Ludwig
Wittgenstein (1889-1951) is one of the most important thinkers in
academics today. His early book, the Tractatus, and his later book,
the Philosophical Investigations, are considered two of the most
important influences for the American and British Analytic school of
philosophy, the dominant school of philosophy in America. In an end of
the century poll in 2000, philosophy professors from America and Canada
were asked to list the five most important books that influenced their
own work. When all of the results were tallied up, the Philosophical
Investigations was #1, and the Tractatus was #4. The Philosophical
Investigations was cited far more frequently than any other book, was
listed first on far more ballots, and crossed over more into many
different disciplines and areas of study.
Wittgenstein’s
thought can be divided into his early, middle and later work. His
early work is the book the Tractatus, the book which gave the world
truth table logic. This tool, as Wittgenstein later came to see it,
remains the mathematical system taught as logic today. Just as
Wittgenstein became famous for his truth tables, he switched positions
in his thinking and came to reject his earlier work. He wrote in
notebooks that were only published after his death, and the
Philosophical Investigations is the most celebrated of these.
Wittgenstein’s Father
was the Austrian Carnegie, making a fortune in Steel. Though his
father was Protestant, and his mother Jewish, Ludwig was baptized
Catholic because of antisemitism at the time. In his early years,
Ludwig was a proud atheist but by the time he was working on his
Tractatus he had a mystical transcendental outlook which he kept for the
rest of his life. Though never religious, and though he had to bribe
Nazis later to smuggle his “Jewish” family from Austria, he was buried
as a Catholic.
The
Wittgenstein family was known for intense criticism, musical talent,
depression, and suicide. Three of Wittgenstein’s four brothers
committed suicide, and he himself considered suicide for awhile before
launching into his late period. Unfortunately, suicide was considered
romantic for Austrian elites at the time.
Wittgenstein
was in Hitler’s elementary school, 2 days younger, but because he was
put forward a grade and Hitler was held back a grade he was 2 years
ahead. Both he and Hitler hated the school and the lessons.
He
began studying at university in Berlin to become an engineer with an
interest in flight (the Wright Brothers had recently invented the
motorized glider, but flew it in France and Germany until 1907 as the US
Army did not believe them). After failing in his attempt to build a
better propeller, he began studying mathematical theory and philosophy
of mathematics, becoming entranced with two thinkers who are along with
Wittgenstein foundational for Analytical philosophy and logic: Russell
from Britain, and Frege from Germany. Wittgenstein went to see Frege,
who did not fully understand his questions and advised him to go see
Russell, which he did in 1911.
He
showed up unannounced to Russell’s room at Trinity College, impressed
him with his intense and brilliant arguments. Russell became convinced
that the young Austrian was going to carry his work forward and be his
successor, solving the remaining problems of logic that Russell’s work
on the foundations of mathematics had left open. As mentioned last
lecture, Russell had shown there were contradictions unresolved in
Frege’s work with set theory, but Russell had become frustrated trying
to solve these contradiction with his theory of types.
Wittgenstein,
an eccentric and difficult personality, was never fully comfortable at
Cambridge, and often got into disagreements with Russell and threatened
to leave many times before fleeing to Norway where he believed he could
finish his work on Logic. While some still disagree, it is generally
accepted that Wittgenstein was gay, developed a relationship with
Pinsent, a young graduate student, and some believe that Russell
encouraged the relationship if he did not introduce the two with the
purpose of keeping the emotional and unstable genius with him at
Cambridge.
When
WWI broke out, he served for Austria, at the same time as he was
developing the material for the Tractatus. Learning of Pinsent’s death
in the war in Italy, he became suicidal, moved in with his uncle and
finished the Tractatus which he dedicated to his ‘friend’ Pinsent. He
tried to get it published, but no one would take it. Remember: this
book went on to be the #4 influence in the US and Canada according to
the poll, the book that gave modern logic truth tables, the method that
replaced Aristotle’s syllogisms.
Russell
intervened back in Cambridge, and had it published and wrote and
introduction for it. This was the start of the end. Though Russell saw
the work as genius, he did not completely understand much of it and his
introduction reflected this. Wittgenstein read the introduction and
realized Russell had great misunderstandings of his work. Believing
that his Tractatus had solved all the problems of philosophy,
Wittgenstein left Russell and Cambridge again and went to be a school
teacher in Austria. He gave away his portion of the family fortune,
anonymously to writers but also to his family. Since his family was
already wealthy, he wrote in a letter, “they won’t be corrupted by it”.
He left the school after a short while (not a good fit, and parents
thought he was crazy). He became a gardener’s assistant, and then his
sister had him design her a house.
While
finishing the house, he was contacted by members of the Vienna Circle,
positivists using Hegel’s logic and Wittgenstein’s Tractatus to give a
solid foundation for science and mathematics. This was what Russell had
hoped for, minus the Hegel who Russell hated. While Wittgenstein had
been away, the Tractatus had become famous, and central to many already
inspired by Frege and Russell. Many came to visit and discus and
progressively Witt became disgusted. He began to realize that there
were fundamental problems with his Tractatus and truth tables, and got
into intense arguments with the Vienna Circle members, at one point
turning his back on his guests and reading Tagore, an Indian
transcendental poet out loud. For the rest of his life, Wittgenstein
thought logical positivism (the analytic school of philosophy)
misunderstood his Tractatus.
In
his early period, Wittgenstein believed he had fully solved the
problems of a complete system of logic. He saw it like Schopenhauer, a
big early influence: logic is a perfect crystal tool of analysis, life
is a messy chaotic ocean, and so logic is perfect but unfortunately
never fits perfectly with life. This is like having the perfect tool
for an impossible and continuous job. In conversations with positivists
he started to change his thinking around and continued to write until
he died. These writings were published after his death as the
Philosophical Investigations and other books. In his later thought,
Wittgenstein saw logic not as a perfect crystal castle in the sky but as
rules and games that are imperfectly lived in the real world
imperfectly and without complete definition. He no longer believed that
logic could provide a foundation for mathematics, science or philosophy.
He denied that contradictions are necessarily false, or disprove a
mathematical-logical system.
In
1929, he decided to return to Cambridge to correct his thinking and
teach. To his horror, when he arrived at the train station he was
greeted by a vast crowd of intellectuals as the new hero, the author of
the Tractatus, the work he now thought was exactly wrong.
The
famous economist Keynes wrote to his wife: ‘Well, God has arrived. I
met him on the 5:15 train’. Wittgenstein continued to lecture at
Cambridge, developing his ideas.
In
1934, he defected to Soviet Russia, wanting to be a plumber or work
with his hands. When he was told that according to the Soviet system he
would be put to work as a philosophy professor in Moscow, he defected
back to Britain.
In
1937, Hitler annexed Austria. Wittgenstein had to bribe Nazis to get
his Jewish family passage out and spend the equivalent today of $50
million in gold and foreign currency. Since he had given away his own
portion of the family fortune, he had to get much of this from his
colleagues at Cambridge and other admirers of his work.
THE TRACTATUS
In
his early thought, expressed in the pages of the Tractatus, reality
consists of atomic facts, states of affairs that are true. Thought,
expressed grammatically in language, ‘pictures’ the world with these
atomic facts. The world does not perfectly fit this atomic language,
but because it is the way the head makes sense of the world we cannot
understand things otherwise. Wittgenstein said that it is the part of
the book that is unwritten that is important, the part where life itself
goes beyond this logic and makes the world what it is. Of the world
beyond logic, he wrote “Of what one cannot speak, one must remain
silent”, which is in fact a quote from Confucius. Our logic and the
world are two things that do not fit, yet mysteriously (and mystically)
the two are one.
If
we boil logic with truth tables down to its tautologies, the necessary
and basic workings, and leave the rest open as the world which always is
beyond our thoughts, we can have the perfect system of logic and
grammar that we use to understand things spelled out even if it cannot
perfectly predict the world or tell us how the world works. Think of
logic as a set of reading glasses, and the world as something one looks
at through the glasses. Wittgenstein believed that with the Tractatus
he had spelled out the perfect crystal form of the glasses, and beyond
this nothing can be said for certain.
When
it comes to facts in the world, however, everything is contingent on
something else and is neither simply necessary or simply impossible.
Logic is the necessary and impossible book-ends with which we interpret
the world and its facts, but the world is always between the necessary
and the impossible, is always somewhat necessary and somewhat
impossible, which creates a gulf between our pure and necessary logic
and the unpredictable world. For Wittgenstein, only logic and math can
be sets of necessary truths, and this is because (as Avicenna and Mill
believe) they are concepts and are ideal, unlike situations of real
things in the world. Once we nail down the perfect tool of logic, we
can use it to examine the world and all of its messy situations. Our
examinations will never be perfect because of the gap between logic and
the world, but at least the logic will be necessary and perfect.
The
reason’s Wittgenstein’s truth tables were such a success is that they
proved, for the first time, that many of the axioms logicians had
discovered were necessarily true (tautologies) in a way that is simple
to do and easy to see.
THE MIDDLE AND LATER THOUGHT OF WITTGENSTEIN
At
first Wittgenstein thought that he had solved all the problems of
philosophy with the Tractatus truth table system (we do still use it
today to teach formal logic), so he left philosophy and Cambridge
behind, went to war, had many experiences, and then later decided that
his earlier thinking contained horrible problems. He no longer believed
that logic could be crystallized in the head as a truth table matrix,
but rather it existed as a complex out in the world, as arrangements of
people, thoughts, symbols, and objects. He continued to work on
notebooks, progressing in his thought until his death, after which his
notebooks were published.
There
is an excellent passage from Lectures and Conversations that
illustrates the turn nicely. This work was taken not from
Wittgenstein’s notebooks but from the notes of his seminar students in
the years leading up to his work on the notebooks which would be
published after his death as the Philosophical Investigations. At this
time Freud’s ideas had stormed onto the academic scene, infuriating
Wittgenstein who now had come to hate the idea that things in the world,
even logical operators and systems, can be boiled down to a single
essential element or factor like sex, power or truth. It is this
skepticism, which can be called the “problem of essences”, which marks
the turn from his earlier thinking to his more influential later
thought.
Wittgenstein
attacked Freud’s psychoanalysis and dream interpretation for boiling
everything down to sex. In the Lectures and Conversations (20-21),
Wittgenstein proposes a thought experiment for consideration. If we
cook a human being down to carbon ash in an oven, are we left with the
essence of the human being? A human being is a “carbon-based” life
form, so carbon is a dominant element. Consider that we could cook a
human down to water in the same oven, and claim that because humans are
3/5ths water we have the essence of the person.
Would
it be correct to say that humans are essentially ashy, or essentially
wet? Why not? We would not say that a human is essentially carbon or
water, nor would we say ashy or wet, because the human being is a
complex situation that is not reducible to a single element. The
properties of carbon or water do not in themselves explain how humans
behave or what they mean to us. If we cooked people down to ashes or
water, we have destroyed the situation and can no longer investigate how
they work. In the same way, a person is not merely their DNA. While
carbon, water and DNA have very important, even necessary roles to play
in any person, they are not exclusively the essence or meaning of the
complex that is a human individual.
In
the same way, Wittgenstein had come to believe that neither facts in
the world nor logic in the head can be reduced to a single element or
necessary structure. Facts and logic are not true in themselves, but
true in real situations of the world which are irreducibly complex.
Wittgenstein says in the Lectures and Conversations that we have to
avoid the “lure of the secret cellar”, the urge to boil situations down
to a single element like Freud tried to boil human relations, meaning
and the mind down to sex or Wittgenstein himself had tried to boil logic
down to its simple structure.
The
task of philosophy, logic and science is not to fully or completely
explain anything, but to investigate things. Thought never fully
defines things but rather describes and re-describes things. If science
is thinking about the world, then science has endless work to do
describing and re-describing things. Consider whether we fully
understand apples, or whether we ever need to entirely understand them
in order to continue to understand them and use them a great deal.
Likewise, if philosophy and logic are ‘thinking about thinking’, and if
thinking is merely a possible description of things, philosophy and
logic have endless work to do describing our descriptions, describing
and re-describing the ways that we describe things. Much insight can be
gained even if no subject is entirely explained or exhausted.
One
good way to approach this is to describe how cultures of thought,
perspectives, facts and models are gathered together and lived in
institutions. Thought ceases to be completely abstract, but is rather a
culture and situation in the real world that involves people, buildings
and money. The cryptanalysis of algebra worked so well as a modeling
language that we came to believe that the mathematics was not in our
practices and text books but rather sewn into the fabric of the world
itself. As we look over the history of thought in the wake of
Wittgenstein’s later work, it becomes evident that mathematics and logic
are tools and lenses, not the hidden structures of things operating at
secret levels out of our immediate sight. In scholarship today,
particularly the history of religion, philosophy and science, it has
become popular to consider a system of thought as a real lived situation
rather than an abstract set of beliefs and ideas. A religion or
science is in fact a situation of human beings who never have to have
entirely the same set of beliefs as long as they can generally and
relatively cohere as a culture.
THE PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS
In
this monumental work, one of my favorites of modern European thought,
Wittgenstein argues for a middle way between two extreme positions,
between the position of scientific positivism (objective truth is facts
in the world) and the position of psychological skepticism (subjective
truth is meanings in the mind). He presents each position in quotes
again and again, and then argues against both in a three stage process.
First he states a position (either that there are facts given in the
world or meaning is all in the head), then shows situations in which the
position works, then shows situations in which the position does not
work. He shows us that taking either position to extremes would be
understandable given particular ways we think and act, but neither
position explains all the ways in which we think and act. We live in
complex ways that depend both on there being a coherent world and there
being human perspectives. Wittgenstein argues that we can take both
positions rather than determine one to be the actual and the other to be
the illusion.
In
his earlier thought, the world and the head are separated by a Kantian
gulf between objectivity and subjectivity. In his later thinking, the
world and our heads work together seamlessly as a complex situation.
One cannot remove either the head or the world to get the bedrock or
anchor of meaning and truth without resulting in absurdities. The clean
and ideal side of logic, math and grammar mislead us into thinking that
meaning must be anchored entirely on one side, either exclusively in
the head or exclusively in the world, but we gain much more ability to
think and describe our heads and our world if we stop looking for
meaning and truth to be entirely in one place rather than the other. In
the same way, rather than determine which facts are absolute truths to
the exclusion of their opposites, or refuse to identify coherence of
belief as it is all ‘mere theory’, we can better understand the facts
and theories we can share by recognizing that they are one and the same
viewed from opposite sides. If we can continue to determine relative
fact from relative fiction, there is no need to entirely separate the
two. To use the tool analogy, as long as we have decent tools we do not
need perfect or eternal ones.
Games
and rules gather people together, but individuals can also variously
interpret rules and meanings. ‘Rules can always be variously
interpreted’ is a central idea of the Philosophical Investigations.
This is not to say that they always are or they should be, but the
window remains open (Wittgenstein writes, “It is like locking a man in a
room but leaving the window open”). Both are only what they are
together as a form of life. Notice that this thinking has much in
common with Laozi’s thinking on the wheel as both empty and solid at the
same time, and much like the Zen koans of a rock being not a rock and a
rock and the sound of one hand clapping.
Consider
the ‘child at the blackboard’ metaphor used in the text. It is always
possible for a child to misunderstand rules and demonstrate this
misunderstanding by making mistakes, even after you show the child and
explain. Let us say that you then write a new ‘inner’ set of rules to
further explain the rules when the child fails. What if the child does
not understand those? Is there a bedrock set of rules that the child
can not possibly misunderstand? If the child can misunderstand rules,
then no set of rules within rules within rules is ever perfectly
airtight. We have an infinite regress unless we can find a set of rules
that can never be misinterpreted.
Just
like Wittgenstein had been seeking the fundamental inner workings of
logic and mathematics, as Frege and Russell had tried to do before him,
if people do math decently there need not be any inner rules aside from
the explanation and demonstration that, if repeated, children can often
follow. Notice we are considering mathematics as a culture, learned by
children and taught by adults, not as an abstract set of necessary or
immutable rules. It turns out that there are no inner workings to
mathematics. Mathematics works as it does openly, on the board in front
of one’s face, without the need of a ‘secret cellar’. If mathematics
on a board is not entirely secure, then no inner set of rules could or
must be either for it to function.
When
we try to explain anything, it is not being simplified, being stripped
down to its core, at all. It is the opposite: we are making it more
complex as we try to simplify and explain it. The rules are not being
discovered in the thing, but being added to the thing. When we explain
things, we are not whittling away the unnecessary but adding our
descriptions to it. In the same way, when we do science to explain
apples or human beings, we are adding our descriptions and the
situations of our descriptions, not uncovering the simple truth of the
thing. The simple truth of a thing is the simple thing itself. The
simplest truth of an apple is the single apple. An explanation of where
apples come from is very useful, but it puts the apple in a complex
with many other things (such as trees, farms, stores, trucks). An apple
is not merely its DNA, but is in a infinitely complex situation with
its DNA and ourselves attempting to isolate components with the tools
and technology we bring into the situation.
We
are always essentializing (like when we say, ‘We are always
essentializing’). Meaning, grammar and logic do separate things into
parts. They are useful for doing so. However, Wittgenstein is arguing
something quite revealing: There are no final explanations, only complex
descriptions. Any explanation is a partial human description, which
can then itself be described and explained. The task of philosophy,
science and mathematics is not to reduce things to simple truth, but to
generate more meaning and situations.
Let
us turn to the text. In the preface to the Philosophical
Investigations, Wittgenstein says that he now sees grave mistakes in his
Tractatus. He says that this new book is not to spare thinking, but to
stimulate thinking. Notice that the Tractatus had the opposite goal:
to put an end to the problems of logic and philosophy. Now Wittgenstein
does not believe that anything can or need be fully solved or closed,
but should rather be opened up and made complex.
In
section 7, Wittgenstein says that language games are actions and
language interwoven as forms of life. He considers that words such as
‘this’ and ‘there’ are learned interwoven with gestures such as
pointing. ‘This’, ‘now’, and other simple words get their meaning from
their use by gesturing human beings. They can not be described fully in
language alone, nor do they represent specific objects consistently.
Rather, they are demonstrated to children and translated into other
languages of cultures that share similar gestures. We know from
neuroscience that in the brain the centers of language and control of
the hands are next to each other, likely because language developed in
apes along with gestures. There are also similarities in the basic
gestures of humanity, including extending the arm to indicate the
direction of sight and attention. Infants only months old will read eye
direction to try to see what others are seeing, and if they can not see
what is being looked at they will check the eyes again. The arm,
whether a culture uses the index finger or not, provides an extension of
the line of sight so that it can be easily recognized and followed by
others. Notice that ‘this’ is as simple as it gets in itself, and to
further explain it we need to bring arms and neuroscience into the
picture.
In
section 11, he says language is like toolbox, a complex set of tools
that have no absolute necessity but are useful as a set. Consider that a
hammer, a screwdriver and glue are a decent set of tools. Are they
absolutely right or necessary tools? We could invent others, but they
work decently well for putting things together and taking things apart.
We do not need an absolute screwdriver any more than we need to
completely understand the relationship between the hammer and
screwdriver. We need only use them. In the same way, we do not need to
understand the word ‘and’ such that it is always used exactly the same
way, nor do we need to completely understand its relationship to ‘or’.
When we use them relatively, not exclusively, they are interchangeable.
At a buffet, I could equally say, “You can have eggs or salad or
steak” or “You can have eggs and salad and steak”. The two can
sometimes be used differently and sometimes similarly, as long as we are
decently consistent in all of our interconnected uses. Indeed, the
words, like tools such as hammers and screwdrivers, are more useful
being often but not always used in particular and exclusive ways (ex:
one can use a screwdriver to open paint cans). ‘And’ and ‘or’ are more
useful when we can use them oppositely, but also identically. In his
earlier thinking, with the truth tables, Wittgenstein was trying to
secure them merely opposite and different meanings, which does not give
us their full usage and meaning.
In
section 12, Wittgenstein uses the metaphor of a locomotive cabin to
further illustrate the same point. There are many levers and switches
that function in various ways. Words and language function in various
ways that form a complex with their environment. We could always
redesign the train cabin, but it works well enough as it is.
In
section 15, he uses another simple tool-oriented metaphor to make
language and meaning physical rather than ideal: naming is compared to
attaching a label (or sticker, with “Hello My Name Is”). The
association of a word with a particular thing is like attaching a label
for ease of use and identification.
In
section 17, he says that we can classify words as we do things, but our
classifications will depend on our situation and purposes. He uses the
metaphor of chess pieces. If you want to move a great distance, you
would classify chess pieces one way, but if you want to break through or
jump over the enemy lines (with a knight or a bishop) you would
classify them another way. The pieces, like words and other things, do
not have classifications and meanings in themselves, but in how they can
be used in concrete situations. This is again much like Mill.
In
section 18, he says that a language is like an old city, with side
streets and squares. It is interesting to compare San Francisco to Salt
Lake City here. San Francisco can be a nightmare to drive, while Salt
Lake City is almost entirely a perfect grid surrounding the Mormon
Temple. In San Francisco, you never know which way a street might turn
due to hills or other intersecting streets. European cities are
similarly often much older than the automobile, and do not lend
themselves to outsiders’ easy navigation. A language, like an old city
or old growth forest, is the result of a long process of many layers of
evolution and development. We can understand meanings just as we can
navigate streets, but things are not always clear cut as Salt Lake City.
In
section 57 and 58, he asks about where ‘red’ exists. He suggests that
‘red’ as a color does not exist in itself, but as an association of many
red things having been experienced, the word ‘red’ being said by others
and oneself associated with these things, as well as the
imagination/projection of the color red in the mind. None of these
things needs to be exclusively present for there to be red. We could
even say the word without any red things or thinking of red, and it
still means the color in our language and culture. We could likewise
see a red thing, and it is red without using the word or seeing red in
the imagination. Thus, the color red is not essentially any red thing,
or the word, or the color in the mind, but the complex of all these.
The color red is not simply a subjective concept, nor it is an
objective fact, but it is a conception and association of many things
and words, both in the head and the world together.
In
section 65, Wittgenstein argues that there is no form common to
language games or forms of life, such as the color red or the use of a
tool. The common element is merely form, or association. In the same
way that Hegel argues that Being itself can not be qualified (green,
good, necessary) or quantified (much, fourteen, half), Wittgenstein
argues that there is no common form to meaning. It is a complex
association that can take any possible form. This is similar to the
organic forms of fractal geometry: No two trees are identical, but they
share what Wittgenstein calls a ‘family resemblance’. In the next
section (66), he uses the example of games. There is no rule common to
all games, but they resemble each other as a family.
In
the next section (67), he uses the metaphor of a thread (one could also
use a rope). The thread is strong not because there is one underlying
strand that runs through its entire length, but because many stands
overlap each other. Mathematics and the meaning/use of a word do not
need a single inner rule to make them entirely consistent. Rather they
are complex networks that are continuously reinforced by our
re-inscription as we use them daily. Derrida, the French
deconstructionist, argues that there is no language set in stone. Old
English, like Old French, drift slowly like tectonic plates. When we
use language, we are not using something already set. Rather, we are
resetting it, re-associating it, re-gluing it together with the only
glue it was ever fashioned from, each and every time we speak or write.
Likewise, mathematics such as algebra is not true in itself. We
continue to use it consistently, and this rebinds its consistent use.
When dividing by zero creates problems, we add additional rules and
then continue to lash them together with the system.
In
section 83, Wittgenstein gives another metaphor to describe the
emergence (a chaos-theory, fractal geometry term) of forms of life.
Imagine people in a field, playing with a ball. The ball is tossed
about, another person joins and kicks it back to another, who chases it,
then pegs the kicker with the ball, and then it is tossed about again.
A game has arisen, but it does yet does not seem to have consistent
rules. It is being made up as it goes along. Human beings are rule
making, association generating beings, who know how to follow and bend
rules as they see fit. This means that the only complete consistency is
both consistency and inconsistency, the only consistent rule is there
are yet there are not consistent rules.
In
section 85, he gives another metaphor to back up this conception. A
rule is like a signpost, such as a sign that points to the right and
reads, ‘San Jose’. Does the sign force you to go to San Jose? No. If
you go to the right, will you surely reach San Jose without getting lost
or running out of gas? No. We can even imagine that if you go to the
left, because you are afraid of San Jose, you could get turned around
and end up there anyway. In spite of these loose ends, we find signs
quite useful.
In
section 99, he comes to the previously mentioned ‘locking a man in a
room but leaving the window open’ metaphor. You can not lock someone in
a room such that they can never get out. There are no simply solid
substances. There are no things without cracks of any kind. Similarly
we can not secure meanings such that they will always stay exactly the
same, but we can secure them by locking them down repeatedly through use
and association. To give an entire account of how a meaning is secured
would be like “repairing a torn spider’s web with one’s fingers” (106).
Just like an old city, we can use things without ever being able to
fully describe them.
Wittgenstein
writes, “We must do away with all explanation, and description alone
must take its place” (109)...”What we do is to bring words back from
their metaphysical to their everyday use” (116)...”What we are
destroying is nothing but houses of cards and we are clearing up the
ground of language on which they stand” (118).
Do
we base our own behavior, let alone the culture of mathematics, on
simple rules? He gives the example of being certain that a table will
resist one’s finger, that a fire will hurt one’s hand. It is not that
there is a simple rule set in an atomic language that reads, ‘Table is
solid’ or ‘Fire hurts hands’. Rather, “a hundred reasons present
themselves, each drowning out the voice of the others” (478). Like the
thread woven of many strands, our belief and certainty that objects are
solid and flame hurts us are woven out of many experiences that are then
woven together with the table and flame before us.
Wittgenstein
writes, “To say, ‘This combination of words makes no sense’ excludes it
from the sphere of language and thereby bounds the domain of language.
But when one draws a boundary it may be for various kinds of reason.
If I surround an area with a fence or a line or otherwise, the purpose
may be to prevent someone from getting in or out, but it may also be
part of a game and the players be supposed, say, to jump over the
boundary” (499). Wittgenstein seems to be thinking specifically of
humor and comedy, though it could also apply to modern and conceptual
art, forms of culture that break rules on purpose. Comedy and modern
art are games where the rule is to break the rules without breaking
anyone’s neck. Wittgenstein had an appreciation both for the Alice
books of Lewis Carroll as well as American slap-stick comedy which he
preferred to opera. At the end of the course, we will study the Alice
books, humor and modern art in light of the later work of Wittgenstein.
The
last image to examine, near the end of the book, is Jastrow’s
duck-rabbit, often called Wittgenstein’s duck-rabbit because the
psychologist Jastrow is far less famous. One can look at the figure
from the left, and it is a duck, and one can look at the figure from the
right, and it is a rabbit. Which is the single correct face?
Wittgenstein says we may have seen only the rabbit face our entire
life, and that does not prevent us or others from seeing the duck when
it is pointed out. This is much like the duel between objectivism
(truth is in the world) and subjectivism (meaning is in the head).
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
Ancient Greek Philosophy Fall 2012
I am happy to announce that I will be teaching Ancient Greek Philosophy in the Fall of 2012. If there is a particular topic you would like to see included in the course, please email me with your suggestions.
Social & Political Philosophy: Review for the Final Exam
Hegel & Revolution
Teen during French Revolution, reason as revolution, Marx inverting theism to materialism, historical process & explanations, dialectic as back & forth, positive-negative-synthesis, dogmatism vs. skepticism, understanding vs. reason, history as Orientals-Greeks-Germans/Europeans, master/slave dialectic, judgment as one-sided acid, oppositions as everything, being is non-being as becoming, freedom is necessity as one, Marx points to final stage of workers vs. owners, business class as latest stage, reason as critique of Rousseau’s romantic will
Socialism
Along with Capitalism and industrialization comes problems, inequality & criticism, equality vs. freedom, social use vs. individual interest, redistribution of wealth, social welfare, planned vs. free economies, most are mixed economies, gradual vs. radical revolution, democratic vs. tyrannical businesses, unions, co-ops, communes, Mazdak the Zoroastrian/Socialist, Saint-Simon’s Socialisme & meritocracy with “thieves” removed from above and below, co-operation vs. competition as productive, hand of greed vs. invisible hand, voting for workers, Marcuse the “father of the new left”, Frankfurt School & Critical Theory, attack on positivism, critique of corporate capitalism, consumerism & marketing, criticism of communism, compared both to fascism, One Dimensional Man, consumer’s fear of revolution, the Establishment, revolutionizing the “obscene”
Communism
Radical socialism & nationalization, capitalism as anarchism, the new French Revolution vs. the capitalists, Saint-Simon’s “each according to contribution” eventually “each according to need”, assumes surplus allows for this, imposing dictatorship evolving toward democracy, Lenin vs. Trotsky’s theory of continuous revolution, problem with failure of reluctant dictatorship, post-Marxists, problem of top-down and bottom-up viewpoints, internationalism, Communist Manifesto, all history is class struggle, problem of the necessary but revolutionary middle class, modern individuality made impossible, abolition of the family & nationality, Lenin & vanguard party dictatorship, Stalin’s socialism in one country, Gramsci & society as more complex than workers vs. owners, hegemony & hegemonic discourse, “counter-revolutionary” as mask of complex problems, Mao & paying attention to farmers vs. industrial city, Zizek and new struggle of first vs. third world
Anarchism
Radical bottom-up vs. previous top-down systems, feasibility of anarchy given technological society, government and power as inherently abusive, problem of central vs. decentralized power (private armies), Proudhon first to call himself an anarchist, “property is theft”, “anarchy is order”, anarchy symbol, free association of co-ops & communes, no need for nationalization, possession through mutual & voluntary use, Bakunin & break with Marx, the propaganda of the deed, criticism of communist dictatorship as self-perpetuating like fascism, Spanish Civil War, Franco, fascist & capitalist support, Squatter’s rights, Free Love & Women’s rights, Emma Goldman, Chomsky vs. Foucault, oppression as monstrous vs. all too human, true human nature vs. fluid human nature, Chomsky argues authority must continuously justify its existence, Foucault argues that institutions create binary dichotomies to maintain power, knowledge always serves power, criticism of psychiatry
Fascism
Fasces as bundle of sticks with ax, fascism as industrialization, nationalism & traditionalism, left & right wing elements, religious & anti-religious elements, anti-communism & anti-anarchism triangle, Mussolini in Italy, hoped for African empire, great depression and rising tides of communism, paramilitary resistance protecting family, religion & nationalism, vicious pacification of Africa, blaming own people in failure, Hitler in Germany, scientific legitimacy, Western ideal origins of Athens, Sparta & Rome, Heidegger and use of Nietzsche & existentialism hoping for radical new beginning, anti-technology & anti-modernity, romantic phenomenology vs. Husserl’s psychological phenomenology, intentionality, thrownness, technology boxing up the miraculous, with and against the “them” as an “I”, every revealing is a concealing, time as horizon of being, all thought as denial of death & meaninglessness, freedom is transparency of becoming, Heidegger as Nazi Trotsky, Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch, antisemetic view of both capitalism & communism, social-Darwinism even in local Nazi leadership, Reichstag Fire & emergency powers, “job creation” through anti-Semitism, admiration of UK & US
Postcolonialism
Islam as last contiguous empire & height of civilization, Europe gets wealth & gains colonial empire, today we live in post-colonial empire, Fanon as existentialist & Marxist, fighting for French & bleaching of his unit, colonialism destructive to oppressed body & mind, debate with Sartre over independence of the black community, gaze of the other as marginalization, interiorized racism, racism as key to class struggle, getting beyond Manichean categorical dualisms of black/white & irrational/rational, some revolutions (US) violence is justified, Said argues Orientalism is how “West” views the Other/Orient, argues against the “Clash of Civilizations”
Feminism
Myths vs. Realities of gender difference, seeking power through isolation vs. socialization, women as conscious of being watched, potential objectification, early civilization & growth of size as source of sexism, cultures offer women’s rights yet maintain oppression, 66% of work & 1% of property, first wave & Susan B. Anthony voting rights & consensual sex, second wave 60s anti-establishment, Simon de Beauvoir argues women Hegelian Other w/ master/slave dialectic, Friedan argues women need individual identity beyond the home, third wave criticisms, bell hooks criticism of white upper/middle class college movement marginalizing racism & poverty, Judith Butler argues gender is a social construct, gender as performance, issue of display of women’s sexuality as oppressive or liberating
Short Answer Concepts
Problem of Equality vs. Freedom, Problem of Cooperation vs. Competition,
Problem of Bottom-Up vs. Top-Down Viewpoints, Problem of the Middle Class,
Problem of Gradual vs. Radical Revolution, Gramsci’s Cultural Hegemony,
Trotsky’s Continuous Revolution, Foucault/Fanon’s Binary Dichotomies Supporting Power,
Fanon’s Institutionalized/Internalized Racism, bell hooks’ Criticism of Second Wave Feminism
Short Essay Topics
1) Hegel and Marx each argued that history is reaching its final form. Is this true?
2) Saint-Simon argues that technology allows for social revolution, while Marcuse argues that it has made the consumer afraid of social revolution. Do technology and industrialization enable revolution and democracy or hold it back?
3) Saint-Simon argued that society should give to each according to contribution, while Marx & Engels argue that eventually each should receive according to need. Is either possible? Which works best?
4) Chomsky argues that social oppression is monstrous, while Foucault argues that it is unfortunately all-too-human. Who do you support, and what does this mean for social change?
5) Heidegger argues that transparency is authenticity. What does his involvement with the Nazi regime say about his philosophy?
6) Against his friend Sartre, Fanon argues that the black community must maintain its own independent identity. Can cultural identity and universal equality be mutually supportive, and how?
Teen during French Revolution, reason as revolution, Marx inverting theism to materialism, historical process & explanations, dialectic as back & forth, positive-negative-synthesis, dogmatism vs. skepticism, understanding vs. reason, history as Orientals-Greeks-Germans/Europeans, master/slave dialectic, judgment as one-sided acid, oppositions as everything, being is non-being as becoming, freedom is necessity as one, Marx points to final stage of workers vs. owners, business class as latest stage, reason as critique of Rousseau’s romantic will
Socialism
Along with Capitalism and industrialization comes problems, inequality & criticism, equality vs. freedom, social use vs. individual interest, redistribution of wealth, social welfare, planned vs. free economies, most are mixed economies, gradual vs. radical revolution, democratic vs. tyrannical businesses, unions, co-ops, communes, Mazdak the Zoroastrian/Socialist, Saint-Simon’s Socialisme & meritocracy with “thieves” removed from above and below, co-operation vs. competition as productive, hand of greed vs. invisible hand, voting for workers, Marcuse the “father of the new left”, Frankfurt School & Critical Theory, attack on positivism, critique of corporate capitalism, consumerism & marketing, criticism of communism, compared both to fascism, One Dimensional Man, consumer’s fear of revolution, the Establishment, revolutionizing the “obscene”
Communism
Radical socialism & nationalization, capitalism as anarchism, the new French Revolution vs. the capitalists, Saint-Simon’s “each according to contribution” eventually “each according to need”, assumes surplus allows for this, imposing dictatorship evolving toward democracy, Lenin vs. Trotsky’s theory of continuous revolution, problem with failure of reluctant dictatorship, post-Marxists, problem of top-down and bottom-up viewpoints, internationalism, Communist Manifesto, all history is class struggle, problem of the necessary but revolutionary middle class, modern individuality made impossible, abolition of the family & nationality, Lenin & vanguard party dictatorship, Stalin’s socialism in one country, Gramsci & society as more complex than workers vs. owners, hegemony & hegemonic discourse, “counter-revolutionary” as mask of complex problems, Mao & paying attention to farmers vs. industrial city, Zizek and new struggle of first vs. third world
Anarchism
Radical bottom-up vs. previous top-down systems, feasibility of anarchy given technological society, government and power as inherently abusive, problem of central vs. decentralized power (private armies), Proudhon first to call himself an anarchist, “property is theft”, “anarchy is order”, anarchy symbol, free association of co-ops & communes, no need for nationalization, possession through mutual & voluntary use, Bakunin & break with Marx, the propaganda of the deed, criticism of communist dictatorship as self-perpetuating like fascism, Spanish Civil War, Franco, fascist & capitalist support, Squatter’s rights, Free Love & Women’s rights, Emma Goldman, Chomsky vs. Foucault, oppression as monstrous vs. all too human, true human nature vs. fluid human nature, Chomsky argues authority must continuously justify its existence, Foucault argues that institutions create binary dichotomies to maintain power, knowledge always serves power, criticism of psychiatry
Fascism
Fasces as bundle of sticks with ax, fascism as industrialization, nationalism & traditionalism, left & right wing elements, religious & anti-religious elements, anti-communism & anti-anarchism triangle, Mussolini in Italy, hoped for African empire, great depression and rising tides of communism, paramilitary resistance protecting family, religion & nationalism, vicious pacification of Africa, blaming own people in failure, Hitler in Germany, scientific legitimacy, Western ideal origins of Athens, Sparta & Rome, Heidegger and use of Nietzsche & existentialism hoping for radical new beginning, anti-technology & anti-modernity, romantic phenomenology vs. Husserl’s psychological phenomenology, intentionality, thrownness, technology boxing up the miraculous, with and against the “them” as an “I”, every revealing is a concealing, time as horizon of being, all thought as denial of death & meaninglessness, freedom is transparency of becoming, Heidegger as Nazi Trotsky, Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch, antisemetic view of both capitalism & communism, social-Darwinism even in local Nazi leadership, Reichstag Fire & emergency powers, “job creation” through anti-Semitism, admiration of UK & US
Postcolonialism
Islam as last contiguous empire & height of civilization, Europe gets wealth & gains colonial empire, today we live in post-colonial empire, Fanon as existentialist & Marxist, fighting for French & bleaching of his unit, colonialism destructive to oppressed body & mind, debate with Sartre over independence of the black community, gaze of the other as marginalization, interiorized racism, racism as key to class struggle, getting beyond Manichean categorical dualisms of black/white & irrational/rational, some revolutions (US) violence is justified, Said argues Orientalism is how “West” views the Other/Orient, argues against the “Clash of Civilizations”
Feminism
Myths vs. Realities of gender difference, seeking power through isolation vs. socialization, women as conscious of being watched, potential objectification, early civilization & growth of size as source of sexism, cultures offer women’s rights yet maintain oppression, 66% of work & 1% of property, first wave & Susan B. Anthony voting rights & consensual sex, second wave 60s anti-establishment, Simon de Beauvoir argues women Hegelian Other w/ master/slave dialectic, Friedan argues women need individual identity beyond the home, third wave criticisms, bell hooks criticism of white upper/middle class college movement marginalizing racism & poverty, Judith Butler argues gender is a social construct, gender as performance, issue of display of women’s sexuality as oppressive or liberating
Short Answer Concepts
Problem of Equality vs. Freedom, Problem of Cooperation vs. Competition,
Problem of Bottom-Up vs. Top-Down Viewpoints, Problem of the Middle Class,
Problem of Gradual vs. Radical Revolution, Gramsci’s Cultural Hegemony,
Trotsky’s Continuous Revolution, Foucault/Fanon’s Binary Dichotomies Supporting Power,
Fanon’s Institutionalized/Internalized Racism, bell hooks’ Criticism of Second Wave Feminism
Short Essay Topics
1) Hegel and Marx each argued that history is reaching its final form. Is this true?
2) Saint-Simon argues that technology allows for social revolution, while Marcuse argues that it has made the consumer afraid of social revolution. Do technology and industrialization enable revolution and democracy or hold it back?
3) Saint-Simon argued that society should give to each according to contribution, while Marx & Engels argue that eventually each should receive according to need. Is either possible? Which works best?
4) Chomsky argues that social oppression is monstrous, while Foucault argues that it is unfortunately all-too-human. Who do you support, and what does this mean for social change?
5) Heidegger argues that transparency is authenticity. What does his involvement with the Nazi regime say about his philosophy?
6) Against his friend Sartre, Fanon argues that the black community must maintain its own independent identity. Can cultural identity and universal equality be mutually supportive, and how?
Sunday, May 6, 2012
Ethics: Review for the Final Exam
The
Final Exam will consist of 20 Multiple Choice questions (2 points each)
and 2 Short Essays (30 points each) at least two pages each in length.
The Multiple Choice questions will cover points in the lectures and
readings. The Short Essays are personal responses to and comparisons of
the concepts that demonstrate your own thinking. The essay topics are
listed at the end of this review. If you wish to write another sort of
essay, please tell me and I will likely let you write it.
Theft, Possession & Zinn
We can see that the ape can come to possess as ‘mine not yours’, and come to forget this possessing (‘neither mine nor yours’). Today, we use Chinese style paper bank notes, backed by the government, just like in China after 500 CE or so. The culture which includes the device of money has advantages over the culture of mere barter. Money as a device is very simple, simple the ways that numbers are simple for much the same purpose. Money is good (and bad) because it is very easy to gather/amass and divide/distribute, much more than any other object or substance. There are, however, two great disadvantages to the culture of money use: First, theft, like trade, becomes easier! Second, the desire for money becomes quite intense.
The Ethical question we must ask is: Is theft ever justified? We can use our Ethical concepts we have studied to give various answers to this question. Kant, of course, would say NEVER. According to the concept of virtue, theft is fully justified as long as the individual is virtuous or becomes virtuous through the act of theft. In a very similar way, Utilitarians and Consequentialists would argue that theft is justified if in the long term it results in good and justice, much happiness and prevention of harm (like Robin Hood). The concept of balance draws our attention not only to the duality of stealing and not stealing but also to the duality of possessing and forgetting about possession, grasping and letting go. If one stores up wealth, one brings theft to one’s doorstep. Is it in one’s self interest to steal from everyone? Not if everyone has large sticks and helmets haven’t been invented yet. We watched the first half of the corporation in class, showing us that the corporation is an “externalizing machine” which puts the stock price before all else, and that this device has allowed America to become very rich but at great social costs.
Lies, Propaganda & Chomsky
Individuals and groups manipulate the truth to serve their own ends, in a conscious/unconscious way that often resembles denial. We focused on the historical background of American propaganda and censorship. Recalling the story of the baboon giving the false leopard call, apes have been seen lying to their fellow apes. The Assyrians were masters of propaganda, using the OLD propaganda model: “This is the king/state, we know best”. We have failed to have a real discussion about censorship and bias in America. This means ‘THEY’ are simply biased and put forth propaganda, and WE would never do something like that. This is not only the basic human frame as before, but Americans and British got set in this in a particular way through WWI and II. In WWI, Propaganda is something the Germans do, not the Belgians, British or Americans. In WWII, the Germans and Japanese do propaganda, and in the cold war the Russians. The British and Americans, however, would never do ‘propaganda’ by name, as they are the champions of liberty, democracy and freedom from tyranny (even as Britain and then America plundered and sought empire in the same way that the Germans, Russians did). We do ‘education’, ‘information’, ‘public relations’, ‘human relations’, and in time of war we may engage in psychological warfare, but we never do ‘propaganda’. Bernays invented the committee of Doctors who tell you to eat eggs and bacon for a ‘hearty’ breakfast, saying old way is ‘Eat Bacon!’, new way: ‘Drs say, ‘Eat bacon’’. This is ‘free expert’ style of British/American propaganda.
Post WWII, the French and Russians had largely convinced everyone that America has no culture, only cheap commercialism, and America talks a lot about Freedom, but look at how they treat black people. The US wanted to fight the ‘French Flu’ and push European intellectuals away from Marxism as liberation towards free market capitalism as liberation. Both US and Soviets fought over who liberates and who oppresses. In 1956, the ‘Melting Pot’ became a slogan for the US. In films, token black people began appearing well before the civil rights movement. Documents of agents who worked with studios on scripts say, ‘took out a drunk, added a black person’.
Violence, War & Grossman
Violence, like sex, was a part of life since childhood in the beginning. As Grossman says, in Victorian England sex became something shameful and best kept out of sight, and similarly with the butcher and refrigeration violence became something out of sight. Consider David Foster Wallace’s FX Porn article about T2 and Jurassic park. Sex and killing are specialized spectacles, quite unrealistic and pieced together with bad dialogue. We all have violent thoughts, but very few humans will be violent, no matter what culture or ethnicity or gender. Normally, there is a safety catch in the human mind that prevents us from being violent. However, in certain situations with particular factors, most everyone becomes capable of violence. 2% of the population have an aggressive personality, potentially psychosis (these individuals are often, Grossman says, drafted into the hardcore units, the marine spearhead squads dropped behind enemy lines or the frontal advance groups). American media is quite gifted with the myth of the easy kill, for both the hero and villain. What this myth conceals: there are far greater chance of being a psychological casualty of conflict then there are of being killed or wounded. What factors increase or decrease the justification and the enabling of violence? Absolution by Distance, Absolution by Authority, and Group Absolution. Both soldiers and gang members find themselves having nightmares where those who have been killed come back to haunt them and ask why. It is as if killing a being does not kill the presence, that the negated presence comes back. This is likely why people believed in evil ghosts for so long across all cultures. Stages of Killing: Combat High, Remorse, Rationalization (wrestling with the contradiction of positive/negative, self/other).
Environment, Consumption & Carson
We have done so well as a species that we have become quite unbalanced with nature. While many cultures have spoken of being in balance (Egyptian Wisdom for instance), it was only with the growth of mechanization and technology that Islamic scholars first wrote consciously of the impact that humans had systematically on the environment. As we see in The Corporation, in the 1940s and 1950s, just as US became the wealthiest nation, petroleum products were used to make huge varieties of products. Wood and metal gave way to plastic. What has happened: we are in a culture that can give us immediate things according to our intentions, but such that we ignore the long and complicated process of nature. Nature can sift things out, but not as fast as we can synthesize just what we want while externalizing the unneeded and then ignoring it until it snowballs up into our face. Cancer rates, birth defect rates, and other problems are evidence of the environmental impact. Wilderness: Does one consider best use in the long term to be using everything, or do we leave things unused for long term. Sustainability: Nature and economy must both be preserved, or both will collapse. Environmental Justice: Who gets benefits and who gets harm of processes in the culture? One fifth of world consumes four fifths of resources.
Class, Power & Karp
Class is a very important issue for Americans today. From propaganda week, we know that A, we are systematically taught that ‘there is no class in America because it is a freedom place’, and B, ‘class is something that OTHER cultures are brutal with, but we are free of that problem’. This was what we said about the Soviets, and they said about us. There are two types of class status, ascribed (born with it) and achieved (gained in time). The common indicators of ascribed class status are ethnicity (race and tribe), family (royal lineage), gender (male, female or other), and culture (religion, language). The common indicators of achieved class status are position (job or role in society), wealth (property which includes money), ability (skills, education and experience), and fame (honor, success, celebrity). The two positions are privileged on the top and marginalized on the bottom. On top in society are those who have enough that if they hold on to it they do not need to work. On the bottom are those who have so little that if they do not work then they have nothing at all. In the middle are those who are using all sorts of strategies to get employed and gain property. In America today, in spite of ditching the British noble heraldry, the top 1% are ‘super-rich’ upper class (who earn over $350,000 a year or get that in returns on investments), the next 5% are ‘rich’ upper class (over $100,000 a year), the 44% are middle class (over $40,000), and the remaining 50% are ‘working-class’ and lower class (under $40,000). This means that the lowest upper class members earn just under 9 times what the lowest middle class members earn.
In the first short article I gave you from the Race, Class & Gender reader, Class & Inequality, Sklar puts together interesting statistics on wealth and poverty in America. All gains in household income since 1975 essentially went to the top 20%. Since 2000, the US has gained 76 billionaires (putting the number at 374) and 5 million additional people below the poverty line (to make 37 million, the population of the East Coast). Our infant mortality rates, especially for inner city impoverished people, rival rates in Malaysia and India.
In the second article, Media Magic, Mantsios argues that the media (TV and movies in particular) make class disappear from America. Poverty is increasing at twice the population growth rate, yet less than 1 in 500 articles in the NY Times is on poverty (and ask Chomsky, they set the nations news). Welfare cheats and aggressive pan handlers take up a sizable portion of the space given to the impoverished in print.
In Indispensable Enemies Karp starts by noting that in American politics there is always a powerful ‘other’ to blame for not getting what one’s group wants, but no group seems to be able to get what it wants for itself. Karp argues that the basic assumption that parties are trying to win elections needs to be questioned. We need to rather ask what the two parties have done in the last 150 years (the time in which America has risen to be the wealthiest nation). When you look at it this way, we see that the two parties have controlled 50% of the country split down the middle since the civil war polarized the country. A landslide in American elections is 60-40, and neither party seems to push lasting popular legislation. Most states stay blue or red for decades, if they ever change at all. This means that, through all of the changes that Zinn, Grossman, Chomsky, Carson and the Corporation have been talking about, the two political parties have remained exactly the same. Karp argues that, when we realize that the two parties are trying to maintain control over their 50%, we can see many things. This is the thesis of the book. We can see that anyone too left or right of center is sabotaged by the party. A party would rather see the other side win a district for a while then see someone who is intent on pushing forward real change. You must prove your loyalty and centrality to be big and get elected. If you show any independence or disloyalty the party will kill your campaign with the help of the other party and wait for the next election, concentrating on keeping a tight and simple lock on the 50%, not on pushing forward a program. Thus Karp charges that we have one party, with two wings, not two parties at all. The upper class pay and play for both sides and further the interests of American power (which is held in particular American hands). The common people are set against each other and told that because the other side is as free as they are nothing can get done. In other words, it is all a game of good cop, bad cop, similar also to Operation Margerine.
Sexism, Gender & De Beauvoir
Distinction of overt vs. covert prejudice: explicit vs. hidden.
The myth is that women are docile, non-violent, unconfident, incompetent, and emotional. Women are capable of violence and even rape, though our society does not recognize this yet. Women are not unconfident or emotional compared to men. There are two dynamics of psychology in which women differ from men. First, men tend to seek power through NOT being social, isolating themselves and their opinions, whereas women tend to seek power through BEING social, interacting with others. Second, in sexuality, men like to watch women and women like to be watched, as one author has said, to watch themselves being watched. In apes and the most ancient nomadic and tribal societies, there is evidence that women often had status and leadership positions. As people began to collect into city states, we can see patriarchy increase. When we look at the cultures of the world and their historical development, we can see that all cultures have taken part in a similar oppression of women, but at the same time women have had increasing power in society and new movements have to appeal to women to take off. Women are 51% of the population (technically the MAJORITY of the population), do 66% of the work, get 10% of the income, and worldwide own 1% of the property. Thus, sexism (overt AND covert) is quite alive, in spite of counter claims.
Feminism is the movement in reaction to sexism and prejudice against women. The basic idea is that women should have the same status as men in society, or “women are people too”. The first wave was the women’s suffrage movement of the 1920s in America and Britain. The second wave was the civil rights movement, the late 60s and early 70s which is also called the women’s liberation movement or ‘women’s lib’. Simone De Beauvoir wrote The Second Sex in France in 1953, arguing that women had been marginalized as ‘The OTHER’ by men using Hegel’s idea of the master-slave dialectic. The Feminine Mystique (1963) by Betty Friedan was another big book of the time (much more published in America than Marxist De Beauvoir’s), arguing that women were not feeling fulfilled as homemakers and mothers, and they needed an identity for themselves as individuals beyond the identity of the family. The third wave was after the 80s backlash against the 60s progressive movements that began in the early 90s and continues today. The third wave tried to not only pay attention to black women, Latina women, third world women, but also to break down the idea of women as essentially different from men but equal. The two big issues, which are still being fought out today, are 1) Is gender a subjective construct (in the mind) or social reality (in the world)? And 2) Did feminism accomplish what it set out to achieve, or did it in part hurt its own efforts in telling women that sex makes them oppressed? (anti-pornography feminism vs. ‘pro-sex’ feminism)
Racism, Ethnicity & Hannaford
If you are marginalized and you point out covert racism, you are often accused of overt racism by privileged people. Great evidence against Racism: Piaget’s studies of Child development stages, and African kids using laptops experiment and the surprise that there is no lag time compared to Western kids. Race seems obvious today, a ‘fact’ of biology. There seem to be distinct ethnic groups that are easily divisible into recognizable races. Hannaford argues that in fact racism rose with science and modernity in the rise of Europe since the 1600s. There was, of course, always ethnocentrism (my tribe is familiar, your tribe over the hill is scary) that correspond to self-centered thinking on an individual level, but ‘black’ and ‘white’ people did not always exist. ‘Race’ comes into European languages by the 1500s. In English, ‘ras’ meant a course or current. The word did not mean a fully separate category of people until after 1700, as Europeans got wealthy beyond everyone and very successful with sciences (phrenology in India example). Today, however, research on genetics shows that there is no definable or divisible races that can be fully separated. Rather, there is a tangle of genetic material that is mostly common to a people.
ESSAY TOPICS:
The short essays are personal responses to and comparisons of the concepts that demonstrate your own thinking. Make sure to write clearly, stick to the subject and use examples from the lectures and readings or your own to support your point. For each of the two essays, write a two page reflection on a topic of your choice. If you prefer, you can select a topic from the options below, but you are also welcome to write on any matter that interests you as long as you focus on the issue, argue well and use good examples. When you are done, it is a good idea to go back over your answer to make sure you have answered the question.
Option 1: What is the ethical conception you think best prevents theft, and why?
Option 2: Must all societies lie? Is the American and British style of propaganda better or worse than the older methods of the past?
Option 3: Are Grossman’s findings on human violence comforting or disturbing? Why?
Option 4: How is environmental sustainability possible in the shadow of the corporation?
Option 5: Karp argues that American two party politics is a deceptive device.
Does he make a good case?
Option 6: Is covert prejudice more or less difficult to fight than overt prejudice?
Option 7: Against some ‘second wave’ feminists, third wave ‘pro-sex’ feminists say that women can be sexy without helping to oppress themselves. What is your thinking?
Option 8: Is racism a permanent condition, or can it be dismantled? How?
Theft, Possession & Zinn
We can see that the ape can come to possess as ‘mine not yours’, and come to forget this possessing (‘neither mine nor yours’). Today, we use Chinese style paper bank notes, backed by the government, just like in China after 500 CE or so. The culture which includes the device of money has advantages over the culture of mere barter. Money as a device is very simple, simple the ways that numbers are simple for much the same purpose. Money is good (and bad) because it is very easy to gather/amass and divide/distribute, much more than any other object or substance. There are, however, two great disadvantages to the culture of money use: First, theft, like trade, becomes easier! Second, the desire for money becomes quite intense.
The Ethical question we must ask is: Is theft ever justified? We can use our Ethical concepts we have studied to give various answers to this question. Kant, of course, would say NEVER. According to the concept of virtue, theft is fully justified as long as the individual is virtuous or becomes virtuous through the act of theft. In a very similar way, Utilitarians and Consequentialists would argue that theft is justified if in the long term it results in good and justice, much happiness and prevention of harm (like Robin Hood). The concept of balance draws our attention not only to the duality of stealing and not stealing but also to the duality of possessing and forgetting about possession, grasping and letting go. If one stores up wealth, one brings theft to one’s doorstep. Is it in one’s self interest to steal from everyone? Not if everyone has large sticks and helmets haven’t been invented yet. We watched the first half of the corporation in class, showing us that the corporation is an “externalizing machine” which puts the stock price before all else, and that this device has allowed America to become very rich but at great social costs.
Lies, Propaganda & Chomsky
Individuals and groups manipulate the truth to serve their own ends, in a conscious/unconscious way that often resembles denial. We focused on the historical background of American propaganda and censorship. Recalling the story of the baboon giving the false leopard call, apes have been seen lying to their fellow apes. The Assyrians were masters of propaganda, using the OLD propaganda model: “This is the king/state, we know best”. We have failed to have a real discussion about censorship and bias in America. This means ‘THEY’ are simply biased and put forth propaganda, and WE would never do something like that. This is not only the basic human frame as before, but Americans and British got set in this in a particular way through WWI and II. In WWI, Propaganda is something the Germans do, not the Belgians, British or Americans. In WWII, the Germans and Japanese do propaganda, and in the cold war the Russians. The British and Americans, however, would never do ‘propaganda’ by name, as they are the champions of liberty, democracy and freedom from tyranny (even as Britain and then America plundered and sought empire in the same way that the Germans, Russians did). We do ‘education’, ‘information’, ‘public relations’, ‘human relations’, and in time of war we may engage in psychological warfare, but we never do ‘propaganda’. Bernays invented the committee of Doctors who tell you to eat eggs and bacon for a ‘hearty’ breakfast, saying old way is ‘Eat Bacon!’, new way: ‘Drs say, ‘Eat bacon’’. This is ‘free expert’ style of British/American propaganda.
Post WWII, the French and Russians had largely convinced everyone that America has no culture, only cheap commercialism, and America talks a lot about Freedom, but look at how they treat black people. The US wanted to fight the ‘French Flu’ and push European intellectuals away from Marxism as liberation towards free market capitalism as liberation. Both US and Soviets fought over who liberates and who oppresses. In 1956, the ‘Melting Pot’ became a slogan for the US. In films, token black people began appearing well before the civil rights movement. Documents of agents who worked with studios on scripts say, ‘took out a drunk, added a black person’.
Violence, War & Grossman
Violence, like sex, was a part of life since childhood in the beginning. As Grossman says, in Victorian England sex became something shameful and best kept out of sight, and similarly with the butcher and refrigeration violence became something out of sight. Consider David Foster Wallace’s FX Porn article about T2 and Jurassic park. Sex and killing are specialized spectacles, quite unrealistic and pieced together with bad dialogue. We all have violent thoughts, but very few humans will be violent, no matter what culture or ethnicity or gender. Normally, there is a safety catch in the human mind that prevents us from being violent. However, in certain situations with particular factors, most everyone becomes capable of violence. 2% of the population have an aggressive personality, potentially psychosis (these individuals are often, Grossman says, drafted into the hardcore units, the marine spearhead squads dropped behind enemy lines or the frontal advance groups). American media is quite gifted with the myth of the easy kill, for both the hero and villain. What this myth conceals: there are far greater chance of being a psychological casualty of conflict then there are of being killed or wounded. What factors increase or decrease the justification and the enabling of violence? Absolution by Distance, Absolution by Authority, and Group Absolution. Both soldiers and gang members find themselves having nightmares where those who have been killed come back to haunt them and ask why. It is as if killing a being does not kill the presence, that the negated presence comes back. This is likely why people believed in evil ghosts for so long across all cultures. Stages of Killing: Combat High, Remorse, Rationalization (wrestling with the contradiction of positive/negative, self/other).
Environment, Consumption & Carson
We have done so well as a species that we have become quite unbalanced with nature. While many cultures have spoken of being in balance (Egyptian Wisdom for instance), it was only with the growth of mechanization and technology that Islamic scholars first wrote consciously of the impact that humans had systematically on the environment. As we see in The Corporation, in the 1940s and 1950s, just as US became the wealthiest nation, petroleum products were used to make huge varieties of products. Wood and metal gave way to plastic. What has happened: we are in a culture that can give us immediate things according to our intentions, but such that we ignore the long and complicated process of nature. Nature can sift things out, but not as fast as we can synthesize just what we want while externalizing the unneeded and then ignoring it until it snowballs up into our face. Cancer rates, birth defect rates, and other problems are evidence of the environmental impact. Wilderness: Does one consider best use in the long term to be using everything, or do we leave things unused for long term. Sustainability: Nature and economy must both be preserved, or both will collapse. Environmental Justice: Who gets benefits and who gets harm of processes in the culture? One fifth of world consumes four fifths of resources.
Class, Power & Karp
Class is a very important issue for Americans today. From propaganda week, we know that A, we are systematically taught that ‘there is no class in America because it is a freedom place’, and B, ‘class is something that OTHER cultures are brutal with, but we are free of that problem’. This was what we said about the Soviets, and they said about us. There are two types of class status, ascribed (born with it) and achieved (gained in time). The common indicators of ascribed class status are ethnicity (race and tribe), family (royal lineage), gender (male, female or other), and culture (religion, language). The common indicators of achieved class status are position (job or role in society), wealth (property which includes money), ability (skills, education and experience), and fame (honor, success, celebrity). The two positions are privileged on the top and marginalized on the bottom. On top in society are those who have enough that if they hold on to it they do not need to work. On the bottom are those who have so little that if they do not work then they have nothing at all. In the middle are those who are using all sorts of strategies to get employed and gain property. In America today, in spite of ditching the British noble heraldry, the top 1% are ‘super-rich’ upper class (who earn over $350,000 a year or get that in returns on investments), the next 5% are ‘rich’ upper class (over $100,000 a year), the 44% are middle class (over $40,000), and the remaining 50% are ‘working-class’ and lower class (under $40,000). This means that the lowest upper class members earn just under 9 times what the lowest middle class members earn.
In the first short article I gave you from the Race, Class & Gender reader, Class & Inequality, Sklar puts together interesting statistics on wealth and poverty in America. All gains in household income since 1975 essentially went to the top 20%. Since 2000, the US has gained 76 billionaires (putting the number at 374) and 5 million additional people below the poverty line (to make 37 million, the population of the East Coast). Our infant mortality rates, especially for inner city impoverished people, rival rates in Malaysia and India.
In the second article, Media Magic, Mantsios argues that the media (TV and movies in particular) make class disappear from America. Poverty is increasing at twice the population growth rate, yet less than 1 in 500 articles in the NY Times is on poverty (and ask Chomsky, they set the nations news). Welfare cheats and aggressive pan handlers take up a sizable portion of the space given to the impoverished in print.
In Indispensable Enemies Karp starts by noting that in American politics there is always a powerful ‘other’ to blame for not getting what one’s group wants, but no group seems to be able to get what it wants for itself. Karp argues that the basic assumption that parties are trying to win elections needs to be questioned. We need to rather ask what the two parties have done in the last 150 years (the time in which America has risen to be the wealthiest nation). When you look at it this way, we see that the two parties have controlled 50% of the country split down the middle since the civil war polarized the country. A landslide in American elections is 60-40, and neither party seems to push lasting popular legislation. Most states stay blue or red for decades, if they ever change at all. This means that, through all of the changes that Zinn, Grossman, Chomsky, Carson and the Corporation have been talking about, the two political parties have remained exactly the same. Karp argues that, when we realize that the two parties are trying to maintain control over their 50%, we can see many things. This is the thesis of the book. We can see that anyone too left or right of center is sabotaged by the party. A party would rather see the other side win a district for a while then see someone who is intent on pushing forward real change. You must prove your loyalty and centrality to be big and get elected. If you show any independence or disloyalty the party will kill your campaign with the help of the other party and wait for the next election, concentrating on keeping a tight and simple lock on the 50%, not on pushing forward a program. Thus Karp charges that we have one party, with two wings, not two parties at all. The upper class pay and play for both sides and further the interests of American power (which is held in particular American hands). The common people are set against each other and told that because the other side is as free as they are nothing can get done. In other words, it is all a game of good cop, bad cop, similar also to Operation Margerine.
Sexism, Gender & De Beauvoir
Distinction of overt vs. covert prejudice: explicit vs. hidden.
The myth is that women are docile, non-violent, unconfident, incompetent, and emotional. Women are capable of violence and even rape, though our society does not recognize this yet. Women are not unconfident or emotional compared to men. There are two dynamics of psychology in which women differ from men. First, men tend to seek power through NOT being social, isolating themselves and their opinions, whereas women tend to seek power through BEING social, interacting with others. Second, in sexuality, men like to watch women and women like to be watched, as one author has said, to watch themselves being watched. In apes and the most ancient nomadic and tribal societies, there is evidence that women often had status and leadership positions. As people began to collect into city states, we can see patriarchy increase. When we look at the cultures of the world and their historical development, we can see that all cultures have taken part in a similar oppression of women, but at the same time women have had increasing power in society and new movements have to appeal to women to take off. Women are 51% of the population (technically the MAJORITY of the population), do 66% of the work, get 10% of the income, and worldwide own 1% of the property. Thus, sexism (overt AND covert) is quite alive, in spite of counter claims.
Feminism is the movement in reaction to sexism and prejudice against women. The basic idea is that women should have the same status as men in society, or “women are people too”. The first wave was the women’s suffrage movement of the 1920s in America and Britain. The second wave was the civil rights movement, the late 60s and early 70s which is also called the women’s liberation movement or ‘women’s lib’. Simone De Beauvoir wrote The Second Sex in France in 1953, arguing that women had been marginalized as ‘The OTHER’ by men using Hegel’s idea of the master-slave dialectic. The Feminine Mystique (1963) by Betty Friedan was another big book of the time (much more published in America than Marxist De Beauvoir’s), arguing that women were not feeling fulfilled as homemakers and mothers, and they needed an identity for themselves as individuals beyond the identity of the family. The third wave was after the 80s backlash against the 60s progressive movements that began in the early 90s and continues today. The third wave tried to not only pay attention to black women, Latina women, third world women, but also to break down the idea of women as essentially different from men but equal. The two big issues, which are still being fought out today, are 1) Is gender a subjective construct (in the mind) or social reality (in the world)? And 2) Did feminism accomplish what it set out to achieve, or did it in part hurt its own efforts in telling women that sex makes them oppressed? (anti-pornography feminism vs. ‘pro-sex’ feminism)
Racism, Ethnicity & Hannaford
If you are marginalized and you point out covert racism, you are often accused of overt racism by privileged people. Great evidence against Racism: Piaget’s studies of Child development stages, and African kids using laptops experiment and the surprise that there is no lag time compared to Western kids. Race seems obvious today, a ‘fact’ of biology. There seem to be distinct ethnic groups that are easily divisible into recognizable races. Hannaford argues that in fact racism rose with science and modernity in the rise of Europe since the 1600s. There was, of course, always ethnocentrism (my tribe is familiar, your tribe over the hill is scary) that correspond to self-centered thinking on an individual level, but ‘black’ and ‘white’ people did not always exist. ‘Race’ comes into European languages by the 1500s. In English, ‘ras’ meant a course or current. The word did not mean a fully separate category of people until after 1700, as Europeans got wealthy beyond everyone and very successful with sciences (phrenology in India example). Today, however, research on genetics shows that there is no definable or divisible races that can be fully separated. Rather, there is a tangle of genetic material that is mostly common to a people.
ESSAY TOPICS:
The short essays are personal responses to and comparisons of the concepts that demonstrate your own thinking. Make sure to write clearly, stick to the subject and use examples from the lectures and readings or your own to support your point. For each of the two essays, write a two page reflection on a topic of your choice. If you prefer, you can select a topic from the options below, but you are also welcome to write on any matter that interests you as long as you focus on the issue, argue well and use good examples. When you are done, it is a good idea to go back over your answer to make sure you have answered the question.
Option 1: What is the ethical conception you think best prevents theft, and why?
Option 2: Must all societies lie? Is the American and British style of propaganda better or worse than the older methods of the past?
Option 3: Are Grossman’s findings on human violence comforting or disturbing? Why?
Option 4: How is environmental sustainability possible in the shadow of the corporation?
Option 5: Karp argues that American two party politics is a deceptive device.
Does he make a good case?
Option 6: Is covert prejudice more or less difficult to fight than overt prejudice?
Option 7: Against some ‘second wave’ feminists, third wave ‘pro-sex’ feminists say that women can be sexy without helping to oppress themselves. What is your thinking?
Option 8: Is racism a permanent condition, or can it be dismantled? How?
Intro Philosophy: Review for the Final Exam
The
Final Exam will cover the material from the second half of the course,
including Islam, Europe, Descartes, Hume, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger,
Sartre, Foucault and Wittgenstein. You may use material from Lewis
Carroll, Humor or Art for your short answers, but they will not be on
the test. The test will be multiple choice questions (2 points each),
and four half page short answer questions explaining a key concept we
covered, connecting it to other class material and outside examples
(life experience, nonfiction or fiction all acceptable).
Islam: Rise of Islam, systems of scholarship, technology, cryptanalysis (pulling out the essential factors), Avicenna’s Floating Man thought experiment (and Descartes’ Demon)
Descartes: Deceiving demon, proof of self-consciousness, trustworthy world and rational facts (2 + 3 = 5), dualism of mind and body, animals as machines
Hume: 2 types of perceptions, impressions & ideas, 2nd always come from 1st, billiard balls and causation as an idea, prejudice, assumption, association, events consistent with belief
Hegel: Historical explanation & dialectic (positive, negative, synthesis as the next positive), three stages of history, master-slave dialectic, dogmatism vs. skepticism in the mind and in history, being & non-being as becoming
Nietzsche: German pessimism, turn from reason to will, Dionysian vs. Apollonian, opposites work together, truth with false, reason with emotion, truth as seduction, falsehood necessary to life and creation, language, grammar and logic as deceptive, creative individuality, stand between morality and nihilism, Zarathustra as first dualist and beyond dualism
Heidegger, Sartre & Foucault: Existentialism, (H) time as horizon of being/meaning, authenticity as accepting becoming, closed understanding and death, modernity & the ready-at-hand, (S) waiter in the cafe, criticism of racism, “Hell is other people”, authentic art & literature, (F) institutions & power/knowledge, privileged & marginalised terms, debate with Chomsky
Wittgenstein: Language games & forms of life, logic in the world, not within, against reduction to a single factor (psychoanalysis and the oven), material metaphors for the mental (toolbox, brake lever, train cabin, sign post), ‘one-thread’ is a chord of many, meanings as everyday use, child at the blackboard, game of catch in a field
Concepts for Short answers include: Descartes’ deceiving Demon, Hume’s billiard table, Hegel’s dialectical stages, Hegel’s master/slave dialectic, Nietzsche’s individual stand, Nietzsche’s Dionysian vs. Apollonian, Nietzsche’s truth as seduction, Heidegger’s authenticity, Sartre’s cafe waiter, Sartre’s “Hell is other people, Foucault’s power/knowledge, Foucault’s debate with Chomsky, Wittgenstein’s oven, Wittgenstein’s blackboard, Wittgenstein’s chord of threads
Islam: Rise of Islam, systems of scholarship, technology, cryptanalysis (pulling out the essential factors), Avicenna’s Floating Man thought experiment (and Descartes’ Demon)
Descartes: Deceiving demon, proof of self-consciousness, trustworthy world and rational facts (2 + 3 = 5), dualism of mind and body, animals as machines
Hume: 2 types of perceptions, impressions & ideas, 2nd always come from 1st, billiard balls and causation as an idea, prejudice, assumption, association, events consistent with belief
Hegel: Historical explanation & dialectic (positive, negative, synthesis as the next positive), three stages of history, master-slave dialectic, dogmatism vs. skepticism in the mind and in history, being & non-being as becoming
Nietzsche: German pessimism, turn from reason to will, Dionysian vs. Apollonian, opposites work together, truth with false, reason with emotion, truth as seduction, falsehood necessary to life and creation, language, grammar and logic as deceptive, creative individuality, stand between morality and nihilism, Zarathustra as first dualist and beyond dualism
Heidegger, Sartre & Foucault: Existentialism, (H) time as horizon of being/meaning, authenticity as accepting becoming, closed understanding and death, modernity & the ready-at-hand, (S) waiter in the cafe, criticism of racism, “Hell is other people”, authentic art & literature, (F) institutions & power/knowledge, privileged & marginalised terms, debate with Chomsky
Wittgenstein: Language games & forms of life, logic in the world, not within, against reduction to a single factor (psychoanalysis and the oven), material metaphors for the mental (toolbox, brake lever, train cabin, sign post), ‘one-thread’ is a chord of many, meanings as everyday use, child at the blackboard, game of catch in a field
Concepts for Short answers include: Descartes’ deceiving Demon, Hume’s billiard table, Hegel’s dialectical stages, Hegel’s master/slave dialectic, Nietzsche’s individual stand, Nietzsche’s Dionysian vs. Apollonian, Nietzsche’s truth as seduction, Heidegger’s authenticity, Sartre’s cafe waiter, Sartre’s “Hell is other people, Foucault’s power/knowledge, Foucault’s debate with Chomsky, Wittgenstein’s oven, Wittgenstein’s blackboard, Wittgenstein’s chord of threads
Social & Political Philosophy: Post-Colonialism
Colonialism & Postcolonialism
Before Europe rose and dominated the world by the mid-1700s, China and Islam were vast empires that developed technology, science, law and culture. Islam was in fact the last great contiguous land empire, stretching from Spain to China. Ironically, Chinese achievements such as ships, gunpowder and magnetic compasses, developed further by Muslims with algebra employed in such fields as cartography (mapping the world), enabled Europe to sail to Africa and the Americas, and to set up colonial empires that could be controlled in spite of separation by great distances. America became the largest slave colony in all of history, and just as Britain ruled the sea less than a century ago America now rules the skies as well as corporate economics. We can now dominate independent others. Chomsky and Zinn are two critics of American empire and its brutality, as well as the fact that “the West” is still hailed as the authoritative voice, the voice of authority and objectivity above and beyond all other cultures.
Islamic civilization was the world’s great civilization before European civilization rose, so it is the natural place to look for the progression and development of philosophy, technology, and culture before Europe, and it gave Europe an astonishing amount of culture, technology and science. In spite of this, most scholars remain entirely ignorant of Islamic achievements as we rarely look outside of ancient Greek or Roman history to find influences on modern society. There is a greater appreciation of India and China in American scholarship, one that does not acknowledge equality with Europe but which acknowledges some depth. Here are some awesome Ahadith, sayings of the prophet Mohammed, the second source of Islam after the Koran:
Go in quest of knowledge, even unto China.
It is better to teach knowledge one hour in the night than to pray straight through it.
A moment’s reflection is better than 60 years devotion.
The ink of the scholar is holier than the blood of the martyrs.
Law and protections for a diverse population were developed the most in Islam before Europe rose and took over. A woman had the right to sue her husband for divorce, and use algebra to get a percentage of his income. Nestorians and Jews fled to Islamic lands from European persecutions. Islam thus thrived as a multicultural and ‘cosmopolitan’ society. It would be centuries before Europe passed them. 1492 is a good example: it is the year that the Christian Kings of Spain and Portugal retook those lands from Muslims, and the start of the Spanish Inquisition that brutally attacked Jews, Muslims and non-Catholic Christians. Thus there is no reason to celebrate the rationality or freedom of the West over and above the rest of human history.
Postcolonialism is a movement in scholarship that argues the effects of colonialism persist in spite of decolonization. As Fanon and Said argue, the West and the white is privileged and pronounced the true humanity which knows itself while all others are marginalized and denounced as savage and ignorant.
Franz Fanon (1925 – 1961)
Franz Fanon was a philosopher, existentialist, Freudian and Marxist who began his career in psychiatry and became a revolutionary whose writings are one of the central sources of the Postcolonial school of thought along with Edward Said. Fanon’s two most famous works are the Wretched of the Earth (or Damned of the Earth, as an alternative translation of the French title) and Black Skin, White Masks. His writings have been an inspiration to many anti-racist and anti-establishment groups including the Black Panthers.
Fanon was born on the Caribbean island of Martinique, a French colony as it remains today similar to US control of Puerto Rico. Though middle class, he witnessed the racist brutality of the French military toward the African population who were descended from slaves brought by the French to Martinique to work on plantations, as Africans had been brought to Haiti by the French and to Jamaica by the British. Nevertheless, Fanon joined the French military fighting Germany and Italy in Algeria. When Germany was defeated, the white soldiers were featured in parades while the black soldiers were removed from sight. Fanon went to France and studied psychology and medicine, becoming a doctor and psychiatrist. He also studied philosophy, and attended lectures by the Phenomenologist Merleau-Ponty, former student of Husserl like Heidegger, who argued that phenomenology and existentialism must be put in the context of the human body and physical experience like Freud and later Korzybski and Piaget.
In 1952, Fanon wrote Black Skin, White Masks as an expansion of his doctorial thesis, arguing that colonialism had a destructive impact on the physical and mental health of black people. Soon after writing the book he moved to Algeria to practice psychiatry, soon becoming the head of service for a major psychiatric hospital. Fanon began experimenting with therapy that took cultural background of Arabic and black patients and the effects of racism into account. When the Algerian Revolution against the French broke out (well portrayed in the famous French film The Battle of Algiers), he sided with and secretly supported the revolutionaries as a member of the Algerian Liberation Front, providing them with medical treatment and supplies. Fanon encouraged and trained interns and nurses to support the cause, and in 1957 Fanon was deported from Algeria and the hospital dismantled. Fanon became a member of the close existentialist circle of the philosopher Jean Paul Sartre in France who followed the work of Nietzsche and Heidegger, and Sartre would later write the preface and lend his fame to The Damned of the Earth, writing famously that it was not a book for white people but white people should have the courage to read to come to a greater understanding of what is at stake for the oppressed in a world dominated by ignorant and racist first world European people.
In the Damned of the Earth, which was published only in 1961 just before his death, Fanon argued that colonialism had taught black people to interiorize racism such that they considered themselves evil and ugly and become self-destructive and violent against their fellow black people. Fanon, in accord with the existentialism of Heidegger and Sartre, saw racism as a form of lying to oneself to avoid the endless transformation of our existence and the questioning gaze of the other. The black body and mind is denigrated to affirm and celebrate the West, white culture and achievements including colonial control of the globe.
Just as Jews are marginalized as the abnormally mental human subspecies, black people are marginalized as overly physical, and thus sensual, musical, and sexual. While Marx argues that class is the central struggle, the rich oppressing the poor and the poor rising up in revolution, Fanon argues that racial inequality is the key to class oppression. Rather than merely “celebrate diversity”, all the while supporting the idea that Western culture is rational and other cultures are less rational, we must accept not only the rationality of all people but our own individual irrationality as human beings. Thus, we accept the rationality and irrationality of white, black and all people, getting beyond the Manichean categorical dualistic thinking that separates both black from white and rational from irrational.
However, going beyond the simple universal humanism of Sartre, Fanon argued that black culture asserting itself as an “other” to white culture is valuable in the struggle, so we should celebrate black culture as an independent and separate voice while celebrating human equality and unity. Rather than impose capitalism or communism, we should allow economies and nations to develop individually and see what works for each local group. Gramsci argued for the same in the wake of Stalin while imprisoned by Mussolini’s fascist regime. Through continuous bottom-up transformation of society (much like Trotsky had wanted for Soviet Russia), we can understand and enable the individual, the various cultures, and the whole.
Fanon argued that in some cases, such as the American Revolution, the Algerian Revolution, and the Haitian Revolution, violence is an appropriate means for resistance to oppression and brutality. Many Black Panther leaders and supporters, including Marcuse’s student Angela Davis, read this text in Oakland and applied it to their own violent and brutal oppression by the Oakland Police and began carrying shotguns to defend themselves and their community, technically not a crime if the weapon is unloaded and unconcealed. Soon, city ordinances were passed to make this illegal in spite of the fact that no one had considered this a threat before the Black Panthers. Fanon remained a revolutionary for the rest of his life, writing on tactics and support structures to aid African rebels and all third world people attempting to gain independence from European colonial powers. For this, there were numerous assassination attempts made on his life. It is rumored that the CIA prevented Fanon from receiving treatment for leukemia just before his death in America. In 1965, four years after Fanon’s death, Time Magazine wrote that he was “an apostle of violence” and “a prisoner of hate” after the assassination of Malcolm X. Fanon likely would have replied, “You and I both, Time Magazine”.
Edward Said (1935 – 2003)
Edward Said, like Fanon one of the central sources of Postcolonialism, was a Palestinian American and professor at Columbia University who grew up Palestinian Christian during the founding of Israel and the wars that followed. Like Chomsky, he first got tenure in another subject (Comparative Literature) before he became a famous cultural critic and hip within left leaning academia like Marcuse and Foucault. He is most famous for his book Orientalism (1978), which argues that “the Occident” an old term that has been replaced since the 1950s by “the West”, views “the Orient” as other through a Manichean lens much like Fanon describes that Said labels “Orientalism”. European white people, including scholars, identify reason and freedom with the West, as Western virtues, while marginalizing other large cultural groups such as African, Chinese, Indian and Islamic as ignorant, authoritarian, emotional, and unselfconscious. Said is particularly focused on Eurocentric prejudice against Islamic cultures and populations, criticizing the romantic portrayal of the wonders of the East by Renaissance painters as well as modern day scholarship. The East, the Orient, is presented as an alien place full of wondrous splendor but also authoritarian despots and pre-scientific irrationality.
Today, we see much of the same in pundits labeling Muslims as a violent and unreasonable people. Bush saying “They hate our freedom” rather than looking to economic oppression originally structured through colonialism and now alive and well in spite of decolonization is a perfect example. Rather than understand September 11th as a result of colonialism, it is presented as a clash of civilizations between the reasonable and free West and the ignorant and authoritarian Islamic Middle East. Asia and China, as Russia was, is seen in a similar light. Russia was the East, vs. America and Britain as the West openly in the rhetoric. My professor Ken Jowitt, a specialist in Eastern Europe during and after the fall of the Soviet Union, told a full auditorium, his political science classroom, that since the fall of the Soviet Union America needs a new enemy, and that it is either going to be Islamic terrorism or communist China. This was less than a year before September 11th. He had argued this in 1990 in a piece included in his book, New World Disorder: The Leninist Extinction, published in Berkeley. This was 10 years before September 11th, and we are still involved in multiple wars in the Middle East 10 years after.
Especially given this situation today, Said is hip on campuses around the world, his work spawning many followers including the author of the book Said and the Unsaid, a joke only funny to humanities graduate students. The TV show Lost, which names several characters after philosophers and scientists, named its Iraqi character Said, a name which means 'happy' in Arabic.
You can watch Said speak on YouTube. We will be watching these clips in class.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjlRR-qRkcc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boBzrqF4vmo
Before Europe rose and dominated the world by the mid-1700s, China and Islam were vast empires that developed technology, science, law and culture. Islam was in fact the last great contiguous land empire, stretching from Spain to China. Ironically, Chinese achievements such as ships, gunpowder and magnetic compasses, developed further by Muslims with algebra employed in such fields as cartography (mapping the world), enabled Europe to sail to Africa and the Americas, and to set up colonial empires that could be controlled in spite of separation by great distances. America became the largest slave colony in all of history, and just as Britain ruled the sea less than a century ago America now rules the skies as well as corporate economics. We can now dominate independent others. Chomsky and Zinn are two critics of American empire and its brutality, as well as the fact that “the West” is still hailed as the authoritative voice, the voice of authority and objectivity above and beyond all other cultures.
Islamic civilization was the world’s great civilization before European civilization rose, so it is the natural place to look for the progression and development of philosophy, technology, and culture before Europe, and it gave Europe an astonishing amount of culture, technology and science. In spite of this, most scholars remain entirely ignorant of Islamic achievements as we rarely look outside of ancient Greek or Roman history to find influences on modern society. There is a greater appreciation of India and China in American scholarship, one that does not acknowledge equality with Europe but which acknowledges some depth. Here are some awesome Ahadith, sayings of the prophet Mohammed, the second source of Islam after the Koran:
Go in quest of knowledge, even unto China.
It is better to teach knowledge one hour in the night than to pray straight through it.
A moment’s reflection is better than 60 years devotion.
The ink of the scholar is holier than the blood of the martyrs.
Law and protections for a diverse population were developed the most in Islam before Europe rose and took over. A woman had the right to sue her husband for divorce, and use algebra to get a percentage of his income. Nestorians and Jews fled to Islamic lands from European persecutions. Islam thus thrived as a multicultural and ‘cosmopolitan’ society. It would be centuries before Europe passed them. 1492 is a good example: it is the year that the Christian Kings of Spain and Portugal retook those lands from Muslims, and the start of the Spanish Inquisition that brutally attacked Jews, Muslims and non-Catholic Christians. Thus there is no reason to celebrate the rationality or freedom of the West over and above the rest of human history.
Postcolonialism is a movement in scholarship that argues the effects of colonialism persist in spite of decolonization. As Fanon and Said argue, the West and the white is privileged and pronounced the true humanity which knows itself while all others are marginalized and denounced as savage and ignorant.
Franz Fanon (1925 – 1961)
Franz Fanon was a philosopher, existentialist, Freudian and Marxist who began his career in psychiatry and became a revolutionary whose writings are one of the central sources of the Postcolonial school of thought along with Edward Said. Fanon’s two most famous works are the Wretched of the Earth (or Damned of the Earth, as an alternative translation of the French title) and Black Skin, White Masks. His writings have been an inspiration to many anti-racist and anti-establishment groups including the Black Panthers.
Fanon was born on the Caribbean island of Martinique, a French colony as it remains today similar to US control of Puerto Rico. Though middle class, he witnessed the racist brutality of the French military toward the African population who were descended from slaves brought by the French to Martinique to work on plantations, as Africans had been brought to Haiti by the French and to Jamaica by the British. Nevertheless, Fanon joined the French military fighting Germany and Italy in Algeria. When Germany was defeated, the white soldiers were featured in parades while the black soldiers were removed from sight. Fanon went to France and studied psychology and medicine, becoming a doctor and psychiatrist. He also studied philosophy, and attended lectures by the Phenomenologist Merleau-Ponty, former student of Husserl like Heidegger, who argued that phenomenology and existentialism must be put in the context of the human body and physical experience like Freud and later Korzybski and Piaget.
In 1952, Fanon wrote Black Skin, White Masks as an expansion of his doctorial thesis, arguing that colonialism had a destructive impact on the physical and mental health of black people. Soon after writing the book he moved to Algeria to practice psychiatry, soon becoming the head of service for a major psychiatric hospital. Fanon began experimenting with therapy that took cultural background of Arabic and black patients and the effects of racism into account. When the Algerian Revolution against the French broke out (well portrayed in the famous French film The Battle of Algiers), he sided with and secretly supported the revolutionaries as a member of the Algerian Liberation Front, providing them with medical treatment and supplies. Fanon encouraged and trained interns and nurses to support the cause, and in 1957 Fanon was deported from Algeria and the hospital dismantled. Fanon became a member of the close existentialist circle of the philosopher Jean Paul Sartre in France who followed the work of Nietzsche and Heidegger, and Sartre would later write the preface and lend his fame to The Damned of the Earth, writing famously that it was not a book for white people but white people should have the courage to read to come to a greater understanding of what is at stake for the oppressed in a world dominated by ignorant and racist first world European people.
In the Damned of the Earth, which was published only in 1961 just before his death, Fanon argued that colonialism had taught black people to interiorize racism such that they considered themselves evil and ugly and become self-destructive and violent against their fellow black people. Fanon, in accord with the existentialism of Heidegger and Sartre, saw racism as a form of lying to oneself to avoid the endless transformation of our existence and the questioning gaze of the other. The black body and mind is denigrated to affirm and celebrate the West, white culture and achievements including colonial control of the globe.
Just as Jews are marginalized as the abnormally mental human subspecies, black people are marginalized as overly physical, and thus sensual, musical, and sexual. While Marx argues that class is the central struggle, the rich oppressing the poor and the poor rising up in revolution, Fanon argues that racial inequality is the key to class oppression. Rather than merely “celebrate diversity”, all the while supporting the idea that Western culture is rational and other cultures are less rational, we must accept not only the rationality of all people but our own individual irrationality as human beings. Thus, we accept the rationality and irrationality of white, black and all people, getting beyond the Manichean categorical dualistic thinking that separates both black from white and rational from irrational.
However, going beyond the simple universal humanism of Sartre, Fanon argued that black culture asserting itself as an “other” to white culture is valuable in the struggle, so we should celebrate black culture as an independent and separate voice while celebrating human equality and unity. Rather than impose capitalism or communism, we should allow economies and nations to develop individually and see what works for each local group. Gramsci argued for the same in the wake of Stalin while imprisoned by Mussolini’s fascist regime. Through continuous bottom-up transformation of society (much like Trotsky had wanted for Soviet Russia), we can understand and enable the individual, the various cultures, and the whole.
Fanon argued that in some cases, such as the American Revolution, the Algerian Revolution, and the Haitian Revolution, violence is an appropriate means for resistance to oppression and brutality. Many Black Panther leaders and supporters, including Marcuse’s student Angela Davis, read this text in Oakland and applied it to their own violent and brutal oppression by the Oakland Police and began carrying shotguns to defend themselves and their community, technically not a crime if the weapon is unloaded and unconcealed. Soon, city ordinances were passed to make this illegal in spite of the fact that no one had considered this a threat before the Black Panthers. Fanon remained a revolutionary for the rest of his life, writing on tactics and support structures to aid African rebels and all third world people attempting to gain independence from European colonial powers. For this, there were numerous assassination attempts made on his life. It is rumored that the CIA prevented Fanon from receiving treatment for leukemia just before his death in America. In 1965, four years after Fanon’s death, Time Magazine wrote that he was “an apostle of violence” and “a prisoner of hate” after the assassination of Malcolm X. Fanon likely would have replied, “You and I both, Time Magazine”.
Edward Said (1935 – 2003)
Edward Said, like Fanon one of the central sources of Postcolonialism, was a Palestinian American and professor at Columbia University who grew up Palestinian Christian during the founding of Israel and the wars that followed. Like Chomsky, he first got tenure in another subject (Comparative Literature) before he became a famous cultural critic and hip within left leaning academia like Marcuse and Foucault. He is most famous for his book Orientalism (1978), which argues that “the Occident” an old term that has been replaced since the 1950s by “the West”, views “the Orient” as other through a Manichean lens much like Fanon describes that Said labels “Orientalism”. European white people, including scholars, identify reason and freedom with the West, as Western virtues, while marginalizing other large cultural groups such as African, Chinese, Indian and Islamic as ignorant, authoritarian, emotional, and unselfconscious. Said is particularly focused on Eurocentric prejudice against Islamic cultures and populations, criticizing the romantic portrayal of the wonders of the East by Renaissance painters as well as modern day scholarship. The East, the Orient, is presented as an alien place full of wondrous splendor but also authoritarian despots and pre-scientific irrationality.
Today, we see much of the same in pundits labeling Muslims as a violent and unreasonable people. Bush saying “They hate our freedom” rather than looking to economic oppression originally structured through colonialism and now alive and well in spite of decolonization is a perfect example. Rather than understand September 11th as a result of colonialism, it is presented as a clash of civilizations between the reasonable and free West and the ignorant and authoritarian Islamic Middle East. Asia and China, as Russia was, is seen in a similar light. Russia was the East, vs. America and Britain as the West openly in the rhetoric. My professor Ken Jowitt, a specialist in Eastern Europe during and after the fall of the Soviet Union, told a full auditorium, his political science classroom, that since the fall of the Soviet Union America needs a new enemy, and that it is either going to be Islamic terrorism or communist China. This was less than a year before September 11th. He had argued this in 1990 in a piece included in his book, New World Disorder: The Leninist Extinction, published in Berkeley. This was 10 years before September 11th, and we are still involved in multiple wars in the Middle East 10 years after.
Especially given this situation today, Said is hip on campuses around the world, his work spawning many followers including the author of the book Said and the Unsaid, a joke only funny to humanities graduate students. The TV show Lost, which names several characters after philosophers and scientists, named its Iraqi character Said, a name which means 'happy' in Arabic.
You can watch Said speak on YouTube. We will be watching these clips in class.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjlRR-qRkcc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boBzrqF4vmo
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)