A Kantian Legacy Renato Barilli—University of Balogna—Renato.Barilli@Unibo.It

Vol 1 No 2 (Autumn 2020)

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The Medium is the Message: A Kantian Legacy Renato Barilli—University of Balogna—[email protected]

A philosophical analysis of McLuhan’s one-liner “the medium is the message.”

Let us begin with the expression that is normally considered an extreme synthesis of McLuhan’s thought, namely “The Medium is the Message.” Although it has come to sound like an oversimplification, a cheap slogan worn out by overuse, my intention is to demonstrate the broad philosophical relevance of these five words. Indeed, I hope to reinstate the phrase by illuminating its profound philosophical relevance. I claim that by adopting this expression, all epistemological proceedings of our day are authorized to refuse a triangular pattern in favour of a binary one. In order to lay the groundwork for such an assumption, let us consider one of McLuhan’s (1962) greatest masterpieces, the Gutenberg Galaxy. According to European tradition, the age McLuhan refers to in his book corresponds to what we define as “the modern age”: the period that extends from the discovery of America in 1492 to the French Revolution in 1789. However, if we follow McLuhan’s premise, the year 1492 should be replaced by 1450 or thereabouts – the date of Gutenberg’s invention of moveable type – in strict concurrence with the institution of what subsequent commentators dubbed the “Renaissance perspective,” announced to history by Leon Battista Alberti in his 1435 De Pictura (Sinisgalli 2011).

What followed this lengthy European period tends to be introduced, at least in Italian history books, as the very ambiguously labelled “contemporary age,” which practically speaking continues as far as the present day. Although the modern age and the contemporary age are so nearly similar in name, their foundational materials and technological factors could not be more different. Modernity had its multitude of machines, from the printing press to the inventions of the industrial revolution, which exploited thermal power in a multitude of ways. But, at the end of the eighteenth century, a completely new form of energy was discovered, electromagnetism, which was soon applied on a large scale and followed by its natural extension, electronics. It is unfortunate that McLuhan declined to write “The Electromagnetic Galaxy” as the companion volume to The Gutenberg Galaxy, since it would have proved an antithetical companion to its predecessor. Nonetheless, the project raises the interesting question of what title McLuhan might have given the book: “The Marconi Galaxy” perhaps? Or “The Einstein Galaxy”? But let us return to the core of modernity, with the phenomenon of radical dissociation as its fundamental characteristic; the human subject on the one hand, and matter, thingness, the exterior world, on the other. This situation generated the difficult problem of how to establish links between two realms whose status from the start was one of total separation. As a rule, joining or combining realities separated at birth is nigh on impossible. This conundrum led more or less

Renato Barilli automatically to a triangular arrangement, since people living in the modern age had to face two non-dialoguing realities, subject and object, a dualism which implied the necessity of engaging a third family of elements, entrusted with the function of mediation. Any attempt to apply the terms favoured by McLuhan’s formula to identify the objective content proved impossible, since the message remained impervious, while its counterpart, the human subject, was obliged to embark on the equivalent of a desperate attempt to explore an unknown planet. The result was that the subject became an object, external to both the human dimension and to the realm of things. Hence the necessity of adopting the triangular solution. The medium was compelled to assume an existence of its own, like an instrument, a weapon in the hands of humanity, but absolutely not part of it. In fact, if we consider the philosophical systems generated at the time of modernity, we find that all of them suffered from this irremediable dualism. Cartesianism was built on two completely non-communicating properties, res cogitans and res extensa. The crucial problem for Descartes and his followers was how to establish a mediation between the two, how to find a remedy to such a deep fracture. As we know, they were constrained to adopt an extreme solution: they assigned to God the function of assuring the communication between the two. If we consider the opposite school, namely English empiricism, there again we find an irremediable dualism, even if it is based on a reversal of the parts. Whereas Cartesianism accords primacy to the subject, to the res cogitans, where our being is considered to dwell, the empiricists preach the opposite: the realm of subjectivity is compared to a tabula rasa, a blank slate, passive and enfeebled. On the one hand, rationalism ascribes the human subject too powerful a role; on the other, empiricism presents it as a virtual non-being. What is more relevant in relation to this paper is the barrier, the gap, the hiatus that exists between the two poles, denying any possibility of communication. This was the main feature of all modern philosophical positions as they anxiously awaited an audacious solution that would be able to bypass the obstacle. Once again, the handbooks are there to teach us that this fundamental solution can be found in Kant’s criticism, in the form of his synthetic a priori judgement. The crucial term here is “synthesis,” for synthesis challenged the dangerous role of analysis, whose vicious effects had already been exposed, and which represented by Kant's time the enemy and major obstacle to overcome. Kantian thought succeeded in establishing a bridge, a link, between the two opposing realms. Subject and object were required to celebrate their marriage, a synthetic union, a mutual collaboration. Since then we have the well-known formula, the touchstone on which the whole Kantian system is built: the notion that human thought has a complete system of forms, but that they would be empty, useless moulds if they did not encounter matter and phenomena coming from the other realm. Because despite their rational and formal character, these moulds are not autonomous. Matter is required to fill these empty vessels. Matter, for its part, is blind, formless, unpredictable—it requires the intervention of human subjectivity.

The Medium is the Message: A Kantian Legacy

Examined in this new light, each of the two pre-existing philosophies were seen to possess only one part of the key to the connection of mind and matter. Rationalism was the natural depository for an a priori way of thinking, but on its own it was condemned to unproductive isolation, its propositions merely analytic and formal. Empiricism, for its part, was correct in maintaining that we cannot renounce contact with matter. Thought had to break free from its self-containment, make contact with the substance of things and impose law and order. This Kantian solution is the central tenet on which our contemporary age is built. However, as normally happens with the founders of new principles, in his philosophical outlook Kant also included many aspects of worn-out thinking. Indeed his synthetic forms were still nourished by analytical elements, as evidenced by his acceptance of Euclidean geometry as the axiomatic system that correctly describes the fundamental characteristics of real space. Taking that unquestioned, self-contained conception as his starting point, it was inevitable that his own system would go on to build an entire world by means of additional numbered steps. Many points constitute a line, many lines a surface, many surfaces a three-dimensional space. As a matter of fact, The Gutenberg Galaxy was born from a happy marriage between the new machine and the ancient geometrical map, respecting a union that had already been established since our Western civilisation adopted a phonetic system of writing: the Phoenician alphabet. Kant understood the necessity of bridging the divide between subjectivity and objectivity, of bringing them together in a synthesis. But in taking an analytic, self-contained system as a basis for understanding space, and space as a basis for understanding res extensa, his system maintained a residual incompatibility between the two. So we had to wait for the arrival of contemporary philosophy for a more effective solution. The best philosophers born in the latter half of the nineteenth century and on through the twentieth were ready to accept and apply synthesis, disentangling it from all persisting traces of elementarism, in other words from a residual subjection to Euclidean geometry. Let us now focus our attention on three responses from two of the best of these latter-day philosophers, namely Henri Bergson and Edmund Husserl. Bergson insisted that we should remove any obstacle between our perception and external experience, given that all our psychological behaviour – perception, memory, imagination, and so forth – are in direct contact with the “other” continent, and so together form a holistic ensemble, a unitary system.

As for the phenomenology founded by German philosopher Edmund Husserl, its main argument is based on intentionality, namely that our subjectivity has no substance in itself, but exists only through the act of emerging from its interiority and encountering the opposite entities. French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre exaggerated that strategy to the point of presenting the subjective realm as a néant – nothingness, total emptiness – in opposition to l'être, the thick, opaque realm of being. Hence the dramatic couple, néant and l'être (being and nothingness).

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean a corresponding set of solutions was also constructed. John Dewey, one of the best representatives of pragmatism, introduced the couple

Renato Barilli knowing versus known, naming this act of mutual reference “interaction,” which he subsequently substituted with the more unifying term of “transaction.” This approach based on a duality was adopted in more or less the same years by the founder of contemporary linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure, who launched perhaps the best known among all such couples: signifiant-signifié. The Swiss linguist is considered the father of a general way of thinking that soon came to dominate every horizon of the humanities, namely structuralism. Here again we find the prevalence of an attitude based on the triumph of totality. It is also possible to define such a unitary way of reasoning with a word of Greek origin: holism, or one derived from German: gestaltism. Everywhere in contemporary epistemology, at least with regard to the human sciences, we find the triumph of holism, of globalizing devices, structures, Gestalten, and so we have to conclude that complexity and involvement come first. This is precisely what upsets the method most frequently employed by earlier modern thought, which began from single, isolated elements, the Euclidian point of view and the letters of the alphabet, all used to construct ever-increasing accumulations. At this point we might wonder where McLuhan’s thought belongs in all these proceedings. If we go back to the answers given to crucial epistemological questions provided by the best contemporary philosophers, we can see that none of them was able to resolve a central, basic question: Why did a dualistic premise become the shared philosophical foundation established at the junction of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries? All of these philosophical systems were inadequate in this regard because they limited their speculations to a theoretical approach, emulating that of the so-called high sciences. It is in this context that McLuhan's primacy becomes evident: media and technology are the cornerstones on which every human culture is constructed. As I said earlier, it is a pity that McLuhan did not write an “Electromagnetic Galaxy”, a masterpiece that would certainly have aligned itself perfectly alongside The Gutenberg Galaxy. Most probably, the answer is that he did not believe he needed to create such a work, given that its principles are already well disseminated in the pages of his writings. For where else do we find the force in which all the synthetic, holistic and structuralist principles of our age are based, if not in the electromagnetic field with all its features and laws? This is the unifying notion from which no one and nothing can be removed. In itself, holism might be considered a fallacious theoretical, quasi-mystical or religious concept. It might even provoke a degree of suspicion. Yet the notion of the electromagnetic field constitutes an indisputable, physical and material reality that immerses us all at every moment of our lives. This is the link, the ultimate warrant of our present unitary, structuralist condition; and, at the same time, it represents the essential refusal of every analytical method based on single atomic elements. Given the totalizing reality of electromagnetism, how could we return to separate entities such as subject and object? We would need to apply some kind of insulating ribbon. If we reason according to the dominant laws of electromagnetism, individuality is a secondary derivative. Within this system, the medium becomes the essential principle of a total interconnection.

The Medium is the Message: A Kantian Legacy

It is worthwhile reflecting that the holistic, structural understanding derived from the primacy of medium has not been easily or broadly accepted in our age. On the contrary, advocates of worn- out analytic thought have re-emerged on many occasions. The endorsement of biunivocalism was contested by the emergence of a new analytic school, launched in Germany by Ludwig Wittgenstein and Rudolph Carnap, which subsequently took root and became consolidated in Britain. From there it emigrated to the U.S.A., where, during the 1930s, it more or less prevailed over all other types of thinking. To some measure, its consolidation of power within the intellectual world was due to the hold gained by the critical and philosophical writings of C.K Ogden and I.A. Richards, in particular the “triangle of reference” they proposed in The Meaning of Meaning (1923). By the 1930s, this way of thinking was almost perfectly entrenched in the U.S.A. This same analytical spirit very soon came to dominate the general field referred to as semiotics, notwithstanding the fact that this new-born science initially preached its derivation from Saussure’s structuralism. Indeed, in the work of any of its exponents it is very hard to find anything similar to the concept of structure; in other words something that would perform the function of unification, of synthesis. There is only atomism, elementarism and a plethora of fragments. This is the situation McLuhan condemns as an unavoidable consequence of literacy – the adoption of the alphabet by Western civilisation. A cruel destiny that was bound to separate and distinguish each token from the other. By following this path, the medium acquires some existence of its own: it appears furnished with a grammar, a logic to be carefully observed before we attempt to approach the “other” area that corresponds to the message. Meanwhile a third protagonist, the human subject, patiently awaits the complete circuit of transmission to be realized through a long series of steps. Direct contact and immediate involvement with the surrounding world are impossible under such a conception, thus actualizing Zeno’s Stoic paradox: How could speedy Achilles succeed in reaching the slow turtle when he is condemned to pass through an infinity of points and stops? Only high speed, which corresponds to the immediate, timeless touch of electromagnetic waves, is able to suggest the right solution to this updated puzzle. Someone might object that semiotics, with its analytical prejudices, is worn out, already committed to a kind of museum of philosophy, and has been substituted by more current and subtler versions from the new French philosophers, such as Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze. They replace Ogden-Richards naïve semiotic triangle with a more sophisticated chain of lateral passages, then lend it a dynamic quality by applying Derrida's neologism, différance, which merely reduces the barrier of separation that all modern conceptions allow between subject and object, while completely eschewing the idea of embracing them in one unique force. At the same time they reject the naive subdivision into three components, putting in their place an unlimited series of small differences. It is as if the new philosophers were inviting us to practise a third way that is neither the triangle nor the binary scheme. Moreover, in every case these analytical theories are postulated with a total absence of any kind of reference to our

Renato Barilli material culture, to the technology of our time, apparently ignoring our participation in an electromagnetic and electronic revolution. In their eyes, the linear system of writing remains the evergreen model that should be respected by our Western culture and elevated almost to the dimension of a metaphysical god, regulating all human actions. The fact that the electronic galaxy condemns literacy as a failure does not disturb these very subtle scholars, whose apparent novelty conceals traditional conceptions. McLuhan’s system, by way of contrast, accords the function of media an expanded importance, without assigning priority either to the written word or graphic alphabet (and particularly not to the graphic alphabet’s most chilling function, assumed through printing). Mediation may be practised more profitably through speech, whose orality requires the full participation of the body. Speaking is a performative act that can be preserved by any of a rich array of electronic resources. Again, and again, in all such instances, the medium is the message, since it is impossible to separate the form, the eloquence, the vehemence of our speech from its content, from the causes we are defending. Human interests are mainly based on properties such as the synthetic, contextual, holistic treatment of data, which is where McLuhan’s formula, the medium is the message, finds its ultimate and winning relevance. References McLuhan, Marshall. 1962. The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Sinisgalli, Rocco. 2011. On Painting (De Pictura). A New Translation and Critical Edition. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press.