What is Husserlian Phenomenology?

# Posts 177 through 188
# Post 189-190: Friedrich Hayek and Karl Popper on Historicism
# Post 191: Anti-Realism and Relativistic Historicism compound MacIntyre’s Ethical Skepticism
# Post 192: Kierkegaard is the Real Postmodern Socrates
# Post 195: The Straw Man Critique of Kierkegaardian Subjectivity
# Post 196: Wittgenstein’s Unscientific Conclusion on Virtue
# Post 198: Braver's Schema of Realism/Antirealism
# Post 200: Can belief in teleology be consistent with realist, or antirealist epistemology?
# Post 201: Pray and curse

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“Pray and curse”—Hegel
(Documents on Hegel's development, Johannes Hoffmeister,1936, pp. 351, 353 ,360, 370 found in Heiss, p. 38 ).​

But can teleology originate from natural history, and not just the history of human civilization? Some would argue the natural world is completely contingent (Wittgenstein) while other philosophers such as Hegel, agree that nature itself unfolds teleologically encompassing human history. Interestingly, the later Hegel would give less emphasis to the historical teleology of “Phenomenology of Spirit” (1807)(pdf.) as the first volume of his system subsequently followed by the second volume, “Science of Logic” (Greater version)(1812-1816), and lastly “Philosophy of Nature “(1817).

However, when Hegel again presented his system in a summary form, the “Science of Logic,” (Lesser version)(pdf.) became the first division as his introduction in “Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences,”(1817)(pdf. final 1830 version). In the Encyclopedia summary, Hegel derives each category of reality from the previous to finish a unified system: The subdivisions are ordered as Science of Logic (Lesser), Science of Nature, and “Science of Geist “(Mind) (pdf.). For a further study see, “Hegel, Kierkegaard, Marx,” by Robert Heiss, trans. E.B. Garside, Delta books, 1975, p. 122-23. So logic is now first in the Hegelian philosophical system, instead of the teleological history of human cognition found in his Phenomenology of Spirit, suggesting there is within the system an ontological foundation for telos in history. Professor Houlgate commented, "Nature, as it emerges in Hegel’s philosophy, is in turn understood to be not just brute contingency or sheer givenness, but actually existing reason (“An Introduction to Hegel, Freedom, Truth and History,” Stephen Houlgate, Blackwell 2005, pp.106-8 ).”

In Hegel’s system, “What is rational is real; and what is real is rational (“Philosophy of Right,”1897; pdf.) which means that Reason (Logos) expresses itself in a dialectical process of unity, diremption, and re-unification as actuality that encompasses both the natural world (science of nature), and the history of cognitive experience (phenomenology of Mind, or Spirit). In Hegel’s logic “…pure being proves ultimately to be self-determining reason or what Hegel calls the ‘ldea’ …‘The Idea, ... contracting itself into the immediacy of being, is the totality in this form – nature’ (Hulgate).” Being is nothing but nature; however, Hegel also says that nature is not fully rational and requires time to develop: “Time is the teleology of consciousness” (J. Hyppolite, “Genesis and Structure of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit,” Northwestern University, 1974 p. 579)(pdf.). We can conclude that Hegel believed in a version of ontologism (plus time) whose thesis is “the human intellect has as its proper object the knowledge of God, that this knowledge is immediate and intuitive, and that all other knowledge must be built on this base.” Historical teleology can also be a religious belief. Hegel’s position on historical teleology is ultimately based on the Christian concept of the Logos. Ironically, this very idea of teleology in Marx’s historicist criticism of capitalism is interpreted today as absolutely anti-Christian.

Narratives are inherently teleological, and like Kant’s category of efficient causality, we cannot think of an effect without a cause so we irresistibly think (with habituated reified language) of a final cause for such events. And yet, teleological historicism is also a useful methodology for researching society and human history as the Italian historicist, Giambattista Vico, once wrote, “What is made is true.” My evolving view now is that historical teleology is not only subjective, but also objective and can be discovered with research and thereby achieve verstehen for both the realist and antirealist epistemologists.

 

# Posts 177 through 190
# Post 191: Anti-Realism and Relativistic Historicism compound MacIntyre’s Ethical Skepticism
# Post 192: Kierkegaard is the Real Postmodern Socrates
# Post 195: The Straw Man Critique of Kierkegaardian Subjectivity
# Post 196: Wittgenstein’s Unscientific Conclusion on Virtue
# Post 198: Braver's Schema of Realism/Antirealism
# Post 200: Can belief in teleology be consistent with realist, or antirealist epistemology?
# Post 201: Pray and curse
#Post XXX: Is Kant’s concept of the noumena coherent and necessary for knowledge?

Is Kant’s concept of the noumena coherent and necessary for knowledge?​

“Finitude is essential for reason, as it is for everything that participates in being…the only point at which the prison of finitude is open is the realm of moral experience….”
—Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol.1, p. 82 (pdf.).​

The subject of Kant’s concept of the noumenon runs throughout Braver’s book, “A Thing of This World,” in his comparative study of antirealists philosophers that include Hegel, Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Foucault; all who reject the Kantian notion of the noumenon, or thing-in-itself, as an incoherent holdover of the realist belief in an independent reality (R1) still present in the Kantian paradigm as “noumenon-envy” (ATTW, p. 503).” For Heidegger, the thing-in-itself is an unproductive, incoherent, and even nihilistic concept while arguing that “appearances are the things themselves,” (Ibid., pp.183-184 for Heidegger citations) which Braver names as Heidegger’s “Phenomenological Ontology” thesis (For complete references to ‘noumenon’ in Braver’s book see, pp. 152, 181-186, 253, 257-258, 336, 340-341, 503).

However, what I read from the rejection of the noumenal concept by each of these philosophers is they immediately faced the emergence of nihilism with its alienating companion of, “The meaninglessness in which the metaphysical articulation of modernity is consummated…Truth is certitude becomes the monotony that is injected into beings as a whole when they are served up for man’ securing of permanence…When certitude becomes the one and only, beings alone remained essential; never again beingness itself, to say nothing of its clearing…When Being lacks the clearing, beings as a whole lack meaning (Heidegger on, Nietzsche, vol. 3:179-80 found in ATTW, p. 336).”

I want to argue that meaninglessness (…and don’t forget the monotony) is a result of jettisoning the concept of the noumenon from the Kantian paradigm that then requires, for the sake of coherence and completeness, each of these antirealist thinkers provide some kind of theoretical corrective (i.e., noumenal) against nihilism, alienation, and neurosis from the monotony. An epistemology of limitation is possible and even coherent: ergo, if the Kantian paradigm isn’t broke, don’t fix it!

“…to that which is inaccessible and not to be gotten around, which is constantly passed over.”
—Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology (pdf.) ​

Hegel expressed skepticism of the Kantian notion of noumenality (also referred to by Kant as the “thing-in-itself,”) as a useless concept if it cannot become an object of knowledge. Hegel wrote…

“It is a natural idea that before engaging in philosophical inquiry one should first examine the instrument or medium of such knowledge (Locke, Kant). Perhaps it is a good or a bad instrument, perhaps no good at all for knowledge of what absolutely is, since it modifies or distorts its object. It is quite vain, however, to try to eliminate the refracting and transforming powers of the instrument and so arrive at the intrinsic notion of the thing. For if what absolutely is cannot be reached by our faculty of knowledge, with all its refracting and transforming power, there is no sense in supposing that it can be reached by dispensing with or discounting the work of this faculty and the course it has to take. Remove the way truth affects us and nothing at all remains (Phenomenology of Spirit, “§73; bold added).”

In contrast to Heidegger, Kant accepts the classic distinction between appearance and reality; a phenomenal world of appearances known by sense experience (intuition) and the symbolic realm of reason (number-theory, geometry, natural science) known by intelligence as necessary a priori (transcendental) categories of the understanding which are universally the same for all consciousness (transcendental idealism)--even for the angels. For Kant, genuine knowledge is limited to the realm of appearances, of the senses, but reason has an internal compulsion to speculate beyond experience for it recognizes no boundaries with any definite closure. As Wittgenstein wrote, “An indefinite boundary is not really a boundary at all (Philosophical Investigations, I, §99)(pdf.).

Kant means the “a priori categories” in the Aristotelian sense (κατηγορία, katēgoria) as ‘that which can be said, predicated, or publicly declared and asserted, about something.’ A category is an attribute, property, quality, or characteristic that can be predicated of a thing (Wiki: Kantian Category)." When reading Kant, wherever the term “categories” is used; think also of imagination. Examples of the categories of the understanding are the concepts of unity, plurality and totality applied in time.

Criticisms of Kant

There are vast libraries of articles interpreting Kant’s concept of the noumenal, but criticism generally centers on the 1.) Etymology of the term noumenon, 2.) Alleged incoherent meaning of the noumenal concept itself, 3.) Kant’s use of the terms noumenon and things-in-themselves.

Kant clarifies his position by defining the concept of the noumenal as a limiting concept (Grenzbegriff); a negation of incompleteness that does not require specific determinations:

“Where extended things are concerned, boundaries always presuppose a space existing outside a certain definite place, and enclosing it; limits don’t require anything like that, but are mere negations, indicating of some quantity that it isn’t absolutely complete. But our reason sees around itself a space for knowledge of things in themselves, so to speak, though it can never have definite concepts of them and is limited to appearances only. As long as the knowledge of reason is all of one kind—for example, reasoning within number-theory, within geometry, within natural science, or the like—definite boundaries to it are inconceivable. (Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, §57) (pdf.).”

The Etymology of “noumenon.”

The etymology of the term “noumenon,” and Kant’s uses of the term are problematic, and even contradictory. “φαινόμενον, phenomenon is translated as bring to light, make to appear, to show. Anything that shows, or shines is a phenomenon. On the other hand, “noumena, or νοούμενα is derived from νοεῖν noeîn ‘to think, to mean,’ which in turn originates from the word νοῦς noûs, an Attic contracted form of νόος nóos[a] ‘perception, understanding, mind.’[3][4] A rough equivalent in English would be ‘something that is thought’, or ‘the object of an act of thought’ (italics added, Wiki: noumenon).” Kant’s use of these terms make clear that the noumenon cannot be an object of sense experience (intuition) and cannot be known determinately: all intuition is sense experience.

“But, though all our knowledge begins with experience, it by no means follows that all arises out of experience.”—Kant, “Critique of Pure Reason,” p.27 (pdf.)​

By Kant’s definition phenomenon is what appears to the perceiving consciousness while noumenon is the object of thought, the thing as it is in itself cannot be experienced without the unifying categories of the understanding. Kant is criticized for arguing that appearances are “caused” by the noumenal thing-in-itself, which according to him, are beyond the unifying categories of experience so we should not be able to infer the noumenon from any phenomenon. To make matters worse, Kant’s entire project is a polemic against metaphysical speculation which claims itself to be knowledge that goes beyond human experience (i.e., religious dogmatism): this interpretation is a clear contradiction in reasoning, and to the overall purpose for writing “Critique of Pure Reason (publ. in 1781, 1st edition; & 2nd ed. in 1787).”

“I therefore had to annul [aufheben] knowledge in order to make room for faith. And the true source of all the lack of faith which conflicts with morality-and is always highly dogmatic-is dogmatism in metaphysics, i.e., the prejudice according to which we can make progress in metaphysics without a [prior] critique of pure reason (CPR, trans. W.S. Pluhar, 1996; p. 31; pdf. p. 91; first bracket mine)."

Logicians can derive endless contradictions from postulating a sensible non-sensible object. I agree with the historian of philosophy, Frederick Copleston, that a purely etymological analysis of Kant’s term noumenon is a dead end, and we should examine how Kant actually used these terms and his later conceptual clarifications (for further analysis see “Modern Philosophy; Kant,” vol. 6, part, One, p. 267; pdf. p.139; First Image Books ed. of Volume VI of The History of Philosophy published 1964).

Kant’s Counter-Arguments

In a summary statement Kant argues: "The object to which I refer appearance as such is the transcendental object,U i.e., the wholly indeterminate concept of something as such. This object cannot be called the noumenon. For I do not know concerning it what it is in itself, and have no concept of it except merely the concept of the object of a sensible intuition as such-an object which, therefore, is the same for all appearances. I cannot think it through any categories; for a category holds only for empirical intuition in order to bring it under a concept of an object as such. Although a pure use of a category is logically,V possible, i.e., is without contradiction, it has no objective validity whatever, because the category does not then apply to any intuition that would thereby acquire the unity of an object. For a category is, after all, a mere function of thought; through it I am not given any object, but only think what may be given in intuition (Critique of Pure Reason, p. 315; pdf. p. 375).”

to continue....

 

# Posts 177 through 191
# Post 192: Kierkegaard is the Real Postmodern Socrates
# Post 195: The Straw Man Critique of Kierkegaardian Subjectivity
# Post 196: Wittgenstein’s Unscientific Conclusion on Virtue
# Post 198: Braver's Schema of Realism/Antirealism
# Post 200: Can belief in teleology be consistent with realist, or antirealist epistemology?
# Post 201: Pray and curse
#Post 202: Is Kant’s concept of the noumena coherent and necessary for knowledge?
#Post 203: The Correlative Argument

The Correlative Argument

Kant’s response to his critics is to make a number of conceptual and terminological distinctions to isolate his further developed view of noumenality. In order to experience--to see the noumenon as an object--I must possess some ability, or intellectual intuition for the object to appear. The very concept of appearance in representational epistemology assumes something that does not appear, that is, the thing as it is in itself independent of the perceiving subject much like a one side of a coin is visible while there is a correlative unseen backside of the coin. For something to be “re-presented” logically implies an originary presentation; “distortion” (Latin: twist apart) implies a pristine whole state. One could counter-argue that the idea of the correlative relationship of two sides of the same coin is relying on a spatial category through which the noumenon could not possibly be an object of perception according to Kant. However, he argues this correlative abstraction is completely indeterminate just as the “transcendental object” is completely indeterminate and does not appear; therefore, the concept of the transcendental object, Kant maintains, is not a blatant contradiction. Only if we had some special intellectual intuition would the noumenal become an object. Kant denies consciousness possesses such an intuition.

The thing-in-itself is problematical, not assertive

Following Kant’s reasoning, the noumenon, or the thing-in-itself (ein Ding an sich) is not a contradictory concept, nor does it assert any existing entity, but functions instead as a limiting concept since we can only know what we can experience through the categories of the understanding (the Kantian block). The "Ding an sich" is not even a “thing!” The noumenal is not a bone, a skull, nor an “is.” Hegel wrote in criticism of phrenology, a pseudo-science of his era, that it is based on the belief the essence (Spirit) of a person could be understood from interpreting the shape of their skull—that is, an abstract externality represents the internal Spirit of a being passed off as a thing: “For this reason, observation finally goes back again from this inconstant language to the fixed being.... When in other respects it is said of Spirit that it is, that it has being, is a Thing, a single, separate reality, this is not intended to mean that it is something we can see or take in our hands or touch, and so on, but that is what is said; and what really is said is expressed by saying that the being of Spirit is a bone (Phenomenology of Spirit; para. §343; original italics).”

“I regard a bone as your reality.”
-Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, §339​

For Kant, the noumenon is problematical (how categories set the limits of experience, and reason), and not assertive (claiming the objective existence of noumenality as an object) (see CPR, p. 319; pdf. p. 379; B 311). British philosopher, William H. Walsh, Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at the University of Edinburgh, comments “If the world we confronted were one of the things-in-themselves, a priori knowledge of it, even of the very restricted sort for Kant argues, would be quite impossible. The fact that we have such knowledge…is taken by Kant as proof that the objects of our knowledge are phenomena or appearances (Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Collier Macmillan (1972) vol. 4, Kant, p. 315; “Encycl.” here on).” Copleston also adds that we cannot say that appearances exhaust reality either. The noumenal is interpreted here as an unknown “X.” Copleston wrote:

“Hence the division of objects into phenomena and noumena is not to be admitted. At the same time the concept of the noumenon is indispensable as a limiting concept; and we can call things-in-themselves, that is, things considered in so far as they do not appear, noumena. But our concept is then problematical. We do not assert that there are noumena, which could be intuited if we possessed a faculty of intellectual intuition. At the same time we have no right to assert that appearances exhaust reality; and the idea of the limits of sensibility carries with it as a correlative concept the indeterminate, negative concept of the noumenon (Copleston, vol. 6, p. 268; pdf. p. 140).”

Positive and Negative Senses of noumenon

Generally, Kant is very careful with his terminology, but in the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason he clarified his arguments by defining two senses of the “noumenal.” First, is the negative sense of the word noumenon that has two theses: “1.) We mean noumenon as a thing ‘in so far as it is not the object of our sensuous intuition,’ and 2.) We make no assumptions of the possibility of another kind of objectifying intellectual intuition of the noumenal (see, CPR, p. 318; pdf. p. 378; B 309).

Secondly, the positive sense of noumenon is 1.) We mean the noumenon as an object of a non-sensuous intuition, 2.) We assume another kind of intuition, which we do not have, but would make the noumenon an intelligible object by another kind of intellectual intuition. Kant rejects this positive sense of the noumenal (Copleston, vol. 6, p. 268; pdf. p. 140; and, CPR, p. 317; pdf. p. 377; B 307).

Wittgenstein’s worldview would be consistent with Kant’s on this issue by accepting the noumenon in the negative sense. Professor Walsh again noted that Kant, “does not need to assert that there actually are things of a different kind; he needs only the idea of such things. To talk about things as they might be in themselves is no more objectionable than to speak of an intellectus archetypus [understanding](Encycl., vol. 4, Kant, p. 315; brackets added).” In fact, one of Wittgenstein’s famous aphorism sums up Kant’s entire transcendental philosophy: “What can be said at all can be said clearly; and whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 1922; italics added).” Kantians and Wittgenstein eschew making assertions about the noumenon in the object-sphere of scientific knowledge--that is the meaning of “whereof.” In a 1959 lecture by Theodor Adorno on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, he coined the term, “Kantian block” that means, “…the confinement of knowledge to the world of experience, and the restriction of the operation of the forms of the understanding within this world (Adorno: The Recovery of Experience by Roger Foster, 2008; p. 82; “RE,” here on).”

But remember, Wittgenstein has a loophole for saying the unsayable so we can argue consistently that Wittgenstein’s view could also align with positive noumenalism. Bertrand Russell describes in the preface to the Tractatus (although, Russell does not use these exact words) Wittgenstein’s possible escape from the truth-conditional semantics of instrumental rationality which is a form of reason that is itself irrational in that it is concerned only with the efficient deployment of means. Russell’s exact words are, “Mr. Wittgenstein manages to say a good deal about what cannot be said, thus suggesting to the skeptical reader that possibly there may be some loophole through a hierarchy of languages, or by some other exit. The whole subject of ethics, for example, is placed by Mr. Wittgenstein in the mystical, inexpressible region (Tractatus, p. 18 )." Wittgenstein’s escape from the objectivating attitude of means-ends mechanistic reductionist scientific categories is through expressive-aesthetic language; the languages of art, philosophy, spiritual faith, poetry, ethics, myth, and even the meta-logical propositions of the Tractatus itself. As I have noted before, Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921) is viewed in the West as a work primarily on logic and theory of language, but Austria-Hungarian Viennese intellectual circles also interpret the Tractatus as a philosophical work on ethics (“Wittgenstein’s Vienna,” by Allan Janik & Stephen Toulmin, 1973; p.24, 193).

Escape Through the Kantian Block: Saying What Cannot Be Said

Interestingly, in Kant’s effort to be complete and clear with his definitions of the noumenal, he identified a second group of philosophers I do not want to ignore. They embrace the noumenal concept in a modified positive sense--that one can say what cannot be said in the object-realm of science. For Adorno, this is the utopian dream of philosophy, “…to counter Wittgenstein by uttering the unutterable (Negative Dialectics, Theodor W. Adorno, 1966; p. 9; ND, here on)(pdf.).” Under the heading titled “The Concern of Philosophy,” Adorno writes about the telos of philosophy and I want to quote it at length since I have spent, in one way or another, studying this one passage for over ten years. I’ll never finish the book:

“Though doubtful as ever, a confidence that philosophy can make it after all—that the concept can transcend the concept, the preparatory and concluding element, and can thus reach the nonconceptual—is one of philosophy’s inalienable features and part of the naïveté that ails it. Otherwise it must capitulate, and the human mind with it. We could not conceive the simplest operation; there would be no truth; emphatically, everything would be just nothing. But whatever truth the concepts cover beyond their abstract range can have no other stage than what the concepts suppress, disparage, and discard. The cognitive utopia would be to use concepts to unseal the nonconceptual with concepts, without making it their equal (Ibid., p. 9-10; italics added).”

To continue….Constellations of Truth.

 

In one of the rare humorous moments in philosophy, Positivism (guys like Wittgenstein) blew themselves up. They wanted to create a a language of science, and proved it was impossible.

I like Kant, but he's old. He's grappling with the relation of philosophy to science. But there was a transition, with Rorty being the Moses, setting the stage for science to be the dominant partner.

Physicists started doing philosophy of science about 40 years ago (give or take), and the first thing they did was throw the language and traditions of philosophy overboard. I like Ronald N Giere, to suggest an example of the breed.

 

# Posts 177 through 196
# Post 198: Braver's Schema of Realism/Antirealism
# Post 200: Can belief in teleology be consistent with realist, or antirealist epistemology?
# Post 201: Pray and curse
#Post 202: Is Kant’s concept of the noumena coherent and necessary for knowledge?
#Post 203: The Correlative Argument
#Post 205: Constellations of Truth

Constellations of Truth

The nonconceptual is the remainder, the residuum, of what any concept does not cover, define, categorize, or captures. Adorno used the word “nonconceptuality” thirty two times in Negative Dialectics. The young Adorno was an assistant to the Christian theologian and professor at the University of Frankfurt, Paul Tillich, who sponsored and accepted his dissertation on Kierkegaard’s aesthetics in 1929. Tillich repeatedly used in a similar way the term “unconditional” in the noumenal sense—i.e., beyond what the concept does not capture---one hundred and two times in his three-volume magnum opus, “Systematic Theology” (1951-1964)(ST, here on)(pdf.).

Adorno contributed to philosophy not only by saving Tillich’s life in warning him to leave Nazi Germany quickly, but by borrowing and developing from philosopher Walter Benjamin the idea of “constellation” as a particular kind of writing style that would enable philosophy to say the unsayable by showing “…the truth as ideas formed by an arrangement of concepts that are not contained in those concept…The constellation shows the truth, it does not assert it in propositional form…. The constellation, in other words, is a form of writing that brings to self-awareness [Selbstbesinnung] the block on experience that curtails what concepts are able to say (RE, p. 82-83).” I imagine this kind of writing would create a series of philosophical essays that express concepts indirectly through a constellation of meanings that go beyond those concepts by showing truth. Adorno and Benjamin believed in truth, and represent another variation of the positive sense of noumenality in an attempt to escape the Kantian block.

Heidegger rejected the Kantian concept of the noumenal, but is still able to identify and describe a form of nihilism that is a driving force in modern technological societies. There is no awe, wonder, gratitude, autonomy, mystery, infinitude, nor of the unconditional—these human attributes have no place within the means-ends nexus of instrumentalist rational thought (utopia: u: οὐ, "not" and τόπος [topos, or topic] "place" or “region” means “no place”). Ultimately, the loss of the nonconceptual is dangerous according to Heidegger and explains why in great detail.

Heidegger’s Move Away from the Kantian Paradigm

This section is important, and not a diversion from the topics we examined so far in this essay; otherwise, I can go no further coherently. Heidegger’s relation to the Kantian paradigm and his later move away from Kant must be clarified since I argue that even though Heidegger rejects the doctrine of the noumenon, his fundamental ontology still express noumenal ideas although in sublimated forms such as the a priori conditions for Being, Time, Dasein, Nothingness, and Care. Maybe some paradigms would benefit from an injection of Kantianism as a corrective by emphasizing the limiting concept of the noumenal, or the unknown X.

You may think it is odd trying to revive that other old dead dog (discredited doctrine) of noumenality; but after reviewing that vast library of distributed cognition, I discovered it has been done before with other systems of thought. The Marxist economist Lucio Colletti (1924-2001) defended Kant’s thing-in-itself in Marxist analysis of capitalism (Really!) since in his opinion the Hegelian branch of Marxism was lacking insightful effective analysis of modern capitalism. Colletti thought of the Hegelian-Marxist tradition as a religion (Hegel was a Christian theologian), not a true science, so he wanted to represent a new dynamic Kantian-Marxist tradition of criticism (However, one could respond to Colletti by noting that Kant--like Hegel--was a Christian theologian also).

I agree with Colletti: Marxism is a Christian heresy, not a non-Christian heresy. This explains why the Neo-Marxist Frankfurt School of philosophers and even some atheistic existentialists not only engage in socio-economic analysis, but also struggle with deeply religious questions and themes like noumenality; yet very people would believe it. Adorno, a member of the Neo-Kantian anti-humanist branch of Marxism, argues that there is no full totality, only a partial totality in a nod to the Kantian thing-in-itself (ND, p. 5). Professor Michael Pelias noted in a seminar lecture that Kant’s Copernican Revolution takes into account the time of capitalism, which is Newtonian time. Colletti believed the creative Kantian paradigm would generate insights into capitalism particularly of fictitious capital ("money that is thrown into circulation as capital without any material basis in commodities or productive activity"—David Harvey) that characterizes modern occult interest bearing financial instruments sold by Wall Street such as derivatives (see further details; “Seminar 9: Marx, Marxism and Philosophy Today” with Professor Michael Pelias; 34-38 minutes; 1hr.50 min.—2hrs. 6 min.).

“The recovery of experience is coterminous with the disclosure of its own limitation, or its own absence”
--Roger Foster, Recovery of Experience​

An analogous case can be made for Heidegger in relation to Kant if we examine the Davos, Switzerland debates between Heidegger and Neo-Kantian Ernst Cassirer of the Marburg Kantian School who studied under Professor Hermann Cohen just as the Nazi Fascists were coming to power in Germany. Unfortunately, the debates were heavily propagandized and characterized by some as a debate between the wise German peasant woodsman against the money grubbing Jew. However, after the debates, Heidegger clarified his position by writing, “What is Metaphysics?” “On the Essence of Ground,” and “Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics (pdf.)” and revealed his views had ”…moved from neo-Kantianism and phenomenology of consciousness to his own phenomenological ontology (IEP: by Dr. W. J. Korab-Karpowicz on Heidegger).” In fact, Heidegger targeted Cassirer’s Neo-Kantian mentor, Cohen, by presenting a “…radical new conception of an ‘existential analytic of Dasein’ in the guise of a parallel interpretation of the philosophy of Kant. Cassirer, for his part, defended his own new understanding of Kant in the philosophy of symbolic forms – against Heidegger’s insistence on the ineluctability of human finitude (SEP: by Dr. Michael Friedman on Cassirer).”

Surprisingly (I would have expected the opposite), Heidegger is emphasizing the finitude of Dasein, and it is Cassirer who attempts to counter Dasein’s “radical finitism” by appealing to the transcendentalism of “…genuinely objectively valid, necessary and eternal truths arising in both moral experience and mathematical natural science (Ibid., Friedman).” The term “radical finitism” refers to Heidegger’s emphasis in Being and Time (1926)(pdf.) of the “throwness” [Geworfenheit] and “falleness” [Verfallenheit] of Dasein into the alienating world of objects as distorted “das Man.” After the Davos debates, Cassirer admitted that the Critique of Pure Reason was written with human finitude as its key theme and assumption, but appealed to the ethical theories of the Critique of Practical Reason as an escape from the prison of finitude. So Heidegger argued the finitude of Dasein while Cassirer offered an escape from the Kantian block. I believe, the debate shows that Heidegger’s new fundamental ontology which emphasized Dasein’s radical finitude still had embedded within it the Kantian negative sense of noumena even though Heidegger rejects Kant’s doctrine of the noumenal thing-in-itself arguing instead that appearance is reality.

Ernest Cassirer’s Neo-Kantian Philosophy of Symbolic Form

Cassirer was not defeated by Heidegger, but attempted to find a Kantian middle way between Hegel’s divine reason and Dasein’s radical finitude. Stanford Professor Michael Friedman wrote of Cassirer, “By building the Marburg conception of knowledge, in his new philosophy of culture, on top of the more primitive forms of mythical thought …and ordinary language… Cassirer takes himself to have done justice to the insights of both Hegel and Heidegger while avoiding both the infinite divine reason of the former and the radical human finitude of the latter. Yet he has now conceded to Heidegger that Kant’s theory of human cognition involves only the notion of potential rather than actual infinity. In particular, Kant’s treatment of the regulative use of the ideas of reason from a merely theoretical point of view leaves their actual content quite indeterminate (SEP: Cassirer; Italics added).” Adorno would also agree that there is no actual infinity in human cognition, only potential infinity. Regarding the question of noumenality; Heidegger is right to emphasis the finitude of Dasein, but Cassirer also has much to offer with this theory of symbolic forms which demands another essay exploring the creation and power of symbolic meaning within language, myth, and science.

“…the inexhaustibleness of That which is worthy of questioning.”
—Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology (pdf.).​

And again, Heidegger’s phenomenology of time also has embedded in it the concept of the limits of human cognition. Professor Friedman writes of Heidegger’s fundamental category of time: “Heidegger seems to embrace this very option, arguing that nature is within time only when it is encountered in Dasein's world, and concluding that nature as it is in itself is entirely atemporal. It is worth noting the somewhat Kantian implication of this conclusion: if all understanding is grounded in temporality, then the atemporality of nature as it is in itself would mean that, for Heidegger, we cannot understand natural things as they really are in themselves (cf. Dostal, R. J., 1993, “Time and Phenomenology in Husserl and Heidegger”, in C. Guignon (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 141–169).”

Next… Heidegger on the Gestalt (shape) of the Great Gestell (enframing).

 

# Posts 177 through 196
# Post 198: Braver's Schema of Realism/Antirealism
# Post 200: Can belief in teleology be consistent with realist, or antirealist epistemology?
# Post 201: Pray and curse
#Post 202: Is Kant’s concept of the noumena coherent and necessary for knowledge?
#Post 203: The Correlative Argument
#Post 205: Constellations of Truth
#Post 206: Heidegger on the Gestalt (shape) of the Great Gestell (Enframing)


Heidegger on the Gestalt (shape) of the Great Gestell (enframing)

Heidegger’s philosophical language is deceptively simple using terms such as “Enframing,” “unconcealment,” “destining,” “presencing,” and “oblivion” that are tightly interconnected with those of technology, and Enframing so I will focus on what is relevant to the Kantian theme of epistemological limitation without overlooking too much detail. Occasionally, words like “destining” [Geschick] that means “fate,” Heidegger will instead emphasis closely associated etymological meanings of the same term such as in this case “self-adapting” and “aptitude,” as in a turning around in direction (see, QT, p. 37 ff.). Also, I want to gain insight by speculating on how other philosophers might stand regarding noumenality including Adorno, Wittgenstein, Tillich, and a few more contemporary Heideggerian scholars.

Heidegger’s philosophy is vast and complex so this short essay cannot be a comprehensive review of his thoughts on technology; rather, I want to show how his critique of modern science, and technology (techne) relies on the concept of noumenality in the Kantian negative sense of the limitation of cognition. Heidegger does not reject noumenality, only the language of noumenality. He never used the term “noumenon” in his lectures collected in the book “The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays (pdf.)(1954), forming five short essays; “The Question Concerning Technology,” “The Turning,” “The Word of Nietzsche: ‘God is Dead,’” “The Age of the World Picture,” and “Science and Reflection.” Heidegger does use mystical language; “Language is the house of Being (“Letter on Humanism,” 1947).” The first essay concerning technology is the paradigm of profound philosophical writing. Heidegger warns in these essays of a specific modern technological paradigm much like Kant warned against dogmatic doctrines (metaphysics) of his day by appealing to the limiting concept of noumenality.

“…where Enframing reigns, there is danger in the highest sense.”
—Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology​

I have discussed pattern-seeking Kuhnian “paradigms” in another essay that describes all of the same characteristics as what Heidegger calls “Enframing” [Gestell] which is a categorical ordering of the world in a specific way. The German word “Gestell,” is related to the term “Gestalt” meaning “shape,” “form,” and is often interpreted as the “pattern of the whole.” Heidegger discusses the form and patterns of modern technology, its limitation, and dangers telling us, “…until Plato the word techne [τέχνη, tékhnē] is linked with the word episteme. Both words are names for knowing in the widest sense (QT, p. 13).” Heidegger uses techne in the modern sense of “technology,” as distinct from “modern science” in the sense of the Greek word ἐπιστήμη,[ epistēmē], meaning 'science' or 'knowledge' referring also in this context to European modern science.

Kantian absolute a priori categories and Neo-Kantian relative a priori categories

To make an analogy between Enframing and paradigms I must add a further distinction between “absolute a priori categories” and “relative a priori categories.” (An analogy is a useful rhetorical device for clarification, but is an inferior substitute for sound deductive argument). The Kantian school of thought understands categories as “absolute,” or the necessary conditions for the possibility of experience (transcendental). On the other hand, the Neo-Kantians, like Ernest Cassirer, believe these necessary “absolute” a priori concepts for experience are functionally indistinguishable from a priori "relative" categories. Relative categories are unnecessary for experience, but they also can change the way perception is organized. The “a priori forms of sensibility” is the Kantian term for the absolute categories of space and time since any object must necessarily be presented to understanding within these two perceptual schemas: place and duration. Traditionally, Western philosophy has four main categories: space, time, causality, and substance. Relative a priori categories could describe the beliefs that time is cyclical, or linear occurring within a closed or open universe—or in a teleological or non-teleological cosmos. These are only contingent cultural beliefs not necessary for the possibility of sense-experience. From my point of view, Heidegger argues as if Enframing is a relative category, or paradigm not necessary for experience, and should be eschewed for its damaging effects on human being. Braver’s Impersonal Conceptual Schemes (ICS) could also be interpreted coherently as relative categories. Relative a priori scientific empirical paradigms are constructed upon transcendental absolute categories of experience or, the forms of sensibility such as space and time.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Paradigms

Heidegger considers the philosophical systems of Kant, Leibnitz, Fichte, Hegel, and Shelling as great philosophical systems: “The greatness of the systematic in these thinkers lies in the fact that it unfolds not as in Descartes out of the subject as ego and substantia finita [finite substance], but either as in Leibnitz out of the monad, or as in Kant out of the transcendental essence of finite understanding rooted in the imagination, or as in Fichte out of the infinite I, or as in Hegel out of Spirit as absolute knowledge, or as in Schelling out of freedom….(QT, p. 141; brackets added).”

A bad system (Heidegger uses the term “degraded system”) are those research projects that blindly gathers data to merely register facts wherein “Ongoing activity becomes mere busyness (Ibid., p. 138; 141).” Philosopher Georg Lukács describes scientific paradigms in this degraded state:

"...that the more intricate a modern science becomes and the better it understands itself methodologically, the more resolutely it will turn its back on the ontological problems of its own sphere of influence and eliminate them from the realm, where it has achieved some insight. The more highly developed it becomes and the more scientific, the more it will become a formally closed system of partial laws. It will then find that the world lying beyond its confines, and in particular the material base which it is its task to understand, its own concrete underlying reality lies, methodologically and in principle, beyond its grasp (“History & Class Consciousness,” 1919-23; p. 116)(pdf.)."

Enframing would be what Heidegger considers the ugly relative a priori paradigm of the modern scientific age. He describes it as a “gathering together,“ or an “ordering” attitude toward nature: “Enframing means the gathering together of that setting-upon which sets upon man, i.e., challenges him forth, to reveal the real, in the mode of ordering, as standing-reserve (Ibid., p. 20).” As a side note, “λόγος,“(Reason) is related to the verb “λέγω” meaning “to gather, pick up”, as in the phrase “αἱμασιὰς λέγων” picking out stones for building walls. To preserve this active sense of framing that is an ordering of nature, Heidegger spells the term distinctly as “En-framing,”(Ibid., p. 19n17).

Heidegger is careful defining the terms he uses to describe modern technology and science, and often repeats them in slightly different contexts to add other desired shades of connotative meanings to avoid the metaphysical incoherencies of exaggerated subjectivism, or objectivism. We should also remember that Nazi censors were present when Heidegger lectured, and also reviewed his written work, but the reader will find a tremendous depth of meanings emerging from below the surface. For example, Heidegger asks rhetorically, “What is a standing-reserve?” His answer: “It is the undifferentiated reserve of the available that is ready for use (Ibid., p. 84, 19ff).” The paradigm of Enframing is specifically aimed at building a standing-reserve, and has profound consequences for how human beings relate to nature, to others, and how the real is defined so that everything everywhere appears as an object for technology (see, Ibid., p. 100). Heidegger mentions energy sources such as coal, and mined ores (like uranium for example) specifically as part of the standing-reserve, “…which puts to nature the unreasonable demand that it supply energy that can be extracted and stored as such…(Ibid., p. 14).”

next…”The Great Reduction of Being to beings.”

 

# Posts 177 through 196
# Post 198: Braver's Schema of Realism/Antirealism
# Post 200: Can belief in teleology be consistent with realist, or antirealist epistemology?
# Post 201: Pray and curse
#Post 202: Is Kant’s concept of the noumena coherent and necessary for knowledge?
#Post 203: The Correlative Argument
#Post 205: Constellations of Truth
#Post 206: Heidegger on the Gestalt (shape) of the Great Gestell (Enframing)
#Post 207: The Great Reduction of Being to beings
#Post 208: The Oblivion of Reified Experience


The Great Reduction of Being to beings

Spelled with a capital letter “Being,” means for Heidegger to “to-be-in-being” or [Sein] in contrast to “that-which-is-in-being” or [das Seiende] (entities, or existent) spelled as “being.” Heidegger derives this distinction from the etymology of "being" (ὄν,) Greek for 'being' as opposed to (ὄντα) that means "things that are." (see translator’s notes on this distinction by Fried and Polt in “An Introduction to Metaphysics,” M. Heidegger, 2000; p. xi)(pdf.). Some translators might not use this English spelling convention instead letting context determine which sense to use.

While discussing Nietzsche’s aphorism “God is dead,” in part II, Heidegger describes Enframing as a natural-scientific reductionist paradigm that wipes out all transcendence [possibilities]. Even nature experienced through Enframing becomes one-dimensional while all other ontological possibilities are “blocked” (Ibid., p. 26); but yet, it still cannot capture nature in its complete unity and totality: “Scientific representation is never able to encompass the coming to presence of nature; for the objectness of nature is, antecedently, only one way in which nature exhibits itself (Ibid., p. 174).” Being is the opposite of objectness (beings). Regarding Nietzsche, Heidegger writes:

"The killing [of God] means the act of doing away with the suprasensory world that is in itself—an act accomplished through man…. But above all, in this event man also becomes different. He becomes the one who does away with that which is, in the sense of that which is in itself. The uprising of man into subjectivity transforms that which is into object. But that which is objective is that which is brought to a stand through representing. The doing away with that which is in itself, i.e., the killing of God, is accomplished in the making secure of the constant reserve by means of which man makes secure for himself material, bodily, psychic, and spiritual resources, and this for the sake of his own security, which wills dominion over whatever is—as the potentially objective—in order to correspond to the Being of whatever is, to the will to power (Ibid., p. 107; italics and brackets added)."

The real means “that which works…’to work’ means ‘to do’ (Ibid., p. 159).” Human beings are fever seized by the paradigm of Enframing, “Man enters into insurrection. The world changes into object (Ibid., p. 100, 21).” Enframing dominates human life by representing nature only as an object to be collected for the “standing-reserve,” driven by a will to control (will to power), and by modern scientific methodologies that recognize no limits which Kant described as characteristic of pure reason: ”Today science goes its way more securely than even before (Ibid., p. 178 ).” Technology “entraps nature” as a “calculable coherence of forces (Ibid., p. 21).” However, Heidegger makes a distinction between Enframing and technology: “…the essence of modern technology lies in Enframing…. It is nothing technological, nothing on the order of a machine. It is the way in which the real reveals itself as standing-reserve (Ibid., p.23).” “Essence” means what something is. Heidegger is not a anti-modernist Luddite, but instead tells us there is “no demonry of technology,” nor is it a curse from “the work of the devil (Ibid., p. 26; 28 ).”

“… the utilization of machinery and the manufacture of machines is not yet technology itself—it is only an instrument concordant with technology, whereby the nature of technology is established in the objective character of its raw materials. Even this, that man becomes the subject and the world the object, is a consequence of technology's nature establishing itself, and not the other way around.”—Heidegger in “What Are Poets For?”​

The problem of Enframing is not technological, but ideological: “…where everything that presences exhibits itself in the light of a cause-effect coherence, even God can for representational thinking, lose all that is exalted and holy, the mysteriousness of his distance. In the light of causality, God can sink to the level of a cause, of causa, efficiens…(Ibid., p. 26).” In another comment he writes: ”Even god is represented in theology—not in faith—as causa prima, as first cause (Ibid., p. 161).” The “Weltbild,” (view of life) is that everything is a thing; even God is an object within the Enframing of the standing-reserve, which can be interpreted as the business mindedness of a modern industrial commodity market system of capitalism. Philosophers have encountered this problematic issue of total reification in other disciplines of study such as theology (Tillich), logic (Wittgenstein), and economics (Lukács). Reification is a kind of amnesia that misunderstands the symbol as more real than the symbolized.

Continue below to….The Oblivion of Reified Experience

 

# Posts 177 through 196
# Post 198: Braver's Schema of Realism/Antirealism
# Post 200: Can belief in teleology be consistent with realist, or antirealist epistemology?
# Post 201: Pray and curse
#Post 202: Is Kant’s concept of the noumena coherent and necessary for knowledge?
#Post 203: The Correlative Argument
#Post 205: Constellations of Truth
#Post 206: Heidegger on the Gestalt (shape) of the Great Gestell (Enframing)
#Post 207: The Great Reduction of Being to beings
#Post 208: The Oblivion of Reified Experience

The Oblivion of Reified Experience

An important theme of The Frankfurt School philosophers such as Marcuse, Horkheimer, and Adorno is the atrophy of experience resulting from an emphasis on identity-thinking that characterizes the categorizing-driven model of subject-object epistemology, and the obsession with calculative instrumentalist rationality. Scientization of life is ultimately nihilistic by reducing the world to things so that experience becomes, to use their metaphors; “withered,” “reified,” “restricted,” “mutilated,” “diminished,” “narrowed,” “damaged,” and “lost.” Reified experience of natural-scientific reductionism is reduced experience. Categorical thinking subsumes all objects under a classificatory concept so that the object is identical to the cover concept; otherwise, it is non-identical. Adorno also refers to what cannot be covered by the concept as the “nonconceptual.” However, Professor Brian O’Connor comments that for Adorno, “The nonidentity is a product of meaning itself, not a mystical alternative to predication (Adorno's Negative Dialectic: Philosophy and the Possibility of Critical Rationality, 2005, Brian O'Connor, p. 67).” Adorno’s major thesis in Negative Dialectics is, “Reified philosophy--reified intellectual life, for that matter--deprives us of the capacity to articulate the complex dynamics of experience (Ibid., p. 55).” Reification means all processes of life are conceptualized as “thing-like,” or “as if” they were a thing, or object. Adorno believed all reification is a form of forgetting; that is, failing to remember the true historical origin of the thingified concept. For example, certain metals are used as money and believed by some to be value itself (bullionism), but these things (metals) within this social context, are actually reifications of the processes of human labor. Adorno thinks that self-reflection and awareness of the nonconceptual will retrieve remembrance, and thereby recover nonreified experience.

Correspondingly, Enframing dominates by reducing Being to beings (thingification) while human life slides into meaningless ‘not-being,’ or oblivion. Stanford professor M. Wheeler writes of oblivion: ”The notion of a not-being (oblivion) signals two things: (i) technological revealing drives out any sense of awe and wonder in the presence of beings, obliterating the secularized sense of what is sacred that is exemplified by the poetic habitation of the natural environment of the Rhine; (ii) we are essentially indifferent to the loss (SEP: Heidegger).” Heidegger wrote that oblivion is a forgetting such that “in the midst of all that is correct the true will withdraw…(QT, p. 26).” Because scientific technology is doing what is real, what works, science does not think (Ibid., p.109); that is, science cannot think outside of itself—of its own framing. The danger of Enframing is its intrinsic drive to dominate, or entrap nature, human beings, and all knowledge to “…be consumed in ordering and that everything will present itself only in the unconcealedness [discovery, truth] of standing-reserve (Ibid., p. 33; brackets added).” The term “oblivion” [Vergessenheit] can be interpreted to mean, “forgetting” (λήθη: lethe, Homer used this word to mean “a place of oblivion” in the lower world…of Hades.)(Ibid., p. 46), but Heidegger also uses this term in other ways related to truth ἀλήθεια (see, Ibid,. p. 36).

Heidegger defines three ontological modes of being: 1.) Dasein: being-there of human existence, 2.) Vorhandensein: present-at-hand is the being of things in existence, and 3.) Zuhandensein: ready-to-hand are things intended as tools for some purpose. One danger of Enframing is Dasein itself becomes part of the standing-reserve as Vorhandensein. Heidegger warns:

“This danger attests itself to use in two ways. As soon as what is unconcealed no longer concerns man even as object, but does so rather exclusively as standing-reserve, and man in the midst of objectlessness is nothing but the orderer of the standing-reserve, then he comes to the very brink of a precipitous fall; that is, he comes to the point where he himself will have to be taken as standing-reserve. Meanwhile man, precisely as the one so threatened, exalts himself to the posture of lord of the earth… This illusion gives rise in turn to one final delusion: It seems as though man everywhere and always encounters only himself…In truth, however, precisely nowhere does man today any longer encounter himself (Ibid., p. 26; Bold text added).”

The efforts of science and technology to reveal the truth of objective interrelations in existence by empirical experiment is overshadowed by the urgency of the standing-reserve itself so that Dasein only orders and bureaucratically manages resources forgetting the questions of human existence and of Being—even forgetting the question of Being is forgotten (see, Ibid., p. 43, 46). The sole telos of human beings and society is now to “entrap” nature as “objects in order” (Ibid., p. 179) for the standing-reserve resulting in their own entrapment.

Within the object-sphere of Enframing only what can be measured is recognized and validated as real: nature, Dasein*, history, and language still cannot be captured in totality while it “sucks up” everything, including other possibilities of living while shutting out the “…inexhaustibleness of That which is worthy of questioning (Ibid., p. 174; italics added).” Here is Heidegger’s negative theory of noumenality, or limitation:

“Even if physics as an object-area is unitary and self-contained, this objectness can never embrace the fullness of the coming to presence of nature. Scientific representation is never able to encompass the coming to presence of nature; for the objectness of nature is, antecedently, only one way in which nature exhibits itself. Nature thus remains for the science of physics that which cannot be gotten around (Ibid., p. 174; italics added).”

Heidegger’s critique of Enframing (not of technology per se) can easily be updated to describe today’s merger of military and Internet monopolies to create unregulated markets for a privatized surveillance and penal state in an age of after-market home made “ghost drones” all while ignoring the emergency of anthrogenetic climate change. Human beings themselves have become objects of the standing-reserve.

*Heidegger repeats the masculine pronoun, “Man,” 183 times in QT instead of “human,” or “humanity” so I am using Dasein instead even though after his philosophical ‘turn’ (die Kehre) he no longer methodologically focuses primarily on Dasein’s experience (transcendental hermeneutic phenomenology) in investigating the question of Being. After publishing Being and Time (1927) he wrote, “everything is reversed,” meaning his earlier writing centered too much on the subjectivity of Dasein in his view.

…next…Paul Tillich on Existential Finitude and Reason

 

OK

 

I have a much better review titled "An Existentialist Interpretation of the Last Scene of Fellini’s Film, 'La Dolce Vita,' ('The Sweet Life')(1960)." The last scene video is block here at PF, but not at my backup site.

 

# Posts 177 through 196
# Post 198: Braver's Schema of Realism/Antirealism
# Post 200: Can belief in teleology be consistent with realist, or antirealist epistemology?
# Post 201: Pray and curse
#Post 202: Is Kant’s concept of the noumena coherent and necessary for knowledge?
#Post 203: The Correlative Argument
#Post 205: Constellations of Truth
#Post 206: Heidegger on the Gestalt (shape) of the Great Gestell (Enframing)
#Post 207: The Great Reduction of Being to beings
#Post 208: The Oblivion of Reified Experience
#Post 211: Paul Tillich on Existential Finitude and Reason


Paul Tillich on Existential Finitude and Reason

“The denial of reason in the classical sense is antihuman because it is antidivine.”
--Paul Tillich​

Tillich’s major work Systematic Theology refers to Heidegger by name thirteen times in his three-volume work with each division titled after the ontological categories of reason, existence, and spirit which parallels fundamental ontology of Being and Time emphasizing the Dasein analytic: existence is self-contradictory, being is finite, and life is ambiguous (see ST, vol. 1, p. 81). Tillich deliberately wrote his systematic theology to demythologize Christian categories (to remove literalistic distortions of symbols and myths) by translation into an existential hermeneutic phenomenology motivated by his belief that “...existentialism is a natural ally of Christianity. Immanuel Kant once said that mathematics is the good luck of human reason. In the same way, one could say that existentialism is the good luck of Christian Theology (Ibid., vol. 1, p. 27).” Take for example, Tillich’s rejection of biblical literalism that defends the cosmological argument’s conclusion that God is the Creator, and First Cause because rationalistic theism is based on the category of causality: "...the category of causality cannot 'fill the bill’...In order to disengage the divine cause from the series of causes and effects, it is called the first cause, the absolute beginning. What this means is that the category of causality is being denied while it is being used. In other words, causality is being used not as a category but as a symbol (Ibid., vol. I, p. 238; italics added).” Tillich’s polemic in opposition to biblical literalism is based on his notion of the unconditional: “…the gods are not objects within the context of the universe…Ultimacy stands against everything which can be derived from mere subjectivity, nor can the unconditional be found within the entire catalogue of finite objects which are conditioned by each other (Ibid., vol. 1, p. 214).”

“Anything that claims to be sacred and that does not recognize the demand of the Unconditional is demonic.”
—Paul Tillich in “Political Expectation,” (1971)(pdf. ) p.31.​

Tillich draws the distinction between ontological and technical concepts of reason. The conceptions of ontological reason are represented by philosophers from Promenades to Hegel including Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, and Aquinas. Classical Reason is that of the logos of being, which includes cognitive, aesthetic, practical, and technical functions of the human mind. The technical concept of reason is the capacity of reason reduced to the capacity to calculate. (Tillich’s distinction parallels Heidegger’s calculative vs. meditative thinking). The “depth of reason” is not another field of reason, but rather is the structure preceding (metaphorically speaking) all rational thought which is manifested in the creative logos of being (see, ST, vol. I, p. 79). Logos determines the ends, while technical reason determines the means. Tillich warns if these two capacities of reasoning become separated and technical calculative reason overshadows the logos as it has since the middle of the nineteenth century, ”The consequence is that the ends are provided by nonrational forces, either by positive tradition or by arbitrary decision serving the will to power (ST, vol. I, p. 72-3).” Logical positivism is given particular criticism of its refusal to recognize as relevant anything that is not empirically verifiable (irrelevant subjectivity) in the object-realm of technical reason. Tillich directs the reader to Max Horkheimer’s famous book, “The Eclipse of Reason (1947)(pdf.).” The topic of Enframing, and the same suspects are here again: Tillich, Adorno, Horkheimer, and Heidegger.

“Wherever technical reason dominate, religion is superstition and is either foolishly supported by reason or rightly removed by it.”
—Paul Tillich​

Tillich has already updated Heidegger’s critique of Enframing for us. Tillich specifically warns of the objectification of Dasein as dangerous to self-identity and human existence. Another existential hazard is falling into a mode of alienated being having lost a sense of noumenality, the unconditional, or the infinite—in short, the loss of existential meaning:

"The basic structure of being and all its elements and the conditions of existence lose their meaning and their truth if they are seen as objects among objects. If the self is considered to be a thing among things, its existence is questionable; if freedom is thought to be a thing among things, its existence is questionable; if freedom is thought to be a quality of will, it loses out to necessity; if finitude is understood in terms of measurement, it has no relation to the infinite. The truth of all ontological concepts is their power of expressing that which makes the subject-object structure possible. They constitute this structure; they are not controlled by it (ST, vol. I, p. 168; italics added)." Tillich believed Hegel “deified reason” which later opened the way for the domination of cognitive-technical-instrumentalist reason of the modern era forgetting Kant’s greater sense of ontological reason that “…grasps the cognitive, aesthetic, practical, and technical functions of the human mind (Ibid., vol. I, p. 72).”

“The secret of Kant’s philosophy is the unthinkability of despair.”
—Adorno in Negative Dialectics, trans. E.B. Ashston, p. 383 (pdf.)​

Tillich describes the Kantian categories as the “forms in which the mind grasps and shapes reality (Ibid., vol. 1, p. 192),” or the categories of finitude, which means Dasein faces existence with uncertainty, insecurity, doubt, risk and anxiety without an object (unlike phobias that have a definite object such as insects, horses, or snakes, etc.). Tillich gives a detailed analysis of Heidegger’s term “Dasein” twice (Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 62, 168 ) describing human existence as thrown and requiring the courage to be: “In this dimension there is an ultimate security, or certainty which does not cancel out the preliminary insecurities and uncertainties of finitude (including the anxiety of their awareness). Rather it takes them into itself with the courage to accept one’s finitude (ST, vol. 2, p. 73)." Realism accepts the “realm of essences” (symbols), but only as tools without the “power of being” so that scientific realism devolves into undialectical pragmatic positivism (see, ST, vol. 1, p. 234).

"Karl Marx called every theory which is not based on the will to transform reality an ‘ideology,’ that is, an attempt to preserve existing evils by a theoretical construction which justifies them.”
--Paul Tillich, ST, vol. I, p. 76​

Paul Tillich publicly identified himself as a socialist in his famous essay, “The Socialist Decision,”(1933)(pdf.) which was immediately censored by the National Socialist (Nazis) who had infiltrated the German University system; he was particularly critical of some German churches for cooperating with the pagan Nazi regime. Tillich was fired from the University of Freiburg in 1933 for his loud and disruptive protests against the display of the Nazi swastikas with the Christian cross. Tillich is known as the first non-Jewish professor dismissed from the university system by the new Nazi regime. Just before immigrating to the United States, Tillich was nearly arrested while traveling to say goodbye to a friend, Mrs. Ida Bienart, at her home in Dresden as she was being interviewed by the Nazis about a comment Tillich made concerning Nazi official Herman Goering being a drug addict—both of which were true. A next-door neighbor warned Tillich before his arrival and hid until dark at another friend’s home, then left Dresden on a train. After WWII ended it became known that Tillich secretly wrote one hundred sermon like radio broadcasts for Voice of America to persuade the German people to “battle to break the Nazi spirit” saying they are “thieves of millions who are adorned with medals,” and even worse than this they “deliberately set the earth aflame (Against The Third Reich: Paul Tillich’s Wartime Addresses to Nazi Germany 1942 to D-Day 1944, pp. 20, 264) (pdf.).” He warned all Christians that an otherworldly attitude that only celebrates internal spiritual peace hands “this world over to satanic powers” and replaces freedom of life with freedom to dream (see my essay, “Paul Tillich’s Wartime Addresses”). As a Christian socialist, Tillich wanted something more than just a better dogcatcher.

“Others, perhaps the majority, were blinded and didn't see to whom the German people had surrendered themselves. They didn't see that they had made a pact with evil. Others finally did suspect what was occurring, but because they shared in the gifts that were first distributed, they accepted bribes and silenced the warning voice. Now they have all awoken and seen what has happened: that the power of evil has become visible in its ultimate depth and is demanding its victims, the German people!”—Tillich, War Addresses, p. 215​

…next…Conclusion

 

# Posts 177 through 196
# Post 198: Braver's Schema of Realism/Antirealism
# Post 200: Can belief in teleology be consistent with realist, or antirealist epistemology?
# Post 201: Pray and curse
#Post 202: Is Kant’s concept of the noumena coherent and necessary for knowledge?
#Post 203: The Correlative Argument
#Post 205: Constellations of Truth
#Post 206: Heidegger on the Gestalt (shape) of the Great Gestell (Enframing)
#Post 207: The Great Reduction of Being to beings
#Post 208: The Oblivion of Reified Experience
#Post 211: Paul Tillich on Existential Finitude and Reason
#Post 212: Conclusion


Conclusion

I reviewed a few of my favorite philosophers about the question of noumenality, and attempted to speculate on what positions they might take to arrive at some coherent conclusions. Kant made the distinction between the negative sense of noumenality which is Apophatic (ἀπόφασις; meaning ‘denial,’ or ‘negation’) and the positive meaning that speculates on the possibility of an intellectual intuition that would make transcendental “objects” intelligible in some way, or Cataphatic (κατάφασις: meaning ‘affirmative proposition’). Surprisingly, Wittgenstein could be placed with those who favor the positive meaning of noumenality since he has a loophole through the Kantian block (according to Bertrand Russell). We can include Heidegger with Wittgenstein on this point since both also viewed poetry as a loophole through which one can think the mystery of Being. Even Kant himself has a loophole to the noumenal realm by commitment to pure practical reason (or the Second Critique of the necessary conditions for the possibility of ethics). Maybe we can identify those in the positive cataphatic camp such as Wittgenstein as “quasi-negative noumenalists,” or “quasi-positive noumenalists” depending on the philosopher’s viewpoint. Adorno, and Benjamin explored the notion of authoring constellations of meanings as a way to say the unsayable. Tillich and Adorno refer to the unconditional and the nonconceptual respectively in their writings describing the loss of experience and a possible recovery of experience.

"...I am indebted to Kantian criticism, which showed me that the question of the possibility of scientific knowledge cannot be answered by pointing to the realm of things."
--Paul Tillich, Interpretations of History, p. 60 (pdf.)​

Heidegger rejects the Kantian doctrine of noumenality, but in my opinion he retains a negative sense of ontological finitude, or “limitation” within his critique of the Enframing paradigm as a totalizing causal-mechanistic materialist science commanding (or swaying) autonomous authority that monopolizes the ability to define what is real experience. Enframing cannot think itself for the same reason that there is nothing outside the text (Derrida): what is not covered by the concept is nonidentical and the nonconceptual. Without the notion of noumenality (as limitation), much of the later Heidegger makes little sense: the same is true of Kantian Transcendental Idealism. Abstract paradigmatic totalities are powerful tools of cognition, but they are only parts of the whole. Even the non-mystic Marxist scholar Lucio Colletti sought to introduce the Kantian notion of noumenality (thing-in-itself) into economic analysis in the hope of stimulating new insightful critiques of capitalism.

“Poetically, Man dwells.”
—Heidegger (1951)​

Theologian Paul Tillich never used the term “noumenon” in his three volumes of Systematic Theology, but instead favored “unconditional” as an ontological negative noumenal concept that represents the ethical realm of the categorical imperative—the ethical form of the imperative is absolute (duty, deon-tology), but its moral contents are relative (empirically contingent). Kant’s notion of noumenality understood in the negative sense—of the limitation of cognition--is not inherently self-contradictory. Tillich has stated he is not a Neo-Kantian because of its “pan-logical tendencies”(see, “The Interpretation of History,” 1969, pp. 36, 59) (pdf.). Ouch!

To repeat Professor W.H. Walsh’s argument why noumenality is necessary for knowledge: “If the world we confronted were one of the things-in-themselves, a priori knowledge of it, even of the very restricted sort for Kant argues, would be quite impossible...The fact we have such knowledge…is taken by Kant as proof the objects of our knowledge are phenomena or appearances.” Reason demands both totality and limitation. If we do not acknowledge our finitude, we are not unlike Kant’s foolish dove flying confidently through a resistant wind:

“When the light dove parts the air in free flight and feels the air's resistance, it might come to think that it would do much better still in space devoid of air.”
--(CPR, p.50, A5).​

End​

 

I posted all 76 essays at my backup website "Strange Phenomenon" with only minor editing changes:
https://sphenomenon.blogspot.com/2022/06/appendix-j-is-kants-concept-of-noumena.html

Philosophy professor Dr. Johannes A. Niederhauser has series of great short videos on Hegel, Kant, Schelling, Heidegger and others that are both commentary and the epi-phenomena from teaching a series of high quality introductory and advanced philosophy seminars on German Idealism. I have learned much from professor Niederhauser's video lectures and from my other favorite internet philosophers such as professors Dr. Gregory Sadler, and Dr. John Vervaeke. I have been wanting to write an update on these professors' good academic work, but I have two other essays I must write first in defense of Marcuse, and one on nomenalism (not to be confused with noumenalism) after clearing up some blind-spots in my reading and research.

I found another very interesting and knowledgeable philosophy professor Dr. Michael Peilas who also teaches high quality content at the Institute for the Radical Imagination [A very Kantian name in my opinion]. I worked through a number of his completed recorded video seminars in which he was the leading instructor such as Technology, Technics, and Time: Where are “We”? which I thought was his best lecture series. Also, Plato for Revolutionaries; and Marx, Marxism and Philosophy Today [This one is also outstanding]; and Bernard Stiegler: Critical Interventions. Stiegler is new to me while his writings sound like an updated and further development of Marcuse's critique of modern advanced capitalism and culture.

"This modest complacency in receiving, or this sparingness in giving, does not, however, befit Science. Whoever seeks mere edification, and whoever wants to shroud in a mist the manifold variety of his earthly existence and of thought, in order to pursue the indeterminate enjoyment of this indeterminate divinity, may look where he likes to find all this. He will find ample opportunity to dream up something for himself. But philosophy must beware of the wish to be edifying."
--Hegel in "Phenomenology of Spirit," para. 9 (pdf.)

Hegel: “Philosophy mustn’t be edifying!”
​

 

Neo-Liberal Techno-Cyber Utopianism


“It is the essentially human project. If man has learned to see and know what really is, he will act in accordance with truth, Epistemology is in itself ethics, and ethics is epistemology.”
--Herbert Marcuse, One Dimensional Man, (pdf.) p.86​

I was going to bring up this topic of Artificial Intelligence (IA) and its planned use in society, presumably, to be our servants, and not our masters (see my essays on law enforcement and its use of robots here, and here). The Good Professor, Dr. John Vervaeke, has recorded advanced and original theoretical research in cognitive science and has in the below video turned to the question of the morality of creating AI machines that can dominate human life in new powerful Orwellian ways.

The IA Neo-Liberal Techno-Utopian sages of cybernetics believe that thinking conscious machines can be created; however, I suspect few of these same scientists believe that such IA machines can be called moral agents. When a kidney dialysis machine does its work, we do not morally praise it, nor do we morally condemn the machine if it fails to fulfill its intended purpose. When I turn the light on, the switch does not “know” to turn on, nor can it “forget” to turn on. This is because machines are not conscious free agents, and consequently, can never be moral agents (an ethical ambiguity that private interests can exploit).

In fact, a cybernetic von Neumann machine cannot in principle be conscious, nor can it in principle be a moral agent because a machine cannot Care, no more than a robot can touch something for “touch” presupposes “worldview”—we are being deceived by our own language:

“…when two things are present-at-hand [objects that are not tools] together alongside one another, 1 we are accustomed to express this occasionally by something like 'The table stands "by" ['bei'] the door' or 'The chair "touches" ['beriihrt'] the wall'. Taken strictly, 'touching' is never what we are talking about in such cases, not because accurate reexamination will always eventually establish that there is a space between the chair and the wall, but because in principle the chair can never touch the wall, even if the space between them should be equal to zero. If the chair could touch the wall, this would presuppose that the wall is the sort of thing 'for' which a chair would be encounter able (Heidegger, “Being and Time,” pdf. p. 81; text p. 55)(pdf.).”

AI, as it is planned, attempts to make machines into conscious humans, and humans into unconscious machines: a demonic transposition of subject and object.

Keeping in mind this distinction between thinking robots and moral agents, the question should be asked, “What if epistemology (logic) and ethics are the same thing?”

Dr. John Vervaeke on Intelligent Machines and Silicon Sages
​

​

 

#Post 205: Constellations of Truth
#Post 206: Heidegger on the Gestalt (shape) of the Great Gestell (Enframing)
#Post 207: The Great Reduction of Being to beings
#Post 208: The Oblivion of Reified Experience
#Post 211: Paul Tillich on Existential Finitude and Reason
#Post 212: Conclusion
#Post 215: Marcusean Dialectics of the Ontology of a False Condition

Marcusean Dialectics of the Ontology of a False Condition

(A review of Matthew Taibbi’s critique of Marcuse)


“Remembrance of the past may give rise to dangerous insights, and the established society seems to be apprehensive of the subversive contents of memory.”
—Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, p. 101 (pdf.)​

It took a tremendous about of malicious willful ignorance, and journalistic skill to write about the Frankfurt School and Marcuse and not mention fascism except to mock and ignore Marcuse’s arguments. I want to critique Matt Taibbi’s essay on Marcuse and explain how his distorted views really originated from at least two sources. Matt, writes his entire essay in a deliberate misreading of Marcuse’s essay titled, “Repressive Tolerance (1965) that presents criticism of the modern American media establishment applying propaganda techniques on a mass scale to vitiate (render ineffective) any social movements to change the status quo, and yet still maintain the illusion of a democratic free state. When Marcuse wrote “Repressive Tolerance” the U.S. was engaged in the height of cold war propaganda during 1965 as the Vietnam War expanded.

The contrived image constructed of Marcuse in Matt’s recycled criticism is completely based on ignoring Marcuse’s point that he is critiquing not free speech, but propagandistic pseudo-free speech that is used to suppress actual discourse of alternatives for organizing modern society. Matt uses the term “tolerance” throughout his essay, but never addresses the “repressive” aspect of pretended democratic tolerance. Marcuse is very clear on this point, but Matt never once addressed the first word of the essay’s title: “repressive.” Matt’s essay is based on ignoring this equivocation between authentic tolerance as opposed to fake tolerance renders his entire criticism a “straw man argument.” Marcuse wrote: "...what is proclaimed and practiced as tolerance today, is in many of its most effective manifestations serving the cause of oppression (Repressive Tolerance, p. 81)(pdf.)."

The Perverted Tolerance Thesis ​

Marcuse dedicated the essay “Repressive Tolerance “ to his students written in a way as to provoke his students into thinking through the dialectical relationship between the conceptual antipoles of tolerance and intolerance for a better understand of paradigmatic framing.

An expert on Marcuse’s work and philosophy professor, Dr. Pelias, noted that Marcuse’s last paragraph of Repressive Tolerance summarized his argument and read it here: “Who is Afraid of Herbert Marcuse?” I want to provide the full text that has been ignored throughout Matt’s essay (bold italics added):

"However, the alternative to the established process is not a dictatorship or elite, no matter how intellectual and intelligent, but the struggle for a real democracy. Part of this struggle is the fight against an ideology of tolerance which, in reality, favors and fortifies the conservation of the status quo of inequality and discrimination. For this struggle, I proposed the practice of discriminating tolerance. To be sure, this practice already presupposes the radical goal which it seeks to achieve. I committed this petitio principii in order to combat the pernicious ideology that tolerance is already institutionalized in this society. The tolerance which is the life element, the token of a free society, will never be the gift of the powers that be; it can, under the prevailing conditions of tyranny by the majority, only be won in the sustained effort of radical minorities, willing to break this tyranny and to work for the emergence of a free and sovereign majority—minorities intolerant, militantly intolerant and disobedient to the rules of behavior which tolerate destruction and suppression (Repressive Tolerance, p. 122)."

Matt writes:
“(One noticeable human tic in the otherwise unrelenting metronome of Marcuse’s prose — the man writes like a car alarm left on — is a weird overuse of the word vitiate).” “Vitiate,” is exactly the correct word since it accurately describes all efforts to change the status quo (voting for example) as ineffective, but maintains the appearance, but not the reality of a democracy. Repressive tolerance does not outlawed free speech, but rather makes speech ineffective. Money is power and is viewed as free speech by US law. Note that Matt buries Marcuse’s argument by encouraging the reader to ignore this important term. The formulation of distractions is an important tactic in Matt’s political writing as I will show.

Matt wrote of Marcuse’s essay:
“Repressive Tolerance is a towering monument to the possibilities of nonsense in the academic profession. The essay’s 10,000 words, alternately hilarious and breathtaking, are circular thinking and the absence of self-awareness raised to the level of art. We don’t often encounter an author capable of denouncing “the tyranny of Orwellian syntax” while arguing in the same breath, literally and without irony, that freedom is slavery.”

No it isn’t: climate change denial is the towering monument to nonsense. The theme of Orwellian language is found in another text by Marcuse titled, “One-Dimensional Man”(1965)(pdf.)(here on ODM) and is the ideological foundation from which “Repressive Tolerance” is derived. In ODM Marcuse provides an analysis of Orwellian language describing how “contradiction” is hidden in propagandistic language to manipulate public opinion. One way to read “ODM” is to understand it as an philosophical update of George Orwell’s dystopian novel, “Nineteen Eighty Four,”(1948 ). Marcuse provides substantial philosophical grounding for how language, concepts, and beliefs are manipulated to control the perception of social reality. “Freedom is slavery,” represents Orwellian language just as the slogan “Work is Freedom” that the Nazis hung over the concentration camp entry gates of Auschwitz. For the prisoners at Auschwitz work is death.

Matt writes: “In other words, real freedom doesn’t exist in the balance between the many individual liberties doled out to persons and institutions alike in societies like ours, but only in the post-revolutionary “created” society of absolute freedom as imagined by the author, a utopia Marcuse tabs the “pacification of existence.” (The ostensibly antiwar leftist’s use of that term just as America was beginning its “pacification” campaign in Vietnam is another of the essay’s quirks)… Therefore, Marcuse wrote, any existing rights and freedoms “should not be tolerated,” because “they are impeding, if not destroying, the chances of creating an existence without fear and misery.”

This is another rhetorical slight-of-hand Matt uses to smear Marcuse by turning against him the Orwellian language he taught his students to recognize. “Pacification” was an Orwellian term that the US military used to conceal the fact that it had unleashed all of it modern conventional weaponry on an industrial scale bombing a nation of barefooted rice farmers who did not want themselves or their children to be colonial slaves forever. Marcuse defined what he meant by “pacification’: “Pacification of existence” means the development of man's struggle with man and with nature, under conditions where the competing needs, desires, and aspirations are no longer organized by vested interests in domination and scarcity - an organization which perpetuates the destructive forms of this Struggle (ODM, p. 17)." Matt is untrustworthy to accurately describe and interpret Marcuse’s work. Again, he ignores the “existing rights and freedoms” are pseudo rights and freedoms granted by caprice and permission.

In America one has all the rights guaranteed by the US Constitution--until you need them. All of our rights have long been…vitiated. For example: Yale psychiatrist, Dr. Bani Lee, was fired for calling Trump and his followers mentally ill. Florida database researcher, Dr. Rebekah Jones, was arrested at her home for refusing to falsify public health Covid data. Florida state workers are banned from using such terms as “climate change,” and “global warming,” and “sea-level rise.” Should we tolerate the free speech of corporate personhood when it claim smoking is healthy, or climate change is not real, or from corrupt government officials falsely report, “Covid is just the flu.” Without truth there is no freedom; otherwise, how can one make a judgment to chose? And remember the famous command from one of our American pseudo-patriots of the fascist party: “Flood the zone with ****!” The “zone” is the public channels of communication:

“The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.”
--Henry Wallace (pdf.) FDR's vice president.
​

... to continue: The Perverted Tolerance Thesis.

 

#Post 205-208
#Post 211: Paul Tillich on Existential Finitude and Reason
#Post 212: Conclusion
#Post 215: Marcusean Dialectics of the Ontology of a False Condition
#Post 216: The Logic of Contradiction

The Logic of Contradiction
​

Matt Taibbi continues; “After completing the first stage of this Orwellian pole-dance, Marcuse marches up and down the runway, flinging paradoxes left and right. Not only is freedom in reverse by Fox News to explain its infamous “Fair and Balanced” motto: “More representation of the Left would be equalization of the prevailing inequality servitude, but tolerance is intolerance! Democracy is totalitarianism! Equality is inequality! For the latter formulation, he used an argument that would be later deployed.”

This is a bullying method: mockingly using Marcuse’s own insights against him as though Marcuse is unaware of Orwellian contradictions; as if Marcuse is blind to his own analysis of Orwellian logic, then launching a false equivalence argument-- but it is Marcuse’s insightful reductio ad absurdum argument of Orwellian irrationality.

Here is an example of Trump’s bullying method: “Are we going to ‘transfer’ you? No! Of course not! ...but it is possible…..but not by me….maybe someone else…but that’s crazy too….but I heard it has happened.” It’s cheap criticism, and I expected better. Another rhetorical method is to take both sides of an issue by acknowledging contradictory statements such as Trump has done: “Covid is just the flu!” and “Covid is deadly,” then choose whatever position is convenient. To Wall Street he says, “Covid is deadly,” but to the citizens, “It’s just the flu.”

Here is another example quote of the use of both tactics, false equivalence and contradiction with confusing distraction added to slander Marcuse: “Summing up: violence is always violence, as a matter of ethics. However, since ethics are not ethical, not only is violence not violence, but non-violence is violence, when practiced by the oppressed against the oppressor. This is the mentality behind last summer’s firing of analyst David Shor for re-tweeting a study suggesting nonviolent protest is effective, as well as the bizarre mania for calling things that were actually violence not violence (e.g. “mostly peaceful” protests, etc), while things that manifestly are not violence, like grade school teasing or cultural appropriation, are regularly described using the word.”

The following three sample propositions help show the underlying logical structure of his anti-Marcusean essay:

“Violence is violence as a matter of ethics.”
(∀x) (Vx ⊃ Vx) ⊃ Ex

“Ethics are not ethical.”
(∀x) (Ex * ~Ex)

“When violence is practiced by the oppressed against the oppressor, then non-violence is violence.”
(∀x) (Ox ⊃ Px) ⊃ (~Vx ≡ Vx)

Definitions:

Ethics ≡ Ethical
(∀x) = for all x
(∃x) = for some x
⊃ = Logical operator for implication: If, then.
V = either, or
≡ = equivalent truth value
~ = not
E = ethics; ethical
V = violence
O = oppressor
P = oppressed
x = variable

These statements are either tautologies that are necessarily true, or contradictions that are necessarily false so that any conclusion whatsoever can be reached by them.

Contradictions in formal logic are undesirable because they allow any conclusion whatsoever to be derived as in the following proof:

Definition: Ay = “Any conclusion whatsoever”

1.)(∀x) (Ex * ~Ex)

2.) Ey * ~Ey
Premise: 1,Universal Instantiation

3.) Ey
Premise: 2, Simplication

4.) Ey v Ay
3, Addition

5.) ~Ey
2, Simplification

6.) Therefore: Ay
4, 5, Disjunctive Syllogism : “Any conclusion whatsoever.”

Marcuse’s philosophical tools are Aristotelian deductive bivalent logic, and the logic of the whole and parts (universal and particular); but additionally, Hegelian dialectical logic for comprehending movement in dynamic historical change---the truth is the whole. Marcuse methodologically studied contradiction in language, thought, and existence, As a philosopher, he changed some of this beliefs like any honest thinker must. I have been studying Marcuse (a particularly difficult philosopher to read) since the late 1970s looking for incoherencies in his own thinking, and have not found any the kind claimed in Matt’s article. Marcuse once wrote, “If man has learned to see and know what really is, he will act in accordance with truth. Epistemology is in itself ethics, and ethics is epistemology (ODM, p. 129),” but this isn’t a contradiction. However, I can say from personal experience that Matt Taibbi isn’t the first person to misread a philosopher.

Of course, Marcuse uses the term violence to describe war, but like any author the specific context and use must be identified. Marcuse told Roger Rapoport of the Los Angeles Times, on July 27, 1969 that he never advocated violence, destruction of university property, nor advocated specific tactics as a teacher.

Marcuse, like all philosophers, not only write using words in their ordinary colloquial senses, but also in a technical philosophical sense that can be traditional, or unique to the author; for example, the terms “positive” and “negative,” appear often in his writing, but not only in the sense of “affirmation” and “denial.” “Positive” in philosophy historically means “actual,” or the “empirical” and the “indicative.” “Negative” in philosophical usage means “potential,” the “normative,” [is/ought] the “possible,” or “transcendental.” Critical philosophy is negative philosophy that views potentiality (i.e., the purposeful or teleological) as higher than the actual as did Aristotle. Positive philosophy is about the actual such as the scientific paradigm of atomistic mechanical empiricism. Marcuse did not invent this terminology to be deceptive, or evil, but inherited this language from the historical cannon of Western philosophy. Some propagandists and polemicists have a field day with these equivocations separated from their historical context to construct straw man arguments. “Negative” is not used by Marcuse to mean, “uncool.”

Some Journalists are Overpaid Entertainers, but some are merely overpaid.
(∃x)[(Jx * Ox) * Ex] * (∃x)(Jx * Ox)​

The author’s criticism must continue to ignore Marcuse’s perverted tolerance thesis to coherently maintain an incoherent straw man argument: “As for the question of exactly how conditional one’s rights should be, Marcuse insisted that ‘extreme suspension of the right of free speech and free assembly is indeed justified only if the whole of society is in extreme danger.’ This sounds reasonable until you read on: ‘I maintain that our society is in such an emergency situation, and that it has become the normal state of affairs.’"

Marcuse was far ahead of his time when we look through his historical life experience and the repressive patterns of totalitarianism he witnessed emerging that are even clearer today. Marcuse is urgently warning that capitalism has morphed into totalitarianism if we glace at our even recent American history. Emergency? What emergency?

COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program) operated from 1956-1971 conducting illegal activities to harm the lives of targeted Americans viewed leftist, or even mildly progressive. In May of 1964 Henry Dee and Charles Moore, were hitchhiking in Meadville, Mississippi, and kidnapped, tortured, then murdered by members of the Ku Klux Klan and some local law enforcement members. Their badly decomposed bodies are found by chance in July during the search for another group of missing activists Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner; President Kennedy had already been murdered in a mafia involved assassination while the U.S. government cast suspicion upon the political left by identifying the assassin as a lone “Marxist” agent; Klansmen were murdering civil rights workers and regularly acquitted, or not prosecuted; the Vietnam war was raging; the mafia was deeply involved in law enforcement and government clandestine activity against “communism; 400 to 1,000 students march through Times Square, New York, with another 700 in San Francisco as the first major student demonstration against the Vietnam War as the war was expanding to the North; August 7, The United States Congress passes the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, giving U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson broad war powers based on a lie; and recently Trump bragging of the ambush and extra-judicial murder of Michael Reinoehl by U.S. law enforcement falsely claiming there is an “antifascist” group when the term only reflects a general anti-authoritarian sentiment according to Homeland Security.

And I remember that the movie Mary Poppins was released 1964 and America was nothing like Mary Poppins’ world as Matt seems to reminisce. The rest of that decade was an extremely violent time; even more than now. Senator Robert Kennedy was later assassinated, after Martin Luther King was assassinated from funds publicly collected by the KKK. And the historical trend continues on to W. Bush’s and Obama’s caged “free speech zones.” The author is leaving out an awful lot of historical context that make his complaints absurd. So Marcuse would say in response:

" 'Different opinions' and 'philosophies' can no longer compete peacefully for adherence and persuasion on rational grounds: the 'marketplace of ideas' is organized and delimited by those who determine the national and the individual interest. In this society, for which the ideologists have proclaimed the "end of ideology,’ the false consciousness has become the general consciousness from the government down to its last objects...The conditions under which tolerance can again become a liberating and humanizing force have still to be created. When tolerance mainly serves the protection and preservation of a repressive society, when it serves to neutralize opposition and to render men immune against other and better forms of life, then tolerance has been perverted (Repressive Tolerance, p. 110-111; bold & italics added)."

….next: "The Anti-Marcusean Script in a Can."

 

#Post 205-211
#Post 212: Conclusion
#Post 215: Marcusean Dialectics on the Ontology of a False Condition
#Post 216: The Logic of Contradiction
#Post 217: The Anti-Marcusean Script in a Can

The Anti-Marcusean Script in a Can​

Matt reminisces further: “Marcuse remember had just finished a book explaining that revolution was obviated in a society where civil liberties were ‘too significant to be confined by traditional forms,’ and whose ‘capacity to spread comforts’ inspired widespread ‘voluntary compliance’ with its more. Now, that same society was described as presenting such ‘extreme danger’ to the citizen that suspension of all civil rights was necessary.”

The author is failing to provide meaningful context to Marcuse’s statements and entire work. Marcuse is a neo-Marxist addressing the Frankfurt School's question of why the working classes in modern societies had not moved beyond capitalism. Edward Bernays’ Manhattan marketing firm’s embracing of Freudian insights into consciousness supplied Marcuse the needed paradigm to explain how fascism overtook Germany during the 1930s, and how capitalism represses working class consciousness seeking economic change, and freedom. This process of formulating a new synthetic unity is named, “paradigm induction” which is a re-seeing, or re-interpretation of phenomena. Marcuse understood through painful experience the power of capitalism to manipulate consciousness as demonstrated by Edward Bernays’ successful marketing methodologies (see, The Century of the Self; full video). I will explore further Marcuse’s purpose in adopting the Freudian paradigm in part two of this essay. Other philosophers such as Bernard Stiegler, and numerous other French critical theorists have since developed Marcuse’s theoretical synthesis into critiques of “technology, time, individuation, consumerism, consumer capitalism, technological convergence, digitization, and Americanization” that go far beyond One-Dimensional Man, and Eros and Civilization.

Matt’s critique of Marcuse is actually an expert propaganda piece and has a definite logical structure. Any fact, or interpretation in Marcuse’s favor is mocked by mere association with emotionally suggestive words. This tactic is directed at Marcuse’s strong points such as his antifascist critique contributions to the Frankfurt School study of authoritarianism. Propositions draw mental pictures and he writes to construct biased pictures of Marcuse without any substantial critical argument. His polemic is just a series of bullying conjunctions that are legitimately related historically to Marcuse’s research: Nazism, Heidegger, Nazism, Marxism, Nazism, Frankfurt School, Nazism, intolerance, Nazism, sexual moral panic, Nazism, violence, Nazis, Marcuse. This simple method of association works best without historical context or any real reasoning, only conjunctions; the lack of reasoning is what makes this tactic effective especially for the distracted casual reader. Making these associations is easy, but concealing this tactic requires real talent which is done by breaking up the contextual information and scatter throughout the essay as fragments that are themselves surrounded by another distracting cluster of associations. The author can claim he provided relevant information, and yet still continue the ad hominem attack. It is impossible for even the experienced reader of Marcuse to immediately address the historical contexts of these clustered associations and maintain reading coherence. I would classify this essay as what philosopher Jacques Ellul called agitation propaganda; although, its origin is from sociological propaganda. His critique of Marcuse is written to ensure the reader’s reception is always in a state of distraction.

Shoveling Coal for Satan​

An expert on Marcuse’s work and esteemed philosophy professor, Dr. Michael Pelias, asked in his reading group, “Why is Marcuse selected for attack at this time rather than Adorno since both were members of the Frankfurt school?” I believe Matt is working off an old script, maybe unknowingly, with customized ready-made ad hominem attacks against Marcuse.

This anti-Marcuse polemic did not have to engage in any original critical thinking about Marcusean concepts because the script has been floating around since 1968 when Harry L. Foster, judge-advocate of the San Diego county extremist right-wing organization of the American Legion contacted California State Senator Jack Schrade and Assembly Representative John Stull (in whose district the University of San Diego was located where Marcuse was teaching) to do a full scale investigation of the professor. Judge Foster read a single hit piece on Marcuse from the San Diego Union. Matt’s critique is simply repeating these same talking points provided to Foster, the University of California regents, and Governor Reagan for a witch hunt (with actual torches) that removed Marcuse from his teaching position by charging him with “corrupting the youth.” I think they missed the Socratic irony.

Here are some of the talking points collected from seven different media articles around 1968:

“It was claimed that Marcuse’s work served ‘as an action manifesto for the street brawler,’ or was ‘a neo-Sorelian exhortation to violence’; he allegedly advocated tyrannical rule by ‘a small elite of individuals who have learned to think rationally’, and who would then withdraw toleration from all who ‘oppose what the new ruling class regards as progressive’. From St Paul’s, Pope Paul VI struck a different note, denouncing ‘the theory that opens the way to license cloaked as liberty, and the aberration of instinct called liberation’, while Pravda [A Soviet Russian newspaper] was no less ardent in defending its faith against the ‘false prophet’ ("Marcuse and the Art of Liberation," Kātz, Barry (1982) Verso press, p. 173; bold & brackets added)." Even the Pope was offended by Marcuse!

“I shall do with these charges what they deserve: nothing.”
--Marcuse (Katz, p. 175).”
​

The critique continues with the following quote with the first two paragraphs giving with a pretty good summary of Marcuse’s stance:
“To be fair to Marcuse, he was trying to argue that the “one-dimensional” society was “radically evil” because it created a kind of totalitarianism of the consumer instinct, in which the individual becomes one with the state through his worship of product, learning to understand happiness only as something that can be bought. While the supreme beneficiaries of this paradise of buying increase their wealth and political control, the state drops bombs abroad, and at home abuses prisoners, minorities, and the “unemployed and unemployable.” Meanwhile, the tyranny of affluence leads to:

“The systematic moronization of children and adults alike by publicity and propaganda, the release of destructiveness in aggressive driving, the recruitment for and training of special forces, the impotent and benevolent tolerance toward outright deception in merchandizing, waste, and planned obsolescence…’

I think most of us can agree that “radical evil” is a term that fits many parts of the American experience, from Tuskeegee to the moonscaped hamlets of North Vietnam and Cambodia to the Covid-racked prisons of today. Surely also we are exhibiting the symptoms of a deeper sickness when we plop our kids in front of screens to make them wanters-of-things, to save time while we adults chase the affluence dragon.”

Marcuse’s theme of “affluence and consumerism” could have been partly inspired by a Harvard professor’s book published in 1958 by economist John Kenneth Galbraith titled, “The Affluent Society.”(pdf.) that also describes the power of an advertising marketing industry to create an imbalanced hyper-consumerist, hyper-exchange culture, and not of the commodities one would expect from an affluent society.

The author’s “being fair” isn’t being fair. Without an explanation of Marcuse’s methodological use of paradigms (Kantian criticism, Hegelian dialectics, Freudian psychoanalysis) this criticism sounds absurd which is the point. Words such as “totalitarian,” “radical evil” and “past” (found in this review’s title quote) are euphemisms for fascism since Marcuse was an immigrant and need to use an Aesopian language common to the Frankfurt School to avoid severe censorship which throwing around the word “fascism” would bring. The author is purposely blind to this dimension of Marcuse’s life experience of witnessing the Nationalist Freikorps’ (that day’s version of the Proud Boys) two purges of the anti-war Spartacus League resulting in over five thousand deaths; the formation of a blood and soil cults of origin in the form of the “National” Socialists (Nazis); the public trials of the House of Un-American Activities looking for communists within government while Marcuse was in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS that later became the CIA) and later in the State Department; his censoring and leaving Brandeis University in 1969; In 1970 Marcuse realized free speech in America meant the Ohio National Guard could collectively punishment university war protesters by randomly shooting into a crowd killing four students and wounding nine others who were all in good standing with Kent State University and up-standing conscientious American citizens to this very day; hung in effigy in San Diego and dismissed from his teaching position by extremist right-wing Governor Ronald Reagan. I appreciate the real risks Marcuse took to warn of a rising pattern of fascism. The author mentions Tuskeegee, Vietnam, and Covid, but seemingly doesn’t see any connection to the recent and ongoing fascist insurrections of today. By embracing a contradiction, one can claim both sides of an opposing argument, or worldview.

next…”How to eat a bowl of thumbtacks.”

 

The correct title is "Marcusean Dialectics on the Ontology of a False Condition." Sorry for that error.

 

A short reading on the differences between the game of the Orient “GO,” and Chess (game of the state) .

“Synchrony and diachrony are two complementary viewpoints in linguistic analysis. A synchronic approach (from Ancient Greek: συν- "together" and χρόνος "time") considers a language at a moment in time without taking its history into account. Synchronic linguistics aims at describing a language at a specific point of time, usually the present. In contrast, a diachronic (from δια- "through" and χρόνος "time") approach, as in historical linguistics, considers the development and evolution of a language through history (wiki: diahrony and synchrony).”

WARS AND CAPITAL: A CLOSE READING OF OUR CONTEMPORARY SITUATION - PART 3
@ 33 minutes: 33 seconds
​

 

I thought this sentence was fixed; this is the risk of writing and posting so quickly. When the essay is competed I will post the final version at my website. The transition was left out of the sentence above and it should read: "And this trend of abusing the public trust is still running today: recently...."

 

Another editing error: a misplaced symbol (∃x) is now corrected. I did the proof in two different ways and mixed the two. The proof is valid.

The final edited version will appear at my website when the essay is completed.

 

#Post 205-212
#Post 215: Marcusean Dialectics on the Ontology of a False Condition
#Post 216: The Logic of Contradiction
#Post 217: The Anti-Marcusean Script in a Can
#Post 222: How to eat a bowl of thumbtacks

How to eat a bowl of thumbtacks


“Reading Marcuse is like eating a bowl of thumbtacks.”
--Matt Taibbi​

I have no counter-argument except eating a bowl of thumbtacks is only one-half the process—digestion is the other.

The critical essay continues: “People who do intellectual work should feel a responsibility to make sure the words they use at least roughly correspond to their ostensible meaning, but like a lot of German intellectuals, Marcuse had been mired in dialectical comparisons for so long that his sense of proportion was ****ed beyond recognition. The man cited aggressive driving in arguing an emergency so dire that a suspension of all civil liberties was warranted.”

We discussed the terminology and language used by philosophers. The above paragraph explains some errors in reading Marcuse, which is not unexpected especially when a philosopher is using language to examine language as its object. Like Heidegger, Marcuse sometimes uses ancient Greek words like eros (love, or desire) and logos, which you will see, is difficult to define even for the Greeks. Marcuse uses terms in the ordinary sense such as “aggression,” but also in a Freudian sense of sublimation (subjective repression of expression). Violence can be committed without aggression like a drone operator dropping bombs from thousands of feet on a village of occupied huts. Trump is responsible directly and indirectly of more than one million Americans dead, but Trump showed no aggression at all saying, “It’s just the flu!”: this is the kind of nihilistic bureaucratic-administrative violence that most frightened Marcuse—the complete objectification of human beings, and being. While re-reading One Dimensional Man I still discover overlooked insights of Marcuse’s critique. A wise philosopher noted that books are like people: it takes years to know them.

Matt further writes: “There’s a reason some German scholars are said to prefer reading Clausewitz in English, because it’s clearer. With Marcuse, the translation doesn’t help. He was the real-world embodiment of Orwell’s utopian linguists who were impatient to rid the world of all those annoying words for shades of difference. Once you have a lock on “good,” why bother litigating degrees of its opposite? Bad is bad. He thought in binary pairs, and freely conflated concepts like inadequacy, misgovernment, and indifference with cruelty, repression, persecution, and terror, a habit of mind that’s inspired a generation of catastrophizing neurotics who genuinely don’t know the difference between disagreement and an attempt on their lives.”

The catastrophizing neurotics now have assault rifles with regular police and paramilitary escorts. Marcuse thought in dialectical terms to capture movement between antipoles that binary bivalent thinking lacks: this is why he is a neo-Marxist. Matt is borrowing Marcuse’s own insights into Orwellian language found in One-Dimensional Man where contradictions are hidden in nouns, sentences and acronyms (which the anti-Marcusean critique avoids mentioning). Matt abuses language in order to demonstrate that Marcuse abused language; making him like the man that was so fearful of “antifa” that he burned his own house down to prove they existed. (The right-wing created term “antifa” refers to an ubiquitous leftists political homunculus without using the rather embarrassing word, “fascist” which names themselves). Marcuse wrote of Orwell:

"Thus, the fact that the prevailing mode of freedom is servitude, and that the prevailing mode of equality is superimposed inequality is barred from expression by the closed definition of these concepts in terms of the powers which shape the respective universe of discourse. The result is the familiar Orwellian language ("peace is war" and "war is peace," etc.), which is by no means that of terroristic totalitarianism only. Nor is it any less Orwellian if the contradiction is not made explicit in the sentence but is enclosed in the noun. That a political party which works for the defense and growth of capitalism is called "Socialist," and a despotic government "democratic," and a rigged election "free" are familiar linguistic--and political--features which long predate Orwell (ODM, p. 88; italics added).”

The author repeats his denial of the perverted tolerance thesis to the reader throughout his essay seeking assent by repetitious psychological reinforcement: “The argument-from-emergency ties in with one of Marcuse’s most quoted passages: ‘Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left.’ This is another precursor to the Roger Ailes/Fox formulation that leftism is so hegemonic that one needs to pull the steering wheel of society hard to the right just to move in a straight line. (Both arguments are absurd). Marcuse famously believed toleration of competing views repeated the error of Weimar Germany, where “if democratic tolerance had been withdrawn, mankind would have had a chance of avoiding Auschwitz and a World War.”

One way to describe the rise of the Cult of Irrationality (Karl Mannheim) is its allegiance to the tactic of “malicious ignorance” (i.e., deliberately not wanting to know, aka., to be woke). Marcuse clearly defined tolerance on the first and last page of Repressive Tolerance: it is a false simulated chattering tolerance designed to jam the channels of communications and preserve the status quo. "In other words, today tolerance appears again as what it was in its origins, at the beginning of the modern period-a partisan goal, a subversive liberating notion and practice. Conversely, what is proclaimed and practiced as tolerance today, is in many of its most effective manifestations serving the cause of oppression (ODM, p. 81; italic added)." Marcuse is describing propaganda posing as tolerance to preserve the mechanisms of repression.

In one last argument to examine Matt writes: “Back in the sixties, Marcuse was denounced by Pope Paul VI while establishment political figures decried his support of groups like the SDS, the Weathermen, and the Black Panthers. He was seen as a thorn in the side of the status quo. Today Marcuse is the status quo.” In a video interview with R.J. Eskow (@ 41 min. 30 seconds) Matt said, “The thing that is important is his [Marcuse] total disregard for the things we most cherish in this country which are individual rights and freedom." The status quo is US law enforcement standing with right-wing armed fascist paramilitary gangs brandishing weapons of war and engaging in long normalized eliminationist speech (see, “Eliminationism in America": Parts I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX and X).

I always enjoyed Matt Taibbi’s journalistic style because of his entertaining style (I don’t know if he is overpaid however) and interpreted his satirical writing as indirectly (or even directly) inspired by George Orwell and Herbert Marcuse since both authors focused on the corruption of language by totalitarianism to construct a false reality. Matt is really good at this kind of political-cultural critique and read him to get a better picture of reality, to read him for his insights such as the perverted social communication channels that functions more like an metaphysical bizzaro disinformation anti-media machine on the World Wide Web; an political economy organized exclusively for monopolist profit legislated through undemocratic monetarist policies (i.e., create inflation on the front end only to fight it with unemployment and austerity on the back end ) with demonic enthusiasm that cyclically reproduces scarcity, uncertainty, and psycho-spiritual-physical misery; the idolatrous Wall Street Socialists who do not value anything except the symbols of wealth instead of the processes of actual human prosperity; the vanishing of the private life replaced by the pseudo-existence of an avatar surveilled by the “administrative-bureaucratic apparatus which organizes, manages, and stabilizes” totalitarian Neo-liberalism. Matt’s critique of the mainstream media and Wall Street is very much consistent with the spirit of Marcusean criticism of a society shaped into a false condition where the “dice is loaded”:

“…to express and define that-which-is [what is actual] on its own terms is to distort and falsify reality. Reality is other and more than that codified in the logic and language of facts. Here is the inner link between dialectical thought and the effort of avant-garde literature: the effort to break the power of facts over the word, and to speak a language which is not the language of those who establish, enforce, and benefit from the facts. As the power of the given facts tends to become totalitarian, to absorb all opposition, and to define the entire universe of discourse, the effort to speak the language of contradiction appears increasingly irrational, obscure, artificial (RR, p. x; brackets & italic added)."

“…the language of contradiction,” is a method for exposing the ideological rationalizations of capitalism to make slavery, ignorance and poverty acceptable modes of human being.

Critically changing one’s worldview is a sign of a great philosopher, and authentic thinker; Immanuel Kant, “awakened from his dogmatic slumber” and wrote, “The Critique of Pure Reason”; Hegel changed his early views and wrote “The Phenomenology of Spirit” (Not love, but the Logos drives history); Wittgenstein moved from the logical positivism of the “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus” to a mysticism of the ordinary; Heidegger made his “turn” (Kehre) going beyond the mechanical logic of Husserlian phenomenology built into Being and Time to …a poetic dwelling. Revelation is restructured Reason (Socialist Theologian Paul Tillich).

​

next…​

Part: II
Anti-Marcusean Script II
Alasdair MacIntyre’s Critique of Marcusean Phenomenology of Repression
​

 

#Post 205-215
#Post 216: The Logic of Contradiction
#Post 217: The Anti-Marcusean Script in a Can
#Post 222: How to eat a bowl of thumbtacks
#Post 223: Part II, Anti-Marcusean Script II

Part: II

Anti-Marcusean Script II

Alasdair MacIntyre’s Critique of Marcusean Phenomenology of Repression​

"264. I could imagine [philosopher G.E] Moore being captured by a wild tribe, and their expressing the suspicion that he has come from somewhere between the earth and the moon. Moore tells them that he knows etc. but he can't give them the grounds for his certainty, because they have fantastic ideas of human ability to fly and know nothing about physics.
This would be an occasion for making that statement."
--Ludwig Wittgenstein in "On Certainty."(pdf.).​

While researching this review of Matt Taibbi’s criticism of Marcuse, I was surprised (honestly) to discover a second anti-Marcusean script that has been floating around the ether for the last fifty-two years! Plenty of time to do damage. Even more surprisingly it was written by a well-known name in philosophy--Professor Alasdair MacIntyre! I recently wrote a 24,000 word critique titled, “Postmodern Socrates on Virtue” of MacIntyre’s 1981 book, “After Virtue.” So there must be a part II continuation of this review at least for completeness.

I want to say out front my general opinion of MacIntyre’s critique of Marcuse’s dialectics in a book title, “Herbert Marcuse: An Exposition and a Polemic by MacIntyre (1970),”(pdf.)(here on referred to as HEP) of about one hundred pages so the reader can more easily follow my objections to specific quoted passages. The most important thing to remember is that this second critique of Marcuse is composed of expositions and polemics—two different steps. His short expositions of both Hegel and Marcuse are out-standing, excellent: one of his many talented skills is philosophical exposition. I noticed his ability to summarize a philosopher’s work in After Virtue (1981) with a critique of Kierkegaardian subjectivity. This was his anti-Kierkegaardian period dating back to at least 1964.

The polemics that follow his expositions, however, are weak that exhibit inflexible Cold War conspiratorial anti-communist thinking. Most importantly, remember while reading that MacIntyre assumes through out his polemic that Marcuse must agree with Marx on every issue otherwise he is a fraud. On the other hand, if Marcuse agrees with Marx then he is a Soviet Stalinist in an attempt to impale Marcuse on the tautologous horns of a false dilemma. Below is MacIntyre’s argument pattern to help recognize the book’s entire underlying structural logical form:

Definitions:

S = Marcuse is a Soviet Stalinist
F= Marcuse is a fraud
A = Marcuse agrees with Marx
~A = Marcuse disagrees with Marx
⊃ = If, then (conditional implication)
v = Either, or (disjunction)
/:: = Therefore

The entire polemical book in Sentential Symbolic Form:

1.) A ⊃ S
2.) ~A ⊃ F
3.) ~A v A
/:: S v F

I thought this looked familiar: the argument form is know as a “Constructive Dilemma,” but one can slip between the horns of the false dilemma (S and F) because there are other alternatives other than Marcuse being a Stalinist, or a fraud which we will discuss later. And we can take the dilemma by the horns by showing that at least one or both of the conditionals (premises 1, and 2) are false. Premise 3 is a tautology (necessarily true) as with the phrase, “either it is raining or not raining”--a nice touch by the Professor. A constructive dilemma is a valid (consistent) argument, but all the premises must be true, otherwise, his anti-Marcusean inferences are unsound as is the case for all valid deductive implicational argument forms.

Furthermore, MacIntyre is resistant to crossing multidisciplinary lines in theoretical thinking and investigations; narrow-mindedness toward Kuhnian, or Neo-Kantian idealism and paradigmatic induction; yet, attempts to interpret Marcusean negative dialectics exclusively through the paradigm of the Vienna School of logical positivism. What could go wrong? Marcuse is portrayed as a conspiratorial deviant lone gunman unconnected to the Frankfurt School of Social Research and high on occult Marxism looking for a fix. MacIntyre classifies Marcuse a “pre-Marxist” and questions him as if he came from somewhere between the earth and the moon.

At strategic points MacIntyre injects simple questions for reflection such as “What is truth?” and “What is historicism?” as a filibustering distraction for the reader. But don’t be distracted. For these and other epistemological questions I will provide links to short summary essays about the basic schools of thought on these questions for further study later.

And I just want to point out that HEP is an anti-Marcusean critique written just as Richard Nixon became president in his first term, and one year before the famous anti-socialist, anti-democratic Powell Memo was published whereby the Nixon appointed Supreme Court Judge recommended corporations “Reclaim America” by entering directly into every level of American life: media, education, politics, church—to espouse the virtues of free market capitalism, or Neo-liberalism. Also, After Virtue was published just as Reagan became president in 1981. Both works smack of sociological propaganda (also called “horizontal propaganda”) that is designed for the long term to integrate and unify public opinion by reinforcing social conformity to cultural norms and attitudes. And now I will review the specific texts by MacIntyre to support my generalizations of his critique.

MacIntyre divides his anti-Marcusean polemic into eight chapters centered around books authored by Marcuse: Eros and Civilization (1955), Reason and Revelation (1955), Soviet Marxism (1958 ), One-Dimensional Man (1964), An Essay on Liberation (1969). Marcuse’s “Critique of Pure Tolerance”(1967) is a short essay and reviewed by MacIntyre in his book. Since Matt’s article focused on “Pure Tolerance,” I will start with MacIntyre’s last chapter on tolerance (so we can blame all this on Matt), and then offer addition commentary on he rest of his book that will by highly abstract.

next…

MacIntyre’s Interpretation of the “Critique of Pure Tolerance.”​

 

I do not like the name "Husserl".

 

@ Husserl

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Husserl