What is Husserlian Phenomenology?

I'm behind on my posting, but I had to read D.C. Schindler's book, "Plato's Critique of Impure Reason," a second time because the content is so rich. Dr. John Vervaeke has created a new video lecture series, "After Socrates," appearing January 9, 2023 covering many of the same topics. I love the title which reveals it focus on virtue ethics much like Alasdair MacIntyre's famous book on moral theory, "After Virtue."(pdf.)

John Vervaeke's New Series: After Socrates | Premieres January 9th, 2023
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Also, Dr. Gregory Sadler recorded a video giving sound advice on how to manage reading philosophy. One ongoing project I have since being retired is to read all those books that I should have read in graduate school. I have kept my reading schedule of three hours a day, five days a week for 29 months now. But not only that: I also have to re-read some of those books that I studied in college. Now that I am older, existentialism makes a lot more sense.

Sadler's Quick Takes #5 | Worries/Concerns About Being "Truly Well Read"
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I also read Paul Tillich's "The Socialist Decision" (1933)(pdf.) as second time around. Tillich also jams a lot content in this book both philosophical and historical. Tillich is a master logician and dialectician. Along with Tillich I read Georg Lukacs', "History and Class Consciousness," (1919-1923)(pdf.), and another excellent book on Lukacs' life and work by G.H.R. Parkinson titled "Georg Lukacs,"(pdf.) Lukacs is greatly under rated as a philosopher. Parkinson is an clear writer and goes into detail of Lukacs' early writings like "The Theory of the Novel," "The Young Hegel," and "Soul and Form."

 

Here is an excellent video lecture by Dr. Ellie Anderson (co-host, Overthink podcast) that "explains the historical origins of the continental/analytic divide in philosophy in the middle of the twentieth century, and why we need to mobilize the term 'continental philosophy' in order to overcome the sway Analytic philosophy has over contemporary Anglo-American universities--and ultimately, overcome the divide altogether." Dr. Anderson's exposition and analysis covers many of the philosophers and concepts explored in this long discussion thread such as that obscure writer, and writings of Edmund Husserl.

Continental Philosophy: What is it, and why is it a thing?
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Professor Dr. Ellie Anderson's viewpoint on the Analytical/Continental division is insightful. Continental philosophy does "have a story to tell" as the professor ends the video--the story of existentialism. Here is another interesting video history on the division of Analytic and Continental Philosophy.
Video Summary:
"The Analytic Philosophy vs Continental Philosophy divide is a faultline running through modern philosophy. In this episode we explore the origins of this divide and why these two paths diverged when their founders were in close contact. Edmund Husserl and Gottlob Frege were the two men that gave rise to Continental Philosophy and Analytic Philosophy respectively and surprisingly they were in close contact — critiquing each other’s work. But despite this closeness, there is a historical backdrop to their concerns that invites us to reconsider this difference. Much like the Empiricism/Rationalist divide of the two centuries before Frege and Husserl, the Continental/Analytic divide ran along the line of the English Channel and seems to have been as much a divide of temperament as of philosophy. The British empiricists and the Anglo-American Analytic tradition are concerned more with a non-human standpoint — what reality is out there and how we can gain purest access to it. On the other the Rationalists and Continentals are more concerned with the human element — what its structure is like and what that tells us about the structure and nature of reality. This difference in focus on the human and non-human element widened into an irreparable chasm by the time of Martin Heidegger and Bertrand Russell."

Analytic vs. Continental Philosophy — the Schism in Modern Philosophy
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In this video Dr. D.C. Schindler gives some background about his well-researched and insightful book "Plato's Critique of Impure Reason: On Goodness and Truth in the Republic," (2008 ). For Plato, "Pure reason," is knowledge of the forms; on the other hand, "impure reason" is the logic of the cave.--of appearances. This distinction between the pure reason (Logos) and impure reason (Mythos, or picture-thinking) explains Socrates' ambivalence toward appearances and images (sights and sounds, or εἰκών, image). The higher levels of knowledge include mathematics (μαθηματικά, method) and the highest level of knowledge is of the Forms (ἀρχή, archetype). Only in the state of mind of Noesis (νόησις) meaning “understanding, concept, or notion” is there intelligibility of the invisible (Forms) as opposed to opinion Doxia (δόξα) “belief” as in ortho-doxy, and belief based on empirical images.

At first Socrates banishes the poets (creators of images) from the polis, but then allows them to return. Schindler writes, "The banishment and return is an image of the ascent and reversal (Ibid., p. 316)," or returning to the cave of images because the absolute needs the relative in order to "save the appearances," and give whole meaning to appearances.

DC Schindler: How Plato predicted Christianity

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...a beautiful vignette that enlivens philosophy by Dr. Johannes A. Niederhauser on Hegel and The Owl of Minerva that is relevant today.

Hegel: The Owl of Minerva (is not what it seems)
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Rousseau and the Crisis of Lost Experience
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”Although it is never explicitly stated within it, Husserlian phenomenology can be turned toward an expression of this spiritual experience.
It is the skeptical dissolution of all types of cognitive experience that do not fit the scheme of the natural-scientific reduction that drives
the crisis of experience, as Husserl sees it,”
(Adorno: The Recovery of Experience by Roger Foster, p. 93 | Loc. 236).​

The German term for mind, “Geist” is also the same word as for “spirit.” *

Both Kant and Hegel were committed to what Dr. Lee Braver termed the Empirical Directive (ED) which he explains as “the strategy of studying transcendental subjectivity—that aspect of us that is responsible for thinking and knowing—vicariously, through its activities in experience (“A Thing of This World,” 2007 by Dr. Lee Braver p. 60).” By closely observing Geist (meaning both mind or spirit) as it appears in time, Hegel believed the gap could be closed between thought and reality. The ahistorical Kant only sees one unified unchanging transcendental self of the logically a priori “I think…” acting on experience, but Hegel instead discovers a multiplicity of historical selves as “experience-organizers” not fully aware of the meaning of these plurality of worldviews causing a radical shift in the understanding of static selfhood and historical change. "This historical proliferation of conceptual schemes seems to dissolve reality into relativism. Hegel allows multiple schemes without giving up knowledge altogether (Ibid., p. 62)."

It turns out that critical theorist and sociologist Max Scheler (1874-1928 ) understood phenomenological observation to be akin to a “spiritual posture.” The later Husserl likely adopted Scheler’s interpretation of the phenomenological method of the Epoche. Scheler viewed Husserl’s phenomenological method as “an attitude of spiritual seeing...something which otherwise remains hidden....”[2] : “Rather, that which is given in phenomenology 'is given only in the seeing and experiencing act itself.' The essences are never given to an 'outside' observer with no direct contact with the thing itself. Phenomenology is an engagement of phenomena, while simultaneously a waiting for its self-givenness; it is not a methodical procedure of observation as if its object is stationary. Thus, the particular attitude (Geisteshaltung, lit. 'disposition of the spirit' or 'spiritual posture') of the philosopher is crucial for the disclosure, or seeing, of phenomenological facts. This attitude is fundamentally a moral one, where the strength of philosophical inquiry rests upon the basis of love”(Wiki: Max Scheler).

Whenever that which is suppressed, disparaged, and discarded by the concept is recovered, Adorno calls this process spiritual experience. Husserlian phenomenology is concerned with the same philosophical project of recovering experience:” Although it is never explicitly stated within it, Husserlian phenomenology can be turned toward an expression of this spiritual experience. It is the skeptical dissolution of all types of cognitive experience that do not fit the scheme of the natural-scientific reduction that drives the crisis of experience, as Husserl sees it (Adorno: The Recovery of Experience by Roger Foster, p. 93 | Loc. 236)."

Both Adorno and Husserl agree the goal of philosophy is to uncover the nonidentical and nonconceptual that is discarded by procrustean conceptualization and identity thinking; however, their methodologies are different. Adorno’s methodology is negative dialectics that is in part Adorno’s refinement of Hegelian dialectical thinking.

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, Systematic Theology, vol. I, p. 79).

Philosophy professors Dr. Ellie Anderson and Dr. David Peña-Guzmán talk about the fifth of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Reveries of a Solitary Walker, where Rousseau reflects on happiness, or one could argue, spiritual experience.

Rousseau, Reveries of the Solitary Walker: Ellie Anderson and David Peña-Guzmán
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*The above passages are excerpts from the seventy-seven essays I authored on this board and my backup website.

 

...and speaking of lost experience (The lost polis of Atlantis), and theories of spiritual experience, here is another content rich video on my favorite topic--the recovery of experience.

Halkyon Guild Member Philosopher Tonatiuth Marron Gomez has created a phenomenological video essay titled, "Time and Forgetting," describing lost and recovered experience in ancient Greece.

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"The first aspect of this affirmation of Life is the need to keep subjectivity subjective."
--Philosopher Inese Radzins on Michel Henry's idea of lived subjectivity.​

I found this well written essay by Dr. Inese Radzins titled, "Critical Theory for Political Theology 2.0: Michel Henry," (1922-2002) about French phenomenologist Michel Henry's treatment of this topic we have discussed concerning the lost capacity to experience life in the modern world. Henry held the very dangerous job of a French Partisan during the WWII Nazi occupation of France. The Nazis were known to have thrown captured French Partisans into crematorium furnaces alive. Radzins touches on many of the topics this thread has dealt with in the past: Marx, Christian theology, spiritual experience, critique of culture, anti-realism, and existential phenomenology. Other thinkers are struggling with these questions, although, this thread has within the philosophical systems of Kuhn, Tillich, Wittgenstein, and Marcuse. Henry views Karl Marx as an important Christian thinker.

Radzin is writing for the group called, Political Theology Network | Conversation at the intersection of religion and politics. Here is Dr. Radzins' summary:

 

And Dr. Cornel West is running as a Green Party presidential candidate for the US 2024 National campaign. Of course, Cornel should run! I am not excited with the Biden-Manchin-Abrams' ticket for more pipelines, larger energy cartels, and more death squads.

Here is your 2024 campaign slogan Brother West:

"De-Nazification, De-Militarization, De-Cartelization, and Democratization!"​

Also, check out an article written by Chris Hedges about Dr. West and his campaign reasoning: "Cornel West and the Campaign to End Political Apartheid."
Dr. Cornel West is a philosophy professor (and a buzzsaw apologist), plus he has Chris Hedges as an experienced researcher/writer. No other candidate makes the insightful arguments Cornel makes. West's opponents have already underestimated him as demonstrated in an interview with news reader Anderson Cooper: "Jimmy Turns on Cornel West?" @16:15

 

Good news! The Institute for the Radical Imagination is releasing new video lectures, adding to the 204 graduate level videos already archived!

I watched all of Dr. Michael Pelias' lectures (It took months) and some series episodes I viewed multiple times such as “Wars and Capital: A Close Reading of Our Contemporary Situation;” “Technology Technics and Time;” “Marx, Marxism and Philosophy Today;” “Bernard Stiegler: From the new Spirit of Capitalism to the Lost Spirit and Mind of Capitalism.” I need to read more French philosophers! Their critique of capitalism and culture is like Herbert Marcuse on steroids! Stiegler, Deleuze, and Guattari are great phenomenologists and psychoanalysts unpacking the ideologies of the unconscious--and it's really ugly!

Dr. Pelias' lectures go from ninety minutes to two hours, if he doesn't get a second wind. My favorite class is lecture 9 of “Marx, Marxism, and Philosophy Today.” Other interesting professors, and lectures include Professor Stanley Aronowitz, Dr. Cornel West, Dr. Richard Wolff, Professor Bruno Gulli, and Professor Peter Bratsis. There are many other names and insightful videos in the institute's video library I did not mention but are well worth studying.

A person could really get a good college level education watching and understanding these invaluable philosophy lecture series.

Seminar 9: Marx, Marxism and Philosophy Today with Michael Pelias
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“French philosopher Alexandre Kojeve was asked by university students, 'What can we do to become more radical?'
And he said, 'Learn ancient Greek.' “​

ὁ δὲ ἀνεξέταστος βίος οὐ βιωτὸς ἀνθρώπῳ
Plato's Apology (38a5–6)​

 

Here is the full video of the movie American Psychosis (2017), and a relevant quote from Marx on the same themes of alienation Hedges speaks about in the film:

“Private property does not know how to change crude need into human need. Its idealism is fantasy, caprice and whim; and no eunuch flatters his despot more basely or uses more despicable means to stimulate his dulled capacity for pleasure in order to sneak a favour for himself than does the industrial eunuch—the producer—in order to sneak for himself a few pieces of silver, in order to charm the golden birds out of the pockets of his dearly beloved neighbours in Christ. He puts himself at the service of the other’s most depraved fancies, plays the pimp between him and his need, excites in him morbid appetites, lies in wait for each of his weaknesses—all so that he can then demand the cash for this service of love. (Every product is a bait with which to seduce away the other’s very being, his money; every real and possible need is a weakness which will lead the fly to the glue-pot. General exploita tion of communal human nature, just as every imperfection in man, is a bond with heaven—an avenue giving the priest access to his heart; every need is an opportunity to approach one’s neighbour under the guise of the utmost amiability and to say to him: Dear friend, I give you what you need, but you know the conditio sine qua non; you know the ink in which you have to sign yourself over to me; in providing for your pleasure, I fleece you.)(1844 Manuscripts, Marx, p. 109: bold text added.)(pdf.)."

American Psychosis - Chris Hedges on the US empire of narcissism and psychopathy
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Here is another good introductory video on the philosopher Immanuel Kant and his deon-tological ethics.
The Greek term δέον, (deon) means 'obligation, duty' + λόγος, (logos) 'study.' But what happens if there is a conflict of duties (Maxims)?

10 Life Lessons from Immanuel Kant (Kantianism)
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I prefer the familial, reasonable, and accountable nature of the gospel of Jesus Christ to the philosophies and contrivances of men.

 

I guess that's why America is so Christian.

"Plato told Aristotle no one should make more than five times the pay of the lowest member of society. J.P. Morgan said 20 times.
Jesus advocated a negative differential - that's why they killed him." – Graef Crystal (1998 )​

So why did St. John speak of the Logos, an ancient Greek concept proposed by philosopher Heraclitus five hundred years before the birth of Christ? Is the logos a philosophy and contrivance of men? Should John be rejected as a Christian heretic? I think Jesus would reject religious dogmatism just as he rejected the religious dogmatism of the intolerant Pharisees of his time--that's why they killed him.

Jesus never said anything about the "logos."

 

I didn't say I preferred Christianity. It's too big, contradictory and confusing. I said I prefer the personal, accountable nature of the gospel of Jesus Christ, rather than what people think, whether thru philosophy or organized religious interpretation. It is personal to me. And I'm reconciled to it. I'm not aware of Johns reference to philosophy. Nor does anyone's opinion about it complicate my relationship with God. There is much that appears contradictory in scripture. Similarly, the entire matter of God and salvation appears contradictory to life and the world. But these realities, by their existence, don't change my heart and endearment to God either. If you love someone, it doesn't matter what people say critically about them. You stick with them. That's what Jesus Christ did for us in harmony with God the Father. And that's why he means so much to me. It is personal.

 

I'm glad to hear it.

"Only an atheist can be a good Christian; only a Christian can be a good atheist."
--Ernst Bloch​

 

Here is the passage that Dr. Pelias is reading from Deleuze.

"Deleuze, A Thousand Plateaus: the games of Chess and Go.
Page 373

Let us take a limited example and compare the war machine and the State apparatus in the context of the theory of games. Let us take chess and Go, from the standpoint of the game pieces, the relations between the pieces and the space involved. Chess is a game of State, or of the court: the emperor of China played it. Chess pieces are coded; they have an internal nature and intrinsic properties from which their movements, situations, and confrontations derive. They have qualities; a knight remains a knight, a pawn a pawn, a bishop a bishop. Each is like a subject of the statement endowed with a relative power, and these relative powers combine in a subject of enunciation, that is, the chess player or the game's form of interiority. Go pieces, in contrast, are pellets, disks, simple arithmetic units, and have only an anonymous, collective, or third-person function: pieces are elements of a non-subjectified machine assemblage with no intrinsic properties, only situational ones.

Thus, the relations are very different in the two cases. Within their milieu of interiority, chess pieces entertain biunivocal relations with one another, and with the adversary's pieces: their functioning is structural. On the other hand, a Go piece has only a milieu of exteriority, or extrinsic relations with nebulas or constellations, according to which it fulfills functions of insertion or situation, such as bordering, encircling, shattering. All by itself, a Go piece can destroy an entire constellation synchronically; a chess piece cannot (or can do so diachronically only). Chess is indeed a war, but an institutionalized, regulated, coded war, with a front, a rear, battles. But what is proper to Go is war without battle lines, with neither confrontation nor retreat, without battles even: pure strategy, whereas chess is a semiology.

Finally, the space is not at all the same: in chess, it is a question of arranging a closed space for oneself, thus of going from one point to another, of occupying the maximum number of squares with the minimum number of pieces. In Go, it is a question of arraying oneself in an open space, of holding space, of maintaining the possibility of springing up at any point: the movement is not from one point to another, but becomes perpetual, without aim or destination, without departure or arrival. The "smooth" space of Go, as against the "striated" space of chess. The nomos of Go against the State of chess, nomos against polls. The difference is that chess codes and decodes space, whereas Go proceeds altogether differently, territorializing or de-territorializing it (make the outside a territory in space; consolidate that territory by the construction of a second, adjacent territory; de-territorialize the enemy by shattering his territory from within; de-territorialize oneself by renouncing, by going ...). Another justice, another movement, another space-time."

 

I meant to reply to post #256 titled, "Rousseau, Reveries of the Solitary Walker: Ellie Anderson and David Peña-Guzmán."

In follow up on this existentialist theme of the loss of experience is another relevant philosophical lecture by Richard Capobianco, Professor of Philosophy, regarding Heidegger's understanding of the recovery of experience. Dr. Capobianco's video lecture is titled, "Heidegger and 'The Greek Experience' of Nature-Physis-Being." The YouTube transcript has so many errors, I transcribed and cleaned up a key passage that I subtitled, "The Recovery of Experience on the Islands of the Aegean Sea." @ 16:23 minutes.

Heidegger and 'The Greek Experience' of Nature-Physis-Being.
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The Recovery of Experience on the Islands of the Aegean Sea.

"Heidegger's reflections on his first trip to Greece in 1962, which was published as "Afenthalte," translated in English as "Sojourns" are...Those reflections are perhaps familiar to many, but not so his observations on a later trip, in May of 1967, that are gathered in a shorter piece titled "On the Islands of the Aegean." In this later philosophical travelogue, I guess we could call it, he reprises several themes from Sojourns, such as concerning Aletheia. But in this later travelogue he attends more closely to the matter of the Greek understanding of physis. The importance for Heidegger of the Greek primordial word, physis, sees really cannot be overstated. It remained at heart of his lifelong effort to think the originally, unifying and fundamental meaning of being. We must ever try, he tells us in this text, to return to the "originally meaning of nature as physis" that prevailed among the ancient Greeks. And accordingly, this means understanding Nature-physis, as he puts it, "the emerging and letting come to presence of what is present."

Thereby, Heidegger recalls for us once again that the Greeks experienced the power of the emergence of all things, the opening and showing and shining forth of all things to us. As he looked upon the Greek island of Kos from aboard his ship in the Aegean he is reminded of "the last great Greek lyric poet, Theocritus, "who, in the Idyll... the title this Idyll is "The Harvest Festival." Heidegger says, "In this Idyll, Theocritus 'celebrated the life and beauty of nature on this island.'" And Heidegger highlights the following lines from the last part of this Idyll, again, "The Harvest Festival." And in Heidegger's text, he uses a translation into the German man made by someone else. And I am going to use a translation in English by Anthony Verity. So, from Theocritus' Idyll, The Harvest Festival:

This lovely pastoral scene clearly moved Heidegger (as it has so many others over the course of the centuries) and he also saw in it confirmation that the Greeks enjoyed a special relation to Nature-physis. The Greeks did not have merely a subjective "feeling" or "sentiment" for nature, which he indirectly suggests is the prevailing characteristic of the modern romantic relation to nature; nor did the Greeks relate to nature as an object for a subject, a relation that developed out of the modern scientific technological way of thinking that was principally inaugurated by Descartes. Rather, the ancient Greeks enjoyed an immediate, he uses that word unmittelbar, an immediate experience of nature, physis,
that was unencumbered by an incessantly mediating subject, this "subjectism" or "subjecticity" that is at the foundation of the modern age. Modern Romanticism and modern science and technology only appear to be opposites, but in fact they are united by this underlying assumption that the foundation for thinking and feeling is the self or the subject."

 

"Philosophy is its own time apprehended in thoughts."
--Hegel (Outlines of the Philosophy of Right)(pdf.)​

I can't believe how fast time is passing. The weeks just fly by reading, writing, and working around the house just to get some physical exercise! Over the years of reading, I noticed a loss in my muscle flexibility so doing some stretching and manual labor feels great in between study sessions. On YouTube there are numerous videos dedicated to only teaching advanced methods of study and ways to enhance your memory. My memory isn't as good as it used to be, and so I went back to (re)memorizing my old Greek paradigms—and it works! My recall memory has improved so maybe I'm not “entering the Springtime of my senility,” as Gore Vidal once said.

One of my Ancient Greek language Professors once filled up all four wall-length blackboards that lined the entire classroom with the Greek conjugated Omega-verb παύω (I stop) from sheer memory with only a piece of chalk in hand (click on 'show” to see paradigms). From memory alone, he wrote out the entire Greek present, active, indicative paradigm for “I stop”, followed by the imperfect tense, then the aorist tense, and so on--for about 45 minutes. We couldn't find any errors by randomly spot checking the forms. Some professors are really smart, but this was scary smart! The instructor was baby-faced, very soft-spoken, and kind—his students lovingly nicknamed him, “The Axe Murderer.”

Which brings to memory another amazing feat! Philosophy Professor Dr. Gregory B. Sadler has completed the last lecture of his 375-video series lasting some ten years reading and commenting on Hegel's “Phenomenology of Spirit.” An entire decade! See what I mean about time?

We all got up off the floor, and Dr. Sadler threw a Hegel Party! Dr. Sadler should be highly commended for his hard work, sacrifice, and excellent lectures on Hegel. I visited one of his websites to show my appreciation.

The Final Episode | Celebrating the Culmination of the Half Hour Hegel Project
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I didn't start Sadler's Hegel series until about lecture #644 in April 2020 and had to catch up by watching the earlier lectures at about four or five lectures a day plus occasional binge-watching sessions to sprint ahead. I read the text passages ahead of time so the video lectures are actually only about twenty-five minutes long so that I could watch three videos in about an hour, and it took about five months to finally catch up. I like that Sadler's lectures are only about a half-hour long like his other “Core Concept” videos that are great for review, and a quick introduction to new philosophers and issues.

I had read large sections of Hegel's Phenomenology before, skipping through the key sections (especially the “Religion” section) in class with another professor during my graduate school years. This time around, I was able to draw into my book's margins (using a 0.5mm mechanical pencil) Dr. Sadler's useful Mind Maps. If you finished Sadler's Hegel course, and have recovered, I recommend re-reading the text's “Introduction," (pdf.) (para. 73 to 89) and what was before incomprehensible is now very clear and simple.

 

There are many versions of "Postmodernism" that are really incoherent, especially the version by pseudonym James Lindsey. The French versions of this particular theme of post-modernism are incomprehensible to me. I cannot read the French language which is a handicap. But I did find a more coherent post-modern narrative that makes more sense on the channel "Then & Now" and is well produced.

What Makes us Postmodern?
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Another fun video on Dr. Sadler's completing his ten-year video lecture reading and commentary on Hegel!

Dr. Sadler's fame has been elevated to the level of a philosophical cartoon character! One person in the video chat (36:40 minutes) noted that Sadler's beard for-itself has phenomenologically transformed into a higher level of development of its essence in-itself. Now, I am a little disturbed by this comment because....

The Spirit is not a bone...nor is it a beard!

Wisdom For Life Radio Show Episode 74 | Philosophical Projects and G.W.F. Hegel
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The Rise of Post-Modernism Conservative Philosophical Garbage​

I have written much about the post-modernism garbage being spewed by what we formally named “Conservatives,” who are really Neo-fascists and crypto fascists propagandizing about a lost national past employing and other political memes. The ultra-right wing American Republican Party infiltrated by blood and soil cults is able to appropriate these issues partly because the American Democratic Party will not defend or stand for anything. For example, the felon, Donald Trump, as head of the U.S. Government was able to steal away from the left the issues of “fake news,” “government corruption,” “rigged elections,” and “de-industrialization” because the Democratic left will not own them. One example of a particularly stupid version of the post-modern meme is by the two dimwits, Unraveling the Postmodernism-Marxism Connection ft Jordan Peterson & James Lindsay. The fascist dimwitted James A. Lindsey spews the same old postmodern garbage, but with an additional meme of “Critical Race Theory.” In comparison to James Lindsey, Jordan Peterson is almost rational!

In response to these post-modern memes, I wrote a critique titled, The Ayn Randian Propagandistic Trope Concerning Postmodernism, and later another essay, Postmodern Socrates on Virtue. My key argument is that the philosophical problems of ethics and epistemology are real which is why I noted that in Ancient Greece 400 B.C. Socrates struggled with these same questions of ethics so are not new problems, or questions. With all that said, there are reasons why “post-modernism” became a political meme. Media apologists Peterson and Lindsay exploit these aporetic questions and attempt to blame all historical change in modern Western Civilization on one contemporary political party, in one particular country—the American Left. An absurd thesis, but this is American academia.

However, Matt McManus of Jacobin.com is able to examine this post-modern meme and offer an insightful analysis of how political extremists and fascists are able to cobble together this propaganda meme to construct a justification for later political violence and reclaim a once great America.

The Rise of Postmodern Conservatism w/ Matt McManus

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I mentioned there are reasons why “post-modernism” has become a fascist meme. The questions of goodness, and virtue, meaning, and truth (nihilism) are ancient philosophical questions about issues that people today rarely think about seriously (except in emergencies) and so there is a huge vacuum any ideology can step into and make its home. So these questions and issues appear in fascist propaganda as somehow unique to modern industrial capitalist society, where is no truth in the modern age. The questions of what truth is, the limits of language, and human alienation is addressed by John Edward Zerzan (born August 10, 1943) an American anarchist and primitivist author of “The Culture of Nihilism.”

Zerzan's writing criticizes agricultural civilization as inherently oppressive, and advocates drawing upon the ways of life of hunter-gatherers as an inspiration for what a free society should look like. Subjects of his criticism include domestication and symbolic thought (such as language, number, art and the concept of time). Zerzan writes about the source of nihilism, and alienation in the following passage and re-affirms my argument that the post-modern meme as presented by some political apologists is really the old philosophical problems of the relations between reality and symbols. Mistaking the symbol for the symbolized in the original sin of language and thought. Philosopher Chad A Haag summarizes Zeran's thesis that I took time to transcribe below (bold added to text; all transcription errors are mine):

26:57: "....but by focusing on language in particular Derrida shows something about post-modernity which Zerzan finds to be inherently problematic which is that post-modernity is just the most extreme form of something which has been going on for thousands of years and that is the fall into symbolic thought itself which actually is a historical anomaly for Zerzan language itself is something which humans have only used for a tiny fraction of their total existence he claims maybe 30,000 years ago maybe 35,000 years ago you start to see language appear, but humans have existed in some form for hundreds of thousands or maybe longer years so for most of human existence we didn't have language because we didn't need it because we were already in a communion in a way that was really real rather than merely symbolic so the kind of communion which hunter-gatherers had with one another didn't need language....losing the connection which once was possible through mind reading I guess, but that is itself just a result of having lost the kind of presence which actually was possible in the hunter gather world view and was the norm it was the norm in the hunter gather world view to have a world characterized by presence, and it only came to be lost because once again the physical situation shifted from the hunter-gatherer one to the physical situation of Agriculture leading to the memological shift from egalitarianism to domination we have to be careful to note that one of Zerzan's insights about language is that it's inherently, rather than accidentally, a structure of domination because even to be able to use language to speak what appear to be your own thoughts requires a certain kind of alienation if I'm speaking a language like say American English....so even to be able to use language to try to express myself, I actually have to negate myself in a certain sense by allowing myself to submit to these structures beyond myself as so many rules that I have to follow...so there's a kind of domination inherent within language. It's not just that I use language to dominate others in order to even use language. I have to myself already be dominated by it and this is not a coincidence, or an accident of language as symbolic thought really only arises once the kind of domination of agriculture becomes a hardwired factor within consciousness through shifting to the deep meme of domination away from the deep meme of Hunter gather egalitarianism."

 

Part I: Tillich's Critique of Hegelian Idealism: the demonry of abstraction
Part II: Feuerbach's Critique of Hegelian Absolute Idealism
Part III: Marx's Feuerbachian Critique of Hegelian Absolute Idealism

Paul Tillich's Critique of Hegelian Idealism: the demonry of abstraction


“...so the question arises whether there is another relation in which the wholeness of the truth
can be reached and the 'demonry of abstraction' overcome.”
--Paul Tillich,(Systematic Theology; vol. III, p. 255)(pdf.)​

I want to continue developing this important theme discussed in post #273 concerning the loss of experience as viewed by philosopher John Edward Zerzan's study on the emergence of nihilism within modern industrial societies. Zerzan's grand thesis is that language inherently distorts perception by symbolically swapping sensuous experience with substituted static objects, or stand-in paradigmatic abstract concepts—an inescapable spiritual exchange that leaves human experience hollowed-out of existential meaning, or ethical purpose. In the following video passage philosopher Chad A. Haag explicates Zerzan's view of language as intrinsically alienating:

“So even to be able to use language to try to express myself, I actually have to negate myself in a certain sense by allowing myself to submit to these structures beyond myself as so many rules that I have to follow. So, there's a kind of domination inherent within language. It's not just that I use language to dominate others in order to even use language. I have to myself already be dominated by it and this is not a coincidence, or an accident of language as symbolic thought really only arises once the kind of domination of agriculture becomes a hardwired factor within consciousness through shifting to the deep meme of domination away from the deep meme of Hunter-Gather egalitarianism (29:25 minutes).”

This existentialist theme of alienation from the tyranny of language which Zerzan speaks can also be found in the philosophical thought of Paul Tillich, Feuerbach, and Marx, but in the sometimes obscure vocabulary of a critique of Hegelian absolute idealism. The term “alienation” has an interesting history and is applied by Marx to describe wage laborers in capitalist production, although, the German term “entfremden,” is interpreted by translators metaphorically as “to estrange” and appears in his 1844 Paris Manuscripts text about one hundred and fifty times. Professor Micheal Pelias noted in his seminar lecture 6 that a closely related term “entaussern” means “to alienate in a legal, commercial sense, to transfer property [or divest].” In other words, “alienate” is a term also used to describe distressed real estate properties. Tillich writes some form of the term “estrangement” three hundred and fifty times in his published nine-hundred paged, three volume systematic theology. In his book, The Essence of Christianity (1841)(pdf.), Feuerbach is translated by George Eliot using the word “estrange” twice to describe man's relationship to God; however, “alienate” is used four times describing people's relationship to themselves, to Nature, and God. However, there is one common key term that is used extensively in the philosophical thought of philosophers Zerzan, Tillich, Feuerbach, and Marx: ”abstraction” in languages and in thought.

“Language is a public tool to interpret the private life.”
Wittgenstein's Private Language Argument​

Paul Tillich on the Ambiguity of Cognitive Abstraction​

Tillich uses the theological-existential term “ambiguity” extensively in all three volumes of his Systematic Theology. An ambiguous life is estranged meaningless finite human existence (ST, vol. I p. 4). One fourth of the third volume of Systematic Theology addresses those questions of human existence implied by the ambiguities of all structures of life (ST, vol. III, p. 11), but also ambiguity of language itself (ST, vol. III, p. 69), in realm of the holy (ST, vol. III, p. 102), of organized religion (ST, vol. III, p. 98 ), of essential and existential being (ST, vol. I, p. 202), of moral law (ST, vol. III, p. 44), and of culture (ST, vol. III, p. 245).

This word, “ambiguity” is a Latin term that literally means “double meaning” and is how Tillich most often applies this concept addresses the aporetic problem of multiple interpretations of life's contingent events and human beings seeking an unambiguous life with certain determinate meaning. In the phenomenology of human existence, Being and Time (1927), Martin Heidegger defines ambiguity (Zwerdeutigkeit) as a mode of existential being of Das Man, (The Man), or the ordinary everyday comportment toward one's own existence by a fallen unauthentic existing human subject. An authentic subject, or Dasein (being-there) self-consciously owns itself, and takes responsibility for itself. Professor Ronald Grimsley (1915-2003) of Oxford University wrote of Heidegger's phenomenological definition of existential ambiguity and is, in my opinion, really the deeper Heideggerian concept Tillich is striving to implement in his own existentialist systematic theology:

“Ambiguity appears as the inability to distinguish between the authentic and the unauthentic, between what is genuinely disclosed and what is inessential covering. It is an attitude which involves other people and the world as well as our own selves. ‘Ambiguous’ knowledge, for example, whether of things or people, is the outcome of an attitude of mind which moves in the world of ‘hearsay’ and is preoccupied with being ‘in the know’ and listening to what ‘they’ say instead of to the call of ‘abandoned Existence’. Such knowledge is in fact ignorance, for it stands in no relation to what really is (Existentialist Thought, 1960, p. 57)(pdf.).”

Tillich develops a specialized vocabulary signifying the important concepts of human existence such as ambiguity, estrangement, and abstraction, but also integrates these into the traditional philosophical language of subject-object representational epistemology. He accepts the cognitive dichotomies between subject (observer), and object (observed); thought and being; objective-subjective realms; essence and existence. Tillich warns that ideological “patterns of conceptualization” are paradigmatically restrictive only to the realm of “beings,” “objects,” or “things.” For Tillich, the “demonry of abstraction,” means the loss of spiritual experience. Tillich's critique is presented as directed against Hegelian absolute idealism, but his insights apply to all idealistic frames of reference:

“To overcome the ambiguities of cognition the divine Spirit must conquer the cleavage between subject and object even more drastically than in the case of language. The cleavage appears, for example, in the circumstances that every cognitive act must use abstract concepts, thus disregarding the concreteness of the situation; that it must give a partial answer, although 'the truth is the whole' (Hegel); and that it must use patterns of conceptualization and argumentation which fit only the realm of objects and their relation to each other. This necessity cannot be dismissed on the level of finite relations; and so the question arises whether there is another relation in which the wholeness of the truth can be reached and the 'demonry of abstraction' overcome. This cannot be done in the dialectical manner of Hegel, who claimed to have the whole by combining all parts in a consistent system. In doing so he became, in a conspicuous way, the victim of the ambiguities of abstraction (without reaching the totality to which he aspired). The divine Spirit embraces both the totality and the concrete, not by avoiding universals--without which no cognitive act would be possible--but by using them only as vehicles for the elevation of the partial and concrete to the eternal, in which totality as well as uniqueness are rooted. Religious knowledge is knowledge of something particular in the light of the eternal and of the eternal in the light of something particular. In this kind of knowledge the ambiguities of subjectivity as well as objectivity are overcome; it is a self-transcending cognition which comes out of the center of the totality and leads back to it (Systematic Theology, Paul Tillich; Vol. III, p. 255)(pdf.).”

...next, Part II: Feuerbach's Critique of Hegelian Absolute Idealism​

 

Post 274: Part I: Tillich's Critique of Hegelian Idealism: the demonry of abstraction
Post 275: Part II: Feuerbach's Critique of Hegelian Absolute Idealism
Part III: Marx's Feuerbachian Critique of Hegelian Absolute Idealism

Feuerbach's Critique of Hegelian Absolute Idealism



“What the subject is lies only in the predicate; the predicate is the truth of the subject—the subject only the personified, existing predicate,
the predicate conceived as existing. Subject and predicate are distinguished only as existence and essence. The negation of the predicates is therefore the negation of the subject. What remains of the human subject when abstracted from the human attributes?”
–The Essence of Christianity, Ludwig Feuerbach,1841, trans. by G. Eliot, p. 19 (pdf.).​

Ludwig Feuerbach (1804 to 72) studied theology at Heidelberg University and is most famous for his book, The Essence of Christianity (1845) while also authoring many other published critical theological studies of Christianity. Feuerbach is considered a member of the loosely defined philosophical school known as the Young Hegelians who were left-wing politically and highly critical toward Hegel's theological speculative idealist philosophy. The Young Hegelians included atheists, pantheists, and naturalists. Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, along with David Friedrich Strauss (1808-74) who authored his historical study of the Life of Jesus (1835) that questioned the existence of the historical Jesus are classified by scholars as Young Hegelian. On the other hand, the conservative right-wing Old Hegelians believed that Hegel's philosophical system was sound, and completely compatible with Christian theistic theology. Professors Karl Friedrich Goschel (1784-1861) and Karl Ludwig Michelet (1801-93) are two examples of Old Hegelians.

*For greater detailed study of the Young and Old Hegelians see Frederick Copleston's, S.J., A History of Philosophy, Modern Philosophy; vol. 7, part II; p. 226) The entire eleven volumes--over four thousand pages--available for free download in three different formats with no membership! (pdf.).

Feuerbach thought religion is a necessary stage in the development of human consciousness, as Hegel described in his phenomenology of history. Marx referred to Hegel's system as a “dead dog” that needed to be dug-up and turned “right-side up.” In other words, the Old Hegelian teleological dialectic emanates from heaven descending to earth, whereas the Young Hegelians instead believed the world historical dialectic emerged from the material base of earth and mind (Geist) ascents to heaven (Freedom). In reaction to Hegel's abstract idealistic philosophy, the Young Hegelians' critical philosophy embraced a much more empirical, dynamic, materialist, and dialectical approach to historical analysis—and even to religion. For Hegel, essence precedes existence, but for a Young Hegelian Feuerbachian materialist such as Marx, existence precedes essence.

“It's only because of the death of God we can really be religious again.”
--Gianni Vattimo quoted in “God and French Phenomenology,” J. Aaron Simmons' video lecture @ 3:10 min.​

Feuerbach's criticism of Hegelian idealism is based on the concept of “abstraction” using the term one hundred and thirty- one times within the three hundred and thirty-one pages of The Essence of Christianity (EC). He writes, “Religion abstracts from man, from the world; but it can only abstract from the limitations, from the phenomena; in short, from the negative, not from the essence, the positive, of the world and humanity: hence, in the very abstraction and negation it must recover that from which it abstracts, or believes itself to abstract (EC, p. 27).” Feuerbach thinks all theology is anthropology. The concept of the divine is a distorted anthropological projection of abstract human attributes amplified to infinity, but without the imperfections of actual human finite existence. One note of clarification is needed for the definitions of “negative” and “positive.” Critical theorists, (such as Herbert Marcuse and Theodor W. Adorno) use the term “positive” to mean “empirical,” and “negative” to mean “possibility,” or “non-empirical.” Feuerbach is using these terms in a different sense: as an ideal concept of humanity (positive), opposed to a limited humanity(negative).

Feuerbach writes about language, abstraction, and imagination, saying:

“A word is an abstract image, the imaginary thing, or, in so far as everything is ultimately an object of the thinking power, it is the imagined thought: hence men, when they know the word, the name for a thing, fancy that they know the thing also. Words are a result of the imagination.... Thought expresses itself only by images; the power by which thought expresses itself is the imagination; the imagination expressing itself is speech. He who speaks, lays under a spell, fascinates those to whom he speaks; but the power of words is the power of the imagination (EC, p. 77)(pdf.).”

In another passage, Feuerbach describes what is being abstracted from and projected out as the negative condition of human existence rather than humanity's positive essence and fullest potentialities:

“All religions, however positive they may be, rest on abstraction; they are distinguished only in that from which the abstraction is made. Even the Homeric gods, with all their living strength and likeness to man, are abstract forms; they have bodies, like men, but bodies from which the limitations and difficulties of the human body are eliminated. The idea of a divine being is essentially an abstracted, distilled idea. It is obvious that this abstraction is no arbitrary one but is determined by the essential standpoint of man. As he is, as he thinks, so does he make his abstraction (EC, p. 97)(pdf.).”

Yes, a lot of projection is going on these days.

However, religion is not the only escapist projection Feuerbach identifies in his critical theology: reason, or logic in the same way are abstractions from space and time and replaced by imagining life as pure reason:

“Thus in conceiving God, man first conceives reason as it truly is, though by means of the imagination he conceives this divine nature as distinct from reason, because as a being affected by external things he is accustomed always to distinguish the object from the conception of it. And here he applies the same process to the conception of the reason, thus for an existence in reason, in thought, substituting an existence in space and time, from which he had, nevertheless, previously abstracted it (The Essence of Christianity, Ludwig Feuerbach,1841, trans. by G. Eliot, p. 37)(pdf.).”

Later, Adorno develops in his thought the Feuerbachian theme of epistemological conceptual classification in experience as represented or expressed within philosophy itself. Roger Foster cautions in his book, Adorno: The Recovery of Experience (2007) that Adorno is not arguing for a “reductivist sociology of knowledge,” but is making a fine distinction that philosophical “Concepts are not causally constituted by a particular structure of historical experience. Rather, Adorno's claim is that they express that experience (Foster, p. 21).”

Feuerbach is not the first to describe Christian theism as escapist projection by human consciousness. The Christian theologian Friedrich Hegel wrote in 1795, at least twenty-three years before Marx was even born, describing the emergence of primitive Christianity under the brutal oppressive government of the Roman Empire:

"Thus the despotism of the Roman emperors had chased the human spirit from the earth and spread a misery which compelled men to seek and expect happiness in heaven; robbed of freedom, their spirit, their eternal and absolute element, was forced to take flight to the deity. [The doctrine of] God's objectivity is a counterpart to the corruption and slavery of man, and it is strictly only a revelation, only a (228 ) manifestation of the spirit of the age (On Christianity: Early theological Writings, Friedrich Hegel, (1795-1800), p. 162-3)(pdf.).

“...for Bloch a sort of quantum mechanics of hope is at work in religion in that it exists and moves as both particle and wave....
The figure of Christ as such is thus a particle of hope...the Christ-impulse...is the wave.”
--Peter Thompson, Introduction of Atheism In Christianity (2009), Verso ed., by Ernst Bloch, p. XXIII.​

From abstraction comes illusion, but it would be a mistake to stop our critique here, writing-off religion as merely utopian false consciousness. Ernest Bloch reads utopian projection as a deep desire for liberation anticipating a non-teleological fulfillment of new possibilities for freedom. “U-topia” means “no-place” in the present, active, indicative (i.e. actuality), but utopia also can mean “possibility” in an ontology of becoming. In Feuerbachian language, Bloch's utopian promise can be paraphrased as “the S [subject] has not yet become its P [predicate] because of current social conditions.” Dr. Thompson describes Bloch's understanding of Christian theistic projectionism as an un-actualized promise, even as a Nazarite “Christ-impulse.”

“Utopia in Bloch is also concrete precisely because it doesn’t yet exist at all, but will be the concrete result of the autopoiesis of its own becoming. It is merely a tendency and Iatency of its own existence of which we only know of because we glimpse its promise in the here and now. In Bloch’s materialist process philosophy, the dialectic of ontology and the ontic [factual], of quantity into quality and the general and particular, the small glimpses of a future utopia which we find in the everyday, thus start to add up to a transformative desire to change the world married to the objective possibility of doing so. It is the merging of Aristotle’s dynamei on— or what might be possible in the future— with kata to dynaton— or what is possible at the moment—in which all things, including both the human species and matter itself, will be changed into something which cannot yet be determined (Atheism In Christianity, Ernst Block, Intro. By P. Thompson, 1972 Verso, p. XVIII; brackets added)(pdf.)."

...next, Part III: Marx's Feuerbachian Critique of Hegelian Absolute Idealism.​