The Midterm Exam will consist of 20 multiple choice questions, three short answer questions covering central concepts, and an essay.
Principle, Moral & Law: Kant
Kant is a positivist with regard to principle, morals and laws. Kant believes that reason should rule over desire (like the early cosmology above) and principles that are figured out by reason should always be followed regardless of the consequences (note that the opposite position can be found in the Utilitarian/consequentialist position below). Kant believes that one starts with good will (good in itself without question) and reasoned principles follow, and one should use this good beginning regardless of what consequences follow (though he says this naturally aims at and leads to good consequences even if this is secondary). Kant calls this “the categorical imperative” and “unconditional universal law”. The example of this is the guy with the knife who asks you “Where did your friend go?”, to whom one should not lie regardless of how easy a good end can come from lying. One must “Do one’s Duty” even if one goes down with the ship.
Virtue & Merit: Aristotle
Virtue is like principle in being a good beginning, but it is also a state or end to obtain. Also, virtue can be individual in a way that principle is collective and for the group. The idea is that one gains virtue, merit or “goodness”, and one can then use this ability/capacity to do good. A virtue-ethicist believes that becoming good or virtuous is more important than following principles or simply having good consequences. One should be virtuous even if it means breaking principles or bad results in a particular situation. The upside of this is a virtue centered ethic is not slave to principle or always seeking the best consequences. The downside is that one could believe that oneself or one’s group is “the virtuous” and ignore principles and consequences to the degree that it becomes a problem for oneself or others.
Consequence, Utility & End: Mill
Consequentialism or Utilitarianism argues that one should focus completely on the ends or results to determine if an act or person is good or bad. Specifically, one should try to maximize pleasure/happiness and minimize pain/suffering for everyone, taking a long view (not a short, 15 minute view). Epicurus was an early Greek consequentialist, and he is followed by the Utilitarian school of Bentham and Mill. While Bentham leaned towards the positive side of the ‘pleasure principle’, maximizing happiness, Mill leaned towards the negative, minimizing harm. Mill is the best known, and has had an important impact on modern thought and theory of law.
Mill’s Utilitarianism is opposite yet similar in many ways to Kant. Both see their side as fundamental and the other side as a secondary consequence. Kant says always follow principle and you will likely be happy, and Mill says always try for happiness and you will likely be principled. Both see their own primary focus as good in itself without the possibility of proof or question.
Attacks on Utilitarianism include: Paradox of the bad as good example, Marx’s guess who gets to use who for whose happiness (the rich and elite), Happiness as unobtainable ideal, Environmental challenge to using the world for human purposes.
Balance & The Mean: Egyptian Wisdom & Confucius
Meaning and value work through pairs of opposites (good/evil, open/closed, individual/collective). A reoccurring theme of the world’s wisdom is that seeking the mean or middle between opposites is better than clinging to either side of an opposition. We can see some beautiful examples of this thinking in the Egyptian wisdom and Confucius passages. In the Egyptian wisdom, moderation of eating and drinking, luxury, and balancing one’s own interest with others are the clearest examples. Confucius offers particularly insightful sayings that call for a balance of one’s self with others for the cultivation of self and society.
Self Interest, Self Esteem and Drive: Nietzsche & Rand
Self is very much an end, though like Mill it can be phrased as a principle (focus on the ends).
While early ethics (in accord with ancient cosmology above) focused on the collective good, modern society has taken a turn towards the individual good. These two have always been complimentary, but devices and media have allowed us to be more enabled as individuals than ever before. Nietzsche and Rand both focus on individual achievement as the central end of life, but they are completely different as far as trusting judgment and truth. Nietzsche trusts no truth at all, calling all collectivism “slave morality” and performing his own misogyny as “Philosophy is always the personal confession of the author”. Rand believes her opinions to be objective, and calls her school the “Objectivists”. Rand’s idea of believing in yourself was repackaged as “self esteem” in the 1980s. While it is important to have self esteem, problems can arise when one trusts one’s own judgment and rejects all opposing judgments entirely.
Perspective & Intersubjectivity: Heraclitus & Zhuang Zi
A balance between thinking our views are completely right or wrong, truth or illusion, is the concept of perspective. The “objective” is very much the intersubjective, the similarity and difference of a group of subjective perspectives. Heraclitus and Chuang Tzu are both excellent thinkers to read to get good examples of this sort of thought. Both use perspectives of animals to show that collective human opinion is just that (pigs sleep in mud, birds sleep in trees). The concept of perspective is good for showing us that all views count, but they are also each limited and capable of progress and expansion.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
How to Write a Philosophy Essay
To write a focused paper that argues for a particular point of view, we must pick an issue and take a position on that issue. While we could invent an issue and position out of the blue, if we pick an issue already discussed it is easier to stay focused and relevant to the subject matter.
Let us say that a thinker or school of thought has taken a position on an issue, and we want to argue for or against this position. Let us assume that there are rival thinkers with opposite positions on the issue. Let us call the first position A, and the opposite position B. While A and B can agree on any unlimited number of points, they must disagree on at least one point. To begin an essay, we briefly state the two positions before we take a position ourselves.
Example 1: Kant argues that morality is anchored in good beginnings (intent, morals, duty) Mill argues that morality is anchored in good ends (happiness, utility, consequences). Both Kant and Mill believe one should use rules and act for the good of society, but Kant believes that one should never break rules while Mill believes rules only serve as tools to achieve good consequences.
Example 2: Mencius argues that human nature is essentially good, while Hsun Zi argues that human nature is essentially evil. Both agree that society is necessary for self improvement, but Mencius argues that society is rooted in human nature while Hsun Zi argues that society is corrective to human nature.
Example 3: Hindus argue that the self/mind/soul is eternal, while Buddhists argue that the self/mind/soul is temporary/mortal. Both agree that karma determines rebirth, but Hindus argue that we always retain our particular individual self while Buddhists argue that extinction of the self and identity with the whole can be achieved through effort and practice.
Now that we have stated the issue and the two opposite positions, we can take a position or stand on it ourselves. There are five possible positions to take between positions A and B.
The first position is ‘All A, no B’. This is an ‘all and none’,‘absolute’, ‘categorical’, or ‘black and white’ position.
The second position is ‘Mostly A, but also some B’. This is a ‘some and some not’, relative, ‘grey’ or ‘grey area’ position, yet it still gives dominance to one side versus the other.
The third position is ‘Some A and also some B’. This is a ‘some/some not’, relative and ‘grey area’ position that gives dominance to neither side.
The fourth position is ‘Mostly B and also some A’. It is the second position, but favors B.
The fifth position is ‘All B, no A’. This is the first position, but entirely for B.
If we examine the issue and find ourselves agreeing with position A, we need only consider the first three. We must choose one of the three based on how much we agree or disagree with the opposite position B. In a debate with an answering opponent, we must also judge based on how effectively and in what position our opponent will argue for B.
If we believe that there is no argument or evidence for B, we can argue ‘All A, no B’. The advantage is that this is the most forceful and least conceding position to take. The disadvantage is that any effective argument for any B, even some little B, makes this position seem ignorant and overly generalizing.
Ex: “Mill is entirely correct. Rules, morals and laws exist simply for the good of humanity.”
If we believe that there is some argument or evidence for B, but there is more argument and evidence for A, we can argue ‘Mostly A but also some B’. The advantage is that any argument for B can be incorporated into our argument and the position still maintained. The disadvantage is that we must concede from the start to ‘some B’, which gives the opponent a foothold. We are still putting our money on A, but we are hedging our bets.
Ex: “I side with Mill, but Kant also has a point. While rules, morals and laws exist for the good of humanity, it is also true that they must be upheld in many situations where there will be bad consequences.”
If we believe that there is equal argument and evidence for A and B, we can argue ‘Some A and also some B’. The advantage of being on both sides is that any argument or evidence can be incorporated into our argument. The disadvantage is that this does not forcefully argue for any particular position, and our opponent can argue we are not taking a stand on the issue. The counter to this is we are taking all sides and viewing the issue as a whole.
Ex: “Kant and Mill are two sides of the same coin. We should equally uphold rules, morals and laws while also questioning their effectiveness when we repeatedly fail to achieve good ends.”
To write an effective essay, pick an issue from the material and argue for one side ‘all and none’ (position 1), for one side ‘some and some not’ (position 2) or both sides equally (position 3).
Remember to use examples from the lectures, reading and your life experience, but also remember to focus on developing your own thought and argument rather than taking time and space repeating what has already been argued and written by others.
The goal of the paper is not to simply take a position, but to take a position effectively. If you take positions 1 or 2, demonstrate why your are taking position A over B. If you take position 3, argue why neither A nor B is sufficient without its complimentary opposite.
Let us say that a thinker or school of thought has taken a position on an issue, and we want to argue for or against this position. Let us assume that there are rival thinkers with opposite positions on the issue. Let us call the first position A, and the opposite position B. While A and B can agree on any unlimited number of points, they must disagree on at least one point. To begin an essay, we briefly state the two positions before we take a position ourselves.
Example 1: Kant argues that morality is anchored in good beginnings (intent, morals, duty) Mill argues that morality is anchored in good ends (happiness, utility, consequences). Both Kant and Mill believe one should use rules and act for the good of society, but Kant believes that one should never break rules while Mill believes rules only serve as tools to achieve good consequences.
Example 2: Mencius argues that human nature is essentially good, while Hsun Zi argues that human nature is essentially evil. Both agree that society is necessary for self improvement, but Mencius argues that society is rooted in human nature while Hsun Zi argues that society is corrective to human nature.
Example 3: Hindus argue that the self/mind/soul is eternal, while Buddhists argue that the self/mind/soul is temporary/mortal. Both agree that karma determines rebirth, but Hindus argue that we always retain our particular individual self while Buddhists argue that extinction of the self and identity with the whole can be achieved through effort and practice.
Now that we have stated the issue and the two opposite positions, we can take a position or stand on it ourselves. There are five possible positions to take between positions A and B.
The first position is ‘All A, no B’. This is an ‘all and none’,‘absolute’, ‘categorical’, or ‘black and white’ position.
The second position is ‘Mostly A, but also some B’. This is a ‘some and some not’, relative, ‘grey’ or ‘grey area’ position, yet it still gives dominance to one side versus the other.
The third position is ‘Some A and also some B’. This is a ‘some/some not’, relative and ‘grey area’ position that gives dominance to neither side.
The fourth position is ‘Mostly B and also some A’. It is the second position, but favors B.
The fifth position is ‘All B, no A’. This is the first position, but entirely for B.
If we examine the issue and find ourselves agreeing with position A, we need only consider the first three. We must choose one of the three based on how much we agree or disagree with the opposite position B. In a debate with an answering opponent, we must also judge based on how effectively and in what position our opponent will argue for B.
If we believe that there is no argument or evidence for B, we can argue ‘All A, no B’. The advantage is that this is the most forceful and least conceding position to take. The disadvantage is that any effective argument for any B, even some little B, makes this position seem ignorant and overly generalizing.
Ex: “Mill is entirely correct. Rules, morals and laws exist simply for the good of humanity.”
If we believe that there is some argument or evidence for B, but there is more argument and evidence for A, we can argue ‘Mostly A but also some B’. The advantage is that any argument for B can be incorporated into our argument and the position still maintained. The disadvantage is that we must concede from the start to ‘some B’, which gives the opponent a foothold. We are still putting our money on A, but we are hedging our bets.
Ex: “I side with Mill, but Kant also has a point. While rules, morals and laws exist for the good of humanity, it is also true that they must be upheld in many situations where there will be bad consequences.”
If we believe that there is equal argument and evidence for A and B, we can argue ‘Some A and also some B’. The advantage of being on both sides is that any argument or evidence can be incorporated into our argument. The disadvantage is that this does not forcefully argue for any particular position, and our opponent can argue we are not taking a stand on the issue. The counter to this is we are taking all sides and viewing the issue as a whole.
Ex: “Kant and Mill are two sides of the same coin. We should equally uphold rules, morals and laws while also questioning their effectiveness when we repeatedly fail to achieve good ends.”
To write an effective essay, pick an issue from the material and argue for one side ‘all and none’ (position 1), for one side ‘some and some not’ (position 2) or both sides equally (position 3).
Remember to use examples from the lectures, reading and your life experience, but also remember to focus on developing your own thought and argument rather than taking time and space repeating what has already been argued and written by others.
The goal of the paper is not to simply take a position, but to take a position effectively. If you take positions 1 or 2, demonstrate why your are taking position A over B. If you take position 3, argue why neither A nor B is sufficient without its complimentary opposite.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Ethics: Lectures for Second Week Summer 2011
Lecture on Balance: Egyptian Wisdom & Confucius
In studying balance as an Ethical concept, we will look at Ma’at in the wisdom of ancient Egypt, the doctrine of the middle way in the teachings of the Buddha of India and Aristotle of ancient Greece, and then finish with the Analects of Confucius, one of the great ancient world Ethics texts and a masterwork on the balance of concern for the self and others.
Ma’at and the Wisdom of Ancient Egypt
The idea of balance was identified with the Goddess Ma’at in the early periods of Egyptian history, but just like the sun became the abstract principle of life and the universe Ma’at became the abstract conception of the balance of opposites.
In the Egyptian wisdom quotes, one of my favorite examples of early city-state texts, we can see that the Egyptians were concerned not only with the balance of good and evil that exist in particular desirable things but also in the ethical virtue of the balance of concern for oneself and for others. As many tribes gathered into the earliest city-states and empires, people saw more and more of human behavior and became concerned with balancing excess and lack. People saw that some had much to eat, much money, much power, and others had none. They saw that excess can hurt the individual and society as much as deficiency, power and riches as much as oppression and poverty. In Egypt and many societies that followed, including India, Greece and China, we can see a concern with balance and avoiding both excess and deficiency being praised as wise and ethical.
In the Egyptian texts (as well as Confucius) we can see a heart centered theory of the human being that ties into this concept of balance and wisdom. The heart was thought to be the center of the human being, as ancient people soon learned that the heart is the center of the vessels that branch throughout the body and which are crucial to its health and nourishment. The Egyptians thought that if one was unkind to others it would choke the breath and blood from the heart and hurt one’s physical as well as mental health (remember that in ancient cosmology, physics was identical with psychology and spirituality). Consider that we still wear the wedding ring on the finger next to the pinky, which has a large vein in it and was thought to control love and lust by the ancient Egyptians (the Greeks and Romans picked up much medicine and physiology from the Egyptians, and we keep this custom today). The ancient Israelites, in contrast, had their wives wear a ring on the index finger to keep her from casting spells while pointing.
In the Egyptian wisdom literature, the “heart-guided-individual” (very similar to the language and theories of Confucius) put wisdom over desire, mind over the body, and thus had self-control and the full powers and potential of the human individual. This was seen as putting oneself in-line with the cosmos, as Being, the one eternal way, is the source and guide of the many individual mortal beings.
Read the ancient Egyptian wisdom quotes with this in mind (particularly p. 7, 10, 17, 20, 21, 22, 30, 31, 32, 34, 35, 36, 44, and 46).
The Buddha and The Middle Way
The Buddha (550 BCE), the founder of one of the largest systems of thought in history, taught moderation between extremes as a fundamental doctrine. Known as “The Middle Way” in both Buddhism and Confucianism, this teaching is quite similar to the ancient Egyptian conception of Ma’at. According to the story of the Buddha’s life he tried extreme practices in the jungle to rid himself of attachment and desire and gain unity of mind and enlightenment as many were doing in his time and still do today, but he found that extreme self denial brought self hatred. Moderation became a core part of the Buddha’s later enlightenment and teaching. Rather than try to rid the self of selfhood or desire, release is found in the moderation between seeking and denying, neither running toward nor away from the self or desirable things. Thus, Buddhist conceptions of ethics often center of moderation between extremes, neither going completely without desirable things nor completely indulging in them.
Aristotle and The Doctrine of The Mean
Aristotle (350 BCE) argues for a very similar concept of moderation in his texts on ethics and health. He associates each virtue with two vices, one more extreme than virtue and the other too deficient. Thus, one should not be afraid of money or family or war but neither should one be a glutton for these things either. He argues that too much drinking and athletics can destroy the body, but no drinking or athletics can make the body and mind weak and deficient.
Confucius and the Golden Rule
Confucius (550 BCE – 480 BCE) was one of the great ethical geniuses of the ancient world. It is worth noting that in Christianity, Buddhism and Confucianism we find Jesus, Buddha and Confucius telling us to press ourselves to identify with others, to see things through their eyes and treat them as we wish to be treated. All three were identified with the central gods of the heavens in each tradition. No matter how religious or non-religious one is, this shows us that humans consider love and wisdom to be quite divine and the supreme goal of individual life and activity.
The Golden Rule:
Jesus and Confucius both say almost the same “Golden Rule”: treat others the way one wants to be treated. Sometimes scholars say that Confucius rather says the negative “Silver Rule”: DON’T treat others the way one DOESN’T want to be treated. It is easy to see that these are two sides of the same rule, quite the same but slightly different. We will see almost the same dual sided rule shared between Bentham and Mill next week as we study consequentialism/utilitarianism. Bentham argued that one should act in a way to bring about the maximum happiness, and Mill argued (taking his ethics from Bentham) that one should act in a way to bring about the minimum pain. Consider that communism often idealizes the positive side of each rule (provides structure but little room for choice) and capitalism often idealizes the negative side of each rule (room for choice but provides little structure). Many scholars have noted that American law is quite influenced by Mill, and follows his idea of erring on the side of doing little harm rather than Bentham. Consider that communist countries often put their former rulers on trial for crimes against the people when things go wrong (except for the top cult-figures), while capitalist countries rarely send their rulers to jail even when crimes could be punishable in court (there are severe problems with both methods, of course).
Heart over Ritual, Intention over Action:
Confucius and Confucianism are often identified with ritual and tradition, such as the father ruling over the household. In many places in the Analects, however, Confucius is quite clear that although ritual and tradition are essential for the cultivation of the individual and the maintenance of society, they are secondary to love and having the right intentions. This can be seen as an extension of ancient cosmology placing mind over body. In courts of law today, and individual is only guilty if they intentionally performed an action. Confucius tells us that action and tradition without the right intention and emotion are the worst things imaginable. One would think that if the two elements of an act are the right intention and right action, having the right action would be half good, but this is wrong according to Confucius. He even argues that if a ruler is corrupt, one should overthrow the state and put a proper ruler in place. Strangely, the Analects became the core text of the Confucian state in China which was quite conservative of traditional structures.
Nothing is Perfect, but Everything is Good:
Another beautiful idea that is central to Confucius’ teachings is “Perfection is nowhere, but good is always at hand”. Confucius says several times that he is not perfect, and that he has never met a perfect person (or even, in some passages, an excellent person), but he tells us that we all share the same virtues and vices and we can learn to be good by listening to the lowest of people (just like the first passage of the Egyptian wisdom , which tells us that “Wisdom can be found even among the maidens at the grindstone”). He even says that Yao and Shun, the two legendary emperors and ancestors of China, could not obtain perfection, so how could we? The best quote on this is Analects 7.22:
“Put me in the company of any two people at random – they will invariably have something to teach me…I can take their qualities as a model and their vices as a warning.”
Examine Oneself:
The last ethical point to consider while reading through the Analects is Confucius’ emphasis on modesty and examining the self for fault before one finds fault with others. This certainly fits snuggly with the quote just mentioned. Confucius praises individuals who question themselves rather than others and who display modesty rather than pride. Confucius displays these virtues with regards to himself many times in the Analects. Consider 1.16, “Don’t worry if people don’t recognize your merits; worry that you may not recognize theirs”. Consider 4.17, “When you see a worthy man, seek to emulate him; when you see an unworthy man, examine yourself”.
In reading the Analects, pay particular attention to the following passages in light of the above:
1.10, 1.14-16,
2.12-15, 2.17,
3.13, 3.26,
4.6, 4.7, 4.10, 4.11, 4.14, 4.17,
5.5, 5.12, 5.13, 5.18, 5.27,
6.15, 6.17, 6.18, 6.20, 6.29,
7.7, 7.22,
9.8, 9.17, 9.26,
11.17,
12.22,
13.24,
14.22, 14.29,
15.21, 15.23, 15.24, 15.36, 15.39
LECTURE ON DRIVE AND DESIRE: NIETZSCHE VS RAND
Last time talked about Mill, Utilitarianism and looking at the Ends of acts rather than beginnings.
So far, we have been concerned with collectivist, not individualist ethical concepts. This time we talk about drive, desire and self interest, reading Nietzsche but also looking at a thinker important in American thought who takes this sort of thinking in an entirely different direction, Ayn Rand. With modern times and increasing technology that enables the individual comes new individualistic thinking and criticism of more collectivist traditional thought.
While Nietzsche and Rand both believe the individual should try to create something in the name of the self, Nietzsche says this is because no one is simply right while Rand says that she and her school of thought, Objectivism, are simply right. Myself, love Nietzsche, hate Rand. Both are critical for looking at modernized society.
There are many positive and negative things about individualism over collectivism. When individualism is a problem we call it ‘selfish’ to label it bad, but our society sees more than just evils in individualism and self-centeredness. As society has become modernized, it is up to the individual to regulate themselves and keep themselves in line. Foucault is the big thinker on this point (who was very influenced by Nietzsche). This means that individualism is just as much praised, as ‘self-starting’, ‘self-reliant’, that one should have ‘self-esteem’ (this is the repackaged ideas of Rand by Brandon, as it is scorned as ‘selfish’. There are many ways today that individuals are more enabled to be individuals than ever before, and it is very bound up with America being both the best and the worst so far in many things that civilizations have been doing from the beginning.
While America is very individualistic as a culture, with positive and negative aspects, it is important to recognize that ‘Western’ white European people are not individualistic by culture starting with the Greeks. This is unfortunately how it is often presented, that Greece was a very ‘human’ and ‘individualist’ place, and that’s why the West is so the West vs. all other cultures. As you know, I am a big fan of saying that the West is a bunch of enabled, wealthy HUMAN BEINGS, and so when they get ‘humanist’ they are actually getting stuff and culture.
When we look at Japanese teenagers in Tokyo and Kyoto, we can see profound individualism (like in the rising ‘Street Culture’ and Art that is shared the world over today beyond cultural differences).
Good evidence for this can be seen in a recent experiment where rural African children were given laptops and the researchers were surprised when the results showed that there was no lag time of any length in the learning compared to American urban children. The researchers all assumed that individualistic-culture raised children would be able to master laptops faster.
Thus, the Greeks and the Renaissance were ‘humanism’ rising, but only because there were surges of wealth and culture, just like in Baghdad 1000 years ago and in China before that. One should expect to see rises, not simple ‘achievements’ of freedom of thought, diversity of opinions, inventions and innovations, etc whenever a city or area becomes enabled. Americans, because of the last 150 years and due to geographic positioning, have become far more enabled and innovating than other areas of the world but we should not fool ourselves in thinking that we are the good culture that owns this, either genetically (by ethnicity) or socially (by form of politics, religion, or science).
In the context of ancient cosmology, individualism and self interest are typically BAD.
Consider that the big ONE is more important and ranks all of the little branches. Many has been characterized as bad and One as good on both an individual and social level. With modern individualist thinking and development, diversity becomes a good thing, both for the individual (post modern conceptions and novels, movies etc) and for the social (multiculturalism, in America called “the melting pot”).
Consider a tree. The more the branches, the larger the trunk has to be to support them, and the larger the trunk, the more branches are needed to feed the tree. Individuality and community are mutually supportive. While traditional society favors the collective and modern society prizes the individual, both can help each other in balance.
While individualism can be too extreme (for me, Rand is just this in particular ways, such as calling her group ‘Objective’ with a capital ‘O’ for praising selfishness) we are now waking to new levels of seeing how the individual can support the group and the group support the individual. This makes individualism and emphasis on drive, the self, and survival forces of GOOD (regardless of what one thinks of Nietzsche or Rand) and thus important for our Ethics even though Ethics has largely ignored individualism to concentrate on the collectivists dueling back and forth (most famously Kant and Mill, both of whom Nietzsche hated).
NIETZSCHE (1844-1900)
Nietzsche is often called the first modern thinker. In fact, depending on whether you say we live in modern or post-modern times, he is called the first modern OR post-modern thinker. He is without doubt one of the most influential philosophers of modern Europe, and most skeptical thought is now deeply in his debt.
Nietzsche came from a long line of protestant Lutheran preachers. Unfortunately, Nietzsche’s father died when he was very little, and though his family sent the boy to school to become a preacher and theologian (like Hegel, Heidegger and many other German thinkers) Nietzsche rebelled and turned to philosophy.
German Pessimism and Schopenhauer:
Just before Nietzsche’s birth, Germany had been going through a great period of pessimism. Just like in China, Egypt, Greece and everywhere, human thought flourishes in the period after tragedy and warring states because people are forced to turn against old conceptions and institutions and ask hard questions that become very popular in these sorts of times.
German princes came together to crush the popular people’s movements for individual rights, and there was a great turning away from the German reason of Kant towards the German will of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. Since reason failed in the world, the world is not a reasonable place but a tough place in which it is hard to push for what one sees as beautiful and true.
Marx wrote in this time, for this crowd.
Schopenhauer is deeply influenced by Buddhism and Indian thought, in a very pessimistic way.
He uses the image of a ship bobbing on the water, just hanging on in a watery, stormy ocean of a world. Rather than believe in a reason beyond, having the stomach to see the harsh reality of the situation became a value, a value that skeptical thought has retained.
German pessimism, including its famous thinkers Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, flourished in two more recent periods of pessimism: WWI for Europe and Vietnam for America. In fact, Nietzsche was the original guy who said ‘my home country is stupid and think they are awesome’, bashing Germany and all things German quite openly, for which he has been honored as not only individualistic but incredibly courageous. Thus European thought following WWI and American culture following the 60’s (Berkeley a key player in this) found deep meaning in calling their society and ‘the system’ a bunch of chumps.
Nietzsche vs. Morality:
The text I gave you to read is ‘Beyond Good and Evil’, in which Nietzsche asks us to look at humanity critically and see that following the rules (like Kant) or ‘the greater good’ (like Mill) is for sheep. The individual rises above the masses and sees things in a new way. Nietzsche came up with these ideas reading Kant and Mill, reacting against their overall goods for everyone evenly. For Nietzsche, inequality are the beautiful mountain ranges to climb and conquer.
Nietzsche was a staunch individualist, believing that ANY group morality is a slave morality, and he called Christianity, Scientific ‘Objectivity’, German Nationalism and German Racism (very much centered in Anti-Semitism) out on this vocally. Again, he is seen as a hero by many for this. Consider: “When we create the master race, we will have to mix in a lot of Jews to get their good qualities”, a joke considering that Nietzsche would never advise creating a master race of equals but rather loves the individual who stands above the race as a herd.
It was a shame that Nietzsche was censored and used by the Nazis to support their ideas of the beautiful rising German will of the master race, taking Nietzsche’s individualism and twisting it into a racial and social doctrine. Nietzsche intended his words for individualists, as he says over and over again. In this, they famously used his concept of the Superman (and yes, Nietzsche is the first person on record to use this phrase, the UBERMENCH) to mean not the artist or visionary who creates but the German race.
Nietzsche vs. Nihilism:
While many would say ‘Nietzsche believes in nothing, then”, this would not be true. Nietzsche was just as vocal about believing in something as he was about not believing the herd mentality. Nietzsche saw himself as a new sort of thinker who would be followed and imitated by many. Because of this, he warns over and over again NOT to make his thought into a school or a system. However, he did not believe like Schopenhauer that one could believe or not and it makes little difference. Nietzsche believed that the whole worth of the individual is that, in the face of nothing being absolutely true, staring into the void of being, you create something and stand for something in a beautiful way, creating your own meaning in life. He was very critical of ‘Nihilism’, believing in nothing, thought this is just what his critics, religious and not, have called him.
Nietzsche believes in Heraclitus and Hegel’s Becoming between Being and Nothing. He avoids believing in eternal positives, but also believing in nothing whatsoever. It is the overturning of the old into the new by the true individual who wills something created beyond themselves and the world that stands in the face of Nihilism that Nietzsche sees as modernity’s greatest threat. He sees a world where everyone sits on their couch, believes in nothing but is afraid to contradict the state or church and do SOMETHING other than sit there.
Thus, Nietzsche relentlessly bashes reason and judgment in himself and in others, but he believes that you must have the courage to create as a contradictory and mortal being.
Nietzsche’s bashing of women: An Interesting Example of Nietzsche’s Skeptical Individualism
One of the most beautiful and deep parts of Nietzsche’s writings is his turn in Human, All Too Human from bashing Kant and others for believing in objective truth to say ‘here are some of my truths’ and without warning start bashing women repeatedly including the famous “When you go to woman, do not forget your whip”. The beauty of this philosophical performance, what inspires Bataille and Derrida, is that Nietzsche here is showing you both sides of himself at once. Unlike Kant or Mill who are writing like they can be consistent and not contradict themselves in the building or seeing of the truth, Nietzsche knows the truth is psychological and complex, and that beauty comes from tension and pain. Thus, even in his bashing he knows he is a human being and flawed. This has had an amazing impact on Art and Literature (particularly since Bataille and his open obscenity in following Nietzsche).
Passages of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil:
N starts off with asking, why do we want or suppose we can simply get truth? Philosophy seems like it has barely even gotten started. Asking this question is perhaps the greatest risk: nihilism can result from q of ‘truth’.
Read BGE (2)
Faith in opposite values: categorical Ts and Fs, such that we can fully know.
Notice ‘frog perspective’, maybe same as frog in well of CT.
Read (3), selection. Instinct to simplify things in ‘truth’ but complex
Read (4), ending. “philosophy beyond good & evil”, this is first time title in the book.
Read (5) start and selection. Philosophers as naïve, trusting so far, critique of Kant. Why?
Read (6), middle. Naïve, because ALL DRIVES can pose as ‘truth’ or ‘good’.
Read (16) start: Notice beyond even Schopenhauer here. Thinking conceals itself such that we cannot be simply certain of it any way. (Notice lead to Freud here)
In 17, speaks more of the deceptive power of language to simplify things for us and shape our world. He mentions resemblance of Indian, Greek and German philosophy, says it is clearly explained by language- fits with growing German- our picture.
Why is language deceptive? How does grammar lie? Read (24), start and end.
Language, and science, have to simplify the world by making strict oppositions out of what is actually subtleties of gradation. Language, philosophy and science make things black and white, but things are actually shades of grey between ideals and extremes.
Nietzsche says that truth is alive, and doesn’t need such simple and artificial scaffolding as our beliefs or our knowing we are right. We should enjoy being wrong.
Read (25) start: Truth needs no protectors- or categorical certainties.
Says falsehood is the surest fact, continually in all truth and discovery.
Read (34), middle to end. Philosophers need to suspect the certainties they have taken for granted, and grammar plays a serious part in the simplifying deception, he says even poison against life. (Note: Hegel’s judgment is the one sided acid).
Also Great: (78), (94) (126)
AYN RAND (1905-1982)
As said, I like Nietzsche’s individualism much more than Rand. I believe Nietzsche takes his individualism too far, to the point that he values it above collective truth where I would rather have a balance of individual and collective goods, both being equally enjoyable and profitable for human beings. Ayn Rand, however, takes what is beautiful in Nietzsche and rams it straight into the ground like the head of an ostrich.
For starters, to give fair warning, Ayn Rand believes that all Philosophers have simply been too stupid to see that reality is right in front of our eyes, that we see real objects, and there are times (MOST of the time for her and her Objectivist followers) when we are just right and others are just wrong and we should simply say so. While this can come in a good form as ‘self esteem’, it is easy to see why philosophy people bash her writings, say that she has never read any philosophy and since she now proposes to simply answer all of the deepest questions correctly with simple and obvious answers she has no idea what philosophy actually is. It is pointed out that she is very popular with individualist people who have never studied philosophy but not with philosophy students. This charge can be quite elitist, but in my opinion it is somewhat justified. What would Nietzsche think of common American people who have not studied great works but come together as ‘Objectivists’ in groups to say over and over again that they are objectively right and everyone who disagrees is simply wrong? He would say that they are hardly enabled individuals, but rather a herd suffering herd delusions of objectivity, like Kant but far less educated.
On the other hand, Ayn Rand is very much a popular, common person’s American Realist philosopher. American Realists, who actually come from Scottish realism, believe in the positivist position (reality is real, self is real, we perceive real objects for real, and one can simply judge things to be true or false, for real) and believe that philosophy, even the positivists like Kant and Aristotle, have been led astray by skepticism and compromised their positions. The problem for philosophy professionals is that, unlike the realists, Rand believes that she is simply right and there are no problems and the rest of philosophy is meaningless, which is a position that even hardcore American realists cannot support.
Rand’s life and Pro-Capitalism, Objectivism Stance:
Ayn Rand is big in America because she defected from Soviet Russia and embraced America as Objectively right. This is why she has reading rooms dedicated to her in Marine academies and other hard core pro-American institutions. She is anti-collectivist like Nietzsche, but thinks that the Soviet Union is simply wrong and collectivist while America is simply right and individualist.
Ayn Rand believes in the value of Selfishness, termed better by Brandon as ‘self esteem’.
You may remember it: it has become a Neo-Con staple and artifact of the 80s.
Argue against Freedman’s (free market) argument that selflessness is an ideal never obtained, so we are based in the self and selfishness as anchor. Each is an extreme, and balance is best.
Think of how Nietzsche would weep at the end of Atlas Shrugged, after the collectivists have ruined society, Rand has her hero trace a dollar sign over the ruins. Praise of selfishness and the all-mighty dollar in a neo-con fashion are the truth that will lift society back up for Rand.
For Nietzsche, belief in the dollar or America is a sheep-like fiction for killing your individuality, not supporting it or lifting society up as a whole.
My Three Moments of Hating Ayn Rand:
End of her speech to Marine graduating class of 1975: ‘and that’s why my philosophy is the only true philosophy’…
Her ejection of Nathaniel Brandon, the ‘King of Self Esteem’, from her Objectivist school after she found out he was two timing her with a model (thought this seems selfish, just not for Rand).
Her attempted cover-up of her lung cancer (from which she died) because she had been very vocal about how doctors who said cigarettes cause cancer are simply wrong and she ‘knew it objectively’.
The Moral of the Story:
You should stand for yourself, and have self esteem, but do not let it blind you into going on and on about how you are right such that you are not critical of your views or the views of those who agree with you (in a school or otherwise). As Hegel says, it is fine that each individual believes themselves at first to be simply the positive truth, but it is important to be critical of oneself in order to develop the self. Doing things for the self and others should be mutually supportive, in balance.
There is decent evidence from biology that human beings are designed to balance self and other interest, and that selfishness kills the individual and isolates them from the supports of society. Angry and judgmental people naturally isolate themselves and have shorter life spans.
Having a pet increases your life span, so caring for others is good for your individual self.
As we will see in Violence week, Lt. Grossman tells us that people will stand up in fire for random strangers in particular situations entirely independent of personality.
Thus, self interest is important for ethics and balance, but not as the sole anchor in the way that Kant and Mill try to make principle or ends the sole point of action.
LECTURE ON PERSPECTIVE:
HERACLITUS, ZHUANG ZI & HEGEL
Perspective is not simply individual, but social. We share reality in so far as we share perspective. This means that we should not only try to see as many perspectives or as much perspective as we can, but also resisting the tendency to accept one’s own perspective as reality or the whole truth. Truth is in each and every perspective, but it is also always beyond and outside of each and every perspective. Focusing on the concept of perspective forces us to affirm our views as truths but also deny our views as the Truth (with a capital T).
Two of the greatest ancient thinkers on perspective are Heraclitus from ancient Greece and Zhuang Zi from ancient China. To consider perspective as an ethical concept we will be looking at the strikingly similar things that these two ancient thinkers say and then end with some insights of the German philosopher Hegel and discoveries of modern psychology.
HERACLITUS:
Heraclitus’ most famous idea is a memorable image: you can never step in the same river twice. Just as a river is always flowing and changing, so is reality always flowing and changing, such that nothing stays exactly the same for any two moments. You step in a river, then step out, then step back in the same river, but it is no longer ‘the same river’. Heraclitus says this is also true of himself.
According to one source, Heraclitus was a king who abandoned the title to become a philosopher. This has been identified as a close resemblance to the story of the Buddha in India, and some scholars have argued that Heraclitus was in fact the Buddha from India while others have argued that the Buddha was in fact Heraclitus from Greece. Both thinkers were mythologized as a king who left powerful king position and became a sage, and both believe in the enlightening sun rising above the watery chaos of reality and human perception, but it is quite likely the two were not the same individual.
Heraclitus is a very skeptical thinker. This does not mean he saw all things as negative. He was convinced that wisdom and inquiring within show us that all is one big cosmic fire, and things that unify the community and the individual bring wholeness and true happiness. However, he believed that humans are often foolish and let their minds divide themselves from the whole and from each other such that their understandings are disjointed and ignorant.
This is very typical thinking of skeptics the world over. A positivist would say that there are specific truths that are certain and must be separated from the uncertain, specific goods that must be separated from the evil. A skeptic would say, like Heraclitus and the Daoists from China, that the truth and the good is the whole and the great One, and the tendency of the mind to divide the good and the true from the rest is the opposite of true understanding and wisdom.
Heraclitus was not a fan of experts and specialists, and he ridiculed the cultural leaders of his time. He says that the common people are completely asleep, but far more dangerous are the experts who have a small piece of the puzzle and say that they know the entire truth. He calls the poets (Hesiod and Homer) and the Pythagoreans frauds, and says that there are no permanent truths or laws other than the constant formation of watery chaos by the sun and cosmic fire.
Notice that this does not question the set up of the cosmos as we have studied it everywhere (and what the Persians gave to the Eastern Greek city states). Many often ask, “Why, then, should I listen to Heraclitus, since he is simply an expert?”. Heraclitus replies as most skeptics do: don’t take my word for it, but look into the world and within yourself and you will find that it is true.
This is a psychological skepticism that is criticizing the human ability to know particular things as permanent that are able to be separated from the One and All (the cosmic fire). Only the All is permanent. All the other things are wandering temporal forms. The many beings arise from the energy of Being, and then they fall back into the fire and disappear. The cosmos resembles the chaos yet order of the human community centered on authority by spoken word. The LOGOS, the word/plan/order/command, is the formative force in the cosmos, the force of fire and light in the watery chaotic world. The cosmic fire speaks with its ever-present Logos (fire over air) and this brings about the firmament in the chaos (the earth rising out of the water). This process, however, does not bring about eternal or stable beings, but chains of beings that are in flux and interdependent.
This goes also for laws, which Heraclitus says have to be defended as if they were city walls. This is sometimes read that Heraclitus thought human law was important and had to be defended, which he did, but in fact he is also telling us that human laws are impermanent like walls made out of earth. They may seem eternal and permanent, but as any former citizen or city of the Persian empire knows, empires fall and impressive city states are overthrown and change hands. The eternal word of the fire forever forms the cosmos, but human speech and walls are temporary, and therefore take force and effort to maintain. As a skeptic, Heraclitus believes that the divisions made by the mind are mortal, not eternal, like the human body. Our knowledge and laws are impermanent like mounds of dirt.
Heraclitus was one of the most famous thinkers of the Greek and Roman world. He was a big influence on Plato, though Plato is very much opposed to his thinking as we will see next week. Both Heraclitus and Plato were big influences on Christianity which initially flourished not in Israel but in Greece and Syria. If a primal speaking of the Word or Logos sounds familiar, Heraclitus was a central influence on the Greek and Roman stoics, and the author of the Gospel of John was almost certainly a Greek stoic writing in Roman times. The opening of the Gospel of John famously reads: the Logos/Word/Order was with God (Fire/Cosmos), and God spoke (“let there be light”) and light was separated from darkness.
It was only in the late 1700s and 1800s that German scholars rediscovered the presocratics and gave them attention and study. Before this time, Greek Philosophy was considered to have originated with Socrates (hence, “presocratics”) and most scholars were only versed in the surviving writings of Plato and Aristotle. Schleiermacher, one of the most famous and central protestant theologians and an opponent of Hegel, was a major force in bringing popularity to Heraclitus and a major translator of Plato. The philosopher Hegel, who we will study later, saw Heraclitus as a skeptic who is put in balance with Plato and other positivists by the course of history itself. Nietzsche, the great skeptical philosopher who we will also study, wrote that he felt closer to Heraclitus than any other thinker. Nietzsche believed, like Heraclitus, that we are proud of our learning and achievement but we are in fact little better than apes.
We are going to go through the fragments according to themes, that show how Heraclitus sees the individual within the cosmos.
(1): The word from which all things follow (Fire-air(spirits)-earth(firm) in water.
Criticism of the experts and knowledge holders, who try for separate essences.
(92, 97, 98, 119, 121, 125)
Criticism of the commoners, asleep and isolated in otherness, (94)
(2): Listen to the great word and all is one, beyond experts and common
(5, 6) Many say they know (certain) but can’t speak and listen (give and take)
(7) Seek the unknown- Knowledge is a blockage (18,19- wisdom beyond- wisdom lit)
(10) Things keep their secrets- unknown in all things
Fire as all things (20, 21, 22, 26, 27, 28)
(25) Air-Fire, Water-Earth (with fragment of souls smell- smoke by both)
Contending tensions/powers set all things (24, 25, 29, 31)
Hot cold and wet dry (39, 40)
Dry soul good, Wet soul pleasured, bad (72)
War is father of all, thus harmonies (46, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61)
(41) River twice, (81) I am and am not like the river (unknown)
(52, 53) Everything has qualities by perspective (relativity)
(71) No depth to soul- explored forever, (80) inquire within
(130) Silence- Healing (Note the parallels with Buddhism out of Jainism)
ZHUANG ZI
Zhuang Zi, the second patriarch of Daoism, lived from 370 to 301 BCE and worked as a manager in a lacquer warehouse, a large ‘factory’ for making vases, bowls and general wood products (like bento boxes). Other than this, we know little of his life other than his work. Daoist tradition holds that Zhuang Zi wrote the ‘inner chapters’ of his work, and that the anecdotes about him and other stories were added by his disciples, the early proto-Daoists.
In several places, we see the idea of perspective which we encountered in Heraclitus. Mao Quiang and Lady Li were famous beautiful women, but fish, birds and deer were frightened by them. Heraclitus said that all human beauty and achievement is nothing but apes to the gods as apes are only apes to us. Who knows what is beautiful, humans, birds, fish, or deer? Which of them knows what tastes good?
Another great passage is the Peng bird who migrates for the Winter, an act which the dove and the cicada (a large insect) find ridiculous. They have no frame of reference to understand such an act. This suggests that the wisdom of Daoism will sound ridiculous and foolish to those who are not experienced and wise. We read in the text "Truth sounds like its opposite!", just as Heraclitus said "The way forward is the way back".
In the Chapter, The Secret of Caring for Life, we meet Cook Ting and his famous butcher’s knife. Cook Ting tells his master that his blade never goes dull, for he can always find the hidden spaces in things, and then his blade goes right through. This is very much like the reasoning of the wise mind, that can use reason to chop anything up easily and naturally, without striking up against anything in opposition.
Notice that Confucius appears many times in the Zhuang Zi, used to argue AGAINST his own position and in favor of a Daoist position. Many times Confucius says that his own way is inferior to the Daoist way. Clearly, these are texts written by Daoists who appreciate the good in Confucianism but think their own school to be superior. For example, page 65, in the chapter ‘The Sign of Virtue Complete’, Confucius says of Wang T’ai, “If you look at them from the point of view of their differences, then there is liver and gall, Ch’u and Yueh (two warring kingdoms in China). But if you look at them from the point of view of their sameness, then the ten thousand things are all one.” I still use this contradiction of one and many to this day. It shows you much about how people make judgments and arguments.
HEGEL AND THE MASTER/SLAVE RELATIONSHIP
Hegel, a German philosopher who lived in the late 1700s and early 1800s, believed that the history of the world and the process of thought in history and the individual was an evolution of perspective that works from opposite sides to bring itself to greater completion. One of the most famous parts of his Phenomenology of Spirit, a history of the evolution of thought, is the Master/Slave dialectic. This concept became very important for anti-sexism (like the feminist De Beauvoir), anti-racism (like Franz Fanon and Angela Davis) and anti-class thinkers (like Hegel’s student Karl Marx). These will be the last three topics for this class, the “Big Three” in universities since the sixties.
Hegel argues that as the self or identity (like a nation) comes into the world, it cannot understand how there can be others like itself that are not itself and so it tries to fight and kill its others. Then the self figures out that it does not have to kill its others and that it is more productive to enslave them (consider that the most selfish individual would tell everyone else “You are wrong” but the slightly smarter but still selfish individual would tell everyone else “That is just what I have been saying”, neither capable of tolerating opinions other than their own).
At first, the master is in the superior position. However, over time, the slave comes to do everything for the master and thus learns through experience while the master grows lazy and ignorant. The slave comes to realize that he can do things he never thought of for someone or something else, comes to grasp subjectivity and perspective, and thus overturns the master and becomes the greater and more highly developed master.
INSIGHTS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY:
INTERNAL/EXTERNAL ATTRIBUTION & THE HOSTILE MEDIA EFFECT
Modern Psychology has learned much from experiments in recent years about how individuals tend to interpret reality. This teaches us many things about perspective that extend and develop what Heraclitus, Zhuang Zi and Hegel had to say.
Internal vs. External Attribution:
Many experiments have confirmed what is often called the actor/observer bias or internal vs. external attribution. If an individual succeeds at a task, they often attribute the success to themselves or the group to which they belong (internal attribution – “I/We are really good at that”). If an individual fails at a task, they often attribute the failure to the situation (external attribution – “It was because of that thing”). However, if the same individual watches another (especially someone disliked or ‘other’ to the individual) succeed at a task, they often attribute the success to the situation (external attribution – “They just got lucky”, or “It was easier that time”), and when they watch another fail at a task, they often attribute the failure to the other person or the group to which they belong (internal attribution – “That shows they are stupid”).
Notice the complete reversal and the contradiction of opposite perspectives given the same evidence. The attribution and perspective is one way or the complete opposite depending on who does the task and whether or not they succeed.
The Hostile Media Effect:
Other experiments have confirmed that both sides of an issue view media coverage and moderation (judges, referees) as hostile to their side. For example, liberals are angry that the media is conservative, and conservatives are angry that the media is liberal. One study at Stanford showed American media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to pro-Israeli students and pro-Palestinian students, and both sides said the coverage was clearly biased in favor of the other side. Another study had students from Princeton and Dartmouth (a big East Coast rivalry) view a Princeton vs. Dartmouth football game, and each group saw more illegal moves on the other side and each said that the referees missed more of these for the other side.
If we consider perspective, anyone in the middle of an issue is to the opposite side of anyone on the edges. I have a card I like that shows children on a see-saw with one standing on the middle, and it reads “I know I am being fair when both sides accuse me of unfairness”. Unfortunately, this is often true in the world of competing and opposite perspectives.
In studying balance as an Ethical concept, we will look at Ma’at in the wisdom of ancient Egypt, the doctrine of the middle way in the teachings of the Buddha of India and Aristotle of ancient Greece, and then finish with the Analects of Confucius, one of the great ancient world Ethics texts and a masterwork on the balance of concern for the self and others.
Ma’at and the Wisdom of Ancient Egypt
The idea of balance was identified with the Goddess Ma’at in the early periods of Egyptian history, but just like the sun became the abstract principle of life and the universe Ma’at became the abstract conception of the balance of opposites.
In the Egyptian wisdom quotes, one of my favorite examples of early city-state texts, we can see that the Egyptians were concerned not only with the balance of good and evil that exist in particular desirable things but also in the ethical virtue of the balance of concern for oneself and for others. As many tribes gathered into the earliest city-states and empires, people saw more and more of human behavior and became concerned with balancing excess and lack. People saw that some had much to eat, much money, much power, and others had none. They saw that excess can hurt the individual and society as much as deficiency, power and riches as much as oppression and poverty. In Egypt and many societies that followed, including India, Greece and China, we can see a concern with balance and avoiding both excess and deficiency being praised as wise and ethical.
In the Egyptian texts (as well as Confucius) we can see a heart centered theory of the human being that ties into this concept of balance and wisdom. The heart was thought to be the center of the human being, as ancient people soon learned that the heart is the center of the vessels that branch throughout the body and which are crucial to its health and nourishment. The Egyptians thought that if one was unkind to others it would choke the breath and blood from the heart and hurt one’s physical as well as mental health (remember that in ancient cosmology, physics was identical with psychology and spirituality). Consider that we still wear the wedding ring on the finger next to the pinky, which has a large vein in it and was thought to control love and lust by the ancient Egyptians (the Greeks and Romans picked up much medicine and physiology from the Egyptians, and we keep this custom today). The ancient Israelites, in contrast, had their wives wear a ring on the index finger to keep her from casting spells while pointing.
In the Egyptian wisdom literature, the “heart-guided-individual” (very similar to the language and theories of Confucius) put wisdom over desire, mind over the body, and thus had self-control and the full powers and potential of the human individual. This was seen as putting oneself in-line with the cosmos, as Being, the one eternal way, is the source and guide of the many individual mortal beings.
Read the ancient Egyptian wisdom quotes with this in mind (particularly p. 7, 10, 17, 20, 21, 22, 30, 31, 32, 34, 35, 36, 44, and 46).
The Buddha and The Middle Way
The Buddha (550 BCE), the founder of one of the largest systems of thought in history, taught moderation between extremes as a fundamental doctrine. Known as “The Middle Way” in both Buddhism and Confucianism, this teaching is quite similar to the ancient Egyptian conception of Ma’at. According to the story of the Buddha’s life he tried extreme practices in the jungle to rid himself of attachment and desire and gain unity of mind and enlightenment as many were doing in his time and still do today, but he found that extreme self denial brought self hatred. Moderation became a core part of the Buddha’s later enlightenment and teaching. Rather than try to rid the self of selfhood or desire, release is found in the moderation between seeking and denying, neither running toward nor away from the self or desirable things. Thus, Buddhist conceptions of ethics often center of moderation between extremes, neither going completely without desirable things nor completely indulging in them.
Aristotle and The Doctrine of The Mean
Aristotle (350 BCE) argues for a very similar concept of moderation in his texts on ethics and health. He associates each virtue with two vices, one more extreme than virtue and the other too deficient. Thus, one should not be afraid of money or family or war but neither should one be a glutton for these things either. He argues that too much drinking and athletics can destroy the body, but no drinking or athletics can make the body and mind weak and deficient.
Confucius and the Golden Rule
Confucius (550 BCE – 480 BCE) was one of the great ethical geniuses of the ancient world. It is worth noting that in Christianity, Buddhism and Confucianism we find Jesus, Buddha and Confucius telling us to press ourselves to identify with others, to see things through their eyes and treat them as we wish to be treated. All three were identified with the central gods of the heavens in each tradition. No matter how religious or non-religious one is, this shows us that humans consider love and wisdom to be quite divine and the supreme goal of individual life and activity.
The Golden Rule:
Jesus and Confucius both say almost the same “Golden Rule”: treat others the way one wants to be treated. Sometimes scholars say that Confucius rather says the negative “Silver Rule”: DON’T treat others the way one DOESN’T want to be treated. It is easy to see that these are two sides of the same rule, quite the same but slightly different. We will see almost the same dual sided rule shared between Bentham and Mill next week as we study consequentialism/utilitarianism. Bentham argued that one should act in a way to bring about the maximum happiness, and Mill argued (taking his ethics from Bentham) that one should act in a way to bring about the minimum pain. Consider that communism often idealizes the positive side of each rule (provides structure but little room for choice) and capitalism often idealizes the negative side of each rule (room for choice but provides little structure). Many scholars have noted that American law is quite influenced by Mill, and follows his idea of erring on the side of doing little harm rather than Bentham. Consider that communist countries often put their former rulers on trial for crimes against the people when things go wrong (except for the top cult-figures), while capitalist countries rarely send their rulers to jail even when crimes could be punishable in court (there are severe problems with both methods, of course).
Heart over Ritual, Intention over Action:
Confucius and Confucianism are often identified with ritual and tradition, such as the father ruling over the household. In many places in the Analects, however, Confucius is quite clear that although ritual and tradition are essential for the cultivation of the individual and the maintenance of society, they are secondary to love and having the right intentions. This can be seen as an extension of ancient cosmology placing mind over body. In courts of law today, and individual is only guilty if they intentionally performed an action. Confucius tells us that action and tradition without the right intention and emotion are the worst things imaginable. One would think that if the two elements of an act are the right intention and right action, having the right action would be half good, but this is wrong according to Confucius. He even argues that if a ruler is corrupt, one should overthrow the state and put a proper ruler in place. Strangely, the Analects became the core text of the Confucian state in China which was quite conservative of traditional structures.
Nothing is Perfect, but Everything is Good:
Another beautiful idea that is central to Confucius’ teachings is “Perfection is nowhere, but good is always at hand”. Confucius says several times that he is not perfect, and that he has never met a perfect person (or even, in some passages, an excellent person), but he tells us that we all share the same virtues and vices and we can learn to be good by listening to the lowest of people (just like the first passage of the Egyptian wisdom , which tells us that “Wisdom can be found even among the maidens at the grindstone”). He even says that Yao and Shun, the two legendary emperors and ancestors of China, could not obtain perfection, so how could we? The best quote on this is Analects 7.22:
“Put me in the company of any two people at random – they will invariably have something to teach me…I can take their qualities as a model and their vices as a warning.”
Examine Oneself:
The last ethical point to consider while reading through the Analects is Confucius’ emphasis on modesty and examining the self for fault before one finds fault with others. This certainly fits snuggly with the quote just mentioned. Confucius praises individuals who question themselves rather than others and who display modesty rather than pride. Confucius displays these virtues with regards to himself many times in the Analects. Consider 1.16, “Don’t worry if people don’t recognize your merits; worry that you may not recognize theirs”. Consider 4.17, “When you see a worthy man, seek to emulate him; when you see an unworthy man, examine yourself”.
In reading the Analects, pay particular attention to the following passages in light of the above:
1.10, 1.14-16,
2.12-15, 2.17,
3.13, 3.26,
4.6, 4.7, 4.10, 4.11, 4.14, 4.17,
5.5, 5.12, 5.13, 5.18, 5.27,
6.15, 6.17, 6.18, 6.20, 6.29,
7.7, 7.22,
9.8, 9.17, 9.26,
11.17,
12.22,
13.24,
14.22, 14.29,
15.21, 15.23, 15.24, 15.36, 15.39
LECTURE ON DRIVE AND DESIRE: NIETZSCHE VS RAND
Last time talked about Mill, Utilitarianism and looking at the Ends of acts rather than beginnings.
So far, we have been concerned with collectivist, not individualist ethical concepts. This time we talk about drive, desire and self interest, reading Nietzsche but also looking at a thinker important in American thought who takes this sort of thinking in an entirely different direction, Ayn Rand. With modern times and increasing technology that enables the individual comes new individualistic thinking and criticism of more collectivist traditional thought.
While Nietzsche and Rand both believe the individual should try to create something in the name of the self, Nietzsche says this is because no one is simply right while Rand says that she and her school of thought, Objectivism, are simply right. Myself, love Nietzsche, hate Rand. Both are critical for looking at modernized society.
There are many positive and negative things about individualism over collectivism. When individualism is a problem we call it ‘selfish’ to label it bad, but our society sees more than just evils in individualism and self-centeredness. As society has become modernized, it is up to the individual to regulate themselves and keep themselves in line. Foucault is the big thinker on this point (who was very influenced by Nietzsche). This means that individualism is just as much praised, as ‘self-starting’, ‘self-reliant’, that one should have ‘self-esteem’ (this is the repackaged ideas of Rand by Brandon, as it is scorned as ‘selfish’. There are many ways today that individuals are more enabled to be individuals than ever before, and it is very bound up with America being both the best and the worst so far in many things that civilizations have been doing from the beginning.
While America is very individualistic as a culture, with positive and negative aspects, it is important to recognize that ‘Western’ white European people are not individualistic by culture starting with the Greeks. This is unfortunately how it is often presented, that Greece was a very ‘human’ and ‘individualist’ place, and that’s why the West is so the West vs. all other cultures. As you know, I am a big fan of saying that the West is a bunch of enabled, wealthy HUMAN BEINGS, and so when they get ‘humanist’ they are actually getting stuff and culture.
When we look at Japanese teenagers in Tokyo and Kyoto, we can see profound individualism (like in the rising ‘Street Culture’ and Art that is shared the world over today beyond cultural differences).
Good evidence for this can be seen in a recent experiment where rural African children were given laptops and the researchers were surprised when the results showed that there was no lag time of any length in the learning compared to American urban children. The researchers all assumed that individualistic-culture raised children would be able to master laptops faster.
Thus, the Greeks and the Renaissance were ‘humanism’ rising, but only because there were surges of wealth and culture, just like in Baghdad 1000 years ago and in China before that. One should expect to see rises, not simple ‘achievements’ of freedom of thought, diversity of opinions, inventions and innovations, etc whenever a city or area becomes enabled. Americans, because of the last 150 years and due to geographic positioning, have become far more enabled and innovating than other areas of the world but we should not fool ourselves in thinking that we are the good culture that owns this, either genetically (by ethnicity) or socially (by form of politics, religion, or science).
In the context of ancient cosmology, individualism and self interest are typically BAD.
Consider that the big ONE is more important and ranks all of the little branches. Many has been characterized as bad and One as good on both an individual and social level. With modern individualist thinking and development, diversity becomes a good thing, both for the individual (post modern conceptions and novels, movies etc) and for the social (multiculturalism, in America called “the melting pot”).
Consider a tree. The more the branches, the larger the trunk has to be to support them, and the larger the trunk, the more branches are needed to feed the tree. Individuality and community are mutually supportive. While traditional society favors the collective and modern society prizes the individual, both can help each other in balance.
While individualism can be too extreme (for me, Rand is just this in particular ways, such as calling her group ‘Objective’ with a capital ‘O’ for praising selfishness) we are now waking to new levels of seeing how the individual can support the group and the group support the individual. This makes individualism and emphasis on drive, the self, and survival forces of GOOD (regardless of what one thinks of Nietzsche or Rand) and thus important for our Ethics even though Ethics has largely ignored individualism to concentrate on the collectivists dueling back and forth (most famously Kant and Mill, both of whom Nietzsche hated).
NIETZSCHE (1844-1900)
Nietzsche is often called the first modern thinker. In fact, depending on whether you say we live in modern or post-modern times, he is called the first modern OR post-modern thinker. He is without doubt one of the most influential philosophers of modern Europe, and most skeptical thought is now deeply in his debt.
Nietzsche came from a long line of protestant Lutheran preachers. Unfortunately, Nietzsche’s father died when he was very little, and though his family sent the boy to school to become a preacher and theologian (like Hegel, Heidegger and many other German thinkers) Nietzsche rebelled and turned to philosophy.
German Pessimism and Schopenhauer:
Just before Nietzsche’s birth, Germany had been going through a great period of pessimism. Just like in China, Egypt, Greece and everywhere, human thought flourishes in the period after tragedy and warring states because people are forced to turn against old conceptions and institutions and ask hard questions that become very popular in these sorts of times.
German princes came together to crush the popular people’s movements for individual rights, and there was a great turning away from the German reason of Kant towards the German will of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. Since reason failed in the world, the world is not a reasonable place but a tough place in which it is hard to push for what one sees as beautiful and true.
Marx wrote in this time, for this crowd.
Schopenhauer is deeply influenced by Buddhism and Indian thought, in a very pessimistic way.
He uses the image of a ship bobbing on the water, just hanging on in a watery, stormy ocean of a world. Rather than believe in a reason beyond, having the stomach to see the harsh reality of the situation became a value, a value that skeptical thought has retained.
German pessimism, including its famous thinkers Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, flourished in two more recent periods of pessimism: WWI for Europe and Vietnam for America. In fact, Nietzsche was the original guy who said ‘my home country is stupid and think they are awesome’, bashing Germany and all things German quite openly, for which he has been honored as not only individualistic but incredibly courageous. Thus European thought following WWI and American culture following the 60’s (Berkeley a key player in this) found deep meaning in calling their society and ‘the system’ a bunch of chumps.
Nietzsche vs. Morality:
The text I gave you to read is ‘Beyond Good and Evil’, in which Nietzsche asks us to look at humanity critically and see that following the rules (like Kant) or ‘the greater good’ (like Mill) is for sheep. The individual rises above the masses and sees things in a new way. Nietzsche came up with these ideas reading Kant and Mill, reacting against their overall goods for everyone evenly. For Nietzsche, inequality are the beautiful mountain ranges to climb and conquer.
Nietzsche was a staunch individualist, believing that ANY group morality is a slave morality, and he called Christianity, Scientific ‘Objectivity’, German Nationalism and German Racism (very much centered in Anti-Semitism) out on this vocally. Again, he is seen as a hero by many for this. Consider: “When we create the master race, we will have to mix in a lot of Jews to get their good qualities”, a joke considering that Nietzsche would never advise creating a master race of equals but rather loves the individual who stands above the race as a herd.
It was a shame that Nietzsche was censored and used by the Nazis to support their ideas of the beautiful rising German will of the master race, taking Nietzsche’s individualism and twisting it into a racial and social doctrine. Nietzsche intended his words for individualists, as he says over and over again. In this, they famously used his concept of the Superman (and yes, Nietzsche is the first person on record to use this phrase, the UBERMENCH) to mean not the artist or visionary who creates but the German race.
Nietzsche vs. Nihilism:
While many would say ‘Nietzsche believes in nothing, then”, this would not be true. Nietzsche was just as vocal about believing in something as he was about not believing the herd mentality. Nietzsche saw himself as a new sort of thinker who would be followed and imitated by many. Because of this, he warns over and over again NOT to make his thought into a school or a system. However, he did not believe like Schopenhauer that one could believe or not and it makes little difference. Nietzsche believed that the whole worth of the individual is that, in the face of nothing being absolutely true, staring into the void of being, you create something and stand for something in a beautiful way, creating your own meaning in life. He was very critical of ‘Nihilism’, believing in nothing, thought this is just what his critics, religious and not, have called him.
Nietzsche believes in Heraclitus and Hegel’s Becoming between Being and Nothing. He avoids believing in eternal positives, but also believing in nothing whatsoever. It is the overturning of the old into the new by the true individual who wills something created beyond themselves and the world that stands in the face of Nihilism that Nietzsche sees as modernity’s greatest threat. He sees a world where everyone sits on their couch, believes in nothing but is afraid to contradict the state or church and do SOMETHING other than sit there.
Thus, Nietzsche relentlessly bashes reason and judgment in himself and in others, but he believes that you must have the courage to create as a contradictory and mortal being.
Nietzsche’s bashing of women: An Interesting Example of Nietzsche’s Skeptical Individualism
One of the most beautiful and deep parts of Nietzsche’s writings is his turn in Human, All Too Human from bashing Kant and others for believing in objective truth to say ‘here are some of my truths’ and without warning start bashing women repeatedly including the famous “When you go to woman, do not forget your whip”. The beauty of this philosophical performance, what inspires Bataille and Derrida, is that Nietzsche here is showing you both sides of himself at once. Unlike Kant or Mill who are writing like they can be consistent and not contradict themselves in the building or seeing of the truth, Nietzsche knows the truth is psychological and complex, and that beauty comes from tension and pain. Thus, even in his bashing he knows he is a human being and flawed. This has had an amazing impact on Art and Literature (particularly since Bataille and his open obscenity in following Nietzsche).
Passages of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil:
N starts off with asking, why do we want or suppose we can simply get truth? Philosophy seems like it has barely even gotten started. Asking this question is perhaps the greatest risk: nihilism can result from q of ‘truth’.
Read BGE (2)
Faith in opposite values: categorical Ts and Fs, such that we can fully know.
Notice ‘frog perspective’, maybe same as frog in well of CT.
Read (3), selection. Instinct to simplify things in ‘truth’ but complex
Read (4), ending. “philosophy beyond good & evil”, this is first time title in the book.
Read (5) start and selection. Philosophers as naïve, trusting so far, critique of Kant. Why?
Read (6), middle. Naïve, because ALL DRIVES can pose as ‘truth’ or ‘good’.
Read (16) start: Notice beyond even Schopenhauer here. Thinking conceals itself such that we cannot be simply certain of it any way. (Notice lead to Freud here)
In 17, speaks more of the deceptive power of language to simplify things for us and shape our world. He mentions resemblance of Indian, Greek and German philosophy, says it is clearly explained by language- fits with growing German- our picture.
Why is language deceptive? How does grammar lie? Read (24), start and end.
Language, and science, have to simplify the world by making strict oppositions out of what is actually subtleties of gradation. Language, philosophy and science make things black and white, but things are actually shades of grey between ideals and extremes.
Nietzsche says that truth is alive, and doesn’t need such simple and artificial scaffolding as our beliefs or our knowing we are right. We should enjoy being wrong.
Read (25) start: Truth needs no protectors- or categorical certainties.
Says falsehood is the surest fact, continually in all truth and discovery.
Read (34), middle to end. Philosophers need to suspect the certainties they have taken for granted, and grammar plays a serious part in the simplifying deception, he says even poison against life. (Note: Hegel’s judgment is the one sided acid).
Also Great: (78), (94) (126)
AYN RAND (1905-1982)
As said, I like Nietzsche’s individualism much more than Rand. I believe Nietzsche takes his individualism too far, to the point that he values it above collective truth where I would rather have a balance of individual and collective goods, both being equally enjoyable and profitable for human beings. Ayn Rand, however, takes what is beautiful in Nietzsche and rams it straight into the ground like the head of an ostrich.
For starters, to give fair warning, Ayn Rand believes that all Philosophers have simply been too stupid to see that reality is right in front of our eyes, that we see real objects, and there are times (MOST of the time for her and her Objectivist followers) when we are just right and others are just wrong and we should simply say so. While this can come in a good form as ‘self esteem’, it is easy to see why philosophy people bash her writings, say that she has never read any philosophy and since she now proposes to simply answer all of the deepest questions correctly with simple and obvious answers she has no idea what philosophy actually is. It is pointed out that she is very popular with individualist people who have never studied philosophy but not with philosophy students. This charge can be quite elitist, but in my opinion it is somewhat justified. What would Nietzsche think of common American people who have not studied great works but come together as ‘Objectivists’ in groups to say over and over again that they are objectively right and everyone who disagrees is simply wrong? He would say that they are hardly enabled individuals, but rather a herd suffering herd delusions of objectivity, like Kant but far less educated.
On the other hand, Ayn Rand is very much a popular, common person’s American Realist philosopher. American Realists, who actually come from Scottish realism, believe in the positivist position (reality is real, self is real, we perceive real objects for real, and one can simply judge things to be true or false, for real) and believe that philosophy, even the positivists like Kant and Aristotle, have been led astray by skepticism and compromised their positions. The problem for philosophy professionals is that, unlike the realists, Rand believes that she is simply right and there are no problems and the rest of philosophy is meaningless, which is a position that even hardcore American realists cannot support.
Rand’s life and Pro-Capitalism, Objectivism Stance:
Ayn Rand is big in America because she defected from Soviet Russia and embraced America as Objectively right. This is why she has reading rooms dedicated to her in Marine academies and other hard core pro-American institutions. She is anti-collectivist like Nietzsche, but thinks that the Soviet Union is simply wrong and collectivist while America is simply right and individualist.
Ayn Rand believes in the value of Selfishness, termed better by Brandon as ‘self esteem’.
You may remember it: it has become a Neo-Con staple and artifact of the 80s.
Argue against Freedman’s (free market) argument that selflessness is an ideal never obtained, so we are based in the self and selfishness as anchor. Each is an extreme, and balance is best.
Think of how Nietzsche would weep at the end of Atlas Shrugged, after the collectivists have ruined society, Rand has her hero trace a dollar sign over the ruins. Praise of selfishness and the all-mighty dollar in a neo-con fashion are the truth that will lift society back up for Rand.
For Nietzsche, belief in the dollar or America is a sheep-like fiction for killing your individuality, not supporting it or lifting society up as a whole.
My Three Moments of Hating Ayn Rand:
End of her speech to Marine graduating class of 1975: ‘and that’s why my philosophy is the only true philosophy’…
Her ejection of Nathaniel Brandon, the ‘King of Self Esteem’, from her Objectivist school after she found out he was two timing her with a model (thought this seems selfish, just not for Rand).
Her attempted cover-up of her lung cancer (from which she died) because she had been very vocal about how doctors who said cigarettes cause cancer are simply wrong and she ‘knew it objectively’.
The Moral of the Story:
You should stand for yourself, and have self esteem, but do not let it blind you into going on and on about how you are right such that you are not critical of your views or the views of those who agree with you (in a school or otherwise). As Hegel says, it is fine that each individual believes themselves at first to be simply the positive truth, but it is important to be critical of oneself in order to develop the self. Doing things for the self and others should be mutually supportive, in balance.
There is decent evidence from biology that human beings are designed to balance self and other interest, and that selfishness kills the individual and isolates them from the supports of society. Angry and judgmental people naturally isolate themselves and have shorter life spans.
Having a pet increases your life span, so caring for others is good for your individual self.
As we will see in Violence week, Lt. Grossman tells us that people will stand up in fire for random strangers in particular situations entirely independent of personality.
Thus, self interest is important for ethics and balance, but not as the sole anchor in the way that Kant and Mill try to make principle or ends the sole point of action.
LECTURE ON PERSPECTIVE:
HERACLITUS, ZHUANG ZI & HEGEL
Perspective is not simply individual, but social. We share reality in so far as we share perspective. This means that we should not only try to see as many perspectives or as much perspective as we can, but also resisting the tendency to accept one’s own perspective as reality or the whole truth. Truth is in each and every perspective, but it is also always beyond and outside of each and every perspective. Focusing on the concept of perspective forces us to affirm our views as truths but also deny our views as the Truth (with a capital T).
Two of the greatest ancient thinkers on perspective are Heraclitus from ancient Greece and Zhuang Zi from ancient China. To consider perspective as an ethical concept we will be looking at the strikingly similar things that these two ancient thinkers say and then end with some insights of the German philosopher Hegel and discoveries of modern psychology.
HERACLITUS:
Heraclitus’ most famous idea is a memorable image: you can never step in the same river twice. Just as a river is always flowing and changing, so is reality always flowing and changing, such that nothing stays exactly the same for any two moments. You step in a river, then step out, then step back in the same river, but it is no longer ‘the same river’. Heraclitus says this is also true of himself.
According to one source, Heraclitus was a king who abandoned the title to become a philosopher. This has been identified as a close resemblance to the story of the Buddha in India, and some scholars have argued that Heraclitus was in fact the Buddha from India while others have argued that the Buddha was in fact Heraclitus from Greece. Both thinkers were mythologized as a king who left powerful king position and became a sage, and both believe in the enlightening sun rising above the watery chaos of reality and human perception, but it is quite likely the two were not the same individual.
Heraclitus is a very skeptical thinker. This does not mean he saw all things as negative. He was convinced that wisdom and inquiring within show us that all is one big cosmic fire, and things that unify the community and the individual bring wholeness and true happiness. However, he believed that humans are often foolish and let their minds divide themselves from the whole and from each other such that their understandings are disjointed and ignorant.
This is very typical thinking of skeptics the world over. A positivist would say that there are specific truths that are certain and must be separated from the uncertain, specific goods that must be separated from the evil. A skeptic would say, like Heraclitus and the Daoists from China, that the truth and the good is the whole and the great One, and the tendency of the mind to divide the good and the true from the rest is the opposite of true understanding and wisdom.
Heraclitus was not a fan of experts and specialists, and he ridiculed the cultural leaders of his time. He says that the common people are completely asleep, but far more dangerous are the experts who have a small piece of the puzzle and say that they know the entire truth. He calls the poets (Hesiod and Homer) and the Pythagoreans frauds, and says that there are no permanent truths or laws other than the constant formation of watery chaos by the sun and cosmic fire.
Notice that this does not question the set up of the cosmos as we have studied it everywhere (and what the Persians gave to the Eastern Greek city states). Many often ask, “Why, then, should I listen to Heraclitus, since he is simply an expert?”. Heraclitus replies as most skeptics do: don’t take my word for it, but look into the world and within yourself and you will find that it is true.
This is a psychological skepticism that is criticizing the human ability to know particular things as permanent that are able to be separated from the One and All (the cosmic fire). Only the All is permanent. All the other things are wandering temporal forms. The many beings arise from the energy of Being, and then they fall back into the fire and disappear. The cosmos resembles the chaos yet order of the human community centered on authority by spoken word. The LOGOS, the word/plan/order/command, is the formative force in the cosmos, the force of fire and light in the watery chaotic world. The cosmic fire speaks with its ever-present Logos (fire over air) and this brings about the firmament in the chaos (the earth rising out of the water). This process, however, does not bring about eternal or stable beings, but chains of beings that are in flux and interdependent.
This goes also for laws, which Heraclitus says have to be defended as if they were city walls. This is sometimes read that Heraclitus thought human law was important and had to be defended, which he did, but in fact he is also telling us that human laws are impermanent like walls made out of earth. They may seem eternal and permanent, but as any former citizen or city of the Persian empire knows, empires fall and impressive city states are overthrown and change hands. The eternal word of the fire forever forms the cosmos, but human speech and walls are temporary, and therefore take force and effort to maintain. As a skeptic, Heraclitus believes that the divisions made by the mind are mortal, not eternal, like the human body. Our knowledge and laws are impermanent like mounds of dirt.
Heraclitus was one of the most famous thinkers of the Greek and Roman world. He was a big influence on Plato, though Plato is very much opposed to his thinking as we will see next week. Both Heraclitus and Plato were big influences on Christianity which initially flourished not in Israel but in Greece and Syria. If a primal speaking of the Word or Logos sounds familiar, Heraclitus was a central influence on the Greek and Roman stoics, and the author of the Gospel of John was almost certainly a Greek stoic writing in Roman times. The opening of the Gospel of John famously reads: the Logos/Word/Order was with God (Fire/Cosmos), and God spoke (“let there be light”) and light was separated from darkness.
It was only in the late 1700s and 1800s that German scholars rediscovered the presocratics and gave them attention and study. Before this time, Greek Philosophy was considered to have originated with Socrates (hence, “presocratics”) and most scholars were only versed in the surviving writings of Plato and Aristotle. Schleiermacher, one of the most famous and central protestant theologians and an opponent of Hegel, was a major force in bringing popularity to Heraclitus and a major translator of Plato. The philosopher Hegel, who we will study later, saw Heraclitus as a skeptic who is put in balance with Plato and other positivists by the course of history itself. Nietzsche, the great skeptical philosopher who we will also study, wrote that he felt closer to Heraclitus than any other thinker. Nietzsche believed, like Heraclitus, that we are proud of our learning and achievement but we are in fact little better than apes.
We are going to go through the fragments according to themes, that show how Heraclitus sees the individual within the cosmos.
(1): The word from which all things follow (Fire-air(spirits)-earth(firm) in water.
Criticism of the experts and knowledge holders, who try for separate essences.
(92, 97, 98, 119, 121, 125)
Criticism of the commoners, asleep and isolated in otherness, (94)
(2): Listen to the great word and all is one, beyond experts and common
(5, 6) Many say they know (certain) but can’t speak and listen (give and take)
(7) Seek the unknown- Knowledge is a blockage (18,19- wisdom beyond- wisdom lit)
(10) Things keep their secrets- unknown in all things
Fire as all things (20, 21, 22, 26, 27, 28)
(25) Air-Fire, Water-Earth (with fragment of souls smell- smoke by both)
Contending tensions/powers set all things (24, 25, 29, 31)
Hot cold and wet dry (39, 40)
Dry soul good, Wet soul pleasured, bad (72)
War is father of all, thus harmonies (46, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61)
(41) River twice, (81) I am and am not like the river (unknown)
(52, 53) Everything has qualities by perspective (relativity)
(71) No depth to soul- explored forever, (80) inquire within
(130) Silence- Healing (Note the parallels with Buddhism out of Jainism)
ZHUANG ZI
Zhuang Zi, the second patriarch of Daoism, lived from 370 to 301 BCE and worked as a manager in a lacquer warehouse, a large ‘factory’ for making vases, bowls and general wood products (like bento boxes). Other than this, we know little of his life other than his work. Daoist tradition holds that Zhuang Zi wrote the ‘inner chapters’ of his work, and that the anecdotes about him and other stories were added by his disciples, the early proto-Daoists.
In several places, we see the idea of perspective which we encountered in Heraclitus. Mao Quiang and Lady Li were famous beautiful women, but fish, birds and deer were frightened by them. Heraclitus said that all human beauty and achievement is nothing but apes to the gods as apes are only apes to us. Who knows what is beautiful, humans, birds, fish, or deer? Which of them knows what tastes good?
Another great passage is the Peng bird who migrates for the Winter, an act which the dove and the cicada (a large insect) find ridiculous. They have no frame of reference to understand such an act. This suggests that the wisdom of Daoism will sound ridiculous and foolish to those who are not experienced and wise. We read in the text "Truth sounds like its opposite!", just as Heraclitus said "The way forward is the way back".
In the Chapter, The Secret of Caring for Life, we meet Cook Ting and his famous butcher’s knife. Cook Ting tells his master that his blade never goes dull, for he can always find the hidden spaces in things, and then his blade goes right through. This is very much like the reasoning of the wise mind, that can use reason to chop anything up easily and naturally, without striking up against anything in opposition.
Notice that Confucius appears many times in the Zhuang Zi, used to argue AGAINST his own position and in favor of a Daoist position. Many times Confucius says that his own way is inferior to the Daoist way. Clearly, these are texts written by Daoists who appreciate the good in Confucianism but think their own school to be superior. For example, page 65, in the chapter ‘The Sign of Virtue Complete’, Confucius says of Wang T’ai, “If you look at them from the point of view of their differences, then there is liver and gall, Ch’u and Yueh (two warring kingdoms in China). But if you look at them from the point of view of their sameness, then the ten thousand things are all one.” I still use this contradiction of one and many to this day. It shows you much about how people make judgments and arguments.
HEGEL AND THE MASTER/SLAVE RELATIONSHIP
Hegel, a German philosopher who lived in the late 1700s and early 1800s, believed that the history of the world and the process of thought in history and the individual was an evolution of perspective that works from opposite sides to bring itself to greater completion. One of the most famous parts of his Phenomenology of Spirit, a history of the evolution of thought, is the Master/Slave dialectic. This concept became very important for anti-sexism (like the feminist De Beauvoir), anti-racism (like Franz Fanon and Angela Davis) and anti-class thinkers (like Hegel’s student Karl Marx). These will be the last three topics for this class, the “Big Three” in universities since the sixties.
Hegel argues that as the self or identity (like a nation) comes into the world, it cannot understand how there can be others like itself that are not itself and so it tries to fight and kill its others. Then the self figures out that it does not have to kill its others and that it is more productive to enslave them (consider that the most selfish individual would tell everyone else “You are wrong” but the slightly smarter but still selfish individual would tell everyone else “That is just what I have been saying”, neither capable of tolerating opinions other than their own).
At first, the master is in the superior position. However, over time, the slave comes to do everything for the master and thus learns through experience while the master grows lazy and ignorant. The slave comes to realize that he can do things he never thought of for someone or something else, comes to grasp subjectivity and perspective, and thus overturns the master and becomes the greater and more highly developed master.
INSIGHTS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY:
INTERNAL/EXTERNAL ATTRIBUTION & THE HOSTILE MEDIA EFFECT
Modern Psychology has learned much from experiments in recent years about how individuals tend to interpret reality. This teaches us many things about perspective that extend and develop what Heraclitus, Zhuang Zi and Hegel had to say.
Internal vs. External Attribution:
Many experiments have confirmed what is often called the actor/observer bias or internal vs. external attribution. If an individual succeeds at a task, they often attribute the success to themselves or the group to which they belong (internal attribution – “I/We are really good at that”). If an individual fails at a task, they often attribute the failure to the situation (external attribution – “It was because of that thing”). However, if the same individual watches another (especially someone disliked or ‘other’ to the individual) succeed at a task, they often attribute the success to the situation (external attribution – “They just got lucky”, or “It was easier that time”), and when they watch another fail at a task, they often attribute the failure to the other person or the group to which they belong (internal attribution – “That shows they are stupid”).
Notice the complete reversal and the contradiction of opposite perspectives given the same evidence. The attribution and perspective is one way or the complete opposite depending on who does the task and whether or not they succeed.
The Hostile Media Effect:
Other experiments have confirmed that both sides of an issue view media coverage and moderation (judges, referees) as hostile to their side. For example, liberals are angry that the media is conservative, and conservatives are angry that the media is liberal. One study at Stanford showed American media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to pro-Israeli students and pro-Palestinian students, and both sides said the coverage was clearly biased in favor of the other side. Another study had students from Princeton and Dartmouth (a big East Coast rivalry) view a Princeton vs. Dartmouth football game, and each group saw more illegal moves on the other side and each said that the referees missed more of these for the other side.
If we consider perspective, anyone in the middle of an issue is to the opposite side of anyone on the edges. I have a card I like that shows children on a see-saw with one standing on the middle, and it reads “I know I am being fair when both sides accuse me of unfairness”. Unfortunately, this is often true in the world of competing and opposite perspectives.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Ethics: Lectures for First Week Summer 2011
Lecture on Aristotle & Virtue, Kant & Morals
Basics of Ancient World Cosmology:
Before getting into Aristotle and his understanding of the virtuous person, it is important to understand the world view of the ancient world. Many ancient cultures (including the Babylonians, the Persians, the Egyptians, the Indians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Chinese, and even the Hawaiians) have a very similar cosmology. Cosmology is the term used to cover the ancient study of the world, which included physics, psychology, biology, medicine, philosophy, religion and most areas of study all together as a single study by the educated and the wise.
The world was thought to be like a big person (making the individual person a microcosm or mini-cosmos within the larger cosmos or world). The elements, including fire, air, earth and water stacked from lightest on the top (fire and air) to heaviest on the bottom (earth and water). This was not only observed in nature (star fire above, winds next, then earth above water) but also in humans (the mind is fire and visions of light, which heats and activates the breath in speech like orders and commands, and the water in the lower regions and functions of the body which often was identified with chaos). Order and reason were identified with the higher elements (fire and air, mind and breath) and chaos and desire were identified with the lower elements (earth and water, flesh and fluid). When the stack of elements is in order the cosmos and the individual are in order, and when the stack of elements are out of order the cosmos and individual are out of order. The higher elements were believed to be eternal just as the cosmos itself and Being are eternal, and the lower elements were believed to be temporary like the individuals and beings are temporary.
One can find in religion and philosophy in ancient cultures (including Christianity, Buddhism, Indian Philosophy, Greek Philosophy and Chinese Philosophy) the same message repeated again and again: reason and the mind must be placed above and in charge of desire and the body. The eternal way of things is to be placed above the temporary ways and wants. This gains the individual wisdom, reason and insight into the workings of the cosmos. When the lower elements are in charge, there is ignorance and destruction. This framework is important for understanding each individual system of ancient thought as well as their overall similarities and differences.
Aristotle (384-322 BCE)
Plato’s student and the tutor of Alexander the Great and Ptolemy, Aristotle is one of the most famous and influential of Greek philosophers. He was primarily interested in biology and speciation, but his works on the soul (mind, self), Logic, Ethics and politics became more important than his works on the animal kingdom. He was a central influence on the origins of Christianity, Islamic thought and European thought in the middle ages. While he is sometimes called the first scientist and the first logician, his views on these subjects expanded ancient world cosmology and were not the birth of these subjects. Aristotle has been claimed by the West as a founder, but the Islamic world also considers him one of their own and he is depicted in different ways depending on who does the illustrating (see the beautiful Islamic image in the Wikipedia article that portrays him as a very dark skinned holy sage for an interesting counter to Renaissance paintings).
Aristotle’s conception of virtue and human purpose is entirely in line with ancient world cosmology. He believes that everything has a single purpose for which it is intended. It is as if the cosmos, Being itself, is a big mind that creates things for particular uses, and individual beings thrive if they are serving their purposes (ergon in the Greek, or “work”, “job”). We are reasonable to the degree that we see the purposes of things, serve our own natural purpose and use things in accord with their natural purposes. This is known as the teleological view, as the study of purpose is called teleology. Notice that teleology is very big with more traditional people today (including evangelical Christians) but modern Philosophy and Science have broken from this view and find it quite antiquated.
For Aristotle, having oneself in the proper stack and order is being in accord with one’s nature, and this means putting theory and soul/intellect on top and putting each lower element of our minds and bodies in the service of the highest part of the mind, the intellect, which corresponds to the highest good of the cosmos itself. Just as the intellect should be pursued because it is the best and highest part, the good itself should be pursued simply in itself and for no other purpose. This is similar to Kant and Moral theory, but absolutely at odds with Mill and consequentialism which believe that good is the end of things but would not say that intellect should be pursued in itself without regards to the consequences and practical ends. Aristotle does believe that the human individual will naturally flourish and be happy if they are stacked up right and in accord with the human purpose of intellectual activity, but this is secondary and the byproduct of serving ones purpose.
Similarly, in matters of politics, Aristotle believes that the city is not primarily a living arrangement but rather for producing the elite and the virtuous. Thus, the city is not for making people happy but having each individual do their natural job. Just like his teacher Plato argues in his Republic, Aristotle argues that each person must have one thing they do best and it is therefore best for them to do that thing and that one thing only. Unfortunately, both Plato and Aristotle argued that slaves and peasants are meant to serve the aristocracy and women are clearly meant to serve men (Mill will strongly criticize these views, one of the first and few outspoken critics of the subjugation of slaves and women).
Consider the example of lying. The moralist would say that lying is wrong in and of itself, like Kant argues that lying goes against our reason by categorical necessity. The consequentialist would say that lying has bad consequences and results in pain and unhappiness. The virtue theorist, however, would argue that the purpose of the mind and human being is truth in and of itself and so lying is not in accord with human nature (or rather, righteous and proper human nature).
Modern Virtue Theory
While Aristotle’s virtue ethics and teleological theory were popular in the middle ages in Europe, there was a decline during the 1700s and 1800s as science rose to prominence and questioned teleology. Kant’s laws and Mill’s consequences became the dueling positions of ethics. Recently, however, there has been a revival of virtue theory that rose along with increasing individualism and criticism of positivistic conceptions of science. If we become critical of the idea that there are simple laws that can be known, it opens a space for a return to the idea of the virtuous person beyond airtight moral laws or the complete calculation of consequences.
However, if we do not believe that things have simple and singular purposes just as we have grown critical of laws and calculation, virtue ethics has a problem: what virtues should the virtuous person have? Often these virtues are mental: intellect, wisdom, reason, and understanding. This has been neglectful of the physical body (the home of the physical brain, of course). Another issue that has come to light is the interpersonal aspect of virtue. Virtue has typically been described as personal, but the individual is naturally social (curiously Aristotle argues this when justifying his political views of the city and its proper organization). Confucius, one of the great moral geniuses of the world, has a very interpersonal view of ethics and thus we will consider his views next under the concept of balance (such as the balance of self and other).
As a final note, consider Jain (the ancient Indian forerunner of Buddhism) anti-merit theory:
In Hinduism and Buddhism, karma can be positive (merit and blessing) or negative (demerit and sin). Thus, karma can either help you up or drag you down. For Jains, karma is ALWAYS NEGATIVE, always weight that keeps you down, always division or blockage between you and the ALL. Thus, one tries best to avoid accumulating karma and to destroy the karma one has already accumulated. Jains are famous for their doctrine of the negativity of karma and the radical nonviolence that follows from this principle. Jains wear masks to prevent insects from flying in their mouths, sweep the ground to avoid killing insects (even though the killing would be unintentional, it would still be an accumulation of karma), influenced other Indian thought in promoting vegetarianism, and even don’t eat root vegetables as it kills (up-roots) the whole plant rather than that plucked from the plant. Thus, any accumulation of virtue or merit is distinguishing and distancing oneself from the whole. Sharing much with ancient cosmology and Aristotle, Jains would argue that the purpose of the individual is to join the whole without distinction and therefore we should work to LOSE merit and karma, not gain it. Kant, Principles and
Morals
Kant (1724-1804) was the European philosopher who argued for always following morals and laws universally. His position is opposed by Mill, who believed that morals are only in the service of getting good consequences. This is one of the biggest oppositions of perspectives in ethics. Should we create morals and laws and always stick to them, or should we do whatever results in the best consequences?
As Europe rose in the 1600s and 1700s, science had begun discovering many new truths about the world. This created an opposition between rationalists who believed that the world has absolute laws that we can know certainly by reason and empiricists who believed that we can only assume what we know and that the rules our reason finds could be wrong. One of the most famous empiricists was Hume, who argued that one can only assume that one billiard ball causes the other billiard ball to move.
Kant was "awoken from his dogmatic slumbers" by Hume. Kant wanted to balance empiricism with rationalism, but he comes down on the rationalist side. In all knowledge, including ethics, Kant believed we must use our reason to figure out the universal laws of our rational and ordered universe. Notice that Kant, as a rationalist, trusts that the world and the mind are reasonable and that there are universal laws out there for us to grasp.
The central example we will consider is the moral "Do Not Lie". Kant believed that one should never lie, and our reason can show us this with certainty. He argued that one is seeking unconditional and universal laws in ethics (as well as every area of human knowledge), which Kant also calls categorical imperatives, and so one should only act in a way that one could expect everyone to always act everywhere at any time. If everyone lied all the time, then society would collapse. Therefore, Kant argued, it is one's duty to not lie and hold to this moral and law.
Consider the "guy with the butcher knife" thought experiment. Let us say you are at home, and the doorbell rings. You answer it, and your friend runs in looking afraid. A minute later the doorbell rings again, you answer it, and a scary guy with a butcher knife asks you where your friend is. Kant would allow one to shut the door and say nothing, but Kant would argue that it is wrong to lie to the scary guy and say you don't know or that your friend took off down the street the other way. Even though we can assume that if you lie it would improve your friend's chances of living, Kant would argue that this would be wrong. We can contrast this with the position of Mill and utilitarianism, which would argue that in some circumstances the lie is the lesser of two evils and one should behave in accord with the ends of ones actions rather than stick rigidly to morals and laws.
An interesting issue here is that rationalists and positivists like Kant believe that one should anchor ethics in good beginnings while empiricists and skeptics believe one should anchor ethics in good ends. Kant believes that one must start with good intentions and principles no matter the consequences, while Mill believes that one should aim at the best consequences no matter the principles or intentions one has. As usual, both sides agree that one should have good intentions, principles and consequences, but they come down on opposite sides when arguing for what is really the essence or importance of the matter.
We will come to Mill's position in the coming weeks. Another contrary position to both Kant and Mill is Nietzsche, who we will also hear from soon. Nietzsche does not trust human reason, so he trusts neither Kant nor Mill. Nietzsche argues that people who believe they know the true morals and people who say they know what led to the best consequences for everyone are capable of deceiving themselves and thinking they know what is best for everyone.
Lecture on Mill and Utilitarianism
The last class focused on ethical concepts that focus on the beginning or cause of an action rather than the end or consequence (with the possible exception of balance, which suggests a medium of the two). Today, we focus on consequentialism and its foremost school, Utilitarianism. Thus, I had you read the first two chapters of John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism. In this work, Mill argues that we should always look at our actions and ask if the consequences are ethical (do good/make people happy and reduce harm/pain). He specifically mentions Kant as wrong about principle and mentions virtue ethics as well, claiming that these two conceptions ignore how we use principle and virtue for happiness and reduction of harm by taking each as a good in itself out of context.
Mill notes: if you call it Utilitarianism, people think it is dry and boring.
If you call it Principle of Happiness or Pleasure first, people think its decadent.
This is why people called Epicurus decadent.
Brief Tradition of Consequentialism
(included in Mill’s own text)
Epicurus (340-270 BCE)
Greek philosopher who believed that happiness was the most important thing, and all virtues, purposes and ends are subordinate to it. From him we get the word ‘Epicurean’ as in ‘Gourmet’, one who appreciates the finer more pleasant tastes of things. As Mill notes, Epicurus was attacked as a glutton in his time, but he actually had a taste for thought, civilization, and what Mill calls the ‘higher virtues’, mental pleasures in giving to others rather than physical selfish pleasures of drinking every night. Mill argues that Epicurus took the long view just as he did, so his opponents are wrong to call happy principle people “swine”.
Jeremy Bentham (1750-1830 CE)
The first to come up with Utilitarianism, but Mill gave it the name.
Bentham believed in max happiness, while Mill complimented this with min pain.
Bentham also believed that simple and common pleasures are just as good as sophisticated, saying the common plays are just as good as fine opera.
Mill rejected this, believing that fine society was of a higher happiness than common culture, as mental pleasure is superior to physical, as selfless pleasures (giving to others) makes one happier than selfish pleasures (receiving from others).
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873 CE)
Born in London, Mill was influenced by Ancient Greek, French, and liberal thought.
His father wrote a history of India, and Mill was for a time involved with his father in the British East India company, the corporation that helped Britain maintain their hold over India. Mill’s family was friends with the Bentham family, from whom Mill took up his consequentialist, ‘happy principle’ thought. However, it was Mill who found the name ‘utilitarian’ in a Christian text talking about how evil it was to fall into it rather than believe in the principle as good, and he added the name and developed the thinking, becoming its famous spokesman.
Mill is a central thinker in Logic, Economics and Ethics.
His liberal social thought is his most famous. He argued for equal rights for all, the end to the subjugation of women and slavery.
Mill’s text: Utilitarianism
Mill’s harm principle as the principle to end principles, putting all focus on harmful consequences. This is not simply ease or expediency in limited personal vision, but the long view over time of what makes people happy and saves them from pain.
Notice: Mill completely agrees with Kant, we need a test for principles and an overall principle to serve as this text. For Kant, this test is ‘can it always be followed?’, while for Mill the test is ‘does following the principle make people happy as a consequence?’.
Both come up with a supreme principle.
Thus, for Kant, one should never lie because the principle is most important as beginning or all good action, while for Mill, one should never lie as long as this has good consequences because this is the most important as end of all good action.
Kant says: Always follow principle, and you will likely be happy.
Mill says: Always follow happiness (self and others), and you will likely be principled.
Both also come up with a pure ‘good in itself’: Kant’s is intention (the good-in-itself beginning of an act) and Mill’s is happiness (the good-in-itself end of an act). Both say that it is impossible to argue for this good-in-itself, but it simply shows itself in us.
We can see two sides to the Utilitarian Principle, maximizing positive and minimizing negative. Bentham says: Always act to maximize happiness. Mill agrees, but says the MOST important thing is to minimize the negative (at least, this is what scholars concur in reading his writings and comparing them to Bentham’s today). Thus, we see the whole principle is ‘max happy and min pain’, but one can lean either way on it. There are times when maximum happiness can cause much pain (majority over the minority, which Mill speaks about vs. Bentham), and there are times when minimum pain hurts maximum happiness (overprotective parenting, insurance issues, have to break some eggs etc).
Mill admits that there will be continuous problems whichever way we use the principle, but we are evolving in a positive direction slowly and we should stick to the Utilitarian view even when there are problems if we truly (and he thinks we do) desire good consequences basically as human beings.
Attacks on Utilitarianism:
Mill addresses many of these directly in the text.
Interesting Paradox/Problem for Utilitarianism: the Good of the Bad as Example
Mill notes this, as do other modern writers on Utilitarianism noting as Mill does that this is a common attack against the Utilitarian principle as ethical conception/system.
COMPARE: PBS documentaries all the time on slavery and the US overcoming slavery as freedom and our view as Americans of the type of place South Africa is.
COMPARE: Prosecuting Attorney arguing that someone is a habitual criminal so latest normal behavior is prime for relapse vs. Defense Attorney pointing at the same evidence as reform and pulling one’s life together as normal from bad upbringing and environment.
Dennett uses three mile island as ex: this caused good nuclear standards to follow, so we could say as a utilitarian that the catastrophe was just as good as people simply coming up with the standards without the disaster.
Consider that we love villains who go from good to bad and heroes who go from bad to good. We can very easily see bad as good and good as bad.
The attack on Utilitarianism says that it is prone to confusing bad with good especially compared to systems of principles or rights that are given, not based on their consequences
Marx attacks Utilitarianism with a common argument today: guess who are the ones to tell you what is useful or makes us happy? Yes: the upper class, who use the lower class as labor. Obviously, it is the task master or overseer and not the worker who gets to say who is useful in their place and how happy the system is overall.
Mill in fact approves of war to advance civilization, and he approves of colonialism as improving the uncivilized. Marx and us could criticize him for this short sightedness.
HOWEVER, Mill was a champion against the enslavement of Black people and the second class status of women. He was an early champion of both, so this is mixed.
He writes, in 1850 on ‘The Negro Question’ words I love:
“It is curious, withal, that the earliest known civilization was, we have the strongest reason to believe, a negro civilization. The original Egyptians are inferred, from the evidence of their sculptures, to have been a negro race: it was from negroes, therefore, that the Greeks learnt their first lessons in civilization; and to the records and traditions of these negroes did the Greek Philosophers to the very end of their career resort (I do not say with much fruit) as a treasury of mysterious wisdom.”
Defense against anti-environment challenge:
Many could say that ‘use’ and ‘happy’ can easily lead to how we abuse the environment.
More relevant today, Mill loved deep forests and argued that wilderness was necessary in the long view of use and happiness. We will read on wilderness for environmental week. This poses us an interesting question: when utilitarianism asks us to take the long view, how long a view can we take? If we pollute the earth and ignore it for hundreds of years, our long view can still be too short.
Basics of Ancient World Cosmology:
Before getting into Aristotle and his understanding of the virtuous person, it is important to understand the world view of the ancient world. Many ancient cultures (including the Babylonians, the Persians, the Egyptians, the Indians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Chinese, and even the Hawaiians) have a very similar cosmology. Cosmology is the term used to cover the ancient study of the world, which included physics, psychology, biology, medicine, philosophy, religion and most areas of study all together as a single study by the educated and the wise.
The world was thought to be like a big person (making the individual person a microcosm or mini-cosmos within the larger cosmos or world). The elements, including fire, air, earth and water stacked from lightest on the top (fire and air) to heaviest on the bottom (earth and water). This was not only observed in nature (star fire above, winds next, then earth above water) but also in humans (the mind is fire and visions of light, which heats and activates the breath in speech like orders and commands, and the water in the lower regions and functions of the body which often was identified with chaos). Order and reason were identified with the higher elements (fire and air, mind and breath) and chaos and desire were identified with the lower elements (earth and water, flesh and fluid). When the stack of elements is in order the cosmos and the individual are in order, and when the stack of elements are out of order the cosmos and individual are out of order. The higher elements were believed to be eternal just as the cosmos itself and Being are eternal, and the lower elements were believed to be temporary like the individuals and beings are temporary.
One can find in religion and philosophy in ancient cultures (including Christianity, Buddhism, Indian Philosophy, Greek Philosophy and Chinese Philosophy) the same message repeated again and again: reason and the mind must be placed above and in charge of desire and the body. The eternal way of things is to be placed above the temporary ways and wants. This gains the individual wisdom, reason and insight into the workings of the cosmos. When the lower elements are in charge, there is ignorance and destruction. This framework is important for understanding each individual system of ancient thought as well as their overall similarities and differences.
Aristotle (384-322 BCE)
Plato’s student and the tutor of Alexander the Great and Ptolemy, Aristotle is one of the most famous and influential of Greek philosophers. He was primarily interested in biology and speciation, but his works on the soul (mind, self), Logic, Ethics and politics became more important than his works on the animal kingdom. He was a central influence on the origins of Christianity, Islamic thought and European thought in the middle ages. While he is sometimes called the first scientist and the first logician, his views on these subjects expanded ancient world cosmology and were not the birth of these subjects. Aristotle has been claimed by the West as a founder, but the Islamic world also considers him one of their own and he is depicted in different ways depending on who does the illustrating (see the beautiful Islamic image in the Wikipedia article that portrays him as a very dark skinned holy sage for an interesting counter to Renaissance paintings).
Aristotle’s conception of virtue and human purpose is entirely in line with ancient world cosmology. He believes that everything has a single purpose for which it is intended. It is as if the cosmos, Being itself, is a big mind that creates things for particular uses, and individual beings thrive if they are serving their purposes (ergon in the Greek, or “work”, “job”). We are reasonable to the degree that we see the purposes of things, serve our own natural purpose and use things in accord with their natural purposes. This is known as the teleological view, as the study of purpose is called teleology. Notice that teleology is very big with more traditional people today (including evangelical Christians) but modern Philosophy and Science have broken from this view and find it quite antiquated.
For Aristotle, having oneself in the proper stack and order is being in accord with one’s nature, and this means putting theory and soul/intellect on top and putting each lower element of our minds and bodies in the service of the highest part of the mind, the intellect, which corresponds to the highest good of the cosmos itself. Just as the intellect should be pursued because it is the best and highest part, the good itself should be pursued simply in itself and for no other purpose. This is similar to Kant and Moral theory, but absolutely at odds with Mill and consequentialism which believe that good is the end of things but would not say that intellect should be pursued in itself without regards to the consequences and practical ends. Aristotle does believe that the human individual will naturally flourish and be happy if they are stacked up right and in accord with the human purpose of intellectual activity, but this is secondary and the byproduct of serving ones purpose.
Similarly, in matters of politics, Aristotle believes that the city is not primarily a living arrangement but rather for producing the elite and the virtuous. Thus, the city is not for making people happy but having each individual do their natural job. Just like his teacher Plato argues in his Republic, Aristotle argues that each person must have one thing they do best and it is therefore best for them to do that thing and that one thing only. Unfortunately, both Plato and Aristotle argued that slaves and peasants are meant to serve the aristocracy and women are clearly meant to serve men (Mill will strongly criticize these views, one of the first and few outspoken critics of the subjugation of slaves and women).
Consider the example of lying. The moralist would say that lying is wrong in and of itself, like Kant argues that lying goes against our reason by categorical necessity. The consequentialist would say that lying has bad consequences and results in pain and unhappiness. The virtue theorist, however, would argue that the purpose of the mind and human being is truth in and of itself and so lying is not in accord with human nature (or rather, righteous and proper human nature).
Modern Virtue Theory
While Aristotle’s virtue ethics and teleological theory were popular in the middle ages in Europe, there was a decline during the 1700s and 1800s as science rose to prominence and questioned teleology. Kant’s laws and Mill’s consequences became the dueling positions of ethics. Recently, however, there has been a revival of virtue theory that rose along with increasing individualism and criticism of positivistic conceptions of science. If we become critical of the idea that there are simple laws that can be known, it opens a space for a return to the idea of the virtuous person beyond airtight moral laws or the complete calculation of consequences.
However, if we do not believe that things have simple and singular purposes just as we have grown critical of laws and calculation, virtue ethics has a problem: what virtues should the virtuous person have? Often these virtues are mental: intellect, wisdom, reason, and understanding. This has been neglectful of the physical body (the home of the physical brain, of course). Another issue that has come to light is the interpersonal aspect of virtue. Virtue has typically been described as personal, but the individual is naturally social (curiously Aristotle argues this when justifying his political views of the city and its proper organization). Confucius, one of the great moral geniuses of the world, has a very interpersonal view of ethics and thus we will consider his views next under the concept of balance (such as the balance of self and other).
As a final note, consider Jain (the ancient Indian forerunner of Buddhism) anti-merit theory:
In Hinduism and Buddhism, karma can be positive (merit and blessing) or negative (demerit and sin). Thus, karma can either help you up or drag you down. For Jains, karma is ALWAYS NEGATIVE, always weight that keeps you down, always division or blockage between you and the ALL. Thus, one tries best to avoid accumulating karma and to destroy the karma one has already accumulated. Jains are famous for their doctrine of the negativity of karma and the radical nonviolence that follows from this principle. Jains wear masks to prevent insects from flying in their mouths, sweep the ground to avoid killing insects (even though the killing would be unintentional, it would still be an accumulation of karma), influenced other Indian thought in promoting vegetarianism, and even don’t eat root vegetables as it kills (up-roots) the whole plant rather than that plucked from the plant. Thus, any accumulation of virtue or merit is distinguishing and distancing oneself from the whole. Sharing much with ancient cosmology and Aristotle, Jains would argue that the purpose of the individual is to join the whole without distinction and therefore we should work to LOSE merit and karma, not gain it. Kant, Principles and
Morals
Kant (1724-1804) was the European philosopher who argued for always following morals and laws universally. His position is opposed by Mill, who believed that morals are only in the service of getting good consequences. This is one of the biggest oppositions of perspectives in ethics. Should we create morals and laws and always stick to them, or should we do whatever results in the best consequences?
As Europe rose in the 1600s and 1700s, science had begun discovering many new truths about the world. This created an opposition between rationalists who believed that the world has absolute laws that we can know certainly by reason and empiricists who believed that we can only assume what we know and that the rules our reason finds could be wrong. One of the most famous empiricists was Hume, who argued that one can only assume that one billiard ball causes the other billiard ball to move.
Kant was "awoken from his dogmatic slumbers" by Hume. Kant wanted to balance empiricism with rationalism, but he comes down on the rationalist side. In all knowledge, including ethics, Kant believed we must use our reason to figure out the universal laws of our rational and ordered universe. Notice that Kant, as a rationalist, trusts that the world and the mind are reasonable and that there are universal laws out there for us to grasp.
The central example we will consider is the moral "Do Not Lie". Kant believed that one should never lie, and our reason can show us this with certainty. He argued that one is seeking unconditional and universal laws in ethics (as well as every area of human knowledge), which Kant also calls categorical imperatives, and so one should only act in a way that one could expect everyone to always act everywhere at any time. If everyone lied all the time, then society would collapse. Therefore, Kant argued, it is one's duty to not lie and hold to this moral and law.
Consider the "guy with the butcher knife" thought experiment. Let us say you are at home, and the doorbell rings. You answer it, and your friend runs in looking afraid. A minute later the doorbell rings again, you answer it, and a scary guy with a butcher knife asks you where your friend is. Kant would allow one to shut the door and say nothing, but Kant would argue that it is wrong to lie to the scary guy and say you don't know or that your friend took off down the street the other way. Even though we can assume that if you lie it would improve your friend's chances of living, Kant would argue that this would be wrong. We can contrast this with the position of Mill and utilitarianism, which would argue that in some circumstances the lie is the lesser of two evils and one should behave in accord with the ends of ones actions rather than stick rigidly to morals and laws.
An interesting issue here is that rationalists and positivists like Kant believe that one should anchor ethics in good beginnings while empiricists and skeptics believe one should anchor ethics in good ends. Kant believes that one must start with good intentions and principles no matter the consequences, while Mill believes that one should aim at the best consequences no matter the principles or intentions one has. As usual, both sides agree that one should have good intentions, principles and consequences, but they come down on opposite sides when arguing for what is really the essence or importance of the matter.
We will come to Mill's position in the coming weeks. Another contrary position to both Kant and Mill is Nietzsche, who we will also hear from soon. Nietzsche does not trust human reason, so he trusts neither Kant nor Mill. Nietzsche argues that people who believe they know the true morals and people who say they know what led to the best consequences for everyone are capable of deceiving themselves and thinking they know what is best for everyone.
Lecture on Mill and Utilitarianism
The last class focused on ethical concepts that focus on the beginning or cause of an action rather than the end or consequence (with the possible exception of balance, which suggests a medium of the two). Today, we focus on consequentialism and its foremost school, Utilitarianism. Thus, I had you read the first two chapters of John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism. In this work, Mill argues that we should always look at our actions and ask if the consequences are ethical (do good/make people happy and reduce harm/pain). He specifically mentions Kant as wrong about principle and mentions virtue ethics as well, claiming that these two conceptions ignore how we use principle and virtue for happiness and reduction of harm by taking each as a good in itself out of context.
Mill notes: if you call it Utilitarianism, people think it is dry and boring.
If you call it Principle of Happiness or Pleasure first, people think its decadent.
This is why people called Epicurus decadent.
Brief Tradition of Consequentialism
(included in Mill’s own text)
Epicurus (340-270 BCE)
Greek philosopher who believed that happiness was the most important thing, and all virtues, purposes and ends are subordinate to it. From him we get the word ‘Epicurean’ as in ‘Gourmet’, one who appreciates the finer more pleasant tastes of things. As Mill notes, Epicurus was attacked as a glutton in his time, but he actually had a taste for thought, civilization, and what Mill calls the ‘higher virtues’, mental pleasures in giving to others rather than physical selfish pleasures of drinking every night. Mill argues that Epicurus took the long view just as he did, so his opponents are wrong to call happy principle people “swine”.
Jeremy Bentham (1750-1830 CE)
The first to come up with Utilitarianism, but Mill gave it the name.
Bentham believed in max happiness, while Mill complimented this with min pain.
Bentham also believed that simple and common pleasures are just as good as sophisticated, saying the common plays are just as good as fine opera.
Mill rejected this, believing that fine society was of a higher happiness than common culture, as mental pleasure is superior to physical, as selfless pleasures (giving to others) makes one happier than selfish pleasures (receiving from others).
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873 CE)
Born in London, Mill was influenced by Ancient Greek, French, and liberal thought.
His father wrote a history of India, and Mill was for a time involved with his father in the British East India company, the corporation that helped Britain maintain their hold over India. Mill’s family was friends with the Bentham family, from whom Mill took up his consequentialist, ‘happy principle’ thought. However, it was Mill who found the name ‘utilitarian’ in a Christian text talking about how evil it was to fall into it rather than believe in the principle as good, and he added the name and developed the thinking, becoming its famous spokesman.
Mill is a central thinker in Logic, Economics and Ethics.
His liberal social thought is his most famous. He argued for equal rights for all, the end to the subjugation of women and slavery.
Mill’s text: Utilitarianism
Mill’s harm principle as the principle to end principles, putting all focus on harmful consequences. This is not simply ease or expediency in limited personal vision, but the long view over time of what makes people happy and saves them from pain.
Notice: Mill completely agrees with Kant, we need a test for principles and an overall principle to serve as this text. For Kant, this test is ‘can it always be followed?’, while for Mill the test is ‘does following the principle make people happy as a consequence?’.
Both come up with a supreme principle.
Thus, for Kant, one should never lie because the principle is most important as beginning or all good action, while for Mill, one should never lie as long as this has good consequences because this is the most important as end of all good action.
Kant says: Always follow principle, and you will likely be happy.
Mill says: Always follow happiness (self and others), and you will likely be principled.
Both also come up with a pure ‘good in itself’: Kant’s is intention (the good-in-itself beginning of an act) and Mill’s is happiness (the good-in-itself end of an act). Both say that it is impossible to argue for this good-in-itself, but it simply shows itself in us.
We can see two sides to the Utilitarian Principle, maximizing positive and minimizing negative. Bentham says: Always act to maximize happiness. Mill agrees, but says the MOST important thing is to minimize the negative (at least, this is what scholars concur in reading his writings and comparing them to Bentham’s today). Thus, we see the whole principle is ‘max happy and min pain’, but one can lean either way on it. There are times when maximum happiness can cause much pain (majority over the minority, which Mill speaks about vs. Bentham), and there are times when minimum pain hurts maximum happiness (overprotective parenting, insurance issues, have to break some eggs etc).
Mill admits that there will be continuous problems whichever way we use the principle, but we are evolving in a positive direction slowly and we should stick to the Utilitarian view even when there are problems if we truly (and he thinks we do) desire good consequences basically as human beings.
Attacks on Utilitarianism:
Mill addresses many of these directly in the text.
Interesting Paradox/Problem for Utilitarianism: the Good of the Bad as Example
Mill notes this, as do other modern writers on Utilitarianism noting as Mill does that this is a common attack against the Utilitarian principle as ethical conception/system.
COMPARE: PBS documentaries all the time on slavery and the US overcoming slavery as freedom and our view as Americans of the type of place South Africa is.
COMPARE: Prosecuting Attorney arguing that someone is a habitual criminal so latest normal behavior is prime for relapse vs. Defense Attorney pointing at the same evidence as reform and pulling one’s life together as normal from bad upbringing and environment.
Dennett uses three mile island as ex: this caused good nuclear standards to follow, so we could say as a utilitarian that the catastrophe was just as good as people simply coming up with the standards without the disaster.
Consider that we love villains who go from good to bad and heroes who go from bad to good. We can very easily see bad as good and good as bad.
The attack on Utilitarianism says that it is prone to confusing bad with good especially compared to systems of principles or rights that are given, not based on their consequences
Marx attacks Utilitarianism with a common argument today: guess who are the ones to tell you what is useful or makes us happy? Yes: the upper class, who use the lower class as labor. Obviously, it is the task master or overseer and not the worker who gets to say who is useful in their place and how happy the system is overall.
Mill in fact approves of war to advance civilization, and he approves of colonialism as improving the uncivilized. Marx and us could criticize him for this short sightedness.
HOWEVER, Mill was a champion against the enslavement of Black people and the second class status of women. He was an early champion of both, so this is mixed.
He writes, in 1850 on ‘The Negro Question’ words I love:
“It is curious, withal, that the earliest known civilization was, we have the strongest reason to believe, a negro civilization. The original Egyptians are inferred, from the evidence of their sculptures, to have been a negro race: it was from negroes, therefore, that the Greeks learnt their first lessons in civilization; and to the records and traditions of these negroes did the Greek Philosophers to the very end of their career resort (I do not say with much fruit) as a treasury of mysterious wisdom.”
Defense against anti-environment challenge:
Many could say that ‘use’ and ‘happy’ can easily lead to how we abuse the environment.
More relevant today, Mill loved deep forests and argued that wilderness was necessary in the long view of use and happiness. We will read on wilderness for environmental week. This poses us an interesting question: when utilitarianism asks us to take the long view, how long a view can we take? If we pollute the earth and ignore it for hundreds of years, our long view can still be too short.
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Violence and the Exploitation of Counter-Violence
Reading about the KKK in the South I just came upon their strategy of "violence and the subsequent exploitation of counter-violence". It strikes me that hate and the exploitation of counter-hate is equally important in human affairs. While the Klan may not be bright enough to have this as a conscious strategy, in studying sexism and racism the last few weeks for Ethics and Social & Political Philosophy it is common for a reactionary group to be labeled as the very problem they oppose. Feminists are seen as "man-hating" sexists and black and Latino groups are seen as white-hating racists. While nations such as the UK and US brutalize other countries, the reaction against it is seen as the hate and the terrorism.
It is true that everyone hates and everyone is capable of violence, so those who fight fire with fire are indeed engaged in the problematic and all-too-human. However, the real issue is the hypocrisy, the inability of human beings to see in themselves what they see clearly in others. Thus, after Klan members killed four middle aged black women with shotguns drive-by style in Chattanooga, Tennessee (1980), the black riots that followed the light jail sentence were used by the Klan as clear evidence that they stood for justice and defense of the white population. The counter-violence was used as a recruiting tool.
There is no easy solution to this problem. It may be that we will always swim upstream, but as it is with so many things in life, transparency, the ability to see all sides of what is going on, is a worthy goal and sometimes is the difference between life and death.
It is true that everyone hates and everyone is capable of violence, so those who fight fire with fire are indeed engaged in the problematic and all-too-human. However, the real issue is the hypocrisy, the inability of human beings to see in themselves what they see clearly in others. Thus, after Klan members killed four middle aged black women with shotguns drive-by style in Chattanooga, Tennessee (1980), the black riots that followed the light jail sentence were used by the Klan as clear evidence that they stood for justice and defense of the white population. The counter-violence was used as a recruiting tool.
There is no easy solution to this problem. It may be that we will always swim upstream, but as it is with so many things in life, transparency, the ability to see all sides of what is going on, is a worthy goal and sometimes is the difference between life and death.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
John Cleese of Monty Python vs. Extremism
I thought this would be appropriate as a post for Social & Political Philosophy. Why do we not have TV this good? Enjoy!
http://youtu.be/HLNhPMQnWu4
http://youtu.be/HLNhPMQnWu4
Social & Political Philosophy: 4th Response Essay Topic
The fourth response essay can go either of two directions. We have studied fascism, anarchism, post-colonialism and feminism since the third response essay. Fascism is a heavy top-down authoritarian system, while the other three are bottom-up struggles for common power. You can either compare fascism to capitalism, communism or socialism, OR you can write on anarchism, post-colonialism and feminism as responses to top-down power.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Social & Political Philosophy: Final Review
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
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
Monday, May 16, 2011
Social & Political Philosophy: bell hooks & Judith Butler
bell hooks (1952 – present)
Born Gloria Jean Watkins, bell hooks (yes, spelled lower case on purpose) is a feminist and social philosopher who argues that class, gender and race are complexly connected. Critical of second wave 60s feminism focusing on sexism to the neglect of racism and the gap between the rich and the poor, she labeled herself a womanist (not in spell check, but now added to my dictionary) and argued much like Foucault did with Chomsky that power, even resistance movements, reinscribes itself and thus feminism can itself be a marginalizing force. This is also similar to Judith Butler, who views culture and feminism as a complex and not as a simple struggle between the forces of good and evil. While feminism made gains in the 60s and continues to do so today, bell hooks was critical of the movement as it was populated mostly by white college women who are upper and middle class, live in first world countries such as the US and UK, and disconnected from the lives of many women who are impoverished, are unable to attend college or a good career, and who are overwhelmingly of European descent. Consider the shows criticized by feminists today, such as Ali McBeal, Sex and the City, and Bridget Jones’ Diary.
One of the most frequently cited sources of the third wave of feminism, bell hooks argues that feminism is for everyone, not just middle and upper class college girls and career minded women. Growing up first in segregated schools and then in predominantly white schools, she saw firsthand that progressives and educators can support prejudice while fighting for change. She studied at UC Santa Cruz and began teaching in 1976 at USC, then later at Santa Cruz, Yale and SF State. She first wrote poetry under her grandmother’s name, Bell Hooks, later keeping the name as she wrote nonfictional essays and books. One of her early and most famous books is Ain’t I A Woman? Black Women and Feminism (1981), which examines the dual marginalization of black women in a patriarchal and racist society. The title is inspired by Sojourner Truth, a black abolitionist and feminist living in the late 1800s whose speech Ain't I a Woman is a celebrated work of women’s rights. She is critical of black men’s sexism towards black women, the marginalization of the poor by the powerful, and white racism and white supremacism in culture and media.
While some are critical of her work, like Foucault she is suspicious of any side that calls itself the true and the objective, including feminist and black consciousness movements. For this, many call her, as they do Foucault and Butler, a post-modernist, a skeptic of conceptions of absolute truth and a believer in perspectivism and historicism, that truth is always in a particular perspective situated in a particular time and place. This is similar to Trotsky and Heidegger in so far as power and knowledge must continuously transform themselves. A movement such as feminism must thus be continuously critical of itself and understand itself as a diverse group of various strategies and perspectives. I am particularly inspired by her view of education and teaching. She argues that schools can operate as mind control centers that breed conformity and complacency with injustice such as institutional racism and sexism, but they should operate as open spaces where individuals are invited to question their culture, assumptions and ideas.
Judith Butler (1956 – present)
Another celebrated source of feminist philosophy, particularly post-structuralist and post-modernist third wave feminism which is critical of power like Foucault, is Judith Butler, a professor at UCB and one of the most famous feminist thinkers today. She wrote her thesis at Yale on Hegel and understanding individuality in French history. Like bell hooks, she began to question feminism and its assumptions, particularly the monolithic “us vs. them” mentality that is unreflective and untransparent not only in its assumptions but in its masking the diversity of the feminist movement.
A political philosopher beyond the focus on feminism, I myself saw her give a recent talk (in jeans and a black t-shirt in front of a well dressed audience) on Palestinians and how their suffering is perceived and framed in the US and UK, particularly on how suicide bombers understand themselves and their actions and how they are understood by outsiders. This is very similar to her work on gender in locating truth in a human body as a performance in time and space. As she is Jewish, she has been praised for this, her most recent work by pro-Palestinian groups and opposed by pro-Israel groups and authors as a traitor and fool. I particularly admire thinkers who stand up against what they believe are injustices of their own culture and people.
Butler’s famous feminist idea is performative gender, that gender, and all identity, is a performance. Wearing a dress, applying make-up and watching certain types of TV shows are obvious examples of how traditional women’s gender is performed. In her most famous book, Gender Trouble, she particularly uses Foucault as inspiration to critically examine gender and how it is prescribed and reinscribed through the actions of people as they identify themselves with a particular gender. Like Hegel and Foucault, this is a historical view of truth that suggests that gender and identity are cultural constructs. Like Foucault and Fanon, Butler is critical of binary divisions and how they limit our understandings of ourselves and others. Like bell hooks, Butler argues that supporting feminism means criticizing binary distinctions such as women vs. men rather than supporting them. Given a diverse population and the complexity of politics and history, human beings limit themselves through their understanding of identity and its complexity.
For example, men come to see certain actions as macho, and they identify these with masculinity and heterosexuality as individuals in a cultural coherence such that their performance of their own identities and individualities are stylized and polarized. Thus, crying becomes something feminine or homosexual, in opposition to the masculine and heterosexual. A male individual, inauthentically as Heidegger might say, would believe that he is doing what he naturally wants without critically reflecting on the fact that he has helped participate in his own enclosure in an identity that limits his individuality and possibilities.
Born Gloria Jean Watkins, bell hooks (yes, spelled lower case on purpose) is a feminist and social philosopher who argues that class, gender and race are complexly connected. Critical of second wave 60s feminism focusing on sexism to the neglect of racism and the gap between the rich and the poor, she labeled herself a womanist (not in spell check, but now added to my dictionary) and argued much like Foucault did with Chomsky that power, even resistance movements, reinscribes itself and thus feminism can itself be a marginalizing force. This is also similar to Judith Butler, who views culture and feminism as a complex and not as a simple struggle between the forces of good and evil. While feminism made gains in the 60s and continues to do so today, bell hooks was critical of the movement as it was populated mostly by white college women who are upper and middle class, live in first world countries such as the US and UK, and disconnected from the lives of many women who are impoverished, are unable to attend college or a good career, and who are overwhelmingly of European descent. Consider the shows criticized by feminists today, such as Ali McBeal, Sex and the City, and Bridget Jones’ Diary.
One of the most frequently cited sources of the third wave of feminism, bell hooks argues that feminism is for everyone, not just middle and upper class college girls and career minded women. Growing up first in segregated schools and then in predominantly white schools, she saw firsthand that progressives and educators can support prejudice while fighting for change. She studied at UC Santa Cruz and began teaching in 1976 at USC, then later at Santa Cruz, Yale and SF State. She first wrote poetry under her grandmother’s name, Bell Hooks, later keeping the name as she wrote nonfictional essays and books. One of her early and most famous books is Ain’t I A Woman? Black Women and Feminism (1981), which examines the dual marginalization of black women in a patriarchal and racist society. The title is inspired by Sojourner Truth, a black abolitionist and feminist living in the late 1800s whose speech Ain't I a Woman is a celebrated work of women’s rights. She is critical of black men’s sexism towards black women, the marginalization of the poor by the powerful, and white racism and white supremacism in culture and media.
While some are critical of her work, like Foucault she is suspicious of any side that calls itself the true and the objective, including feminist and black consciousness movements. For this, many call her, as they do Foucault and Butler, a post-modernist, a skeptic of conceptions of absolute truth and a believer in perspectivism and historicism, that truth is always in a particular perspective situated in a particular time and place. This is similar to Trotsky and Heidegger in so far as power and knowledge must continuously transform themselves. A movement such as feminism must thus be continuously critical of itself and understand itself as a diverse group of various strategies and perspectives. I am particularly inspired by her view of education and teaching. She argues that schools can operate as mind control centers that breed conformity and complacency with injustice such as institutional racism and sexism, but they should operate as open spaces where individuals are invited to question their culture, assumptions and ideas.
Judith Butler (1956 – present)
Another celebrated source of feminist philosophy, particularly post-structuralist and post-modernist third wave feminism which is critical of power like Foucault, is Judith Butler, a professor at UCB and one of the most famous feminist thinkers today. She wrote her thesis at Yale on Hegel and understanding individuality in French history. Like bell hooks, she began to question feminism and its assumptions, particularly the monolithic “us vs. them” mentality that is unreflective and untransparent not only in its assumptions but in its masking the diversity of the feminist movement.
A political philosopher beyond the focus on feminism, I myself saw her give a recent talk (in jeans and a black t-shirt in front of a well dressed audience) on Palestinians and how their suffering is perceived and framed in the US and UK, particularly on how suicide bombers understand themselves and their actions and how they are understood by outsiders. This is very similar to her work on gender in locating truth in a human body as a performance in time and space. As she is Jewish, she has been praised for this, her most recent work by pro-Palestinian groups and opposed by pro-Israel groups and authors as a traitor and fool. I particularly admire thinkers who stand up against what they believe are injustices of their own culture and people.
Butler’s famous feminist idea is performative gender, that gender, and all identity, is a performance. Wearing a dress, applying make-up and watching certain types of TV shows are obvious examples of how traditional women’s gender is performed. In her most famous book, Gender Trouble, she particularly uses Foucault as inspiration to critically examine gender and how it is prescribed and reinscribed through the actions of people as they identify themselves with a particular gender. Like Hegel and Foucault, this is a historical view of truth that suggests that gender and identity are cultural constructs. Like Foucault and Fanon, Butler is critical of binary divisions and how they limit our understandings of ourselves and others. Like bell hooks, Butler argues that supporting feminism means criticizing binary distinctions such as women vs. men rather than supporting them. Given a diverse population and the complexity of politics and history, human beings limit themselves through their understanding of identity and its complexity.
For example, men come to see certain actions as macho, and they identify these with masculinity and heterosexuality as individuals in a cultural coherence such that their performance of their own identities and individualities are stylized and polarized. Thus, crying becomes something feminine or homosexual, in opposition to the masculine and heterosexual. A male individual, inauthentically as Heidegger might say, would believe that he is doing what he naturally wants without critically reflecting on the fact that he has helped participate in his own enclosure in an identity that limits his individuality and possibilities.
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?
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