Tracing Mercadoʼs Anthropological Perspective (Second of Two Parts)

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KRITIKE VOLUME EIGHT NUMBER TWO (DECEMBER 2014) 1-18

On Filipino Philosophy

Tracing Mercado’s Anthropological Perspective (Second of Two Parts)

Emmanuel D. Batoon

Abstract: The paper traces the significance of Leonardo N. Mercado’s anthropological perspective on the study of Filipino philosophy and argues that the significance of his perspective lies in its bringing to light the Filipino people as a group of philosophers in their own right who constructed a worldview of their own and embodied it in their languages, behavior, and mythology that provides them with a mission and vision as a nation. To justify the argument, a content analysis of the book Elements of Filipino Philosophy was done in terms of Mercado’s cultural philosophical theoretical framework, where philosophy is constructed by a group of ordinary people like Filipinos and the result is an empirical and observably unique but not idiosyncratic worldview like the Filipino worldview, ethnographic method that involves an ethno-linguistic analysis of the major Philippine languages, phenomenological observation of Filipino behavior, secondary data analysis of social scientist’s analysis of Philippine mythologies, and findings on the conceptual elements of the Filipino worldview composed of a logos that describes the mode through which Filipinos construct their world, ontos that describes Filipinos’ constructed world, theos that describes how Filipinos construct a sacred world, and ethos that describes how Filipinos construct a moral world. To extend the argument of the discourse, a rejoinder is provided in response to scholars’ criticisms and approval of Mercado’s anthropological perspective on the study of Filipino philosophy.

Keywords: Mercado, Filipino philosophy, cultural philosophy, ethnographic method

Response to Scholars

fter establishing the significance of Mercado’s anthropological perspective in the study of Filipino philosophy through the analysis A of the components of his book, Elements of Filipino Philosophy, we now

2 MERCADO’S ANTHROPOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE proceed to the analysis of scholars’ reaction to Mercado’s anthropological perspective on the study of Filipino philosophy.

A. Critics

Emerita Quito

Emerita Quito, in footnote number eight (8) of her paper entitled, The Filipino and the Japanese Experience in Lectures on Comparative Philosophy makes the following comments regarding Mercado’s study:

Leonardo Mercado, SVD pioneered in writing about Filipino Philosophy. Credit must be given to him for pioneering, but until now there is still opposition to his theories. Scholars find his work to be merely linguistic.1

In the main body of her text she says the following:

The question now is: Is there an indigenous Filipino Philosophy? Or, are there any Filipino philosophers? It is deplorable to answer the question in the negative. Despite the pioneering work of one Filipino author, it is premature to speak of a Filipino philosophy, moreover, of a Filipino philosopher. She cites a number of reasons: 1) … the typical Filipino is full of mirth and optimism, he does not brood over the philosophical problems of life and death. Besides, he does not have the time … ; 2) … there is a universal fear of philosophy… In the present set-up in the Philippines, it is doubtful whether we can produce a Filipino thinker who can, with freedom and dignity, speak unafraid of themes that may run counter to orthodoxy. … In the Philippines, when one dabbles in Philosophy, one is exposed to ridicule like the proverbial Pilosopong Tasio who is mentioned in a derogatory manner; and 3)….Even our language does not lend itself to philosophy; There are no equivalents to words like being, essence, existence, becoming, actuality, transcendence. … Our mentality or our Weltanschauung

1 Emerita S. Quito, “The Filipino and the Japanese Experience,” in Lectures on Comparative Philosophy (Manila: De la Salle University, 1979), 34.

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is too personal and emotional to allow a more transcendental way of viewing things.2

In response to Quito, one can say that Mercado’s goal is not to be a Filipino philosopher in the likes of Sartre and Heidegger. He is not engaged in formulating an academic-universal philosophy using an abstract intellectual method and writing this down in an academic treatise. He merely interpreted the ordinary mainstream Filipinos’ produced cultural philosophy that is shown in their everyday language and behavior. By adopting an anthropological perspective, he wished to show that Filipinos philosophize about their life as a culturally organized people. Perhaps, Quito realized Mercado’s anthropological point later when she used Levi-Strauss’s Structuralist Anthropology in understanding the Filipino Volkgeist:

“Philosophy” or “love of wisdom” is a Greek concoction which must be understood in the spatio- temporal context of Pythagoras, who coined the term. … It must be mentioned that long before the ancient Greeks formulated the word “philosophy,” the Indians had used darshana which means “point of view,” and the Chinese sages had used the term tao to designate primitive wisdom. … Why should we now in the Philippines be so pre-occupied about whether there is or there is no Filipino philosophy? Why the heated and unnecessary discussion of whether we are using the term in its original Greek connotation when we should be more receptive to the Asian concept? … I have no qualms of using the term Volkgeist instead of philosophy to describe our spirit, our diwa, which characterizes the inhabitants of these seven thousand islands in the Pacific. Once we let go of our penchant for the Greek concept of philosophy, the true Filipino spirits or diwa will emerge and may well be the general seed of future philosophical and academic thinking.3

If Quito reiterates scholars’ finding that Mercado’s study as “purely linguistic”, Alfredo Co finds Mercado’s study futile.

2 Ibid., 28-29. 3 Emerita Quito, “Structuralism and the Filipino Volkgeist,” in A Life of Philosophy: Festschrift in honor of Emerita S. Quito (Manila: De la Salle University Press, 1990), 732.

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Alfredo Co

Alfredo Co makes the following comments to Mercado’s enterprise:

I certainly respect the diligence undertaken by my colleagues in philosophy, but I definitely disagree with what they refer to as Filipino philosophy. After over twenty years of comparing Bisaya, Ilokano, Bicolano, Tagalog and even Ilonggo, Leonardo N. Mercado, SVD is still on the same level of comparing them but he has not established what can be categorically claimed as the Filipino philosophy.4

Then Co suggests:

Those of us who are still toiling in a desperate search for the Filipino soul and the Filipino philosophy are really lagging behind. Many of our Filipino thinkers have already done their part by philosophizing and writing. In the process, they have become philosophers. And because these are Filipinos philosophizing, then we call the body of their works Filipino philosophy. For when the Filipino philosophizes, he at once claims the right to claiming his own views.5

Co is correct in understanding that Mercado’s book is exploratory in nature but perhaps Co is unjustified when he accused Mercado of failing to come up with a “categorical” conclusion regarding the “essential” Filipino philosophy. Mercado did not do this precisely because he cannot do it; he is not the creator of Filipino philosophy—the Filipino people are. Even the Filipino people cannot create a categorical “essential” Filipino philosophy because it is an artificial cultural symbolic system, not a natural phenomenon, that changes through time and space by way of cultural acculturation like assimilation or amalgamation. Mercado’s study, though limited, is an interpretation of the Filipino people’s worldview that can never be lumped with the body or “sum” of Filipinos “doing philosophy” especially those who use explicit or implicit academic philosophical theories as norms in prescribing what “should” happen in Philippine society, instead of using empirical Philippine social

4 Alfredo P. Co, “Doing Philosophy in the Philippines: Fifty Years Ago and Fifty Years from Now,” in Karunungan, 21 (2004), 11. 5 Ibid., 17.

E. BATOON 5 realities to verify the explanatory power of these academic philosophical theories. If Co finds Mercado’s study futile, Nicanor Abueg finds Mercado’s study “scientistic”.

Nicanor S. Abueg

Nicanor S. Abueg expected Mercado to follow the existential phenomenological method which required that he perform an epoche or bracketing of all his prejudices about Filipinos so that he could return the original Filipino experience to arrive at the eidos of Filipino philosophy. But Mercado did not meet his expectations because he used a scientific anthropological approach in studying Filipino philosophy. In Abueg’s mind, Mercado “placed himself above the subjects of his inquiry,”6 and “assumed that the philosophy of a culture is implied in the people’s way of thinking and behaving.”7 Abueg was wrong in expecting that Mercado suspended all his prejudices in studying the Filipino so that he could arrive at the essence of the existential individual Filipino consciousness. Absolute epoche and eidetic reduction cannot be done as long as an individual knower is an embodied subjectivity because s/he is always situated in a cultural world. But Mercado’s use of anthropological perspective provided the condition of possibility through which he can provide an emic or insider view, as opposed to etic or outsider view, of the lived Filipino social-cultural world that is constituted in and through the Filipino language and behavior. If Abueg finds Mercado’s study “scientistic” Feorillo Demeterio III finds Mercado’s study lacking in critical reflection.

Feorillo Demeterio III

Feorillo Demeterio does not directly react to Mercado’s book but implicitly criticizes it for it lacks a critique of power in understanding the Filipino worldview based upon an anthropological perspective. Demeterio opines:

The phase of early indigenization of Abulad, which is equivalent to the interpretation of the Filipino worldview of Nakpil-Zialcita, is also not as promising as critical philosophy. … The main problem with this way

6 Nicanor S. Abueg, “Leonardo N. Mercado’s Elements of Filipino Philosophy by Leonardo N. Mercado, SVD,” in Philippine Studies, 22 ( 1974), 384. 7 Ibid.

6 MERCADO’S ANTHROPOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

of doing Filipino philosophy has been revealed already by Nakpil-Zialcita when he questioned the philosophic nature of the concern of this way of philosophizing. Having doubted its philosophic nature, Nakpil-Zialcita placed its being philosophic on its purpose which is to theorize further on the impact of the Filipino world-view on the present and future of the Filipino. Instead of doing the post-sociological and post anthropological speculations, many of our philosophy professors and students had been mired behind the trail of the social scientists and other cultural experts whose tasks they poorly attempted to duplicate.8

Is Mercado interpretation of the Filipino worldview devoid of any critical and liberative character? If one were to ask the traditional Critical Theory question, “For whom and against whom is Mercado’s book?,” what could be the answer? If one situates Mercado’s book in its historical context, then one finds that his work has something to do the clamor for ‘Filipinization’ which is a part of the liberation of Filipinos from colonial mentality. He says:

The clamor for Filipinization has reached the ears of various sectors of the nation. For instance the demand for Filipinizing education. … Another filed is the indigenization of theology because Christianity in the Philippines has been preached in Western categories. But indigenizing theology, as encouraged by Vatican II, need Filipino philosophy for its basis. In other words, Filipino philosophy is a means of liberating the Filipino from mental bonds.9

In addition, Mercado’s focus on the Filipino sakop as a society that follows the communalist barangay10 poses an alternative model of social life to the so-called leftist communist society of the communist party of the

8 F.P.A. Demeterio III, “Thought and Socio-Politics: An Account of the Late Twentieth Century Filipino Philosophy,” in F.P.A. Demeterio’s Philosophy and Cultural Theory Page, 20, Accessed 30 June 2011, . 9 Mercado, Elements of Filipino Philosophy, 7. 10 William Henry Scott, Barangay Sixteenth Century Philippine Culture and Society (Quezon City: Ateneo De Manila University Press, 1994).

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Philippines or the rightist capitalist society of the oligarchs or the so-called centrist new society of Pres. Ferdinand Marcos.

Andrew Gonzales

Finally, after learning about the criticisms of professional philosophers on Mercado’s anthropological perspective, it is vital to turn to the analysis of a social scientist-linguist’s criticism on Mercado’s book. The linguist, Bro. Andrew Gonzales, discusses the context of his criticism on Mercado’s book as follows:

My own admittedly subjective view on this matter…is that this conscious research for a ‘Filipino’ social science is a red herring, that is, ‘a diversion (unintentionally) intended to distract attention from the real issue’ which in my opinion is the development of social science research in the Philippines for national development. This search for a social science that is ‘Filipino’ is to me narcissistic. In Greek mythology, Narcissus fell in love with his own image and in the process was turned into a flower! In general, it is my impression that certain felicitous results in human life arise as a result of the convergence of spontaneous currents. Where one tries to ‘plan’ too much, the results can be unhappy ones. In many areas of human life, one is ‘performing’ and this ‘performing’ can lead to a lack of performance.11

Gonzales eventually claims that this futile attempt to “Filipinize” the social sciences had its beginnings in theology and philosophy:

In the area of philosophy and theology, perhaps the best known and fully conscious attempt to arrive at ‘elements’ of Filipino Philosophy and Theology has been Leonardo Mercado’s attempts. While the efforts have been valiant and consistent, I am afraid that the results have been infelicitous. What Mercado has done in his books (1974, 1975) is to cull from the findings of cultural anthropology and folklore ‘elements’ that could

11 Andrew B. Gonzales, “Indigenization of the Social Sciences A Red Herring?” in Indigenous Psychology: A Book of Readings (Diliman, Quezon City: AKADEMYA NG SIKOLOHIYANG PILIPINO Philippine Psychology Research and Training House,1990), 110- 111.

8 MERCADO’S ANTHROPOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

constitute seminal ideas for what traditional Western theology and philosophy have included in their considerations: God, Man, the Universe, Man’s Relation with God and with Others. What results, it seems to me (Gonzales 1976), is a labeling process, a matter of giving Philippine names, to realities learned in a Western tongue. If this is what Filipino philosophy and theology are it is not too interesting. … I am pointing out that this conscious search has not yet resulted in an interesting body of knowledge; perhaps the very logic and structure of the enterprise, when ‘performed’ this way, inevitably gives rise to glorified labeling, a less obvious form of translation.12

The attempt at “Filipinization” of the Social Sciences is not at all narcissistic. It is high time that Filipinos start talking about themselves to understand themselves (ganito tayo)’ instead of explaining to westerners who they are (ganito kami). Mercado’s book is one the genuine at attempts at Filipinization. Mercado’s work is not also a mere performance. He provides empirical linguistic and behavioral evidence to justify his claims and his use of the terminologies on the elements of other culture’s philosophies is meant to serve as heuristic devices to elucidate his empirical findings on the elements of Filipino philosophy to fellow Filipinos trained in Western academic philosophies. As Mercado puts it:

This study is not comparative. Whatever is mentioned about Greek philosophy (particularly Plato and Aristotle) and about Oriental philosophy is just for the sake of bringing things clearly to light. That is the purpose of the light-and-shadow literary device. … Secondly, this work is intended for non-ordinary readers of higher college level, that is, readers who have received a Western education and unwittingly have been trained to think in the Western bias.13

If the aforementioned scholars criticized Mercado’s anthropological perspective on the study of Filipino philosophy, other scholars made it a model framework from which they patterned their own studies.

12 Ibid., 112. 13 Mercado, Elements of Filipino Philosophy, 13.

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B. Admirers

Dionisio Miranda

Fr. Dionisio Miranda gathers Mercado’s insight on loob and says:

Leonardo Mercado, who believes that loob is a holistic concept untranslatable by a single word and hence associated with a variety of meaning: (a) malay, (b) intellect, senses, mind, judgment, decision, (c) desire, or will, (d) human heartedness, moral goodness, conscientious, (e) conscience, (f) love. In this last he notes that loob and body are the same as a man alive. Loob is not distinct from man’s faculties as long as he is alive; not so in death.14

Then, Miranda used Mercado’s concept of loob as model in formulating a psychological-moral account of the concept of loob. Then he followed Mercado’s anthropological (cultural) approach. Miranda discusses his cultural approach:

My own particular concerns lead toward an understanding of loob in its implication for philosophical anthropology in general and for moral anthropology in particular. But, within the strands of Filipino thought I would consider myself broadly in the mainstream of those who are concerned with philosophy of culture or the inculturation, indigenization and contextualization of theology. More specifically I would count myself around those who have accepted the Filipinization of philosophy and theology as a valid and worthwhile project .15

Then he discusses his method in this way:

Forced to give my method some kind of label, I initially thought of “cultural exegesis,” later I weighed the merits of “thematization of culture.” … the notion in fact borrows from the linguist’s distinction between emic

14 Dionisio M. Miranda, SVD, Loob The Filipino Within: A Preliminary Investigation into a Pre-Theological Moral Anthropology (Manila: Logos Publications, Inc., 1988), 2. 15 Ibid., 3.

10 MERCADO’S ANTHROPOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

(from the inside) and etic (from the outside) analysis of cultural system. Native exegesis of culture would then be the equivalent of linguistic, emic analysis, i.e., the description and analysis of a culture by one of its members.16

Miranda’s substantive findings on loob as a complex psycho-moral reality is that it is composed of the concepts of sarili (man as self), psychological personality and moral character as two dimensions of sarili, categories of loob, distinctive constituents of katauhan, and distinctive constituents of pagkatao.17 Given this psycho-moral implication of the concept of lobo, Miranda also extends Mercado’s concept of loob to include the idea of labas which Miranda interpreted as referring to the in-between or pagitan,18 which eventually leads to the idea of intersubjective relationships or pakikipagkapwa-loob. Hence, Miranda converted the concepts of loob, kapwa, and labas as ethical categories to serve as conditions of possibility for the formulation of a formal Filipino theory on ethical action and special ethics.19 If Miranda translated Mercados’ interpretation of the concept of loob into a pscho-moral concept, Alejo elaborated Mercado’s interpretation of the concept of loob by interpreting it as a TEXT.

Albert Alejo

Fr. Albert Alejo acclaimed Mercado’s book as the “first systematic study on Filipino philosophy that launched the most fruitful twenty years of research on the topic by his students”20 though it is not the first to deal with the study of Filipino philosophy (Zialcita)21 and elaborated Mercado’s findings by doing a Ricoeurian phenomenological hermeneutic22 reading of the concept of loob. He first subjected the concept of loob to a hermeneutics of suspicion23 where he investigated the misconceptions about loob (tianak ng kalooban)24 as

16 Ibid., 3-4. 17 Ibid., 23-44. 18 Ibid., 77-100. 19 Ibid., 101-124. 20 Albert Alejo, Tao Po! Tuloy! (Quezon City: Office of Research Publications, Ateneo de Manila University,1990), 13. 21 Fernando N. Zialcita, “Forms of A Filipino Philosophy,” in Solidarity, 7 (1972), 4-1. 22 Paul Ricoeur, Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences, trans. by John B. Thompson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). 23 Paul Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation, trans. by Dennis Savage (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 27. 24 Alejo, Tao Po! Tuloy!, 5-7.

E. BATOON 11 a word or a sign. Then, he made a hermeneutics of retrieval25 of the eidos of loob which he educed from his lived experience of participation.26 Alejo finds that the loob is not just a concept but a “text.” As a “text,” it is not found in the language that is loob by itself and in itself, but in the encounter between the language of loob and the user of the language of loob. He showed this through a review of how Filipino scholars interpreted the ostensive reference of the word loob, including that of Mercado’s interpretation of loob as holistic and interior. But instead of digging for the hidden similar unconscious logical structure that lies behind the different ostensive reference of the language of loob through an analysis of grammar and syntax, as a traditional structuralist scholar would do, he looked for the “non-ostensive” reference that the word loob “revealed. In this way, he interpreted loob as a “metaphor.”27 Alejo finds that, “When one recognizes this metaphor, he or she looks at its literal meaning in the context of everyday experience and listen to what it says from and within its literal meaning;”28 then one realizes that it is really a symbol that “reveals” a phenomenon which is a “wide world.”29 He continues by saying that this “wide world” is a “reached-known- world” (daigdig ng abot-malay)30, a “reached-felt-world” (daigdig ng abot- dama)31 and a “reached- acted-world” (daigdig ng abot-kaya)32. The “reached- known-world” is composed of the known self, other, world and God. The “reached-felt-world” is comprised of the felt-self (interiority), felt others (commiseration), felt-world (involvement) and felt-God (fear and attraction). And the “reached-acted-world” is composed of the known and felt-self as a construction, the known and felt-self with other as an embodied self, the known and felt-self with the world as possessing temporality or possibilities and the known and felt-self with God as a struggle and hope. In the end, Alejo qualifies that the wide world of loob is a reached- world (daigdig na abot)33 to add the idea that Filipino society as a world is based on what Filipinos can envision as the horizon of reality (abot tanaw ng meron)34 and at the same time, a world that can only envision so much of reality (abot-dili)35 because, of Filipinos’ limited consciousness, lukewarm

25 Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy, 28. 26 Ibid., 7-9. 27 Ibid., 63. 28 Ibid., 65. 29 Ibid., 80. 30 Ibid., 85. 31 Ibid., 91. 32 Ibid., 100. 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid., 112. 35 Ibid., 113.

12 MERCADO’S ANTHROPOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE feelings, and disbelief in their capacity. This limited view of the world could only be extended if Filipinos would resolve to ‘participate’ to extend it. If Alejo extended Mercado’s interpretation of the Filipino concept of loob into the understanding that loob is a TEXT, Dr. Timbreza elaborated Mercado’s study of Filipino philosophy by gathering Filipino oral literary data to complement Mercado’s use of linguistic data in studying Filipino philosophy.

Florentino Timbreza

Florentino Timbreza publicly admitted that Mercado inspired him to conduct his own investigations on the Filipino philosophy which he entitled, Pilosopiyang Pilipino.36 Timbreza extended Mercado’s interpretation of Filipino philosophy based on the analysis of Filipino languages by using Filipino oral literature in the form of “sayings” (kasabihan) from a number of ethnic linguistic groups which included not only the three major groups (Tagalog, Visaya, Bicol) that Mercado studied but also from relatively smaller ones like the Igorot, Kalinga-Banao, Tiruray, Tausug, Maranaw and Maguindanaw.37 If the philosophers’ admired Mercado’s study, so too did scientists.

Virgilio Enriquez

Dr. Virgilio Enriquez, a leading advocate of indigenous social psychology (Sikolohiyang Pilipino) in the Philippines, commends Mercado’s interpretation of the Filipino concept of loob and its relation to the Filipino moral values wants it to be further studied by looking at it from the perspective of empirical psychology to arrive at an understanding of the empirical Filipino social psyche or collective consciousness (kamalayan) and morality.38 Hence, Enriquez together with Amelia B. Alfonso conducted an empirical social psychological linguistics study on the Tagalog social values. Their findings show the following Tagalog people’s social values: 1) Importance of human relationship; 2) High regard to emotion and to the

36 Florentino T. Timbreza, Pilosopiyang Pilipino (Manila: Rex Book Store, 1982). 37 Ibid., ix. 38 Virgilio G. Enriquez and Amelia B. Alfonso, “The Worldview and Weltanschauung of the Filipinos as Reflected in the Tagalog Language,” in The Filipino Weltanschauung in Languages, Literature, Popular Culture, Visual Arts and Other Fields (Philippines and Singapore: Philippine Psychology Research House, Philippines and Institute for Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore, 1980), 15.

E. BATOON 13 welfare of other people; 3) Concept of success is one which is also for everybody and not only for the individual.39 If Enriquez examined the implications of Mercado’s interpretation of the Filipino concept of loob to the study of empirical Filipino social- psychology, Jocano complemented Mercado’s anthropological linguistic- phenomenological approach with Clifford Geerz’ anthropological “thick description” approach in the study of Filipino philosophy.

Felipe Landa Jocano

Dr. Felipe Landa Jocano, an anthropologist and one of the panel of examiners in Mercado’s dissertation defense in 1973,40 complements Mercado’s anthropological linguistic-phenomenological interpretation of mainstream Filipinos’ worldview using Clifford Geertz’ anthropological thick description methodology in understanding selected Filipino “rural villagers” who were the recognized thinkers whose local knowledge of the native lore is admired and respected.41 His data was gathered from his unpublished field notes and previously published articles and books42. Jocano’s findings show that Filipinos view their world is composed of layered but continuous structures that perform specific functions in defining the self of man (natural, biological, communal, social, normative, ethical, moral, aesthetic, teleological, and ideological). The natural dimension,43 with its likas (energy) and bisa (life force), makes a man grow as an animal. The biological dimension44 is the impact of nature to a man’s well-being (health) or non-well-being (illness). The communal dimension45 reveals a man’s kin or blood relations. The social dimension46 is the impact of a man’s communal relations that affects his or her well-being or non-well-being. The normative dimension47 sets the standards of behavior that a man must follow in communal life. The ethical dimension48 is a man’s conformity or non-conformity with the norms of behavior set by his or her community. The moral dimension49 is the “honor”

39 Ibid., 20-21. 40 Leonardo N. Mercado, Elements of Filipino Philosophy, Ph.D. Dissertation (Manila: UST Graduate School, 1973), ii. 41 Ibid., 12-13. 42 Ibid. 43 Ibid., 15-36. 44 Ibid., 37-50. 45 Ibid., 51-64. 46 Ibid., 65-84. 47 Ibid., 85-96. 48 Ibid., 111-122. 49 Ibid., 123-134.

14 MERCADO’S ANTHROPOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE that a man should show in communal life. The aesthetic dimension50 is the pleasure that he or she gets out of a morally ordered life. The teleological dimension51 is a man’s belief regarding the end towards which he or she should tend. The ideological dimension52 is the interior order of meanings that provide the frame of life and purpose for a man. This represents the core of loob from which an individual is able to understand and respond to the dimensions that condition his or her life.

Final Words

The paper started tracing Fr. Leonardo N. Mercado’s anthropological perspective on the study of Filipino philosophy through an explanatory content analysis of his book’s substantive theoretical framework, method, and findings on Filipino philosophy and through a critical content analysis of scholars’ analysis of Mercado’s perspective. The analysis of the components of Mercado’s book shows the social significance of his anthropological perspective on the study of Filipino philosophy in terms of the following: 1) The anthropological perspective, as a substantive theoretical framework, is appropriate because it brings to light the Filipino worldview; 2) The anthropological ethnographic method is adequate because it is able to gather and analyze data on Filipinos as a culturally organized group; 3) The anthropological perspective provides substantive findings about the Filipino worldview in terms of logos, ontos, and ethos. The logos highlights the Filipino’s social psychological way of thinking; the ontos shows the intuitive concern for the being of interpersonal relationships. They conceive the individual man as loob who needs to be fixed and constituted through interpersonal relations in society as sakop. They have to physically sustain and concretize the sakop. They have to naturalize the sakop by humanizing nature. They have to rationalize the sakop by sacralizing it, by formulating an ethos that regulates the behavior of the members toward the sakop, and by constructing rituals to make the members affirm, memorialize, and celebrate the sakop. The tracing of Mercado’s study continued by the analysis of scholars’ reaction to his study. One group of scholars criticized his study on grounds that his work is a mere translation or performance, or that his work is futile because he has not produced a categorical account on the “essential” Filipino philosophy, or that his work smacks of scientism. The critics merely imposed their biases unto Mercado’s work without fully understanding what an anthropological perspective on Filipino philosophy really means. But, some

50 Ibid., 135-144. 51 Ibid., 145-160. 52 Ibid., 161-186.

E. BATOON 15 other scholars understood Mercado’s perspective. Some of them philosophically elaborated Mercado’s study by adding literary data form Filipino ethnic groups in the understanding of Filipino philosophy or by interpreting the loob as TEXT and a metaphor. Some of them elaborated Mercado’s study by using it as model in formulating the Filipino psycho- moral character or the Filipino psycho-social character. And some of them complemented Mercado’s anthropological linguistic-phenomenological perspective on mainstream Filipino philosophy with an anthropological “thick description” on rural village Filipinos’ philosophy. After tracing Mercado’s anthropological perspective on the study of Filipino philosophy, what else could young Filipino philosophy scholars do on the study of Filipino philosophy? Given the premise that cultural philosophies are man-made symbolic systems whose meanings can change in time and space through cultural assimilation and amalgamation, it is therefore, necessary that contemporary Filipinos’ (who are not just members of the Filipino nation but also citizens of the virtual world and have worked all over the world) language and behavior be studied to check whether or not they manifest the same Filipino worldview discovered by Mercado in the 1970s. It may also be vital to interview them, individually and as a focused group, to ascertain if they still conform to the Filipino worldview that they have been made to interiorize earlier in their lives. To pursue this kind of research, however, requires an interplay of forces: culture, structure, and agency. Research culture provides the worldview on research that frames the research structure and research agency of the members of academe. The research culture which the research on Filipino philosophy demand is a worldview that has the following: 1) a clear logos or thinking on the significance and value of the research on Filipino philosophy as an academic, philosophical pursuit; 2) a clear account of the ontos or reality of the Filipino worldview as output of this kind of research; and 3) a clear ethos or ethics on how to conduct this type of research. Research structure refers to the “system of opportunities” available to researchers. The structural supports that this kind of research requires includes social science theoretical and methodological courses in the curriculum of professional philosophical education, fielding of teachers and research supervisors versed in both theories and research methods in philosophy and in the social sciences, organization of conferences and workshops that serve as venues for the public presentation of research results, and allotment of space in existing journals, if not altogether the creation of new journals for the publication of this type of research. This

16 MERCADO’S ANTHROPOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE academic structural support also entails financial subsidies and the continuous exercise of political will. The needed exercise of agency to fulfill this kind of research comes from two sources: school administrators and research proponents. School administrators have to exercise their agency by making tough decisions as regards the building of the much-needed structural support. But such will not be a daunting task if they really want to understand how ordinary Filipinos imagine the nation and exercise their reflexivity to see what is best to adapt from the Western academic philosophical theories for the development of the nation. Research proponents, on the other hand, have to exercise their agency by being more knowledgeable in philosophy as well as in the social sciences in terms of theory, method, and research practice. They have to dive into the sources of empirical data on Filipino philosophy as well as literature on the Philippines and the Filipinos. They also need to seek help and encouragement from other scholars because the task is sometimes too daunting and frustrating. They have to look for a reason or a passion to motivate themselves to carry on with the task despite cultural and structural barriers. Finally, they have to work hard to make their research results known to politicians who promised to make policies and programs that serve the interest of the Filipino nation. If all these things are possible, then other scholars can join Fr. Leonardo N. Mercado in celebrating the best in the Filipino!

Department of Philosophy, University of Santo Tomas, Philippines

References

Abueg, Nicanor S., “Leonardo N. Mercado’s Elements of Filipino Philosophy by Leonardo N. Mercado, SVD,” in Philippine Studies, 22 (1974), 384- 386. Abulad, Romualdo E., “Options for a Filipino Philosophy,” in Karunungan, 1 (1984), 17-30. ______, “Contemporary Filipino Philosophy,” in Karunungan, 1:5 (1988), 1-13. Abulad, Romualdo E., Florentino T. Timbreza and Herminia V. Reyes, “Pilosopiyang Pilipino,” in Ensayklopedia ng Pilosopiya, ed. by Emerita S. Quito (Manila: De La Salle University of Press, 1993). Alejo, Albert, Tao Po! Tuloy! (Quezon City: Office of Research Publications, Ateneo de Manila University, 1990). Batoon, Emmanuel D., A Guide to Thesis Writing in Philosophy Part One: Proposal Writing (Manila: REJN Publishing, 2005).

E. BATOON 17

Co, Alfredo P., “Doing Philosophy in the Philippines: Fifty Years Ago and Fifty Years from Now,” in Karunungan, 21 (2004), 1-18. Cresswell, John W., Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches 2nd ed. (Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications, Inc., 2002). Demeterio III, F.P.A., “Thought and Socio-Politics: An Account of the Late Twentieth Century Filipino Philosophy,” in F.P.A. Demeterio’s Philosophy and Cultural Theory Page, April 2002, Accessed 30 June 2011,. ______, “Re-reading Emerita Quito’s Thoughts Concerning the Underdevelopment of Filipino Philosophy,” in F.P.A. Demeterio’s Philosophy and Cultural Page. April 2002, Accessed 30 June 2011,. Enriquez, Virgilio. G., Indigenous Psychology: A Book of Readings (Quezon City: Akademya ng Sikolohiyang Pilipino, 1990). Enriquez, Virgilio G. and Amelia B. Alfonso, “The Worldview and Weltanschauung of the Filipinos as Reflected in the Tagalog Language,” in The Filipino Weltanschauung in Languages, Literature, Popular Culture, Visual Arts and Other Fields (Philippines and Singapore: Philippine Psychology Research House, Philippines and Institute for Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore, 1980). Gonzales, Andrew B., “Indigenization of the Social Sciences A Red Herring?,” in Indigenous Psychology: A Book of Readings (Diliman, Quezon City: AKADEMYA NG SIKOLOHIYANG PILIPINO Philippine Psychology Research and Training House, 1990). Gripaldo, Rolando M., Filipino Philosophy Traditional Approach Part 1, Section 3rd ed. (Washington, D.C.: C & E Publishin Inc. and the Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 2009). Jocano. Felipe L., Filipino Worldview (Quezon City: PUNLAD, 2001). Mercado, Leonardo N., Elements of Filipino Philosophy, Ph.D. Dissertation in Philosophy (Manila: UST Graduate School, 1973). ______, Elements of Filipino Philosophy (Tacloban City: Divine Word University Publication, 1974). Miranda, Dionision, Loob: The Filipino Within (Manila: Divine Word Publications, 1989). Neuman, W. Lawrence, Social Research Methods Qualitative and Qualitative Approach, 6th ed. (Boston: Pearson Education, Inc., 2006). Payne, Geoff and Malcolm Williams, “Generalization in Qualitative Research,” in Sociology, 32 (2005), 295-314.

18 MERCADO’S ANTHROPOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

Quito, Emerita S., The State of Philosophy in the Philippines (De La Salle University Monograph Series No.5. Manila: De La Salle University Research Center, 1983). ______, “The Filipino and the Japanese Experience,” in Lectures on Comparative Philosophy (Manila: De la Salle University, 1979). ______, “Structuralism and the Filipino Volkgeist,” in A Life of Philosophy: Festschrift in honor of Emerita S. Quito (Manila: De la Salle University Press, 1990), 724-741. Radin, Paul, Primitive man as philosopher (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1957). Redfield, Robert, The Primitive World and Its Transformation (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1953). Reyes, Ramon C., “Sources of Filipino Thought,” in Philippine Studies, 21 (1973), 429-37. Tassi, Aldo, “Modernity as Transformation of Truth into Meaning,” in International Philosophical Quarterly, 22 (1982), 185-194. Timbreza, Florentino T., Pilosopiyang Pilipino (Manila: Rex Book Store, 1982). ______, “Understanding Filipino Philosophy,” in Karunungan, 3 (1986), 9-35. Zialcita, Fernando N., “Forms of A Filipino Philosophy,” in Solidarity, 7 (1972), 4-14.

KRITIKE VOLUME EIGHT NUMBER TWO (DECEMBER 2014) 19-46

Article

Ang Pilosopiya ni Pierre Bourdieu bilang Batayang Teoretikal sa Araling Pilipino

F.P.A. Demeterio III and Leslie Anne L. Liwanag

Abstract: This paper is basically a presentation of the tenets of Pierre Bourdieu’s philosophy in a language and level that can be easily understood by Filipino students and scholars of philosophy, cultural studies and Philippine studies. The discussion of Bourdieu’s philosophy revolves around 1) his concepts of habitus, field and symbolic violence; 2) his critique of television; 3) his theory of capitals; 4) some implications of his theory of capitals; and 5) his being public intellectual. The ultimate aim of this paper is to suggest some aspects and dimensions of Philippine society and culture that can be analyzed using some of bourdieu’s thoughts as interpretive frameworks, as well as to challenge the said Filipino students and scholars of philosophy, cultural studies and Philippine studies to creatively and effectively appropriate such theories for the enrichment of the theoretical corpus of Philippine studies. This paper is part of a series of similar works done by one of the co-authors that dealt with Adorno, Schleiermacher and Dilthey, Heidegger, Gadamer and Bultmann, and Lyotard.

Keywords: Bourdieu, Philippine Studies, habitus, social reproduction

Introduksiyon

angarin ng papel na itong mailahad ang mga mahalagang aspekto ng kaisipan ni Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002). Isa siyang Pranses na H sosyolohista, antropolohista, pilosopo, at aktibistang lumalaban sa globalisasyon. Hindi lamang iinog ang papel sa wikang Filipino, bagkus ipapamalas ang antas ng diskursong maiintindihan ng mga kapwa Pilipinong nasa larangan ng araling kultural at araling Pilipino. Makatutulong ito sa mga wala pa masyadong kasanayan sa antas ng diskursong pilosopikal, sa mga Pilipinong mag-aaral ng pilosopiyang marahil hindi pa handang basahin ang mga primaryong teksto ni Bourdieu o ang mga komplikadong babasahin tungkol sa kanya na naisulat na sa wikang Ingles.

20 ANG PILOSOPIYA NI PIERRE BOURDIEU

Tunguhin din ng papel na itong matukoy ang ilang aspekto mula sa naturang banyagang diskurso para lalong mapagyaman ang teoretikal na kalipunan ng lokal na araling kultural at araling Pilipino. Ipinanganak si Bourdieu sa isang rural na rehiyon ng Bearn na matatagpuan sa paanan ng kabundukang Pyrenees, sa timog-kanlurang bahagi ng Pransiya. Napabibilang siya sa angkan ng mga ingkilino at maliliit na kawani ng gobyerno. Nag-aral siya ng elementarya at sekondarya sa karatig na bayan kasama ang mga anak ng mga magsasaka, manggagawa, at may maliliit na negosyo. Sa pamamagitan ng kanyang angking talino at sipag, nabiyayaan siya ng iskolarship ng gobyerno at nakapag-aral sa Lycee Louis-le-Grand. Dito pinaghandaan niya ang kanyang pagpasok sa prestihiyosong Ecole Normale Superieure. Sa Ecole Normale Superieure, ang resulta ng kanyang entrance examination ang naglagay sa kanya sa programang pilosopiyang tinagurian noong reyna ng mga siyensiya. Kaya naging guro niya ang mga batikang pilosopong katulad nina Louis Althusser (1918-1990), Alexandre Koyre (1892 -1964), Gaston Bachelard (1884-1962) at Georges Canguilhem (1904-1995). Gawa rin ng kanyang pagkalagay sa programang pilosopiya, napasama siya sa intelektuwal na pakikipaglaban sa hegemonya ng eksistensiyalismo ni Jean Paul Sartre (1905-1980). Matapos niyang makamtan ang degri kasabay ang pilosopo at kritikong si Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), minabuti ni Bourdieu na magturo ng pilosopiya sa isang maliit na bayan ng Moulins sa kalagitnaang bahagi ng Pransiya. Inaasahan ng maraming kalaunan sasama si Bourdieu sa elitistang lupon ng mga pilosopong Pranses, ngunit tinahak niya ang hindi ganoong kaglamorosong disiplina ng sosyolohiya. Noong 1955, kinailangan niyang magbigay-serbisyo militar. Gawa ng kanyang taglay na pagkarebelde, ipinadala siya sa Algeria na kolonya pa ng Pransiya. Nagkaroon ng malalim na epekto sa paghugis ng kanyang kaisipan ang karanasan niya sa Algeria, dito nasaksihan niya ang nasyonalistang pakikipaglaban ng mga Algeriyano. Bunsod nito, tuluyan niyang iniwan ang landas ng pilosopiya at sa halip tumuon sa mga praktikal at kongkretong paksa ng sosyolohiya. Nakilala siya ng mga sosyolohistang Pranses dahil sa kanyang kauna-unahan etnograpikong proyekto tungkol sa mga Berber. Gawa ng kanyang sentimiyento laban sa digmaan at kolonyalismo, minabuti ng pamahalaang Pranses na alisin siya sa Algeria at pabalikin na lamang sa Pransiya. Sa pamamagitan nito, nakapagturo at nakapanaliksik si Bourdieu sa University of Paris at sa Ecoles des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. Dito nakatrabaho niya ang batikang sosyolohistang si Raymond Aron (1905-1983) at itinayo niya ang Centre for the Sociology of Education and Culture.

F. DEMETERIO AND L. LIWANAG 21

Sa paglipas ng panahon iginawad sa kanya ang professorial chair ng sosyolohiya sa College de France at ang prestihiyosong Gintong Medalya mula sa Centre National de Recherche Scientifique. Sumakabilang buhay siya noong 2002 dahil sa sakit na kanser. Nakapaglathala si Bourdieu ng mahigit apatnapung libro at limangdaang artikulo. Ilan sa kanyang mga pangunahing libro ang Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture (1970) na isinulat kasama si Jean- Claude Passeron; ang Outline of a Theory of Practice (1972); Distinction: a Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (1984); Homo Academicus (1984); In Other Words: Essays towards Reflexive Sociology (1987); Practical Reason: on the Theory of Action (1998); Language and Symbolic Power (1991); at On Television (1999). Bukod sa larangan ng sosyolohiya at pilosopiya kinilala din ang kanyang mga naging intelektuwal na ambag sa panitikan, sining, edukasyon, araling kultural, araling mas midya, at araling post-kolonyal. Tatalakayin ng papel na ito ang kaisipan ni Bourdieu sa ilalim ng apat sub-seksiyon na tungkol sa kanyang: 1) mga konsepto ng habitus, larangan at simbolikong dahas; 2) pagsusuri sa telebisyon; 3) teorya ng mga kapital; 4) ilang implikasyon ng teorya ng mga kapital; at 5) pagiging isang pampublikong intelektuwal.

Habitus, Larangan at Simbolikong Dahas

Isa sa mga pangunahing pakay ni Bourdieu ang pagsaliksik sa kultural na pagkakaiba ng mga panlipunang uri. Sinuri niya ang kung ano ang ugat ng pagkakaibang ito, paano pinapanatili ng ganitong pagkakaiba ang inhustisya at kawalan ng pagkakapantay-pantay sa lipunan, at paano isinasalin ng isang panlipunang uri ang kanyang partikular na kultura mula sa isang henerasyon patungo sa kasunod na henerasyon. Para matugunan ang ganitong mga katanungan ginamit niya ang mga konseptong habitus, larangan (field), at simbolikong dahas (symbolic violence). Hinango niya ang ideya ng habitus mula sa kaisipan ni Aristotle (384- 322 BCE), sa mga Eskolastiko, at sa ilang mga modernong sosyolohista katulad nina Marcel Mauss (1872-1950), Nobert Elias (1897-1990), at Max Weber (1864-1920). Ginamit niya ang habitus bilang solusyon sa teoretikal na problema tungkol sa kung alin ang mas mahalaga, ang indibidwal ba o ang sistema at estruktura. Ayon sa kanya, ang habitus ay isang:

System of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles which generate and organize practices and representations that can be objectively adapted to their outcomes without

22 ANG PILOSOPIYA NI PIERRE BOURDIEU

presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an express mastery of the operations necessary in order to attain them.”1

Ibig sabihin, isang sistema ng disposiyon sa pagkilos, pakiramdam, at pag-iisip ang habitus, at ito ay hinubog ng obhektibong estruktura ng kanyang kongkretong kondisyon.2

Kilos

Damdamin

Isip

Habitus Panlipunang Estruktura

Paghubog

Pagpapatibay

Figure 1: Ugnayan ng Habitus at Panlipunang Estruktura

Nagmumula sa habitus ang bawat kilos, damdamin, at isip ng isang indibidwal na tumutulong sa paglikha ng mga obhektibong panlipunang estruktura. Habang hinuhubog at pinapatibay ng habitus ang mga panlipunang estruktura, masasabing maaaring mamana rin ang habitus ng isang indibidwal mula sa kanyang kinalakihang tahanan at kapaligiran.3 Ilan sa mga terminong ginamit ni Bourdieu para lalong maipaliwanag ang konsepto ng habitus ang “cultural unconscious,” “habit- forming force,” “set of basic, deeply interiorized master-patterns,” “mental habit,” “mental and corporeal schemata of perceptions, appreciations and actions,” at “generative principle of regulated improvisations.”4 Hindi siya sang-ayon sa deterministikong kaisipan na ang sistema at estruktura ang humuhubog sa kilos, damdamin, at isip ng isang indibidwal. Gayundin sa rasyonalistikong kaisipan na ang kilos, damdamin, at isip ng isang indibidwal na malayang-malaya sa hegemonya ng sistema at estruktura.

1 Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice, trans. by Richard Nice (California: Stanford University Press, 1990), 53. 2 See ibid., 55; see Figure 1. 3 See Figure 1. 4 Bourdieu, The Logic of Pratice, 52-56.

F. DEMETERIO AND L. LIWANAG 23

Ito ang dahilan kung bakit ginamit niya ang habitus bilang tulay sa pagitan ng magkatunggaling determinismo at rasyonalismo. Maaaring bigyan ng habitus ng sapat at parehong kahalagahan ang indibidwal at ang sistema, o estruktura. Dagdag niya:

The habitus contains the solution to the paradox of objective meaning without subjective intentions. It is the source of the strongs of ‘moves’ which are objectively organized as strategies without being the product of a genuine strategic intention—which would presuppose at least that they be apprehended as one among other possible strategies.5

Kapag ituturing ang habitus bilang kultura ng isang panlipunang uri o ng isang maliit na pangkat ng isang panlipunang uri, akmang-akma ang kulturang ito sa estruktura at kondisyon ng naturang uri o pangkat dahil hinubog ito sa puwersa ng parehong estruktura at kondisyon. Tinatawag na habitus ang pagsasaloob ng indibidwal sa mga estruktura at kondisyon ng kanyang kalagayan at kapaligiran. Ito ang dahilan kung bakit kadalasan walang kakayahang mangarap at magplano nang matayog ang isang taong mahirap sapagkat ramdam niya kung ano lamang ang mga abot-kayang posibilidad na maaasahan niya sa kanyang mahirap na kalagayan at kapaligiran. Ang habitus din ang dahilan kung bakit magkakaiba ang kultura ng mga naghaharing uri at inaaping uri, pati na kung bakit iba ang kultura ng isang indibidwal na biglang yumaman at kultura ng mga dati nang mayaman. Ginamit ni Bourdieu ang konsepto ng larangan bilang pampalit sa makitid na konsepto ni Karl Marx (1818-1883) tungkol sa antagonismo sa gitna ng mga panlipunang uri. Sinang-ayunan ni Bourdieu si Weber na una nang nagsabing mahirap pag-aralan ang isang lipunan kapag ang titingnan lamang ang tunggalian ng mga panlipunang uri. Kung nakatuon si Marx sa antagonismong nakapaloob sa malawak na lipunan, minarapat ni Bourdieu na tingnan ang mas espesipikong antagonismo, o tagisan ng galing o paligsahang nakapaloob sa mas maliliit na parte ng lipunan. Kung sinuri ni Marx ang makroskopikong lipunan, sa mikroskopikong larangan nakatutok si Bourdieu. Para kay Bourdieu, isang espasyo sa loob ng lipunan ang larangan kung saan dumidiskarte at nakipagpaligsahan para makamtan ang mga kanais-nais na hangarin ang mga tao at institusyon. Ipinaliwanag niya at ng kanyang kolaborador na si Loic Wacquant:

5 Ibid., 62.

24 ANG PILOSOPIYA NI PIERRE BOURDIEU

In a field, agents and institutions constantly struggle, according to the regularities and the rules constitutive of this space of play … with various degrees of strength and therefore diverse probabilities of success, to appropriate the specific products at stake in the game.6

May estruktura ang larangan dahil may mga batas ito kung paano dapat kikilos ang mga nasa loob. Gayundin may kani-kaniyang taglay na kapangyarihan ang bawat nasa loob nito. Isinulat nina Bourdieu at Wacquant:

… the field as a structure of objective relations between positions of force undergirds and guides the strategies whereby occupants of these positions seek, individually or collectively, to safeguard or improve their position and to impose principles of hierarchization most favorable to their own products.7

Isang halimbawa ng larangan ang mundo ng akademiya kung saan nagtatagisan ng galing sa pagtuturo, pagsasaliksik at paglilimbag ang mga propesor. Isang pa ang mundo ng mga mag-aaral kung saan nagtatagisan din ang mga ito sa pag-aaral at paglilinang sa kani-kanilang sarili bilang mga umuusbong na pinuno at eksperto sa iba’t ibang kurikular at ekstra-kurikular na gawain. Maituturing ding mga larangan maging ang relihiyon, siyensiya, o ang ano pa mang propesyon kung saan may kani-kanilang batas sa pagdidiskarte at batayan kung ano ang kapangyarihang taglay ng mga nasa loob ng mga ito. Ayon kay Bourdieu may tatlong uri ng pagdidiskarte para makamtan ang pinakamakapangyarihang posisyon sa loob ng isang larangan: 1) ang konserbasyon ng kapangyarihan para mapanatili ito ng isang indibidwal o institusyon; 2) ang pag-angkin, o pagmana ng kapangyarihan para maisalin ito mula sa unang may hawak patungo sa bagong hahawak nito; at 3) ang subersiyon ng kapangyarihan para mawalan ng lehitimasyon ang unang may hawak nito, o para mapawalang bisa ang naunang kapangyarihan sa pamamagitan ng hindi pagkilala nito bilang isang katanggap-tanggap na anyo ng kapangyarihan.8

6 Pierre Bourdieu and Loic Wacquant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 102. 7 Ibid., 101. 8 See ibid., 102.

F. DEMETERIO AND L. LIWANAG 25

Sa pamamagitan ng larangan, ipinakita ni Bourdieu na hindi lamang matatagpuan ang Marxistang konsepto ng antagonismo sa makroskopikong tunggalian ng mga panlipunang uri. Para sa kanya, may taglay na mikroskopikong antagonismo o tagisan ng galing – lantaran man o palihim. Bilang isang Neo-Marxista, naniniwala si Bourdieu na may taglay ring inhustisya at hindi pagkakapantay-pantay ang lipunan. Sa pananaw ni Marx, ideolohiya ang itinuturong dahilan sa hindi paglaban ng mga inapi sa mga naghaharing uri at sa pagtanggap ng mga inaapi sa kanilang dehadong kalagayan. Ideolohiya ang bumubulag sa mga inaapi para hindi nila makita ang laganap na inhustisya at hindi pagkakapantay-pantay sa loob ng lipunan. Sa pananaw ng Italyanong Marxistang si Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937), hegemoniya ang sagot sa kaparehong katanungang tumutukoy sa kultura at sistema ng pagpapahalaga ng mga naghaharing uri na kusang tinanggap ng mga inaapi. Kaakibat ng pagtanggap sa mapang-aping estruktura ng lipunan ang malawakang pagtanggap sa kultura at sistema ng pagpapahalaga ng mga naghaharing uri. Sa pananaw ni Althusser, repressive state apparatus at ideological state apparatus naman ang sagot sa kaparehong katanungan. Gumagamit ng dahas at banta ng dahas ang repressive state apparatus sa pagpapatupad sa ideolohiya ng mga naghaharing uri, habang banayad na sumusuyo ang ideological state apparatus sa mga tao para tanggapin ang parehong ideolohiya. Nakaugat sa mahabang tradisyon ng Marxismo ang konsepto ng simbolikong dahas ni Bourdieu. Pumapatungkol ang simbolikong dahas sa estruktural na pagpataw ng mga kategorya ng pag-iisip at pagtingin sa mga indibidwal para tanggapin na lamang nila ang mapang-aping kaayusan ng lipunan. Nilinaw ni Bourdieu: “Symbolic power is that invisible power which can be exercised only with the complicity of those who do not want to know that they are subject to it or even that they themselves exercise it.”9 Kapag tinanggap na ng mga indibidwal ang kasalukuyang kaayusan bilang normal at natural na kaayusan, hindi na nila maisipang punahin ito bilang isang mapang-aping kaayusan o kaya hindi na nila bibigyang oras na pagtangkaang palitan ng mas makatao at mas makatarungang kaayusan. Ibig sabihin, ginagawang lehitimo ng simbolikong dahas ang kabuoang sistema at estruktura ng lipunan. Katulad sa hegemoniya ni Gramsci at sa ideological state apparatus ni Althusser, isang banayad na pagpilit sa mga indibidwal na sundin na lamang ang kasalukuyang kaayusan

9 Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1991), 164.

26 ANG PILOSOPIYA NI PIERRE BOURDIEU at huwag na itong punahin at palitan ang konsepto ng simbolikong dahas ni Bourdieu Lalong lilinaw ang mga konsepto ng habitus, larangan, at simbolikong dahas kapag tatalakayin na ng papel ang teorya ng mga kapital ni Bourdieu. Bago pa man dumako ang papel na ito sa nasabing teorya, ipapakita muna kung paano ginamit ni Bourdieu ang mga naturang konsepto sa kanyang pagsuri sa telebisyon.

Pagsusuri sa Telebisyon

Hindi sa aspektong pagbibigay ng libangan nakatuon ang pagsusuri ni Bourdieu, datapwat nakapokus sa pagbabalita at pagbibigay ng impormasyon sa telebisyon. Dagdag dito, nakasentro ang kanyang pagsuri sa katotohanang dapat batayan ng pagbabalita at pagbibigay ng impormasyon. Sa kabila ito ng pagiging mas kilala ni Bourdieu sa larangan ng araling kultural bilang dalubhasa sa pag-uunawa sa libangang dala ng telebisyon gamit ang kanyang teorya ng mga kapital. Kaya mahalagang linawin na ang Bourdieu’ng mababasa sa librong On Television ang tatalakayin sa seksiyong ito at hindi muna ang Bourdieu’ng mababasa sa librong Distinction na tatalakayin naman sa kasunod na seksiyon. Hihimayin ng seksiyong ito ang tatlong mahahalagang paksa ng librong On Television: 1) ang tunggalian sa loob ng larangan ng dyornalismong pantelebisyon, 2) ang pagiging sakop ng larangan ng dyornalismong pantelebisyon sa larangan ng ekonomiya at politika, at 3) ang simbolikong dahas na ipinapalaganap ng telebisyon. Kung babalikan, espasyo sa loob ng lipunan ang larangan kung saan nakikipagtagisan ng galing at dumidiskarte para makamtan ang mga kanais- nais na bagay ang mga indibidwal at institusyon. Alinsunod dito, madaling ituring na isang larangan ang dyornalismong pantelebisyon dahil nagtatagisan din ng galing at dumidiskarte para makikilala bilang isang mahusay na dyornalista ang mga dyornalistang nasa loob ng industriyang ito. Bukod dito, malinaw na nagtatagisan ng galing at dumidiskarte para mahatak ang pinakamaraming manonood ang mga pinagtatrabahuhan nilang himpilan. Naniniwala si Bourdieu na may malaking epekto sa katotohanan at kalidad ng serbisyong inihahatid ng telebisyon ang tunggalian sa loob ng larangan ng dyornalismong pantelebisyon. Una, gawa ng pagsisikap ng isang dyornalistang mananatili sa kanyang trabaho at makikilala bilang isang mahusay na mamamahayag, mapipilitan siyang sumunod sa mga nakasulat at hindi nakasulat na patakaran ng kanyang propesyon.

F. DEMETERIO AND L. LIWANAG 27

Isa sa mga mahalagang hindi nakasulat na patakaran ang tungkol sa ano dapat at hindi dapat iulat. Tinawag ito ni Bourdieu na “self censorship” na bunsod sa reyalidad na ang katotohanang inihain ng telebisyon ang isang katotohanang sinala na ng politika sa loob ng propesyong dyornalismo. Winika ni Bourdieu:

It is … true that at at time such as today, when great numbers of people are looking for work and there is so little job security in television and radio, there is a greater tendency toward political conformity. Consciously or unconsciously, people censor themselves—they do not need to be called into line.10

Pangalawa, sa pamamagitan ng tunggalian sa pagitan ng mga himpilan para makuha ang pinakamaraming manonood, minamanmanan ng bawat himpilan ang mga programa at gawain ng kani-kanilang kakompetensyang himpilan na nagreresulta ng pare-parehong programa at gawain sa kabuoan. Nilinaw ni Bourdieu:

People are ready to do almost anything to be the first to see and present something. The result is that everyone copies each other in the attempt to get ahead; everyone ends up doing the same thing. The search for exclusivity, which elsewhere leads to originality and singularity, here yields uniformity and banality.11

Kaya hindi napupunan ng ibang himpilan ang kakulangan sa katotohanan ng isang himpilan. Minsan nasasakop ang isang larangan ng isa pang mas malaki at mas makapangyarihang larangan. Ito ang nangyari sa dyornalismong pantelebisyon, sa puntong pagmamay-ari ng malalaking kompanya ang himpilang ginagalawan nito, o hindi kaya ng gobyerno. May epekto sa katotohanan at kalidad ng serbisyong inihain ng telebisyon ang pagiging sakop ng larangan ng dyornalistang pantelebisyon ng malalaking kompanya o gobyerno.12 Una, nagdadagdag ng self-censorship sa mga dyornalista na hindi na maaaring magpahayag ng anomang impormasyon na makakasama sa may- ari ng himpilan. Kadalasan, ang mga kompanya na nagmamay-ari ng isang

10 Pierre Bourdieu, On Television, trans. by Priscella Parkhurst (New York: The New Press, 1998), 15. 11 Ibid., 20. 12 See ibid., 16.

28 ANG PILOSOPIYA NI PIERRE BOURDIEU himpilan ay may-ari din ng marami pang kompanya na hindi rin maaaring ipahamak ng anomang negatibong pahayag. Kapag nagkataong gobyerno ang nagmamay-ari ng isang himpilan, lalong lalawak pa ang self-censorship na ito bunsod sa lawak ng estruktura ng pamahalaan na dapat isa-alang- alang ng mga dyornalista. Pangalawa, dahil sakop ang dyornalismong pantelebisyon ng mas malawak at mas makapangyarihan larangan ng ekonomiya, hinuhugis ng ekonomiya ang anyo at nilalaman ng dyornalismong pantelebisyon. Kundi man aabot sa ilang milyong piso, libo-libo ang halaga ng bawat segundo ng produksyong pantelebisyon. Inihain ang produksiyong ito sa nakararaming indibidwal na abala sa kani-kanilang mga gawain, kaya sadyang mabilis ang takbo ng programang pantelebisyon. Bunsod sa bilis na ito, naaangkop sa telebison ang mga nilalamang nakamamangha, sensasyonal, at dramatiko, o hindi kaya ang mga nilalamang gasgas, pangkaraniwan, at alam na ng nakararaming manonood. Binigyang-diin ni Bourdieu na: “Time, on television, is an extremely rare commodity. When you use us precious time to say banal things, to the extent that they cover up precious things, these banalities become in fact very important.”13 Naniniwala si Bourdieu na hindi uubra ang telebisyon sa paghahain ng mga seryoso, pinag-iiisapan nang mabuti, at hinihimay nang mabuting mga isyu at usapin. Kaakibat ng telebisyon ang pagsala at pagbaluktot sa katotohanan. Gawa ng kahusayan sa pagtatago at laganap ang pagtanggap ng mga tao nito, malinaw para kay Bourdieu na may taglay na simbolikong dahas ang telebisyon. Una, ipinataw ng mga dyornalista ang kanilang pananaw sa nakararaming manonood. Sa pagtanggap ng mga manonood sa pananaw ng mga dyornalista bilang natural na pananaw, nararanasan nila ang simbolikong dahas. Dagdag pa ni Bourdieu: “They show things and make people believe in what they show. This power to show is also a power to mobilize. It can give a life to ideas or images, but also to groups.”14 Pangalawa, ang mga dyornalista at himpilan ang nagpapasya kung ano ang maaari at hindi maaaring ipalabas sa telebisyon, kontrolado nila ang pagsali ng mga indibidwal sa public sphere, o ang espasyo kung saan malaya sanang talakayin ng mga mamamayan ang samu’t saring usaping panlipunan. Hawak ng telebisyon kung ano lang dapat ang tatalakayin, at kung paano dapat tatalakayin ang mga usaping nasa sa loob ng public sphere, nararanasan din ng public sphere, mga indibidwal, lipunan, at pati na ng demokrasya ang simbolikong dahas.

13 Ibid., 18. 14 Ibid., 21.

F. DEMETERIO AND L. LIWANAG 29

Pangatlo, kontrolado rin ng mga dyornalista at himpilan ang pagsali ng mga intelektuwal sa public sphere. Sa mga talakayang pantelebisyon, ang mga dyornalista at himpilan ang pumipili kung sino-sinong mga eksperto at dalubhasa ang dapat nilang yayain sa studio at makapanayam sa harap ng kamera. Kadalasan, pinipili nila ang mga eksperto at dalubhasang kapareho nila ang takbo ng isip, bukod sa kakayahan ng mga ito na mag-isip at magsalita nang mabilis. Inilatag niya:

If television rewards a certain number of fast-thinkers who offer cultural ‘fast food’—predigested and prethought culture—it is not only because those who speak regularly on television are virtually on call. . . The list of commentators varies little. … These ‘authorities’ spare journalists the trouble of looking for people who really have something to say, in most cases younger, still-unknown people who are involved in their research and not much for talking to the media.15

Para kay Bourdieu, lumalabas na lumilikha ang telebisyon ng mga eksperto at dalubhasa na hindi naman talaga eksperto at dalubhasa sa mata ng kani-kanilang mga kasamahan sa loob ng kani-kanilang disiplina. Dahilan ang patakaran ng telebisyon sa pagpili ng mga eksperto at dalubhasa na hindi tumutugma sa patakaran ng pagkikilala kung sino ba talaga ang mga tunay na eksperto at dalubhasa sa loob ng isang disiplina. Bilang halimbawa, silang mga indibidwal na bihasa sa sosyolohiya, kasaysayan, o sa agham pampolitika ang kinikilala bilang tunay na eksperto at dalubhasa ng kani-kanilang mga kapwa sosyolohista, historyador, siyantistang politikal. Kaya ayon kay Bourdieu, isang uri ng simbolikong dahas ang pakikialam ng telebisyon sa pagkilatis ng mga personalidad sa loob ng mga disiplina.

Ang Teorya ng mga Kapital

Ipinaliwanag ni Bourdieu ang pagkakaiba-iba ng taglay na kapangyarihan ng mga indibidwal at insititusyon sa loob ng isang larangan, pati na ang pagkakaiba-iba ng mga habitus ng iba’t ibang panlipunang uri at mas maliliit na pangkat, gamit ang kanyang teorya ng mga kapital. Isang uri ng kapangyarihan ang kapital na maaaring gamitin para makamtan ang mga kanais-nais na bagay o karagdagang kapangyarihan at iba pang anyo ng kapangyarihan. Ipinahayag niya: “Capital is accumulated labor … which,

15 Ibid., 29-30.

30 ANG PILOSOPIYA NI PIERRE BOURDIEU when appropriated on a private … basis by agents or groups of agents, enables them to appropriate social energy in the form of reified or living labor.”16 Ang kapangyarihan bilang kapangyarihan ay hindi maituturing na kapital kapag hindi ito ginagamit bilang kasangkapan para makamtan ang mga kanais-nais na bagay, o hindi kaya para lumikha ng karagdagang kapangyarihan at iba pang anyo ng kapangyarihan. Naipakita na ni Marx kung gaano kasentro ang kapital sa kanyang pananaliksik tungkol sa modernong lipunan. Ngunit nakatali ang kapital na ito sa diskursong pinansiyal at pang-ekonomiko. Kaya para kay Marx, ang kapital ay pera o kayamanan na ginagamit sa paglikha ng karagdagang pera o kayamanan. Sinusugan ni Bourdieu ang ideya ni Marx tungkol sa sentral na kahalagahan ng kapital, habang pinalawak ng Pranses na pantas ang para sa kanya ay makitid na pagdalumat ng Alemang pilosopo sa konsepto ng kapital. Sinabi niya: “It is in fact impossible to account for the structure and functioning of the social world unless one reintroduces capital in all its forms and not solely in the one form recognized by economic theory.”17 Kung para kay Marx ang kapital ay pera at kayamanang pinansiyal at pang-ekonomiko lamang, naniniwala si Bourdieu na may apat na pangunahing uri ang kapital: 1) ang pang-ekonomikong kapital na lubusan nang pinag-aralan ni Marx, 2) ang kultural na kapital, 3) ang panlipunang kapital, at 4) ang simbolikong kapital. Ang katanungan kung paano nagkakaiba-iba ang mga habitus ng mga indibidwal, mga institusyon, mga panlipunang uri, at malilit na pangkat ay ganap nang ipinaliwanag ni Bourdieu sa pamamagitan ng pagbibigay-diin sa katotohanang ang mga ito ay may taglay na iba’t ibang kombinasyon ng pagkakaroon, hindi pagkakaroon at dami ng apat na uri ng kapital. Katulad ng nabanggit na, ang pang-ekonomikong kapital ni Bourdieu ay katumbas sa kapital na tinatalakay ni Marx. Tumutukoy ito sa kayaman, pera, lupain, stock at share ng mga korporasyon, at iba pang mga kahalintulad na bagay. Ang sinomang mayroong pang-ekonomikong kapital ay mayroon ding kapangyarihan sa loob ng isang larangan – ito ang dahilan kung bakit makapangyarihan ang mayayaman. Subalit, napansin ni Bourdieu na kahit sa mga simpleng lipunan, hindi lamang nakabatay ang kapangyarihan ng isang indibidwal sa kanyang lupain, alagang hayop, at mga kagamitan sa pagsasaka. Nakabase rin ito sa laki ng kanyang angkan na maaari niyang sandalan tuwing magkakaroon ng problema. Gayundin sa lawak ng kanyang mga kaalyansa na maaari niyang maging kaabay sa palitan ng mga produkto, pangangalakal, at pakikidigma. Kaya malinaw para sa kanya na hindi sapat

16 Pierre Bourdeiu, “Forms of Capital,” in J. Richardson ed., Handbook of Theory and Research in for the Sociology of Education (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood, 1986), 46. 17 Ibid.

F. DEMETERIO AND L. LIWANAG 31 ang pang-ekonomikong kapital para ipaliwanag ang kabuoan ng kapangyarihan. Marahil ang kultural na kapital ang pinakakilalang konsepto ni Bourdieu at ang pinakamadalas ding hinihiram ng mga mananaliksik sa larangan ng araling kultural. Tumutukoy ang kultural na kapital sa kaalamang propesyonal, kasanayang teknikal, edukasyon, katatasan sa pagsasalita, kaalaman tungkol sa sining at kultura, at panlasang astetikal. Sa isang modernong lipunan, nagiging kapital ang mga kultural na kasanayang ito dahil may aktuwal na merkado kung saan maaari ikalakal ang mga ito. Bilang halimbawa ng kultural na kapital ay ang diploma, masasabing nakikilala lamang ito bilang isang anyo ng kapangyarihan sa mga lipunan kung saan pinapahalagahan ang mga indibidwal na nakapagtapos sa kolehiyo. Sa kabilang banda, doon sa mga mas simpleng lipunan kung saan walang paki-alam ang mga mamamayan sa pormal na edukasyon, walang saysay at bisa ang isang diploma kahit pa magmumula ito sa mga pinakamahusay na unibersidad sa mundo. Ipinaliwanag ni Bourdieu na matatagpuan sa tatlong anyo ang kultural na kapital. Una, bilang bahagi ng habitus, umiikot ito sa mga kasanayan at kaalaman sa pagkilos, pagdama, at pag-iisip na naisaloob na ng isang indibidwal.18 Edukado at kulturado ang tawag sa indibidwal na dumaan sa mahabang proseso ng pagkatuto na nag-umpisa pa noong kanyang kamusmusan. Ito ang dahilan kung bakit hindi maaaring bigla ring maging edukado at kulturado ang isang indibidwal na biglang yumaman. Kahit anomang gawin niyang pagkukunwaring edukado at kulturado, mahahalata at mahahalata ang kanyang kakulangan sa kultural na kapital. Mahalaga para kay Bourdieu ang proseso ng pagpapalaki ng mga magulang sa kanilang mga anak dahil dito isinasalin ng isang henerasyon ang kanilang kultural na kapital patungo sa susunod na henerasyon.19 Pangalawa, maaari ring matagpuan sa obhektipikadong anyo ang kultural na kapital. Tumutukoy ito sa mga materyal na kagamitan tulad ng mga libro, likhang sining, at instrumentong pang-agham na nangangailangan ng mataas na antas ng kaalaman at kasanayan para magamit at pakinabangan.20 Kadalasang mas madaling dayain ang obhektipikadong anyo ng kultural na kapital kaysa sa naisaloob nang anyo nito. Halimbawa, mababatid na madaling paligiran ng isang indibidwal na biglang yumaman ang kanyang sarili ng mga libro, likhang sining at instrumentong pang- agham. Gayunpaman, sa oras na tanungin siya tungkol sa mga katangian at saysay ng mga bagay na ito, lalantad din ang kanyang kakulangan sa naisaloob nang kultural na kapital.

18 See ibid., 47. 19 See ibid., 48. 20 See ibid., 47.

32 ANG PILOSOPIYA NI PIERRE BOURDIEU

Pangatlo, maari ring matagpuan sa institusyonal na anyo ang kultural naapital. Tumutukoy ito sa laganap na halaga sa paggagawad ng diploma sa loob ng modernong sistema ng edukasyon.21 Kapansin-pansin sa modernong lipunan na madalas binibigyan ng bigat ang diploma kaysa aktuwal na kaalaman at kasanayan ng mga indibidwal. Ito ang dahilan kung bakit sa institusyonal na anyo ng kultural na kapital ibinubuhos ng mga kasapi ng mataas at gitnang panlipunang uri ang kani-kanilang pang- ekonomikong kapital para masalinan ng sapat na kultural na kapital ang kani-kanilang mga anak. May institusyonal na batayan ang ganitong anyo ng kultural na kapital, kaya mas mapagkatiwalaan ito kaysa tiyagaan at swertihan na pagsasalin ng internalisadong kultural na kapital. Ibig sabihin, kapag may sapat na yaman ang mga magulang, habang may sapat na talino at tiyaga naman ang kanilang mga anak, may malaking tiyansa ang mga ito na magawaran ng institusyonal na kultural na kapital matapos ang ilang taong pormal na pag-aaral. Nabanggit na ng papel na ito na kahit sa isang simpleng lipunan, hindi lamang nakabatay sa lupain, alagang hayop, at kagamitan sa pagsasaka ang kapangyarihan ng isang pamilya, kundi pati na sa laki ng angkan at lawak ng mga ka-alyansa nito. Ang mga ito ang ilan sa mga anyo ng panlipunang kapital, ang pangatlong uri ng kapital ayon kay Bourdieu. Ipinaliwanag niya:

Social capital is the aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition—or in other words, to membership in a group—which provides each of its members with the backing of the collectively- owned capital, a ‘credential’ which entitles them to credit, in the various senses of the word.22

Tungkol sa mga kakilala, ka-sosyo, kamag-anak, at ka-alyansa na maaaring pagmumulan ng tulong, palitan, kalakal, proteksiyon, rekomendasyon, at iba pang kahalintulad na bagay ang panlipunang kapital. Koneksyon ang dala ng panlipunang kapital. Paniguradong makapangyarihan ang sinomang sagana sa ganitong anyo ng kapital dahil mayroon siyang mas malawak na merkado kung saan maaari niyang ialok ang kanyang ibang kapital. Mas mahirap isalin mula sa isang henerasyon patungo sa susunod na henerasyon ang panlipunang kapital kumpara sa

21 See ibid. 22 Ibid., 51.

F. DEMETERIO AND L. LIWANAG 33 pang-ekonomiko at kultural na mga kapital. Hindi sapat para sa isang indibidwal ang pagkakaroon ng mga magulang na may malawak na panlipunang kapital. Kung may mamanahin man siyang ilang koneksyon, dapat mayroon pa rin siyang sariling kasanayan sa pagpapanatili at pagpapalawak ng mga ito.23 Ang simbolikong kapital ang pang-apat na uri ng kapital ayon kay Bourdieu. Tumutukoy sa karangalan at di-pormal na kapangyarihang politikal. May ilang indibidwal sa loob ng lipunan na kahit walang hinahawakang posisyon, tinitingala at kinikilala bilang lider. Kaya sinusunod ng iba ang sinomang mayroong simbolikong kapital. Isinulat niya: “Symbolic capital is credit, it is the power granted to those who have obtained sufficient recognition to be in position to impose recognition.”24 Isang matingkad na halimbawa ng mga indibidwal na may taglay na simbolikong kapital sa konteksto ng Pilipinas ang mga artista sa pelikula at telebisyon. Makikitang pinaniniwalaan sila ng masa sa oras na mag-endorso ng mga kandidato sa politika o hindi kaya tumakbo sila bilang mga kandidato mismo. Naniniwala si Bourdieu na maaaring magpalit-palit ng uri ang apat na kapital. Ibig sabihin, ang pang-ekonomikong kapital ay maaaring gawing kultural, o panlipunan, o simbolikong kapital; kagaya na ang kultural na kapital ay maaaring gawing pang-ekonomiko, o panlipunan, o simbolikong kapital; o kaya ang panlipunang kapital ay maaaring gawing pang- ekonomiko, o kultural, o simbolikong; at pati rin ang simbolikong kapital ay maaaring gawing pang-ekonomiko, o kultural, o panlipunang capital.25

Pang- Ekono- Kultural miko

Pan- Simbo- lipunan liko

Figure 2: Ang Posibilidad sa Pagpapalit-Palit-Uri ng Apat na Kapital

Isang halimbawa ng pagpapalit-uri ng pang-ekonomikong kapital patungong kultural na kapital ang mga magulang na nagbubuhos ng

23 See ibid., 51-52. 24 Pierre Bourdieu, In Other Words: Essays Towards a Reflexive Sociology, trans. by Loic Wacquant & Matthew Lawson (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1990), 138. 25 See Figure 2.

34 ANG PILOSOPIYA NI PIERRE BOURDIEU kayamanan para sa pagpapaaral ng kanyang anak. Isa namang halimbawa ng pagpapalit-uri ng kultural na kapital patungong pang-ekonomikong kapital ang isang bagong gradwado mula sa isang unibersidad na nakakuha ng magandang trabaho. Ang isang negosyante na nakikinabang sa kanyang pagkakaroon ng maraming kakilala para makapagbenta ng kanyang produkto ay isa namang halimbawa ng pagpapalit-uri ng panlipunang kapital pantungong pang-ekonomikong kapital. Ang isang respetadong indibidwal na nakikiusap sa kanyang mga tagahanga at tagasunod na suportahan ang kanyang pagtakbo bilang kandidato ay isa namang halimbawa ng pagpapalit-uri ng simbolikong kapital patungong panlipunang kapital. Kahit lumihis si Bourdieu sa kaisipan ni Marx tungkol sa bilang ng mga kapital, sinang-ayunan pa rin niya ang Alemang Pilosopo tungkol sa kahalagahan ng pang-ekonomikong kapital. Nilinaw niya:

So it has to be posited simultaneously that economic capital is at the root of all the other types of capital and that these transformed, disguised forms of economic capital, never entirely reducible to that definition, produce their most specific effects only to the extent that they conceal … the fact that economic capital is at their root, in other words … at the root of their effects.26

Dagdag dito, ipinaliwanag ni Bourdieu na kahit maaaring magpapalit-palit-uri ang kanyang apat na kapital, ang pang-ekonomikong kapital pa rin ang pinakamabilis at pinakamadaling makapagpalit-uri.27

Pang- Ekono- Kultura miko l

Pan- Simbo- lipunan liko

Figure 3: Ang Bentahe ng Pang-Ekonomikong Kapital sa Pagpapalit-Palit ng Uri

Madalas, kahit gaano kadami o kabigat ang kultural, panlipunan, at simbolikong kapital ang hawak ng isang indibidwal, mahirap pa rin itong

26 Bourdieu, “Forms of Capital,” 54. 27 See Figure 3.

F. DEMETERIO AND L. LIWANAG 35 ipagpalit-uri patungong pang-ekonomikong kapital. Kaya malaki ang lamang ng isang indibidwal na may marami o mabigat na pang- ekonomikong kapital.

Ilang Aplikasyon ng Teorya ng mga Kapital sa Araling Kultural

Sisiyasatin ng seksiyong ito kung paano ginamit ni Bourdieu ang kanyang teorya ng mga kapital sa kanyang pananaliksik tungkol sa estetika, edukasyon, at panlipunang reproduksyon. Estetika at mga Kapital: Nakabatay sa mga konsepto ng pang- ekonomiko at kultural na kapital ang pananaliksik ni Bourdieu tungkol sa estetikang Pranses. Naniniwala siya na kung ang kultural na pagkakaiba ng mga panlipunang uri sa loob ng moderno at industriyalisadong lipunan ang pag-uusapan, pinakamahalaga ang dalawang nabanggit na kapital. Kaya gamit ang mga ito, nirebisa niya ang simplistiko at tradisyonal na klasipikasyon ng mga panlipunang uri na binubuo lamang ng naghahari, gitna, at mababang uri. Naniniwala siya na ang ganitong ka-payak na klasipikasyon ay hahantong sa pag-o-overlap ng mga katangiang kultural ng iba’t ibang panlipunang uri. Malinaw para sa kanya na ang pagkakaiba-iba ng kultura ng mga panlipunang uri ay nakaugat sa pagkakaiba-iba ng parehong pang-ekonomikong kapital at kultural na kapital. Sa katunayan, tinawag niyang “dominanteng prinsipyo ng hirarkiya” ang pang- ekonomikong kapital, habang ang kultural na kapital bilang “sekondaryong prinsipyo ng hirarkiya.”28

Mataas na Kultural na Kapital

K2 K1

Mababang Pang- Mataas na Pang- Ekonomikong Ekonomikong Kapital Kapital K4 K3

Mataas na Kultural na Kapit al Figure 4: Alternatibong Konseptuwalisasyon ni Bourdieu tungkol sa mga Panlipunang Uri

Inilahad ni Bourdieu ang kanyang alternatibong konseptuwalisasyon ng mga panlipunang uri sa pamamagitan ng pagbuo ng

28 See Pierre Bourdieu, La Noblesse d’État: Grandes Ecoles et Esprit de Corps (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1989), 373-385.

36 ANG PILOSOPIYA NI PIERRE BOURDIEU isang iskemang may dalawang dimensiyon, kung saan ginamit niya ang pang-ekonomikong kapital bilang x axis at kultural na kapital bilang y axis.29 Sa halip sa tatlong simplistiko at tradisyonal na panglipunang uri, iminungkahi niya ang apat na panlipunang pangkat na nagkakaiba sa taglay nilang pang-ekonomiko at kultural na kapital.30 Ang mga nasa unang kuwadra (K1) ay may matataas na pang-ekonomiko at kultural na kapital. Kasapi sila sa mga angkang dati nang mayaman at bahagi sila sa mga naghaharing uri. Ang mga nasa pangalawang kuwadra (K2) ay may mabababang pang-ekonomikong kapital ngunit mataas na kultural na kapital. Sila ay mga propesyonal, guro, at alagad ng sining. Kahit hindi sila mayaman bahagi pa rin sila ng mga naghaharing uri dahil nililikha at pinapanatili nila ang naghaharing kultura. Ang mga nasa pangatlong kuwadra (K3) ay may matataas na pang-ekonomikong kapital ngunit mababang kultural na kapital. Sila ang mga bagong usbong na mayayaman at mga negosyanteng sadyang may mababang kultural na kapital. Hawak nila ang kapangyarihang ekonomikal at kasapi rin sila sa mga naghaharing uri. Ang mga nasa pang-apat na kuwadra (K4) ay may mabababang pang- ekonomiko at kultural na kapital. Sila ay binubuo ng mahihirap at walang pinag-aralang masa, sila ang bumubuo ng mababang uri. May tatlong puntos na dapat isaalang-alang ng mambabasa para maiiwasan ang impresyon na simplistiko rin ang alternatibong inilatag ni Bourdieu. Una, ang Figure 1 ay isang matematikong x at y graph na nangangahulugang ang bawat indibidwal ay may kanyang sariling puwesto batay sa dami at bigat ng kanyang pang-ekonomiko at kultural na mga kapital. Sa madaling salita, maski na sa loob ng isang kuwadra, mayroon din pagkakaiba sa mga puwesto at kapangyarihan ng mga saklaw na indibidwal o mas maliit na pangkat ng mga indibidwal. Pangalawa, magkakadikit-dikit at halos magkakarugtong na ang mga puwesto ng mga indibidwal at mas maliit na pangkat. Ang ibig sabihin, ang konsepto ng mga panlipunang uri ay mga konstrak lamang. Sa totoong buhay ay imposibleng tukuyin ang kani- kanilang mga hangganan at pagitan. Pangatlo, ang x at y graph na may dalawa nang nabanggit na dimensiyon ay may pangatlo pang dimensiyon: ang dimension ng panahon. Kung titignan, isinaalang-alang ni Bourdieu ang katotohanang ang mga puwesto ng mga indibidwal at maliit na pangkat sa naturang graph ay gumagalaw habang lumilipas ang panahon. Lalong lilinaw ang pangatlong dimensiyon ng kanyang alternatibong konseptwalisasyon sa mga panlipunang uri kapag tatalakayin na ng seksiyon na ito ang kanyang pananaw tungkol sa panlipunang reproduksyon.

29 See ibid., 383; see Figure 4. 30 See Figure 4.

F. DEMETERIO AND L. LIWANAG 37

Sa pananaw ni Bourdieu, naaayon sa kinabibilangang kuwadra ng isang indibidwal ang estetika at panlasa para sa sining, musika, moda, babasahin, muwebles, at pagkain. Sinabi niya: “The spaces defined by preferences in food, clothing or cosmetics are organized according to the same fundamental structure, that of the social space determined by volume and composition of capital.”31 Para sa mga naroroon sa unang kuwadra na may panggastos at kakayahang umunawa sa sining at kultura, kinukunsumo nila ang mga produktong kultural na may kalidad at kamahalan.32 Habang para sa mga naroroon sa ikalawang kuwadra na walang sapat na panggastos ngunit may kakayahan sanang umunawa sa sining at kultura, kinukunsumo nila ang produktong kultural na may kalidad ngunit hindi kamahalan.33 Kung ang mga naroroon sa unang kuwadra ay kayang manood ng opera, ballet, at mamahaling konsiyerto, ang mga naroroon sa pangalawang kuwadra ay masaya na sa panonood ng art film, pagdalaw sa mga museo, at pagbabasa ng mabibigat na panitikan. Kung gourmet ang kinakain ng mga naroroon sa unang kuwadra, exotic at hindi pangkaraniwang pagkain na hindi kamahalan ang gustong kainin ng mga naroroon sa pangalawang kuwadra. Ang pagkakaiba sa estetika at panlasa ng mga naroroon sa una at pangalawang kuwadra ay nakabatay sa pagkakaiba sa kanilang pang- ekonomikong kapital. Kahit pareho silang may kakayahang umunawa sa sining at kultura, magkakaiba ang kani-kanilang pinipiling produktong kultural. Para sa mga naroroon sa pangatlong kuwadra na may panggastos sana ngunit wala namang kakayahang umunawa sa sining at kultura, ang iba sa kanila ay walang paki-alam sa estetika at panlasa. Ang iba naman ay nagkukunwaring kulturado na madalas nagtutulak sa kanila sa pamimili ng mga mamahalin ngunit walang kalidad na produktong kultural. Habang para sa mga naroroon sa pang-apat na kuwadra na walang panggastos at wala ring kakayahang umunawa sa sining at kultura, ang kanilang estetika ay functional at abot-kaya.34 Kung gourmet ang kinakain ng mga naroroon sa unang kuwadra; exotic ang sa mga naroroon sa pangalawang kuwadra; at kung ano-ano lamang ang sa mga naroroon sa pangatlong kuwadra; ang kinakain ng mga naroroon sa pang-apat na kuwadra ay iyong maramihan, matataba, maaalat, at tipong nakakabusog. Kapag moda naman ang pag- uusapan, kung magagara at mamahalin ang isinusuot ng mga naroroon sa unang kuwadra; desente, maporma, ngunit hindi kamahalan ang sa mga naroroon sa pangalawang kuwadra; at samu’t saring mamahaling pananamit

31 Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: a Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. by Richard Nice (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1984), 208. 32 See ibid., 55-56. 33 See ibid., 331. 34 See ibid., 376.

38 ANG PILOSOPIYA NI PIERRE BOURDIEU ang mga naroroon sa pangatlong kuwadra; madalas walang paki-alam sa moda ang mga naroroon sa pang-apat na kuwadra. Para kay Bourdieu, ang pagkakaiba-iba sa hawak na pang- ekonomiko at kultural na kapital ng mga kuwadra ay nagreresulta sa pagkakaiba-iba ng kani-kanilang estetika at panlasa. Ma-estetiko at malayaw ang estilo ng mga naroroon sa unang kuwadra, asetiko ang mga naroroon sa pangalawang kuwadra, mapagkunwari ang mga naroroon sa pangatlong kuwadra, at walang pakialam at praktikal ang mga naroroon sa pang-apat na kuwadra. Maaaring ituring ang estilo ng mga naroroon sa una at pangalawang kuwadra bilang mataas na kultura, o high/elite culture, at ang mga naroroon sa pangatlo at pang-apat na kuwadra bilang kulturang popular. Gayunman, alinsunod sa konseptwalisasyon ni Bourdieu, sa loob mismo ng mataas na kultura at pati na sa loob mismo ng kulturang popular, may pagkakaiba pa rin sa estilo bunsod sa pagkakaiba sa pang-ekonomikong kapangyarihan ng mga naroroon sa una, pangalawang kuwadra, at mga naroroon sa pangatlo at pang-apat na kuwadra. Edukasyon at mga Kapital: Sa sub-seksiyong ito, susuriin ng papel ang isa pang aplikasyon ng teorya ng mga kapital ni Bourdieu na may kinalaman sa kanyang pagbatikos sa sistema ng edukasyon sa Pransiya. Ipinakita ni Bourdieu na kahit sa mga maunlad na bansa tulad ng Pransiya, na halos magkakapantay-pantay ang kalidad ng pampubliko at pampribadong paaralan, hindi pa rin magkakapantay-pantay ang oportunidad ng kabataan. Paniwala ni Bourdieu, dehado ang mga batang nanggagaling sa mga angkang may mababang kultural na kapital lalo na iyong mga nanggagaling sa pang-apat na kuwadra. Inilatag ni Bourdieu ang dalawang dahilan kung bakit nagkakaganito. Tungkol ang unang dahilan sa pangarap at ekspektasyon. Ang mga batang nanggagaling sa mabababang uri ng lipunan ay kadalasan walang matayog na realistikong pangarap, habang ang kani-kanilang pamilya naman ay wala ring mataas na ekspektasyon para sa kanila.35 Kahit ipamudmod man sa kanila ng pamahalaan ang libreng tersiyaryong edukasyon, hindi rin kakagat sa ganitong oportunidad o magpursigeng magtapos ang karamihan sa kanila. Samantalang may mataas na pangarap sa buhay na sinasabayan ng mataas ding ekspektasyon mula sa kani-kanilang mga pamilya ang mga batang nanggagaling sa matataas na uri ng lipunan. Ipinakita ni Bourdieu na may taglay na disposisyon ang mga naghaharing pamilya para sa edukasyon na nangangahulugang “propensity to consent to the investment in time, effort and money necessary to conserve and to increase cultural capital.”36 Ang kabataan nila ay halos itinutulak na patungo

35 See Pierre Bourdieu, “Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction,” in J. Karabel & A. H. Halsey eds., Power and Ideology in Education (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 495. 36 Ibid., 495.

F. DEMETERIO AND L. LIWANAG 39 sa pamantasan at minamanmanan para magtapos ng kani-kanilang binabalak na degri. Ayon kay Bourdieu, magkakaiba ang tingin ng mga panlipunang uri sa edukasyon. Kung para sa mga kasapi ng mabababang uri, isa itong hindi pangkaraniwang pagkakataon na para lamang sa kanilang talagang matalinong kabataan; para sa mga kasapi ng matataas na uri, kailangang- kailangan ng kanilang kabataan ang edukasyon. Tungkol sa ekspekstasyon ng mga guro at paaralan ang ikalawang dahilan ni Bourdieu. Pinuna niya ang hindi malay na pagkiling ng mga gurong pabor sa kabataang may namanang mataas ng kultural na kapital mula sa kani-kanilang tahanan. Isinulat ni Bourdieu:

By doing away with giving explicitly to everyone what it implicitly demands of everyone, the educationa system demands of everyone alike that they have what it does not give. This consists mainly of linguistic and cultural competence and that relationship of familiarity with culture which can only be produced by family upbringing when it transmits the dominant culture.37

Kung susuriin, mas madali ang pag-aaral para sa kabataang may hawak na mataas na kultural na kapital kaysa kabataang mababa lamang ang hawak na kultural na kapital. Sa kalaunan, ang nakalalamang na kabataang ay tuloy-tuloy sa pag-akyat sa pataas nang pataas na mga antas ng edukasyon, habang tila gumagapang, hirap na hirap, at madalas tumitigil na lamang sa pag-aaral ang nalalamangang kabataan. Ipinakita ni Bourdieu na ang kakulangan sa edukasyonal na tagumpay ng mga kasapi ng mabababang uri ang isang problemang hindi matutugunan sa pamamagitan ng mga iskolarship. Hindi lamang ito nakaugat sa kakulangan sa pang-ekonomikong kapital, kundi kakulangan lalo na sa kultural na kapital. Bunsod nito, sa halip na magbigay ng panlipunang mobilidad ang edukasyon, may lihim itong hegemonya para mapanatili ang kasalukuyang kaayusan. Binigyang diin niya:

(Education) is in fact one of the most effective means of perpetuating the existing social pattern, as it both provides an apparent justification for social inequalities and gives recognition to the cultural heritage, that is, to a social gift treated as a natural one.38

37 Ibid., 494. 38 Pierre Bourdieu, “The School as a Conservative Force: Scholastic and Cultural Inequalities,” in J. Eggleston ed., Contemporary Research in the Sociology of Education (London: Methuen, 1974), 32.

40 ANG PILOSOPIYA NI PIERRE BOURDIEU

Panlipunang Reproduksyon at mga Kapital: Sa sub-seksiyong ito, susuriin ng papel ang isa pang aplikasyon ng teorya ng mga kapital ni Bourdieu na may kinalaman sa kanyang pananaliksik at pagbabatikos sa panlipunang reproduksyon. Ang mga indibidwal na naroroon sa iba’t ibang kuwadra ay may kani-kanilang diskarte para maisalin ang kani-kanilang kapangyarihan at kayamanan sa kani-kanilang kabataan.39 Para sa mga naroroon sa unang kuwadra, ipinamana nila ang kanilang kayaman (pera, lupain, stocks at shares, negosyo, at kahalintulad na bagay) sa kanilang mga anak.40 Nabanggit na ng papel kung gaano kadali isalin ang pang- ekonomikong kapital sa lahat ng uri ng kapital. Bukod sa ipinamamanang pang-ekonomikong kapital, nagbubuhos din ng malaking halaga ang mga naroroon sa unang kuwadra para sa edukasyon ng kanilang kabataan. Kadalasan ang mga anak ng mga naroroon sa unang kuwadra ay nag-aaral sa mga primera-klaseng pamantasan. Mataas ang hawak na kultural na kapital ng kabataang nagmumula sa unang kuwadra, madalas na nagtatagumpay sila sa kanilang pag-aaral. Kung mapapanatili ng kabataang ito ang kanilang mataas na pang-ekonomikong kapital, mananatili silang naroroon sa unang kuwadra at magiging matagumpay ang proseso ng panlipunang reproduksyong hangad ng kanilang mga magulang. Para sa mga naroroon sa pangalawang kuwadra, ang panlipunang reproduksyong hangad nila ay hindi tunay na panlipunang reproduksyon dahil pinangarap nilang tataas ang pang-ekonomikong kapital ng kanilang kabataan.41 Sa madaling sabi, gusto ng mga naroroon sa pangalawang kuwadra na mangingibang kuwadra ang kanilang kabataan patungo sa unang kuwadra. Kaya sa pamamagitan ng kanilang pagtutok sa edukasyon ng kanilang mga anak, sinisikap ng mga naroroon sa pangalawang kuwadra na magiging mas maginhawa ang pamumuhay ng kanilang kabataan pagdating ng panahon. Gawa ng mataas din ang hawak na kultural na kapital ng kabataang nagmumula sa pangalawang kuwadra, madalas matagumpay rin sila sa kanilang pag-aaral. Minsan nakakamtan ng kabataang ito ang mas mataas ng pang-ekonomikong kapital. Ngunit kadalasan nahihirapan pa rin silang lumipat sa unang kuwadra dahil wala naman silang namamanang substansyal na pang-ekonomikong kapital mula sa kanilang mga magulang. Kaya kahit hangad ng mga naroroon sa pangalawang kuwadrang pumanhik sa unang kuwadra ang kanilang kabataan, madalas sa ikalawang kuwadra pa rin mananatili ang mga ito. Bigo man ang reproduksyong gustong mangyari ng mga naroroon sa pangalawang kuwadra, matagumpay pa rin ang tunay na panlipunang reproduksyon.

39 See Bourdieu, Disntinction, 125-168. 40 See ibid., 121. 41 See ibid.

F. DEMETERIO AND L. LIWANAG 41

Para sa mga naroroon sa pangatlong kuwadra, katulad sa mga naroroon sa unang kuwadra, ipinamana rin nila ang kanilang kayamanan (pera, lupain, stocks at shares, negosyo, at kahalintulad na bagay) sa kanilang mga anak, at nagbubuhos din sila ng malaking halaga para sa edukasyon ng kanilang kabataan.42 Binigyang-diin ni Bourdieu: “Those fractions of the dominant class and middle class who are richest in economic capital … have had to make greatly increased use of the educational system in order to ensure their social reproduction.”43 Kaya katulad ng mga naroroon sa pangalawang kuwadra, ang panlipunang reproduksyong hangad ng mga naroroon sa pangatlong kuwadra ay hindi rin tunay na panlipunang reproduksyon dahil pinangarap naman ng mga naroroon sa pangatlong kuwadra na tataas ang kultural na kapital ng kanilang kabataan at papanhik sila sa unang kuwadra. Pero, kahit naisin man ng mga naroroon sa pangatlong kuwadra na salinan ng mataas na kultural na kapital ang kanilang kabataan sa pamamagitan ng edukasyon, medyo mahihirapan ang kabataang ito dahil sa kanilang kakulangan sa namanang kultural na kapital mula sa kanilang tahanan. Subalit dahil sa katotohanang mas madaling magpalit-uri ang pang-ekonomikong kapital, mas madali rin para sa kabataang nagmumula sa pangatlong kuwadra na pumanhik sa unang kuwadra kaysa kabataang nagmumula sa pangalawang kuwadra. Mas madalas matagumpay ang reproduksyong gustong mangyari ng mga naroroon sa pangatlong kuwadra, kaya madalas bigo naman ang tunay na panlipunang reproduksyon. Para sa mga naroroon sa pang-apat na kuwadra, ang kanilang diskarte at pakikipagsapalarang bumuti ang kinabukasan ng kanilang kabataan ay laging humahantong sa kanilang pagiging biktima. Bunsod ito sa kanilang kawalan ng pang-ekonomikong kapital na maaaring ipamana sana sa kanilang mga anak, sa kanilang kawalan ng kakayahan, at tiyagang magtiwala sa magandang kinabukasan na ipinangako ng edukasyon. Ang kanilang habitus na kapos sa kultural na kapital ang pumipigil sa kanilang magkaroon ng realistikong pangarap para sa mas maginhawang kinabukasan ng kanilang kabataan. Kaya ang kabataang nagmumula sa pang-apat na kuwadra ay sa pang-apat na kuwadra din hahantong, nagsumikap man o hindi ang kanilang mga magulang na mangibang kuwadra sila baling araw.

Si Bourdieu bilang Pampublikong Intelektuwal

Ang kaisipan ni Bourdieu tungkol sa pagiging isang pampublikong intelektuwal at kung paano niya ito isinasabuhay ang panghuling paksang

42 See ibid. 43 Ibid., 133.

42 ANG PILOSOPIYA NI PIERRE BOURDIEU tatalakayin ng papel. May magkakasalungat na modelo ng pagiging intelektuwal na maaaring banggitin para maihayag ang kaisipan ni Bourdieu tungkol dito. Ito ang binaryo ng intelektuwal bilang isang tagakonserba o tagaturo ng kaalaman, at intelektuwal bilang tagasaliksik o tagalikha ng kaalaman. Kahit na parehong ginampanan ni Bourdieu bilang isang propesor ang binaryong ito, mas matimbang para sa kanya ang modelo ng intelektuwal na subsob sa pananaliksik at paglikha ng kaalaman. Gayunpaman, hindi nangangahulugang basta na lamang niyang iminungkahi na dapat mananaliksik at lilikha ng kaalaman ang isang intelektuwal. Hindi pumapabor si Bourdieu sa mga mananaliksik na mas nakatuon sa mga proyektong bayad ng gobyerno at mga kapitalista. Sa puntong ito, malinaw ang kanyang pagiging makakaliwa. Sa usapin ng pagiging makakaliwang pampublikong intelektuwal, may dalawang modelo na maaaring banggitin para lalong maipaliwanag ang kaisipan ni Bourdieu tungkol dito. Ang dalawang modelong ito ay parehong tutol sa panghihimasok ng gobyerno at ng mga kapitalista sa proseso ng pananaliksik at paglilikha ng kaalaman. Una ang modelo ng organikong intelektuwal na dinalumat ni Gramsci. Isinasaad dito na dapat umusbong sa panig ng mga manggagawa at inaapi ang isang intelektuwal para maipagtanggol niya ang kanilang uri. Pangalawa ang modelo ng intelektuwal bilang kapwa-manlalakbay ng partidong komunista na dinalumat naman ni Sarte. Isinasaad dito na maaaring gumabay at bumatikos sa nasabi nang kaalyansa niyang partido ang isang intelektuwal bilang kapwa-manlalakbay. Subalit, parehong hindi sinang-ayunan ni Bourdieu ang modelo nina Gramsci at Sartre. Kahit makakaliwa si Bourdieu, ayaw niyang mabahiran ng politika ang agham panlipunan. Tumututol siya hindi lamang sa panghihimasok ng gobyerno at mga kapitalista sa proseso ng pananaliksik, kundi pati na rin sa panghihimasok ng partido komunista at ng mga manggagawa at inaapi. Buo ang paniniwala niya na kung sakaling may agenda mang igigiit ang agham panlipunan, dapat manggagaling lamang sa loob ng agham panlipunan mismo at sa kanyang mga kaanib na intelektuwal. Ito ang dahilan kung bakit hindi nagustuhan ni Bourdieu ang modelo ng pampublikong intelektuwal na isinasabuhay ni Sartre, ang modelo ng isang unibersal na intelektuwal na nakikialam sa lahat ng usaping panlipunan kahit pa ang labas na sa kanyang espesyalisasyon. Para kay Bourdieu, dapat nakatayo sa kanyang sariling kaalaman at may kabatiran ang pampublikong intelektuwal kung ano ang mga usaping nararapat niyang pakialaman at mga panig na nararapat niyang katigan at ipaglaban. Alinsunod dito, mas sinusunod ni Bourdieu ang modelo ng espesipikong intelektuwal na isinasabuhay ng Pranses na pilosopong si Michel Foucault (1926-1984). Sa umpisa, iniwasan ni Bourdieu ang pagharap

F. DEMETERIO AND L. LIWANAG 43 sa midya bilang pampublikong intelektwal. Ngunit sa bandang huling bahagi ng kanyang buhay noong kalagitnaan ng dekada nobenta, unti-unti niyang ginampanan ang naiwang papel ni Foucault bilang pangunahing pampublikong intelektuwal ng Pransiya.

Mahahalagang Puntos sa Pilosopiya ni Bourdieu para sa mga Pag-aaral ng Teksto at Kultura ng Pilipinas

Bilang pagtatapos, may ilang makukuhang mahahalagang puntos mula sa kaisipan ni Bourdieu na magagamit ng mga Pilipino sa pagpapayaman at pagpapayabong ng mga tekstuwal at kultural na proyekto, lalong-lalo na sa larangan ng araling Pilipino. Mula sa mga nakaraang pagtatalakay, mababatid na napakainteresanteng gamitin ang konseptong larangan ni Bourdieu upang sipatin ang mga mikroskopikong tunggalian sa loob ng mga larangang matatagpuan sa pang-araw-araw na buhay bilang mga Pilipino at sa iba- ibang dimensiyon at aspekto sa lipunan. Nagawa nang tignan ni Bourdieu ang larangang mas midya, edukasyon, at ilang propesyon. Subalit nakabatay lamang ang mga ito sa kanyang etnograpiya sa Pransiya. Mula rito, masasabing hindi isang duplikasyon kapag susuriin ang parehong mga larangan ayon sa etnograpiya ng sariling bansa sapagkat maliwanag na iba ang kulturang nananalaytay sa Pransiya kumpara sa iba pang bansa sa mundo tulad ng Pilipinas. Bunsod ng reyalidad na magkakaiba ang mga kondisyon at sirkumstansiya ng Pransiya at Pilipinas, magkakaiba rin ang anyo at proseso ng tunggalian sa nabanggit nang mga larangan. Bukod sa mga larangang napag-aralan na ni Bourdieu, marami pang ibang larangang maaaring pagtutuunang pansin ang mga Pilipinong mananaliksik tulad ng relihiyon, halalan, social media, at iba pang mga kahalintulad na penomenon. Makabuluhan din kung gagamitin ang konseptong simbolikong dahas ni Bourdieu para alamin ang partikular na anyo, bisa, at epekto nito sa loob ng mga larangang Pilipino. Katulad ng malaking posibilidad na may pagkakaiba sa anyo ng mga tunggalian sa loob ng mga larangang Pranses at ng mga larangang Pilipino, malaki rin ang posibilidad na may pagkakaiba sa anyo, bisa, at epekto ng mga simbolikong dahas na Pranses at Pilipino. Maaaring gawing modelo ang pambabatikos ni Bourdieu sa banayad na sabwatan ng mga kapitalista, gobyerno, at dyornalismong pantelebisyon bilang modelo sa sariling pagsusuri sa mga bakas ng sabwatan na matatagpuan sa aktuwal na mga diskurso ng dyaryo, radyo, at telebisyon. Maaaring makatulong ang pambabatikos ni Bourdieu sa simbolikong dahas na ipinapataw ng telebisyon sa mga tagapanood bilang modelo sa sariling pagsusuri sa lawak at lalim ng pagkontrol ng dyaryo,

44 ANG PILOSOPIYA NI PIERRE BOURDIEU radyo, at telebisyon sa publikong espasyo (public sphere). Ang kakulangan ng mga Pilipino sa pagbabasa ng mga seryosong literatura ang naglagay sa mga mamamayan sa mas mapanganib na sitwasyon dahil kapos ang bawat isa sa perspektibong maaaring gamitin para salain o di kaya labanan ang simbolikong dahas na inihain ng mas midya araw-araw. Kung susuriin, masasabing maiuugnay at kapaki-pakinabang ang pag-aaral ni Bourdieu tungkol sa sistema ng edukasyon, teorya ng mga kapital at panlipunang reproduksyon para sipatin ang sariling sistema ng edukasyon sa bansa. Ano kaya ang pagkakapareho at pagkakaiba sa mga uri ng kapital na sangkot sa proseso ng edukasyon sa konteksto ng Pransiya at Pilipinas? Ano kaya ang pagkakapareho at pagkakaiba sa mga estratehiya ng pagpapalit-uri ng mga Pranses at ng mga Pilipino? Isang halimbawa ang pagpapalit-uri ng pang-ekonomikong kapital patungong kultural na kapital ng mga magulang na nagbubuhos ng kayamanan at salapi upang mapag-aral ang kanyang anak. Walang-duda na sa Pilipinas, isang malaking bagay ang mapagtapos sa pag-aaral ang anak dahil hindi lamang kultural na kapital ang ipinapamana ng mga magulang, bagkus maaaring maging bukal ang edukasyon sa pagpapayabong ng iba pang kapital o maaaring maibalik ang pang-ekonomiyang kapital na sandaling ginamit sa pagpapaaral ng anak. Sa kabilang kamay, gamit ang mga kapital na kanyang ibinahagi, mas makikita ng mga Pilipino kung gaano ka-di-pantay-pantay ang pangako na inaalay ng edukasyon. Malayong-malayo ang kinabukasang ipinapangako ng isang pampubliko at ng isang pampribadong paaralan, at malayong-malayo pa rin ang kinabukasang ipinapangako ng isang karaniwang pampribado at ng isang primera-klaseng pampribadong paaralan. Sa umpisa pa lamang ay alam na natin na sa pagtatapos ng isang grupo ng kabataan ang kanilang oportunidad ay hindi magkakapantay- pantay. Kapag gagayahin ang pagdalumat ni Bourdieu sa apat na kuwadra sa konteksto ng Pilipinas, ano-ano kayang mga pangkat ng indibidwal at propesyon at panlipunang uri ang hahantong sa bawat kuwadrang ito? Ano- ano kaya ang mga espisipikong manipestayon ng kapangyarihan, panlasa, estetika at pananaw sa buhay ang taglay ng mga Pilipinong naroon sa bawat kuwadra? Gamit ang konseptuwalisasyong ito sa mga panlipunang uri ng Pilipinas, maraming aspekto at dimensiyon ng panlipunang tunggalian ang maaaring mas pulidong mahimay. Interesanteng tignan ang kaisipan ni Bourdieu ukol sa pagiging isang pampublikong intelektwal kapag ikokonteksto sa Pilipinas. Naangkop kaya ang kanyang mga mungkahi kung paano dapat gagalaw ang isang pampublikong intelekwal sa mga sirkumstansya at reyalidad ng Pilipinas? Kung susuriin, ang kinikilalang pambansang bayaning si Jose P. Rizal, ang nangungunang pampublikong intelektwal sa bansa ay tila hindi papasa sa

F. DEMETERIO AND L. LIWANAG 45 pamantayan ni Bourdieu. Una, hindi tulad ng ilang pampublikong intelektwal sa dahon ng kasaysayan, hindi umusbong si Rizal kabilang ang mga manggagawa at inaapi. Katunayan, maykaya ang pamilya nila sapagkat binubuo sila ng mga negosyante at magsasaka na nangungupahan sa hasyenda ng mga prayleng Dominikano. Pangalawa, gayong pasok si Rizal sa aspektong pagkasubsob sa pananaliksik at paglikha ng mga bagong kaalaman, imposibleng hindi maaaring mabahiran ng politika ang kanyang pagiging pampublikong intelektwal sapagkat isa ring mukha ng politika ang kagustuhan niya mismong magkaroon ng ganap na pagkakaisa sa Pilipinas bilang nasyon at pagkakaroon ng kamalayan ng mga mamamayan sa mga panlipunang isyu upang makamit ang kalayaan. Dagdag dito, hindi rin magiging posible sa kaso ni Rizal na manatili na lamang sa loob ng larangang agham panlipunan mismo bilang social scientist at sa kanyang mga kaanib na intelektuwal. Ano pa man, binubuo ang lipunan ng mga manggagawa, inaapi, at naghaharing-uring imposibleng hindi maiangkla sa mga agendang iginigiit ng nasabing larangan. Sa kabilang banda, maipagmamalaking isa si Rizal sa mga mananaliksik na hindi nakatuon sa mga proyektong bayad ng gobyerno at mga kapitalista. Ang totoo pa niyan, kinikilala siyang walang- takot na repormistang isiniwalat ang pang-aabuso ng mga prayle sa mga Pilipino at mga katiwalian sa pamahalaan ng Kastila gamit ang kanyang mga panulat. May Pilipinong intelektwal kayang papasa sa pamantayan ni Bourdieu? Dapat bang isabuhay ng mga Pilipinong intelektwal ang mga pamantayang ito? Ilan lamang ito sa mga interesanteng katungan sa pakikipagdiyalogo sa kaisipan ni Bourdieu. Mahalaga rin ang papel ng pagsusuri ni Bourdieu sapagkat hindi lamang masasarado sa kanyang mga mungkahing kapital ang kanyang naging pag-aaral. Mula sa mga nabanggit na, maaaring makatulong ang kanyang mga kapital bilang pundasyon upang magkaroon at makabuo ng iba pang kapital na maaaring gamitin upang maipamalas ang antas ng diskursong maiintindihan ng mga kapwa Pilipinong nasa larangan ng araling kultural at araling Pilipino. Bilang pagtatapos, masasabing hindi lamang sa pang-ekonomikong kapital umiikot ang yaman ng isang tao. Nararapat na marunong din siyang gamitin ito upang magkaroon ng iba pang kapital katulad ng nabanggit na kanina. Gayunman, gayong lumihis si Bourdieu sa kaisipan ni Marx, walang- dudang ang pagsasang-ayon niya kay Marx ukol sa kahalagahan ng pang- ekonomikong kapital dahil batid ng karamihan na sa apat na kapital, ito pa rin ang pinakamabilis at pinakamadaling makapagpalit-uri.

Department of Filipino, De La Salle University-Manila, Philippines

46 ANG PILOSOPIYA NI PIERRE BOURDIEU

References

Bourdieu, Pierre and Loic Wacquant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). Bourdieu, Pierre, “Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction,” in J. Karabel & A. H. Halsey eds., Power and Ideology in Education (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977). ______, “Forms of Capital,” in J. Richardson ed., Handbook of Theory and Research in for the Sociology of Education (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood, 1986). ______, “The School as a Conservative Force: Scholastic and Cultural Inequalities,” in J. Eggleston ed., Contemporary Research in the Sociology of Education (London: Methuen, 1974). ______, Distinction: a Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. by Richard Nice (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1984). ______, In Other Words: Essays Towards a Reflexive Sociology, trans. by Loic Wacquant & Matthew Lawson (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1990). ______, La Noblesse d’État: Grandes Ecoles et Esprit de Corps (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1989). ______, Language and Symbolic Power (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1991), 164. ______, On Television, trans. by Priscella Parkhurst (New York: The New Press, 1998), 15. ______, The Logic of Practice, trans. by Richard Nice (California: Stanford University Press, 1990).

KRITIKE VOLUME EIGHT NUMBER TWO (DECEMBER 2014) 47-65

Article

Vattimo and Caritas: A Postmodern Categorical Imperative?

Matthew Edward Harris

Abstract: After the death of God, the hermeneutical nihilist Gianni Vattimo thinks we are living in an age where it is no longer possible to believe in ‘violent’ metaphysical notions such as ‘objectivity’ and ‘universality.’ However, we still cannot shake off the traces of the past that have been passed down through linguistic traditions. Kantian ethics is a case in point, situated in the midst of what Vattimo, following Heidegger’s interpretation of Nietzsche, regards as the history of Being as a weakening without a termination point. Kant’s Categorical Imperative is a secularised form of Christian caritas mixed with its evangelical universalising mission. In turn, Kant’s emphasis on reason built on the key Christian insight of binding people together by turning inwards through faith. For Vattimo, if one turns inwards then one should listen to others like you, i.e., those who are fellow weak thinkers who want to engage in dialogue. By introducing this condition implicitly, Vattimo weakens the categorical imperative by revealing it in weakened form to be a hypothetical imperative at the cost not only of excluding ‘strong’ thinkers, but also revealing a stronger conception of the subject in his philosophy that borders on the metaphysical.

Keywords: Vattimo, Kant, hermeneutics, secularisation

Kant’s Categorical Imperative in the light of Vattimo’s hermeneutical nihilism

mmanuel Kant’s Categorical Imperative is arguably the height of Enlightenment thought on ethics. At its heart is the subject conceived as I the supremely rational and autonomous individual, the lawgiver whose value derives from self-legislating and having self-respect, with respect for others as such logically following. The rational, law-giving member of the kingdom of ends “must always regard himself as making laws in a kingdom of ends which is possible through freedom of the will,” writes Kant in the

48 VATTIMO AND CARITAS

Groundwork,1 and this ability and realisation “must be found in every rational being.”2 Respecting oneself through obeying one’s own laws, therefore, one realises every other being is similarly a self-legislator, and therefore one attributes worth to all rational beings as ends in themselves. In turn, this informs what one is able to rationally universalise when self-legislating, at least on the interpretation of Kant offered by philosophers such as Onora O’Neill and Allen Wood.3 Although this brief summary of Kant’s position is schematic and perhaps over-simplified for purposes of brevity, it contains the key assumptions that the postmodern philosopher Gianni Vattimo regards as devalued and implausible in his interpretation of the European-wide event of the “death of God.” These assumptions include the sovereignty of the subject, the transparency of reason, and the need to universalise in ethics. Born in Turin in 1936, Vattimo studied under Hans-Georg Gadamer in Heidelberg and Luigi Pareyson in Turin. Along with the significant and distinct philosophies of his mentors, his two defining influences have been Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger. Vattimo often reads Heidegger through Nietzsche and vice-versa. In the case of the death of God, the Nietzschean image central to Vattimo’s weak thought, his controversial philosophical programme since the late 1970s, Vattimo draws heavily on Heidegger’s volumes on Nietzsche and his essay “The Word of Nietzsche: ‘God is Dead’.” Vattimo follows Heidegger in drawing heavily from Nietzsche’s unpublished work. Thus, Vattimo in key works such as The End of Modernity, like Heidegger in “The Word of Nietzsche ... ,” identifies the “death of God”’ not only with nihilism,4 but also with the important quotation from an aphorism of The Will to Power, that in nihilism “the highest values are devaluing themselves.”5 Both of these identifications are contestable, not least due to the fact that Nietzsche was ambivalent towards nihilism. In The Gay Science, Nietzsche regards nihilism as the fate of European civilisation to lose faith in that which makes life endurable, particularly its embedded Christian values.6 Yet in The Anti-Christ, Nietzsche

1 H. J. Paton, The Moral Law: Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (London: Hutchinson University Library, 1972), 95. 2 Ibid., 96. 3 Onora O’Neill, The Bounds of Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Allen Wood, Kant’s Ethical Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 4 Gianni Vattimo, The End of Modernity, trans. by J. Snyder (Cambridge: The Polity Press 1988), 20; Martin Heidegger, “The Word of Nietzsche: ‘God is dead’,” in The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, ed. by David Ferrell Krell (New York and London: Garland 1977), 57. 5 Heidegger, “The Word of Nietzsche,’” 66. 6 Friedrich Nietzsche The Gay Science, trans. by Josephine Nauckhoff (Cambridge: Cambridge University 2001), 204.

M. HARRIS 49 sees nihilism as bound up with vigour sufficiently destructive to obliterate these inherited values.7 Rather than sharing Nietzsche’s ambivalence towards nihilism, Vattimo sees it as our “sole opportunity.”8 Why is nihilism liberating? For Vattimo, nihilism, the “death of God,” is the end of philosophy, by which, again following Heidegger, he means metaphysics and the “highest values” from the time of Plato to its dissolution in the late- modern world of techno-science. “Metaphysics” is, for Vattimo, a pejorative term. It is seen as negative because it is “violent,” because it silences, closing down debate by presuming there is always a correct answer to any question that is asked. From the idea of Plato’s philosopher kings to Logical Positivism, metaphysics has been linked to restriction and repression. If nihilism is liberating, how did it come about? Here Vattimo adduces a number of arguments. This is his method: Instead of demonstrating, he cajoles one into seeing the most plausible way of interpreting the way in which the world is now. In his work A Farewell to Truth, Vattimo writes:

Someone might ask, ‘but why are you so convinced that you should be preaching [this message of liberation] to us if you are not a metaphysician?’ To which I would reply, ‘but haven’t you read a, b, c, and d?’ In short, the only arguments I can adduce are not ones of the traditional type but ones of transmission, language, the classics we have in common.9

By these classics, Vattimo is referring to the wide range of authors that are part of the western tradition to which Vattimo refers and draws upon when outlining his position concerning the death of God. In Beyond Interpretation, Vattimo states that if one has read Marx, Nietzsche, Freud and Wittgenstein, one can no longer entertain certain beliefs about the world,10 including the idea that a human is a rational, autonomous self-legislator. These thinkers themselves are part of a longer tradition, that of what Vattimo calls the “nihilistic vocation of Being”: the death of God is metaphysics culminating in its own self-destruction. Vattimo has various, interrelated ways of articulating this phenomenon. Along Nietzschean lines, he refers to

7 Friedrich Nietzsche The Anti-Christ, trans. by R. J. Hollingdale (London: Penguin 1990a), 132. 8 Vattimo, The End of Modernity, 19. 9 Gianni Vattimo, A Farewell to Truth, trans. by William McCuaig (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 70-71. 10 Gianni Vattimo, Beyond Interpretation, trans. by David Webb (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997), 106.

50 VATTIMO AND CARITAS the death of God, such as the image Nietzsche used of God cancelling out his own commandment not to tell lies by being discovered to be a superfluous lie. Vattimo also employs the Heideggerian notion of metaphysical descriptions of “subject” and “object” being dissolved in the Ge-Stell (enframing) enacted by technology, with technology challenging humans and vice versa to the point of everything losing its qualities, which we become aware of in the Ereignis, the event of transpropriation in which we realise we are released from being defined by a metaphysical essence. The Ge-Stell precludes historical newness in its “reduction of everything to Grund.”11 With all human existence now entirely capable of being planned, what counts as a human “subject” and an “object” loses definition, and so Vattimo cites Heidegger stating that the Ereignis involves the “oscillating” realm ‘through which man and Being reach each other in their essence ... losing those determinations with which metaphysics had endowed them.”12 Indeed, when Vattimo discusses Ereignis, he quotes from Heidegger’s Identity and Difference rather than his Contributions to Philosophy.13 Through being released from metaphysically-defined qualities and roles, there has been what Vattimo calls in his book The Transparent Society, a “liberation of differences, of local elements,”14 such as minority groups using communications technology to come to the microphones and, in more recent times, begin blogging and setting up alternative media outlets. This postmodern phenomenon illustrates that there is no longer any centre, that there are “no facts, only interpretations,”15 a phrase of Nietzsche’s Vattimo often mentions. Vattimo has continuously stressed the need to engage with the history of metaphysics, the forgetting of ontological difference by identifying Being with beings. Being is more originary than beings, for without the clearing of Being in which humans (or “Dasein,” to use Heidegger’s terminology adopted by Vattimo) dwell, one would not be able to identify and refer to beings at all. The “opening” provided by the clearing of Being into unconcealment permits any expression. The opening is not given once for all, but is “historical” and “eventual”; how we understand the nature of

11 Gianni Vattimo, “Towards an Ontology of Decline,” in Recoding Metaphysics, ed. by Giovanna Borradori (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1988), 71. 12 Ibid., 72. Vattimo quotes from Heidegger, Identity and Difference, trans. by Joan Stambaugh (New York, Evanston, and London: Harper and Row, 1969), 37. The translation is slightly modified in Vattimo’s essay. 13 Vattimo, “Towards an Ontology of Decline,” 71-72. See also Gianni Vattimo, The Adventure of Difference, trans. by Cyprian Blamires (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1993), 171-174. 14 Gianni Vattimo, The Transparent Society, trans. by David Webb (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992), 8. 15 Gianni Vattimo, The Responsibility of the Philosopher, trans. by William McCuaig (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010a), 81.

M. HARRIS 51 things depends on changes in language over time. While Heidegger in his later works places critical emphasis on language, Vattimo’s own philosophical style finds its most succinct expression in the identification he makes between Being and language through his own translation into Italian of Gadamer’s phrase from Warheit und method (Truth and Method) “Sein, das verstanden werden kann, ist Sprache.”16 Vattimo’s translation was “L’essere che può venire compreso è linguaggio.”17 Rendered from the Italian into English, the translation reads “Being that can be understood is language.” Vattimo wished to keep the commas from the German, even though a strict translation into Italian and English would not necessitate them. The commas are present in the German due to the conventions of grammar. Against removing the commas, Vattimo writes in his book The Responsibility of the Philosopher that he wanted to emphasise that Being is language, to ward not only against relativism, but also against “the supposition ... that somewhere beyond all linguistic comprehension there might subsist a Being ‘in itself’.”18 As Vattimo implies when talking about the “classics,” the horizons of our thought are established through the linguistic traces we inherit. This is his interpretation of the “thrownness” in Heidegger’s analytic of Dasein. We inherit the tradition of western metaphysics, as well as a canon of literary classics, such as Dante, Shakespeare, and the Bible. Within this tradition we find themes such as the uniqueness and importance of the human being, variously understood in terms of his being made in the image of God, secularised into the autonomous rationality of the Cartesian and Kantian human being. Other dominant themes include universality and objectivity, first understood as Platonic forms, historicised through Christianity, being secularised in Kant’s thought, and quantified through science and positivism. Vattimo frequently recounts Nietzsche’s narrative of “How the ‘Real World’ finally became a Fable” from his Twilight of the idols in which this story is outlined.19 In the nihilism of the story’s end, which Vattimo understands as the death of God, both “rationality” and “rationality” need to be “reconstructed,” as Vattimo puts it in his book Nihilism and emancipation.20 These linguistic metaphysical traces—from Plato, Christianity, Descartes, Kant, and many more besides—cannot be discarded in a sort of dialectical overcoming, for to do so would be just to start again on another foundationalism, to repeat, not weaken, metaphysics. This is why Vattimo’s

16 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Wahrheit und methode: grundzuge einer philosophischen Hermeneutic (Tubingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1972), 450. 17 Gianni Vattimo, Verità e metodo (Milan: Bompiani, 1983), 542. 18 Vattimo The Responsibility, 57. 19 Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, trans. by R. J. Hollingdale (London: Pengunin, 1990b), 50-51. 20 Gianni Vattimo, Nihilism and Emancipation, trans. by William McCuaig (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), xxvi.

52 VATTIMO AND CARITAS philosophical programme is one of pensiero debole (“weak thought”), in which he talks of “weakening” not “destroying” metaphysics, for the traces of the latter are ineradicable, not least because they constitute the horizons of thought within the traditions found in our shared western culture. As Vattimo writes in The End of Modernity, “Tradition is the transmitting of linguistic messages that constitute the horizon within which Dasein is thrown as an historically determined project.”21 Rather than an overcoming, in a term borrowed from Heidegger, Vattimo proposes that thought undertakes a Verwindung (an ironic distortion, or “twisting” of, and convalescence from) metaphysics.22

Vattimo’s Verwindung and Christianity

It is just this kind of ironic distortion that Vattimo performs on Christianity, in what Giovanni Giorgio refers to as Vattimo’s most recent phase of thought.23 Why choose Christianity, and how has Vattimo twisted it? Vattimo appeals to Christianity for personal, philosophical, and ethical reasons. Growing up in Italy during the 1940s and 1950s, religion was ever- present, and he was sent to Catholic school and participated in Catholic youth groups. While he lost his faith during his university studies, particularly when he lost the links with the Italian Catholic culture when he moved to take up the Humboldt fellowship in Germany, his mind returned to existential questions concerning his own health and mortality, and that of others, in his advancing years.24 Philosophically, Vattimo was eager to ground hermeneutics historically. Due to his assumptions that all forms of metaphysics are violent, he did not want there to be any “rightist” interpretation of Heidegger (and by left and right, think along Hegelian lines) in which a “return of Being” was possible, a tendency he sees in what he regards, somewhat unfairly, as the metaphysical philosophies of alterity in the thought of Derrida and Levinas.25 Finally, Vattimo wants his hermeneutical nihilism to yield an ethic.26 One of the principal advantages of the philosophies of Derrida and Levinas is that alterity, grounded in the transcendent “Other,” provides an ethic of concern for the “other” that trumps any individual or cultural standard. A purely “leftist,” historical and

21 Vattimo, The End of Modernity, 120. 22 Ibid., 172-179. 23 Giovanni Giorgio, Il pensiero di Gianni Vattimo (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2006), 12. 24 Gianni Vattimo, Belief, trans. by David Webb and Luca D’Isanto (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999). 25 Vattimo After Christianity, trans. by Luca D’Isanto (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 36-37. 26 Vattimo, Beyond Interpretation.

M. HARRIS 53 immanent hermeneutical nihilism does not seem to provide anything more than subjectivism or relativism, insufficient for establishing any kind of ethical normativity. From the early 1990s onwards, Vattimo’s “Verwindung” of Christianity has aimed to address these concerns through the hermeneutical figure of Jesus Christ. As he puts it in his book Belief, “The interpretation given by Jesus Christ of Old Testament prophecies, or (better) the interpretation which he himself is, reveals its true and only meaning: God’s love for his creatures.”27 There are two sides to the same coin of bringing Jesus Christ into his philosophical programme: the historical and the ethical. The historical refers to Vattimo’s appropriation of a term used to refer to one of St. Paul’s Christological themes: “kenosis.” Usually, the context of kenosis is the Christ Hymn of Paul’s letter to the Philippians (chapter two, verses five to eleven), in which Christ is said to empty his power to come from heaven to earth, incarnating himself in the “form of a slave.” Vattimo does not quote Philippians 2:5-11, although he cites the text once in Belief.28 Instead of focusing on this one particular text, by kenosis Vattimo means a message of indefinite weakening inaugurated through the message of Jesus and Jesus’ message. Due to Vattimo’s anti-metaphysical stance, he does not think the message of Jesus corresponds to an incarnation in the literal sense of the term. As such, Vattimo has been accused by theologians such as Thomas Guarino of filling up old wineskins with new wine—“a new and alien vintage”— without regard for what Christians actually believe.29 However, this is precisely the point of a Verwindung; Vattimo cannot shed the linguistic tradition, even though he can weaken it through interpreting it anew. Nevertheless, what exactly Vattimo means by “the interpretation which he himself is” remains unclear. Luca D’Isanto speculates that for Vattimo it refers to the message of the divine abandoning transcendence entering into history, thus, weakening himself.30 This reading cannot be derived explicitly from Belief, although it can be seen in a later, lesser known essay of Vattimo’s called “After Onto-Theology.”31 The message of the Christ entering into history parallels the “indefinite process of consummation and dissolution” of the structures of Being, “which does not culminate in ‘fully realized

27 Vattimo, Belief, 64. 28 Ibid., 39. 29 Thomas Guarino, Vattimo and Theology (London and New York: T&T Clark, 2009), 152. 30 Luca, D’Isanto, “Introduction,” in Gianni Vattimo, Belief (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999), 11. 31 Gianni Vattimo, “After onto-theology: philosophy between science and religion,” in Religion After Metaphysics, ed. by Mark Wrathall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 35.

54 VATTIMO AND CARITAS nothingness’,”32 for the latter itself would be metaphysical. Vattimo calls this process “secularisation.” It is this process that culminates in the nihilism of the late-modern world and it is through this imagery that Vattimo argues that the tradition of the West favours this “left Heideggerian” interpretation. The plurality found in the secularised late-modern world has its archetype in the way in which God has spoken to his people in different ways at different points in history, which is another interpretation Vattimo gives to kenosis in Beyond Interpretation.33 If secularisation is not to be understood in some quasi-Hegelian metaphysical emptying of transcendence into immanence in the manner in which 1960s death of God theologian Thomas Altizer conceived of it, the force by which it moves must be provided by something else. While the kenotic power of Christ derives from the message of God entering into history, Christ’s kenotic power stems from his message which then feeds into ethics. Rather than dwelling on Philippians 2:5-11, Vattimo places more emphasis on John 15:15: “I no longer call you servants but friends.”34 The message of kenosis, then, is one of levelling, of devaluing the highest values; God takes the form of a slave and he is no longer calling others servants. The message of Jesus, and Jesus’ message as recorded in the New Testament, are seen as paradigmatic for devaluing the highest values—“If one thinks of nihilism as an infinite history in terms of the religious ‘text’ that is its basis and inspiration, it will speak of kenosis as guided, limited and endowed with meaning, by God’s love.”35 For God’s love, Vattimo often uses the term caritas (“charity,” or “love”). For Vattimo, secularisation has no limit except for charity. This principle of charity is the point of convergence between philosophical nihilism and the religious tradition of the West.36 Vattimo further reinforces the link between the discourses of kenosis and the history of Being by drawing upon the thought of the French anthropologist René Girard, particularly his book Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World.37 Girard argues that Jesus was killed for exposing the “victimary mechanism” underlying all natural religions. The latter were established to contain the overflow of mimetic violence through scapegoating an individual upon which society can vent in order to preserve itself. Ritualised over time and developed into that which is sacred underscoring the religious overseen by priests, Jesus appeared the perfect victim, yet his message of love revealed

32 Vattimo, Belief, 63. 33 Vattimo Beyond Interpretation, 48. 34 Vattimo Belief, 78. 35 Ibid., 64. 36 Vattimo Beyond Interpretation, 51. 37 René Girard, Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World (London and New York: The Athlone Press, 1987).

M. HARRIS 55 the natural sacred for what it is. Girard did not develop his insights into a theory of secularisation, but Vattimo draws parallels between the “onto- theological” qualities of God (such as his omniscience and transcendence) and the violence of metaphysics,38 to the point where in his essay “Heidegger and Girard” he thinks the latter has helped him “complete” Heidegger.39

Vattimo and caritas: Ethics without transcendence

Girard’s work “completes” Heidegger by yielding a hermeneutical ethic that cannot be found in either the work of the latter or in the thought of Nietzsche. Girard bridges the gap between the New Testament and Heidegger’s thought by linking Jesus’ message of love to the revelation of religious violence that is at the same time metaphysical, thus, fusing the discourses between secularisation and the nihilistic vocation of Being as a weakening of strong structures in history. Vattimo has been heavily criticised for his understanding of caritas, with some theologians, such as Frederiek Depoortere, seeing it as “something absolute, something transcendent.”40 Anticipating such criticism, Vattimo writes in Belief that, “Perhaps the reason why nihilism is an infinite, never-ending process lies in the fact that love, as the ‘ultimate’ meaning of revelation, is not truly ultimate.”41 Caritas, then, is not a moral absolute or transcendent principle, but it is the only limit of secularisation. Secularisation is the nihilistic process of weakening strong structures. It would appear that caritas is the self-limiting of secularisation, with its tendency for weakening as its limiting factor. If caritas is to be treated as a kind of ethic, what would it be and how would it be related to nihilism as a process? Cryptically, Vattimo writes in Belief that “love ... is a ‘formal’ commandment, not unlike Kant’s categorical imperative, which does not command something specific once and for all, but rather applications that must be ‘invented’ in dialogue.”42 Elsewhere, in an essay called “Ethics without Transcendence,” Vattimo elaborates a little more on how he sees caritas functioning both historically and formally: “It should not be forgotten that the categorical imperative of Kant in its most memorable formulations does little more than express in secular terms that Christian imperative of

38 Vattimo, Belief, 39. 39 Gianni Vattimo, “Heidegger and Girard,” in Christianity, Truth, and Weakening Faith: A Dialogue, ed. by Santiago Zabala (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 78. 40 Frederiek Depoortere, Christ in Postmodern Philosophy: Gianni Vattimo, René Girard, and Slavoj Žižek (London and New York: T&T Clark, 2008), 20. 41 Vattimo, Belief, 65. 42 Ibid., 66.

56 VATTIMO AND CARITAS caritas.”43 Through traces of both Kant and the Christian principle of love, Vattimo aims to derive a limit of secularisation that is both ethical and hermeneutical. If Vattimo can successfully create a post-Kantian ethic which takes into account not only the death of God as an ontological event, but also retain the sense of duty and ethical structure from Kant’s work, then he would have made an important contribution to post-Kantian thought. This is especially so as Kantian thinkers in the Anglo-American tradition, such as David Wiggins, have expressed scepticism concerning the possibility of post- Kantian universalism in ethics, only seeing some sort of preference utilitarianism with an “impartial spectator” as a live possibility.44 While Vattimo did not want to retain the strong notion of an objective, universal moral law, he did want to “twist” this Kantian structural feature to retain a universally available criterion (in the normative sense) for adjudicating between interpretations based on a respect for others, the latter feature being picked out by Kant scholars such as Jerome Schneewind as an integral feature of Kant’s work.45 It was with later works, such as After Christianity (2002), The Future of Religion (2004), and After the Death of God (2007), that Vattimo developed his historicised understanding of the Categorical Imperative further. Vattimo’s method is to trace the Kantian concerns with interiority and universality that underlie the Categorical Imperative not only back to the Christian revelation, but also forward to the collapse of compelling reasons for their “rationalist” interpretation. For the former part of his method, Vattimo appeals to the German hermeneutic philosophy of Wilhelm Dilthey (d. 1911), who thought the most significant consequence of the Christian revelation was that it involved people turning inwards to discover the truth. In his Introduction to the Human Sciences, Dilthey argued that Jesus Christ unified people through faith, an inner truth.46 This focus on the inner life, which Vattimo refers to as the “principle of interiority,” constitutes a universality in the sense that the Christian faith is for all people, regardless of race, nationality, class, or gender. Corresponding approximately to Nietzsche’s story of how the world became a fable, it is with Christianity that the absolute became interiorised, historicised, and universalised in terms of faith. Vattimo notes in After Christianity, his book that most discussed Dilthey’s ideas that “the new principle of subjectivity introduced by Christianity did not immediately

43 Gianni Vattimo and Santiago Zabala, “Ethics without transcendence?,” in Common Knowledge, 9 (2003), 403. 44 David Wiggins, Needs, Values and Truth (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991). 45 J. B. Schneewind, “Autonomy, Obligation and Virtue: An Overview of Kant’s Moral Philosophy,” in The Cambridge Companion to Kant, ed. by Paul Guyer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 309-341. 46 Wihelm Dilthey, Introduction to the Human Sciences, trans. by Ramon J. Betanzos (Detroit and London: Harvester-Wheatsheaf. 1979), 229.

M. HARRIS 57 succeed.”47 Nevertheless, Vattimo points to thinkers such as Augustine in whom the tension between “the novelty of Christian interiority and the hegemony of Greek aesthetic or ‘visual’ objectivism” was embodied.48 “A struggle between Christianity’s offering of a new possibility to thought and metaphysics’ endurance,” writes Vattimo in After Christianity, “goes on up to Kant, who draws the anti-metaphysical implications of the inaugural move of the Christian message.”49 On the one hand, the Greek aestheticist idealist objectivism stipulated that absolute truth was located exterior to the intellect in the forms. On the other hand, Christianity emphasised “inwardness, will, certitude of the cogito” that had been recollected by Descartes,50 and from whose thought Kant was drawing further conclusions. The turn inward, begun with Christ, moving slowly through Augustine, Descartes and Kant, weakened the dominant Platonic- Aristotelian notion of truth as correspondence, that is, of objectivity. If truth is found within one, then one need not match statements to external things outside. Of course, as Vattimo realises, with Descartes and Kant’s thought there occurred merely a relocation of metaphysics; the metaphysical needs did not disappear, but simply moved to the subject, such as Descartes’ requirement for “clear and distinct” ideas and his foundationalism. Kant, similarly, thought that a universal, absolute moral law could be established on the subject’s rational will. The death of God undermined faith in this rational will, however, through the various insights of Marx, Freud, Nietzsche, among others. Unfortunately, Vattimo does not explicitly state how and why subjectivity as secularisation culminates in the death of God and the liberating need for a Verwindung of metaphysics. This omission may well be because it would require him to accept Heidegger’s estimations both of Nietzsche as a metaphysician, albeit one who simultaneously heralded the end of metaphysics and of nihilism. For Heidegger, Nietzsche’s theory of the will to power was the ultimately nihilistic theory (in a negative sense) for it reduced the suprasensory, such as God and the forms, to “highest values,” reducing Being to value. That which valued was the will to power, the will that wills itself in order to survive.51 It was said above that Vattimo’s method also involved moving forward to the way in which we can “piously remember” the linguistic traces of tradition, in this case of the Categorical Imperative. The latter already had the character of a secularised, weakened Christian universalism, which in turn is a historicised Platonism, “for the people,” as Nietzsche said in Beyond

47 Vattimo, After Christianity, 107. 48 Ibid., 107. 49 Ibid., 108. 50 Ibid. 51 Heidegger, “The Word of Nietzsche’.”

58 VATTIMO AND CARITAS

Good and Evil.52 Nevertheless, since Kant, there has been the world-historical event of the death of God, liberating all traditions from being placed in a metaphysically ordered hierarchy. With the culmination of metaphysics goes a need to reconfigure notions such as rationality, universality, and objectivity. Vattimo’s starting point in twisting these traces of Enlightenment rationality is the present situation in which objectivity is not possible or plausible due to the decentred hermeneutical plurality that is the defining feature of late- modernity (or “postmodernity”), and that this nihilism is the result of recognising our finitude through secularisation inaugurated by Christianity’s principle of interiority. Vattimo states in The Future of Religion that with caritas he is developing “a metarule that obliges and pushes us to accept the different language games” that have been liberated by the event of the death of God.53 In A Farewell to Truth, Vattimo responds to Augustine’s precept, “look within yourself,” which Vattimo regards as ‘an advance on the truth of the object,’ with the question, “if you turn toward your inner self, oughtn’t you also try to heed ‘the other as yourself’?”54 Vattimo’s logic here is reminiscent of Kant’s. For Kant, if one recognises that one is a rational self-legislator and is willing to obey one’s own laws, then one should be able to see this capacity for self-legislation in others, giving them the same moral value to which one would impute onto oneself. Vattimo’s appropriation of Augustine’s “look within yourself,” which is based upon a universal brotherhood of faith according to Dilthey’s understanding of Christianity’s appeal, is far less defined. Augustine’s turn inward had value on the assumption that it was possible for the human being to have an inner connection with God. As Vattimo has no need for, or belief in, an objectively existing metaphysical God, then this justification for turning inward has no purpose. All we are left with, in fact, is an inward-gazing, with no adequate reason for it; our subjectivism is nihilistic and empty. Nevertheless, we still do in fact turn inwards. If we do turn inwards, surely we should look to others who just so happen to do the same to find a way to establish ethical norms. Indeed, in finding no objective truths within or without, all we can do is to turn to one another to fuse one’s limited horizons in dialogue. To whom should one turn in caritas, and how should one conduct oneself in this turning? Moreover, what would be the result of this action? The answers to these questions will reveal Vattimo’s postmodern Categorical

52 Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. by R. J. Hollingdale (London: Penguin, 1990), 32. 53 Gianni Vattimo, Richard Rorty, and Santiago Zabala, “‘What is Religion’s Future After Metaphysics?,” in The Future of Religion, ed. by Santiago Zabala (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 59. 54 Vattimo, A Farewell to Truth, 76.

M. HARRIS 59

Imperative. In After the Death of God, Vattimo writes “once you turn inward you must also try to listen to others like you.”55 What does Vattimo mean by others “like you”? Clearly he cannot mean anything like a Platonic universal of humanity or a Kantian rational subject. In Vattimo’s book The End of Modernity, he calls for the need for a “crash diet” for the subject,56 of a reduced subjectivity, even if he does not flesh out the details. It would appear that Vattimo would prefer to follow Heidegger in conceiving of the individual more in terms of Dasein’s relation to Being than as an autonomous subject who moves out of herself to have relationships with other people and relations to other things. Vattimo believes people should interpret late- modernity accordingly as the nihilistic epoch of Being. Writing in Nihilism and Emancipation, this becomes clear as Vattimo states:

The situation to which we really belong before all else, and toward which we are responsible in our ethical choices, is that of the dissolution of principles, of nihilism. If we choose instead to find our ultimate points of reference in the most specific kinds of attachment (to race, ethnic group, family, or class), then we limit our perspective right at the outset.57

With a “dissolution of principles,” there is no centre, no objectivity and no absolute against which anything can be measured in terms of its truth value. This situation has liberated a plurality of interpretations, which is why Vattimo believes his hermeneutical nihilism is the koiné of late-modernity. Accordingly, ethics should take the form of “discourse-dialogue between defenders of finite positions who recognize that this is what they are and who shun the temptation to impose their position on others.”58 This form of ethics “will certainly retain ... some aspects of Kantism (especially the formulation of the categorical imperative in terms of respect for the other ... stripped of any dogmatic residue).”59 Vattimo’s crash-diet subject is, then, one who has piously recollected Being in its current nihilistic sending; recognising her own finitude by turning inward and finding no divine spark or foundational rationality there, she will turn to others like her. What will these postmodern, weakened subjects do? Vattimo has implied that they will engage in dialogue, but for what end? Vattimo writes

55 Gianni Vattimo, “Toward a nonreligious Christianity,” in After the Death of God, ed. by Jeffrey W. Robbins (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 42. 56 Vattimo, The End of Modernity, 47. 57 Vattimo, Nihilism and Emancipation, 41. 58 Ibid., 46. 59 Ibid.

60 VATTIMO AND CARITAS in A Farewell to Truth that “we don’t reach agreement when we have discovered the truth, we say we have discovered the truth when we reach agreement. In other words, charity takes the place of truth.”60 Elsewhere, in Christianity, Truth and Weakening Faith, Vattimo puts his position more clearly by stating that, “It is still possible to speak of truth ... but only because we have realized caritas through agreement. Caritas with respect to opinion, with respect to choices about values, will become the truth when it is shared.”61 The “universal,” writes Vattimo in Nihilism and Emancipation, is only regarded “by passing through dialogue, through consent, if you like through caritas ... truth is born in consent and from consent.”62 In fact, Vattimo priorities “listening” over talking, for Christian charity, in its secularised universal mission, involves acknowledging that others might be right so that “universality” should give rise to charitable hospitality, as Vattimo writes in After Christianity.63 Listening to others will further weaken one’s own position, as will gathering multiple interpretations in order to fuse horizons to create more syncretistic, less logically coherent positions. This is how caritas is the stimulus to weakening, the nihilistic force behind secularisation. Vattimo’s postmodern Categorical Imperative, then, is forming truth as dialogue. This dialogue is the coming together of “weak” subjects fusing their horizons as a result of recognising their finitude as a consequence of turning inward and reading the “signs of the times,”64 that we are living in the epoch of the consummation of the nihilistic vocation of Being.

The conditional and the postmodern subject: Problems for Vattimo’s ethics

Vattimo’s notion of caritas rescues some core strengths from Kant’s ethics for the late-modern philosopher. It retains the benefits of the second and third formulations of the Categorical Imperative by grounding concern for, and the ethical significance of, others through recognising the importance of oneself. Arguably, though, there are problems with respect to Vattimo’s Categorical Imperative. The first is that Vattimo’s Categorical Imperative actually seems more like a hypothetical imperative: “if one is prepared to listen to one-another, then engage in dialogue.” The second problem is that the decision whether or not to engage in dialogue seems to presume some

60 Vattimo, A Farewell to Truth, 77. 61 Vattimo, “Heidegger and Girard,” 51. 62 Vattimo, Nihilism and Emancipation, xxvi. 63 Vattimo, After Christianity, 101-102. 64 Gianni Vattimo, “The Trace of the Trace,” in Religion, ed. by Jacques Derrida and Gianni Vattimo (Cambridge: The Polity Press, 1998), 91-92.

M. HARRIS 61 kind of autonomy of decision-making, or at the very least a stronger notion of subjectivity than Vattimo is prepared to admit. Vattimo seems to introduce the conditional into the Categorical Imperative: if others are like you, then listen to them. Can you have an unconditional Categorical Imperative? Unsurprisingly, the answer is “No,” for it would be a contradiction in terms. A conditional imperative is a hypothetical imperative, such as, “If you want to go to the cinema, then you have to buy a ticket.” This is instrumental reasoning based on an individual or a community deciding a goal and then deducing what would be the rational course of action required in order to achieve this goal. In the case of Vattimo, this goal-setting and instrumental rationality occurs at a different point in the ethical decision-making process than in Kant’s ethics. For Vattimo, the goal-setting occurs through the dialogue, but the decision to enter into dialogue is based on whether the other party is willing to engage. “Strong” thinkers would not be dialogue partners, for they presume the “correctness” of their views at the outset, precluding dialogue and, therefore, truth. In recent years, in collaboration with his pupil Santiago Zabala in the work Hermeneutic Communism, Vattimo has preferred to use the term ‘conversation’ rather than dialogue, for the latter term is reminiscent of Platonic dialogues in which truth is presupposed at the outset.65 Truth for Vattimo and Zabala is identical with “friendship,” and the latter is forged in the fusion of horizons that constitutes weakening of Being in accordance with the secularising power of caritas, that is, its nihilistic vocation as a process in history. It has been written elsewhere that the separation of people into “strong” and “weak” thinkers is regrettable not only because it retains a metaphysical dualism, but also because the semantic field of “friendship,” “truth,” and “charity” indicates that those who are not prepared to engage in dialogue can be ignored and not listened to.66 Moreover, the value judgement behind Vattimo’s assessment of “strong” thinkers reveals the inconsistencies in Vattimo’s philosophy. “The unconditional is violent” is ironically an unconditional assessment. One can liken this inconsistency to Bernard Williams’ criticisms of subjectivism in his book Morality: if a subjectivist says someone “has no right” to criticise another’s opinion, then this idea of “no right” takes one beyond a merely subjectivist ethic; it is some sort of meta- ethic or transcendental, pre-content schema in which ethical opinions are separated and managed.67 If Vattimo criticises strong thought on the basis of

65 Gianni Vattimo and Santiago Zabala, Hermeneutic Communism: from Heidegger to Marx (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 25-26, 79. 66 Matthew E. Harris, “Vattimo and Otherness: Hermeneutics, Charity and Conversation,” in Otherness: Essays and Studies, 4 (2013), 1-21. 67 Bernard Williams, Morality (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1973), 41.

62 VATTIMO AND CARITAS it being “violent,” and if Vattimo backs out of a genuine Categorical Imperative of universal respect for others based on an “inner turn” primarily on the basis that some people are strong thinkers, then he is just like Williams’ subjectivist holding that people have “no right” to condemn someone else’s beliefs. In other words, Vattimo’s view that “violence is wrong” is his implicit moral absolute, in the same way the subjectivist still conceives of a “right” and “wrong” when it comes to judging peoples’ opinions. Of course, Vattimo would not even consider himself a relativist, let alone a subjectivist. Vattimo would argue that he is appealing to history to ground a criterion for interpretation that takes him beyond relativism and subjectivism. Vattimo’s problem is in trying to create a criterion for interpretation out of hermeneutical nihilism. “For this problem,” writes Wolfgang Welsch in Weakening Philosophy: Essays in Honour of Gianni Vattimo, “[that is] of the multiplicity of competing interpretations and the absence of a noninterpretative metacriterion—Vattimo has no solution.”68 Welsch does not think that a “noninterpretative metacriterion” is possible after the death of God. Vattimo may argue that we should try to recollect traces of Being to weaken them to reduce violence. However, if Being just happens, then why should one listen to it? Being has weakened itself despite “strong” thinkers from the time of Late-Antiquity up to the present; indeed, as Vattimo pointed out, the “principle of interiority” took its time to develop between Augustine and Descartes, but it did. Therefore, if we are “thrown” into the world as Dasein, and if Being is inescapably linguistic, surely it is impossible to fail to recollect it in some way, and it takes further, strong reasons to argue for weak thinking and the reduction of violence. If one argues that we should all be weak thinkers (and therefore conversation partners), that we should interpret the traces of Being charitably; then, sooner or later one runs into an ethical absolute. Indeed, if one argues that one can choose to be either a strong or weak thinker, and that one should be excluded or included as a result of this choice (or at least identity); then, this implies that Vattimo believes that individuals are subjects capable of ethical responsibility, even if it is in the postmodern ontological-ethical sense of the way one comports oneself to Being. It has been argued by Gavin Hyman in a review of Nihilism and Emancipation that Vattimo does not “distort” metaphysics sufficiently in his notion of the subject that underlies his ethics. First of all, Hyman distinguishes between the “nominative” and “accusative” ethics of the subject, whereby the former is autonomous and discrete, whereas the latter is called by something that is

68 Wolfgang Welsch, “The Human—Over and Over Again,” in Weakening Philosophy: Essays in Honour of Gianni Vattimo, ed. by Santiago Zabala (Montreal & Kingston, London, Ithaca: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2007), 100.

M. HARRIS 63 constituted by that which is prior to contemplation.69 Hyman questions whether Vattimo has been able to move to an “accusative” ethics of the subject. Although Vattimo argues that we should read the “signs of the times” and that we are thrown into the infinitely plural world of late-modern, Hyman points out that Vattimo’s subject seems to still need ethical guidance.70 “For Vattimo” writes Hyman, “ethics ... is something we develop or invent by means of our own “choices” and ‘decisions.’”71 Vattimo does mention the need for decisions and choices such as “between what holds good and what does not in the cultural heritage from which we come.”72 Hyman finds it puzzling that Vattimo should conceive of such a strong, founding subject when he rejects other “metaphysical” notions such as the Levinasian “Other,” for the latter is equally “metaphysical” and is a more promising way of grounding a postmodern ethic.73 Presumably, on this nominative sense of the subject, one can choose to adhere to one’s heritage and become a “strong” thinker. While Vattimo would argue that this is not reading the “signs of the times,” this assumption presumes that one can only create one ontology of actuality. Surely, though, in the spirit of plurality one is able to interpret late-modernity in different ways? One could interpret plurality as the dissolution of first principles and foundationalism, or one could see everyone else as wrong and only you and your “cultural heritage” as being right. With no neutral point from which to adjudicate interpretations, even caritas needs to be grounded on something else, something which is lacking. Vattimo’s postmodern Categorical Imperative, therefore, lacks both a foundation that does not beg the question or consistency with his intention to weaken metaphysics.

Department of Philosophy, Staffordshire University, United Kingdom

References

Depoortere, Frederiek, Christ in Postmodern Philosophy: Gianni Vattimo, René Girard, and Slavoj Žižek (London and New York: T&T Clark, 2008). Dilthey, Wilhelm, Introduction to the Human Sciences, trans. by Roman J. Betanzos (Detroit and London: Harvester-Wheatsheaf, 1979).

69 Gavin Hyman, “Must a Post-Metaphysical Political Theology Repudiate Transcendence? The Case of Gianni Vattimo,” in The Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory, 8 (2007), 129. 70 Ibid., 130 71 Ibid. 72 Vattimo, Nihilism and Emancipation, 46. 73 Hyman, “Must a Post-Metaphysical Political Theology Repudiate Transcendence?,” 130.

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D’Isanto, Luca, “Introduction,” in Gianni Vattimo, Belief, trans. by Luca D’Isanto (Cambridge: The Polity Press, 1999). Gadamer, Hans.-Georg, Wahrheit und methode: grundzuge einer philosophischen hermeneutic (Tubingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1972). Giorgio, Giovanni, Il pensiero di Gianni Vattimo (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2006). Girard, René, Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World (London and New York: The Athlone Press, 1987). Guarino, Thomas, Vattimo and Theology (London and New York: T&T Clark, 2009). Harris, Matthew E., “Vattimo and Otherness: Hermeneutics, Charity and Conversation,” in Otherness: Essays and Studies, 4 (2013), 1-21. Heidegger, Martin, Identity and Difference, trans. by Joan Stambaugh (New York, Evanston, and London: Harper and Row, 1969). ______, “The word of Nietzsche: ‘God is dead’,” in The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, ed. by David Ferrell Krell (New York and London: Garland, 1977). Hyman, Gavin, “Must a Post-Metaphysical Political Theology RepudiateTranscendence? The Case of Gianni Vattimo,” in The Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory, 8 (2007), 124-134. Nietzsche, Friedrich, The Anti-Christ, trans. by R. J. Hollingdale (London: Penguin, 1990a). ______, Twilight of the Idols, trans. by R. J. Hollingdale (London: Penguin, 1990b). ______, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. by R. J. Hollingdale (London: Penguin, 1990c). ______, The Gay Science, trans. by Josephine Nauckhoff (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). O’Neill, Onora, The Bounds of Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). Paton, H.J. The Moral Law: Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (London: Hutchinson University Library, 1972). Schneewind, J. B., “Autonomy, Obligation and Virtue: An Overview of Kant’s Moral Philosophy,” in The Cambridge Companion to Kant, ed. by Paul Guyer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). Vattimo, Gianni. Verità e metodo (Milan: Bompiani, 1983). ______, The End of Modernity, trans. by Jon Snyder (Cambridge: The Polity Press, 1988). ______, “Towards an Ontology of Decline,” in Recoding Metaphysics, ed. by Giovanna Borradori (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1988). ______, The Transparent Society, trans. by David Webb (Cambridge: The Polity Press, 1992).

M. HARRIS 65

______, The Adventure of Difference, trans. by Cyprian Blamires (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1993). ______, Beyond Interpretation, trans. by David Webb (Cambridge: The Polity Press, 1997). ______, “The Trace of the Trace,” in Religion, ed. by Jacques Derrida and Gianni Vattimo, trans. by David Webb (Cambridge: The Polity Press, 1998). ______, Belief, trans. by David Webb and Luca D’Isanto (Cambridge: The Polity Press, 1999). ______, After Christianity, trans. by Luca D’Isanto (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002). ______, “After Onto-Theology: Philosophy Between Science and Religion,” in Religion after Metaphysics, ed. by Mark Wrathall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). ______, Nihilism and Emancipation, trans. by William McCuaig (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004). ______, “Toward a Nonreligious Christianity,” in After the Death of God, ed. by Jeffrey W. Robbins (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007). ______, The Responsibility of the Philosopher, trans. by William McCuaig (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010). ______, “Heidegger and Girard,” in Christianity, Truth, and Weakening Faith: a Dialogue, ed. by Santiago Zabala (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010). ______, A Farewell to Truth, trans. by William McCuaig (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011). Vattimo, Gianni, Rorty, Richard and Santiago Zabala, “What is Religion’s Future After Metaphysics?” in The Future of Religion, ed. by Santiago Zabala (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005). Vattimo, Gianni and Santiago Zabala, “Ethics without Transcendence?,” in Common Knowledge, 9 (2003), 399-405. Vattimo, Gianni and Santiago Zabala, Hermeneutic Communism: from Heidegger to Marx (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011). Welsch, Wolfgang, “The Human—Over and Over Again,” in Weakening Philosophy: Essays in Honour of Gianni Vattimo, ed. by Santiago Zabala (Montreal & Kingston, London, Ithaca: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2007). Wiggins, David, Needs, Values and Truth (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991). Wood, Allen, Kant’s Ethical Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Williams, Bernard, Morality (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1973).

KRITIKE VOLUME EIGHT NUMBER TWO (DECEMBER 2014) 66-76

Article

The Narrative’s Creative and Ethical Mediation: A Refigured Self, a Refigured World

Kelly Louise Rexzy P. Agra

Abstract: In the age-old divide between philosophy and the arts, one can situate most compellingly Paul Ricoeur’s take on the narrative which best highlights the creative or even cathartic dimension of art, particularly literature, in the configuration of the self. He argues that a work of art is not a simple imitation, rather, it is always and already a creative imitation---a new take, a different rendering, a refiguration of reality that discloses multi-layered truths, referring to a world and projecting other possible worlds. Ricoeur follows Aristotle in this view on mimesis but he goes on to develop it into a triad of mimetic activity wherein one could draw an aesthetic and ethical import, as it treats a work of art as one that speaks of realities that are not immediately given nor could simply be encapsulated and reduced to logical and scientific descriptions. Ricoeur here is not simply making an apology of the arts, instead he is presenting the mediating role of the narrative in understanding human action and its meaning and ultimately, oneself, within the horizon of temporal existence. This paper is a reflection of Ricoeur’s portrayal of the narrative which echoes the reality that it is in the stories told and heard, written and read, lived and narrated wherein anyone can see that after all, the mystery of life and the joyful struggle for living is shared by everyone else. Through narration, imaginative and ethical variations, different worlds and ways of living are opened up. In recounting one’s life, one is able to form and share an understanding of oneself and one’s world, that is not substantial but rather dynamic, ever available to transform and be transformed.

Keywords: Ricoeur, narrativity, literature, ethics

K. AGRA 67

. . . we have no idea of what a culture would be where no one any longer knew what it meant to narrate things. - Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative

hat fault do you find in them?” Adeimantus asked Socrates referring to the poets, in their discussion of the literary “W education suitable for the republic. To which Socrates replied: “The worst fault possible, especially if the fiction is an ugly one ... Misrepresenting the nature of gods and heroes, like a portrait painter whose portraits bear no resemblance to their originals ... a fault which certainly deserves censure.”1 This conversation found in Plato’s The Republic, portrays one of the controversies western philosophy has been involved in in asserting its believed privileged position towards the pursuit of the good life.2 Such position that regards rhetoric, poetry, and art in general as inferior, for what they present are twice removed from reality, as they are only imitations of imitations, and worse, they corrupt philosophy’s most prized ‘Reason.’3 In this divide between philosophy and the arts, one can situate most compellingly Paul Ricoeur’s take on the narrative, which best highlights the creative or even cathartic dimension of art, particularly literature, in the configuration of one’s identity. One finds in Ricoeur an appreciation of a work of art not as a simple imitation, rather, as an always and already creative mimesis, a refiguration of reality that discloses multi-layered truths, referring to a world, and projecting possible worlds one could imagine oneself inhabiting. Ricoeur follows Aristotle in this view on mimesis but he goes on to develop it into a triad of mimetic activity: prefiguration, configuration, refiguration—which could be found in his three volume work Time and

1 Plato, The Republic, trans. by Desmond Lee (London: Penguin Books, 2007), 377d-e, 69. Note that the last phrase was Adeimantus’ reply to Socrates, “a fault which certainly deserves censure.” 2 The ‘Good’ in Plato is the supreme “end of all endeavour, and the object on which every heart is set” for it is “the source not only of the intelligibility of the objects of knowledge, but also of their being and reality”-- the ultimate goal of the soul. The use of the phrase ‘good life’ here is to refer to a general disposition for living a good life. Following Ricoeur, it is “the nebulus of ideals and dreams of achievements with regard to which a life is held to be more or less fulfilled or unfulfilled. [ ... ] it is ‘that in view of which’ all [ ... ] actions are directed, actions which were nevertheless said to have end in themselves.” Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, trans. by Kathleen Blamey (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1994), 179. [Hereafter cited as OAA.] 3 Michael Weston writes in the introduction of his book Philosophy, Literature and the Human Good, “It began of course, with Plato, who announced that there had long been a quarrel between philosophy and poetry.” In this book, Weston explores philosophical and literary figures that directly or indirectly tackle this long battle between literature or art and philosophy such as Kant, Schlegel, Nietzsche, Bataille, Blanchot, Derrida, Murdoch, Nussbaum, Rorty, Cavell, Kierkegaard, Phillips. See Michael Weston’s Philosophy, Literature and the Human Good (London and New York: Routledge, 2001).

68 CREATIVE AND ETHICAL MEDIATION

Narrative. He treats a work of art as one that speaks of realities that are not immediately given nor could simply be encapsulated and reduced to logical and scientific descriptions. In The Rule of Metaphor Ricoeur speaks of this creative character of poetry and writes, “Poetry does not seek to prove anything at all: its project is mimetic; its aim ... is to compose an essential representation of human actions.”4 Ricoeur here is not simply making an apology of the arts. Instead, he is presenting the mediating role of art in understanding human action and its meaning, and ultimately, oneself, within the horizon of temporal existence. The intertwining of time and narrative is proposed by Ricoeur as an alternative in remedying the fatal deficiency in any purely phenomenological approach. It is a response to what he saw was the danger of Heidegger’s direct ontologization of human existence as he asserts that there is more than one way to talk about being. Time—as that within which we exist as finite human beings, acting and suffering at the same time, in a world we inhabit with others—“becomes human time to the extent that it is organized after the manner of a narrative; the narrative, in turn, attains its full meaning when it becomes a condition of temporal existence.”5

The Creative Power of Literature

At least once, in someone’s life, one experiences an utter powerlessness to articulate what one feels that one is ready to trust that no amount of literature would ever suffice to represent the depth of an experience that overwhelms one’s being. Perhaps these are the instances that lead one to suppose that maybe there is a God, whose power stretches far beyond anything that could be conceived. Such instances convince one of the mystical, the tormenting, or the dreadful, when there seem to be nothing but intoxication, torture, or horror! These are the experiences wherein the cogito in all its assertiveness can never deny that event when it is drawn from thinking. The ‘I’ then crumbles into a kind of infinity where every purpose,

4 Paul Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor: The Creation of Meaning in Language (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), 13. A scholar on Ricoeur, David Pellauer comments, “Aristotle considered rhetoric and poetic discourse – even their use of metaphor and other figurative forms – to overlap logic because of the appeal to some form of argumentation they both include.” “ ... rhetorical argument introduces the idea of creativity ... ” He adds that the semantic innovation in metaphor, its transgressive and transformative aspect “is what makes it capable of creating new meaning by disturbing the existing logical order at the same time that it begets it in a new form ... it makes us see things differently, not by imitating them in the sense of producing a copy but by redescribing them.” David Pellauer, Ricoeur: Guide for the Perplexed (London and New York: Continuum, 2007), 67. 5 Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1984), 1:3. [Hereafter cited as T&N, followed by the volume and page number].

K. AGRA 69 every thought and every doubt simply fades, for nothing else exists except that genuine moment that at once made it feel most alive. To recount such times would even seem foolish just when one already believed that they could not be spoken of if not in approximation. Yet, one cannot help but consider that these events deserve to be recounted, ‘because in the last analysis human lives need and merit being narrated.’6 It is therefore in such enigma of experience wherein Paul Ricoeur finds the language of imagination available in literature asserting its power. Literature for him creatively gives a closer approximation of reality and experience than that of science’s, logic’s, or even phenomenology’s direct descriptions. Likewise, it highlights a tempering of the tension between being wary of not thinking that language could contain reality, but believing so that language can touch this reality. In the field of figurative discourse, Ricoeur takes the metaphor’s transgressive aspect that disturbs commonplace understanding, and the network of reference and expectation, as that which makes possible the redescription of things. In the opening lines of Time and Narrative, Ricoeur stresses that The Rule of Metaphor and Time and Narrative must be taken together as a pair. For it is in both where he brings out the similarities between the metaphor and the narrative. The first of these is their capacity to display the creativity of language.7 He writes,

The work of art—having an effect comparable to that of metaphor in integrating levels of sense that are overlaid, preserved and contained together—is the occasion for discovering aspects of language that are ordinarily concealed by its usual practice, its instrumentalized function of communication. The work of art bares properties of language which otherwise would remain invisible and unexplored.8

Ricoeur calls this ‘semantic innovation.’ He says, “in both cases, the new thing—the as yet unsaid—springs up in language.”9 If the metaphor is able to give birth to new meanings by coupling terms which do not belong to

6 T&N, 1:75. 7 See Leovino Ma. Garcia’s “Paul Ricoeur’s Happy Memory: Remembering, Forgetting, Forgiving,” in Thought the Harder, Heart the Keener: A Festschrift for Soledad S. Reyes, ed. Eduardo Jose Calasanz, Jonathan Chua, Rofel Brion (Loyola Schools, Ateneo de Manila University: Office of Research and Publications, 2008), 3. 8 Paul Ricoeur, “Aesthetic Experience,” in Critique and Conviction: Conversations with Francois Azouvi and Marc de Launay, trans. Kathleen Blamey (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1998), 172. 9 T&N, 1:ix.

70 CREATIVE AND ETHICAL MEDIATION the same semantic field, the narrative—by invention of the plot—synthesizes heterogeneous elements in order to project a complete story.10 This synthetic operation both within the metaphor and the narrative makes possible the infinite combination of elements and of thought experiments that could only happen within the realm of imagination. The second similarity that he draws from the two is found on the level of their reference or truth-claim.11 This presupposes that literature primarily refers to a network of human activity and experience. Inasmuch as it is a human creation, it is necessarily grounded within a situation from which it can only arise. This is its first reference: it refers to a particular world where it can only be thought of. However, this reference to a world is accompanied by an opening of another world: ‘the kingdom of the as if.’12 This is its second reference: the ‘world of the text’ or the story itself. Through human action’s configuration in a plot, the narrative enables the projection of heterogeneous values, and referential frameworks involved in temporal existence. The narrative in exposing multiple possibilities of living under given social and historical circumstances is thus able to present truth as a matter of existential appropriation and not of intellectual argument.13 In such presentation, the power of literature comes in three waves. First, it provides a space for an articulation of experiences that cannot be expressed through a direct or definitive description. Second, it brings to language the possibility for a new take on reality; it unsettles, challenges, and remodels human expectations. Third, it is not the case that literature is out of this world; it actually refers to a world and is a product of it. And by its creativity, it is also able to project other possible worlds that contribute to the widening of our cognitive fields.

The Ethical Dimension

If living is just living alone, perhaps the tensions brought to the fore by ethics would not at all be relevant. If self-autonomy is all that matters, tragedy, or the novel may not have been invented. If the world does not disclose the reality that we are beings-with-others, we may not even have an idea of what a family is. One characteristic of the narrative is that it consists of characters who act and suffer in the field of social interaction and in everyday life. The narrative, with its proposition of a world likewise proposes conditions where there is a need for an exercise of moral judgment, circumstances where the spectator is drawn to feel with the actor’s struggle

10 Garcia, “Paul Ricoeur’s Happy Memory,” 4. 11 Ibid. 12 T&N, 1:64. 13 Weston, Philosophy, Literature and the Human Good, xix.

K. AGRA 71 to press for a decision, and situations that illustrate expected and unexpected outcomes. This is because actors are not sole actors in the practical field, they are with and against other beings with whom they share the struggle for life and the finite attempts to overcome their weaknesses. In the same way that the stories we read, watch, and hear present new worlds from which we could derive hope, inspiration, and understanding, stories offer us hints on how to interact and relate with other people. Ricoeur proceeds to assert that action can never be ethically neutral. In light of this, he reminds us of one of the oldest functions of art: that it constitutes an ethical laboratory where the artist pursues through the mode of fiction experimentation with values. As he writes, “Telling a story is at the same time deploying an imaginary space for thought experiments in which moral judgment operates in a hypothetical mode.”14 From this we draw Ricoeur’s attempt to wed ethics with aesthetics as he sees it to be initially manifest in a work of art, and that being the case, it is as evident in the narrative. He stresses,

... the practical understanding authors share with their audiences necessarily involves an evaluation of the characters and their actions in terms of good and bad. There is no action that does not give rise to approbation or reprobation, to however small a degree, as a function of a hierarchy of values for which goodness and wickedness are the poles.15

The narrative is a projection of ethical possibilities. The novel for one, more than being unrelated to reality or a mere story of a happy ending, extends into the social sphere. It re-channels our attention to lives and events that are not always monumental but nonetheless exert a forceful emulation of the everyday lives of ordinary people in its own creative way. Hence, when we read these stories, it is not too difficult for us to relate and feel with the characters precisely because our own lives share a particular resemblance with the lives of the characters. The themes of love, jealousy, desire, weakness, forgiveness, desperation, and all else, which at times almost leave us dumbstruck no matter how trivial they may appear in contrast with the problems of the world, are given attention and significance. For is it not that at the end of the day, our immediate concerns inflict us more gravely? Meanwhile, what the narrative also enables is the self’s recognition of itself. The narrative becomes a tool for a ‘hermeneutics of the self.’ From the very start, Ricoeur stresses that there is no direct way of understanding

14 OAA, 170. 15 T&N, 1:59.

72 CREATIVE AND ETHICAL MEDIATION ourselves. The self can only be interpreted through the long detour of signs and symbols of human action, and these are brought to light in the realm of discourse and interpretation through narration. The self of self-knowledge is the fruit of an examined life, purged and clarified by the cathartic effects of narratives handed down by one’s culture.16 One recognizes oneself in the stories one tells about oneself, borrowing from fiction and history, ways to recount.17 Recalling Marcel Proust’s lines from Time Regained, Ricoeur quotes him: But to return to myself, I thought more modestly of my book, and one could not exactly say that I thought of those who would read it, of my readers. Because they would not according to me be my readers, but the real readers of themselves ... . It was my book, and thanks to it I enabled them to read what lay within themselves.18

Through an account of the ethical dimension of the narrative Ricoeur reminds us of three things. First, the self is a result, a product of culture and history. In place of an ego enamored of itself is a self, instructed by narratives.19 Insofar as every narrative is a configuration of multiple events and characters, we, as narrative-selves, are assemblages of all the forces that have thus affected, informed, and moved us. Second, inasmuch as every narrative opens itself to unlimited interpretations and re-interpretations, it is also in our capacity to continually figure and refigure our identities. This is where Ricoeur develops what he calls ‘narrative identity.’ We are a constant project, and while we still feel the warmth of our breaths, we can change. Third, as we all are but travelers in search of ourselves, Ricoeur invites us to let our own stories be heard, for maybe somewhere in a bitter cold night, it could touch and inspire a soul, likewise determining himself, ready to transform and be transformed. At the bottom of it all, the narrative crystallizes a purged self who understands life as really a life with others.

Conclusion: Refiguration through the Narrative

The narrative, presented as performing a creative-ethical mediation, now unfolds its significance in relation to man’s understanding of time, life, human action, the world, and himself. As the narrative asserts its power in

16 Ricoeur stresses: “self-constancy refers to a self instructed by the works of culture it has applied to itself.” T&N, 3:247. 17 Paul Ricoeur, “Narrative Identity,” in On Paul Ricoeur: Narrative and Interpretation, ed. by David Wood (New York: Routledge, 1991), 188. [Hereafter cited as NI]. 18 Cf. Marcel Proust, “Time Regained,” trans. by David Wood in NI, 198. 19 Paul Ricoeur, “Life in Quest of Narrative,” in On Paul Ricoeur: Narrative and Interpretation, ed. by David Wood (New York: Routledge, 1991), 33. [Hereafter cited as LQN.]

K. AGRA 73 disclosing human realities that could only be made available through the discourse it transmits, it brings to the fore tensions which in Ricoeur turn out to be complementary. The first tension is the very title of his book where he developed his theory of the narrative: Time and Narrative. ‘In narrative discourse, we may find a refigured time that in the best of cases help us make better sense of the ordinary everyday time of our lives as well as of its limit situations.’20 Such enhanced understanding is so that we may allow new forms of narrative configuration to rise—an understanding of reality as not permanent nor absolute, but temporal—joyfully affirming the transitory nature of things and even our finite lives. The narrative, as it constructs and unifies diverse aspects of temporal existence achieves its full meaning and is able to make time, human time. We learn from Heidegger that to be temporal always means to be ‘in time.’ Temporality is the meaning of our being. Our lives are the entire stretch of how we had been and will be between our births and deaths. The narrative, therefore, receives the role of synthesizing all the factors, events, encounters, and social roles involved in one’s existence that contribute to the determination of one’s series of decisions. Such decisions work against the backdrop of facticity but are truly ‘owned.’ Our situatedness determines our possibilities, but it is we who decide which possibility to actualize. It is our choices which lead to sets of consequences that make us who we are, transforming our lives into living narratives of our identities. All these are crafted into a story of an individual who at once graced the world and shared with the entire humanity the living projection of how it is to be human—a configuration that inasmuch as it is not closed in upon itself, is ever open for the limitless ways of being recounted, by others and within different contexts, a story that can be heard and read, and when understood, contributes to the refiguring of our understanding of human action and its possibilities.21 Following the poem’s invitation, narrating, telling, and reciting turns out to be a remaking of action, which in its own way will re-signify the world in its temporal dimension.22 If Ricoeur is able to bridge time and narrative, he is also able to unify Fiction and Life. Like all narratives, fiction too presents a world of the text in which the story is understood to unfold.23 Fiction, being a laboratory for ethical judgment, in its openness to infinite thought experiments about ways and means of existing in inexhaustible situations, allows the world to be seen differently, but also, in perspectives that could be true of the world as it

20 Pellauer, Ricoeur: Guide for the Perplexed, 73. 21 Ibid., 72. 22 This is an allusion of what Ricoeur said, that “the narrative re-signifies the world in its temporal dimension, to the extent that narrating, telling, reciting is to remake action following the poem’s invitation.” T&N, 1:81. 23 Pellauer, Ricoeur: Guide for the Perplexed, 77.

74 CREATIVE AND ETHICAL MEDIATION actually is or might be. Fiction becomes a way of articulating new experiences of time, of fictive experiences that help us better understand our own world.24 For Ricoeur, the way we interpret our lives will always be quasi-past and quasi-fictive. A life, he says, is no more than a biological phenomenon as long as it has not been interpreted.25 It is not the case that we live life and merely read fiction precisely because ‘reading is already a way of living in the fictive universe’26 of a story. Stories are recounted, but in addition to that, they are lived; they come to life, in the field of imagination. The reason why we cry, laugh, get irritated, or feel in love after watching a film or hearing a narrative is because as their plots unfold toward their endings, we can follow and relate to their flow even only by imagining them. And as we listen, watch, or read, we let ourselves be immersed and engaged with different worlds. We lose ourselves for our consciousnesses are directed to the stories’ horizons. And while Ricoeur refers to the paradox of an active-recipient in the being of the reader, he accentuates more than anything the broadening of the reader’s horizon. This way, the narrative that creatively mediates fiction and life can be seen as an arena of imaginative and ethical variations that can be appropriated by selves who are both readers and authors of their lives. Finally, what narration succeeds in doing is the ever-dynamic co- refiguration of the Self and of the World. Literature as serving a mediating function attempts to discover new features of referentiality which are not descriptive, features of communicability which are not utilitarian, and features of reflexivity which are not narcissistic.27 It is by being in this world that we receive stories, and since we are not merely passive recipients of historical fictions or fictional histories, nor inactive observers of what happens in the society, it is also by being in this world that we actually are able to craft and tell a story. Because we are in the world and are affected by situations, and we try to orient ourselves in them, we also have something to say; we also have an experience to bring to language and to share.28 As such, what Gadamer calls as the ‘fusion of horizons’ is not just a fusion of the worlds of two or a few individuals; the fusion at large is the fusion of all possible horizons within the one big horizon, that is the world. Our selves are constantly refigured because we primordially exist in a world where we get to encounter and be encountered by other selves that are also in constant refiguration. And, insofar as we are individuals shaped by our own historical situatedness, these other selves to whom we stand in opposite but in mutual regard, are to us, truly ‘others.’ For only what is different from us can change

24 Ibid., 79. 25 LQN, 27-28. 26 LQN, 27. 27 LQN, 27. 28 T&N, 1:78.

K. AGRA 75 and enlarge us. This acknowledgment of others and their worlds as really different from ours is what makes possible our co-belonging and co- determination in a world that mediates our worlds—to use Nishida Kitaro’s term: a ‘world of worlds.’29 Yet, this world within which we live is also refigured by us. The world is not the world without us—beings who are born and who pass away, but not without bringing something new—for it is our individual and intersecting worlds that constitute this world. We determine the world as it determines us. Every movement, every change, every creation affects and refigures everything else precisely because everything is interconnected. To recall a line from The Storyteller by Walter Benjamin, “The art of storytelling is the art of exchanging experiences.”30 Life inasmuch as it is temporal could only be lived once, so live in such a way that it could touch and inspire other souls; live without forgetting that in every encounter, our selves and our worlds are constantly refigured.

Department of History and Philosophy, University of the Philippines-Baguio, Philippines

References

Benjamin, Walter, The Storyteller: Reflections on the Works of Nilokai Leskov, . Davis, Bret W., “Toward a World of Worlds,” in Frontiers of Japanese Philosophy, Vol. 1 (Nagoya, Japan: Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture, 2006), 205–245. Garcia, Leovino Ma., “Paul Ricoeur’s Happy Memory: Remembering, Forgetting, Forgiving,” in Thought the Harder, Heart the Keener: A Festschrift for Soledad S. Reyes, ed. by Eduardo Jose Calasanz, Jonathan Chua, RofelBrion (Loyola Schools, Ateneo de Manila University: Office of Research and Publications, 2008). Pellauer, David, Ricoeur: Guide for the Perplexed (London and New York: Continuum, 2007). Plato, The Republic, trans. by Desmond Lee (London: Penguin Books, 2007). Ricoeur, Paul, “Aesthetic Experience,” in Critique and Conviction: Conversations with Francois Azouvi and Marc de Launay, trans. by Kathleen Blamey (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1998).

29“Sekai-tekisekai” or “world of worlds” is an idea borrowed from Kitaro Nishida which refers to the world as a place of unity-in-diversity, for the interaction of a plurality of singular worlds. See Bret W. Davis’ “Toward a World of Worlds,” in Frontiers of Japanese Philosophy, Vol. 1 (Nagoya, Japan: Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture, 2006), 205–245. 30 Walter Benjamin, The Storyteller: Reflections on the Works of Nilokai Leskov, 1, .

76 CREATIVE AND ETHICAL MEDIATION

______, On Paul Ricoeur: Narrative and Interpretation, ed. by David Wood (New York: Routledge, 1991). ______, Oneself as Another, trans. by Kathleen Blamey (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1994). ______, The Rule of Metaphor: The Creation of Meaning in Language (London and New York: Routledge, 2003). ______, Time and Narrative (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1984). Weston, Michael, Philosophy, Literature and the Human Good (London and New York: Routledge, 2001).

KRITIKE VOLUME EIGHT NUMBER TWO (DECEMBER 2014) 77-97

Article

The Philosophical Anthropology of Erich Fromm: The Conscious and the Unconscious in Man

Ian Raymond B. Pacquing

Abstract: The philosophical anthropology of Erich Fromm rests on his analysis of the existential dichotomy, which breaks man’s humanity. When man disobeys God in paradise, he begins to become human. He begins to be free. For Fromm, disobedience is a prerequisite towards freedom. However, there is in him a yearning to go back to paradise to enjoy the “roots of his own nature.” He wants to be secured and taken care by a loving God. This allegory was taken and interpreted by Fromm that man is separated from his own nature. In paradise, he is an animal. He does not possess any reason or freedom as a human being. Physiologically, he does what other creatures do. However, saying “no” to God’s commandment allowed him to become human. He has reason and freedom. He is forced to take the responsibility to build his own humanity. Now, he is torn between two existential nature i.e., his animal nature and human nature. There is no way for him to return to his paradisiacal roots. He has to move on and build his true human nature. For Fromm, this can be done through reason, faith, and love.

Keywords: Fromm, existential dichotomy, neurosis, freedom

Prophetic Messianism

ainer Funk, the autobiographer of Fromm, once remarked that anyone who reads the work of Fromm must begin with his concept of man.1 R For Funk, this is the central issue of Fromm’s thought, which must never be separated from his discussions on sociology, anthropology, religion, sciences, and technology. Any study concerning the nature of man must begin and end with man. Fromm anchors his thought on humanism, which

1 Erich Fromm, On Being Human, ed. by Rainer Funk (New York: Continuum, 1999), Foreword, 9.

78 THE CONSCIOUS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS IN MAN he uses to examine the world. In the words of Funk, “Fromm speaks of humanistic socialism, humanistic forms of industrial society, of a humanistic weltanschauung, of a humanistic psychoanalysis, of humanistic character structure, of humanistic ethics, of humanistic guilt ... .”2 Fromm’s philosophical anthropology emanated from his early experiential influences on Judaist Hasidism under his Talmud mentor Salman Baruch Rabinkov.3 Fromm says, “My sense of the world, however, was not that of a modern man but a premodern one; and that attitude was reinforced by studying the Talmud, reading the Bible a lot, and hearing a lot of stories about my ancestors, who had all lived in a world that predated the bourgeois world.”4 The influence of Hasidism was inculcated in Fromm so that, as scholars would say, he served God with joy by singing Hasidic songs all throughout his life.5 This early influence would be carried on by Fromm to develop what he later termed in his anthropology as “prophetic messianism.”6 This messianism is concerned with how he visualized the goal of humanity in achieving its end.7 Soon his Hasidic influences began to mix with the humanist Marxism and Freudian psychoanalysis when he entered the university in Frankfurt. This then fortified his belief on the centrality of man as the foundation of his humanistic psychology.8 In Modern Man and the Future, Fromm argued that man is in search of a unity within himself by building a social system based on reason, love, justice, and solidarity.9 Through Fromm’s allegorical reading of Adam and Eve in the Genesis, he argues that there exists an existential dichotomy in man. His original state in paradise before they ate the forbidden fruit speaks of his animal nature. Man follows physiologically the dictates of his instincts just like what other creatures do. He eats, drinks, sleeps, and rests following the natural flow of his animal nature. It seems that, for Fromm, man was basically

2 Rainer Funk, “The Humanistic Foundation of Psychoanalysis According to Erich Fromm,” presented at the 34th Winter-Meeting of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis (December 9, 1990), in San Antonio/Texas in commemoration of Erich Fromm’s 90th birthday, 1. 3 Cf. Merkur Dan, “Erich Fromm’s Humanistic Psychoanalysis,” in Explorations of Psychoanalytic Mystics, 11 (2010), 71. 4 Erich Fromm, For the Love of Life, trans. by Robert and Rita Kimber (New York: The Free Press, 1986), 98. 5 Cf. Dan, “Erich Fromm’s Humanistic Psychoanalysis,” 71. 6 Cf. Lawrence Wilde, “In Search of Solidarity: Ethics of Politics of Erich Fromm,” in Contemporary Politics, 6:1 (2000), 4. 7 This is seen in all his major works such as the Escape from Freedom (1941), Man for Himself (1947), Sane Society (1955), The Art of Loving (1957), and The Anatomy of the Human Destructiveness (1973). 8 Cf. Joanne Braune, “Erich Fromm and Thomas Merton: Biophilia, Necrophilia, and Messianism” in Fromm Forum, 15 (2011), . 9 Cf. Erich Fromm, “Foreword Bellamy,” in The Literary Estate of Fromm (New York, 1960).

I. PACQUING 79 an animal in paradise. He does not possess any reason to know and to understand himself and his environment. Further, man does not even know, as he was with other creatures, that he is primarily a man. He was just one among the many creatures God created. He depends only on his instincts to survive.10 However, when Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, for the first time, man became aware of himself. He now possesses reason, and his intelligence surpasses that of other creatures. It is here that history begins to unfold. He argued in Fear of Freedom that, “The most beautiful as well as the most ugly inclinations of man are not part of a fixed and biologically given human nature ... as a matter of fact, man himself is the most important creation and achievement of the continuous human effort, the record of which we call history.”11 Man had cut his ties with nature, which made him a “part of the soil of his tribe.”12 For the first time, man had reached his own individuality trying to come to terms with his own self. He now begins to be conscious of himself and of his environment. His freedom and reason become a redemptive factor of his own individual autonomy. His act of disobedience is an act of becoming free. Fromm mentions that man’s disobedience of God’s command has an emancipatory intent for it allows man to liberate himself from the clutches of paradisiacal environment. He acknowledges that this act of disobeying God is an act of man’s “owning” his individuality.13 It is an act of redeeming his own self as a human being. It is his affirmation of himself as man. Man now becomes aware not only of himself, but of recreating and perfecting his own individual self. He becomes conscious of his own desires, wishes, and fantasies. Man now enjoys his own freedom, his own individual self. As a conscious being, he now begins to transform his environment in order to become more human.14 However, by regaining his humanity, he is

10 Cf. Braune’s argument on the messianism of Fromm in “Erich Fromm and Thomas Merton.” See also Fromm’s discussion on the human situation in the Sane Society (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1955), 22-24; Man for Himself: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1990), 4-5; Revolution of Hope (New York: American Mental Health Foundation, Inc., 1970), 59; You Shall be as Gods, 53. See also Fromm’s rejection of the libido theory of Freud in his book, The Greatness and Limitation of Freud’s Thought where he argued for man’s liberation through productive character orientation. 11 Erich Fromm, Fear of Freedom (US: Farrar & Rinehart, 1942), 9. 12 Fromm, On Being Human, 160. 13 Cf. Fromm’s discussion of man wanting to be like God in You Shall be as Gods, 53. Further, Funk’s reiteration on the Marxist element of Fromm’s work would affirm commentators like Jay, Kellner, Mclaughlin, and Wiggershaus that his psycho-social philosophy became the ground for the members of the Frankfurt School in analyzing the pathology of society. For further discussion see Rainer Funk, Erich Fromm: The Courage to be Human (New York: Continuum, 1982), 67. 14 Cf. Fromm, “Foreword Bellamy,” 2.

80 THE CONSCIOUS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS IN MAN continuously torn within. His disobedience leads to a rupture of his existential self. It is a dichotomy that can never be solved.15 Fromm says,

... this configuration is precisely one of an existential dichotomy, or to use somewhat less technical language, it is precisely one of a contradiction between man as an animal who is within nature and man as the only thing in nature that has awareness of itself.16

However, this existential rupture leaves man not knowing what to do with his new-found freedom. He wants to be secured, to be related, and to belong. He wants to cling to some source to derive his own power. Man wants to be identified and to be recognized. He is forced to renew himself by searching for ways to be reunited again with nature. His animal stature yearns to go back to “the soil of his tribe,” yet being aware of himself and his environment through the use of his reason and intelligence, he has to move, to create anew, to transform his life and his environment. In The Art of Loving, Fromm says:

In the beginning of human history, man, though thrown out of the original unity with nature, still clings to this primary bond. He finds his security by going back, or holding on to these primary bonds. He still feels identified with the world of animals, and trees, and tries to find unity by remaining one with the natural world.17

He wanted to go back to his original state of animality, fearing that his new-found freedom would bring him nowhere in history. He yearned for the paradisiacal environment. However, according to Fromm, because of his ability to say “no” to God, he was perpetually expelled from paradise. His harmony with nature was broken. Paradise is irreparably lost. Further, saying “no” to God becomes a blessing to man. It is through the act of disobedience

15 Bischof argues that Fromm feels that man is surrounded by contradictions. Most of life’s problems are man-made and, therefore, they can be man-solved. Some of the existential dichotomies are: man lives, yet he dies; man is a part of nature but needs to transcend it; man loves peace yet wages war; man wants to be individualized and be himself yet wants to be socialized and be like everyone else; man behaves rationally but has the strong urge to behave emotionally; man submits himself to higher authorities, yet he also wants to dominate. Cf. Ledford J. Bischof, Interpreting Personality Theories, 2nd ed. (New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1964), 606. 16 Fromm, On Being Human, 75. 17 Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving (London: Thorson Publisher, 1957), 50.

I. PACQUING 81 that he becomes human. This act of disobedience allows man to participate in his own humanity. More than the allegory of Paradise, from a scientific-biologically driven nature, man is basically an animal but the evolution of his brain results in the progress of reason and intelligence.18 This gives man the ability to surpass the rest of the animal kingdom. Fromm says:

At the basis of this insoluble existential dichotomy lies an evolutionary, biologically given fact: man emerges from animal evolution ... while at the same time the development of that part of the brain ... has developed far beyond the order of size. This fact makes man ... more helpless than the animal, and gives him the other possibility for a new, even though entirely different kind of strength.19

The assertion of Jerome Eikstein contributes to this evolution. He says that the transformation of man from “stoop-four-leggedness into an upright- gaited, two-legged being” widened his power, his sense of self, and his knowledge of his surroundings.20 Further, this erect posture of man symbolizes the beginning of human culture. In other words, as two-legged, erected specie, developing the world from his own two hands, the “original sin” is a consequence of his reactions to the world.21 His reactions and counter reactions lead to patterns of fear, anxiety, aggressiveness, and guilt. Man thus satisfies his instincts better than the animals. Unlike the rest of the animal kingdom, it is only man who cooks his food and does not eat it raw. The more

18 Cf. Maciej Henneberg, “Evolution of the Human Brain: Is Bigger Better?,” presented at the Australian Physiological and Pharmacological Society Satellite Symposium on the Evolution of Physiological Processes (June 1998). He argued that the capability of man to use his reason and intelligence gives him the advantage to create tools for the betterment of his environment. 19 Erich Fromm wrote this paper in 1969, which is the second part of a longer piece entitled, “Freud’s Model of Man and Its Social Determinants.” However, due to health reasons, one of his students read the second part which is entitled, “My Own Concept of Man,” at the Third International Forum in Mexico City. The second part was published in Fromm Forum, 17 (2013), . For the evolution of the human brain, see also the articles of John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin in . The evolution of the human brain gives us an advantage from the rest of the animal kingdom. 20 Cf. Jerome Eikstein, “The Rise and Fall of Man,” in Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 5:1 (1965), 69. 21 Cf. ibid., 70.

82 THE CONSCIOUS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS IN MAN developed the brain, the less instinctual, and the more rational is the mode of behavior.22 The tensions that arise from his animality and “non-animality,” from his being thrown into the world without his will (which he shares with other creatures) and his transcending the world, lead him to become a “freak of nature.” Just like the rest of the animal kingdom, he is subjected to the physical laws of nature, yet he wants to transcend it. This “duality” within him yearns for the messianism of unity and looks towards the future as the repository of oneness, unity, justice, peace, wisdom, and love.23 Man wants to attain an inner equilibrium, which was disturbed by this tension. There is a longing in him to develop further his humanity. Man becomes a wanderer, a searcher for the meaning of his life. Fromm says as a consequence of the disobedience, man perpetually searches for relatedness, belongingness, and unity within himself, with his fellow men, and with the world. Ronald Dropkin shares this insight from Fromm. He says that “some of the needs that may be considered the same for all men are the need for belongingness, achievement and recognition, economic security, to be relatively free from fear, for self-respect and sharing in the values that direct one’s life, and for guiding purposes in understanding the world in which one lives.”24 As the bearer of reason and freedom, man has to continuously strive to become himself. He has to develop, to grow, and to mature. Fromm believes that through man’s creativity, nature will continuously evolve to become his new haven. It is from man’s creative action that humanity’s problem may be resolved by improving its potentialities within history. He says:

The real problem is to infer then the core common to all human race from the innumerable manifestations of human nature, the normal as well as the pathological ones, as we can observe them in different individuals and cultures ... Just as the infant is born with all human potentialities which are to develop under favorable social and cultural conditions, so the human race, in the process of history, develops into what it potentially is.25

That is why the messianism of Fromm is not intended in passivity but in action aimed toward a better humanity.26 The creativity of man entails actions,

22 Cf. Bischof, Interpreting Personality Theories, 606. 23 Cf. Braune, “Erich Fromm and Thomas Merton,” 1. 24 Ronald H. Dropkin, “Becoming Aware,” in Journal of Educational Sociology, 31:6 (1958), 207. 25 Erich Fromm, “The Psychology of Normalcy,” in Dissent, 1 (Spring 1954), 1. 26 Cf. Braune, “Erich Fromm and Thomas Merton.”

I. PACQUING 83 which should emanate from his own individuality. In improving himself, he must be able to say “be who I am; never be other than myself.”27 For Fromm, the act of disobedience is reclaiming of man’s “I am.” Although man is related with others, he must be able to maintain his autonomy as individual, as “I am.” To be oneself is one of the prerequisites of Fromm in order to move toward this prophetic messianism. My relation towards other men is an experience of humanity i.e., experiencing man “as man in their existential continuum.”28 It is becoming human by nurturing his own peculiarity as human. Man, as a free individual, is accountable towards himself. He has the responsibility to account for his actions as emanating from himself. His actions, his thinking, and his feelings must be fully human. They must be in consonance to his own peculiar nature. However, this becoming free from paradise entails a burden filled with gigantic responsibility on the part of man. He becomes alone, anxious, and fearful about this new-found freedom.29 He is now left alone and isolated in the midst of history without knowing what to do. Nothing is left to him except himself. Fromm says “the awareness of having been torn away from his natural basis and of being an isolated and unrelated fragment in a chaotic world, would lead to insanity (the insane person is one who has lost his place in a structured world, one which he shares with others and in which he can orient himself).”30 In order to avoid this insanity, he needs to have a sense of himself. He needs to be related and to belong to a world, which he could share with others. He needs to transcend his own existence by struggling to build a better world. The decision does not reside in God any longer but in himself. Since the responsibility rests in him alone, and he himself experiences his own peculiarity, Fromm noted that man fears his new freedom. He has the capacity to escape it or shun it totally. He either regresses by becoming totally isolated or enters into a form of submission. To find security and oneness, he submits himself to authorities and entities outside of himself. He continuously looks for an idol, with whom he can share the burden of his responsibility as man. This submission to authorities/idols is a manifestation of wanting to be reunited back to his place of origin. He wants to regress to infantile situation where he could just follow

27 Leonard C. Feldstein, “Fromm’s Genius was in his Actual Presence,” in The Clinical Erich Fromm, ed. by Rainer Funk (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi Publishers, 2009), 170. 28 Cf. Ruth Nanda Anshen, “Review of Man for Himself: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics,” in The Philosophical Review, 57:5 (Sept., 1948), 521. 29 Anxiety may be defined through the following: “Anxiety is not an effect of all other affects such as pleasure or sadness. It is rather an ontological aspect of man, rooted in his very existence as such ... . Anxiety is the experience of the threat of imminent non-being ... it is at the center core of his self-esteem and his sense of value as a self, which is one important aspect of his experience of himself as a being.” See Eckstein, “The Fall and Rise of Man,” 77. 30 Fromm, “My Own Concept of Man,” 2.

84 THE CONSCIOUS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS IN MAN naturally his instincts like what other animals do. What primitive religions did when they worship and imitate animals is a form of infantile regression, says Fromm.31 Man’s imitation of nature is an expression of his desire to go back to where he originally belongs, where he is nursed by Mother Earth. Man tries to appease nature by creating idols to worship. He formulates laws and regulations on how to submit himself back to nature. Man wants to restore his animality through such worship and imitations. His human energies are transformed in order to make existence bearable. The unbearable obligation moves him to cling to escapism. Man wants to escape this terrible obligation, but he is obliged to create new and better solutions to his dichotomy. As Daniel observes, he (man) “escapes from making choices. He tries to get the other person or the institution in order to take actions for us.”32 Again, Maccoby also noted, “Although we share almost 99 percent of our genetic material with the chimpanzees, the other one percent allows us to choose between either becoming more uniquely and fully human or regressing to tribalism and/or psychopathology ... .”33 The burden of becoming more human rests in man alone. He must develop, grow, and mature, no longer in God’s paradise but by creating his own history as a free and rational individual. He must unfold his potentiality within history. For Fromm, man’s unfolding in history is actually reconciliation with nature. It is a “progressive affirmation of free will, reason, and love between men.”34 He further says, “it is the history of man’s development toward his humanity, towards the development of his specifically human qualities of reason and of love.”35 This is the reason why, for Fromm, the expulsion of man from paradise propelled him into a world of “loneliness, isolation, and homelessness and [he was] left yearning for a union that seemed impossible to reclaim.”36 In the words of Cortina, “man is uprooted from his biological heritage ... humans are both cursed and blessed with the search for a new identity that will give meaning and purpose to their existence.”37 But since man is armed with reason and freedom, he has to move

31 Cf. Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo, trans. by James Strachey (London: Routledge and Keagan Paul, 1919), 3, 21. 32 Cf. Victor Daniel’s unpublished notes on Erich Fromm, . 33 Michael Maccoby, “The Two Voices of Erich Fromm: The Prophetic and the Analytic,” in Society, (July/August 1994). This article is adapted from a lecture given at the Erich Fromm International Symposium, Washington, DC, May 6, 1994. 34 Ramon Xirau, “Erich Fromm: What Is Man's Struggle?,” in B. Landis and E. S. Tauber eds., In the Name of Life. Essays in Honor of Erich Fromm (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971), 150. 35 Fromm, On Being Human, 19. 36 Braune, “Erich Fromm and Thomas Merton,” 4. 37 Mauricio Cortina, “Review Essay of Daniel Burston’s The Legacy of Erich Fromm,” in Jahrbuch der Internationalen Erich-Fromm-Gesellschaft, 4 (1993), 4.

I. PACQUING 85 on in history. It is only within history that he can redeem his full human individuality. Fromm believed that this redemption can only happen by squarely facing his human reality. Man has to accept this existential dichotomy and must proceed toward the future. He could not and cannot go back to his original state in paradise. He is barred by “two angels with fiery sword watching the entrance, and man cannot return.”38 Further, he argues that what the serpent says “you shall be as gods” is actually a blessing and not a curse.39 When Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, God’s authority was threatened in his position as the supreme ruler. God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil.” To protect himself, God expelled man from paradise.40 It is because of this that man needs to be like him, after all, he was created in the likeness and image of God.41 He possesses this power to transcend his own historical materiality and project himself towards the future. For Fromm, there is no way for man to account his actions but to use his own reason and freedom. He is accountable only to himself as experiencing his self and not to some external authorities outside of himself. The power to move and fully realize himself lies in his own hands.42 It is a society in which “man relates to man ... a society which gives him the possibility of transcending nature by creating rather than destroying.”43 Man must be at home with himself and with other fellow men. This prophetic messianism is clearly elaborated in Escape from Freedom. Fromm says:

Man, the more he gains freedom in the sense of emerging from the original oneness with man and nature, and the more he becomes an “individual,” has no choice but to unite himself with the world in the spontaneity of love and productive work or else to seek a kind of security by such ties with the world as destroy his freedom and the integrity of his individual self.44

Fromm reiterated this unity in his book The Art of Loving. He says:

38 Fromm, On Being Human, 75. 39 Cf. Braune, 4. 40 Erich Fromm, You Shall be as Gods (Canada: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1966), 21. 41 Cf. Ibid. 42 Cf. Ian Raymond B. Pacquing, “The Power of Man in Fromm’s Humanistic Ethics,” in Kritike, 7:2 (Dec. 2013), 33-49. 43 Cf. Daniel, 21. 44 Merkur Dan quoting the Escape from Freedom, a book written by Fromm in 1941. The analyses of Fromm in this book capture the burden of man’s responsibility toward himself in building his own humanity through the peculiar powers that he has. However, Fromm analyzes the different historical events and finds that man wants to escape from freedom by means of submitting himself to authorities that could give him security from his loneliness, anxiety, and homelessness.

86 THE CONSCIOUS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS IN MAN

The deepest need of man is the need to overcome his separateness, to leave the prison of his aloneness. The Absolute failure to achieve this aim means insanity, because the panic of complete isolation can be overcome only by such radical withdrawal from the outside world.45

Again, in his book You shall be as gods,46 he argued further that this messianic unity which he professes brings new harmony within humanity through oneness with nature. Nature becomes the all-loving and nurturing mother. All men are equal for they are children of a mother; they are children of Mother Earth.47 Man wants to be who he is and expends his own powers by creating himself and re-creating the lost paradise where he once lived. This happens only when man has a strong sense of himself and has control over his actions, his thoughts, and his feelings. He looks at the capacity for self- awareness, for realism and rationality. Fromm says:

By radical humanism I refer to as the capacity of man to develop his own powers and to arrive at inner harmony and at the establishment of a peaceful world. Radical humanism considers the goal of man to be that of complete independence, and this implies penetrating through fictions and illusions to a full awareness of reality.48

According to Abraham Kaplan, “the consciousness of who and what we are reveals our true interests and directs us to their fulfillment.”49 Self- awareness realizes itself when man’s life becomes his very own. His actions must gear towards his full development. His own thoughts and feelings must emanate from himself. In other words, the claim to be human is one in which man as man becomes the sole proprietor of his own self. As man becomes a part of history, he has to create a new harmony in the historical process. The disrupted union between him and nature entails a struggle to attain his goal toward a better humanity. I quote Anshen:

45 Fromm, The Art of Loving, 8. 46 Cf. Fromm, You shall be as Gods, 100. 47 Fromm, The Art of Loving, 51. 48 Ramon Xirau, “Erich Fromm: What Is Man's Struggle?,” in B. Landis and E. S. Tauber eds., In the Name of Life. Essays in Honor of Erich Fromm (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971), 150-160. 49 Abraham Kaplan, “The Heart of Erich Fromm,” in New York Review of Books, (April 8, 1965).

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Man has entered a new era of evolutionary history ... . He is contending with a fundamental change, since he has intervened in the evolutionary process. He must now better appreciate this fact and then develop the wisdom to direct the process toward his fulfillment rather than toward his destruction ... extending his innate capacity and augmenting his ability and his need to communicate as well as his ability to think and to create ... .By intelligent intervention in the evolutionary process man has greatly accelerated and greatly expanded the range of his possibilities.50

Fromm echoed this in his book The Sane Society:

Mental Health, in the humanistic sense, is characterized by the ability to love and to create, by the emergence from incestuous ties to the family and nature, and by a sense of identity based on one’s experience of the self as the subject and agent of one’s own powers, by the grasp of reality inside and outside of ourselves ... the aim of life is to live it intensely, to be fully born, to be fully awake.51

A person who experiences his own individual autonomy attains full independence or a genuine sense of the self.52 This is the reason why his evolutionary development is a step for him “to become like God, he can imitate God, as it were. Indeed, this idea of the imitation Dei of approximating God requires the premise that man is made in God’s image.”53 The process of fulfilling his own individuality by becoming like God is a manifestation that man wants to rise above his own animal stature. He is becoming an autonomous human being, who can truly transcend and understand himself and the world of which he is a part. Couple this with what Fromm calls productive work and love, he believes that the biblical promises of a redemptive paradise would come true. This “paradise” is a manifestation of his hope that “Americans at the end of the 19th century were willing to believe in, and capable in believing in, a society that would fulfill the promises and

50 Ruth Nanda Anshen, “World Perspective,” in Erich Fromm, To have or To be (London: Continuum, 1997), ix. 51 Erich Fromm, The Sane Society (Canada: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1955), 204. 52 Cf. Bonnie Brennen, “Searching for the Sane Society: Erich Fromm’s contribution to Social Theory,” in Javnost-The Public, 13:3 (2006), 9. 53 Fromm, You shall be as Gods, 53.

88 THE CONSCIOUS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS IN MAN hopes that are at the root of our whole western civilization.”54 Moreover, in his humanist credo, a confession Fromm made in 1960, he says:

I believe in the possible realization of a world in which man can be much, even if he has little ... a world in which “man” is the end, the first and the last; a world in which man can find the way of giving a purpose to his life as well as the strength to live free and without illusions.55

History now is his home. History is a continuous remaking of social processes, which are intended for his own individual autonomy. But history has shown that man is like an infant seeking security at the bosom of his mother.56 In order to find strength from his powerlessness, and in order for him to find recognition from his isolation, he himself adheres with and clings to the powers of other people and institutions. In his celebrated book Escape from Freedom, Fromm says:

We see that the process of growing human freedom has the same dialectic character that we have noticed in the process of individual growth. On the one hand it is a process of growing strength and integration, mastery of nature, growing power of human reason, and growing solidarity with other human beings. But on the other hand this growing individuation means growing isolation, insecurity, and thereby growing doubt concerning one's role in the universe, the meaning of

54 Fromm, “Foreword Bellamy,” 2. 55 Fromm, On Being Human, 104. 56 Cf. Ibid. According to Fromm, “thousands of generations man lived by food gathering and hunting. He was still tied to nature, and afraid of being cast out from her. He identified himself with animals and worshipped these representatives of nature as his gods ... . During this period, he worshipped goddesses as the bearers of natural fertility, experienced himself as the child dependent on the fertility of the earth, on the life-giving breast of Mother. At a time some four thousand years ago, a decisive turn in man’s history took place ... . He severed the ties with nature and with Mother, and set himself a new goal, that of being fully born, of being fully awake, of being fully human; of being free ... . Reason and conscience became the principles ... his aim was a society bound by the bonds of brotherly love, justice and truth, a new truly human home to take the place of the irretrievably lost home in nature ... five hundred years before Christ in the great religious system of India, Greece, Palestine, Persia, and China, the idea of unity of mankind assumed a new and more developed expressions. Lao-tse, Buddha, Isajah, Heraclitus, Socrates, and later, on Palestinian soil, Jesus and the Apostles, on American soil, Quetzalcoatl, later again, on Arabian soil, Mohammed, taught the ideas of unity of man, of reason, love, and justice as the goals man must strive for.” Fromm, The Sane Society, 354.

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one's life, and with all that a growing feeling of one's own powerlessness and insignificance as an individual.57

The Distorted Humanity: Conscious and Unconscious

The problem of dealing with this humanistic position of Fromm is curbed by forces in history. Man’s essential core is dismantled by the unfolding of events most specially the influx of cultural conformism and alienation in the modern world.58 In Funk’s Foreword to the book On Being Human, Fromm says that humanism spells out the conscious and the unconscious. As a psychoanalyst who followed Freud, Fromm says that the conscious state comprises those parts of man’s mental life of which he is fully aware.59 It is those experiences, which are observable and are known through the senses. It refers to those experiences that he is aware of in himself and of his social environment. They are those which man knows through his daily encounter with the world and with his fellowmen. It refers to the everyday routine man does to promote a better world. Bischof says, “The state of being conscious enables us to know where we are, what is happening around us, who we are, how we are to go about doing what we are presently doing ... .”60 In other words, it is the replica of social representations. They speak of what we know as representations and manifestations of culture and society in the conscious mind. However, Fromm believes that the motivating force behind human behavior is the unconscious instinctual drives and needs.61 In Booerie’s explanation, these unconscious strivings are “the source of our motivations, whether they are simple desires for food or sex, neurotic compulsions, or the motives of an artist or scientist. And yet, we are often driven to deny or resist becoming conscious of these motives, and they are often available to us only in disguised form.”62 The unconscious becomes the repository or home of unbridled instincts. For Freud, this unconscious state is not totally disconnected from the conscious one but rather it (unconscious) serves as an effect of the latter (conscious). Freud says, “If we restore the true connection, we call the original

57 Erich Fromm, The Fear of Freedom (US: Farrar & Rinehart, 1942), Foreword IX. Outside North America, this book is known as Fear of Freedom. However, in continental Europe, this book is known as Escape from Freedom. 58 Cf. Neil McLaughlin, “How to Become a Forgotten Intellectual: Intellectual Movements and the Rise and Fall of Erich Fromm,” in Sociological Forum, 13:2 (Jun., 1998), 222. 59 Cf. Bischof, Interpreting Personality Theories, 50. 60 Cf. Ibid. 61 Cf. Erich Fromm, The Crisis of Psychoanalysis (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1970), 138. 62 George Boeree, Theories of Personality, 4/19, .

90 THE CONSCIOUS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS IN MAN effect 'unconscious,' although the effect was never unconscious but its ideational presentation had undergone repression.”63 Here, Freud seeks to explain that the unconscious is restrained from being expressed. The wish or desire, which is supposed to be expressed, is repressed. According to Freud, the memories of the past, particularly those childhood experiences which brought anxieties and pain, are blocked from the conscious mind. It was unconsciously blocked and prevented from acting. The prevention, exclusion, or blocking from the conscious mind are done without the knowledge of the agent.64 For Freud, the unconscious are representations of something hidden, which motivates man to behave and act in certain ways. Vanderplas explains, “Conscious acts alone do not enable us to account for certain aspects of slips of tongue and of other parapraxes, of dreams, of mental symptoms or obsessions in the sick, let alone the sudden inspirations of healthy persons.”65 Since the wish or desire is repressed, it forces the individual to sublimate his desire to some other forms. That is why, for Freud, the theory of repression becomes the pillar upon which psychoanalysis rests.66 Fromm follows this Freudian principle, but he moves further from Freud. While Freud is concerned with those instinctual individual drives, which are repressed, what he did not see was the cause of the repression. As already proven by analytic authors, repression is caused by the pressure from social structures like religion, customs, policies, and education.67 These social structures, says Fromm, allow only what is demanded from man. There are instinctual drives, which are only permitted by the very social structures which he comes from. These instinctual drives are filtered by society and would only appear as society would have wanted them to. Social filters, according to Fromm, serve as a dynamic mechanism to preserve the structural foundations of society. Thus, even if one wants to engage in extramarital affairs, if society does not allow it, that desire is repressed.68 These instinctual drives in man are not socially legalized and accepted. Through repression, a certain character is built in order to be in consonance with the social structures. In the Foreword to Fromm’s Revision of Psychoanalysis, Rainer Funk says man is controlled by social factors, which he believes to be so natural in the social arena, but unknown to him, these are

63 Abraham Edel, “The Concept of the Unconscious: Some analytic Preliminaries,” in Philosophy of Science, 31:1 (Jan., 1964), 19. Italics mine. 64 Cf. Bischof, Interpreting Personality Theories, 53. 65 J.M. Vanderplas, “Psychoanalytic Theory,” in Controversial Issues in Psychology (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966), 412. 66 Cf. Stanley Hayman, “Psychoanalysis and the Climate of Tragedy,” in B. Nelson ed., Freud and the 20th Century (London: G. Allen und Unwin, 1958), 171. 67 Cf. Fromm, The Crisis of Psychoanalysis, 141. 68 Cf. Erich Fromm, The Greatness and Limitations of Freud’s Thought (New York: Harper and Row, 1979), 13.

I. PACQUING 91 the results of reified ideologies. Man rationalizes the foundations of social structures. Fromm says, “Common sense, the constraints of circumstances and of so-called normalcy, and the self-evident are rationalized expressions of the fixation on idols and the belief in illusions and ideologies.”69 What we believe to be the smooth flow of social transactions are rationalizations emanating from ideologies perpetuated by those who are in authority. They serve as a cover up of what ought to be desired of man and for man. Psychoanalysis then is to excavate these repressed drives in order to know which desires and drives are apt for the development of man. It is to know those repressed instinctual desires, which originally wanted to be expressed. Eisktein says that the psychoanalytical methods attempt to excavate the underlying causes through understanding the original “abode” of man’s dreams i.e., understanding the myth that enveloped his social existence.70 Fromm believes that this unconscious region is the commonality that men share so that they can understand each other but are obstructed by ideologies and illusions. The unconscious speaks of the universal essence of man, which becomes the “essential human core about which universally valid empirical knowledge can be attained.”71 Each human expression is a representation of this universal man. Each man becomes a symbol of this essential core. The confirmation of this universal nature of man is found in our dreams wherein our unconscious speaks to us.72 Samuel Baron says, “Fromm maintains that what the dream says is a highly personal expression of the dreamer's own thinking and feelings.”73 Psychoanalysis says that dreams are the royal road to what is unconscious.74 Even Freud himself accepted that dreams are the via regia towards the interpretation of the unconscious.75 We are cut from our day-to-day experiences of the world around us. In The Forgotten Language, Fromm argues that in our dreams, man regresses into an animal-like state of mind, which for Jung, is the unconscious state which is more superior and

69 Rainer Funk, Foreword to Revision of Psychoanalysis (New York: Open Road, Integrated Media, 2013). 70 Cf. Eikstein, “The Rise and Fall of Man,” 70. 71 Cf. Rainer Funk, “The Humanistic Foundations of Psychoanalysis According to Fromm,” presented at the 34th Winter-Meeting of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis, December 9, 1990, San Antonio, Texas. 72 Cf. Erich Fromm, The Forgotten Language. An Introduction to the Understanding of Dreams, Fairy Tales and Myths (New York: Rinehart and Co., 1951), 9. 73 Samuel Baron, “Review of The Forgotten Language. An Introduction to the Understanding of Dreams, Fairy Tales and Myths,” in Psychoanalysis. Journal of the National Association for Psychoanalysis, 1 (1952), 78f. 74 Cf. Jorge Silva Garcia, “Notes on Erich Fromm and the Understanding of Dreams,” in Erich Fromm Archive, (1982), 2. 75 Sigmund Freud, “Origin and Development of Psychoanalysis,” in American Journal of Psychology, 21 (1910), 200.

92 THE CONSCIOUS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS IN MAN purposive than the actual state.76 Our dreams, Fromm says, “allows both our worst and our best sides to come out; thus, during our dreams we can be less intelligent, less wise, and less decent than our waking lives; on the other hand, we can also be better and wiser than we are then.”77 That is why the unconscious “always represents the whole man in the whole gamut of his potentialities, both darkness and for light.”78 Kleiner and Linton say that through our dreams, the unconscious becomes “a language in which inner experience, feelings, and thoughts are expressed as if they were sensory experiences in the outer world.”79 Dreams become the universal language, which assumes the role of a secret code to untangle the mysteries of the unconscious.80 Through our dreams, the higher order of reason might be at the center of who we are rather than what we are in actual life. Millet says that who we want to be, “the real me,” becomes more evident in our dreams than in our waking state.81 The unconscious then goes down deep to the very isolation and loneliness of being human. It speaks of the unspoken truth in him. Being fully human can only be known by unraveling the mysteries within the unconscious. It is within that region that the entire spectrums of human endeavors reside. Fromm says:

What is contained in the unconscious, then, is not just good or evil, the rational or irrational; both are contained there; there we find all that is human. The unconscious is the whole man-minus, that part of man which corresponds to his society. The consciousness represents social man i.e., man subject to the accidental limitations imposed by the historical situation into which an individual is thrown. Unconscious represents the universal man, the whole man rooted in the cosmos.82

Quoting Fromm, Funk says, “... man, in any culture, is faced by the gamut of possibilities: He is the archaic man, the beast of prey, the cannibal, the idolater; but he is also the being with the capacity for reason and love, for

76 Cf. Baron, “Review of The Forgotten Language. An Introduction to the Understanding of Dreams, Fairy Tales and Myths,” 78-79. 77 Fromm, The Forgotten Language, 36. 78 Funk, “The Humanistic Foundations of Psychoanalysis,” 3. 79 Robin David Linton and Brian H. Kleiner, “Using Dreams To Enhance Self- awareness,” in Journal of Religion and Psychical Research, 12:1 (January, 1989), 15. 80 Cf. Baron, Review of The Forgotten Language. An Introduction to the Understanding of Dreams, Fairy Tales and Myths,” 78. 81 John A.P. Millet, “Review of The Forgotten Language,” in Pastoral Theology, 3 (April, 1952), 47. 82 Funk quoting Fromm, “The Humanistic Foundation of Psychoanalysis,” 3.

I. PACQUING 93 justice.”83 One may perceive somebody with these particular behavioral traits expressed through human actions, and as far as the consciousness is concerned, these are all what we can know. However, in one’s unconscious reside all the possibilities that one may potentially become. That is why, for Fromm, this gamut of possibilities enunciates what being human is all about. The unconscious is the repository of the humanity found in each human being, and each human expression, each human action or trait is just one among those possibilities. The essence of man is his humanity. We cannot find or observe this very essence in our daily existence. What we observe and know through our senses is what our conscious mind tells us. It is what society wants us to portray. What we don’t know is the very humanity in us that yearns to be expressed and understood. The existential dichotomy then in man is a kind of tension, which wants to absolutize and to unify himself as himself, seeking his own individual autonomy through the uncovering of those possibilities that lie beneath the unconscious. Through the unconscious, man comes to realize himself as a project wanting to be fulfilled. We can find in the unconscious what potentialities could be developed further in man.84 Mondin was impelled to say that man is an impossible possibility for becoming human is “so vast, so varied, and so multiform, that every definition demonstrates itself as too limited.”85 We can also say with him that every conscious knowledge of man is too limited that what we tend to forget is his very unconscious, which is the haven of becoming human. In the Heart of Man, Fromm says, “the humanistic experience consists in the feeling that nothing human is alien to one, that ‘I am you,’ that one can understand another human being because both of us share as our common possession that same element of human existence.”86 To allow then the unconscious to become conscious, man begins to grow and unfurls his potentials. He becomes who he is as man. To point out his humanism, Fromm asks, “if men differed in their basic psychic and mental structure, how could we speak of humanity in more than a physiological and anatomical sense? How could we understand the art of entirely different cultures, their myths, their drama, their sculpture, were it not a fact that we all share the same human nature?”87 Further, Fromm admired Spinoza, Herder, and Goethe for “they believed that every individual carries within himself not only his individuality but also all of humanity with all its potentialities.”88 The entire spectrum then of Fromm’s

83 Editor’s Foreword, On Being Human, 10. 84 Cf. Edel, “The Concept of the Unconscious,” 20. 85 Battista Mondin, Philosophical Anthropology (Rome: Urbaniana University Press, 1985), 19. 86 Fromm, On Being Human, 11. 87 Erich Fromm, Beyond the Chain of Illusion (London: Simon and Schuster, 1962), 20. 88 Ibid., 21.

94 THE CONSCIOUS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS IN MAN thinking as influenced by Hasidic culture is centered on man—the thinking man, the acting man, the feeling man—the multifarious faces of him, in all his unity and diversity, as the creator and maker of his own life, his possibilities and impossibilities, his conscious and unconscious—all of these speak of his very capacity to move forward in the evolutionary process in history. This capacity gears toward self-awareness, rationality, and realism. Man does realize himself not only through vertical transcendence but through historical transcendence in that evolutionary process through reason and love.89 Reiterating his concept of humanism to a group of political scientists and economists, Fromm says that the “right of each man to unfold as an individual and as a human being ... the right to be oneself”90 becomes a fundamental issue in his philosophical anthropology. Further, he asserts that, “If a person fails to attain freedom, spontaneity, a genuine expression of self, he may be considered to have a severe defect, provided we assume that freedom and spontaneity are the objective goals to be attained by every human being.”91 The fact that 21st century man strives to get rid of all the limitations and boundaries set upon him by society implies that he wants to be determined as man. He wants to be unbounded by any social constructs that would delimit his capacity to become human. Twenty-first century man wants to be self-determined by confining himself to his own individual autonomy by wanting to construct society in a new way,92 in order for him to conceptualize his goal for self-realization.

Department of Philosophy The Graduate School University of Santo Tomas, Philippines

References

Anshen, Ruth Nanda, “Review of Man for Himself: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics,” in The Philosophical Review, 57:5 (Sept., 1948). ______, “World Perspective,” in Erich Fromm, To have or To be (London: Continuum, 1997). Baron, Samuel, “Review of The Forgotten Language. An Introduction to the Understanding of Dreams, Fairy Tales and Myths,” in Psychoanalysis. Journal of the National Association for Psychoanalysis, 1 (1952).

89 Cf. Kaplan, “The Heart of Erich Fromm,” 2. 90 Cf. Erich Fromm, “The Automaton Citizen and Human Rights,” in Fromm Forum, 12 (2008), 11-16. 91 Fromm, “The Psychology of Normalcy,” 2. 92 Cf. Rainer Funk, “Striving for Unboundedness and Its Impact on Psychoanalytic Treatment,” in Fromm Forum, 17 (2013), 22-28.

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Bischof, Ledford J., Interpreting Personality Theories, 2nd ed. (New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1964). Boeree, George, Theories of Personality, 4/19, . Braune Joanne, “Erich Fromm and Thomas Merton: Biophilia, Necrophilia, and Messianism” in Fromm Forum, 15 (2011), . Brennen, Bonnie, “Searching for the Sane Society: Erich Fromm’s contribution to Social Theory,” in Javnost-The Public, 13:3 (2006). Cortina, Mauricio, “Review Essay of Daniel Burston’s The Legacy of Erich Fromm,” in Jahrbuch der Internationalen Erich-Fromm-Gesellschaft, 4 (1993). Dan, Merkur, “Erich Fromm’s Humanistic Psychoanalysis,” in Explorations of Psychoanalytic Mystics, 11 (2010). Daniel, Victor, Unpublished Notes on Erich Fromm, . Dropkin, Ronald H., “Becoming Aware,” in Journal of Educational Sociology, 31:6 (1958). Edel, Abraham, “The Concept of the Unconscious: Some analytic Preliminaries,” in Philosophy of Science, 31:1 (Jan., 1964). Eikstein, Jerome, “The Rise and Fall of Man,” in Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 5:1 (1965). Feldstein, Leonard C., “Fromm’s Genius was in his Actual Presence,” in The Clinical Erich Fromm, ed. by Rainer Funk (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi Publishers, 2009). Freud, Sigmund, “Origin and Development of Psychoanalysis,” in American Journal of Psychology, 21 (1910). ______, Totem and Taboo, trans. by James Strachey (London: Routledge and Keagan Paul, 1919). Fromm, Erich, “Foreword Bellamy,” in The Literary Estate of Fromm (New York, 1960). ______, “My Own Concept of Man,” in Fromm Forum, 17 (2013), . ______, “The Automaton Citizen and Human Rights,” in Fromm Forum, 12 (2008). ______, “The Psychology of Normalcy,” in Dissent, 1 (Spring 1954). ______, Beyond the Chain of Illusion (London: Simon and Schuster, 1962). ______, Fear of Freedom (US: Farrar & Rinehart, 1942). ______, For the Love of Life, trans. by Robert and Rita Kimber (New York: The Free Press, 1986).

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______, Man for Himself: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1990). ______, On Being Human, ed. by Rainer Funk (New York: Continuum, 1999). ______, Revolution of Hope (New York: American Mental Health Foundation, Inc., 1970). ______, Sane Society (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1955). ______, The Art of Loving (London: Thorson Publisher, 1957). ______, The Fear of Freedom (US: Farrar & Rinehart, 1942). ______, The Forgotten Language. An Introduction to the Understanding of Dreams, Fairy Tales and Myths (New York: Rinehart and Co., 1951). ______, The Greatness and Limitations of Freud’s Thought (New York: Harper and Row, 1979). ______, The Sane Society (Canada: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1955). ______, You Shall be as Gods (Canada: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1966), 21. ______, The Crisis of Psychoanalysis (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1970). Funk, Rainer, “Striving for Unboundedness and Its Impact on Psychoanalytic Treatment,” in Fromm Forum, 17 (2013). ______, “The Humanistic Foundation of Psychoanalysis According to Erich Fromm,” presented at the 34th Winter-Meeting of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis (December 9, 1990). ______, “The Humanistic Foundations of Psychoanalysis According to Fromm,” presented at the 34th Winter-Meeting of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis, December 9, 1990, San Antonio, Texas. ______, Erich Fromm: The Courage to be Human (New York: Continuum, 1982). ______, Foreword to Revision of Psychoanalysis (New York: Open Road, Integrated Media, 2013). Garcia, Jorge Silva, “Notes on Erich Fromm and the Understanding of Dreams,” in Erich Fromm Archive, (1982). Hayman, Stanley, “Psychoanalysis and the Climate of Tragedy,” in B. Nelson ed., Freud and the 20th Century (London: G. Allen und Unwin, 1958). Henneberg, Maciej, “Evolution of the Human Brain: Is Bigger Better?,” presented at the Australian Physiological and Pharmacological Society Satellite Symposium on the Evolution of Physiological Processes (June 1998). Kaplan, Abraham, “The Heart of Erich Fromm,” in New York Review of Books, (April 8, 1965).

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Linton, Robin David and Brian H. Kleiner, “Using Dreams To Enhance Self- awareness,” in Journal of Religion and Psychical Research, 12:1 (January, 1989). Maccoby, Michael, “The Two Voices of Erich Fromm: The Prophetic and the Analytic,” in Society, (July/August 1994). McLaughlin, Neil, “How to Become a Forgotten Intellectual: Intellectual Movements and the Rise and Fall of Erich Fromm,” in Sociological Forum, 13:2 (Jun., 1998). Millet, John A.P., “Review of The Forgotten Language,” in Pastoral Theology, 3 (April, 1952). Mondin, Battista, Philosophical Anthropology (Rome: Urbaniana University Press, 1985). Pacquing, Ian Raymond B., “The Power of Man in Fromm’s Humanistic Ethics,” in Kritike, 7:2 (Dec. 2013). Vanderplas, J.M., “Psychoanalytic Theory,” in Controversial Issues in Psychology (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966). Wilde Lawrence, “In Search of Solidarity: Ethics of Politics of Erich Fromm,” in Contemporary Politics, 6:1 (2000). Xirau, Ramon, “Erich Fromm: What Is Man's Struggle?,” in B. Landis and E. S. Tauber eds., In the Name of Life. Essays in Honor of Erich Fromm (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971).

KRITIKE VOLUME EIGHT NUMBER TWO (DECEMBER 2014) 98-118

Article

Art as Authentic Life— Deleuze after Kierkegaard

Arjen Kleinherenbrink

Abstract: There is an underappreciated existentialist side to Deleuze’s philosophy, which frequently addresses the question of the best mode of existence, and consistently does so in explicit dialogue with Kierkegaard. Where Kierkegaard conceptualizes the possibility of authenticity in terms of the knight of faith, Deleuze arrives at a more impersonal notion of authenticity as an act which results in a work of art purged from subjective connotations.

Keywords: Life, art, authenticity, ethics

Introduction

n the Fall of 1945, Gilles Deleuze and Michel Tournier attended Sartre’s famous speech “Existentialism is a Humanism.” The two friends were horrified by Sartre’s defense of human freedom and responsibility in I th terms reminiscent of 18 century Enlightenment thought: “we were floored. So our master had had to dig through the trash to unearth this worn-out mixture reeking of sweat and of the inner life of humanism.”1 This momentary shock eventually transformed into permanent disappointment: even though he kept crediting Sartre as an inspiration, the only works Deleuze ever repudiated were precisely a number of Sartrean articles written in the 1940s. These anecdotes are well known among Deleuze scholars, which may explain why Deleuze’s relation to existentialism remains underappreciated.2 A handful of texts analyze his relation to Sartre, but not a single one explores Deleuze’s connection to that other famous existentialist: the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. This is surprising because Deleuze makes

1 François Dosse, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari – Intersecting lives (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 95. 2 Several exceptions exploring the Sartre-Deleuze connection include Boundas (1993), Khalfa (2000), and Somers-Hall (2006).

A. KLEINHERENBRINK 99 frequent use of Kierkegaard’s thought in ways that go far beyond casual referencing.3 From Difference and Repetition to A Thousand Plateaus and beyond, Deleuze consistently works with and through Kierkegaard whenever he arrives at questions of the good life or of the best mode of existence. I aim to trace this relation to Kierkegaard for two reasons.4 First, Deleuze’s ethics are generally held to be a blend between Stoic disengagement, Spinozist beatitude, and Nietzschean affirmation.5 Though this is not incorrect, it is certainly incomplete. The recipe needs to be supplemented with a fourth, existentialist ingredient that concerns the criteria for the result of our actions, in addition to our attitude towards them.6 Second, this explication will clarify Deleuze’s frequent yet ever vague insistence that art is simultaneously at the heart of life and of ethics.

The problem of “a” life

In the essay Immanence: A Life, Deleuze repeatedly insists that life is best lived as a life, emphasizing the fourth person singular.7 Though this late essay emphasizes the notion of a life with unprecedented force, it was already introduced in The Logic of Sense, becoming increasingly explicit in and after the publication of A Thousand Plateaus.8 Yet what does it mean? How to do it? Moreover, why do it? Deleuze is not particularly forthcoming in answering such questions, since his explanation consists in introducing a swirl of unfamiliar neologisms, including “affect,” “asignifying sign,” “becoming- imperceptible,” “the restoration of immanence,” and “infinite speed.” Yet this

3 In his magnum opus Difference and Repetition, Deleuze explicitly states that his conceptualization of repetition amounts to “following Kierkegaard’s wish to carry out the reconciliation of the singular with the general.” Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, trans. by P. Patton, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 25. 4 To be clear: this text is not an exegetic work on Kierkegaard. Deleuze only refers to Fear and Trembling, Repetition and some passages from the Papirer, a mere part of Kierkegaard’s oeuvre. I will ignore the question of whether Deleuze’s reading of Kierkegaard is adequate, focusing instead on how Deleuze transforms Kierkegaard to fit his own problems. For a Kierkegaardian response to Deleuze’s reading, see Clar’s text from 1975. 5 For example, see James Williams, Gilles Deleuze’s Logic of Sense - A Critical Introduction and Guide (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008). 6 Deleuze’s Nietzschean side has always emphasized activity (see his frequent references to Nietzsche and “dancing” in Difference and Repetition). Adding a Kierkegaardian element to the mix, so to say, would then create a nice balance of two “passive” or contemplative aspects and two “active” aspects to Deleuzian ethics. 7 Gilles Deleuze, Two Regimes of Madness - Texts and Interviews 1975-1995, trans. by A. Hodges and M. Taormina (Cambridge, MA: Semiotext(e) / MIT Press, 2007), 384. 8 Gilles Deleuze, The logic of sense, trans. by M. Lester (London: Athlone Press, 1990), 102-103.

100 ART AS AUTHENTIC LIFE is where Kierkegaard comes in.9 Deleuze’s discussions on a life and the associated neologisms just mentioned are permeated with references to and use of Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling and Repetition, and it is with a detour through these texts that we can uncover Deleuze’s intentions.10

Life as a knight of faith

Fear and Trembling and Repetition famously address the problem of how to become an authentic self. According to Kierkegaard this is a matter of purging our motives for acting of all contingency and temporal displacement. Only a relation of each present to an absolute can serve as sufficient ground to grant authenticity to our existence. Kierkegaard identifies four contingent modes of acting that must be avoided if such a relation with the absolute is to be attained.11 The first is recollection. To act out of recollection means to long for the restoration of a contingent past, so that the present will always fall short and disappoint. Recollection is a “discarded garment that does not fit,”12 a mode of living that stops life dead in its tracks by “an undoing of movement and a reversal of [life’s] course, a trying to get back to the point prior to movement.”13 The second is hope. To hope means to act on an envisioned

9 Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling and Repetition, trans. and ed. by H.V. Hong and E.H. Hong (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1983). [Fear and Trembling will be subsequently cited as FT, while Repetition as R, followed by section then page number] 10 To give two examples: “... what does becoming-imperceptible signify? [ ... ] Becoming-imperceptible means many things. What is the relation between the (anorganic) imperceptible, the (asignifying) indiscernible, and the (asubjective) impersonal? A first response would be: to be like everybody else. That is what Kierkegaard relates in his story about the “knight of the faith,” the man of becoming: to look at him, one would notice nothing, a bourgeois, nothing but a bourgeois [ ... ]: after a real rupture, one succeeds in being just like everybody else.” Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus - Capitalism and Schizophrenia 2, trans. by B. Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 279; “become like everyone, but in fact you have turned the “everyone” into a becoming. You have become imperceptible, clandestine [ ... ]. Despite the different tones, it is a little like the way in which Kierkegaard describes the knight of faith [ ... ]: the knight no longer has segments of resignation [ ... ], he resembles rather a bourgeois, a tax collector, [ ... ] he blends into the wall but the wall has become alive, he is painted grey on grey.” Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet, Dialogues, trans. by H. Tomlinson and B. Habberjam (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), 127. Also see A Thousand Plateaus, 171, 197, 282, 543 n.66 and Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, What is Philosophy?, trans. by H. Tomlinson and G. Burchell (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 73-74. 11 And not just two, as is often thought. For Kierkegaard, “Hope” and “Recollection” are just as problematic as “Aesthetic” and “Ethic” existence. 12 R III, 174. 13 John D. Caputo, “Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and the Foundering of Metaphysics,” in R. L. Perkins ed., International Kierkegaard Commentary - Fear and Trembling and Repetition (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1993), 208.

A. KLEINHERENBRINK 101 future that may never become reality. Whereas recollection is too “backward” to live up to the present, hope is too “forward.” The third contingent mode is the aesthetic mode of existence, or to justify actions in terms of desires and sentiments one just happens to have.14 It refers to acts in which we pay no mind to others, a foreclosure from the public sphere, which leads Kierkegaard to call this mode “hidden.” The fourth is the ethical mode, which Kierkegaard calls “disclosed” and “universal.” It is to act in accordance with the normative framework of a society, rendering actions intelligible to all in principle. The ethical mode still cannot yield authentic selfhood, as it never grants certainty as to whether we are not just acting in order to be appreciated by others, which would reduce a person to a “limb of a larger body.”15 Kierkegaard gives the example of Agamemnon’s intended sacrifice of his daughter to ensure favorable winds for the Greek fleet heading for Troy.16 Even though Agamemnon concedes his private interests to the universal, this cannot make him an authentic self. He remains driven by the need to conform to societal values that pertain to a contingent Greek universe. These four modes can of course inspire noble and beautiful actions, yet they risk the surrender of one’s life. Aesthetically, to worldly distractions; ethically, to social conformity; in recollection, to dreams of a past; in hope, to longing for a future. Instead of hoping or recollecting, Kierkegaard insists that we repeat: “he who will merely hope is cowardly; he who will merely recollect is voluptuous; he who wills repetition is a man, and the more emphatically he is able to realize it, the more profound a human being he is.”17 Instead of acting aesthetically or ethically, he insists on a religious mode of existence, the only one in which one can be a “single individual.”18 This single individual is the knight of faith, certain of authentic selfhood precisely because he abandons all contingency in favor of “an absolute relation with the absolute.”19 Who is this knight of faith who repeats, and how is the relation with the absolute attained? To answer these questions, Kierkegaard famously employs the example of Abraham.

14 This makes for ‘slaves of the finite” are “frogs in the swamp of life” and “benchwarmers that live absorbed in worldly joys (FT III, 91-92), stuck in an “aesthetic illusion” (FT III, 135) of disdainful “bourgeois philistinism” (FT III, 89). 15 David Gouwens, “Understanding, imagination, and irony in Kierkegaard’s Repetition,” in International Kierkegaard Commentary - Fear and Trembling and Repetition, 14. Also see “no one becomes an authentic self simply by absorbing the values of one’s society.” Stephen Evans, “Faith as the telos of morality: a reading of Fear and trembling,” in ibid., 25; it is “unacceptable to make a goal of being approved by other people” Morris, T. F., “Constantin Constantius” search for an acceptable way of life,” in ibid., 333. 16 FT III, 108. 17 R III, 174. 18 FT III, 105, 111, 124. 19 FT III, 106. Note that Kierkegaard thus counterintuitively aligns universality with contingency, and opposes them to absoluteness and necessity.

102 ART AS AUTHENTIC LIFE

As is written, God commands Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. According to Kierkegaard, Abraham transcends the aesthetic and the ethical by obeying God without hesitation. He does not perform the sacrifice for his own sake (aesthetics) or for the benefit of his family (ethics).20 This is further confirmed by Abraham’s concealment of his intentions to his loved ones. An aesthetic silence would have been intended to prevent the slaying by pretending that nothing had happened, not to help bring it about.21 Ethically speaking silence is not even a possibility, because the ethical mode requires by definition that one justifies actions in terms of common sense.22 Abraham must act utterly alone since his intentions are in principle unintelligible for others: though religiously he is about to sacrifice, ethically he is about to commit murder.23 Yet this ambiguity does not yet make a knight of faith. Abraham only deserves this title insofar as he has the absurd faith that by abandoning everything he will regain what he resigns:

But to be able to lose one’s understanding and along with it everything finite, for which it is the stockbroker, and then to win the very same finitude again by virtue of the absurd—this appalls me, but that does not make me say it is something inferior, since, on the contrary, it is the one and only marvel.24

The knight of faith makes a twofold movement: surrendering the finite and then seeing it restored by virtue of the absurd (God intervening at the very last moment to save Isaac). This second part is crucial. Had Abraham stopped after the first part (accepting the sacrifice of his son without absurdly believing that Isaac would be restored to him), then he would merely be a “knight of infinite resignation.” Resignation still relies on an ethical understanding that there is something that, unpleasant as it may be, has to be done.25 However, by absurdly believing that surrendering the finite will still result in the restoration of the finite, Abraham moves beyond understanding and resignation. This “leap” is absurd and paradoxical and thought cannot penetrate it, not in the last place because it places a single individual higher than the universal. Thus, Abraham becomes an authentic self, a single individual living a present in an absolute relation with the absolute. When

20 “For Abraham the ethical had no higher expression than family life.” FT III, 158. 21 FT III, 158. 22 “Abraham [ ... ] cannot speak. As soon as I speak, I express the universal, and if I do not do so, no one can understand me.” FT III, 110. 23 FT III, 61-64, 66-67, 73, 82, 120. 24 FT III, 87. 25 FT III, 97.

A. KLEINHERENBRINK 103 everything finite is restored to him after his leap of faith, he can be certain that he is neither driven by selfish gain, nor by societal norms.26 This is because he repeats, and we now understand that to repeat is to regain what one has surrendered earlier. Repetition allows for authenticity through the certainty that one is not a slave to aesthetics, ethics, recollection, or hope, that one cannot be reduced to a private individual or a social subject.27 Only in this mode of existence can existence be called “earnest” for Kierkegaard.28 This leaping into an earnest existence is the first of two themes Deleuze adopts from the Danish philosopher.29 The second is Kierkegaard’s description of “how the knight of faith should be played.”30 Kierkegaard emphasizes how utterly devoid of spectacle it would be to see a knight of faith. Indeed, we would exclaim: “Good Lord, is this the man, is this really the one—he looks just like a tax collector!”31 Glory and public recognition befall knights of infinite resignation, not knights of faith. The former can be publically staged as paragons of virtue, and we cry for them in sympathy because their actions correspond to our values.32 And even though with every breath, the knight of faith “buys the opportune time at the highest price, for he does not do even the slightest thing except by virtue of the absurd,” there is nothing spectacular in watching him do it.33 The very marvel of faith according to Kierkegaard is that its movement is a mode of existence in which all of life, including its most common and trivial aspects, is restored to a person who thereby becomes a self, having left behind all other modes of existence or attitudes to life that would have subjected him to past, future, social doxa, or private passion. Hence, a knight of faith exists “in such a way that [his] contrast to existence constantly expresses itself as the most beautiful and secure harmony with it,” as “the only happy man, the heir to the finite.”34

26 FT III, 106, 120. 27 “Only the religious movement remains as the true expression for repetition ... ” R, 302, Pap. IV B112 n.d., 1843-1844; “repetition is transcendent, a religious movement by virtue of the absurd”, R, 305, Pap. IV B112 n.d., 1843-1844. 28 R III, 133. Nevertheless, ethics does not contradict faith by definition and faith does not always demand acting in violation of ethics. Kierkegaard merely asserts that faith is superior to ethics and irreducible to it, not that it annuls it. 29 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 127, 282; What is philosophy?, 74; Deleuze, Difference and repetition, 11, 95; Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 1 - The Movement Image, trans. by H. Tomlinson and B. Habberjam (London: Athlone Press, 1986), 114-116. 30 Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, 9; Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 197, 279. 31 FT III, 90. 32 FT III, 89, 110, 115. 33 FT III, 91. 34 FT III, 100.

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These two figures, a movement putting a single individual in relation to something absolute, and simultaneously retaining a completely normal presence in the world, deeply influence Deleuze in conceptualizing a preferable mode of existence. Simultaneously, his version of the problem of becoming a single individual, or, in his terminology, living a life in the fourth person singular, still differs from Kierkegaard’s. How could it be otherwise when Deleuze demands a strict atheism in life and philosophy?35

Abraham becomes Cain

As with Kierkegaard’s disavowal of recollection, Deleuze asserts that “history today still designates only the set of conditions, however recent they may be, from which one turns away in order to become, that is to say, in order to create something new.”36 Where Kierkegaard dismisses the ethical and aesthetic modes of existence, Deleuze also demands “a determination purely of thinking and of thought that wrests [existential modes] from the historical state of affairs of a society and the lived experience of individuals” in a “struggle against opinion.”37 And in a striking parallel with the knight of faith whose absurd faith cannot be adequately spoken of, Deleuze asserts that the most admirable mode of existence is one that cannot be judged: “better to be a road-sweeper than a judge”;

… herein, perhaps, lies the secret: to bring into existence and not to judge. If it is so disgusting to judge, it is not because everything is of equal value, but on the contrary because what has value can be made or distinguished only by defying judgment.38

With such similarities, it is not surprising that Kierkegaard’s knight of faith is Deleuze’s primary association when inquiring into the preferable mode of existence.39 Yet this first response is no satisfying answer. Deleuze

35 “Atheism is the philosopher’s serenity and philosophy’s achievement.” Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?, 92; “Pluralism is the properly philosophical way of thinking, the one principle of a violent atheism.” Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and philosophy, trans. by H. Tomlinson (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), 4; “Religions are worth much less than the nobility and the courage of the atheisms which they inspire.” Deleuze, Two Regimes of Madness, 360. 36 Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?, 96. 37 Ibid., 70, 203. 38 Deleuze and Parnet, Dialogues, 8; Shunning judgment by others and rejoicing in meeting someone who does not judge are also key themes in Repetition. See Morris’ “Constantin Constantius” search for an acceptable way of life,” especially pages 321-324: “Here was an actuality that was not concerned with judging him ... .” 39 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 279.

A. KLEINHERENBRINK 105 agrees with Kierkegaard on which modes must be avoided, but cannot accept a religious movement of faith as a solution:

Undoubtedly, faith possesses sufficient force to undo habit and reminiscence [ ... ] However, faith invites us to rediscover once and for all God and the self in common resurrection. [ ... ] This is [Kierkegaard’s] problem: the betrothal of a self rediscovered and a God recovered, in such a manner that it is no longer possible truly to escape from either the condition or the agent.40

By relying on God to restore the finite, the knight of faith is immediately propelled back into the very conditions of private habit and social mores that he needed to flee in the first place. For Kierkegaard, this is the beauty of absurd faith. For Deleuze, it is a disappointment: one escapes, only to rediscover oneself bound to the finite tighter than ever before.41 Yet Deleuze does not intend to critique Kierkegaard as much as he wants to point out that Kierkegaard’s solution falls short in Deleuze’s own version of Kierkegaard’s problem:

Kierkegaard’s “knight of the faith,” he who makes the leap, are men [sic] of a transcendence or a faith. But they constantly recharge immanence [ ... ], with the infinite immanent possibilities brought by the one who believes that God exists. The problem would change if it were another plane of immanence. It is not that the person who does not believe God exists would gain the upper hand [ ... ]. But, on the new plane, it is possible that the problem now concerns the one who believes in the world, and not even in the existence of the world but in its possibilities of movements and intensities, so as once again to give birth to new modes of existence [ ... ]. It may be that believing in this world, in this life, becomes our most difficult task [ ... ]. The problem has indeed changed.42

40 Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, 95. 41 Kierkegaard aims for a new ground and a “God-relationship restored (and enhanced) by the incarnation and atonement of the Son of God.” Vincent McCarthy, “Repetition’s repetitions,” in International Kierkegaard commentary - Fear and Trembling and Repetition, 277. 42 Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?, 74-75.

106 ART AS AUTHENTIC LIFE

Deleuze shifts the parameters of the problem. It now concerns the belief in possibilities of movement and new modes of existence in the world. Authenticity is then no longer a matter of restoration, but of creation. The knight of faith chooses one final mode of existence. Deleuze searches something that escapes from private life, social conditions, recollection, and hope in a more radical sense: something that can continuously generate something unseen, not to restore the finite but to renew it. The obstacle to such renewal is precisely transcendence. In everyday life, this can be religious or cultural dogma that one is not supposed to question. In philosophy, it is the idea of a ground or first principle. Transcendence ensures that all events and things are watered down to mere permutations or reconfigurations of something already known and established for all eternity. Quite obviously, Deleuze counts the religious mode of existence among such transcendent structures, and so the problem has changed. Becoming an authentic self still requires dismissing personal desire, social circumstance, and idealized pasts or futures, but religion has been added to this list and all these modes of existence are discounted for being contaminated with transcendence and opinion, which limit existence and attempt to capture life in clear-cut schemas. The ideal can no longer be the tranquil knight of faith; rather, we need a paragon of the creation of ruptures in the prisons of life.43 The shining example is no longer Abraham: Deleuze chooses Cain as his champion. Cain is “the true man” and a true man is one who “never ceases to betray God just as God betrays man.”44 God betrays man in representing transcendence par excellence. Absolute and not contingent as He may be, God still functions as a displacement of the justification of things from outside of themselves, i.e., as a position of judgment. Restoration of immanence or allowing for the new without pinning life to any limiting principle whatsoever demands that this betrayal be betrayed. Such double betrayal is the only way to break with “the doctrine of judgment [that] has reversed and replaced the system affects.”45 This provides us with the starting point of Deleuze’s solution to his reading of Kierkegaard’s problem. The preferable mode of existence breaks with all manifestations of stifling opinions and transcendent, untouchable principles, including faith. For Deleuze, this entails creating affects, in relation to which he introduces a complex series of neologisms.

43 Ibid., 47. 44 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 123. 45 Deleuze, Essays Critical and Clinical, 129.

A. KLEINHERENBRINK 107

Affect, sign, fourth person singular

Affect is introduced to Deleuze’s philosophy in two studies on Spinoza. However, in A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze develops a markedly post-Spinozist conceptualization of affect. He starts using the term in response to a different problem: no longer Spinoza’s “what can a body do?,” but the problem mentioned earlier: the possibility of a world in which new modes of existence can emerge.46 Through this shift, affect becomes detached from the body: “affects are no longer feelings or affections,” the flesh is now considered “too weak” to carry the affect, and affects are now “nonhuman becomings of man.”47 If affect is to play a part in breaking with the self and with opinion, it must be able to effectuate a power that “throws the self into upheaval and makes it reel.”48 It cannot concern a contingent person or body; affects must be “impersonal, an alternate current that disrupts signifying projects as well as subjective feelings.”49 What must affect be if it is to realize such ambitious aims? First of all it is a being and not a process of affection.50 When asked what type of being this entails, Deleuze answers “art,” because only art can declare as its aim “to wrest the affect from affections as the transition from one state to another.”51 Affects are not simply encountered in nature; their creation is a complex techne, and for Deleuze, it is highly rare that a work of art truly creates an affect and manages to stand up on its own.52 To stand up on its own means that a work of art no longer refers to the lived experience of either artist or spectator, that it does not represent particular historical circumstances, that it neither recalls a past nor announces a future, and hence there is only an affect when the work of art refers to nothing but itself:

… the young girl maintains the pose that she has had for five thousand years, a gesture that no longer depends on whoever made it.53

46 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 256. 47 Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?, 164, 178, 169/173. 48 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 240. 49 Ibid., 233. 50 “Affects are beings.” Deleuze and Guattari, What is philosophy?, 164. 51 Ibid., 167. 52 Ibid., 164. This is also how one should understand—“affects always presuppose the affections from which they are derived, although they cannot be reduced to them.” Gilles Deleuze, Essays Critical and Clinical, trans. by D. W. Smith and M. E. Greco (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 140. 53 Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?, 163.

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This becomes Deleuze’s hallmark of authenticity: not so much authenticity for the self, but authenticity by the self by virtue of that which is created. When successful, this drags the very materials from which the work of art is composed into the affect: “[even] the material passes into the sensation.”54 Sensations are not affections. A work of art “is a bloc of sensations, that is to say, a compound of percepts and affects.”55 Affects are thus never encountered alone, but always intertwined with percepts. Whereas affects are those entities that can generate affections, percepts are those entities that can generate perceptions. A work of art as an affect-percept compound is thus situated “before” language in the sense that it can come to be talked about after being perceived and felt:

… it is an utterable. We mean that, when language gets hold of this material (and it necessarily does so), then it gives rise to utterances which come to dominate or even replace the images and signs, and which refer in turn to pertinent features of the language system, syntagms and paradigms, completely different from those we started with.56

In addition, an affect-percept compound is eternal and thus absolute because “even if the material lasts for only a few seconds it will give sensation the power to exist and be preserved in itself in the eternity that coexists with this short duration.”57 The creation of affects is an activity of extraction, detachment, a cutting of ties with all modes of existence that must be dismissed on account of their capacity to enslave or imprison life in transcendence and opinion:

The painter does not paint on an empty canvas, and neither does the writer write on a blank page; but the page or canvas is already so covered with preexisting, preestablished clichés that it is first necessary to erase, to clean, to flatten, even to shred, so as to let in a breath of air from the chaos that brings us the vision [ ... ]. Because the picture starts out covered with clichés, the painter must confront the chaos and hasten the destruction as to

54 Ibid., 193. 55 Ibid., 164. 56 Deleuze, Gilles, Cinema 2 - The Time Image, trans. by H. Tomlinson and R. Galeta (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), 29. 57 Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?, 166.

A. KLEINHERENBRINK 109

produce a sensation that defies every opinion and cliché.58

This helps to understand what Deleuze means when writing that affects respond to a necessity to break through opinion and cliché by “creating new, as yet unknown statements [ ... ], asubjective affects, signs without signifiance.”59 Affects are asignifying signs because they do not refer to or represent something outside of themselves. If a painter manages to create an affect, a woman’s smile on a painting no longer has “Lisa’s smile,” nor a “typical 16th century expression,” not even a smile consisting of this or that specific type of reddish paint. This is not to say that an affect cannot signify something; it is to say that an affect does not do so necessarily, and that when it does, it is only in a second moment.60 If it does not escape immediate signification, it remains firmly stuck in the known, in clichés, recognition, and opinion. This also explains Deleuze’s resistance to judgment because what else is judgment than to capture something in terms and criteria belonging to something else? In the case of affect, this would annul everything it can be. A successful affect is an asignifying sign, a double betrayal that moves against or simply ignores what is already known and accepted, and thus “no [true] art and no sensation have ever been representational.”61 If an affect is to be judged, this must happen in terms of the affect itself, if such a thing is possible. The power of art lies in the possibility of the creation of affects and the power of affects lies in being relationally undetermined and hence allowing for the new. From the perspective of affect, any way of talking about, characterizing, or interpreting a work of art is just one way, and even a multitude of ways can in principle never exhaust the asignifying status of the affect. The introduction of affects and asignifying signs already provides a sense of what Deleuze is working towards. We are now in a position to return to the single individual or the fourth person singular:

58 Ibid., 204. Also: “everything that novelists must extract from the perceptions, affections, and opinions of their psychosocial “models” passes entirely into the percepts and affects to which the character must be raised without holding on to any other life.” Ibid., 188. 59 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 147. 60 “[Art] is no less independent of the viewer or hearer, who only experience it after, if they have the strength for It.” Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?, 164. 61 Ibid., 193. Also “... we attain to the percept and affect only as to autonomous and sufficient beings that no longer owe anything to those who experience or have experienced them.” Ibid., 168; “signs [ ... ] are not signifiers.” Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 88- 89.

110 ART AS AUTHENTIC LIFE

We will say of pure immanence that it is A LIFE, and nothing more.62

In leaving behind all enslaving, stifling modes of existence, affect becomes completely singular. It is no longer this or that smile, but simply “a smile.” Deleuze borrows the notion of the fourth person singular from the poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti. In the latter’s novel Her, the protagonist Andy Raffine is obsessed with reaching the fourth person singular. He spends life searching for something absolute instead of relative, for a girl exempt from the small flaws of real women. Of course, he never finds a girl, but why? It is because Andy longs for a thing so pure that he becomes unable to see himself “as a component in the viewing process.”63 Andy’s search is doomed from the start, precisely because he has the wrong understanding of the fourth person singular: he looks for a girl, but still one as conceived of from his perspective. However, Her also contains what Ferlinghetti calls the true fourth person singular, the “a ... ” that manages to detach itself from the longings and desires of a subject.64 Ferlinghetti stages the true fourth person singular as the one mode of existence in which disappointment and lack become impossible: there is just the presence of a smile. The young girl whose smile it is and the spectator moved or unmoved by it are only relevant in a secondary sense. Quite understandably, this is an incredibly hard thing to achieve: “I keep slipping off [ ... ] because I and no one has the true fourth sight to see without the old associational turning eye that turns all it sees into its own.”65 Nevertheless, this is Deleuze’s criterion for authenticity: to leave behind all modes of existence that are unable to generate the new. Again, Deleuze is approaching Kierkegaard’s problem though in ways that Kierkegaard did not. It is no longer a search for a restoration of the Self; it is to search for moments of creation beyond the confines of the Self, until there is only “the it or the non-person,” “hardly any individuality, but [ ... ] singularities, a smile, a gesture, a grimace—such events are not subjective traits,” and hence where affect is created, there is only “a belly, a mouth, an engine, a thingamabob, a baby.”66 Reaching the point of the indefinite article can reduce us to the point where everything we say and think about ourselves

62 Deleuze, Two Regimes of Madness, 385. 63 Lawrence Ianni and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, “Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s Fourth Person Singular and the Theory of Relativity,” in Winsconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature, 8:3 (1967), 396. 64 Ferlinghetti, Lawrence, Her (New York: New Directions, 1988), 93; Ianni and Lawrence, “Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s Fourth Person Singular and the Theory of Relativity,” 400- 401. 65 Ferlinghetti, Her, 93. 66 Deleuze, Two Regimes of Madness, 351, 387, 110.

A. KLEINHERENBRINK 111 is discarded, if only for a moment “one has combined “everything” (le tout): the indefinite article, the infinitive-becoming, and the proper name to which one is reduced.”67 This is why Deleuze often remarks that affect operates at infinite speed. Not only is art eternal as long as it lasts, it is also something detached from the rhythms of everyday life. This clarifies why Deleuze finds that so many novels fail to be art, that is, to create affects: too much ink is being wasted on recounting private affairs, and too little of it manages the desirable detachment, singularity, and reduction:

… the art of the novel [ ... ] is a misunderstanding: many people think that novels can be created with our perceptions and affections, our memories and archives, [ ... ] and finally with our opinions holding it all together.68

Architecture, becoming, imperceptibility

Deleuze cannot follow Kierkegaard, since the movement of faith entails transcendence reinstalled. He thus turns to Cain as the double betrayer. The activity by which to carry out such double betrayal and opening to the new is art because only art can create something purely for itself. Affects are beings: singular, asignifying signs that must be addressed in the fourth person singular. And Deleuze does not stop there. As affect cannot depend on emotions, feelings, or bodily states, he concludes that “art begins not with flesh but with the house.”69 Art is always the activity by which something is detached, and such singularization is a matter of framing, of demarcating and hence decoupling by means of lines, gestures, windows, beams, glass, and so forth. The affect is not found; it must be built. Art is impossible otherwise and as such “architecture, the first of the arts.”70 As a consequence, the design of buildings is only a subset of a wider architectural domain. For Deleuze, architecture concerns all art as the necessary condition for the creation of affect. Cinema is a good example here. Framing a face in close-up can show fear of resignation as affect. Because of the close-up, context drifts away, and as the face itself becomes a landscape that fills the entire screen, the actor’s identity dissipates. All that remains is “a” fear or “a” resignation in which the affect has been abstracted from all contingent circumstances. At that point, a

67 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 280. 68 Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?, 170. Kierkegaard could not agree more, as he insists that an author should not draw too much on personal experience, lest his actuality intrude so much that a work becomes mere “private talkativeness.” Fear and Trembling and Repetition, 98. 69 Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?, 186, 189, italics mine. 70 Ibid., 179.

112 ART AS AUTHENTIC LIFE viewer has the rare opportunity to enter into a situation in which there is only the fourth person singular. The subject-object distinction is then momentarily denied and immanence is “recharged” by a moment of contact with something that does not belong to our quotidian experiences. But this is still art as a specific practice. How can art and affect be the general mode of existence par excellence? Deleuze’s conceptualizations seem to concern very isolated moments that will only rarely be created and experienced. The next step in the sequence of concepts, however, suggests otherwise when Deleuze asserts that:

... you are [ ... ] a set of nonsubjectified affects. You have the individuality of a day, a season, a year, a life.71

This can be understood by turning to a final concept, that of “becoming”: “the house takes part in an entire becoming. It is life, the nonorganic life of things.”72 Architecture is part of a movement of becoming, which reveals the nonorganic life of things. This refers to things taken as asignifying or in the fourth person singular. This is a constant theme in Deleuze’s philosophy, where anything functioning within a certain structure or system is always doing so in a second moment, conditioned by something else. Hence, he writes that “real becomings take refuge in art and sweep it away toward the realms of the asignifying, asubjective, and faceless,” and that “affects [are] becomings that spill over beyond whoever lives through them (thereby becoming someone else).”73 Becoming is a movement that belongs to raising compositions to affects, to the detachment and singularization mentioned earlier. What is becoming in this context of sensational compounds of affect and percept? Deleuze answers:

… sensory becoming is the action by which something or someone is ceaselessly becoming-other while continuing to be what they are.74

How to reconcile becoming-other with continuing to be what one is? Becoming is a movement similar to repetition or the movement of faith in Kierkegaard: one constantly abandons oneself in favor of something else, but this very act allows one to remain oneself. Deleuze intends that the mode of existence preferable for human beings is this becoming-other, as the essence of selfhood becomes becoming-other: “here begins a long and inexhaustible

71 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 262. 72 Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?, 180. 73 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 208. 74 Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?, 177.

A. KLEINHERENBRINK 113 story: I is an other, or the paradox of inner sense.”75 After private individuality, social context, and all transcendent illusions and limiting grounds are left behind, the only thing remaining is movement itself. With Kierkegaard’s knight, this is always done towards and from faith. For him, it is raising consciousness “to the second power,” but for Deleuze it is a more radical raising of consciousness to what he calls the “nth power,” the double betrayal of Cain that unshackles us for the sake of allowing for the new.76 As with Kierkegaard, this requires no spectacle, since “movement is the thing that is imperceptible.”77 The mode of existence of being a set of nonsubjectified affects entails a radical transformation from the perspective of the life of doxa that Deleuze considers to be the norm, but this transformation is not physical. Throughout A Thousand Plateaus, the many examples of becomings (becoming-woman, becoming-animal, and so on) are always accompanied by the reminder that a man becoming-woman or a child becoming-horse does not actually become something else in a direct, literal sense. Hence, becoming a set of asubjectified affects can only concern a movement on the spot, in other words, a certain attitude or approach to life, or again in other words, a preference for a specific mode of existence: an attitude. As with Ferlinghetti’s true fourth person singular, maintaining this mode of existence is hard, and one might only succeed in it for a fleeting moment:

To go unnoticed is by no means easy. To be a stranger, even to one’s doorman or neighbors. If it is so difficult to be “like” everybody else, it is because it is an affair of becoming. Not everybody becomes everybody/everything [tout le monde], makes a becoming of everybody/everything. This requires much asceticism, much sobriety, much creative involution.78

To become tout le monde is to abandon oneself in the precise sense of realizing situations in which there is no longer a subject-object distinction, in which a morsel of reality is present as “a smile,” not this or that smile that I am interpreting. Since this is a movement on the spot, it is like “painting grey on grey” or “pink on pink”: it might not change anything physically, yet simultaneously it matters tremendously in how one relates to the world.79

75 Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, 86. 76 Pap. IV B111 n.d., 1843-1844; R III, 229. Deleuze most notably employs the term “nth power” throughout Difference and Repetition. 77 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 280. 78 Ibid., 279. 79 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 11, 197.

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This reveals two reasons why Deleuze describes true becoming as becoming- imperceptible. Firstly, it is not visible “from the outside.” Secondly, becoming puts us in a zone of indiscernibility, in situations in which there is “a ... ” taking place, and therefore in which it is not at all clear where “I” stop and “it” starts.80 At this point, it is clear why Deleuze considers this mode of existence as superior to all others. Firstly, it is the only mode in which an event or encounter is truly appreciated for what it is, as singular and as unmediated by memory, anticipation, norms, values, language, and so forth. It is an extremely strict criterion for authenticity, in which even the perspective or desire of the subject involved is purged. Secondly, it is the only attitude towards life in which something new can come into being. Only from the fourth person singular can one say that something, which is then to be taken as an affect, is not a mere reconfiguration of pre-existing components. Thirdly, and more generally, much of Deleuze’s thought is dedicated to demonstrating that the self or subject is not given a priori, and concepts such as affect and becoming are part of his endeavor of describing a world of experiences and encounters that is more fundamental than our “normal” way of seeing things, a world that is in fact constitutive of this normality. Hence, for Deleuze, the preferable mode of existence, of being a self, is an attitude in which one tries to have encounters that put the self beyond the self, that make becoming-other as an always present yet mostly unnoticed constitutive process, tangible, if only for a moment.

Conclusion

How to look at a work of art? With a cynical, weary eye that can only see it as resembling other art, as when we utter the cliché that “everything has already been done a thousand times before”? If so, then there is no art, just images. For Deleuze, the same is true for living a life. We can easily live life as though everything derives from circumstance, from history, or from others. This is life devoid of authenticity. But if so, then there is no life worth living, or at least no possible future worth entering. To Deleuze, the Cainite mode of existence, the double betrayal that allows for singular encounters unshackled from circumstance, is our only chance of experiencing moments in which something new is created.81 And the experience of the new is preferable, precisely because it is the only experience that is not (yet) captured in orders of transcendence, whether common sense and opinion or the edifices and first principles of philosophy. It is the only mode of existence in

80 This is how one should read “what cannot be perceived on one [level] cannot but be perceived on the other.” Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 281. 81 Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?, 97.

A. KLEINHERENBRINK 115 which “immanence can be restored”, resulting in “Man par excellence.” But this is precisely Man capable of severing his own involvement from the mode of existence of that which is produced, i.e., art. It must be emphasized that such moments cannot be forced: an individual subject cannot go out and “decide” to have an encounter with the new. Instead, one can only experiment and try to seek it out: “make consciousness an experimentation in life.”82 If this does not strike us as a very practical or concrete rule by which to live, it is only because it is first and foremost an encouragement to cultivate a certain attitude. The entire emphasis on viewing ourselves and others as art, on viewing art as affect, and on understanding affect as an utterable or perceivable is intended for this: an attitude in life in which we refuse to first see a problem, a situation, a person, or any other concrete thing in terms of that which it is not. This is why Deleuze so frequently cries out against stereotypes and popular opinion, and also why his philosophy has always resonated well with those who resist racism, sexism, and all other forms of essentialism in both theory and practice. At the heart of Deleuze’s ethics is the attempt to see things in terms of themselves as much as possible. Not that this is guaranteed to make the world a better place, but at the very least it might make it more authentic. Deleuze calls this “choosing to have a choice” in which “the alternative is not between terms but between the modes of existence of the one who chooses,” for which he credits Pascal’s Wager and Kierkegaard’s Either/Or as the first texts to develop this insight.83 The true choice is not to have a life or to create affects, especially not since such matters are highly asubjective. The self, strictly speaking, does not have the capacity to realize the proper mode of existence, much like the knight of faith cannot exist without God restoring the finite for him. The true choice is to believe that a life and affect are possible in this world. Only “the character who makes [this] true choice raises the affect to its pure power or potentiality.”84 In his final essay, Deleuze cites a Dickens story that perhaps illustrates best how the affect-creating potential of art can become manifest in life itself:

A scoundrel, a bad apple, held in contempt by everyone, is found on the point of death, and suddenly those charged with his care display an urgency, respect, and even love for the dying man’s least sign of life. Everyone

82 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 134. Also see Deleuze and Parnet, Dialogues, 61. In a striking parallel, it was Kierkegaard who introduced the word experiment into Danish, as well as the explicit notion of experimenting not experimenting with or on, but a character. See pages xxii-xxxi of the 1993 International Kierkegaard Commentary. 83 Deleuze, Cinema 1, 114-116; Deleuze, Cinema 2, 177. 84 Deleuze, Cinema 1, 115.

116 ART AS AUTHENTIC LIFE

makes it his business to save him. As a result, the wicked man himself, in the depths of his coma, feels something soft and sweet penetrate his soul. But as he progresses back toward life, his benefactors turn cold, and he himself rediscovers his old vulgarity and meanness. Between his life and his death, there is a moment where a life is merely playing with death.85

This demonstrates why the preferable mode of existence, a moment in which the fourth person singular is attained, is strictly speaking beyond good and evil, since “only the subject that incarnated [a life] in the midst of things made it good or bad.”86 And this is why Deleuzian ethics are perhaps existentialist before being anything else. Authenticity resides in the demand that the value of an act, of a production of something, can never be drawn from a cherished history, an envisioned future, a desire felt, or a norm obeyed. To be authentic is to even purge one’s own presence from the affect under consideration, and to evaluate only it in terms of the feelings, perceptions and consequences that it might bring about. And finally, unlike the knight of faith, this can no longer concern every waking moment. Much more, it is the kind of rare occurrence that demands sobriety, work, and the kind of restricted optimism of one who merely labors to bring about something new, as humble as the result may be.

Center for Contemporary European Philosophy, Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands

References

Boundas, Constantin V., “Foreclosure of the Other: from Sartre to Deleuze,” in Journal of the British society for phenomenology, 24:1 (1993), 32-43. Caputo, John D., “Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and the Foundering of Metaphysics,” in R. L. Perkins ed., International Kierkegaard commentary - Fear and trembling and Repetition (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1993). Clar, André, “Médiation et Répétition: le lieu de la dialectique Kierkegaardienne,” in Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques, 59:1 (1975), 38-78. Deleuze, Gilles, Cinema 1 - The Movement Image, trans. by H. Tomlinson and B. Habberjam (London: Athlone Press, 1986).

85 Deleuze, Two Regimes of Madness, 386. 86 Ibid., 387.

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______, Cinema 2 - The Time Image, trans. By H. Tomlinson and R. Galeta (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989). ______, The Logic of Sense, trans. by M. Lester (London: Athlone Press, 1990). ______, Difference and Repetition, trans. by P. Patton (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994). ______, Essays Critical and Clinical, trans. by D. W. Smith and M. E. Greco (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997). ______, Nietzsche and Philosophy, trans. by H. Tomlinson (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006). ______, Two Regimes of Madness - Texts and Interviews 1975-1995, trans. by A. Hodges and M. Taormina (Cambridge, MA: Semiotext(e) / MIT Press, 2007). Deleuze, Gilles and Parnet, Claire, Dialogues, trans. by H. Tomlinson and B. Habberjam (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987). Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Félix, A Thousand Plateaus - Capitalism and Schizophrenia 2, trans. by B. Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987). ______, What is Philosophy?, trans. by H. Tomlinson and G. Burchell (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994). Dosse, François, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari – Intersecting Lives (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010). Evans, Stephen, “Faith as the Telos of Morality: A Reading of Fear and Trembling,” in R. L. Perkins ed., International Kierkegaard Commentary - Fear and trembling and Repetition (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1993). Ferlinghetti, Lawrence, Her (New York: New Directions, 1988). Gouwens, David, “Understanding, Imagination, and Irony in Kierkegaard’s Repetition,” in R. L. Perkins ed., International Kierkegaard Commentary - Fear and trembling and Repetition (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1993). Ianni, Lawrence and Ferlinghetti, Lawrence, “Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s Fourth Person Singular and the Theory of Relativity,” in Winsconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature, 8:3 (1967), 392-406. Khalfa, Jean, “Deleuze et Sartre: idée d’une conscience impersonelle,” in Les temps modernes, 55:608 (2000), 189-222. Kierkegaard, Søren, Fear and Trembling and Repetition, trans. and ed. by H.V. Hong and E.H. Hong (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1983). McCarthy, Vincent, “Repetition’s repetitions,” in R. L. Perkins ed., International Kierkegaard Commentary - Fear and trembling and Repetition (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1993).

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Morris, T. F., “Constantin Constantius” search for an acceptable way of life,” in R. L. Perkins ed., International Kierkegaard Commentary - Fear and trembling and Repetition (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1993). Somers-Hall, Henry, “Sartre and the virtual - a Deleuzian Interpretation of the Transcendence of the Ego,” in Philosophy Today (SPEP supplement), 50:5 (2006), 126-132. Williams, James, Gilles Deleuze’s Logic of Sense - A Critical Introduction and Guide (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008).

KRITIKE VOLUME EIGHT NUMBER TWO (DECEMBER 2014) 119-138

Article

Deleuze contra Hegel: The Rupture of the Dialectics towards Non-Conceptual Difference

Raniel SM. Reyes

Abstract: This paper is a brief philosophical analysis of the relationship between G.W.F. Hegel and Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy. In the first part, I will present Hegel’s dialectical philosophy as the opus’ point of departure including a truncated elucidation of the totalitarian aspect of his thinking. Since the Hegelian system is very comprehensive, it has also influenced other parts of Europe, especially France. Upon its arrival in the French soil, the system’s structurality was re-attuned in accordance with the materialities engendered by the political events besetting the French society during the 1960s. In order to explicate this hermeneutical fusion of horizons, I will utilize Deleuze’s philosophy of difference in order to undermine the Hegelian system. However, as Deleuze’s intellectual career progresses, his radicalism has mitigated. From an inclusive diagnosis of the said system, it has merely ruptured the metaphysical walls of the dialectic to become sensible to the pluralistic voices of difference. Amidst this so-called Deleuzian turn, I will delineate in the last part some additional albeit sophisticated convergence between their philosophies.

Keywords: Deleuze, Hegel, dialectics, difference

Revisiting the Hegelian Dialectics and the Specter of Totalitarianism

hilosophy is not merely a search for the ultimate truths of reality and a reflection of our lived experiences. It is likewise a radicalization of P the present order. Although the German Hegel and the French Deleuze are progenies of different historical periods and intellectual traditions, they have devised their respective critiques against the representationalist metaphysics of their times. However, despite this perceived convergence, there remains a complex divergence between them specifically, their means

120 DELEUZE CONTRA HEGEL of confronting representation. On one hand, we have a very systematic and rigorous thinker in Hegel, and we have an eccentric and rhizomic philosopher in Deleuze, on the other. Let us start with the philosophy of Hegel. Hegel’s intellectual system is undeniably one of the most towering theoretical eyeglasses of modernity. Other thinkers are only left constructing their projects as a reaction to his philosophy, yet they end up simply being subsumed by the profundity of the system or ending as anti-Hegelian Hegelians. Traditionally, when we talk about Hegel, our starting point is the notion of the dialectic. This principle is a very important concept in understanding his Logic, Philosophy of Nature, and Phenomenology of the Spirit. In these major writings, he characterizes the dialectic as the dialectic of the Logic that ingeniously manifested itself in natural and spiritual phenomena and consciousness.1 In Science of Logic, the dialectic is illustrated to be the principle capable of explicating our understanding of basic categories such as concept and judgment.2 As each category implicitly contains the force of self- contradiction, it will be reconciled or sublated in the long run to craft a higher form of unity towards a grand collective synthesis in the Absolute. Meanwhile, the Phenomenology of the Spirit chronicles the experience of consciousness as it traverses the primitive state going to the Absolute.3 Two important points can be ruminated from the aforementioned statement. Firstly, the Hegelian philosophy is an overcoming of the Cartesian metaphysics where the I (self) is deemed as given, i.e., detached from all material contingencies. Secondly, the nature of reality, unlike the Kantian epistemological demarcations, can already be accessed thinly through a series of dialectical struggles. Following the words of Hegel:

The logical has in point of form three sides ... These three sides do not constitute three parts of the Logic, but are moments of each logical reality, that is, of each concept ... a) Thought, as the Understanding, sticks to finite determinacies and their distinctness from one another ... b) The dialectical moment is the self-sublation of such finite determinations and their transition into their opposites ... c) The speculative moment, or that of positive Reason, apprehends the unity of the

1 Frederick Beiser, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Hegel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 131. 2 G.W.F. Hegel, Science of Logic, trans. by A. V. Miller (London: Allen & Unwin; New York: Humanities Press, 1969). 3 Stephen Houlgate, The Hegel Reader (MA: Blackwell Publishing, 1998), 56.

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determinations in their opposition—the affirmation that is contained in their dissolution and transition.4

Under Hegel’s re-reading of the modern tradition, Reason (the overarching principle of this epoch) is not anymore reduced to mere Cartesian Cogito. It is rather conceived as a materially-conditioned principle operating within the realm of the human condition. Using this new theoretical lens, reason is situated in the topography of history, i.e., as something that evolves from the primitive, religious, going to the realm of philosophy. As it elevates from one stage into another, the reformulation of (its) freedom is likewise observable from being the voice of a single subjectivity to becoming the voice of intersubjectivities concretized in the different social institutions. For this reason, the solutions to the numerous binaries in modernity that fragmented reality and estranged life can be positioned in the landscape of culture and is possible only via a clearer dialectical perception of reason. In this Hegelian parlance, reason is introduced into a new kind of modernity wherein another brand of liberty from its metaphysically-optimistic delusion is rendered to itself. This novel brand of emancipation is a new philosophy of creativity geared to embattle modernity’s foundationalism or representationalism. Further, this attribute is vitally contributory to reason’s disposal of its assimilative mentality, the very conceptual aberration responsible for the various problematic dichotomies and violence in modernity. Therefore, a philosophy becoming art-like in Hegel’s mind is tantamount to reason learning how to be dialectical, as well as reality being perceived as embedded in the fluid realm of material processes and antagonisms. This remarkable craftsmanship is a form of thinking capable of reconciling all modern dichotomies differentially. Additionally, Kant’s noumenon can already be known (indirectly) in the arena of historical configurations. When things are viewed in the ambit of the immanent field of life, then all epistemological binaries and ideas can be mediated. Even our concept of God for Hegel is a dialectical offspring of cultural deliberations. In other words, the nature of reality is fathomable through a series of struggles (both affirmative and negative) since in the first place, nature and reality are rational. Speaking of God, Hegel relatively assumes that philosophy is also about the Absolute. Contrary to the customary reading of this concept, he conceives it not as an end, but simply as a by-product of concrete struggles. According to him, “Absolute ... is essentially a result ... it is first at the end of what it truly is; and ... precisely in this consists its nature, viz. to be actual,

4 Hegel, Science of Logic, 31; Cf. Houlgate, The Hegel Reader, 140.

122 DELEUZE CONTRA HEGEL subject, the becoming of itself.”5 It is thus safe to say that the Absolute, being a product of dialectical processes, always has a dimension of becoming-other in nature and history. What is absolute in it is not that all is one, as the formalistic sciences argue; rather, it is the negative movement of the dialectic—the synthesis of difference that is itself differential. For Hegel, the true Absolute cannot be simply equated with the God of the theologians or Soren Kierkegaard’s. Rather, it is the absolute mind formed by the collectivity of the human condition understanding itself—a totality of truth manifested dialectically in history and not in God’s divine consciousness.6 In fact, religion (where God is given a deific status) in Hegel’s philosophy occupies only a step before philosophy in the achievement of the Absolute. From the antagonism of subjective and objective spirit, they are henceforth differentially reconciled in the absolute. Hereafter, dialectical consciousness finds its expression in the minds of individuals, family, civil society, state, and finally art, religion, and philosophy. It is then very evident that he perceives society to be in a dialectical movement. Furthermore, Hegel’s dialectic carries with it the capability of elevating itself towards self-understanding through a series of contradictions ingrained in the different social institutions. Amidst these series struggles (Aufhebung), the mind realizes itself via the dialectical process. In Hegel’s words, “Dialectical movement of negative thinking fuels the spirit. Consequently, a new world is born perpetually, but that which is without any period of full actuality especially in its beginnings. But the actuality of this simple whole consists in those various shapes and forms which have become its moments, and which will now develop and take shape afresh, this time in their new element, in their newly acquired meaning.7 Hence, self- understanding embedded in the dialectic is a tortuously tedious mission because Absolute knowledge is not even the end; rather, it is the collective consciousness of the society. The dialectic is not only a concrete description of the internal logic of reality; it is also a praxis. The dialectic enables an immanent examination of the dynamics of social consciousness as opposed to the modern Cartesian and Kantian epistemological traditions, while sustaining its negative fervor: “Dialectic as a negative movement, just as it immediately is, at first appears to consciousness as something which has it at its mercy, and which does not

5 G.W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of the Spirit, trans. by A.V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 9. The absolute in Hegel’s work can also mean the moments of consciousness or spirit wherein an idea is perceived as a ‘totality’ of the real. 6 Cf. G.W.F., Elements of the Philosophy of Right, trans. by Hugh Barr Nisbet, ed. by Allen W. Wood (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1991), 23. 7 Houlgate, The Hegel Reader, 50.

R. REYES 123 have its source in consciousness itself.”8 It is therefore convincing then to claim that Hegel’s own brand of materialist philosophy is a coming-close to society’s flaws writ large. For him, the truth is the whole, but the whole is nothing without the parts. The whole is the process of development wherein the parts come to constitute the whole, thereby conditioning its increased depth and complexity. In this manner, the whole’s existence is provisional since it is merely a moment in consciousness, which is always open to the process of negation. This process, of course, is an offshoot of the intrinsically contradicting structures of the society itself. As such, it can be claimed that truth can be its own self-movement, rather than a mode of cognition remaining external to its material.9 Albeit the genius of Hegel’s philosophy levelheadedly personifies the Owl of Minerva of his time, it would still be very difficult for us not to indulge substantial attention to his argument regarding the claim that contradictions (becoming and difference) in history must be understood as toward a unitive movement of the Asbolute Spirit. Being a child of the Enlightenment, this viewpoint is concomitantly informed by an overarching premise that society must become rational, i.e., it must engender the reconciliation of the subjective and the objective spirit via the institutions of the ethical life. This is only achievable in modernity in general and the Prussian state in particular. This is his version of the Archimedian eureka where reality is united with the Notion. However, it must be accentuated that this totalitarian spectrum found in the Hegelian system is the very reason why the critical theorists (especially those from the first generation spearheaded by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer) attempted to salvage this obscure aspect in Hegel’s philosophy, using the philosophies of immanent critique and negative dialectics, together with the overriding project of social transformation. Nevertheless, in the continental canon, these social theorists are not alone in this anti- foundationalist advocacy, since the Owl of Minerva’s arrival into the French soil also has produced fabulous amount of scholarship that deserves considerable attention.

Deleuze’s Revaluation of Hegel towards Non-Conceptual Difference

Deleuze-in-the-making and the Hegelian Achilles Heel

The most eminent reception of the Hegelian philosophy in the contemporary period comes from the French grain. Although its readership

8 Ibid., 102. 9 Hegel, Phenomenology of the Spirit, 28.

124 DELEUZE CONTRA HEGEL is still selective, the French’s radical prognosis of the dialectics presents us a new treatment in looking at difference, which is irreducible to any assimilative significations. Proponents of this brand of theorization are popularly acknowledged as the philosophers of difference in the likes of Michel Foucault, Jean Franscois Lyotard, Jacques Derrida, and Gilles Deleuze. From 1940 until 1950, the resonance of the Hegelian voice has penetrated into the French ears, and to their pre-existing theoretical discourses that further strengthened the said system. Now let us explain Deleuze’s take on the Hegelian philosophy’s arrival to his land, backdropped by the poststructuralist general critique of representationalist thinking for assimilating difference in the regime of metaphysics. The aftermath of World War II and France’s Liberation had a paramount effect on the thoughts of Foucault, Lyotard, Derrida, Deleuze, etc. The 1960s marks a point in France’s history when the socio-political atmosphere of the time was greatly opportune in providing the concrete condition for the cultivation of the ideas of young philosophers.10 These men became famous in relating their critique of metaphysics, science, and history to the socio-political climate that brought forth philosophical currents, such as postmodernism and poststructuralism.11 Deleuze belongs to this intellectual and socio-political milieu. Deleuze criticizes Hegelian philosophy in a circumvented fashion so as not to simply be a weak prey to it. To be specific, he uses Nietzsche, another German thinker who was re-interpreted by French scholarship in the 1960s. The appropriation of the Nietzschean philosophy is due to the communal frustration with the dominant philosophies at that time, generally influenced by Hegelianism like Marxism and Phenomenology.12 Even the different social spaces were already longing for a condition other than what the Hegelian notion of unity, teleology, and the Absolute can offer. This is a possibility that Deleuze finds realizable in the Nietzschean philosophical corpus. The Nietzsche-Hegel engagement is illustrated by Deleuze primarily in one of his early literatures, Nietzsche and Philosophy.13 This book chronicles the exciting battle between these two thinkers in the arena of contemporary

10 See Paul Patton and John Protevi eds., Between Deleuze and Derrida (London: Continuun, 2003). 11 Jean Francois Lyotard defines postmodernism’s primary attitude as the incredulity towards meta-narratives. See Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. by Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984). 12 Cf. Robert Sinnerbrink, Understanding Hegelianism (Acumen: Acumen Publishing, 2007), 173. Much of my explication of Deleuze’s revaluation of Hegelian philosophy is derived from Sinnerbrink’s aforementioned book; and for this, I am greatly thankful. 13 Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, trans. by Hugh Tomlinson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983).

R. REYES 125

French philosophy. When the 1968 student protest agitated the French sensibility, this opus assumed a somewhat Biblical status to a wide-range of scholars and the fuming crowd, as this year became an ecstatic moment for everyone to philosophize by violating the monotony of order using not only words but also force. It is interesting to note that the maxim “God is dead” was conceptualized by Hegel prior to Nietzsche. At first, it was unthinkable that this adage Nietzsche niftily borrowed from Hegel would be the very point of departure of the former to attack the tradition where the latter belongs. According to Nietzsche, since all values depreciate by themselves in the modern epoch, the nihilism corrupting Hegel’s historico-cultural dwelling must be revaluated.14 Being a part of the whole, Hegel’s philosophy is of no exemption to this grand critique of European decay. From Platonism and Christianity’s promise of the otherworld, repugnance of the immanent, and the positivistic optimism of science, Deleuze also includes the notion of dialectical history (dialectics) to be one of the most compelling sources of nihilism. In Nietzsche and Philosophy, Deleuze opines that:

History thus appears as the act by which reactive forces take possession of culture or divert its course in their favor. The triumph of reactive forces is not an accident in history but the principle and meaning of “universal history.” This idea of a historical degeneration of culture occupies a prominent place in Nietzsche's work: it is an argument in Nietzsche's struggle against the philosophy of history and the dialectics.15

In fact, after deliberating the manifold depictions of nihilism across religions, disciplines, and civilizations, Deleuze even dedicates a part in the said book with a title, ‘Against Hegelianism.’ From the denigration against Hegel’s analysis of the death of God proposition as constitutive of degeneration, Deleuze proceeds with a barefaced appraisal of the dialectic principle. Even though Hegel fought the prevalent metaphysics of representation during his time, his dialectic still transforms into another representationalist philosophy. In this manner, it becomes debilitated to go beyond its own symptoms and nemesis because it is already despoiled by the forces of ressentiment and bad conscience. Deleuze further argues that:

14 Cf. G.W.F., Elements of the Philosophy of Right, 23. 15 Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, 139.

126 DELEUZE CONTRA HEGEL

Dialectic thrives on oppositions because it is unaware of far more subtle and subterranean differential mechanisms: topological displacements, typological variations. ... Deprived of all its ambitions, opposition ceases to be formative, impelling and coordinating: it becomes a symptom to be interpreted. Deprived of its claim to give an account of difference, contradiction appears for what it is: a perpetual misinterpretation of difference itself, a confused inversion of genealogy. In fact, to the eye of the genealogist, the labor of the negative is only a coarse approximation to the games of the will to power.16

Whereas the Hegelian dialectic always leaves one foot behind in its struggle, Nietzsche’s radical philosophy proposes for a total destruction of the past edifice. Although his genealogical critique looks at the past origin of values, it is equipped with a bold quest to qualitatively identify whether they are of slavish or noble origins, and more importantly, to reach the primary protean receptacle of all of these—the Will to Power.17 Essentially, the will to power is the differential character of forces. Deleuze explains that life forces and values are only secondary to the will to power. This principle consists of a confluence of forces that still necessitate further engagement with other forces. According to him, “The will to power is the element from which derive both the quantitative difference of related forces and the quality that devolves into each force in this relation. The will to power here reveals its nature as the principle of the synthesis of forces.”18 Further, Deleuze conceives that the dialectic is simply operating based on a seemingly superficial normativity, for it only appears as simulating state of the will to power. Even after the demise of God, as well as the reconciliation of God and man, they still retain their identities as epitomes of reactive forces. The Hegelian dream of thought’s lofty elevation is thereby undermined. Since this so-called dialectical development of thought only ends as a form of will to nothingness, Deleuze via Nietzsche thinks that it miserably becomes like Christianity—so effective in imposing moral guilt to the crowd, yet deficient in creating new values and possibilities. In other words, although the dialectic has a teleological slate of advancement, it falls short in becoming revolutionary. It is because as things are negated, some values are still preserved in the camel’s back (to use a Nietzschean vocabulary), and as such, can still condition the subtle mutation of decadent forces. This mentality of

16 Sinnerbrink, Understanding Hegelianism, 157-158. 17 Cf. Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, 52. 18 Ibid.

R. REYES 127 negation and self-preservation for Nietzsche is constitutive of the last man or the individual who does not have enough audacity to lion all values in pursuit of totally new relations of forces be it biological, economic, or political. Therefore, as modernity engenders God’s death, it degenerately crafted some substitute metaphysical guarantors like “permanence,” “soul,” “Geist,” etc., thereby authoring new forms of foundationalism and strengthening nihilism’s pervasiveness. A case in point can be gleaned from Philippine politics. The Filipinos’ earnest desire to dethrone their President Joseph Estrada in 2001 has ambiguously positioned Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (the Vice-President) in the presidential seat. They failed to realize that Arroyo has only romanticized the hype of the people’s ire to ploy her malevolent and narcissistic goals for the Philippine society. On a critical perspective, the Filipinos’ magnanimous goal of ousting (negation) a corrupt leader engendered them a sightless instillation of another one (preservation). It is a resurrection of tyranny or a recurrence of the Same (despotism) inside a new physiological container (Arroyo’s body).19 Nietzsche suggests that in order to overcome modern nihilism, we must live dangerously. We must revaluate all existing values whose origins are derived from debased or reactive configurations. After completely obliterating all artifacts of dogmatism and ressentiment, man is now confronted with the task of fashioning new values under the backdrop of life as a will to power. Consequently, with the demise of all metaphysical guarantors such as God, Reason, and Science, life is de-deified and is given a chance to live anew vigorously. This is a day of celebration where other pathways of thriving and spheres of immanence or becoming-closer to the earth are opened to our horizons. It is an existence way beyond the mechanical life of Franz in Milan Kundera’s novel Unbearable Lightness of Being,20 or that of Roquentin in Jean-Paul Sartre’s Nausea.21

19 Cf. Epifanio San Juan, Only By Struggle: Reflections on Philippine Culture, Politics, and Society (Quezon City: Giraffe Books, 2002). A more contemporary instance of this spiteful loop is the so-called debased political recycling which happened last December of 2013 in the aftermath of super typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan). At the commencement of the enduring rehabilitation program by the Philippine government, President Benigno Aquino Jr. designated former senator Panfilo Lacson as the chief officer of the said program. Prior to Lacson’s stint, he was deemed fugitive by the previous Arroyo administration. But now he is given another chance to rub out the places wrecked by the typhoon. For Deleuze, this vicious circle is the upshot upon difference’s marginalization in the unfolding of history. For the Filipinos, on the other hand, it is the outcome of our despoiled understanding of history, politics, and responsibility, etc. 20 Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being (New York: Harper and Row Publishing, Inc., 1985). 21 Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea, trans. by Robert Baldick (New York: Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1966).

128 DELEUZE CONTRA HEGEL

The post-metaphysical culture created amidst nihilism’s twilight is an ontology of immanence vitally informed by the Spinozist tradition.22 In this regard, Nietzsche affirmatively formulates the typologies of the ascending and the descending23 mode of life, and introduces the metaphor of the Eternal Return so as to test us on what kind of life we want to recur. Since values are already based on how we view life and expend our potentialities, their significance depends on whether we are going to recognize it as ascending (noble) or descending (slavish). In other words, the manner on how we value life is identified by the sense of power that we affirmatively cultivate, and not by its truthfulness or falsity. After this transvaluative recommendation, Deleuze further explains that, “Against Hegelian dialectics, which overcomes alienation via the comprehension of our historical experience, Nietzschean genealogy overcomes nihilism by harnessing the active forces of the body and unconscious in order to invent new concepts and modes of existence.”24

From Nietzschean Anti-Dialectics to a Reformulated Hegelianism

Robert Sinnerbrink is correct to claim that the youthful radical spirit in Deleuze has moderated throughout the production of the Difference and Repetition25 at the height of the French revolution. Of course, this ethico- epistemological shift occurring in the career of thinkers is not an exclusive event in philosophy. In the territories of politics, historiography, sociology, and even in ordinary human affairs, it is also observable how individuals at some point of their endeavors realize the viability of past anomalies theoretical or otherwise, and discovered another eureka moment in their vocations. It should not surprise us when heroes become tyrants, extremists become conservatives, and friends become foes, vice versa. I cannot help but parallel this intellectual metamorphosis with Nietzsche’s literary career depicted when Zarathustra’s goal of informing the modern community

22 Baruch Spinoza is referred to by Deleuze as the prince of philosophers, especially with his claim that God is Nature (Deus sive Natura). See Gilles Deleuze, Spinoza: Expressionism in Philosophy, trans. by Martin Joughin (New York: Zone Books, 1990), 11. 23 In the Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche distinguishes the ascending from the descending life-typology. In his words, “Every individual may be scrutinized to see whether he represents the ascending or the descending line of life. If he represents the ascending line, then his worth is indeed extraordinary and for the sake of life as a whole, which takes the step farther through him, the care for his preservation and for the creation of the best conditions for him may even be extreme ... If he represents the descending development, decay chronic degeneration, and sickness, then he has small worth and the minimum of decay requires that he take away as little as possible from those who have turned out well. He is merely a parasite.” Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, trans. by R.J. Hollingdale (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1968, 33). 24 Sinnerbrink, Understanding Hegelianism, 177. 25 Cf. Ibid., 174.

R. REYES 129 regarding the wisdom of the Overman has toned down towards the end in simply looking for few kindred spirits because of cumbersome disenchantment. I suppose that this brand of metamorphosis does not only form part of Deleuze’s maturity process conditioned by the historical evolution of his time, but also something of a consciously profound self-criticism to his brazen confrontation of the Hegelian dialectic. Meaning to say, in obliquely antagonizing the dialectic via Nietzsche’s philosophy, Deleuze is in turn challenged by some structural quandaries derivable from the very system he aspires to push into limits. As such, his project converts into a painstaking reconstruction of the dialectic to develop into a principle receptive to difference, and not to nihilism and representation. From the dialectics’ nihilistic domain, Deleuze’s attention progresses into the totalitarian aspect of the Hegelian teleology, equipped with the positive desire to salvage Hegel’s endeavor from falling into another metaphysics of domination. His overhauling project is patently informed by his critical diagnosis of the system, which is guilty for marginalizing singularity and sensibility. For if this activity continues, the differential forces and affects of these concepts will not be given evenhanded considerations; they will only be counted as forms of contradictions necessary to achieve another kind of elevated unity. In the latter part of Deleuze’s philosophical career, you can seldom see the name Nietzsche. It only implies that the radically affirmative substance of the Nietzschean philosophy has already been planted in the entire capillaries of the Deleuzian machinery, thereby becoming a rather intuitive blueprint across Deleuze’s project. In fact, the Nietzschean philosophy of difference was presented extensively in Difference and Repetition, as a reversal of the Platonic project of representaionalist thinking. Deleuze likewise finds in difference the notion of the non-conceptual that undermines Western rationality’s foundationalism like Derrida.26 Using this yardstick, the renewed object of philosophy is no longer the ill-fated notion of being or unity, but the intrepid affirmation of difference as the chaotic multiplicity of the world’s becoming.27 This overturning of Platonism project,

26 Deleuze and Derrida’s contribution to the French Postwar scholarship can be gleaned from their efforts to revive Nietzsche’s philosophy of difference. Their philosophies seek to invert Plato’s metaphysics and revaluate the Hegelian dialectical philosophy due to their nihilistic and teleological orientations. See Gilles Deleuze, Negotiations, trans. by Martin Joughin (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 88; Patton and Protevi, Between Deleuze and Derrida, 4. 27 Ronal Bogue, Deleuze and Guattari (New York: Routledge, 1989), 32.

130 DELEUZE CONTRA HEGEL therefore, has morphed into a fluid philosophy that replaces Hegel’s negation of negation with a Heraclitean philosophy of affirmation.28 Deleuze’s shift from an overall appraisal to a mere reconstruction of the Hegelian dialectic offers an invitation for a new genealogy, principally in relation to his stellar friendship with his mentor Jean Hyppolite. His teacher’s kaleidoscopic reading of Hegel launches an antagonism to the predominant philosophy of being or dialectical unity of reason that substantially complemented his philosophy of difference’s war-cry. As Hyppolite resorted to Martin Heidegger’s philosophy in his mature years, his project was accused by Deleuze of still dwindling into the Hegelian notion of conceptual difference where difference itself is recognized merely as a form of contradiction. On the other hand, Nietzsche, in his later career, parted way with Wagner because of his mathematized aesthetics, that is, “for retaining too much harmonic form, and too many pedagogical personages: too much Hegel.”29 In Deleuze’s case, this signals the time of his critical distantiation from his mentor. In opposition to Hyppolite, he suggests the reformulation of the concept of difference that is pure in-itself and is irreducible to the categorization of contradiction and identity. Difference in-itself for him is “something which distinguishes itself from other things, imagine something which distinguishes itself, and yet in distinguishing itself it does not distinguish itself from the other.”30 Hence, it is only in the fluid state of pure difference where non-conceptual difference is possible. In addition, difference in-itself is a thinking of pure difference unfounded on the principle of identity. In the language of Deleuze, “We propose to think difference in-itself independently of the forms of representation which reduce it to the Same, and the relation of different to different independently of those forms which make it pass through the negative.”31 This aforementioned concept of the later Deleuze develops into the principle of nomadic thought. Contrary to the striated interiority circulating within the veins of representationalism, this revitalized concept mobilizes freely in an element of exteriority, as it rides in the smooth and open-ended plateau of difference.32

28 In the Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche explains his appreciation to the ancient philosopher Heraclitus: “With the highest respect, I except the name of Heraclitus. When the rest of the philosophic folk rejected the testimony of the senses because they showed multiplicity and change, he rejected their testimony because they showed things as if they had permanence and unity.” Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, 2. 29 Gilles Deleuze, and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. by Brian Massumi (London: The Athlone Press, 1988), 269. 30 Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, trans. by Paul Patton (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 43. 31 Ibid., xix. 32 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, xii.

R. REYES 131

Based on the above-explanation, Deleuze’s radical philosophy can be portrayed as an immanent critique and reconstruction of the Hegelian dialectic. Like the critical theorists who remain ambivalently Hegelians after salvaging Hegel from its teleological pathology, he penetrates this dialectical tradition like a new Socrates who would remind his fellowmen about the virtualities of non-conceptual difference. As a radical thinker, Deleuze strives to pursue the possibility of conceiving the dialectic without a teleological unity waiting at the end of the road. He is no Marx or Lenin in this aspect. But he is a philosopher whose unwavering thrust is the differential dialectic of the play of multiple becomings in the world of the chaosmos.33 To roughly explicate this point, let me quote a poem by Antonio Mechado entitled, There Is No Road: “Traveler, your footprints are the only road, and nothing more ... there is no road, the road is made by walking.”34 This rhizomic voyage is comparable to teaching and sacrificing your entire youth in the university just to inspire students to go beyond the rabbit’s fur or imagine higher causes, without knowing exactly what road or direction your feet will lead you to. But along the way, you will realize that you have fashioned roads of possibilities because of your nomadic efforts. Deleuze’s major challenge then is to perceive the dialectics in terms of problematics, rather than of propositions and reconciliations, as well as to invert the subordination of difference to identity, negativity, and contradiction, towards thought’s liberation from the yoke of representationalist thinking.35 He extends his project to history’s landscape since the dialectics is the blood-line of historical unfoldings. Historical progression, for him, does not happen due to dialectical movement of the negation of negation, but rather, due to the affirmation of difference and problem-decisions.36 This is so because contradictions in reality can anytime be manipulated by those in power (politicians, capitalists, or psychoanalysts), be it for the maintenance of the status quo or for the justification of exploitation. From a wider perspective, philosophical thinking must learn the logic of the dice-throw amidst the experience of chaos since this is the very state that it would be awakened from its slavish and essentialist slumber. This is the ardent time for philosophy’s chaoticizing of itself in front of difference. When Deleuze contends that thought must confront chaos, it is not in order to vanquish chaos for that would condition once again the possibility of

33 “Chaosmos” is a term which means the dynamic harmony between chaos and cosmos. It is the affirmation of chance and necessity. Albeit for Nietzsche (in the eyes of Deleuze) the universe is of chaotic character, it is not in contradiction to necessity. 34 Mechado Antonio, From Selected Poems of Antonio Mechado, trans. by Betty Craige (University of Georgia: LSU Press, 1978), 76. 35 Cf. Sinnerbrink, Understanding Hegelianism, 183. 36 Cf. Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, 268.

132 DELEUZE CONTRA HEGEL reverting to representationalism. Rather, it is to delineate a plane of consistency comprising of heterogeneous forces. These forces are constitutive of chaos acting as a bastion of creativity, active forces and infinite possibilities. Meaning to say, instead of waiting for the Owl of Minerva to arrive, a time where all things will synthesize towards higher forms of unity, let us indefatigably disturb the present totalized representationalism through the invention of new concepts and lines of flight. This is what Deleuze calls as differential thinking or non-conceptual difference. If Deleuze’ diagnosis of Hegel’s notion of becoming is explicitly depicted in Difference and Repetition, his undermining of Hegel’s notion of universal history and its predominant teleological spirit are profoundly elaborated in the later writings, especially in Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus.37 At first glance, becoming a philosopher of difference while simultaneously being equipped with a notion of a universal history would bring Deleuze into an unfavorable situation. However, this philosophical quandary is only feasible when we limit our understanding to the concept of universal history by virtue of modern representationalism or Hegelian foundationalism. Deleuze’s universal history circumvents Hegel’s via a turn to Marx’s relation to capitalism. The reason is that Marx’s historical materialism radiates on “its contingent, singular existence, its irony, and its own critique.”38 In this vein, what is illustrated is a universal history ironically epitomized by capitalism due to its ingrained capability of fashioning both its own nemesis, and of transfiguring the society into a self-critical assemblage. This rather paradoxical kind of history authored by capitalism’s immanent and ever-elastic logic was observed by Deleuze to subsist also, even in the field of psychoanalysis in relation to the Oedipal universality of desire.39 Subsequently, Deleuze chaoticizes Marx’s corpus through a reformulated concept of individual production already outside the realm of economic activity, or the labor’s subordination to capital. Production is deterritorialized to fabulate difference that is capable of surmounting any striated spaces. Nevertheless, capitalism can only afford us a potentiality or the precondition for a universal history, and not its actual foundations because it “has not always existed; history as a world history is a result.”40 It is only when the Deleuzian philosophy of difference emancipates capital from the economic

37 Gilles Deleuze, and Felix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. by Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983); Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus. 38 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 271. 39 Eugene Holland, Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus: Introduction to Schizoanalysis (New York: Routledge Inc., 1999). 40 Karl, Marx, Grundrisse: Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy (New York: Vintage, 1973), 11.

R. REYES 133 constraints of the market that the proliferation of difference can be engendered and freedom in universal history become immanent.41 Hegel’s dialectical history obliterates the occurrences of differential events in the material field of life and appropriates the subject into necessary principles and logical structures under the backdrop of the Absolute’s regulative potency. Since the individual merely metamorphoses into a cog inside the Hegelian machine of universal history (that devours the possibility of fabulations), Deleuze deterritorializes the structurality of this totalizing principle to arrive at a reformulated notion of a universal history grounded on multiplicity. This Deleuzian notion of history undermines the underlying Hegelian-Marxist belief that history is a form of an organism that is capable of fashioning its own self-destruction and healing. In furthering this, he deterritorializes the codifications of history-as-organism towards the formulation of a history constitutive of nomadic movement and becomings. This dynamic type of becoming-history, for Deleuze and Guattari, is a:

Multiplicity that never allows itself to be overcoded ... All multiplicities are flat, in the sense that they fill or occupy all of their dimensions: plane of consistency of multiplicities, even though the dimensions of this ‘plane’ increase with the number of connections that are made on it. Multiplicities are defined by the outside: by the abstract line, the line of flight or deterritorialization according to which they change in nature and connect with other multiplicities.42

This aforementioned juvenile principle opens its horizon to the aesthetic possibilities and virtualities of life. Under this revitalized concept, history (philosophical history) gains a power to be incessantly critical of itself without necessarily being totalized by the principle of the Absolute.43 This novel project radiates an intrinsic vitality of ceaseless ingenuity that is hospitable to the dynamics of becoming and difference. Hence, it renders history its reconfigured universality. This Deleuzian historicizing involves rhizomic materialities which can stimulate the construction of new radical

41 Cf. Eugene Holland, Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus: Introduction to Schizoanalysis (New York: Routledge Inc, 1999); Adrian Parr ed., The Deleuze Dictionary (Manchester: Edinburg University Press, 2005). 42 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 30. 43 Craig Lundy, Craig, History and Becoming (Edinburg: Edinburg University Press, 2013); Daniel Smith and Henry Somers-Hall, The Cambridge Companion to Deleuze (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

134 DELEUZE CONTRA HEGEL machines, untimely concepts, and variegated lines of flight, in pursuit of a world and people-to-come.44

Differential Harmony and Philosophy, Once Again

The genius of the Hegelian dialectic stands steadfast on the claim that any kind of opposition can simply be absorbed by this principle as a register of contradiction towards a higher form of unity. We should not be forgetful that Soren Kierkegaard’s philosophies of indirect communication and subjective truth, as rigorous resistances contra the Hegelian tradition of his time, simply ended being overshadowed by Hegelianism.45 In my case, I did not even imagine that my initial goal of comprehensively antagonizing the Hegelian system through Deleuze would mollify my exorbitant vigor and would let me appreciate the said philosophy more. This extenuation becomes possible via an affirmative Deleuze-ing of Hegel, which is likewise a Deleuze- ing of Deleuze himself. Accordingly, it makes me realize and re-think some of the concealed penchants and lapses of Deleuze, and it leads me to recognize that he is only human, conditioned by the material contingencies of his time and by the ink of his pen. Deleuze’s interpretation of Nietzsche is so lucid that he already turns heedless to Hegel’s sterling scholarship. Contemporary authors like Stephen Houlgate and Catherine Mallarme have plausibly observed this prejudice. In fact, Deleuze’s famous invitation of becoming non-philosophical as a necessary qualification for renewed philosophical thinking is already addressed in Hegel’s lectures on the Absolute spirit, Art, and Religion. The latter’s re-definition of philosophy from being a theoretical discourse to a creative attitude proposes its inclusivity to other disciplines. In this discursive democratization, every voice is given a chance to say something about the particular and the whole and is occasioned for perpetual examination. This is the reason why Deleuze even proceeds to literature and science-fiction movies in his ingenious imagination of a people and world-to-come. And it is only when each voice realizes an urge for self-reflection and critique, especially in relation to decadent institutions and despotic machines, that it can be sublated towards higher forms of unity, which in the contemporary scheme of things, must be conceived in the light of constellations and social

44 Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, What is Philosophy?, trans. by Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994); Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet, Dialogues, trans. by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjmn (London: Continuum, 2002). 45 Soren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling (London: Penguin Books, 1985).

R. REYES 135 transformation. But just a caveat, this coarse armistice between their philosophies is not as simple as it may appear. In the Philippines, Hegelian philosophy adherents would say (akin to the Estrada-Arroyo instance earlier-cited) that from hindsight, Arroyo’s delusion of political supremacy was justified for it ignited the fire within the Filipinos’ heart, enough for the entire nation to condemn her whole-sale. This malady, among other social contagions adulterating our society, has noticeably elevated the people’s critical consciousness and has generated praxiological desiring-machines for their conscientization on the significance of nation-building, social activism, ethical responsibility, etc. It has also raised many questions as to what kind of public governance and historical dialectics the Filipino people want in the future. At this moment, it is interesting to reflect on these queries: What is in the Philippines’ EDSA II revolution that produced the autocrat Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo rather than a noble leader? What is in Thailand that empowered its people to nullify its democratic government just for the debased Thaksin-influenced regime not to surface its renaissance? What is in the dehumanizing Apartheid in South Africa that yielded and eulogized the great man Nelson Mandela, in the same strain that India produced Mahatma Gandhi? Certainly, there are times that instead of slavishly readying ourselves from the rationality given to us by the Hegelian ‘hindsight analysis’ (capacitated of providing us both destruction and development), we must be ruthlessly critical regarding our perennial pursuit for a collective identity as a groundwork for an anti-tyrannical and anti-foundational machinery. It is because it will always be susceptible to the homogenizing ploy organized by the despotic system itself. The relatively enigmatic relationship between Hegel and Deleuze depicts us an enthralling philosophical relation and problem that have been enticing mounting interest among contemporary scholars. In the article “Nomadology or Ideology,” Sinnerbrink posits the two prevailing approaches to this predicament: the assimilationist reading and the radical separatist.46 The former upholds that despite his self-confessed anti- Hegelianism, Deleuze inescapably falls into the rubric of the Hegelian dialectic. This viewpoint, which I alluded a while ago, is discernible in the projects of cultural theorists like Catherine Malabou and Slavoj Zizek. The latter perspective argues the impossibility of compromise between Hegel and Deleuze. This stance is famously represented by Michael Hardt and Brian Massumi. In this regard, Sinnerbrink opines that, “not surprisingly, we could summarize this difference as that between the Hegelian claim that Deleuzian difference does not entirely escape the movement of dialectics, and the more

46 Robert Sinnerbrink, “Nomadology or Ideology,” in Parrhesia, 1 (2006), 62–87.

136 DELEUZE CONTRA HEGEL

Nietzschean claim that Deleuze’s thought remains irreducible to the movement of dialectical integration of difference into a more complex unity.”47 At the end of the day, in spite of Hegel and Deleuze’s rigorous attempts to diagnose representationalism and free philosophy from conceptual reification, they have not successfully emancipated their respective projects in the ubiquitous privileging of philosophy in the history of western tradition, pondered by some as the philosopher’s bad faith. In other words, despite Hegel’s critical appraisal of modern epistemologies and Deleuze’s radical reconstruction of the Platonic and Hegelian philosophy, they still converge to what many call as the privileging of philosophy scheme—always carrying the quicksand of essentialism on its back. Notwithstanding this perennially inexorable conundrum, philosophy can still deterritorialize itself by becoming-nomadic, minortarian, and aesthetic, in order to midwife creativity and difference from the womb of the only ontology we cannot deny—LIFE.

Department of Philosophy The Graduate School University of Santo Tomas, Philippines

References

Beiser, Frederick, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Hegel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). Bogue, Ronald, Deleuze and Guattari (New York: Routledge, 1989). Deleuze, Gilles, Nietzsche and Philosophy, trans. by Hugh Tomlinson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983). ______, Difference and Repetition, trans. by Paul Patton (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994). ______, Negotiations, trans. by Martin Joughin (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995). ______, Spinoza: Expressionism in Philosophy, trans. by Martin Joughin (New York: Zone Books, 1990). ______, The Logic of Sense, trans. by Mark Lester (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990). Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Felix, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. by Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983).

47 Ibid., 62

R. REYES 137

______, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. by Brian Massumi (London: The Athlone Press, 1988). ______, What is Philosophy?, trans. by Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994). Deleuze, Gilles and Parnet, Claire, Dialogues, trans. by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjmn (London: Continuum, 2002). Hegel, G.W.F., Elements of the Philosophy of Right, trans. by Hugh Barr Nisbet, ed. Allen W. Wood (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1991). ______, Phenomenology of the Spirit, trans. by A.V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977). ______, Hegel’s Science of Logic, trans. by A. V. Miller (London: Allen & Unwin New York: Humanities Press, 1969). Holland, Eugene, Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus: Introduction to Schizoanalysis (New York: Routledge Inc., 1999). Houlgate, Stephen, The Hegel Reader (MA: Blackwell Publishing, 1988). ______, The Opening of Hegel’s Logic: From Being to Infinity (USA: Purdue University Press, 2006). Kierkegaard, Soren, Fear and Trembling (London: Penguin Books, 1985). Kundera, Milan, The Unbearable Lightness of Being (New York: Harper and Row Publishing, Inc., 1985). Lundy, Craig, History and Becoming (Edinburg: Edinburg University Press, 2012). Marx, Karl, Grundrisse: Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy (New York: Vintage, 1973). Mechado, Antonio, From Selected Poems of Antonio Mechado, trans. by Betty Craige (University of Georgia: LSU Press, 1978). Nietzsche, Friedrich, Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, trans. by Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1966). ______, On the Genealogy of Morals, trans. by Walter Kaufmann, in Basic Writings of Nietzsche (New York: Modern Library, 2000). ______, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book For Everyone and No One, trans. with an intro. by R.J. Hollingdale (London: Penguin Books, 1969). ______, Twilight of the Idols, trans. by R.J. Hollingdale (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1968). Parr, Adrian, ed., The Deleuze Dictionary. Manchester (Edinburg University Press, 2005). Patton, Paul and Protevi, John, Between Deleuze and Derrida (London: Continuun, 2003). San Juan Epifanio, Only By Struggle: Reflections on Philippine Culture, Politics, and Society (Quezon City: Giraffe Books, 2002).

138 DELEUZE CONTRA HEGEL

Sartre, Jean-Paul, Nausea, trans. by Robert Baldick (New York: Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1966). Smith, Daniel, and Somers-Hall, Henry, The Cambridge Companion to Deleuze (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). Sinnerbrink, Robert, “Nomadology or Ideology” in Parrhesia, 1, 62–87 (2006). ______, Understanding Hegelianism (Acumen: Acumen Publishing, 2007).

KRITIKE VOLUME EIGHT NUMBER TWO (DECEMBER 2014) 139-166

Article

Habermas, Discourse Ethics, and Normative Validity1

Dennis A. de Vera

Abstract: This paper is an exploration of Habermas’ critical reconstructions of the problematic of rationality via critical theory’s critique of instrumental reason. It brings together several key ideas ranging from the dialectic of instrumental reason and how it leads to epistemological dissonance to the discursive redemption of the normativity of reason. It sketches, as a concluding reflection, whether or not his ideas may be situated within the larger methodological trajectory of Philippine social science research. The paper thus considers the concepts of discourse, discourse ethics and normative validity as crucially important.

Keywords: Habermas, instrumental reason, discourse ethics, normative validity

Introduction

et me begin with a rather misleading premise. Jürgen Habermas is no friend to enlightenment dialectic and its conception of reason and rationality. Habermas for example, avers that the process of L 2 enlightenment mutilates reason. On the one hand, the dialectic of enlightenment reduces reason to a mere instrument. On the other hand, it disparages reason by transforming it into a kind of power, stripped of its intrinsic capacity for validity claims. The mutilation of reason, in this sense,

1 This paper is a revised version of my graduate seminar essay in Social and Political Philosophy. I owe my appreciation of Jürgen Habermas to Dr. Zosimo E. Lee and Dr. Armando Ochangco. Although it came to me like baseball hard knocks, it reflects the kind of academic nourishment I received from them. I thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and charitable reading of this paper. I am grateful as well to David Ingram, Hugh Baxter and Andrew Edgar for their instructive suggestions. I thank Ms. Peachy Araza, a colleague at CLSU for the random occasions of discussion on Politeismo. 2 See Jürgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, trans. by Thomas McCarthy (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1987), 111.

140 NORMATIVE VALIDITY is its reduction to functional or instrumental rationality, devoid of any reflective capacity of its own. The sort of enlightenment dialectic Habermas detests here however is directed at the mounting pessimism3 on the prospects of enlightenment apparent in the writings of Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno. In The Dialectic of Enlightenment and other important works, both thinkers for example, suggest what is otherwise held as a sweeping thesis concerning modernity or the impasse of enlightenment:4 In the preface to the Dialectic, Horkheimer and Adorno remark at one point: “Myth is already enlightenment, and enlightenment reverts to mythology.”5 The enigmatic use of myth here suggests the ironic character, if not the dreadful double-bind, of enlightenment.6 Instead of delivering what it initially promises, its raison d’être—human autonomy and freedom from fear—the process of enlightenment, which is purportedly rational, brings forth reification, domination and repression of individuals on one hand and of society on the other hand.7 Pace Horkheimer and Adorno, and how they both portray the process of enlightenment as essentially one of startling apotheosis,8 Habermas seeks to show, despite such mounting pessimism, that it is also a

3 Shane Phelan for example frequently talks about this pessimism in explaining the dynamics of interpretation between Adorno, Habermas and Lyotard in “Interpretation & Domination: Adorno & the Habermas-Lyotard Debate,” in Polity, 25:4 (Summer 1993). 4 See David Ingram, Habermas and the Dialectic of Reason (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1987), 65. Ingram’s discussion here, however, is essentially directed to the reification thesis. Notable works that bear on this point include, but not limited to, the following: Theodor Adorno, The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 1991); Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life (Meard Street, London: Verso, 2005); Negative Dialectics (London and New York: Routledge, 2004); Max Horkheimer, Critical Theory: Selected Essays (New York: Continuum, 2002); Between Philosophy and Science: Selected Early Writings (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1993); Eclipse of Reason (London, New York: Continuum, 2004). 5 Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments (Standord, California: Stanford University Press, 2002), xviii. 6 Darrow Schecter, The Critique of Instrumental Reason from Weber to Habermas (New York: Continuum, 2010), 94. Schecter for example remarks that whereas myth is generally and essentially straightforward, the unfolding of the mythological character of enlightenment is more insidious. 7 J. M. Bernstein for example carefully explains this thought. See J. M. Bernstein. “Negative Dialectic as Fate: Adorno and Hegel,” in Tom Huhn ed., The Cambridge Companion to Adorno (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 21. See also William Ophuls discussion of some interesting themes brought about by progress in science, especially Chapter 3. William Ophuls, Requiem for Modern Politics: The Tragedy of Enlightenment and the Challenge of the New Millenium (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1997). 8 Bernstein, “Negative Dialectic as Fate,” 21.

D. DE VERA 141 fertile ground for achieving the ends of reason and rationality, and consequently the deliverance of what it hopes to accomplish.9 This paper therefore is an exploration of Habermas’ critical reconstructions of the problematic of rationality via the critique of instrumental reason. It brings together some key ideas ranging from the dialectic of instrumental reason and how it leads to epistemological dissonance to the discursive redemption of the normativity of reason. It sketches, as a concluding reflection, whether or not his ideas may be situated within the larger methodological trajectory of Philippine social science research. The paper thus considers the concepts of communicative rationality, discourse, discourse ethics, and normative validity as crucially important.

Dialectic, Dissonance, and Rationality

Habermas’ critical reconstruction of the rationality problematic draws its roots from critical theory’s critique of instrumental reason. One way of stating this is by saying that the reduction of reason to a mere instrumental or functional rationality not only distorts reason; more significantly, it also devalues reason to the effect that it results in epistemological dissonance. The kind of dissonance at issue here though originates from Weber’s and Marx’s accounts of the rationalization of society—Weber through his notion of sub- systems of purposive rational action and Marx through his notion of the development of forces of production.10 In his explication of Weber, Habermas notes for example, that said rationalization results inevitably in the rise of world religions, the development of societal rationalizations and the evolution of highly differentiated cultural value spheres.11 These rationality complexes steered the rationalization of the view that the universe is a coherent whole12 as well as further

9 Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, 113. Habermas, for example, talks of the various contributions of enlightenment that range from theoretical dynamics to aesthetic experiences. I thank the anonymous referee for pointing this out. 10 See Max Weber’s account of rationalization in Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1978). See also Karl Marx, An Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr and Company, 1904), especially the Appendix; Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1 (Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, Ltd., 1976). 11 Habermas suggests that cultural modernity consists in the differentiation of value spheres. Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, 112. Richard Rorty claims though that this way of framing cultural modernity may be associated with Habermas’ attempt of an all- encompassing history of philosophy since Kant. See Richard Rorty, Essays on Heidegger and Others: Philosophical Papers Volume 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 169. 12 Habermas, for instance, explains that the rise of world religions, owing to the rationalization of worldviews, has generated conditions that lead to (a) “eradication of magical thoughts” [may be viewed as the loss of mythical influences of religions] and (b) “systematic

142 NORMATIVE VALIDITY bureaucratization and institutionalization of social structures within the capitalist system and modern state. As a result, it brought forth organized institutions of taxation, administration, trade and commerce, including the judicial system along with property and contract terms. Trade and commerce flourished and made labor subject to corporate ethics and capitalist values.13 Wages and incentives are calculated and regulated through work performances by cut-throat competitions. Meanwhile, the emergence of cultural value spheres ushered in the institutionalization of different cultural complexes of modern consciousness ranging from the scientific to the artistic, with their own inner logics patterned after purposive rationality or instrumental reason.14 This Weberian sociological anatomy of rationalization however, oscillates, to a certain extent, between rational development and irrational destruction. Since what is at work here is a concept of reason which is essentially instrumental, its inclination is generally oriented towards technological exploits and utilities. From a certain point of view, its cultural and dialectical undertones bring about dreadful, if not disastrous, social pathologies. Imagine for instance the possible effects of rapid technological progress to the environment or of the institutionalization of various organized systems of taxation, finance and labor to individuals and society, or of the bureaucratization of procedures in democratic practices and law as well as the emergence of organized religion to humanity as a whole. Do they really bring about development or human autonomy, or security? Or shall one say that more than development, they bring about destructions?15 In Weber’s terminology, they bring about distortions, disenchantments and dissonance in society. They become steering media which either impoverish or colonize society as a whole or the life-world.16 Paradoxically, while modern culture develops significantly, along this Weberian sociological anatomy of rationalization, it also develops unfortunately, if not perpetuates, social, economic and cultural conditions

organizations” (Dogmatization) of religious beliefs and practices. See Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action: Reason and the Rationalization of Society, Vol. 1 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984), 201- 205. 13 In Theory and Practice, for example, Habermas recasts Marx’ account of the fetishism of labor and how it acquires real use value. See Jürgen Habermas, Theory and Practice (Boston: Beacon Press Books, 1973), 219-222. 14 Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action -1, 234-235. 15 See for example Ophuls’ discussion concerning the four great ills brought about by the development of modern civilization. Cf. Ophuls, Requiem for Modern Politics, 97. 16 See Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Life-world and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason, Volume 2 (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1987), 281.

D. DE VERA 143 that give rise to the loss of traditional values, human autonomy as well as loss of meaning.17 These social pathologies, of course, are generally reflective of prejudices. They arise because of pessimism, if not nihilism, about the failure of enlightenment to keep its promises of redemption. For one, there is a certain lament to the effect that it looks at progress or development only by totally controlling or subjugating nature.18 For another, it fails to recognize the limitations of its own conception of reason—a point traceable for instance from Hegel.19 To a certain degree thus, the process of enlightenment indeed, is pessimistic. Strangely enough, Karl Marx takes this pessimism further. As a pioneer of materialist critique of the history of economy of capitalist societies, Marx characterizes the economy of modernity as one of alienation and objectification.20 Human beings for example are estranged, alienated, objectified and devalued by the relations of productions in various ways— from his or her humanity, from the product of his or her labor and from other human beings. There is for example an intrinsic confrontation, if not contestations, between himself or herself and what he or she produces, owing to this fact of estrangement. What Karl Marx articulates here, essentially, is a “political economy of reification based on alienated labor” in a materialist lens.21 This notion of reification nonetheless is picked up by both Horkheimer and Adorno. In fact, it is a central theme of The Dialectic. What for Marx is an outright “political economy of reification based on alienated labor” is for both Horkheimer and Adorno, a fundamental “genealogy of

17 Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action – 1, 243-244, 346-355, italics in the original. See also Rick Roderick, Habermas and the Foundations of Critical Theory (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986), 34. Roderick in the same way explains: “The relationship of the spread of formal rationality to substantive rationality was, for Weber, highly problematic. On the one hand, capitalist rationalization was a substantive success in productivity and efficiency. On the other hand, traditional values were being lost. Weber’s analysis of this rationalization process led him to regard it as fundamentally irreversible; it would inevitably lead to a loss of freedom and a loss of meaning.” 18 James Schmidt, “Civility, Enlightenment, and Society: Conceptual Confusions and Kantian Remedies,” in The American Political Science Review, 92:2 (June 1998), 420. 19 Schmidt, “Civility,” 420. 20 See for instance Karl Marx’s discussion of alienation in the following works: The Grundrisse, trans. and ed. by David Mclellan (New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1971), Ch. 5; A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr and Company, 1904), Ch. 1; Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, in David McLellan ed., Karl Marx: Selected Writings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), see the section on ‘Alienated Labor’; see also “Alienation and Social Classes,” in Robert Tucker ed., The Marx-Engels Reader (New York and London: W. W. Norton and Company, 1978), 133-135. 21 Schecter, Instrumental Reason, 94.

144 NORMATIVE VALIDITY reification based on alienated nature.”22 They take reification, in contrast to Marx, generally as importantly directed towards further domination and repression as human beings are further atomized, processed and controlled through the fetishisms of commodities—which in turn, define humanity’s value on the basis of use and/or exchange values within the relations of production under capitalism.23 Human beings for instance become slaves and are enslaved consequently by the allure of the eschatological and salvific promises of enlightenment—its mythic or self-destructive character. Habermas on the other hand, though wary of what Marx, Horkheimer and Adorno regard as reification due to instrumental reason, maintains that these social pathologies or pessimistic tendencies may be remedied through a critical reconstruction of Weber’s account of rationalization. In Habermas’ view, the problematic of reason may be reclaimed by expanding the idea of reason or rationality beyond purposive rationality or instrumental reason. What Habermas suggests here, as we shall see in later sections, is to look at the life-world as a fusion of three structurally differentiated components—those of culture, society and personality.24 The integration of these components takes shape in the processes of cultural reproduction, social integration and socialization.25 Each of these processes, he argues, contributes to the maintenance of the life-world as each process may be analyzed in terms of what he calls communicative action, a move beyond Weberian purposive-rational action or instrumental reason.

Positivism, Objectivism, and End of Epistemology

Incidentally, the rationality problematic is also evident in the rise of positivism as a science. The advent of positivism, for example, commencing from August Comte to the twentieth century philosophers of science such as Ernst Mach, Sir Karl Popper, Ernest Nagel, Carl G. Hempel as well as Thomas Kuhn,26 commences a new positive philosophy oriented towards a historical understanding of society. The parameter of which however, is defined by the contents of scientific knowledge.27 Here, the term scientific knowledge

22 Ibid. 23 For a more comprehensive explanation, see Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923-1950 (London: Heinemann, 1973), 260-262. 24 Habermas, Communicative Action – 2, 146. 25 Ibid., 142. 26 See for instance his The Structure of Scientific Revolution (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1962, 1970). 27 The works of Sir Karl Popper and Carl G. Hempel, for instance, provided the foundational principle of modern positivist social research. For Carl Hempel, social and historical events are governed by general laws, much like the natural sciences. They can be

D. DE VERA 145 amounts to the positivist science’s search for “regularity,” “universal principles” or “patterns of events” that govern social phenomena much like the empirical sciences. Oddly enough, Habermas argues that by associating knowledge with the demands of positivist science [scientific knowledge], positivism succeeds in justifying itself as a mode of meaningful inquiry.28 The commitment to this form of scientific knowledge or meaningful inquiry however, generates significant bifurcations at the level of facts and values. On one hand, the idea that only ‘statements derived from observable phenomena are meaningful’ ignores the normative components of the phenomena themselves. It fails for example to consider the role of inter- subjective consensus in understanding a given phenomenon. On the other hand, the idea that ‘positivist science is objective science’ negates the role of values and therefore of subjective judgment, in the determination of facts themselves. In other words, only such ‘facts’ as defined by positivist science, may be brought before the tribunal of reason. This demand, additionally, not only delimits the potent scope of scientific knowledge. It also delimits the extent of what may be properly called knowledge. Thus the production of the contents [concepts, theories, claims] of knowledge must be verified through facts by means of the method it adheres to—the method of observation.29 By restricting inquiry into facts in the construction of theories, positivism then, lays bare the ground for objectivism and objectivity. Apparently, as positivism lays the basis for objectivism, it also marks the “end of the theory of knowledge.”30 Similarly, it marks as well the beginning of “the pseudo-scientific propagation of the cognitive monopoly of science.”31 In this manner, positivism thus renounces a) the possibility of epistemological self-reflection, b) inquiry into the knowing subject, c) validity of judgments made and d) questions concerning the conditions of knowledge,

explained by “antecedent or simultaneous conditions.” These conditions generally presuppose regularity. Here, the term regularity provides the “scientific anticipations” of the processes themselves as though the regularity itself rests on some general laws of explanation. For Sir Karl Popper, the problematic is not so much about the possibility of verifying scientific theories but their falsifiability so that they [theories] can be “inter-subjectively tested.” See Carl G. Hempel, “The Function of General Laws in History,” in The Journal of Philosophy, 39:2 (Jan. 15, 1942), 39; See also Karl Raimund Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (London: Routledge, 1959), 23. 28 Jürgen Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interest (Boston: Beacon Press Books, 1971), 72, 80. 29 In On the Logic of the Social Sciences, for example, Habermas himself remarks explicitly, that the methodology of positivism is subservient to the scientific rules of construction and verification of theories “as if it were a question of the logical connection between symbols.” See Jürgen Habermas, On the Logic of the Social Sciences (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1988), 91. 30 Habermas, Human Interest, 67. 31 Ibid., 71.

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“in the name of rigorous knowledge.”32 In Knowledge and Human Interests for instance, Habermas laments:

Once epistemology has been flattened out to methodology, it loses sight of the constitution of the objects of possible experience; in the same way, a formal science dissociated from transcendental reflection becomes blind to the genesis of rules for the combination of symbols. [ ... ] The positivistic attitude conceals the problems of world constitution. The meaning of knowledge itself becomes irrational—in the name of rigorous knowledge ... Until the present day this objectivism has remained the trademark of a philosophy of science. [ ... ] Transcendental-logical inquiry into the meaning of knowledge is replaced by positivistic inquiry into the meaning of ‘facts’ whose connection is described by theoretical propositions.33

The collapse of epistemology deprives reason of its capacity for critical reflection. On one hand, reason becomes blind to the conditions under which claims to knowledge may be validated. On the other hand, it becomes blind as well to the conditions of [normative] validity and therefore lacks the means to warrant or even justify any claim to knowledge. A theory of knowledge founded on positivist orientation, in Habermas’ terms, must ultimately show whether in fact what it claims to be scientific knowledge is “released from every normative bond.”34 For Habermas, the validity of science or what it claims to be knowledge is and cannot be separated from certain normative commitment.35 In the absence of such a commitment, science shows its lack of means or genuine commitment for a publicly grounded judgment or inter-subjective understanding. Interestingly, as positivism stripped reason of its capacity for critical reflection by reducing claims to knowledge to the methodology of empirical science, it faces the impasse as to how objective scientific knowledge is possible.36

32 Ibid., 68-69. 33 Ibid. 34 See Jürgen Habermas, “The Analytical Theory of Science and Dialectics: A Postscript to the Controversy between Popper and Adorno,” in T. A. Adorno et al., The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology (London: Heinemann, 1976), 149. 35 See Stephen K. White, The Recent Work of Jürgen Habermas: Reason, Justice and Modernity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 26. 36 Roderick, Foundations of Critical Theory, 54.

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Similarly, an epistemology of this sort warrants no framework or principle, as it were, of rational justification.37 For one, it fails to consider, if not ignore altogether, the possibility that there may be underlying human interests in the generation and production of instrumental or purposive rationality. For another, it neglects the possibility that there may be other ways of looking at reality and how such reality may be understood, characterized or described.38 While it may true that positivism provides a seemingly important framework for understanding external phenomena, it does not provide a means of knowing how such phenomena are internally constituted in themselves. On the one side, since positivism adheres strictly to its method of objectification, it deprives the life-world of its vital agencies necessary for social interactions—the inter-connectedness of its agents.39 On the other side, since positivism strictly adheres to its method of abstraction, it separates and consequently invalidates the role of lived experiences in explaining social phenomena. In both ways, positivism reduces the horizon of lived experiences within the life-world as sensory data of “controlled scientific observation and experiment.40 Pace the objectivism of positivism, Habermas nonetheless argues that its limitation as an objective framework of knowledge rests upon its neglect of the very pre-conditions of scientific knowledge. At one point, it remains grounded on what Husserl refers to as a pre-scientific world—the background condition of knowledge. At another point, it has not “freed itself from [the] interests rooted in the primary life-world.41 The underlying idea here is that the very possibility of knowledge requires, inter alia, a background condition which allows for the possibility of experience and consequently of knowledge. In this sense, for knowledge to be possible, its constitution must be given in status quo ante by a background condition as part of the larger ontology of the life-world. Habermas thus considers the life- world as the background condition of knowledge. For him the life-world is the anti-thesis to the objectifications of positivist science. In On the Pragmatics of Social Interaction, Habermas is critically explicit:

Thus we misconstrue the constitution of the world of possible experience if we choose the object domain of scientific knowledge as our paradigm and fail to see that

37 Ibid., 53. 38 Ibid., 54. 39 See Austin Harrington, Hermeneutic Dialogue and Social Science: A Critique of Gadamer and Habermas (London and New York: Routledge, Tayloyr and Francis Group, 2001), 16. 40 Ibid., 13. He remarks for example, that these failures lead to the “suppression of the transcendental framework of inter-subjectively understood meanings that first gave meaning to scientific activity.” 41 Habermas, Human Interest, 305.

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science is anchored in the life-word and that this life- world is the basis of the meaning of scientifically objectified reality. The constitutive theory of empirical knowledge must therefore presuppose a constitutive theory of the life-world. The latter, in turn, comprises a constitutive theory of society (as part of a so-called ontology of the life-world).42

Interestingly, the apparent neglect for example of positivist science to perceive the immanence of human interests in every application of instrumental-functional rationality conceals the potent role of human interests in the constitution of knowledge concerning the life-world and how individuals constitute themselves. For Habermas, understanding the human species and how they constitute themselves in the world cannot simply be made on the basis of the scientistic dogmatism exemplified by positivist science. Rather, they have to be understood through the mediation of interests that propel them to constitute themselves as well as their history. In this sense, human interests are fundamental because they provide the essential pre-conditions of reproduction and self-constitution of the both the life-word and the human species. Thus, by introducing the notion of [cognitive] interests, Habermas frees reason and rationality from the restraints of a purely positivist methodology and consequently saves the life- world from epistemological dissonance. Here, his turn to language and communicative action is essentially primordial.

The Turn to Language and Communicative Action

Habermas’ turn to language and communicative action is driven basically by two things. On one hand, Habermas recognizes the need to investigate the positivist idea of validity since it fails to consider the role of interests in the reproduction and maintenance of the life-world. On the other hand, he recognizes as well the need to investigate the growing technical rationality of modernity given the ironies, paradoxes as well as dissonances that it entails.43 On the whole, what Habermas attempts to show is the fact that the normativity of reason and consequently the validity of scientific theories are dependent essentially upon the underlying [human] interests, which in turn, propel the maintenance and reproduction of an inter-

42 See Jürgen Habermas, On the Pragmatics of Social Interaction: Preliminary Studies in the Theory of Communicative Action, trans. by Barbara Fultner (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2001), 25. 43 David S. Owen, Between Reason and History: Habermas and the Idea of Progress (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002). Owen touches on this question at length.

D. DE VERA 149 subjectively ordered social and cultural life of the life-world.44 Accordingly, Habermas intends to achieve a certain level of understanding which is adequate to understand the relations, if any, between the technological progress advanced by positivist methodology and the “proper shape and direction of social and cultural life.”45 A key element however in Habermas’ turn to language is an understanding of the pragmatics of language that mediates human actions.46 Here, the pragmatics of language is understood as referring to the formal- pragmatic features of linguistically mediated social interaction, the nature of which is characterized by the kind of speech acts used, functions of speech, action-orientation, basic attitudes, validity claims and relations to the world. It is thus a critical move away from positivist epistemology towards a theory of language. Central however to this pragmatics of language is his contrast between strategic and communicative action. At the heart however of this contrast is a distinction between two notions of rationality. Early in The Theory of Communicative Action—1 for example, Habermas proposes a distinction between cognitive-instrumental rationality and communicative rationality.47 Cognitive-instrumental rationality refers to that notion of rationality which directs human actions towards the realization of certain private ends. The realization of such ends is directed either by instrumental rationality, that is, when the action itself is aimed at the material production out of nature by means of one’s labor, or by strategic rationality, that is, when the action itself is directed towards influencing others.48 Communicative rationality on the other, relates to actions that are oriented towards reaching mutual understanding or mutual agreement by means of shared interpretations of the world achieved through the process of communication.49 This distinction, interestingly, is borne out of Habermas’ dissatisfaction with existing theories of society and modernity that employ the concept of rationality.50 The turn to language or to linguistically mediated interactions enables Habermas to explore the general features of social actions and consequently of communicative action. Initially, he makes a distinction between action orientations, i.e., between actions which are oriented toward success and actions which are oriented towards reaching mutual

44 White, Recent Work, 27. 45 Ibid. 46 Habermas, Communicative Action – 1, 333-337. 47 Ibid., 8-22. 48 Ibid., 10-24; see also his Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action (Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1996a), 58. 49 Habermas, Communicative Action – 1, 10. 50 Ibid., xxxix-xl.

150 NORMATIVE VALIDITY understanding.51 Secondly, of those actions oriented towards success, he makes a further distinction between instrumental and strategic actions.52 Habermas considers both actions however as a contrast between non-social and social actions. Finally, of those actions oriented towards reaching understanding, Habermas identifies communicative action. He however considers strategic and communicative actions as types of social actions, of which, the latter takes pre-eminence because of its import to reach mutual understanding.53 Interestingly, Habermas considers the process of reaching mutual understanding as primordial to a critical theory of society. In contrast to strategic action, which is generally oriented towards success, communicative action moves along the axis of a “rationally motivated assent, through adducing reasons” rather than a “de facto accord” imposed from outside, either through coercion or force, or sanction.54 It lays bare the fact of mutual recognition between individuals. As an action oriented towards reaching mutual understanding, communicative action, in this regard, effects an “inter-subjective consensus,” a shared agreement based on mutual convictions supported by reasons. As a shared agreement, it has a binding character between the individuals themselves. In the “Remarks on the Concept of Communicative Action,” for example, Habermas explicitly writes:

In strategic interactions, communicative means too are employed in the sense of a consequence-oriented use of language; here consent formation through the use of language does not function as a mechanism for coordinating action, as it does in communicative action. In communicative action the participants in interaction carry out their action plans under the condition of an agreement reached communicatively, while the coordinated actions themselves retain the character of purposive activity. Purposive activity forms just as much a component of consent-oriented action as of success- oriented action; in both cases the actions imply interventions in the objective world.55

51 Habermas, Moral Consciousness, 133; Communicative Action – 1, 268-288; Pragmatics, 118-120. 52 Habermas, Communicative Action – 1, 285-286. 53 Habermas, Pragmatics, 120. 54 Ibid., see also Communicative Action – 1, 287. 55 See Jürgen Habermas, “Remarks on the Concept of Communicative Action,” in G. Seebas and R.Tuomela eds., Social Action (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1985), 174, italics added.

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An underlying idea here however is Habermas’ reconstruction of the theory of speech-acts. For Habermas, the works of Apel,56 Austin57 and Searle58 among others, not only articulate but also provide the basis for the illocutionary character of communicative action. David Owen for example explains why this is the case. On one hand, the illocutionary character of communicative action demarcates clearly the difference between action orientations, i.e., between actions directed toward success and actions directed toward reaching mutual understanding. On the other hand, the emphasis on such distinction brings forth the peculiar “binding character” of communicative action in the “process” of reaching mutual understanding.59 Precisely for such reasons, Habermas argues that said illocutionary character of communicative action provides the “consensual basis of coordination” and consequently of “mutual agreement” among individuals.60 Habermas nonetheless moves further than by simply incorporating communicative action within Austin’s and Searle’s theory of speech acts. In the course of his reflection for example, Habermas argues that in the process of “reaching mutual understanding,” individuals cannot help but raise, whether implicitly or explicitly, validity claims or claims that must be defended by reasons. For real understanding to occur or for rational consensus to arise, individuals involved in the communication process must mutually recognize, if not satisfy, at least four [4] claims to validity: intelligibility or comprehensibility of what is said, the truth of what is said, the sincerity of the speaker and the normative rightness of what is said.61 In Religion and Rationality for example, Habermas writes:

In communicative action, we orient ourselves toward validity claims that, practically, we can raise only in the context of our languages and of our forms of life, even if

56 See for instance the following works of Apel: Karl Otto Apel: Selected Essays, Towards A Transcendental Semiotics: Volume 1, ed. by Eduardo Mendieta (New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1994), Karl Otto Apel: Selected Essays, Ethics and the Theory of Rationality, Volume II, ed. by Eduardo Mendieta (New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1996). 57 How to do Things with Words: The William James Lectures delivered at Harvard University in 1955 (London, Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1962). 58 See for example the following works: Expression and Meaning: Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), “Meaning and Speech Acts,” in The Philosophical Review, 71:4 (1962), 423-432; “Austin on Locutionary and Illocutionary Acts,” in The Philosophical Review, 77:4 (1968), 405-424. 59 Owen, Reason and History, 39. Owen however provides a third reason. He notes that “a speech act analysis clarifies the rational basis that underlies a communicatively achieved agreement.” 60 Habermas, Communicative Action – 1, 295. 61 Habermas, Pragmatics, 63-64; see also Communicative Action – 1, 328, Moral Consciousness, 58.

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the convertibility [Einlösbarkeit] that we implicitly co- posit points beyond the provinciality of our respective historical standpoints.62

One apparent idea here nonetheless is the inherent goal or telos of the communication process itself, i.e., that it seeks to achieve a rational consensus based on voluntary agreement on the basis of reasons which are found acceptable or reasonable. Habermas thus remarks that the process of reaching mutual understanding is determined by these claims to validity, either through redemption or through refutation, by giving reasons for either assent to or dissent from what is said.63 A central notion here however is the possibility of inter-subjective recognition of immanent obligations in communicative action. Since the latter’s terminus ad quem is to “reach mutual understanding,” its possibility is internally grounded on said validity claims. For example, in every act of communication, it is an immanent obligation that what is communicated must be comprehensible or intelligible to another. The comprehensibility or intelligibility of what is communicated “guarantees” the possibility of mutual understanding. That what is communicated is true is also another immanent obligation. The truth of what is said “warrants” the possibility of shared knowledge. A third immanent obligation is that what is communicated is uttered in “good faith” or that there is no reason to believe that deception is involved. This secures the possibility of “believing in” what is communicated. Finally, what is communicated must be within the bounds of established norms of a given context. This affirms the validity of prevailing norms and suggests that it is right to recognize such norms as valid. The mutual recognition of these so-called immanent obligations not only guarantees the possibility of “mutual agreement” or “mutual understanding.” Habermas for example suggests that said agreement achieves as well three things:64 (a) that the speaker states something true about the world, (b) that the speaker performs a normative speech act within the bounds of an established norm in a given context thereby forging inter- subjective relation and (c) that the speaker expresses sincerely such speech acts from his/her own experiences. To say that an agreement is established is to say that, inter alia, at least two persons [speaker and hearer] agree on (i) the truth of the propositional content of what is said about the world, (ii) the normative rightness of what is said in relation to its context and (iii) the sincerity of what is said based on the subjective experiences of the speaker.

62 See Jürgen Habermas, Religion and Rationality: Essays on Reason, God and Modernity (United Kingdom: Polity Press, 2002), 80. 63 Habermas, Communicative Action – 1, 307-308. 64 Ibid., 307.

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For Habermas this fact of mutual agreement reveals the tripartite function of speech acts in communicative action. Thus he says:

As the medium for achieving understanding, speech acts serve: (a) to establish and renew interpersonal relations, whereby the speaker takes up a relation to something in the world of legitimate (social) orders; (b) to represent (or presuppose) states and events, whereby the speaker takes up a relation to something in the world of existing states of affairs; (c) to manifest experiences—that is, to represent oneself—whereby the speaker takes up a relation to something in the subjective world to which he has privileged access.65

A crucial concept here however is communicative competence.66 Drawn largely from the works of Chomsky67 and the mature Wittgenstein,68 Habermas explains that “communicative competence” is not simply “linguistic ability” or the ability to form comprehensible sentences. More than “linguistic ability,” “communicative competence is the ability to embed a well-formed sentence in relations to reality.”69 Here, the “relations to reality” means that the competent speaker recognizes the immanent obligations embedded in communicative interactions as well as the validity claims that he/she raises, whether explicitly or implicitly. Communicative competence then is an essential pre-condition of mutual understanding. It applies to all participants in communication. The ability to communicate, or the lack of it, for example, determines the conditions that affect the grammar of communication or the direction of language use. Within the life-world for instance, this has a crucial role. Either it generates conditions necessary to achieve success or mutual understanding or it generates conditions detrimental to one or the other, or possibly both. If it leads to success or mutual understanding, communication succeeds in disclosing the immanent rationality it presupposes and the underlying

65 Ibid., 308. 66 Habermas however draws the idea of communicative competence from Lawrence Kohlberg’s account of moral competence. A critical treatment of Kohlberg’s account is evident for example in Habermas’ discussion of the relation between moral consciousness and communicative action in Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action. 67 See for instance Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1965). 68 See The Philosophical Investigations, trans. by G. E. M. Anscombe, P. M. S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte (United Kingdom: Basil Blackwell Ltd.,/ John Wiley and Sons, 2009). 69 Jürgen Habermas, On the Pragmatics of Communication (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1996b), 50.

154 NORMATIVE VALIDITY assumptions why it is crucially important. Initially, it gives rise to coordinated actions (hence successful) whose possibility is dependent on a prior unspoken agreement indicative of strategic rationality. Secondly, it gives rise to mutual understanding or rational consensus (the telos of communication) whose possibility is dependent on an unstated prior agreement indicative of communicative rationality. Thirdly, it also gives rise to possibilities of criticisms, reflections and claims to normative validity insofar as both success and mutual understanding are achieved inter-subjectively. And finally, it gives rise to conditions that delineate rational communication from the irrational one. For example, the fact that success or mutual understanding is achieved suggests that implicitly, the presuppositions of validity claims are mutually recognized, thereby achieving the possibilities of i) mutual understanding and co-ordination and ii) of delineating what may be called into agreement from what is not. The task thus of communicative competence in communication is to bring about either (i) or (ii) or both, within the horizon of the participant’s critical self-reflection. This ensures, eventually, the possibility to take part in what Habermas calls “ideal speech situation.”70 Habermas nonetheless notes that mutual understanding or rational consensus is always the result of a consenting and agreeing rational will. The idea of a rational will carries with it the assumption that it [rational will] is built necessarily into communicative action. Roman Coles for instance remarks that “because participants in normal speech acts must strive toward a consensus about something in the world—an unforced consensus of rational agreement - their utterances take the form of validity claims open to criticism.”71 Participants thus, become self-authenticating sources of normative validity. The possibility of arriving at rational consensus nevertheless, is subject to the assumption that reason is universal. To a greater extent, such universality provides the internal connection between validity claims and their supposed redemption through discourse. The said connection in turn, forms the rational foundation of normative validity, the outline of which is critically articulated in Habermas’ account of Discourse Ethics. In the section that follows, I present, albeit briefly, some fundamental ideas of Discourse Ethics as a program of justification of normative claims to validity.

70 Recall for example the importance of mutually acknowledging the four claims to validity. While comprehensibility may be discerned in language, the validity claims to truth, normative rightness and sincerity have to be redeemed by giving reasons to one’s claims. 71 See Roman Coles, “Communicative Action & Dialogical Ethics: Habermas & Foucault,” in Polity, 25:1 (Autumn 1992), 75.

D. DE VERA 155

Discourse Ethics and Normative Validity

Habermas’ account of Discourse Ethics is essentially articulated through the discourse principle as follows:

Only those norms can claim to be valid that meet (or could meet) with the approval of all affected in their capacity as participants in a practical discourse.72

Conceived broadly, the discourse principle expresses the essential backbone of Habermas’ moral theory.73 As a principle, it remains neutral with respect to morality and law.74 As a point of view however, it articulates basically “the meaning of post-conventional requirements of justification” in a post-metaphysical way of thinking.75 Here, post-metaphysical thinking is understood as that sort of thinking characterized by a critique of Hegelian idealism and a critique of foundationalist philosophy of the subject.76 As a program of justification, though, its primary task is to arrive at “a rule of argumentation for discourses in which moral norms can be justified.”77 Conceived narrowly however, the discourse principle, as Habermas puts it, is “only intended to explain the point of view from which norms of actions can be impartially justified.”78 For example, given certain problematic validity claims, the discourse principle specifies what sort of discourse is appropriate and how such discourse must operate. In problems involving the justification of moral norms for instance, the discourse principle functions as a universalization principle and serves as a rule of argumentation thereby specifying the point of view from which said justification is to be carried out.79 It is to be noted nevertheless that for Habermas the operation of the discourse principle is dependent on what sort of argumentation is carried out.

72 Habermas, Moral Consciousness, 66, 93. 73 See William Rehg, Insight and solidarity: a study in the discourse ethics of Jürgen Habermas (Berkeley and Los Angeles, California: University of California Press, 1994), 30. 74 See Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, trans. by William Rehg (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1996c), 107. 75 Ibid. See also Hugh Baxter, Habermas: The Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy (Standford, California: Standford University Press, 2011), Ch. III. Baxter for instance explains that this sort of justificatory requirement is meant to augment the failure of systems in a rationalized life-world to provide the basis of legitimacy of social norms and institutions. 76 See Jürgen Habermas, Postmetaphysical Thinking: Philosophical Essays, trans. by William Mark Hohengarten (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1992), 39-40. 77 Jürgen Habermas, Justification and Application: Remarks on Discourse Ethics (Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1993), 31-32. 78 Habermas, Facts and Norms, 108-109. 79 Ibid., 109.

156 NORMATIVE VALIDITY

The shift to argumentation or discourse, essentially, brings out the communicative character of communication. For Habermas, discourse is an “exacting type of communication.”80 It is “removed from contexts of experience and action” because it is context-transcending, that is, it transcends the narrow context of specific forms of life.81 In discourse, what is given a purchase are the object of discussion, the freedom of the participants, the force of the better argument as well as the cooperative search for truth.82 Furthermore, discourse, as an “exacting type of communication” is “free of exigent constraints.”83 On one hand, it generalizes principles that ought to be agreed upon. On the other hand, it abstracts what ideas of sort may be rationally accepted by adducing the best reasons. Finally, discourse stretches the presuppositions of context-bound communicative actions beyond the limits of one’s particular form of life.84 In the absence therefore of a communicatively shared interactions, discourse, being such type of communication, provides the ideal condition for reaching mutual understanding. However, discourse or argumentation is not to be confused with a “decision procedure,” instead, it is to be viewed as “a problem solving procedure that generates convictions.”85 This is precisely what is captured by the discourse principle. In a modern pluralistic society, it presents an “ideal procedure of deliberation” or articulates the “normative background condition,” within which conflicting social norms may be evaluated and consequently validated. Since the dynamics of inter-personal relationships, which is built essentially through legitimately ordered relations, is accessible only from a participant’s point of view, the discourse principle, serves as standpoint of impartial justification. Precisely from this standpoint, “only those norms can claim to be valid that meet (or could meet) with the approval [acceptance] of all affected [concerned] in their capacity as participants in a practical discourse.”86 The notion of validity here however points to the reached agreement arrived at cooperatively through adducing reasons. It thus becomes a function of the cooperative search for norms which are worthy of recognition. In much the same way, the idea of acceptance here points to the fact of agreement reached by means of the force of the better argument or by means of the best reasons rather than by means of de facto acceptance or threats of either sanction or

80 Habermas, Moral Consciousness, 202. 81 Habermas, Justification and Application, 146. See also Jürgen Habermas, Legitimation Crisis, trans. by Thomas McCarthy (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1976), 107. 82 Habermas, Legitimation, 107-108. 83 Owen, Reason and History, 44. 84 Habermas, Moral Consciousness, 202. 85 Habermas, Justification and Application, 158. 86 Habermas, Moral Consciousness, 66.

D. DE VERA 157 force. The discourse principle thus, as Habermas puts it, specifies the conditions that valid norms would fulfill if they could be justified.”87 Apparently, the discourse principle becomes notably effective within the limitations of system perspectives in the life-world. Given the fact of pluralism, it is certainly possible that one’s belief in the validity of norms, legitimacy of coercive positive laws, and desirability of values as well as acceptability of certain ways of behavior may diverge due to the multiplicity, if not hybridity, of substantive contents and symbolic representations of norms, laws, values and behavior within the life-world. Since the primary task of communicative action is to bring about stability and integration in the way individuals relate with one another in the life-world, through norms that coordinate social interactions, the scenario of plurality is likely to encumber this possibility, unless said plurality in ipso, accrues to an inter-subjectively shared belief in normativity achieved deliberately through rational consensus by appealing only to those norms that command universal assent or what Habermas himself refers to as norms “worthy of recognition.”88 In Truth and Justification for example, Habermas aptly remarks:

This scenario of a pluralism of worldviews and of a disintegrating communal ethos is meant to remind us how members of modern societies can become aware of the fact that there can be rational dissensus about fundamental standards of value and why they might be faced with the task of making efforts on their own in order to reach an agreement together about norms for living together in justice.89

Within the context of a pluralism of perspectives thus, the question of normative validity arises out of the need to provide a publicly shared basis of social and moral norms within which a legitimately ordered interpersonal relations may be grounded. Habermas argues thus, that the fact of pluralism of perspectives entails a “publicly shared basis of [norms] that may be shared by all” rather than a de facto adherence to them because of threats of sanctions from social institutions or belief “in the authority of an omnipotent god.”90 Apparently, a pluralism of perspectives amplifies the dilemma of determining, whether or not a given norm of action, which is necessary to order interpersonal relations, in fact, is publicly shareable on one hand and

87 See Jürgen Habermas, The Inclusion of the Other: Studies in Political Theory, ed. by Ciara Cronin and Pablo de Greiff (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1998), 42. 88 Jürgen Habermas, Truth and Justification, (Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2005), 258. 89 Ibid., 263. Italics added. 90 Habermas, Inclusion of the Other, 8, 10.

158 NORMATIVE VALIDITY whether or not the duties they impose as well as the practical obligations they generate warrant a publicly shared recognition and adherence to such norms on the other hand. The force of this concern is well expressed by Habermas as follows:

Norms regulate contexts of interaction by imposing practical obligations in a justifiable manner on actors who belong to a shared community. [ ... ] Duties, by contrast, derive their binding force from the validity of norms of interaction that claim to rest on good reasons. We feel obligated only by norms of which we believe that, if called upon to do so, we could explain why they both deserve and admit of recognition on the part of their addressees (and of those affected).91

Habermas nevertheless suggests that discourse principle, to be effective, necessitates a rule of argumentation which specifies how moral norms may be possibly justified. Habermas thus introduces this rule of argumentation through the principle of universalization as follows:

All affected can accept the consequences and the side effects its general observance can be anticipated to have for the satisfaction of everyone’s interests (and these are preferred to those known alternative possibilities for regulation).92

Habermas however explicitly suggests that this principle is meant precisely “to regulate only argumentation.”93 As such a rule, it provides the basis for the logic of rational discourse. At one point, it “fosters hermeneutic sensitivity” since it takes into account a broad spectrum of interests and value-orientations from the participants themselves.94 At another point, it generates “interpretive interventions” into one’s self-understanding through a “generalized reciprocity of perspective taking.”95 Finally, it fosters mutual respect since it enjoins all participants to cooperatively reach mutual understanding or rational consensus.96

91 Ibid., 41. Italics added. 92 Habermas, Moral Consciousness, 65. 93 Ibid., 66. 94 Habermas, Inclusion of the Other, 42. 95 Ibid., 42-3. 96 Ibid.

D. DE VERA 159

The possibility nonetheless of the test for universality is embedded in the presuppositions of discourse itself. Habermas suggests the following as central to discourse:

The four most important presuppositions are (a) publicity and inclusiveness: no one who could make a relevant contribution with regard to a controversial validity claim must be excluded; (b) equal rights to engage in communication: everyone must have the same opportunity to speak to the matter at hand; (c) exclusion of deception and illusion: participants have to mean what they say; and (d) absence of coercion: communication must be free of restrictions that prevent the better argument from being raised or from determining the outcome of the discussion.97

These presuppositions, Habermas argues, serve as the touchstone of the practice of argumentation. Although they are “ideal requirements,” they have practical function in laying the basis for impartial justification. On one hand, the rules guarantee “openness and equal inclusion” of participants. On the other hand, they ensure autonomy and transparency. In more general terms, the rules provide compelling reasons to achieve impartiality of judgment concerning a controversial norm.98 The test for impartiality, however, is achieved, in principle, when all affected reach mutual agreement by means of the force of the better argument. Habermas defines impartiality thus:

True impartiality pertains only to that standpoint from which one can generalize precisely those norms that can count on universal assent because they perceptibly embody an interest common to all affected.99

This impartial grounding, he argues, is entailed by the facility that the discourse gives to the “production and discovery of the norms of well- ordered inter-personal relations.”100 Thus, when participants, whether

97 Habermas, Truth and Justification, 106-107. 98 Ibid. Habermas for example explains further that the rules themselves point to the self-correcting nature of discourse. Since the presuppositions themselves guide the structure of discourse, they also guide the participants in securing good reasons in the process even if they are faced with difficulties in conveying them. 99 Habermas, Moral Consciousness, 65. 100 Habermas, Inclusion of the Other, 38.

160 NORMATIVE VALIDITY willingly or unwillingly, fail to accept the presuppositions of discourse, they are caught essentially in what Habermas refers to as performative contradiction.101 Within the broader spectrum of justification, therefore, both the discourse principle and universalization principle serve as procedural normative principles. On the contrary, it does not necessarily mean that the application of both principles themselves generally leads to mutual agreement or rational consensus. There may be circumstances where agreement is too difficult to achieve or where rational consensus is too far-fetched. In cases like these, Habermas considers the likelihood that what is essentially needed is perhaps a discourse of clarification or self-interpretive discourses rather than discourse of justification,102 although Habermas also suggests the possibility of bargaining, or compromise or negotiations in situations where moral or ethical discourse fails.103 On the whole, what is given a purchase in Habermas’ Discourse Ethics thus is not necessarily normative validity, but the inter-subjectivity of how said validity, in ipso, is arrived at. To a certain extent, what Discourse Ethics considers primarily important is the process of reaching mutual understanding because the process itself articulates the formation of rational and consenting wills, akin to a Kantian kingdom of ends.104 The redemption of validity claims and therefore of the normative character of reason, rests ultimately upon it and it alone.

Concluding reflections: some methodological considerations

The question surrounding the applicability of Habermas’ ideas to problems facing postmodern society and culture is well-noted by Habermas scholars, whether sympathetic or otherwise, as far too difficult than what Habermas himself may have initially imagined. The intellectual rigor that it demands, especially the conditions it requires for the practice of discourse ethics, is more than adequate to wear away, let alone erode, any attempt to pursue such a very complex task. The reasons for this difficulty are diverse. Among the general ones, I mention only two. Initially, there is the problem concerning Habermas’ “empty intellectualism.”105 One motivating reason that underlies this criticism is drawn out from the belief that Habermas’

101 Habermas, Moral Consciousness, 80. 102 Habermas, Justification and Application, 158; Inclusion of the Other, 34. 103 Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, 165-167. 104 See Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, in Mary J. Gregor ed., Practical Philosophy: The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 87, [4:438]. 105 See Michael Pusey, Jürgen Habermas (London and New York: Routledge, 1987), 114.

D. DE VERA 161 attempt of redemption of the idea of rationality has turned to a “self- regarding intellectualism that does not relate to the circumstances of ordinary people.”106 Secondly, there is also the problem concerning the methodological adequacy of Habermas’ ideas.107 A fundamental reason here is due largely to Habermas’ own admission to a brutal [conceptual re-engineering] or critical reconstructions of concepts from various thinkers.108 Uwe Steinhoff for instance, laments that this sort of methodology “does not inspire trust.” He asks: “what systematic value, what justificatory force, one might wonder, is a brutally distorted history of theory supposed to have?”109 Still, there are other specific criticisms hurled against Habermas, only, that I do not wish to go any further. Whether or not they have substantive merits, these criticisms have to be decided by the force of the better argument. It is my suggestion nonetheless that despite said criticisms, Habermas’ ideas have far reaching methodological considerations to the study of Philippine culture and society. Although there are already studies that utilize Habermas’ ideas, they have yet to penetrate the mainstream of Philippine social science research.110 I take thus the following Habermasian ideas as methodologically relevant. Firstly, Habermas’ notion of discourse or argumentation may perhaps serve as an alternative model of understanding disputes, if not a way of resolving it, within the larger context of conflict studies in the social sciences. For one, it takes off from the pragmatic presuppositions of everyday communication, which means that the possibility of understanding conflict is already contained in it rather than derived from some remote sources that are alien to the context itself. For another, it does not always demand argumentation in the literal sense. It also allows for discourse that leads to self- clarification or self-understanding. The hermeneutic sensitivity that is necessary to view the conflict inter-subjectively here is already embedded in the discourse itself [rather than imposed from outside]. The case of Mideo Cruz’s Politeismo, for example, may have been otherwise resolved or understood better, through a discourse of clarification,

106 Ibid., 115. 107 See Uwe Steinhoff, The Philosophy of Jürgen Habermas: A Critical Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 241. 108 In Autonomy and Solidarity for example, Habermas confesses: “I think I make the foreign tongues my own in a rather brutal manner, from a hermeneutic point of view. Even when I quote a good deal and take over other terminologies I am clearly aware that my use of them often has little to do with the authors’ original meaning.” Jürgen Habermas, Autonomy and Solidarity. Autonomy and Solidarity: Interviews with Jürgen Habermas (London and New York. Verso, 1992), 128. 109 Steinhoff, The Philosophy of Habermas, 242. 110 Agustin Rodriguez’ Governing the Other: Exploring the Discourse of Democracy in a Multi-verse of Reason and Karl Gaspar’s Manobo Dreams in Arakan: A People’s Struggle to Keep their Homeland for example are cases in point.

162 NORMATIVE VALIDITY if not through discourse itself.111 Given that the art exhibit touches on a number of central issues, especially those that relate to religion, law and rights, an appeal to a discourse of clarification may have been crucial to the juxtaposition of the said issues, if not the questions attached to it. The problem here of course is not exhausted simply by the question concerning the nature of the art in Politeismo. But, it cannot be brusquely concluded either as a blasphemous art offensive to religion.112 The crucial issue here, one may say, is the degree of toleration we, as a people, are willing to consent to (toleration is crucial since it thrives only on conditions when one is truly and deeply offended by something).113 Secondly, Habermas’ emphatic claim on inter-subjectivity may perhaps bridge the apparent dichotomy inherent between the objectivity of quantitative methodology and subjectivity of qualitative methodology and thus provide an inter-subjective understanding of social reality and human relationships. An emphasis on the role of inter-subjectivity may, in the long run, provide a more coherent, if not broader, basis of interpretation and understanding of social reality. At one point, an interpretation or an understanding grounded on inter-subjectivity cuts across quantitative generalizations derived from random sampling. At another point, an understanding of social reality on the basis of inter-subjective interpretation is much more grounded on lived experiences than the explanatory theory of qualitative methodology. A shift thus to inter-subjectivity is more encompassing, if not more coherent and consistent, than the selected propositional, conceptual and predictive categories of meanings of both quantitative and qualitative methodologies. The shift however entails a more

111 Similar controversies are also present for example in the U.S. Both Robert Mapplethorpe and Andres Serrano for example have also become causes célèbres. Robert Mapplethorpe’s homoeroticism and Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ both sparked national controversies. I thank David Ingram for this valuable information. (Personal Communication [Ingram’s reply to De Vera], July 31, 2013) 112 While Prof. Randy David is correct to point out that “art cannot hope to secure its autonomy by free-riding on the legal system,” it makes perfectly good sense to suppose as well that free-riding on the legal system is the first step towards securing that autonomy in a society that is highly dominated by religion. See David, Randy, “When Art irritates Religion,” in Philippine Daily Inquirer, (July 31, 2011), . 113 David Ingram nonetheless shares an opinion about it in a correspondence with him. He says: “In The Theory of Communicative Action, Habermas also says that the rationality of artistic taste is partly conditioned by cultural standards. Legally speaking, Habermas acknowledges that "legal" - specifically juridical - discourses are partly constrained by prior legal precedents; at least they must draw their reasons from the whole texture of the law. Legislative discourses, however, are only constrained by constitutional basics and must be more free-wheeling. It’s a matter for the people, working through their democratic channels, representatives, public opinion, etc. to decide what limits, if any, should apply.” (Personal Communication [Ingram’s reply to de Vera], July 31, 2013], italics added).

D. DE VERA 163 hermeneutic sensitivity to the heterogeneity of value orientations and complexity of social reality and human relationships. An interesting yet challenging case here for instance may be drawn from the century old conflict in Mindanao. To an extreme case, it does not only articulate an inherited “colonial bias against non-Christians,” but also expresses a highly bifurcated social order—between “a dominant [Christian] majority and a belligerent [Muslim] minority.”114 Whereas it may be true for example that there are various mechanisms designed primarily to end the conflict, from the Tripoli Agreement in 1976 to the Manila Agreement in 1996, the highly entrenched cross-cultural differences between them [Christians and Muslims], prove totally sufficient to erode unfortunately what is otherwise understood as the “road to peace and reconciliation” in the south. Finally, Habermas’ notion of validity may perhaps be more useful in assessing and evaluating the acceptance or rejection of generalizations, theoretical constructs and conceptual categories derived from both quantitative and qualitative researches rather than the traditional formula of validity evident in them, such as those of measurement validity (internal or external), contextual validity and dialogic validity. Since the very nature of research is to arrive at an honest and truthful description of social reality, a shift perhaps to a more discursive notion of validity, a la Habermas’ may contribute to the further growth of understanding Philippine social reality as a whole.

Department of Social Sciences, Central Luzon State University, Philippines

References

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114 See Samuel K. Tan, “History of the Mindanao Problem,” in Amina Rasul ed., The Road to Peace and Reconcilliation: Muslim Perspective on the Mindanao Conflict (Makati City: AIM Policy Center, 2003), 6; see also Santanina Rasul, “Muslims in the Philippines or Filipino Muslims?’ in ibid., 23.

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KRITIKE VOLUME EIGHT NUMBER TWO (DECEMBER 2014) 167-192

Article

Justice as the End of Politics: A Critical Discourse

Olusegun Steven Samuel

Abstract: This paper explores the issue of justice. It is hypothesized that social development can hardly be realized unless the idea of justice is well theorized and practiced. To achieve this, a holistic theory of justice is needed. Thus, it is stressed that a vivid account of the nature of man, the idea of a good life and institutional arrangements are fundamental in a discourse on justice. The paper holds that the Yoruba’s conception of man/person is highly effective to developing a promising theory of justice. Therefore, shades of justice are discussed with the hope to show that politics cannot take shape without a preconceived notion of justice. Fairness, equality, freedom, impartiality and social responsibility are instances of themes on politics that have their genealogy in a theory of justice. As a consequence of this, we argue that a theory of justice must precede a theory of social development. For the crisis confronting a culture or society to be reasonably addressed, the paper argues that local ideas of justice must conform to the universal tenets of justice. This universality of justice, as distinct from a particularized kind, is defended using a non-harm criterion. Hence, we conclude that justice provides the basis for the protection of human right, dignity and worth.

Keywords: Justice, Yoruba, non-harm, social development

Introduction

he problems of contemporary societies are many-sided. These problems include social, political, economic and environmental ones. T These issues are sometimes interwoven in a way that one problem cannot be practically disconnected from the others. Thus, any discourse that intends to grapple with these societal problems must be holistic. This is necessary because these challenges cannot be fully resolved unless every part of the said problems has been carefully diagnosed and addressed. In this paper, therefore, we seem not to be advancing a piecemeal solution to the

168 JUSTICE AS THE END OF POLITICS problem of politics; instead, we are diagnosing politics so as to account for its goals and how these aims can be adequately realized. To this end, we are interested in discussing the end of politics. It is our concern here to raise anew the question: what is the end of politics? In this respect, scholars have postulated hundreds of theses as responses to the above question. In this piece, we shall also suggest an answer to it. Suffice it to say at the outset then that the ultimate problem of politics is that of justice, and this is pursued (in politics) with the sole aim to achieve social development. In this paper, therefore, we shall advance the position that only a holistic theory of justice can provide the basis for social development. Also, we would have to defend our claim that every discourse on politics is centred on justice. This would necessitate us to examine shades of justice. However, to create a better platform for the exploration of the nature of justices; it seems apposite to discuss the nature of man, the yardstick of an ideal life and social institutions. To achieve the above intents, this paper is structured into three segments. The first section—‘The Nature of Man and the Ideal Society: Some Comments’—discusses theories on human nature and ideal society. The institutional arrangements that emanate from theorists’ worldviews are also considered. In this regard, the views of Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Hobbes and Karl Marx are discussed as well as critiqued. We then add the Yoruba idea of man/person. The second section entitled—‘Understanding Justice: A Holistic Approach’—explores the idea of justice as fairness, equality, freedom, distributions of needs and dues, impartiality, amongst other perspectives. This part of the paper connects the meanings of justice to different conceptions of man, the idea of a good life and social institutions essential for effectuating justice in practice. To make our point clearer, we discuss Plato, Aristotle, John Rawls, I. M. Young, and Walzer’s conceptions of justice and situate these in the context of human nature, ideal life and social institutions discussed in the first segment. The third and final section entitled—‘Justice as the End of Politics: A Critical Discourse’—explores the correlation between a just society and social development. It is in this section that our thesis is defended.

The Nature of Man and the Ideal Society: Some Comments

Theory of human nature is a fundamental part of a theory of justice and politics. Suffice it to note that there are numerous theories of human nature that have been advanced. Today, we have psychological, biological, sociological, economic or philosophical arguments for how man behaves. In fact, different theories of human nature lead to different accounts of justice as well as different political philosophies on how social development can be

O. SAMUEL 169 realized. In spite of this, there is a universal assumption that theorists usually make. This assumption is simply that man is a rational being. Since the time of Plato to the present, there is still a strong belief that man is a rational animal and that this rationality distinguishes man from lower animals. Although there are different paradigms of rationality, yet scholars take as rational, someone who is free, responsible and capable of desire and choice. Plato, for instance, places the most rational man over those who are less rational, but courageous and easily propel by needs. From Platonic standpoints, thus, a well-ordered society would turn out to be one that arises from the guardianship of the most rational man—the best man. Let us now discuss some theories of man, ideal state and institutional arrangements that could bring about a just order as some theorists have theorized. Here, we shall attempt a sketch of Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes and Marx’s accounts. Plato devotes his book The Republic to the issue of politics and in doing this, the nature of man, ideal state and institutional framework that can ensure just order is clearly discussed. Plato nurses the idea that man’s faculties can be divided into three parts, namely: rational (nous), courageous (thumos) and appetitive (epithumia). As a rational being, man, for Plato, has two other faculties which are his thumos and epithumia. It is man’s cognitive ability that places him over other lower animals, but not his strength (courageous element) or his desire (appetitive element). Thus, a balanced man is someone who can control his strength and desires through his reason. As Chiedozie Okoro puts it, “Plato for instance is of the view that justice, fair play and good conduct obtain in the society only as it has been so instituted in the psyche (mind) of the individual.”1 Moreover, corresponding to aforementioned traits in men are the roles which individuals are to play in the society as rulers, soldiers and artisans, respectively. Since each individual has a peculiar psyche or trait, each ought to stay where she is best fitted without undue interference in areas she has less capacity to function effectively. For society to be better or peaceful those who are rational (as well as morally upright) are to rule. Plato writes:

... the rulers of the city will be chosen—the best of the older men, selected for their devotion to the state by various tests and carefully groomed for office. They will be assisted by the lower class guardians, the auxiliaries or soldiers.2

1 C. Okoro, “Social Psychology,” in Philosophical Psychology: Selected Readings, ed. by Godwin Azenabor (Lagos: Malthouse Press Ltd, 2001), 31. 2 Plato, The Republic, in Great Dialogues of Plato, trans. W.H.D. Rouse, ed. by Eric H. Warmington & Philip G. Rouse (New York: Penguin Group, 1956), 120.

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Plato, then thinks that it is inappropriate to discuss the nature of justice without doing so in connection with the idea of how man ought to live a just life. Men must be morally upright and they must agree to establish a political order where property ownership is to be permitted to the class of the artisans only. Rulers, therefore, would have no right to private estate in Plato’s communism for them not to be partial. To our mind, inasmuch as Plato’s idea of reason, morality and undue interference are vital to the discourse of justice, it is nonetheless inadequate. There are numerous challenges to Plato’s idea of man and his theory of an ideal society. Plato’s view that only philosophers are to rule is unfair, and this may give rise to inequality and marginalization since this has altered the presupposition that all men are rational animals. Moreover, if it is the nature of humans to be rational, then one needs to appraise the standard of rationality in Plato’s theory of leadership. Is science, morality, practicality of one’s idea, rhetoric or logic the paradigm of rationality in Plato’s philosophy? Let us suppose that two people are to be compared, say—‘A’ and ‘B.’ Let us suppose further that ‘A’ is a morally upright person who also has knowledge of logic as well, and ‘B’ is morally upright but has knowledge of geometry instead. The question is, then, by Plato’s nous parameter, how do we choose the philosopher king? If logic is more favoured than geometry by Plato or is rated above other intellectual areas or skills, then those who are interested in logic would most likely be rulers over those who have knowledge of geometry. But is it possible to abstract logic from geometry or mathematics? Mathematics, to be sure, operates on certain logical (induction or deduction) reasoning. Thus, it turns out that there is to be faced in Plato’s paradigm of rationality, a problem of unfairness in the process of choosing the most rational leader. As we have demonstrated, there are challenges as to how the best man would be chosen. Until the process of choosing the leaders is fair, the problem of injustice in politics cannot be resolved. Should this problem persist, then, other problems are permissible by implication. Like Plato, Aristotle considers the nature of man to situate in proper context his version of justice and the idea of a good life. Emphasis of Plato, as we have shown, is how the best man can be selected to rule so that justice can be pursued. For Aristotle, it is better to develop good laws that would ensure that all men are made to comply with it. In this case, a law is what is needed rather than best ruler theory. This, nonetheless, requires that we understand why there is a need for a law. This need, for Aristotle, requires further that a discourse on man is made. Thus, he describes man as a political animal. Aristotle maintains that “... for man is by nature a social being.”3 What this

3 Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics, trans. by J.A.K. Thomson (London: Penguin Books Ltd, 1976), 74.

O. SAMUEL 171 suggests is that man is intended by nature to live in a political society; not doing this would render man nothing but a beast or a god. Man is a rational animal, yet Aristotle opines that without law to limit his action he could be the worst creature on earth. Unrestrained freedom, then, has the tendency to bring about a chaotic state of affairs. Hence, he thinks that an ideal society is one that can control the excesses of man for the sake of the community.’ For instance, he writes:

Every state is a community of some kind, and every community is established with a view to some good; for mankind always act in order to obtain that which they think good. But, if all communities aim at some good, the state or political community, which is the highest of all, and which embraces all the rest, aims at good in a greater degree than any other, and at the highest good.4

This highest good is happiness, and society should aim at promoting it even if an individual’s happiness is violated. Aristotle avers,

For even if the good of the community coincides with that of the individual, it is clearly a greater and more perfect thing to achieve and preserve that of a community, for while it is desirable to secure what is good in the case of an individual, to do so in the case of a people or a state is something finer and more sublime.5

He believes that law can be instrumental to such a course. It is apposite to say that there are certain merits in favour of this postulate. The fact that Aristotle recommends that man ought to promote the happiness of others as well as live the life of the mean is considerable. The life of the mean presupposes that man should not live an extreme life—excess of riches or poverty. However, there are many limitations to his position as well. For instance, there is a contending issue today that law, which may be used to pursue the good life may be tyrannical or used unjustly against the minority in a society. Also, happiness sought through law may turn out to be ones that suit the law-giver or rulers. Inasmuch as a good law is highly important to curb the excesses of man, one cannot downplay Plato’s theory of the best man. This is so because only a rational and morally upright person can ensure that laws are used for a just cause. In fact, the issue whether the state or political

4 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, in Great Books of the Western World, ed. by Robert Maynard, Vol. II (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1952), 1252a: 445. 5 Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics, trans. by Thomson, 64.

172 JUSTICE AS THE END OF POLITICS community can promote the highest happiness for all through law as indicated by Aristotle should not be accepted at its face value. On his part, Thomas Hobbes, in his masterpiece—Leviathan, describes man as natural egoist. Like Plato and Aristotle, Hobbes subscribes to the view that man is a rational being; however, Hobbes adds that this rationality is self-directed. In other words, man is self-interested, self-seeking and biased. Man, to Hobbes, calls ‘good’ what pleases him or what works to his advantage and ‘evil’ as what is not amenable to his desires. This moral psychology is what Hobbes thinks defines who man is. That is, man is largely driven by desire and aversion. Hobbes maintains that,

These simple Passion called Appetite, Desire, Love, Aversion, Hate, Joy, and Grief, have their names for diverse considerations diversified. As first, when they one succeed another, they are diversely called the opinion men have of the likelihood of attaining what they desire. Secondly, from the object loved or hated. Thirdly, from the consideration of many of them together ... .”6

Having argued that desire and aversion are the determinants of human actions, he says that society would be nasty, brutish and chaotic if lives are governed without strong leader(s) and law(s) since all men would be pursuing their interests which, when true to the logic of their nature, would bring one man in conflict with another man. Thus, Hobbes paints a hypothetical condition to illustrate what society would turn out to be if law and government are non-existent. He, then, shows how rational humans used their reasons to calculate their gains over less rational ones. He also shows that weaker men teamed up with others to put out of life more rational and even stronger people. The point that emanates from Hobbes’ analysis of the condition of man in the state of nature is that law ought to define what is just, but this is lacking in the state of nature of governmental institution that ought to balance and check people’s action, and more fundamentally, goods are not adequately distributed among men since some take more than others. To address this crisis, Hobbes advances that politics requires a strong leader—the leviathan. Politics should, therefore, be organized on a monarchical platform where the leader, after a social contract is entered by all, is deposited with absolute power to legislate

6 T. Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. by C.B. Macpherson (London: Penguin Books, 1968), 122.

O. SAMUEL 173 what the ideal life is. The ideal society is one in which all conflicting desires are balanced through absolute laws from an absolute authority. There is a need to say that Hobbes’ analysis (although not totally correct about man’s nature) is somewhat true about man. Here, one can see that desire (interest or needs) that Plato talks loosely about could even influence the decision of Plato’s best man or Aristotle’s legal system. To our mind, if it can be proved in praxis that all humans are egoists, then even rational decisions and laws would arise from men’s desires. So in a somewhat loose sense, one may argue that rationality is controlled by man’s interest. Interest, in this case, is conditioned by man’s needs. This deterministic connection between reason and needs have been advanced by David Hume and Karl Marx. But, before we discuss Marx’s conception of man, it is vital to assert that Hobbes’ theory should not be overrated. We grant that Plato’s best man may sometimes act irrationally or sometimes act to promote his interest as against the interest of his competitors, but this does not give support to Hobbes’ claim that all men are naturally egoistic. Egoists in some situations have also acted in some way to promote the interest of others. Moreover, the fact that men, in Hobbes’ state of nature, enjoy relative peace and since they know that a social contract would inform a better life than they have so-enjoyed during the time of war largely indicate that men could differentiate between good and bad way of life. But Hobbes has erroneously supposed that men in the state of nature lack the idea of a good life, justice or morality. Accordingly, we argued instead that it is only those who have the knowledge of good and evil, right and wrong, who can legislate a law; otherwise, they would have nothing to reject as unfair, impartial or illegal. This is a position that Hobbes fails to note. To end this section, let us consider Karl Marx’s idea of man and his postulate of an ideal society. Marx’s conception is important to be mirrored in this paper because contemporary scholars have written varieties of theses on justice by appealing to Marx’s critique of capitalism and democracy. To start with, Marx’s idea of man is somewhat dissimilar to the views of theorists we have discussed above, but his view is not totally disconnected from our subject matter. He sees man as a social being. As a social animal, man is engaged in production and exchange in order to satisfy his basic needs. However, it turns out that man hardly achieves this aim. What man experiences instead is hardship. In fact, Marx describes the condition of man as that of alienated labour. Man, in a capitalist society for instance, is an alienated being because he is forced to work for the capitalist, yet he has no ownership right to the factors of production. Marx writes, “The man who possesses no other property than his labour must, in all conditions of society and culture, be the slave of other men, who have made themselves the owners of the material conditions of production. He can work only with their

174 JUSTICE AS THE END OF POLITICS permission, hence, live only on their permission.”7 In addition to this, Marx argues that the fruit of production is not evenly distributed. The capitalist takes more than they have invested, whereas the workers (the majority) go home with starvation wages. To Marx, in a capitalist state “... labour does not appear as end in itself but as the servant of the wage.”8 Again, he writes:

The value, that is, the quantity of labour which the workmen add to the material, falls rather into two parts. One pays their wages or is paid for through their wages. By this transaction the workmen give in return only much labour as they have received in the form of wages. The other part forms the profit of the capitalist, that is, it is quantity of labour which he sells without having paid for.9

Thus, the workers are not truly free in the capitalist or democratic society since few people (the class of the rulers) dominate the masses (the ruled). He, therefore, argues for a socialist or communism system where goods are distributed according to needs rather than by competition. Communism, for Marx, is the riddled of history solved and the return of freedom to man. The ideal society, for Marx, is one where alienation, exploitation and property relation are totally removed. Like other theories of human nature, this theory has its merits and demerits. One must grant that a society where the citizens are so-divided in such a way that a group is dominating other groups, development can hardly be realized. As Marx has indeed shown, exploitation, alienation and inequality in the distribution of economic resources may hamper social development. To this end, we argue that untrimmed capitalism has tendency to alter human development as well as freedom. However, this is not to say that every criticism levelled against capitalism by Marx is to be accepted on its face value. In fact, we are skeptical that development would emerge immediately when communism is adopted as Marx claimed. It seems true that uneven distribution of private property is the cause of society’s ills; however, this does not guarantee that development would come if property right is removed. We shall show later why we think that these positions are inaccurate. Again, Marxist view that revolution would end alienation seems weak. It is assumed that after revolution is carried out, then development

7 K. Marx, Selected Works, Vol. 1 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1977), 228. 8 K. Marx, “Alienated Man,” in Philosophy for A New Generation, ed. by A.K. Bierman & James A. Gould, 2nd ed. (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1973), 537. 9 K. Marx, Capital: Theories of Surplus Value, Vol. IV (Moscow: Progress Press, 1963), 78.

O. SAMUEL 175 would emerge at the dawn of communism. To our mind, the cost of so-doing would disturb the developmental aspiration that necessitates it. We, therefore, argue that a cogent solution to the problem of politics should be looked up from its major intent—the issue of justice. This, then, shall be our focus in the next section. Let us now turn our attention to the Yoruba idea of man/person. The Yoruba (of Nigeria) idea of man/person needs to be discussed here because it has import to a holistic account of justice. To them, man is a product of creation. The process begins from Obatala who makes an amo (a clay) in the shape of a status, then to Olodumare, who gives emi to the clay (the life giving entity, soul), then finally to Ajala’s court where man takes his ori (destiny). The metaphysical substances ara (body), emi (soul) and ori (destiny) define someone as being a man. These, however, do not make man a rational being. Man only becomes rational after having developed traits that are capable of being put to use for the benefit of the community he belongs. Man, as perceived by the Yoruba, is therefore distinct from a person in that only a person can be altruistic, rational and law abiding. Man, in this sense, is someone that has emi (soul), ara (body) and ori (destiny). Having these characteristics only define that one is a human being, but it does not constitute the fact that one is rational, moral or law-abiding. Thus, a dichotomy is made between manness and personhood in various proverbs such as this okunrin yi ki ma a se eniyan (meaning, this man is not a person). The defining characteristics of being a person include the fact that he is a creation of God with the ability to develop his rational faculty, dignity and worth. That is, man is capable of being rational, moral, altruistic, law abiding and cooperative, but he ought to choose to be so, forced to comply or train. Since not everyone has these qualities altogether, the Yoruba believe that human laws are needed to correct the ills that man can bring upon man and person alike. These laws, to be sure, are not meant to put the man who breaches the laws out of life; rather, they are meant to deter or reform the man who harms others. For them, omoburuku maa ni ojo ti re (meaning, an unjust man may be useful to the society tomorrow). As Segun Gbadegesin puts it,

Children are appreciated for what they are. Though they are encouraged to be the best they could be, when, for some reason, they do not conform, they are not thrown out because, as they say, A ki fi omo buruku fun e e kun pa je (we do not throw a child to the tiger just because he/sher is bad).10

10 S. Gbadegesin, “Individuality, Community, and the Moral Order,” in The African Philosophy Reader, ed. by P.H Coetzee and A.P.J Roux (London, Routledge, 1998), 305.

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Then, character training is, therefore, advanced by the Yoruba as something that is crucial to be developed so that people could be helped to develop the necessary ideals for the promotion of community aspirations. As Ademola K. Fayemi observes:

... the absence of proper culture, moral probity, and integrity devalues the personhood of a person to the level of just ordinary things—eniyan lasan, lasan or animal—eranko. Thus, such a being or an individual loses the personhood of being a member of society which being human being demands. In other words, such a person would not be deemed fit, for confidence, trust or responsibility; and would not pass the gamut of being qualified as omoluabi in a Yoruba cultural context.11

The point, then, is that rationality, if it is to be taken seriously, entails the ability to make choices that will enhance the interest of oneself as well as others. Rationality, to the Yoruba, is not restricted to having the capacity to think, make decision or reflect. The issue of self-interestedness is frowned upon. Thus, the Yoruba idea of iwa (character) and omoluabi (well-behaved humans) are germane to theory of justice if we are to resolve problems identified above because these concepts go deeper into the substance of the issue of social development. To sum up this section, it is therefore important to say that someone that is irrational today may act rationally tomorrow and vice versa. From the Yoruba’s position, one must first be a man, for him to be a person. But, human society has a cluster of both. Hence, man can be both egoistic and altruistic. Only an altruistic person is capable of ruling the society in such a way that fairness is promoted. Thus, only a person (rather than man) is capable of acting in such a way that community interest and justice can be realized. Experiences have shown that man is self-interested, yet experience has not failed to show that a person is also a being unto others. The transition from man to person, or vice versa, points out that change is inevitable and human nature is variable. The need for law and character development is, therefore, fundamental. Moreover, man cannot be law abiding unless he first becomes a person, which entails that he becomes rational and moral. Thus, the assumption that all men are rational requires to be replaced by the statement ‘all persons are rational.’ For instance, law is used to deter and reform

11 A.K. Fayemi, “Human Personality and the Yoruba Worldview: An Ethico- Sociological Interpretation,” in The Journal of Pan African Studies, 2:9 (2009), 171.

O. SAMUEL 177 criminals; nevertheless, some people still commit crimes. Aside from having law, therefore, character training is highly significant since leaders are products of nurture rather than nature. Thus, this presupposes that leaders (persons) are not born but made. In other words, only men are born. Given the above, it is right to say that man is someone who could use law to deprive others of their basic needs. So adhering to the Yoruba idea of person, only those who have learned, in practice, how to wuwa (behave) in such a way that others are cared for can rule justly. This suggests, then, that the Yoruba’s conception of person can enhance a holistic discourse on justice. Let us now turn to the issue of justice.

Understanding Justice: A Holistic Approach

The issue of justice is a complex one. It is so because scholars have been able to defend arguments that could be incorporated into its boundary. As more theories are advanced, the scope of justice becomes enlarged. This enlargement is needed to be able to cope with issues confronting society in recent times. To this end, there are theories of justice such as justice as fairness, equality, impartiality, liberty, right and respect for the rule of law, distribution of burdens and benefit, promotion of common good, promotion of happiness for the greatest number and compensation. In fact, there are other uses to which the term is being put. We shall add to this, a theory of justice that is based on the principle of non-harm. To attain a holistic theory of justice, then, a critical analysis of these shades of justice would be attempted. What, then, is justice? Or how is justice to be construed? There is no gainsaying that almost all philosophies on politics are centered on the theme—‘justice.’ Although this does not have an explicit content in the works of some philosophers and social researchers alike, it would be demonstrated in this piece to be so. But let us first attempt a sketch of the idea of justice from the worldviews of Plato, Aristotle, Rawls, Young, Mill, Bentham and Walzer. Our selection of these theorists’ ideas does not suggest that these theorists are the most important scholars that have written on the issue of justice. Rather, there are other notable theorists, whose views we cannot discuss here due to the length of this paper. So these selected theorists are probably the most referred to by contemporary writers. To begin with, Plato’s theory of justice cannot be conceived without a vivid picture of his nature of man that we have discussed above. Let us suppose that we have three traits and three positions to be occupied. Plato is defending the view that each person with a given trait should stay where she is best fitted. He opines that, “Justice is therefore the due arrangement of these three elements in their proper stations in the soul ... ” in such a way that “each class does the work for which it is fitted without presuming upon the

178 JUSTICE AS THE END OF POLITICS preserves of the others.”12 Justice, then, for Plato, instigates that it is unfair to go beyond one’s limit. Thus, to be consistent with Plato’s idea of justice, men then are not equal. The practical implication of this is that, those who cannot perform certain tasks but who forced themselves to do so are likely not to perform very well in it unlike those who have the required skills for it. The implication is that if one does what she cannot, there is tendency that people may be harmed by her action. For instance, possibly, a leader without rational or legal skills would impose or enact laws that have tendency to unfairly harm the interest of others. Hence, Plato’s idea of justice seems valuable in this light although it does not exhaust the uses to which the term could be rendered. It has its own pitfalls as well. To add to this, Aristotle describes justice in various ways. First, he sees justice as fairness. By this conception, Aristotle posits that justice entails treating equals equally and unequals unequally. What this suggests is that justice demands that we identify the differences among men and, as such, treats people differently. Such differential treatments lead to justice so long as it does not embrace partial inequality. Let us suppose that A and B are equal. If they are to benefit from social goods to be provided freely by the state, then by Aristotle’s principle, they ought to be treated equally; otherwise, such distributive process would be unjust. Aristotle discusses two types of justice, namely—distributive and rectificatory justice. Distributive justice deals with how goods, resources and money are shared among people in a society in such a way that each is given her due (that is, what one ought to take), whereas rectificatory justice is used to correct someone who has acted unfairly to others. The latter, to be sure, is not intended to harm the person who has wronged another but to ensure that such a person does not benefit from the inequality he has done to others. Rectificatory justice deals with the inequality in transaction and does not accept the motive why the doer carries out the injustice. In this case, an action is bad because it is based on inequality of some sort rather than on its consequences or intention. In this regard, Aristotle reiterates:

For it makes no difference whether a good man has defrauded a bad man, nor whether it is a good or a bad man that has committed adultery; the law looks only to the distinctive character of the injury, and treats the parties as equal, if one is in the wrong and the other is being wronged, and if one inflicted injury and the other has received it. Therefore, this kind of injustice being an inequality, the judge tries to equalize it; for in the case

12 Plato. The Republic, 120.

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also in which one has received and the other has inflicted a wound, or one has slain and the other been slain, the suffering and the action have been unequally distributed; but the judge tries to equalize by means of the penalty, taking away from the gain of the assailant. For the term ‘gain’ is applied generally to such cases, even if it be not a term appropriate to certain cases, e.g., to the person who inflicts a wound—and ‘loss’ to the sufferer; at all events when the suffering has been estimated, the one is called loss and the other gain.13

From the above, it seems clear that inequality of all kinds (except it is a natural kind) cannot be justified. To connect this to the nature of man, someone that exploits others has, by this theory, committed an unjust act. He has created an undue situation for the realization of others’ survival. In a similar token, it would be wrong to claim, as Marx does, that violent revolution is inevitable to actualize human freedom. This suggests that retaliation or revenge is advanced by Marx, rather than rectificatory justice argued for by Aristotle. Of course, we do not think that it is logical to seek for justice on the one hand, and adopt an unjust framework for its realization on the other hand. The Marxist approach has tendency to inflict harm on those that do not participate in the revolution. Justice cannot accept unjust method—the Marxist revolution. However, we need to argue also that Aristotle’s idea of justice is problematic like that of Plato. There is an issue as to how we should define those that are equal and those that are unequal. What should the criteria be? Should it be Platonic reason, strength or appetitive? Or should it be Hobbes’ notion of interest? Or should it be age, taste or fashion? If one of these is favoured, we suspect that there would be injustices in the distribution of dues because it would be an imposition of a criterion reached by the desire of some people. And if we are to pursue Aristotle’s theory of law to its logical conclusion, it is highly probable that the rulers’ interest would be the defining parameter. Hence, Thrasymachus’ idea of justice as ‘might is right’ would therefore be the overriding principle. It seems crucial, therefore, that another theory of justice is considered. In his popular text A Theory of Justice, John Rawls presents a theory of justice that appeals to a social contract theory. It cannot be overemphasized that Hobbes was the first theorist to appeal to a hypothetical theory of a state of nature. In a somewhat similar version, Rawls discusses theory of justice as fairness which appeals to an original position. In this state, men were

13 Aristotle, The Nichomachean Ethics, in The Great Books, 1132a: 379.

180 JUSTICE AS THE END OF POLITICS assumed to be covered with a veil of ignorance. So considered, they lack knowledge of what their future situations would be upon entering a political society. Since they do not know whether they may be poor or rich, Rawls posits that it is easy to imagine that if these people were to make law, they would ensure that it is fair so that no one who be favoured or disfavoured by the law that emanated from their deliberations. The point here is that justice, to Rawls, entails fairness. In addition to fairness, Rawls says that the procedure of deciding what the law would be makes them equal. Rawls writes, “Obviously the purpose of these conditions is to represent equality between human beings as moral persons, as creatures having conception of their good and capable of a sense of justice.”14 Thus, to corroborate our earlier position against Hobbes’ idea of the state of nature where the notion of justice is ruled out, it is clear that a sense of justice cannot be eliminated even in a hypothetical situation because it is upon this that politics is erected. We shall come to put this point clearer later. Rawls goes on to say that from the fact of justice as fairness, as it has been advanced, two fundamental principles are to be developed. He maintains the first principle has to do with political liberty and the second principle is aimed at the distribution of social and economic advantages so that the least advantaged ones would not be marginalized. He writes:

First: each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others. Second: social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both (a) reasonably expected to be everyone’s advantage, and (b) attached to positions and offices open to all.15

The first principle states certain inalienable rights that Rawls considers as fundamental for the promotion of justice to any individual. These rights, which include right to life, right to freedom of movement and association, freedom of speech, association, and freedom from arbitrary arrest, right to vote, right to hold political office and right to personal property, are basic for the promotion of an individual’s dignity. He avers, “These liberties are all required to be equal by the first principle, since the citizens of a just society are to have the same basic rights.”16 As the foregoing suggests, it appears that Hobbes’ intention to deposit the right to rule in the

14 J. Rawls, “A Theory of Justice,” in Lloyd’s Introduction to Jurisprudence, ed. by M.D.A. Freeman, 7th ed. (London: Sweet & Maxwell Ltd, 2001), 659. 15 Ibid., 569.

16 Ibid., 569.

O. SAMUEL 181 leviathan is an infringement on the liberty of each and every man in seeking for a political position. Thus, Hobbes’ submission needs to be rejected. It is unacceptable because adhering to such postulate indicates that one man has a right by nature that others lack even when it was socially created. Where, then, lies the root of such right? This indicates that Hobbes’ theory of ideal state would likely promote inequality that justice stands for. In a similar dimension, Rawls’ theory of justice nullifies Marx’s submission that property would be held in common. If it is granted that property is an inalienable right as Rawls claimed, it would be unjust if society violates such in the name of common good. But, is it? The second principle of Rawls would ensure that social and economic institutions are arranged in such a way that the poor are not exploited. Here, the emphasis is placed on the institution rather than on those who occupied these institutions. This position is what Aristotle considers as the appropriate way of addressing the problem of injustice. To Rawls,

The social system is to be designed so that the resulting distribution is just however things turn out. To achieve this end, it is necessary to set the social and economic process within the surroundings suitable political and legal institutions. Without the proper arrangement of these background institutions the outcome of the distributive process will not be just.17

Rawls, therefore, submits that it is only when political and legal institutions are just that the injustices in distribution of economic and social dues or goods can be fair. There are certain problems that can be observed in Rawls’ theory of justice. One of the problems in Rawls’ account is that he assumed that people in the state of nature are moral, so the law that they would make (because they lack knowledge of their future position in society) would be just. In fact, in society a simple opinion poll would show the inaccuracy of such an assumption as this. The point is that Rawls’ underrates Hobbes’ theory of human nature that has turned out to be true, especially when one considers the nature of leaders societies have produced. Again, Rawls also assumed, like others before him, that man is a rational animal. Thus, his conception of man has taken for granted that rational animals tend to be the worst creature if they are driven by their interests. One needs to add that Rawls’ claim that legal and political justice would determine the outcome of economic justice is contrary to Marxist thesis, which suggests that material condition determines

17 Ibid., 572-573.

182 JUSTICE AS THE END OF POLITICS what happens at the level of superstructure. To the Marxist, what happens in society is ultimately determined by the economic base.18 To be frank, we think that Marx’s view is the most appealing one. Every production activity is directed at consumption. If this is true, then it follows that legal issue is a means to an end but not an end in itself. However, consumption is the end of production. One could see, then, that it is when dispute arises on what is produced or on how what is produced is to be used, exchanged, distributed or consumed that legal matter arises. This indicates that economic base determines ultimately the life of a society. Therefore, we argue contrary to Rawls’ view that when there is economic justice, then legal and political justices may be attained. This is not a guarantee for it though. There are other theories of justice that can be assessed. I. M. Young, on his part, argues that justice cannot be solely construed on distributive framework. Against this background, Young posits that themes such as opportunity, rights and power cannot be subsumed under distributive justice. What this suggests is that justice would have to be construed from other dimensions. Young posits that,

Justice names not principles of distribution, much less some particular distribution pattern. This represents too narrow and substantive a way of reflecting on justice. Instead, justice names the perspectives, principles, and procedures for evaluating institutional norms and rules.19

Rather than conceiving justice as fair share, treating equals equally, fairness and so on, justice, according to Young, deals basically with institutional procedures. The process of deciding or choosing what a law is or how it should be is the target of Young’s perception of justice. Young, therefore, argues that if a law is to be just, then everyone who is to accept it must agree to it in the first place. This agreement, to be clear, would arise without coercion, compulsion or force. In this case, everyone must agree that the procedures of societal institutions are liberal for justice to take shape. In this way, Young maintains that, “For a social condition to be just, it must enable all to meet their needs and exercise their freedom; thus, justice requires that all be able to express their needs.”20 Otherwise, that system is unjust.

18 F. Engels, “Letter to J. Bloch,” in Modern Political Thought: The Great Issues, ed. by William Ebenstein, 2nd ed., (New York: Rolt, Rinehart & Winston, Inc, 1960). 19 I.M. Young, “Defining Injustice as Domination and Oppression,” in Lloyd’s Introduction to Jurisprudence, 615.

20 Ibid., 615.

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Of course, Young’s idea of justice seems fundamental in a discourse of justice. Apart from the fact that a just law is needed, institutions’ procedures ought to be just; otherwise, the issue of justice would not go beyond the letters of the law (to inform practical changes in the society). Probably, Young’s conception conforms to our everyday appeal for justice. In this case, people require that the process of deciding cases in courts be just, and that financial institutions, legal institutions, political institutions and social institutions maintain high integrity, transparency and openness. Insomuch as it is unjust (immoral) for man to be corrupt, the logic is that societal institutions ought to reject corruption. If one intends to solve the crisis of corruption, we think that it is fundamental that the issue of injustice in institutions be resolved as well, since it is injustice (such as impartiality, unfairness, unfair inequality, etc.) that gives rise to corruption. Thus, one ought to agree with Young that oppression, domination and marginalization are injustices pursued through state’s institutions. Working on this dimension on the issue of justice, it seems clear that the domination of man by man in the capitalist system as identified by Marx should not be overlooked. One cannot therefore object that when procedure of legal and economic institutions is just, and when the people make good laws and act morally, justice would be possible. However, Young’s position should not be overrated. In fact, it seems impossible as he has suggested that everyone should agree on a law or on a thing before it can be rendered just. We think that this is utopia or, perhaps, not practical to be realized in the world today. Justice, as we want it to be pursued, does not reject opposing views; it incorporates different ideologies and works in the interest of all so long as it is fairly done. This does not translate to mean that everyone’s view has to be accepted. Any view to be accepted ought to be such that can further enrich the goal of human society. Hence, another theory is desirable. Today, there are different versions of utilitarian approach to justice. Indeed, John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham have considered critically the issue that was raised by Hobbes and other social contract theorists (Locke, Rousseau and Rawls) whether law can be used to promote ‘common good.’ Accordingly, the idea of common good has come under many names such as ‘commonwealth,’ ‘general will,’ and ‘majority interest.’ The idea of justice to utilitarian is to develop a common basis for the application of justice. Thus, the utilitarian believes that justice is the promotion of happiness for the greatest number of people. To know what is just or not, they think that pleasure and pain are the criteria available to all mankind. For instance, Bentham asserts that,

184 JUSTICE AS THE END OF POLITICS

Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne.21

To corroborate this, Mill avers:

I must again repeat, what the assailants of utilitarianism seldom have the justice to acknowledge, that the happiness which forms the utilitarian standard of what is right in conduct is not the agent’s own happiness, but that of all concerned. As between his own happiness and that of others, utilitarianism requires him to be as strictly impartial as a disinterested and benevolent spectator. In the golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth, we read the complete spirit of the ethics of utility.22

Like Marx, Aristotle and Young, Mill and Bentham think that justice is to be extended to cover at least the majority of the people. In this respect, Hobbes’ view that man should pursue his self-interest because everyone is doing the same in society is to be jettisoned. This means, therefore, that any action that fails to benefit the majority cannot be taken to be just by Mill and Bentham’s standard. In the past few decades, several shortcomings can be attributed to the utilitarian calculus on justice. One needs to ask: Is it just to sacrifice the right of an individual to enjoy certain basic goods like shelter for the sake of the community (or majority)—say for instance, the construction of community library? Going by Mill and Bentham’s accounts, insofar as the majority would benefit from the action, it probably it seems just to destroy the individual’s shelter. The point here is that utilitarian idea of justice permits certain inequality inasmuch as the majority would enjoy pleasure over pain. It is vital to underscore that the inalienable rights (basic liberty) argued for by Rawls can be sacrificed at the altar of utilitarianism. Our arguments against Mill and Bentham include: (1) the state should not violate the basic rights of her citizens unless the citizens have violated the good norms of the society, (2) in the case of our example, the state ought to compensate the individuals

21 J. Bentham, “An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation,” in Utilitarianism, ed. by Mary Warnock (New York: New American Library, 1962), 33. 22 J.S. Mill, Utilitarianism, ed. by Mary Warnock (New York: New American Library, 1962), 268.

O. SAMUEL 185 involved if these individuals have acquired such lands legally and, (3) the promotion of the majority happiness in a given case must not lead to the marginalization, domination or oppression of the minority in any case. That is to say, a robust theory of justice ought to promote just social order wherein primary goods—shelter, food and clothing are to seen as inalienable rights. Consequently, any attempt to deny an individual these goods presupposes that that person’s right, worth, dignity and humanity is under attack. Such individuals need to seek redress or compensation. To do this is to seek for justice. There is another theory en route to justice. This dimension to seeking justice is one that arises from the view that justice is relative to culture. In recent times, Michael Walzer presents this idea of justice. Walzer argues that, “Justice is relative to social meanings.”23 Apparently, there are no unique criteria of justice. Thus, to him, “A given society is just if its substantive life is lived in a certain way—that is, in a way faithful to the shared understandings of the members.”24 He adds, “The theory of justice is alert to differences, sensitive to boundaries.”25 It follows from Walzer’s citation that there will be different parameters for justice insofar as people embrace different criteria for justice and that justice arises insofar as people living in a given community share certain beliefs as justice. Accordingly, when a people agree on certain viewpoints as the accepted way of life, then it seems just to follow such dictate. And since societies have different shared understandings, it follows then that the idea of justice differs from place to place. It is true to the logic of shared understanding that the way of life of people across the world must vary; however, this does not support Walzer’s claim that justice is pluralistic and that each society should operate on a local idea of justice. To be pluralistic would mean, then, that a society (say, country A) makes it a way of life that certain maxims such as fairness, equality and impartiality, for instance, are just and must to be pursued by all her citizens, and that another society (say, country B) affirms unfairness, inequality and partiality as a way of life. If both society A’s and society B’s ways of life are taken to be shared understanding, then it follows from Walzer’s view that both are just. This appears to be one of the consequences that Walzer’s pluralistic idea of justice may likely inform. So the charge of relativism has been brought against his theory. Indeed, Ronald Dworkin has attacked Walzer’s Spheres of Justice as a relativist account. He writes:

23 M. Walzer, “Three Distribution Principles,” in Lloyd’s Introduction to Jurisprudence, 643. 24 Ibid., 643. 25 Ibid., 645.

186 JUSTICE AS THE END OF POLITICS

The idea that the world is divided into distinct moral cultures, and that it should be the goal of politics to foster the value of “community” by respecting the differences, has for a long time been associated with political conservatism and moral relativism. It is once again fashionable in political theory, but its proponents have paid insufficient attention to their central concepts. Moral traditions are not clubs into which the peoples of the world are distributed so that everyone carries a membership card in one but only one. On the contrary, these traditions can be defined at different levels of abstraction, and people who belong to a common tradition at one level of abstraction will divide at another, more concrete, level.26

For Walzer, political theory must be grounded and informed by the culture and traditions of a specific society.27 For this reason, Glen Stassen observes that, “Even though widely praised for its historically situated concreteness and its perceptive criticism of forms of domination, Michael Walzer’s theory of justice has been criticized as relativist in the sense that it rests on the conventional or dominant view of justice held in each particular society.”28 If one cannot point to any existing country that affirms publicly the latter (country B), it means then that Walzer’s idea is possibly not suitable to address issues of international injustices. Apparently, what seems to be the case is that ideologies, customs, mores, traditions and beliefs that guide people often have influenced their explanations of the good life and what the law to be enacted ought to be; however, this does not mean that the underlying idea of justice behind a good life or a law is dissimilar all over the world. The culture of a people, to be clear, often affects the kind of laws that are practiced in a society, but no culture whatsoever openly goes against the tenets of justice in principle. Although laws are wrongly applied to the detriment of justice, we doubt that law and cultural values alone can serve as the bases for justice. Thus, when the issue of justice is considered, attention ought to turn directly to factors that unify humans—right reason, a good life, morality and human nature.

26 R. Dworkin’s Reply to Michael Walzer’s Spheres of Justice: An Exchange, (July 21, 1983), 27 Cf. “Michael Walzer,” in Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, . 28 G. Stassen, “Michael Walzer’s Situated Justice,” in The Journal of Religious Ethics, 22:2 (1994), 375.

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Justice as the End of Politics: A Critical Discourse

We have been discussing the nature of justice so as to address the crisis of injustice in the human society. Here, one needs to say that justice serves as a means to an end and also as an end in itself. In this paper, we are advancing the latter view as the plausible framework to resolving the crisis militating against contemporary society. As a means to an end, justice is pursued in a society to achieve other ends such as social development, whereas when justice is conceived as an end in itself, justice is pursued for its own sake. What, then, is it that we are interested in defending here? The goals of this section are: (1) to argue that without a holistic theory of justice and the application of the same to politics, social development cannot be fully realized, and (2) to construct a pillar for the universality of justice on the doctrine of non-harm. Today, there are thinkers for whom the idea of justice is only a means to an end. If their position is to be treated with all seriousness it deserves, the consequence, rather than the intention of the doer’s actions, would be the standard for evaluating a just act. That is, when an ideology is considered as a means to certain ends it has two possible interpretations. First, it suggests simply that the end is more preferable or desirable than the means itself. For instance, the need for revolution in Marxist philosophy follows from this way of thinking. That is to say, freedom of the working class or social development for all (an end) is more desirable, but not revolution that happens to be a mere means. Revolution, in this case, is only needed to realize the end. So long as the end has been fulfilled, it means that the means is unnecessary unless other ends are to be pursued. Following from this analogy, the question then is: Is the idea of justice a mere means? Again, justice as a means also suggests that without justice the ends of politics has strong tendency to be altered negatively. Herein, the meaning of justice as means is synonymous with the meaning of justice as end. It appears that when justice is primarily construed as a means, this latter usage is not usually intended. Why, then, do we conceive this connotation of justice as a means rather than as an end? Our response is that justice should be construed as an end in itself; the logic is that man must first be just before justice can be extended to the entire society. In other words, man would have to become a person to be able to act justly. This idea has been exposed briefly in the discourse on the Yoruba’s conception of man/person. Let us now develop a basis for it. From the Yoruba’s dichotomy between a man and person, at least, it seems quite clear that social, legal, economic and political institutions cannot be just unless humans who are to steer the events of social institutions are just. What this translates to mean is that if X is to secure Y so that Y does not

188 JUSTICE AS THE END OF POLITICS dominate or exploit Z, then X must herself not plan to do the same to Z or have intention to collaborate with Y to dominate Z. In case Y knows quite well that X has the intention of exploiting Z and that Y is justified in believing that X would do that to Z since she has evidence to that effect, it follows then that X is not the appropriate person to secure or legislate a law on how to protect Z from being exploited. A Yoruba proverb says aso re ni ki o wo ki o to da aso fun mi (meaning simply that one should examine herself before she condemns others or advises others). The evidence that Y has against X, in this case, must be capable of being established through a reliable method, verified, and shown not to contain any false allegation against X. What this presupposes is that people who are to administer justice must in practice be just and those who are to bring the case of harm to the court of justice must come with clean hands. Thus, the first principle of justice as an end, therefore, deals with the individual. In fact, it is one thing for an act to be just in principle; it another that such is effectuated in the society (practice). As an end, justice is to be pursued beyond theoretical level. That is, it ought to be practicable, rather than merely in textbooks and constitutions. Then, if it is granted that justice requires by our first principle that every individual is to be just, then it follows that every man must be a person for justice to be practically meaningful. To be a person means simply that one must be rational and moral. Let us construct an argument to show how this can be realized. Suppose that A is a holistic theory of justice that holds that men’s actions are to be fair and impartial. Then if B, C and D as individuals are to live without each acting as threat to others, it means then that B, C and D must be just; they ought not to harm one another. That is, each ought to treat others as an end in themselves. By treating others in this way, each has ceased to be a man; rather, each is now a person. However, when certain discrimination occurs among them such that equals are treated unequally, injustice has set in. Yoruba would say: ika to ba wo imu ni ama fi ruu imu (the finger that is as equal as the nostril is what is to be put in it). What this signifies is that everyone is to be treated as they ought to be treated. But how is one ought to be treated? Suppose that B, C and D are equals and are to benefit from social goods, which they have not worked for. Suppose the law states that no person is to be discriminated in the sharing of goods that are provided freely to citizens by the state. Suppose further that B, C and D are citizens of that state. Then, injustice arises should the distributor of the good discriminate against B, but not C and D. The distributor here has allowed injustice in the affair of the state. Consequently, this analogy presupposes that a theory of justice ought to start by addressing the crisis facing the individual. It would then move to institutional arrangements, then to the larger society. These three stages consist a triadic process of a holistic theory of justice.

O. SAMUEL 189

It is therefore faulty to seek for social development without first nurturing human beings into persons. The latter must be conceived if the former would be effectively realized. It means simply that one is putting the cart before the horse. Thus, theories on social development cannot lead to other ends/goals of politics unless justice is rooted in individuals and institutions. It is a truism that the man that would distribute social goods must first be just; otherwise, one should expect unfair distribution. Our examinations in the previous sections show that there are different challenges to development; hence, politics provides the platform to address shades of justices. That is to say, discourses on social obligation, social responsibilities, duties, fairness, transparency, fairness, impartiality, common good, equality, war, terrorism, among others are themes in politics, which focus on how justice can be upheld. All these are concerned on how justice is to be distributed or promoted. For instance, if government fails to perform her political obligation, citizens often raise charges of marginalization, unfairness, partiality or exploitation. This is an appeal to justice. Thus, among the Yoruba, the discourse on justice considers issue as ibi (evil), idajo (judgment), ese (wrong or sin) and aare (right). Any ibi done to a person or man is always rejected. Like Aristotle, the Yoruba does not think that justice means paying evil with evil. In fact, justice means non-harm. This does not mean that the man that does the harm would not face idajo; instead, the judgment is meant to teach or nurture the one who has acted unjustly to become humane. Yoruba would say aa ki n le omobuuruku fun ekun pa je (we do not throw a stubborn child to the lion as prey). The person or man that suffers harm is then compensated so as to show to others that the state can give justice to anyone through the power she has to lord over the affairs of the society. Idajo stresses further the issue of fundamental human rights that justice depicts. Idajo, which liberally means judgment, may also be rendered to mean punishment. The Yoruba will say oti gba idajo re (he has received his punishment), or elese kan o le lo lai gba ijado (no sinner would die without receiving the appropriate sanctions). This suggests that justice demands that those who harmed others are to be punished as well. Like Aristotle rightly notes, justice equalizes the disparity between the aggrieved and the person that harmed the others. The foregoing suggests that justice is something that must be balanced in all humans before it can develop in the larger society. This does not mean that justice deals with a specific human trait; rather, it supposes a need for nurturing of moral values that can lead to the development of just actions and can benefit the masses. Here, there is a need to stress that such a justice that can be enjoyed in the human society is a minimal kind. It is

190 JUSTICE AS THE END OF POLITICS minimal because it appears that we would have to force people to comply with state laws and by so doing harm others unjustly. Therefore, an appeal to moral foundation for justice ought to precede a legal appeal. It seems apt to say that force of the law cannot be used to achieve the benevolent non-harm value of justice; hence, the Yoruba idea of iwa (character development) is to be imbibed in society. What we are suggesting here is that governments across the globe would have to commit energies to the promotion and enhancement of moral values as the basis for justice. This idea must kick-start from homes, to schools, then to the operations of establishments (both private and public). From the foregoing, it means that laws must take cognisance of the nature of justice at its holistic dimension. In this holistic angle, man ought to be transformed through morality to be able to develop rational character. This character, to be sure, is not a mere ability to reason, think, reflect or remember. Rather, rational character requires that one should act in a way favourable to the community of humans and nonhuman beings alike. On the moral platform, therefore, justice simply connotes ma se ibi (do no harm). Since the Yoruba believe that a man is capable of being transformed, the transition from man to person requires ile ire (good family upbringing) and iwa rere (good character). It is iwa rere that deters one not to harm others and it is from ile ire that one learns that. And it follows from this that people would not harm other members of the community if they could develop traits such as suuru (patience), ife (love) and ifowosowopo (love is the basis for cooperation). Probably, when people develop these virtues, the promotion of worth, dignity and rights of others can be ensured. The point is that social crisis emerges more fundamentally when one man harms others. He harms them because he is yet to be rational in the Yoruba use of the term ‘rationality,’ wherein rational has its major root in morality. Therefore, issues of unfairness, impartiality, unequal distributions of dues, interferences, failure to perform one’s duties, among others are instances of harm done to a man, group or society by others due to the lack of moral virtues to pursue justice in praxis. In sum, it is therefore right to argue on the one hand that justice ought to be theorized before a philosophy of social development can begin. On the other hand, since all societies in the world deliberate on justice, they are protecting themselves (individuals and societies) from harm that may result from others’ inability to act rationally (in the Yoruba sense). To us, the principle of non-harm (ma se ibi) therefore serves as a unifying cord that binds together all societies’ parameters of justice beyond the shallow relativistic account of justice. The principle of ma se ibi therefore is the inner kernel of justice in practice.

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Conclusion

The paper attempted a synoptic account of justice, and it argued that justice was the end of politics, which required a holistic approach. Then, we demonstrated that when a society seeks social development, such intent ought to be rooted in a holistic theory of justice as non-harm. It is our position that the Yoruba’s idea of person is apt for such a course. Therefore, the paper sought for the root of justice in a normative principle of non-harm, which lies in the nature of person as rational and moral being. Ma se ibi (does no harm) was a principle extracted from the Yoruba’s conception of person as a basis for universality of justice. Thus, we showed the link between nature of man and justices on the one hand, and justice and political discourses on the other hand, thereby critiquing some foundations for justice. Finally, the paper demonstrated that meaningful development cannot take shape unless the issue of justice is holistically developed and used. However, since only persons are rational, the paper argued the position that holistic social development can only take place in society where persons are continually nurtured. Accordingly, it was noted that justice seems significant for and should exist prior to social development. Hence, we concluded that justice provides the basis for the protection of human right, dignity and worth.

Department of Philosophy, University of Lagos, Nigeria

References

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, in Great Books of the Western World, ed. by Robert Maynard, Vol. II (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1952). ______, The Nicomachean Ethics, trans. J.A.K. Thomson (London: Penguin Books Ltd, 1976). Bentham, J, “An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation,” in Utilitarianism, ed. by Mary Warnock (New York: New American Library, 1962). Engels, F., “Letter to J. Bloch,” in Modern Political Thought: The Great Issues, ed. by William Ebenstein, 2nd ed. (New York: Rolt, Rinehart & Winston, Inc., 1960). Fayemi, A.K, “Human Personality and the Yoruba Worldview: An Ethico- Sociological Interpretation,” in The Journal of Pan African Studies, 2:9 (2009). Gbadegesin, S, “Individuality, Community, and the Moral Order,” in The African Philosophy Reader, ed. by P.H. Coetzee and A.P.J. Roux (London, Routledge, 2009).

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Hobbes, T, Leviathan, ed. by C.B. Macpherson (London: Penguin Books, 1968). Marx, K, Capital: Theories of Surplus Value, Vol. IV (Moscow: Progress Press, 1963). ______, “Alienated Man,” in Philosophy for A New Generation, ed. by A.K. Bierman & James A. Gould, 2nd ed. (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1973). ______, Selected Works, Vol. 1 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1977). “Michael Walzer,” in Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, . Mill, J.S., Utilitarianism, ed. by Mary Warnock, (New York: New American Library, 1962). Okoro, C.B., “Social Psychology,” in Philosophical Psychology: Selected Readings, ed. by Godwin Azenabor (Lagos: Malthouse Press Ltd, 2001). Plato, The Republic, in Great Dialogues of Plato, trans. by W.H.D. Rouse (New York: Penguin Group, 1956). Rawls, J, “A Theory of Justice,” in Lloyd’s Introduction to Jurisprudence, ed. by M.D.A. Freeman, 7th ed. (London: Sweet & Maxwell Ltd, 2001). Stassen, G, “Michael Walzer’s Situated Justice,” The Journal of Religious Ethics, 22:2 (1994). Walzer, M, “Three Distribution Principles,” in Lloyd’s Introduction to Jurisprudence, ed. by M.D.A. Freeman, 7th ed. (London: Sweet & Maxwell Ltd, 2001). Young, I.M, “Defining Injustice as Domination and Oppression,” in Lloyd’s Introduction to Jurisprudence, ed. by M.D.A. Freeman, 7th ed. (London: Sweet & Maxwell Ltd, 2001).

KRITIKE VOLUME EIGHT NUMBER TWO (DECEMBER 2014) 193-206

Article

Higher Pleasures, Civic Virtue, and Democracy: A Reconstruction of Millian Themes

J. Mikael Olsson

Abstract: This article takes a start in the utilitarian philosophy of John Stuart Mill and considers an interpretation of the concept of “higher pleasures” as referring to “political” pleasures. This interpretation is based on the idea that even if one is a utilitarian, the value of democracy (majority rule) should take precedence over the value of (hedonistic) utilitarianism. On the political level, this has the consequence that civic virtue (or higher pleasures) should have an important role in a democratic society. Thus, the article connects to contemporary discussions on republicanism in a novel way and offers some ideas of how higher pleasures may be promoted in a constitutional context.

Keywords: Mill, democracy, utilitarianism, republicanism

Part One

he distinction between higher and lower pleasures (in the context of utilitarian thought) is one of John Stuart Mill’s most well-known ideas. T However, most readers of Mill have found this distinction unappealing and have concluded that his version of utilitarianism is hard to defend on philosophical grounds. So if one still wants to use the principle of higher and lower pleasures, one has to do a lot of interpretive work, and perhaps also inject some of one’s own ideas into the equation. In this article I will put forward my own suggestion of what a reasonable theory of higher pleasures might look like. My contention is that it is possible to be a hedonist of the Benthamite kind (that is, concerned with the maximization of undifferentiated pleasure), yet still adhere to the view that some pleasures should be regarded as “higher” than others. Now this is not simply a case of placing certain pleasures in the higher category because they tend to have more hedonic value than others; it is, rather, a way of appreciating certain

194 A RECONSTRUCTION OF MILLIAN THEMES pleasures more even though their hedonic values are equal (and in some cases even lower) than other alternatives. This view does, in other words, retain Mill’s insistence on a difference in kind (and not just in degree) regarding pleasures, even though it is still basically a hedonistic view. This hedonistic defense of the distinction between higher and lower pleasures becomes possible if we regard certain political “virtues” as being more important than a “simple” felicific calculus would warrant—and this view I believe every utilitarian (hedonistic or otherwise) should hold (why this is so I will explain shortly). This also connects utilitarianism in a fruitful way to some kinds of republicanism; and it is, furthermore, a view that one may find some support for in Mill’s own writings. Moreover, I believe the theory put forward in this article provides an answer to a problem frequently raised against utilitarianism, namely, that it does not respect certain fundamental rights. As will become evident, the kind of philosophy defended here does—without being inconsistent—condemn at least some infringements of these allegedly basic rights. But why, one may ask, bring Mill into the discussion in the first place? Why do I not simply make the argument plain and simple? My answer is that I believe the study of political thinkers of the past helps us to structure certain perennial tensions, especially the one that exists between substantial moral doctrines and forms of political rule. Political thoughts, like those of Mill, are, in other words, helpful as heuristic devices in coming to grips with our own problems. Thus, I have no ambition to find out what Mill “really” thought or what influenced him to think the way he did etc. Mill’s political philosophy (or rather parts of it) is simply used (some would perhaps say “shamelessly” used, or distorted) to better clarify an argument. Thus, I am not claiming that the interpretations I make are “superior” to other interpretations. For a long time, many Mill scholars have seen him as being a utilitarian only in a very attenuated sense, or not being a utilitarian at all.1 These interpretations are usually made by textual analysis, to find inconsistencies and the like (and it is then assumed that the inconsistencies can be resolved by finding compelling evidence for either side). My endeavor is, however, of a different kind. I am using a “tension” in Mill’s thought (mainly his ambiguous account of what utilitarianism is, and how it fits in with the politics in general) to offer ideas that may be of relevance to us, not to Mill himself or to his contemporaries—or, as another theorist has written (in the context of Mill’s inconsistencies regarding gender relations): “The tensions in Mill’s argument permit us to read him against himself, and widen the path that he opened but was reluctant to follow for whatever reasons.”2

1 See, e.g., Christopher Miles Coope, “Was Mill a Utilitarian?” in Utilitas, 10:1 (1998). 2 Nancy J. Hirschmann, “Mill, Political Economy, and Women’s Work,” in American Political Science Review, 102:2 (2008), 211.

J. OLSSON 195

Part Two

Mill’s revision of utilitarianism in the little book with the same name is, of course, very well known. To refute the idea that utilitarianism is just a “philosophy for swine,” he says that “it is quite compatible with the principle of utility to recognize the fact, that some kinds of pleasure are more desirable and more valuable than others. It would be absurd that while, in estimating all other things, quality is concerned as well as quantity, the estimation of pleasures should be supposed to depend on quantity alone.” In the brief discussion leading up to this passage, it is somewhat clear that the pleasures of the intellect are among the higher pleasures, or more specifically, “the pleasures of the intellect, of the feelings and imaginations, and of the moral sentiments.”3 So how do we, in practice, know which specific activities are higher and which are lower? Mill’s contention is that to such a question “there is but one possible answer. Of two pleasures, if there be one to which all or almost all who have experience of both give a decided preference, irrespective of any feeling or moral obligation to prefer it, that is the more desirable pleasure.” Furthermore, Mill does not hesitate to claim that most people who are acquainted with different kinds of pleasures usually prefer “the manner of existence which employs their higher faculties.” This discussion ends with the famous dictum that it is “better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.”4 Now this notion of competent judges of higher pleasures has been severely criticized over the years.5 A recent article by M. Hauskeller may serve to sum up the critique. First, there is the problem of what quality the higher pleasures possess that makes them better than lower pleasures. Mill does not (according to Hauskeller) tell us what “quality” is, and “[t]o suggest [ ... ] that intellectual pleasures are more desirable and more valuable because they are of higher quality is like saying that they are more valuable because they are more valuable.”6 Second, there is the problem of finding the supposed competent judges of higher and lower pleasures. Experience seems to show us that virtually all people prefer a life that contains a mix of (what Mill calls) higher and lower pleasures, and that everyone would decline to lead a life that contained only one or the other. This is, however, difficult to

3 John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, Liberty, Representative Government (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1954), 7. 4 Ibid., 8, 9. 5 For a brief overview of the criticism, see Henry R. West, An Introduction to Mill’s Utilitarian Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 69-73; also Rex Martin, “A Defence of Mill’s Qualitative Hedonism,” in Philosophy, 47 (1972), 140 f. 6 Michael Hauskeller, “No Philosophy for Swine: John Stuart Mill on the Quality of Pleasures,” in Utilitas, 23:4 (2011), 432.

196 A RECONSTRUCTION OF MILLIAN THEMES square with Mill’s claim that the higher pleasures are preferable to the lower irrespective of quantity.7 But the problem of competent judges is perhaps even deeper than this because the argument seems to be circular:

We are told that in order to find out what kinds of pleasure are more valuable we need to ask competent judges which they prefer, and when we ask who is a competent judge we are told that competent judges are those, and only those, who prefer the higher kinds of pleasure.8

Hauskeller’s claim is, in short, that Mill fails to make the argument that utilitarianism is not a “philosophy for swine” because it seems to be difficult to introduce a qualitative distinction between different pleasures without abandoning utilitarianism. One solution to this dilemma is to introduce higher and lower pleasures as quantitative distinctions only.9 It is perfectly possible to be a hedonist and to claim that pleasures can be sorted into different groups according to their pleasantness. Someone like Bentham might, for instance, claim that certain types of pleasure “tend to be intense, but are also rather short-lived, often followed by states of displeasure, and don’t give rise to other pleasures so much. In other words, they are deficient with respect to duration, fecundity and purity.”10 And Richard Kirwan, in his 1810 essay Of Happiness, claims that the “savage” state of man is worse because the intellectual pleasures of modern man do, in fact, contain a higher quantity of pleasure, all things considered:

To such mental pleasures as are referable to intellect, memory or imagination, savages have no pretence. And as those sources of pleasure are unproductive of pain, here is one great deficit in the scale of happiness without any counterpoise in pain.11

The pleasures of intellect, memory and imagination are, thus, “higher” pleasures in that they contain a larger quantity of pleasure (and on

7 Ibid., 433-435. 8 Ibid., 438. 9 Some attempts have actually been made to interpret Mill in this fashion; see mainly H. Keith Quincey, “The Higher Pleasures and their Quantification,” in Polity, 12:3 (1980), but also Martin, “A Defence,” 146 f. 10 Hauskeller, “No Philosophy for Swine,” 440. 11 Richard Kirwan, “Of Happiness,” in Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, 11 (1810), 132; see also 168-184.

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Kirwan’s account, this is mainly because they are mixed with pain to a lesser degree than, for example, the pleasures of food or sex).

Part Three

A utilitarian should agree that it might be valuable to distinguish between different sorts of pleasures on a quantitative scale (although one may, on empirical grounds, quarrel over which pleasures belong in which groups). Nevertheless, this is not the point Mill is making; his distinction between higher and lower pleasures is based on differences in quality—a distinction that appears to be bound to fail (if one wants to remain a hedonist). It is, however, possible to be a fully convinced hedonistic utilitarian while still retaining a qualitative distinction between higher and lower pleasures as long as it is possible to provide that which Mill does not provide: a description of what it is, exactly, that gives the higher pleasures more quality. One way to make the argument is to make one’s utilitarian commitments subservient to one’s democratic commitments. Now when democracy is discussed in connection to utilitarianism, the reasoning usually goes the other way around: democracy should be valued as a type of government only insofar as it is the best way to maximize happiness. And this seems to be a reasonable conclusion from utilitarian premises. If a certain minority would derive more pleasure from a change of policy than the majority would from keeping the status quo, then perhaps (or evidently?) we should make the policy change in an undemocratic fashion.12 Of course, many of the utilitarians of the early 19th century were more favorably inclined towards democracy than most political thinkers at that time, but there are significant qualifications to their support for democracy. First of all, we should recall that it took quite a while for Bentham to abandon his assumption that utilitarian policies could very well be promoted by enlightened despots (although his support for democracy subsequently became very radical for the time), but apart from this, it is rather well known that James Mill, while being a democrat of sorts, put severe restrictions on voting rights, as did his son, John Stuart (although not as severe as his father’s).13 What I suggest, however, is that utilitarians (as well as adherents to any other moral doctrine) should let their first allegiance be to democracy, that they should defend democracy (with majority rule and universal suffrage) without qualifications. This is for two reasons (that are lexically

12 Cf. Quincey, “The Higher Pleasures,” 462. 13 See, e.g., Richard W. Krouse, “Two Concepts of Representation: James and John Stuart Mill,” in The Journal of Politics, 44 (1982), 513-520; James E. Crimmins, Utilitarian Philosophy and Politics. Bentham’s Later Years (London: Continuum, 2011), 30-36, 108-111, 129 f.

198 A RECONSTRUCTION OF MILLIAN THEMES ordered): (1) utilitarianism is just one of many subjective attitudes one could have, and to presume that utilitarianism should be allowed to override majority rule is just a way of saying that my or my (minority) group should let our subjective preferences rule supreme; (2) the freedom of discussion and inquiry that is a necessary condition of democracy is also very helpful, if not necessary, in finding out what would maximize happiness. (Of course, reason (1) could be rejected by claiming that I (or my small group) should be allowed to rule no matter what, but then we have abandoned the minimal conditions that are needed to speak about political philosophy in any meaningful way. We would simply be in a “state of nature,” where people take what they can get without feeling any obligation or desire to give reasons for their actions. This is, again, a possible attitude to take, but it is uninteresting to reflect on in the present context.) In the following I will discuss the (more important) first reason. While reason (2) is more of an internal topic for utilitarians, reason (1) is intended to apply to everyone, regardless of moral doctrine (i.e., no matter what your moral doctrine is, I believe you have good reasons to value democracy above it). Now reason (1) may make a strong claim upon utilitarians—it says that any notion of objectivity regarding this ethical stance (or, indeed, any ethical stance) should be discarded. In essence, this amounts to saying that non-cognitivism (the belief that norms can be neither true nor false) is the correct view in meta-ethics. Indeed, it is my contention that non-cognitivism is correct.14 Furthermore, I argue elsewhere15 that non-cognitivism should have some consequences in the context of democracy (namely, that no one should claim that their particular moral view—utilitarianism, for instance— should be implemented unless a majority supports it). It seems highly reasonable to me that non-cognitivism should inculcate some humility into its adherents, or as one philosopher has put it:

An emotivist [who would usually also be a non- cognitivist] need not adopt all contrary ideals [ ... ]. All he must do is recognize that there are contrary ideals and that, while in his terms these ideals are evil, his ideals are evil in their terms. And that, except in terms of somebody’s ideal, neither ideal is right.16

14 For a brief defense of non-cognitivism, see J. Mikael Olsson, Austrian Economics as Political Philosophy (Dissertation, forthcoming), chapter I. 15 J. Mikael Olsson, “The Straussian Paradigm Turned Upside-Down: A Model for Studying Political Philosophy,” in Minerva – An Internet Journal of Philosophy, 17 (2013); “Plato, Socrates, and the Politics of Meta-Aggression,” in SATS. Northern European Journal of Philosophy, 14:2 (2013). 16 Asher Moore, “Emotivism: Theory and Practice,” in The Journal of Philosophy, 55:9 (1958), 379 f.

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Just ponder what it would be like to reject these sentiments; either we must reject non-cognitivism and claim that there are objectively correct answers to what is right and wrong, or we must become radical egoists and claim that one is allowed to have one’s will realized (in various social contexts) simply because it is my will or my attitude that is being expressed (i.e., that the fact that I, Mr. or Ms. So-and-so, have a moral attitude makes that attitude more right than everyone else’s and should thus be implemented by law). Regarding reason (2), it may be argued that it is an empirical matter that remains to be confirmed (a fan of B. F. Skinner’s fictional utopia Walden Two might, for instance, claim that “politics” is unnecessary for the pursuit of happiness, and that the important thing is to have expert managers, be they elected democratically or not). However, since the argument about putting democracy “above” utilitarianism stands firm in spite of a refutation of reason (2), I will not discuss it further.

Part Four

If we then accept that we, as (hedonistic) utilitarians, must respect the democratic procedure, we may at the same time have to view some kind of pleasures as “higher,” in that they are in some ways connected to this procedure. We may, in other words, view the higher pleasures as political pleasures—or perhaps as civic virtues. These higher pleasures may then be regarded as qualitatively different from, as well as more valuable than, the lower pleasures, but we will still be able to be quantitative hedonists when it comes to “substantial” decisions, that is, decisions that do not concern the democratic framework. In other words, when it comes to constitutional questions (as well as “ordinary” laws that have more or less obvious indirect impact on the democratic constitution), the notion of higher pleasures comes into full force, but the less actual laws (or acts of private individuals) affect the democratic framework, the less we have to take account of higher pleasures in our utilitarian reasoning. (This also means that we cannot, for instance, disenfranchise certain citizens or suppress their freedom of speech in the name of higher quantities of pleasure because if we want to value democracy above any substantial moral doctrine, then we must surely insist on these absolute rights that are necessary for the functioning of a democracy.) This line of thinking makes an interesting bridge between utilitarianism and republicanism. Now republicanism comes in different forms, and I suspect that my ideas are less compatible with some of the “instrumental” theories of republicanism that have surfaced in recent

200 A RECONSTRUCTION OF MILLIAN THEMES decades than with more “procedural” theories (Philip Pettit’s republican theory, for instance, would not be very compatible with the view of civic virtue propounded in the present article since he believes (majoritarian) democratic politics may itself become a threat to freedom from domination17). Since I suggested that we should value democracy before any substantial moral theory, it may be the case that we should mainly look back to (what we may call) the Greek virtues of participation rather than the Roman defense of republican rule because the former stresses the value of participation in itself, whereas the Roman tradition stresses participation in order to safeguard freedom for the individual. The two traditions seem, however, to share a lot of common features. For one thing, the (individual) practice of these kinds of republicanism seems similar.18 It is important for the citizens to be public- spirited and to “be prepared to overcome their personal inclinations and set aside their private interests when necessary and to do what is best for the public as a whole.” Civic virtue is the “lifeblood” of the republic, and “[w]ithout citizens who are willing to defend the republic against foreign threats and to take an active part in government,” it will fail.19 In light of this, it is interesting that while Mill is rather silent when it comes to specific examples of higher pleasures (specific examples are mostly invented by interpreters of Mill),20 he does, nevertheless, hold civic virtue in high esteem. Indeed, his view of democratic rule seems to rely more on the “quality” of the people than of the institutions, believing that “[i]f representative government” and “social life in general is to attain a full, vigorous, many-sided development [ ... ] it will depend upon the free self- realisation of individual men who say the thing they think and act the thing they say.”21 It is well known that he writes about the value of deliberation and free inquiry (which are no doubt important to the virtuous citizen) in his essay On Liberty, but a fuller account of civic virtues may be found in Considerations on Representative Government. It seems to be only in this work that we get an idea of what a person devoted to the higher pleasures would look like, or, more specifically, how such a person would act in the political realm. One main point in Considerations is that the “political machinery does not act in itself,” so it needs active participation by its members:

17 Philip Pettit, Republicanism. A Theory of Freedom and Government (Oxford University Press, 1997), 62, 180-183, 200 f, 232. 18 Cf. Shelley Burtt, “The Good Citizen’s Psyche: On the Psychology of Civic Virtue,” in Polity, 23:1 (1990), 23. 19 Richard Dagger, “Communitarianism and Republicanism,” in G. Gaus & C. Kukathas eds., Handbook of Political Theory (London: SAGE, 2004), 169, 170. 20 Cf. John McCunn, Six Radical Thinkers (London: Edward Arnold, 1910), 85: “If there be a compact and connected ideal of happiness discoverable in Mill’s writings, the reader is left to piece it together for himself.” 21 Ibid., 44 f.

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The people for whom the [representative] form of government is intended [ ... ] must be willing and able to do what is necessary to keep it standing. And they must be willing and able to do what it requires of them to enable it to fulfil its purposes. [ ... ] [A] people may prefer a free government, but if, from indolence, or carelessness, or cowardice, or want of public spirit, they are unequal to the exertions necessary for preserving it [ ... ] they are more or less unfit for liberty.22

Mill wrote a lot about this sort of thing, namely, how people should act to preserve their free government. He does not generally discuss the virtues of the “private” person (which even Bentham did at times), but he discusses the virtues of the “public” person a lot. So even if his account of utilitarianism is rather vague, he still lets us know what he means by a virtuous, public-spirited human being. In a couple of pages in Considerations, he lists “qualities” like industry, integrity, justice, and prudence, as well as “attributes” like mental activity, enterprise, originality, invention, and courage, as necessary for a (basically) democratic government.23 These are similar qualities and attributes that we also meet in Utilitarianism as examples of higher pleasures, but in Considerations, we see clearer the political relevance of these virtues. In other words, if we do not get a good reason in the former work what makes the higher pleasures good, we get—at least potentially— that reason in the latter. The higher pleasures seem to be very much similar to the activities one might plausibly think are necessary to keep a democratic government going. If we, moreover, turn back to the republican theme, we actually see a strong “Periclean” streak in Mill’s writings. Not only does he (in On Liberty) mention Pericles by name as an outstanding ideal, but he does also talk positively about the Athenian model of political participation: “Notwithstanding the defects of the social system and moral ideals of antiquity, the practice of the dicastery and the ecclesia raised the intellectual standard of an average Athenian far beyond anything of which there is yet an example of in any other mass of men, ancient or modern.”24 In other words, the Athenian constitution may have given its citizens ample opportunities to experience higher pleasures, and most of those citizens would probably think that these higher pleasures (so necessary for their political system) should

22 Mill, Representative Government, 177 f. 23 Ibid., 187 f. 24 Ibid., 216. Cf. Frederick Rosen, Classical Utilitarianism from Hume to Mill (London: Routledge, 2003), 295 f.

202 A RECONSTRUCTION OF MILLIAN THEMES take precedence over the advancement of pleasures that have no effect on the constitution (or may actually be detrimental to it, if they were given free rein). Now it is evident that Mill did not, in fact, value the procedure of democracy in itself. He held that the purpose of government is to make people better in some ways and to advance civilization, and some form of democracy (or “representative government”) may be the most appropriate means to this at a certain stage of history. 25 This is the main point where the present theory differs from Mill’s actual theory of democracy. Nevertheless, the qualities that Mill sees as desirable in a “civilized” and “progressed” human being seem to be basically the same qualities as those required for a proceduralist view (i.e., a view where the procedure is valuable in itself, and the qualities needed to keep this procedure going are valuable as means only). But this also highlights the need to judge my theory, so to speak, on its own merits, and not according to a criteria of correctness of interpretation and the like.

Part Five

I have suggested that even a hedonistic utilitarian can (and should) accept a notion of higher pleasures as “political” pleasures, since devotion to (the procedure) of democracy should precede substantial moral considerations. Now we have also seen that traces of this “republican” utilitarianism can be found in Mill too, and it is an interpretation (or perhaps a creative reconstruction) of his argument that has the potential to be more inspiring to us than his rather cryptic account of higher pleasures in Utilitarianism. Furthermore, I do think that this republican utilitarianism is a highly reasonable political philosophy to subscribe to (whether Mill subscribed to it or not). In practice, it provides us a heuristic device for such purpose as to allocate public resources, whereby we can be guided by considerations of higher and lower pleasures. With this theory, we have a reason why we may use the political machinery to produce more dissatisfied Socrates-like people than satisfied fools, why we, even as utilitarians, may promote civic virtue, “understood as the disposition to give public ends precedence over private desires in both political action and deliberation.”26 And once we have secured a viable state of majority rule, as well as a willingness “to do what is necessary to keep it standing,” we may revert to a greater extent to a full consideration of the “lower” pleasures in the actual lawmaking process. This would mean, perhaps, that a democratic society should provide ample opportunities for education and public debate (for

25 Henry M. Magid, “John Stuart Mill,” in L. Strauss & J. Cropsey eds., History of Political Philosophy, 3rd ed. (The University of Chicago Press, 1987). 26 Burtt, “The Good Citizen’s Psyche,” 35 f.

J. OLSSON 203 instance, through the funding of research in a wide variety of fields as well as of public service media), even if the resources that are necessary for this must be redirected from projects that mainly concern “material” growth (beyond reasonable minimum levels) or the like. I will end by mentioning a few possible objections to my reasoning. First, there is the premise that one should not base the value of democracy on one’s own substantive moral theory. Now I have assumed, in a quite “populist” fashion (to use Robert Dahl’s terminology), that “in choosing among alternatives, the alternative preferred by the greater number is selected.”27 This could be challenged by claiming—as James Madison did, for instance—that it is not the size of the majority that matters; it is “whether the ruling group, whatever its size, imposes severe deprivations on the ‘natural rights’ of citizens.”28 Of course, one can substitute one’s own cherished moral doctrine for natural rights, but my contention is that whatever that doctrine is, one should not make one’s defense of democracy dependent on it. To do so would be either to claim that there are some kinds of objective moral facts, or that political rule is just about asserting your personal value preferences (and unless democracy realizes your personal value preferences, then some other kind of rule would be preferable). As a non-cognitivist and anti-realist (believing that there are no moral norms that can be true or false and that there are no moral facts), I must dismiss the first point. To defeat my dismissal would require a successful defense of moral realism and cognitivism. As to the view that political rule is a completely egoistical affair, I can only admit that my theory would crumble (for an “egoistic” utilitarian this would mean that the value of democracy is dependent on the fact that utilitarianism, according to him or her, is the best moral theory, and if a majority of the people are not utilitarians, then it would be okay to override that majority for no other reason than that the majority is violating his or her personal preference for utilitarianism). In that case, however, we have abandoned all meaningful political philosophy anyway, and a fundamental existential condition of mankind is that we always have the option to refuse to philosophize or to present reasons for our actions. As for myself, I believe that the only non-egoistical way (or perhaps the least egoistical way we can think of) to defend democracy is to let the majority rule simply because it is the majority, by virtue of our fundamental equality on the metaethical plane (i.e., we are all equal in that no one’s moral preference is more “true” than anyone else’s). And if the majority is not advocating hedonistic utilitarianism, one should not insist that it be implemented anyway (we should not, in other words, set up a constitution that, for example, demands qualified majorities

27 Robert A Dahl, A Preface to Democratic Theory (University of Chicago Press, 2006), 64. 28 Ibid., 10.

204 A RECONSTRUCTION OF MILLIAN THEMES for legislation that is not clearly based on hedonistic considerations—of course, this also excludes more drastic ways of enforcing minoritarian policies, such as enacting a coup d’état and setting up a dictatorship), but one should insist that everyone appreciate the virtues (i.e., higher pleasures) that are necessary to produce a well-functioning democracy. To accept majority rule but deny that any surrounding institutions and practices are necessary to keep it going seems to be highly inconsistent (but for a discussion on the purely empirical side of this argument, see below). Another objection is that the view discussed here confuses the meaning of “pleasures.” When we discuss pleasures as civic virtues we are obviously talking about an activity (the exercising of civic virtue), whereas as hedonists we are talking about mental states (the experience of “actual” pleasures). To unify these different kinds of consequences into a single theory may be problematic. I accept that it may be confusing to speak about “pleasures” on both levels—the constitutional (focused on political “pleasures”) and the regular lawmaking level (focused on hedonistic “pleasures”) —and that the theory may necessitate some “inflation” of the meaning of the word “pleasure.” I believe, however, that it is possible to keep this term, provided that we are clear in each case which level we are referring to. But to be clear, I am arguing that it is the pleasures that come from political activities that should be regarded as higher. Thus, political activities themselves should not be equated with higher pleasures, nor should civic virtue be equated with higher pleasures—again, it is the pleasures produced by the exercise of civic virtue that are important when it comes to distinguishing between higher and lower pleasures. This ought to mean that someone who is forced to exercise civic virtue, and who is not enjoying it one bit, cannot be said to add to the sum of higher pleasures in society. What it does mean, on the other hand, is that if people who would enjoy it have no possibilities to do it (for instance, because they are too poor and have no access to education), then the sum of higher pleasures would seem to be less than it could potentially be. Lastly, let us look at a possible empirical objection, namely, that the functioning of a healthy democracy does not depend very much on the things I have labeled as higher pleasures, that democracy can be well sustained without virtuous and well-informed citizens. I will not try to evaluate the empirical research on these matters, but I will concede that if this objection is well founded, then there seems to be no weighty reasons for a utilitarian to lay much stress on the higher pleasures. In that case it would be best to be simply a classical hedonist (and, of course, a democrat). But many social scientists (as well as other kinds of scholars) do not believe that the objection is well founded. Personally, I think there is something to Martha Nussbaum’s assertion that something has gone wrong in our time when it comes to

J. OLSSON 205 preparing people for democracy. Writes Nussbaum: “Thirsty for national profit, nations, and their systems of education, are heedlessly discarding skills that are needed to keep democracies alive. If this trend continues, nations all over the world will soon be producing generations of useful machines, rather than complete citizens who can think for themselves, criticize tradition, and understand the significance of another person’s sufferings and achievements.”29 Nussbaum is, of course, not a utilitarian, but what are the “skills” she is talking about other than things that Mill would call higher pleasures?30

Department of Political Science, Stockholm University, Sweden

References

Brink, David, “Mill’s Deliberative Utilitarianism,” in Philosophy and Public Affairs, 21:1 (1992). Burtt, Shelley, “The Good Citizen’s Psyche: On the Psychology of Civic Virtue,” in Polity, 23:1 (1990). Crimmins, James E., Utilitarian Philosophy and Politics. Bentham’s Later Years (London: Continuum, 2011). Coope, Christopher Miles, “Was Mill a Utilitarian?” in Utilitas, 10:1 (1998). Dagger, Richard, “Communitarianism and Republicanism,” in G. Gaus & C. Kukathas eds., Handbook of Political Theory (London: SAGE, 2004). Dahl, Robert A., A Preface to Democratic Theory (University of Chicago Press, 2006). Hauskeller, Michael, “No Philosophy for Swine: John Stuart Mill on the Quality of Pleasures,” in Utilitas, 23:4 (2011). Hirschmann, Nancy J., “Mill, Political Economy, and Women’s Work,” in American Political Science Review, 102:2 (2008). Kirwan, Richard, “Of Happiness,” in Transaction of the Royal Irish Academy, 11 (1810). Krouse, Richard W., “Two Concepts of Representation: James and John Stuart Mill,” in The Journal of Politics, 44 (1982). Magid, Henry M., “John Stuart Mill”, in L. Strauss & J. Cropsey eds., History of Political Philosophy, 3rd ed. (The University of Chicago Press, 1987). Martin, Rex, “A Defence of Mill’s Qualitative Hedonism,” in Philosophy, 47 (1972). McCunn, John, Six Radical Thinkers (London: Edward Arnold, 1910).

29 Martha Nussbaum, Not for Profit. Why Democracy Needs the Humanities (Princeton University Press, 2010), 2. 30 Cf. David Brink, “Mill’s Deliberative Utilitarianism,” in Philosophy and Public Affairs, 21: 1 (1992), 101.

206 A RECONSTRUCTION OF MILLIAN THEMES

Mill, John Stuart, Utilitarianism, Liberty, Representative Government (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1954). Moore, Asher, “Emotivism: Theory and Practice,” in The Journal of Philosophy, 55:9 (1958). Nussbaum, Martha, Not For Profit. Why Democracy Needs the Humanities (Princeton University Press, 2010). Olsson, J. Mikael, Austrian Economics as Political Philosophy, forthcoming dissertation. Olsson, J. Mikael, “Plato, Socrates, and the Politics of Meta-Aggression,” in SATS. Northern European Journal of Philosophy, 14:2 (2013). Olsson, J. Mikael, “The Straussian Paradigm Turned Upside-Down. A Model for Studying Political Philosophy,” in Minerva – An Internet Journal of Philosophy, 17 (2013). Pettit, Philip, Republicanism. A Theory of Freedom and Government (Oxford University Press, 1997). Quincey, H. Keith, “The Higher Pleasures and their Quantification,” in Polity, 12:3 (1980). Rosen, Frederick, Classical Utilitarianism from Hume to Mill (London: Routledge, 2003). West, Henry R., An Introduction to Mill’s Utilitarian Ethics (Cambridge University Press, 2004).

KRITIKE VOLUME EIGHT NUMBER TWO (DECEMBER 2014) 207-232

Article

The Influence of Confucian Values on Modern Hierarchies and Social Communication in China and Korea: A Comparative Outline

Tomasz Sleziak

Abstract: Confucianism and Neo-Confucianism, being by-products of socio-political and educational developments at various stages of Chinese history, have permeated to a varying degree several aspects of life in East Asian societies. China itself, along with its neighbouring states—such as Vietnam and Korea—despite political changes, globalization, and adoption of non-traditional systems of governance, have retained hierarchic models of communication derived from Neo- Confucianism. The nature of the doctrine and the transformative processes it underwent in the course of history are still widely discussed issues, just like the degree to which the societies in China and Korean Peninsula consciously follow the ethnolinguistic, philosophical, and moral principles of Confucianism. The goal of this paper is therefore not to focus on purely metaphysical aspects of Confucianism, but rather to examine communication patterns and modes of behaviour in various aspects of daily life in China and Korea introduced in processes of Confucianisation or influenced by Confucian philosophy, by means of the combination of qualitative method and comparative analysis.

Keywords: Confucianism, values, modern hierarchies, social communication

Background

he core motivation behind this paper lies in the relatively-unexplored academic area encompassing connections between Confucian T traditions and current mentalities of East Asian nations as well as certain spheres of public activity. Furthermore, since it is a well-established academic fact that Confucianism has persisted until the present day, the main

208 CONFUCIAN VALUES hypothesis and intellectual basis of the paper is the survival and persisting prevalence of this doctrine as a coherent, independent, and influential socio- political system of thought in East Asia, distinguishable from other cultural traditions of the region. It has also been assumed that the differences in terms of adoption and adaptation of Confucianism in China and Korea should not be viewed as purely dichotomic, but rather as processes which share common roots and cultural denominators. In order to verify these assumptions in a satisfactory manner, the examination of the ties binding pre-modern and modern societies of Korean Peninsula and China, as well as of the differences between Korean and Chinese applications of Confucian ideology, was performed with the aid of both traditional and contemporary literature on wide-ranging subjects from the field of East Asian studies and relevant humanities. The framework of my nine-month research leading to the compilation of the paper was centered on intellectual history and sociology of China and Korea along with specific aspects of linguistic hierarchism in Chinese and Korean cultures and the application of socio-political and philosophical doctrines in pre-modern and modern East Asia Research methods applied include comparative analysis (extending to literary materials, relevant aspects of Chinese and Korean Confucianism, specific ethnolinguistic elements and traditional and modern sociological thought of the region of East Asia) and qualitative line of enquiry. Online articles and sociological data were also of importance in the course of research, as they presented relatively up-to-date state of East Asian societies and data pertaining to the acceptance of Confucian values. Lastly, the author would like to extend words of gratitude to Prof. Andrea Riemenschnitter, Prof. Martina Deuchler, Dr. Ralph Weber, Prof. Pankaj Mohan, Dr. Anders Karlsson and Dr. Lars Laamann whose expertise has greatly contributed to the structure and topicality of the paper.

Earliest historical basis of Confucianism

Confucianism is a complex and often misinterpreted system of beliefs. This applies not only to its theoretical and functional aspects, but also to its western name. The historical figure Kong Qiu has not given a formal name to his doctrine, and the term “Rujia” (chin. 儒家), which is typically translated as “scholarly tradition” or “the school of sages,” only appears in Han dynastic period, primarily in the writings of Sima Tan 司馬談. Furthermore, as indicated by surviving documents from the early Zhou period (such as the “Classic of History,” also translated as “Book of Documents,” chin. Shujing 書經), several ideas often attributed to Confucianism in fact have origins traceable to the oldest ethical and sociological thoughts of China. Despite that fact, the compilatory work of

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Confucius, as well as his own theoretical contributions, cannot be overlooked as this doctrinal amalgamate was seemingly such an effective framework for education and governance systems that, despite the downfall of feudal structures associated with it, it survived to this day in mentalities of East Asian nations. Confucius repeatedly stressed the necessity of the balance between humaneness (chin.Ren 仁, kor. Yin 인), ritual propriety (chin. Li 禮, kor. Ye 예), righteousness (chin. Yi 义/義, kor. Ui 의) and filial piety (chin. Xiao 孝, kor. Hyo 효), which, according to him, correlated with the concept of a virtuous government, harmonious society,1 and later came to be perceived as directly connected to the idea of Five Cardinal Relationships (parent-child, ruler-minister, husband-wife, elder-younger, and friend-friend), which are in turn frequently concluded, at least partially, to constitute the core of extant Confucian values in East Asia and embody the set of rules by which an individual is bound in his or her interactions with the rest of society.2 Confucius, however, did not concern himself with overly metaphysical speculations, and it was the work of successive generations of scholars that led to creation of various “cosmological anthropologies,” which are collectively treated under the purely western term of Neo-Confucianism and have considerably influenced socio-political and intellectual environments of East Asia from the ninth to nineteenth century. The historical context of Confucianism should therefore, along with its changing pathways and reinterpretations, be analyzed in order to understand the placement of the philosophy in cultures of modern China and Korea.

Confucian ritual and philosophical traditions and their points of divergence

The key point in any research concerning the status of Confucianism in China and Korea is the role of nobility and its ties with various cultural heritages of the region. The application of both aspects of Confucian philosophy—conservatism and the transformative principle—the influence of the hereditary aristocracy, originally deeply respected by Confucius himself, had severely declined during Chinese Tang and Sung dynastic periods, giving place to a scholarly class of administrators. Among the main

1 Wing Tsit Chan, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1963), 14-16 2 Uichol Kim and Seung-hwan Lee, “The Confucian Model of Morality, Justice, Selfhood and Society: Implications for Modern Society,” in The Universal and Particular Natures of Confucianism, Proceedings of The 8th International Conference on Korean Studies (The Academy of Korean Studies, 1994), 167-209.

210 CONFUCIAN VALUES purposes of this new social formation was not only the creation of official cadres practicing the “virtuous” governance according to the then- developing Neo-Confucianism, but also the dissemination of the particular “cosmological anthropology” by the scholarly caste among all social strata.3 While the details of this process will be discussed further on, it should be noted here that the shaping of Neo-Confucian metaphysics into a credible socio-political doctrine of harmony in essence not only constituted a largely successful counterattack against the popularity of Buddhist and Taoist thought in rural areas, but also gave additional support to the traditional corpus of ancestral and seasonal ceremonies; these rituals, despite their partially pre-Confucian origins,4 have eventually become characteristic to the religious aspects of Neo-Confucianism in both China and Korea. However, the differences between processes of Confucianisation initiated in these two traditional countries in different periods of time had traditionally been significant. This fact stemmed from the cult of authority, which by the end of Goryeo period (918–1392) came to encompass the figure and literary heritage of such figures as Cheng Yi 程頤; Cheng Hao 程顥, and most importantly Zhu Xi 朱熹 in Korean Peninsula.5 Common to Korea and China was the performance of these rituals—either in the form of familial and household cults or as a pseudo-religion of state—along with reverence to Zhu Xi, who expanded upon their role in perceived anthropological and cosmological processes by borrowing terminology from Buddhism and Taoism in order to explain the relationship between the Heaven, human nature, principle, material force, and the way through which an individual may attain qualities of a sage6 akin to idealized rulers of old. But it was the latter area in which an individual was granted the higher possibility of personal development within the scope of Neo-Confucian culture, as the cultural root of Cheng-Zhu orthodoxy in Korea was practically an exclusive domain of the Yangban (kor. 양반) scholar-officialdom. On the other hand, the access to the higher levels of career and the core of both the state affair and Confucian culture was notably easier in China. This culture has been for a long time tied to the specific form of bureaucracy present within the sinic cultural sphere, which was in many

3 Romeyn Taylor, “Chinese Hierarchy in Comparative Perspective,” in The Journal of Asian Studies, 48:3 (Aug. 1989), 490-511. 4 Benjamin I. Schwartz, The World of Thought in Ancient China (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1989), 53-55. 5 Martina Deuchler, “Neo-Confucianism in Early Joseon Dynasty: Some Reflections on the Role of Ye,” in Korean National Commission for UNESCO, eds., Korean Philosophy: Its Tradition and Modern Transformation (Elizabeth, New Jersey and Seoul: Hollym, 2004), 43-54. 6 Pratoom Angurarohita, “Buddhist Influence on the Neo-Confucian Concept of the Sage,” in Sino-Platonic Papers, 10 (June 1989), 1-31.

T. SLEZIAK 211 ways an amalgamate construct of pure Confucian code of conduct and the legalist heritage of Qin period;7 from sixteenth to the early nineteenth century, it was perceived as an ideal system of governance by the eighteenth-century European scholars, based on the exaggerated or incomplete information they received from Jesuit missionaries. Modern specialists in the field of East Asian studies call validity of this “sino-centrism” into doubt, as the top ruling spheres in both China and Korea were not the embodiments of an enlightened rulership, but they, in fact, functionally represented variants of aristocratic autocracy.8 In accordance with the outlook of Voltaire,9 however, the “religious” setting of China and (by extension) Korea may have—to a certain degree—resembled deistic concepts of the western Enlightenment,10 as anthropomorphic metaphysical beings were not significant within the scope of state cults, and the concepts of Heaven and Ancestors may be seen as dissimilar to the Judeo-Christian images of “God.” These concepts were instead of purely moral-philosophical nature, performance of rituals directed towards them being considered essential to the survival of the state, society and ruler’s virtue since the Zhou period.11 Since cosmological and socio- political dimensions of what eventually came to be called the teaching of the scholars (chin. Rujia 儒家) were connected with each other through a distinctly sinophone interpretation of the principles of cause-and-effect, universal correlation, and cyclical nature of life, the behavior of any individual or social stratum12 could potentially influence Heaven and Earth and vice versa through complex reconfigurations additionally involving such factors as five elements,13 thus leading to ascription of the highest possible priority to maintenance of harmony and order in societal activities and state administration. Therefore, it may be concluded that while Confucius himself

7 Benjamin A. Elman and Alexander Woodside eds., Education and Society in Late Imperial China, 1600 - 1900 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 551. 8 Paul S. Ropp ed., Heritage of China Contemporary Perspectives on Chinese Civilization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 79, 238. 9 Voltaire, “Selections from the Philosophical Dictionary,” 1-2, accessed December 29 2014, . 10 John K. Fairbank, Edwin O. Reischauer and Albert M. Craig, East Asia The Modern Transformation (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1965), 55-58. 11 Scott Cook, “The Debate over Coercive Rulership and the ‘Human Way’ in Light of Recently Excavated Warring States Texts,” in Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 64:2 (Dec., 2004), 399-440. 12 This includes the imperial authority, which reinforced its authority by the means of being metaphysically-perceived—in terms of supposedly being granted by Heaven, the embodiment of the highest virtue and principle—yet not immutable prerogatives believed to be formulated by the Duke of Zhou (chin. Ji Dan 姬旦) and known collectively as the mandate of heaven (chin. Tian Ming 天命). 13 Tien-Rein Lee, “Heaven, Earth and Humans: Color Harmony in Chinese Culture,” in Obuda University e-Bulletin, 3:1 (2012), 155-164, 29 December 2014, .

212 CONFUCIAN VALUES was not explicit in his appraisal of the supernatural, the theories concerning the role of humans in the universe or the origins of their emotional as well as intellectual faculties are core elements of Confucianism and have constituted the integral part of this essentially humanistic philosophy—unlike more esoteric beliefs of Taoists and Buddhists—even before the advent of Neo- Confucian movements in Sung dynastic period.14 This in turn brings further an additional problem of legitimacy and policy-making. Despite the frequent political volatility in China and Korea and the fluctuating trust towards the ruler or administration, the scholar-literati were the true ruling and relatively stable (in terms of their administrative responsibilities and personal lifestyles) social class, which through long academic disputes formulated official doctrines to be followed by both the government and commoners—including those who attempted to raise their status through participation in the official examination system—though in the case of the latter (given the frequent economic hardships and physical labor), the appropriation of Confucian precepts usually meant conservative repetition of seasonal and ancestral rites (either explicitly supported by the literary canon or tolerated by authorities) as well as acceptance of traditional hierarchies and interpersonal communication. Eventually, despite the highly elaborate cosmology and ritual corpus of Neo-Confucianism, most of their constituents had lost their traditional background and significance in modern China and Korea, and Neo-Confucianism itself ceased to be the state ideology, transforming into an internalized, underlying ethnolinguistic system, with age and gender remaining prime defining factors of its intricacy. In order to understand the magnitude of these changes, a short analysis and comparison between certain aspects of pre-modern China and Korea and the influence Confucianism exerted on socio-political settings and interpersonal communication in these two countries must be presented.

Outline of the Evolution of Confucian philosophy and social models

The first key factor regarding differences between Confucian states of China and Joseon Korea lies in the processes of gentrification. The period of disorder following the downfall of the Han dynasty and the subsequent time of peace under Sui, Tang, and Sung dynasties marked the end of most privileges associated with traditional aristocracy.15 Chinese Neo- Confucianism—most importantly the texts that came to be venerated as

14 Luke J. Sim, S.J. and James T. Bretzke, S.J., “The Notion of Sincerity (Ch’eng) in The Confucian Classics,” in Journal of Chinese Philosophy, 21 (1994), 179-212. 15 Edwin O. Reischauer and John K. Fairbank, East Asia The Great Tradition (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1960), 186-187.

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“classics” (including such works as “The Book of Documents,” “The Book of Odes,” “Spring and Autumn Annals,” “Analects,” and “The Book of Mencius”) —formed the basis for examination system which in turn became the main method of social advancement. Many official positions could be inherited; however, since the seventh century AD, academic effort and resources rather than birth could determine one’s life. The landholding class, financially placed at the top of society, often dominated the examination system, though it no longer had any specific, traditional privileges placing it ritually above other social strata. However, Mark Edward Lewis, a specialist in Tang dynastic period, makes an important remark on the concentration of the highest-level academic institutions in the capital, which, coupled with certain rank- and family-based restrictions, complicated the attempts of provincial candidates at career advancement.16 Nonetheless, the situation in Korean Peninsula of the late Goryeo period was very different as regards the society’s structure; the reasons for survival and prominence of the semi- aristocratic Yangban scholar-officialdom were numerous, despite the nominal adoption of Ming Chinese educational curriculum in the form of Confucian textual studies and the oft complex, “metaphysical”17 methods of governance as outlined by the orthodox Cheng-Zhu school of Neo- Confucianism, which envisioned equal chances of advancement for all members of society.18 Among these reasons is the degree to which the landholding families were tied to the royalty of the late Goryeo period as well as to the ruling Yi family of Joseon, which was significantly high in the history of East Asian gentry.19 Furthermore, there were several administrative restrictions enacted by Joseon policy-makers, which impeded the efforts of persons outside Yangban kinship groups to engage in a career of a scholar- official.20 It may be said that while in China the position of a “gentleman” (chin. Junzi 君子) was envisioned by Confucius and later scholars as one that could be reached by one’s own effort, in Joseon the analogous term Gunja (kor.군자) came to be associated almost exclusively with the hermetic Yangban class.

16 Mark Edward Lewis, China’s Cosmopolitan Empire the Tang Dynasty (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009), 203-204. 17 This is in terms of describing all forms of social interactions as placed within an intricate system of cosmological factors, such as the five elements, the principle and the material force, and the institutionalized ancestral worship. 18 Yung Sik Kim, The Natural Philosophy of Chu Hsi 1130 - 1200 (American Philosophical Society, 2000), 123, 247, 271, 278. 19 John Duncan, “The Korean Adoption of Neo-Confucianism: The Social Context,” in Walter H. Slote and George A. de Vos eds., Confucianism and the Family (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), 75-90. 20 Yong-Ho Choe, “Commoners in Early Yi Dynasty Civil Examinations: An Aspect of Korean Social Structure, 1392 - 1600,” in The Journal of Asian Studies, 33:4 (Aug. 1974), 611-631.

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Although both in China and Korea the ruling social spheres acted as the main disseminators of Confucianism, the commoners were active participants in the cultural activities of their states, or at least were faithful recipients of the government’s policies associated with Confucianism, which in turn came to be linked with collective action and responsibility as the main factors shaping an individual into a “complete” being.21 This type of a top- down policymaking had its official roots in the Sung and Ming periods, when dialogues between philosophers and the imperial environment were common; the scholarly and political authority of such persons as Zhu Xi, his chief opponent Lu Xiangshan 陸象山, and the orthodox position of the former have all resulted from such encounters, as Theodore de Bary describes in his brilliant analysis of Sung period academic discourses.22 However, Brian E. McKnight points out that these debates, besides being purely theoretic, also had a practical dimension, and several of Sung Neo-Confucians23 and later periods in China and Korea have also engaged in legal matters and community administration. In these terms, the cooperation between village communities and people living within them was envisioned by Neo- Confucian scholar-officials as a mechanism which could—at least in theory— alleviate much of the administrative problems of the state, especially in its outlying regions. Such sustainable system of community compacts was devised in China and subsequently copied in Joseon Korea; Martina Deuchler extensively elaborated on this topic in her work.24 Confucianism —both its moral principles and academic curriculum—acted as the main basis for these social structures. Along with the aforementioned ancestral rituals, these semi- artificial socio-political systems were based on an idea of harmony connected to not only status and education, but also gender inequality,25 which nonetheless brought relative internal stability to East Asian states for the duration of long dynastic cycles. Many hierarchic speech patterns have developed or, in more cases, were reinforced26 during that time as a result of

21 Sor-Hoon Tan, “Can there be a Confucian Civil Society,” in Chong Kim-Chong and Tan Sor-Hoon eds., The Moral Circle and The Self (Chicago and La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 2003), 193-218. 22 William Theodore de Bary, Neo-Confucian Orthodoxy and the Learning of the Mind-And- Heart (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981). 23 Brian E. McKnight, Law and Order in Sung China (Cambridge, USA: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 20-24. 24 Martina Deuchler, “The Practice of Confucianism: Ritual and Order in Choson Dynasty Korea,” in Benjamin A. Elman, John B. Duncan and Herman Ooms eds., Rethinking Confucianism: Past and Present in China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam (Los Angeles: UCLA Asian Pacific Monograph Series, 2002), 293-334. 25 Patricia Buckley Ebrey, Confucianism and Family Rituals in Imperial China A Social History of Writing About Rites (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1991), 145-166. 26 Lucien Brown, Korean Honorifics and Politeness in Second Language Learning (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2011), 20-22.

T. SLEZIAK 215 the influence Confucian doctrine exerted on the culture of the nobility as well as the general relations between high and lower social strata, and, consequently, through top-down approach, on the daily life of commoners. It may definitely be concluded that these developments were an attempt at emulation of traditional China’s (where the Confucian ideology started to exert its influence at a much earlier stage of social organization) culture and communication patterns; regardless of the dubious results, various fields of literature, especially the art of commentary, philosophical dispute and poetry were nonetheless given further prominence due to their importance in the system of official examination. However, the aforementioned tendency towards group-thinking and collectivism had eventually led to political factionalism in both China and Korea, which in turn brought about the decrease of the ruler’s authority and of the administrative efficiency, as it was impossible for politicians of different ideological affiliations to formulate a coherent state policy in an environment, where every faction primarily had focused on its own political agenda and typically rejected academic opinions of opposing groups. This was one of the biggest shortcomings of Joseon’s politics the Sirhak (kor. 실학, literally ‘real learning’ or ‘practical learning’) movement lamented.27 Moreover, this attitude, coupled with the aforementioned cult of authority and reverence to the ethnic Chinese culture, has caused intellectual isolation of Korea. For example, such developments as the gradual loss of popular support towards Buddhism, the official disdain towards the precepts of the heterodox Lu-Wang mind-and-heart school in Joseon, and the XIXth century clash between Neo-Confucian ritualism and Christianity28 may be directly connected to the staunch intolerance of Joseon’s scholar-officialdom and the relative value uniformity among Koreans under the Yi dynasty.29 This intolerance towards doctrines unendorsed by the government was, however, virtually unknown within Korean society in earlier times. While the exact date of Confucianism’s arrival on the Peninsula is unknown, one may assume based on extant resources that it appeared jointly with Buddhism between third and fifth centuries AD,30 and until the late Goryeo period (918-1392) it had influenced education curriculum and political organization in Korea to a limited degree, for instance, by providing a basis for the honor code of the Silla Hwarang, its popularity being much

27 Don Baker, “Practical Ethics and Practical Learning: Tasan’s Approach to Moral Cultivation,” in Acta Koreana, 13:2 (Dec. 2010), 47-61. 28 Robert E. Buswell and Timothy S. Lee eds., Christianity in Korea (University of Hawai’I Press, 2006), 287. 29 Michael J. Seth, A History of Korea From Antiquity to the Present (Plymouth, UK: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers Inc., 2011), 179. 30 Mark Peterson and Philipp Margulies, A Brief History of Korea (New York: Infobase Publishing, 2010), XIII.

216 CONFUCIAN VALUES lower than Buddhism among non-elites. The wake of the Joseon period brought an end to these inter-doctrinal dynamics; consequently Confucianism started to extend a far-reaching influence on Korean society by transforming traditional customs, providing new regulations for them, and dominating socio-political environment of Korea at the expense of Buddhism and Shamanism. The concept of belonging to a defined group and conforming to its goals, beliefs, and general lifestyles, can thus be seen as common denominator of interpersonal relations and socio-political processes of all social strata in traditional China and Korea—the notion that has largely survived the fall of feudality. However, as previously mentioned, the official paths of career, Confucian moral norms, and peer-pressure factored in a development of a Korean individual of Joseon period to a much higher degree than in the case of his Ming Chinese contemporary, as well as presenting his personal freedom of thought and choice as highly limited, at least from the modern perspective.31 Even in the private environment of the family, an individual was bound by strict rules defining his or her position and interpersonal relations, seemingly more centered on the maintenance of ritual propriety than of humaneness as envisioned by Confucius. These, as stipulated by Zhu Xi in his Family Rituals, were applied much more vehemently in Joseon than in Ming and Qing China; for instance, the low standing of secondary wives and their offspring as well as the social issues stemming from this type of family setting was extraordinary in pre-modern East Asia.32 Still, a question remains, if these limitations—in one way or another associated with Confucianism—have retained their significance into the present day East Asian states, and whether Confucian doctrine can serve as a positive agent of social mobilization and growth in today’s China and South Korea.

The wake of modernity in East Asia and clashes between Confucianism and foreign doctrines

a) The first half of the twentieth century in China and Korea

In the first decades of the twentieth century, both the occupational Japanese forces in Korea and most of the forces of modernization in China considered state Confucianism to be among the chief agents responsible for

31 James B. Palais, “Confucianism and The Aristocratic/Bureaucratic Balance in Korea,” in Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 44:2 (Dec. 1984), 427-468. 32 Peter H. Lee and Theodore de Bary eds., Sources of Korean Tradition Vol.I (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 317.

T. SLEZIAK 217 the economic and political decline of the far-east monarchies. The fact that the downfall of Joseon and Qing dynasties was almost immediately followed by the abolishment of the official examination system is a supplementary proof of the direct ties between Confucianism and the traditional politics of the aforementioned states, and of the negatively perceived role of the Confucian philosophy as the main factor preventing modernization. Among Chinese scholars and reformers active during the republican period, Kang Youwei 康有為 was especially vocal in his criticism of the orthodox Confucianism and its ties with the rulership.33 It was then that, in the process of the development of their own nationalistic doctrine, Koreans started to view themselves as a single nation belonging in a specific geopolitical reality, and not as a set of sharply divided feudalistic classes.34 As the external pressure towards modernization increased in China and Korea, the official aspect of Confucianism has largely faded, although extensive reconstructions of the ritualistic corpus of the doctrine have been carried out since the end of the Korean War. Due to the abolition of privileges of the Korean Yangban class, the former scholar-officials were required to become accustomed to new cultural and socio-political environments. Consequently, many of their kinship groups, by utilizing the Japanese capital and leftover infrastructure, have, as Tan Soo Kee notes, provided an intellectual and technological basis for the indigenous Chaebol 채벌 conglomerate system.35 Meanwhile, however, the struggle for independence and the realistic needs of the occupied Korean people had made it difficult for a conservative doctrine such as Confucianism to serve the role of a main drive of the nation towards freedom; among ideologies inspired by foreign philosophies and policy models, the capitalist and socialist offshoots of nationalist thought eventually proved more attractive to the majority of society. Similar ideological struggles took place in China, though it must be noted that despite the chaotic governance of the republican period, the public discourse nonetheless faced fewer restrictions than in the case of Korea, which may have contributed to the presence of a very active intellectual environment as well as—indirectly— to a number of ideological clashes in the “middle country,” as Leigh Jenco remarks in his article.36 As a result of

33 Lawrence R. Sullivan, “Intellectual and Political Controversies Over Authority in China: 1898 - 1922,” in Peter D. Hershock and Roger T. Ames eds., Confucian Cultures of Authority (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006), 171-214. 34 Gi-Wook Shin, Ethnic Nationalism in Korea Genealogy Politics and Legacy (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2006), 5-6. 35 Soo Kee Tan, “Influences of Confucianism on Korean Corporate Culture,” in Asian Profile, 36:1 2008, 9-20. 36 Leigh K. Jenco, “’Rule by Man’ or ‘Rule by Law’ in Early Republican China: Contributions to a Theoretical Debate,” in The Journal of Asian Studies, 69:1 (Feb. 2010), 181-203.

218 CONFUCIAN VALUES the discourse between supporters of Confucianism with the adherents to such philosophies as western humanism and rationalism, the so-called New Confucianism was formulated, supporters of which—such as Mou Zongsan 牟宗三—strived to appropriate the ancient doctrine to the reality of the twentieth century.37 As for the familial aspect of Neo-Confucian thought, it had largely survived in both of these countries in the form of household cults, extensively described in Choi Joon-Sik’s book,38 though the degree of this survival is debatable and adherence to their tradition is steadily decreasing, with most of the supporters of these cults being, as Choi points out, the inhabitants of rural regions. The rising popularity of Christian denominations in East Asia has also affected the popularity of ancestral rituals and related forms of Neo-Confucian cult. However, as these rituals, in their modern form, represent purely private aspect of life in East Asia, they will not be further enquired into in this paper. As much as the structure of Chinese and Korean societies developed, their modes of communication underwent changes as well. The rising popularity of the communist movement in China raised the issue of analphabetism among lower social strata, and consequently the idea of simplification of traditional characters started to be proclaimed as early as the beginning of the twentieth century, but actively applied only in the 1950s in mainland China.39 Meanwhile, in Korean Peninsula, the majority of the modern political forces considered the use of Hanmun (kor. 한문, chin. 漢文, lit. classical Chinese writing) in daily life to be outdated, complicated, and potentially dangerous to the uniqueness of the national culture,40 therefore, shifting the focus to the formerly shunned, indigenous Hangul phonetic alphabet. Both of these ethnolinguistic processes were directly connected to the aforementioned reinterpretations of Confucianism, as the use of the traditional Chinese characters used to be a denominator of the ruling, privileged class in China and Korea. This, however, did not mean the complete abandoning of the Confucianism-influenced communication. While in China the system of honorifics had been greatly simplified, the relationship between speaker and listener, their individual statuses and the spatial- temporal setting of their conversation have retained their importance in Korean day-to-day communication despite various new structural influences and loan words taken predominantly from such languages as Japanese and

37 Xinzhong Yao, An Introduction to Confucianism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 242-247. 38 Joon-Sik Choi, Folk-religion, The Customs in Korea (Seoul: Ewha Womans University Press, 2005). 39 Linsun Cheng ed., Berkshire Encyclopedia of China (Great Barrington, Massachusetts: Berkshire Publishing Group, 2009), 263-264. 40 Seth, A History of Korea From Antiquity to the Present, 258-261.

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English in the first half of the twentieth century as the result of the Peninsula’s new geopolitical situation.41 The Japanisation conducted by the occupational forces in Korea and attempted in certain regions of China (such as Manchuria) brought upon yet another significant factor of change— the revival of Buddhism, which for many centuries was defensive against Neo-Confucianism in China and Korea. Although the Japanese form of this religion was in many aspects different from the ones practiced in the continental East Asia, the side effect of the introduction of the foreign, syncretic (in terms of its strong connection with Shinto) doctrine was the revival of the indigenous Buddhist thought in the aforementioned countries, as well as the apparent decrease of Confucian rituals performed in the public space, which was also influenced by policies of the Japanese occupational government.42 Various Christian denominations have garnered following as well, though their success had been severely limited due to both indigenous and Japanese opposition to these movements,43 as well as by the perceived incompatibilities between canonical rules of Christianity and Confucianism, most importantly the long-standing problem of Confucian ancestral cults. All of these socio-political issues contributed to the practical relegation of ritualistic Confucianism to the private sphere in China and Korea; however, despite the new linguistic and socio-political developments, an arguably Confucian basis for interpersonal communication in these countries has retained its importance. The new political orders and military confrontations of the second half of the century have brought further changes to the perception of Confucianism and its socio- political role in East Asia.

b) The new socio-political orders of China and Korean Peninsula in the second half of the twentieth century

The end of the Second World War and the doctrinal, political, and ethnical divisions caused by it had far-reaching consequences for Confucianism in China and Korea. Existence of two states—the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of China (Taiwan)—each of them aspiring to represent the Chinese people and their values—was directly mirrored by the situation in the Korean Peninsula. The principles of Marxism, Leninism, and Maoism (in mainland China), augmented, in the case of North

41 Ki-Moon Lee and Robert S. Ramsey, A History of Korean Language (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 191-192, 299-305. 42 Henrik Sorensen, “The Attitude of the Japanese Colonial Government Towards Religion in Korea (1910-1919),” in Copenhagen Papers in East and Southeast Asian Studies, 8 (1993), 49-69. 43 Fairbank, Reischauer, and Craig, East Asia The Modern Transformation, 760-761.

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Korea, by the original “Juche” idea of autarchy and ideological independence, viewed any religious conduct—or any explicitly connected to monarchism— as a potentially disruptive social activity. Despite the gradually introduced modifications to this state policy in the People’s Republic of China, the environment for official discourse on Confucianism, Buddhism, and Christianity still faces many restrictions, and the situation in this regard is especially difficult in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. On the contrary, the openly nationalist Kuomintang party, which became the governing body of Taiwan’s “Republic of China,” stated the need to protect what it perceived as the traditional Chinese culture, which in turn encompassed both religious Taoism and Neo-Confucianism; this policy had extensive support from various “patriotic” refugee scholars who escaped communist persecutions at that time.44 The case of the Republic of Korea (South Korea) was somewhat similar to Taiwan; Syngman Rhee 이 승만, Park Chung-Hee (Pak Jeong-Hui 박 정희) and Chun Doo-Hwan (Jeon Doo-Hwan 전 두환), while maintaining a security-centered relationship with the United States, considered Confucianism and Shamanism not only as the core of the national thought, but also as the underlying theoretical support for the nationalized economy.45 The paternalistic control exerted by an authoritarian figure or group of individuals on an extensive, profit-driven structure (which are, up to present time, common in East Asia, including Japan) has been frequently described as such application of the Confucian top-down approach in modern times. The interesting aspect of this situation is the situation in North Korea with the dominance of the ruling Kim family, which in turn resembles the mechanisms behind the public authority of Yi kinship groups in Joseon Korea, as one may conclude from Paul French’s analysis of the subject.46 Despite this characteristic of East Asian societies, it was only recently, as will be detailed later, that the governments of the mainland China and South Korea openly started expressing their wish to use Confucianism in the process of legitimization of their own rule. Although Confucianism had not been listed among the legal religions in communist China, the tenure of Deng Xiaoping 邓小平 constituted an important landmark as regards the official perception of the traditional doctrine, and since that time, the positive outlook on non-cultist aspects of Confucianism has been on the rise among

44 Shu-Hsien Liu, Essentials of Contemporary Neo-Confucian Philosophy (Westport, Connecticut, London: Praeger, 2003), 35, 54, 111-112. 45 Henry C.K. Liu, “Korea Under Park Chung-Hee,” in Asia Times, 25 October 2006, . 46 Paul French, North Korea The Paranoid Peninsula A Modern History (London and New York: Zed Books, 2005), 63-64.

T. SLEZIAK 221 the Party members and official policies of the state.47 Furthermore, the continuous survival and thriving of kinship structures in mainland China is believed to be supported not only by socialist, collectivist thought, but also by Confucianism and its tenets pertaining to proper relationships between family members.48 The aforementioned persistence of indigenous beliefs in Taiwan has been of a different nature, as the authority of Taoist deities, Buddhist sacred figures, and Confucian scholars has come to be respected in a purely religious manner among islanders; this approach along with the “westernization” (or “pop-culturization”) of Confucianism is, to a certain degree, considered by many modern scholars to be against the original teachings of Confucius.49 It was in Taiwan, however, that the scholars representing the movement of “New Confucianism” found their solace after the defeat of the Kuomintang on the continent.50 Although these developments have been significant from a cultural point of view, many aspects of East Asian societies have changed since then, and along with them, the perception of Confucianism. The democratization of South Korea and the various, complex socio-economic and political changes in the People’s Republic of China, which started in the second half of the 1980s, have constituted the chief causes of new rearrangements of the role of the “doctrine of the sages” in day-to-day life of China’s and Korea’s societies.

c) The Contemporary Situation of Confucianism in China and South Korea

The rapid economic rise of China and South Korea, coupled with the political opening of the former, had both positive and negative results in sociological terms. Education and entertainment underwent significant changes, which were, at least to a certain degree, related to the re-examination of the modern forms of Confucianism. Nationalist thought partially absorbed cosmopolitan interpretation of Confucian ideology, which has since been stated to emphasize cultural exchanges51—South Korea’s embracing of

47 Randall Peerenboom, China Modernizes threat to the west or model for the rest? (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 107-108. 48 Yunxiang Yan, “The Individualization of Chinese Society,” in London School of Economics Monographs on Social Anthropology, 77 (2009), 100. 49 Xiuping Hong, “The Characteristics and Prospect of the Confucian Academy: A Commentary on Jiang Qing’s Ideas on the Confucian Academy,” in Fan Ruiping ed., The Renaissance of Confucianism in Contemporary China (New York: Springer, 2011), 185 -204. 50 Jeffrey Richey, Confucianism Historical Development Modern Age, in Patheos Library, 8 May 2013, . 51 Arif Dirlik, “Confucius in the Borderlands: Global Capitalism and the Reinvention of Confucianism,” in Boundary 2, 22:3 (Autumn 1995), 229-273.

222 CONFUCIAN VALUES globalization, the fall of dictatorship, and the 1988 Olympic Games being the underlying temporal key points in these developments. In the case of China, as was mentioned previously, the policies of Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin 江泽民 (most importantly, the so-called ideology of the “Three Represents” 三個代表) are seen as the signifiers of the reinterpretation of Maoism and acceptance of both old indigenous doctrines—such as Confucianism—as well as foreign technology and market economy, with the aim of revitalizing the stagnated and inefficient industry and social productivity.52 Regardless of the details of these changes, the Confucian core of interpersonal relations has remained intact, and the domination of men in familial structures and work continues to define East Asian behavioral models.53 Another proof of Confucianism’s persistence as the dominant system of social interaction is the acceptance of communal values associated with Confucianism in Taiwan, which was proved by Fetzer’s and Soper’s comparative research,54 though the authors also frequently note within their work that there is an increasingly large number of Taiwan’s citizens who associate Confucian ideology with policies of the ruling Kuomintang party; the results can be very well applied in mainland China and South Korea as well. The presence of patriarchy, perceived as the key element of familism and communitarian attitude, results in a much higher focus on producing a male heir and rearing him to become a “respectable” member of society than ever practiced in European or American societies. Therefore, it can be seen that the aforementioned cosmopolitanism—being, by definition, focused on relationships with foreign states and cultures—did not replace Confucian values as the main basis for official administration and interpersonal communication. As Daniel A. Bell notes, the younger generations of Chinese Communist Party officials, including the former president Hu Jintao 胡锦涛, are keen on treating Confucian values (most importantly the filial piety, behaviour towards family members and the widely-perceived higher-in-ranks) as the measuring tool of their morality and public conduct, as well as of the general socio-economic changes within the country.55 The authority of Confucius himself is, however, being treated with caution, as evidenced by the case of the statue of the Sage, which was firstly placed on the highly sensitive (in political terms)

52 Ruiping Fan, Reconstructionist Confucianism Rethinking Morality After the West (New York: Springer, 2010), 240-241. 53 Uhn Cho, “Gender inequality and patriarchal order recontextualized,” in Hee-Yeon Cho, Lawrence Surrendra and Hyo-Je Cho eds., Contemporary South Korean Society A critical perspective (London and New York: Routledge, 2013), 18-27. 54 Joel S. Fetzer and Christopher J. Soper, “The Effect of Confucian Values on Support for Democracy and Human Rights in Taiwan,” in Taiwan Journal of Democracy, 3:1 (July 2007), 143- 154. 55 Daniel A. Bell, China’s New Confucianism Politics and Everyday Life in a Changing Society (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2008), 23-26.

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Tiananmen Square in Beijing, and then subsequently removed.56 Furthermore, the Confucius Institutes have come under international criticism in the recent years, being branded as instruments of China’s ‘soft power’ and political agenda worldwide.57 South Korean government has also been supporting Confucian heritage of the country. Designation of Confucian shrines as protected cultural property and recommendation of such culturally significant Confucian heritage as Seowon academies for the UNESCO World Heritage List58 are sign of this attitude, though just like their Chinese counterparts, the South Korean politicians are reluctant to let Confucianism gain more public foothold. In the 1995 research report by Helgesen and Thomsen,59 a relatively high number of respondents associated Confucianism with such values as authoritarianism and alienation; these results, coupled with other findings outlined by Helgesen and Thomsen, collectively prove both the highly fluid perception of Confucian values in Korea and the survival of the doctrine as an independent, distinguishable system of beliefs. Despite the seemingly positive premise of the application of Confucianism in the apparatus of the leading party of China (and, by extension, elsewhere in East Asia), the potentially dangerous side to this process is emphasized by Gilbert Rozman.60 He points out the morally dubious aspect of assessing a person’s worth in Confucianism, which, in his eyes, is largely based on the factor of birth and the widely-perceived social placement. Furthermore, while by the principles expounded by Mencius, the society has a full right of rising against corrupt politicians and administrators,61 the authority of the supreme leader (such as the President, Secretary General of the Party, etc.) is frequently seen by the masses and experts alike as unchallengeable.62 Rozman’s focus on the assessment of a person’s hierarchical position and functional capabilities as dependent on

56 Samuel Wade, “Tiananmen Confucius Statue Relocated,” in China Digital Times, 21 April 2011, . 57 D.D. Guttenplan, “Critics Worry About Influence of Chinese Institutes on U.S. Campuses,” in New York Times, 4 March 2012, . 58 Ah-young Chung, “CHA to propose ‘seowon’ for UNESCO heritage,” in Korea Times, 10 December 2013, . 59 Geir Helgesen and Soren Risbjerg Thomsen, Measuring Political Attitudes in East Asia The Case of South Korean Democratization (Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, 1995), 34. 60 Gilbert Rozman, “Can Confucianism Survive in an Age of Universalism and Globalization?,” in Pacific Affairs, 75:1 (Spring 2002), 11-37. 61 A.T. Nuyen “‘The ‘Mandate of Heaven’: Mencius and the Divine Command Theory of Political Legitimacy,” in Philosophy East and West, 63:2 (April 2013), 113-126. 62 Ho-Fung Hung, “Confucianism and Political Dissent in China,” in East Asia Forum, 26 July 2011, .

224 CONFUCIAN VALUES interpersonal connections—typically in the form of affective networks— mostly refers to the structures of the Chinese Communist Party, and he somewhat diminishes the educational aspect of social advancement. In fact, the society at large in mainland China, Taiwan and South Korea treats proper schooling, grades, and examinations as the most basic ways of access to the higher echelons of a state’s socio-economic environment.63 Rozman’s point, on the other hand, is validated by June Ock Yum who points out the importance of the intermediaries in East Asian professional settings, as opposed to the more personal and direct methods of contact typical to American businesses.64 Regardless, certain discrepancies concerning application of Confucian values between East Asian ruling spheres and the societies of the region may be explained by Confucius’ own opinion on the rectification of names and divisions of functions. In this regard, Antonio Cua notices the particular opinion of the Sage, according to which the rulers and their advisors, while emulating the functionality of familial structures, should be kept separate from the matters of the rest of the populace, being in tune with their traditional (i.e., at least in part hereditary) prerogatives, official roles, distinct modes of communication and interpersonal relations, despite his stressing knowledge and practical skills as future basis for advancement of all members of society.65 Within this ancient tradition, one may surprisingly find not only the roots of divisions in modern East Asia and mechanisms behind affective networks, but also the basis for the contemporary form of oriental authority ‘cults.’ These ‘cults’ extend to the spheres of economic activity, perceived—especially the South Korean Chaebol system and Taiwanese traditional family companies—as serving an important role in the financial sustenance of the people and contributing to national pride.66 Ties between politicians and the leading conglomerate clans are therefore acceptable in such a setting, despite the frequent corruption, nepotism-based scandals and recruitment of employees based on familial connection and aforementioned affective networks, which, as proven by latest media investigations, pose a significant danger to the fairness of South

63 John Sudworth, “China’s Students Take on Tough Gaokao University Entrance Exam,” in bbc.co.uk, 8 June 2012, < http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-18349873>. 64 June Ock Yum, “The impact of Confucianism on Interpersonal relationships and communication patterns in East Asia,” in Communication Monographs, 55:4 (1988), 374-388. 65 Antonio S. Cua, “Reflections on the Structure of Confucian Ethics,” in Philosophy East And West, 21:2 (April 1971), 125-140. 66 Gary G. Hamilton and Nicole Woolsey Biggart, “Market, Culture and Authority: A Comparative Analysis of Management and Organization in the Far East,” in American Journal of Sociology, 94, Supplement: Organizations and Institutions: Sociological and Economic Approaches to the Analysis of Social Structure (1988), 52-9.

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Korean,67 mainland Chinese,68 and Taiwanese69 job markets. The frequently asked question of the compatibility of the western democratic models with Confucian social though is thus well-placed. Sor-Hoon Tan understands the frequent “interventionism” of East Asian governments and their ties with kinship structures and economic entities as not only embodying Confucian theory of a “benevolent ruler,” but also resembling Dewey’s modern view of the necessary degree of influence of the politicians extended over the sphere of economy, aimed at alleviating hardships of society, even at the cost of an individual’s personal freedom.70 Popular outlooks towards politicians in East Asia, besides being grounded on administrative and age-based hierarchies, are also shaped by regional factors; it is especially in the nominally democratic states such as South Korea, where, in the process of voting, one can freely express his or her allegiance to a politician from his or her geographical area. Wang-Bae Kim sees regional sentiment as an alternative to globalism, and one of the main ideological forces in modern South Korea, especially since the society of that country, in academic and sociological terms, is under the influence of an underlying indigenous-Confucian cultural heritage.71 However, Confucian culture finds sustainment not only within private kinship structures, affective networks, or as an aspect of regionalism. In the recent years, Taiwan, mainland China, and South Korea have been producing various televised series and movies concerning the national traditions and history; Confucian communication and moral tenets are often emphasized within such media,72 which in turn is an easily accessible and direct method of contact with the ancient doctrine, especially to younger generations, who in their intellectual pursuits usually focus on subjects and skills required for their career, most importantly natural sciences. Moreover, it can be said that while comprehension of the canon of Confucian classics is no longer mandatory in East Asian academic curricula, Chinese and Korean students are constantly exposed to a model of education and examination deeply reminiscent of the

67 Chosun Ilbo, “Nepotism Still Rife in Korean Employment,” in english.chosun.com, 22 November 2011, . 68 Jamil Anderlini, “Bo’s Downfall Sheds Light on Nepotism,” in Financial Times, 18 April 2013, . 69 Yan-Chih Mo, “Councilors Accuse Taipei of Nepotism,” in Taipei Times, 18 May 2012, . 70 Sor-Hoon Tan, Confucian Democracy A Deweyan Reconstruction (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004), 173-175. 71 Wang Bae Kim, “Regionalism its origins and substance with competition and exclusion,” in Hee-Yeon Cho, Lawrence Surrendra and Hyo-Je Cho eds., Contemporary South Korea a Critical Perspective (London and New York: Routledge, 2013), 28-40. 72 Ying Zhu, “The Confucian Tradition and Chinese Television Today,” in The New York Times, 15 May 2013, .

226 CONFUCIAN VALUES one advised by Cheng-Zhu school in pre-modern times, with memorization, blind respect for teachers and cooperation with peers, rather than free- thinking and individualistic behaviour, being rewarded in the course of one’s career.73 Various academic projects conducted in recent years further confirm and explain this particular mentality, as well as the general, if partially unconscious, trend of acceptance the younger generations exhibit towards traditional Confucian values. However, the opinions concerning specific aspects of these values tend to vary depending on a country’s unique socio- historical circumstances.74 Interpersonal relations modeled on Confucian principles are also present within various forms of entertainment favored by young East Asians, such as internet games, though the pop-culture and modern jargon may make it difficult for a scholar to clearly identify the patterns of traditionalism within such products, especially considering the promotional character at least some of them possess, for instance, as part of the global Korean Wave phenomenon.75 Persistence of Confucian values in new media additionally reinforces the traditional morality of Chinese and Koreans in daily life, and despite the aforementioned linguistic changes, the “high speech,” “low speech,” honorific particles, and various levels of ethnolinguistic hierarchy, along with the deep sense of placement within specific social group—family, friends, company—still influence East Asian interpersonal communication. Whether or not such social organization and behavioral models can survive the rapid aging of East Asian societies and the rising financial discrepancies76 is a question the answer to which can only be pinpointed after further investigation and analyses. Based on developments in East Asia so far, one thing can be ascertained—that the transformative aspect of Neo-Confucianism, often hidden behind conservative nature of the doctrine, has definitely contributed to socio-political changes in the region, and that Confucianism, despite the traditional doctrinal opposition from Christianity, Buddhism, Shinto, Shamanism, and other religions of the world, will continue to be noticeable in daily lives of East Asian nations.

73 Kyung Hee Kim, “Learning From Each Other: Creativity in East Asian and American Education,” in Creativity Research Journal, 17:4 (2005), 337-347. 74 Yan Bing Zhang, Mei-Chen Lin, Akihiko Nonaka and Khisu Beom, “Harmony, Hierarchy and Conservatism: A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Confucian Values in China, Korea, Japan, and Taiwan,” in Communication Research Reports, 22:2 (June 2005), 107-115. 75 Yong Jin Dal, “The New Korean Wave in the Creative Industry Hallyu 2.0,” in II Journal, 2:1 (Fall 2012), . 76 Rafal Chomik and John Piggott, “Ageing Societies: The Race Against Time,” in East Asia Forum, 9 April 2013, .

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Key Conclusions

Main geographic, socio-political, and cultural areas of enquiry were limited to social interactions and hierarchism in People’s Republic of China, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Republic of China, Republic of Korea, and their historical predecessors. Whether a state actively supports dissemination of the traditional doctrine or tries to uproot it in favor of foreign ideologies, the fact is that due to several centuries of Neo- Confucianism’s dominance as the key source of the region’s official policies and cultural settings, the societies of China and Korean Peninsula have— perhaps unconsciously—accommodated Neo-Confucian principles as a basis for their day-to-day lives. While in pre-modern history of the sinophone cultural sphere, the differences between Korean and Chinese applications of “sagely teachings” had their source in varying political circumstances and indigenous forms of social organization, at present it is difficult to find functional points of divergence pertaining to support or limitation of Confucianism in mainland China, Taiwan, and both Koreas. The reason for this could lie in the superiority and longevity of Neo-Confucianism displayed so far over other philosophical and metaphysical teachings present in the region—perhaps due to its highly practical nature. Thus, it can be concluded that regardless of China’s or Korea’s officially adopted political ideologies, or the publicly expressed, highly varying attitudes towards the ancient doctrine, the dualistic conservative-transformative nature of Neo-Confucian heritage will remain the central denominator of the expressed values of Koreans and Chinese and of the interpersonal communication in their daily lives, embodying the internalized, yet visible and distinguishable core of East Asian sociological, philosophical, and ethical heritage.

Department of the Languages and Cultures of Japan and Korea, School of Oriental and African Studies, United Kingdom

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KRITIKE VOLUME EIGHT NUMBER TWO (DECEMBER 2014) 233-246

Review Article

Ang Diskurso ng Katarungan ayon kay Agustin Martin Rodriguez

Emmanuel C. de Leon

Rodriguez, Agustin Martin, May Laro ang Diskurso ng Katarungan (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2014). 260 pp.

asasabing matagumpay ang Governing the Other: Exploring the Discourse of Democracy in a Multiverse of Reason (2009) ni Agustin M Martin Rodriguez. Kaya, ang masusugid niyang mambabasa ay nanabik sa paghihintay ng kasunod nito. Sa bagong librong pinamagatang May Laro ang Diskurso ng Katarungan (2014), naglatag si Rodriguez ng epistemolohikal at metapisikal na teorya ukol sa katalagahan at gampanin ng tao. Gamit ang wikang Filipino, maingat niyang binalangkas ang posibilidad ng pagtatatag ng isang makatarungang lipunan base sa hiwaga ng pagkatao. Sa rebyung ito, sinikap kong makisabay at makisimpatya sa mga pagmumuni-muni ni Rodriguez upang makapagbigay ng ilang pag-uulat tungkol sa uring pilosopiya na mayroon ang nasabing Pilipinong pilosopo. Hindi ito upang kitilin ang imahenasyon ng mga susunod na mambabasa ng nasabing libro. Sa halip, naglalayon itong matalaban din ng mga talinghagang binigkas sa ni Rodriguez sa kanyang libro. Ang pag-uulat at rebyung ito ay nakasentro sa mga sumusunod: 1) layunin pilosopikal ng libro, 2) pagbaling sa wika at pantayong abot-tanaw, 3) dinamismo ng katalagahan, pagpepresensiya at meron, 4) multiberso ng katwiran at pagtatalaban ng abot-tanaw, 5) diskurso tungo sa isang makatarungang lipunan, at 6) ebalwasyon at kahalagahan.

Layuning Pilosopikal: Pagtalab ng mga Talinghaga ng Pilosopiya

Sa isang makabagong panahon na mayroon tayo ngayon, malimit sinusukat ang katuturan ng isang bagay batay sa mga pamantayang makukwenta. Dahil dito, maging ang pilosopiya ay napipintasan bilang walang kwenta. Mistulang napag-iiwanan ng ibang disiplina ang pilosopiya sapagkat mayroon silang kongkretong mga tanong. At, tila may nararating

234 DISKURSO NG KATARUNGAN silang sagot na kapaki-pakinabang sa lipunan. Parang mas may talab ang kanilang mga tanong sapagkat nakaugat ang mga ito sa masusing pag-aaral na nakabase sa mga nararanasan. Kaya kung minsan, ang mga mag-aaral ng pilosopiya ay napapatanong din kung ano ang silbi ng kanilang ginagawa. May silbi ba ang mga pagmumuni-muning pilosopikal? Dito sa mga pintas na ipinupukol sa pilosopiya nagsimula si Rodriguez sa pagpapaliwanag ng pakay niya at kung bakit may mahalagang masasabi ang pilosopiya sa larangan ng lipunan, pulitika, at katarungan. Nagtatangka siyang maghain ng isang balangkas ng posibilidad ng pagbubuo ng isang makatarungang lipunan sa pamamagitan ng mga pagmumuni-muning pilosopikal na nakaugat sa mismong galaw o laro ng pagkatao ng isang tao. Kaugnay nito, ipinaliwanag ni Rodriguez, “Ninais kong maunawaan ang dahilan ng pagdurusa ng mundo mula sa abot-tanaw ng hiwaga ng tao at ng kaniyang pag-iral.”1 Hindi naman sa wala siyang tiwala sa pananaliksik ng agham panlipunan. Sabi nga niya, marami rin siyang natutunan dito. Subalit, mayroon tayong makukuhang sagot sa mismong galaw o laro ng ating pagkatao. Nakukutuban ni Rodriguez na may mas malalim na dimensyon ang problemang panlipunan ng ating bansa. Maaaring dulot ito ng galaw ng isang tao at ng istrukturang panlipunan. Dagdag pa niya,

May kutob ako na nakaugat ito sa istruktura ng pag-iral ng tao mismo, sa bukal ng kaniyang pag-iral, at sa kaugnayan ng tao bilang bukal na ito. Kaya para maliwanagan ako sa aking mga tanong, nag-aral ako ng pilosopiya at sa palagay ko meron talaga itong naipaliwanag sa akin na mahalaga tungkol sa tao, sa lipunan, sa karahasan, at sa pag-asa. Ito ang nais kong ibahagi sa librong ito.2

Siguro, itinatanong na natin ngayon kung ano nga ba talaga ang patakaran ng pilosopiya na ibang iba sa ibang patakaran? Kung tama ang aking pagbasa kay Rodriguez, sinasabi niyang ang pilosopiya ay isang “paraan ng talinghaga.” Hindi ito isang tumpak o tiyak na pagpapaliwanag. Sa halip, isa itong pagbigkas ng mga talinghaga upang makagising ng kamalayang magbukas. Kaugnay nito, sinabi ni Rodriguez,

Tungkulin ng pilosopiya ang magpahiwatig ng kaalaman na nauukol sa sumasaibayong katotohanan.

1 Rodriguez, May Laro ang Diskurso ng Katarungan, 5. 2 Ibid.

E. DE LEON 235

Pakay nito na maipamalay ang sumasaibayong batayan o bukal upang makilala ito ng tao at maisatupad ang kaniyang pag-iral ayon sa kaayusang ito. Samakatuwid, hindi interesado ang pilosopiya sa teorya bilang teorya lamang. Paraan ng pagmumulat ang mga teorya nito. Kapag binigkas ng pilosopo ang kaniyang sistema at teorya, sinusubukan niyang bigkasin ang kaniyang nakutuban o nasulyapan sa ibayo ng empirikal na katiyakan ng mundo.3

Subalit, para kay Rodriguez, hindi buong-buo ang nabibigkas ng isang pilosopo. Binibigkas lamang ang mga konsepto gamit ang mga talinghaga upang pukawin ang kamalayan ng ibang tao at hamunin silang sumulyap rin sa sumasaibayo nang sa ganoon ay matuklasan rin ang kalaliman nito. Ito marahil ang ipinapaliwanag ng pilosopong si Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) na kaalamang maka-Gelassenheit, isang kaalaman na inihahanda ang isang tao sa pagkabukas sa nagprepresensiya at hindi ayon sa mga kategoriya ng pagtanggap na tinatakda ng tao kundi ayon sa presensiya ng mismong nagprepresensiya. Sa analisis ni Heidegger, nauunawaan ng tao ang isang bagay na nagpapakita sa kanya (isang phainomenon) batay sa kung anong nakikita niyang presensiya nito. Subalit, nakakaligtaan na ang isang bagay ay may mismong pagpepresensiya. Kaya, ang nababagay na atitud ay isang pagkabukas na hindi naghahangad na ikahon ang nagpepresensiya sa isang komprehensiyon. Sa ganoong paraan, nakikilala natin ang nagpepresensiya sa kanyang mayamang kahulugan na sumasaibayo sa komprehensiyong maka-syentipiko. Mahalaga ang paglilinaw ni Rodriguez sa tungkulin at layunin ng pilosopiya gamit ang simplistiko subalit hindi mababaw na mga salita. Mistulang binabawi niya ang tamang pagtingin sa pilosopiya na namarkahan ng masamang konotasyon sa pagdaan ng panahon. Kung paano niya ito binigkas at ipinaliwanag, dito mahalaga ang pagpili niya ng wikang gagamitin. Bigyan natin ito ng atensyon sa susunod na seksyon.

Pagbaling sa Wika at ang Pantayong Abot-tanaw

Bakit nasa wikang Filipino ang libro? Kung tama ang aking pag- unawa, hindi lamang ito isang pagsasanay na akademiko. Kung layunin lamang niyang mabasa ng marami, malamang sinulat na lamang niya ito sa wikang Ingles. Subalit, ipinapalagay ni Rodriguez na ang paggamit niya ng wikang Filipino ay bahagi ng kanyang pagsisid sa malalim na mundo ng

3 Ibid., 9.

236 DISKURSO NG KATARUNGAN katotohanan na malamang nadaanan na niya gamit ang wikang banyaga subalit hindi pa nauunawaan sa mas malalim na paraan. Naniniwala siya na may panibagong abot-tanaw ang paggamit niya ng wikang Filipino sa pagbigkas ng mga paksa sa librong ito. Isa nga itong pagbabakasakali na mayroon siyang ibang makikita kung gagamitin niya ang wikang Filipino. Mahalaga ang wika sapagkat dito natin naibabahagi ang ating mga saloobin, iniisip, nadarama, at mga prinsipyo sa buhay. Kaya nga, mahalaga rin ang pagpili ng isang kolektibong wikang gagamitin, sang-ayon kay Rodriguez. Kaugnay nito, ipinaliwanag niya,

Mahalaga ang wika dahil sabay dala nito ang buong kasaysayan ng mga simbolo’t kahulugang ginagamit ng isang kultura para ipaliwanag ang katalagahan at dala rin nito ang mga konsepto ng abstraksyon na pinahihintulutan ang taong suriin ang katalagahan sa ibayo ng empirikal na karanasan.4

Kung talagang nakikinig tayo ng taimtim sa sinasabi ni Rodriguez, ipinaparating niya ang napakahalagang pagpili ng wikang gagamitin. Sapagkat naghahain siya ng isang uri ng diskurso sa librong ito, napakahalaga ng gampanin ng wika. Mulat siya sa potensyal ng wika bilang sabay na may kakayahang ipakita at itago ang saloobin at kawalang katwiran. Kung baga, dalawa ang mukha ng wika. May kakayanan ang wikang maging behikulo ng karahasan at kawalang katarungan. Maaaring gamitin ang wika para sa panlilinlang. Kaya kailangang piliin ang wikang gagamitin na magdadala sa atin sa isang tinatawag niyang “pantayong abot- tanaw”, isang wikang bahagi ng epeko ng mga taong papasok sa diyalogo. Ito marahil ang wikang sinasalita ng kanilang kaluluwa o ang wikang tumatalab sa meron ng mga nag-uusapan. Kaya nga, maaari nating sabihin na “sosyal” at kontra-sosyal ang paggamit niya ng wikang Filipino. Sa isang banda, sosyal ito dahil sa pangangailangang lumubog sa karanasan ng mga gumagamit ng wika. Bahagi nito ang pagsisikap na manirahan sa bayan ng katotohanan. Sa kabilang banda, kontra-sosyal dahil itinataas ni Rodriguez sa nibel ng epistemolohiya ang wikang Filipino. Kung tutuusin, kayang-kayang makipagtalastasan ng mga estudyante ni Rodriguez sa Pamantasan ng Ateneo gamit ang wikang Ingles. Kung ang simpleng layunin lamang niya ay ituro ang mga konsepto ng napakaraming pilosopo, malamang hindi na niya kailangang gumamit ng wikang Filipino. Ngunit makukutuban nating mayroong mas malalim na aspekto ang paggamit niya ng sariling wika.

4 Ibid., 173.

E. DE LEON 237

Nakikita niyang potensyal ang wika upang basagin ang pader na naghihiwalay sa mga mayayaman at mahihirap. Subalit, mahalagang linawin sa puntong ito na walang partikular na wikang iminumungkahi si Rodriguez. Kasama sa pagbubuo ng isang malayang diskurso ang hindi pagpataw ng “katanggap-tanggap” na wika. Lahat na wika ay potensyal. Kaya, kasama sa malayang diskurso sa pagitan ng multibersong katwiran ang pagtanggap na multiberso rin ang wika. Kakabit ng kahirapan ng diyalogo ang pagkakaiba-iba ng wika at pagkabukas sa mga ito. Dahil laging mahalagang konsepto sa libro ni Rodriguez ang paggalang sa “ka-iba”, maging ang pagkakaiba-iba ng wika ay dapat ring igalang. Laging umuugong ang temang ito na parang mahirap talagang tanggihan.

Ang Katalagahan, Pagpepresensiya at Meron

Ginamit ni Rodriguez ang terminolohiyang “katalagahan” upang itukoy ang kabuuan ng lahat ng meron. Panahon pa ng mga sinaunang Griyego, isang katanggap-tanggap na prinsipyo ang pagkakaroon ng kaayusan ng mga bagay. Nakaayos o nakatalaga ang mga bagay sa kanilang pagdirito sa mundo. Sa ibang salita, umiiral ang mga bagay sa mundo base sa kanilang pagiging ganito at hindi ganoon. Minsan, ginagamit din natin ang salitang “talaga” upang magpakita ng katiyakan. “Talaga ba?” Itinatanong nito kung mayroon bang katiyakan. Ganito rin, ayon kay Rodriguez, ang pag- iral ng mundo—may pagkatalaga o katiyakan. Ipinapaliwanag niya na ang pagmemeron ng bato, ng puno, ng tao, ng ibon, at ng kung anumang tiyak o talagang umiiral ay gumagalaw sa isang katalagahan. Ngayon, isa siguro sa pinakamahirap maunawaan sa terminolohiya ng tradisyong Roque Ferriols itong “meron.” Subalit, naipaliwanag ito ni Rodriguez sa paraang walang paliguy-ligoy at malinaw. Ang isang bagay na nakatalaga o may tiyak na presensiya ay matatawag na meron. Samakatuwid, maaari nating sabihin na ang salitang “meron” ay nagpapakita ng pagkanarito ng isang bagay, ng isang talagang umiiral. Kaugnay nito, nilinaw ni Rodriguez, “Kapag nais kong bigyan diin ang katangian ng pagpepresensiya ng mga meron, tutukuyin ko ang mga meron bilang nagdirito.”5 May tiyak na pagkanarito ang mga nagmemeron. Sa madaling salita, isa itong obheto. Totoo ang meron o narito ang meron kaya siya napapag-usapan, napag- iisipan, at nararanasan. Mahalagang sangkap itong katalagahan ng meron sa pilosopiya ni Rodriguez. Kung tama ang aking pagkaunawa, ito rin ang tinatawag ni Ferriols na “pagtalab ng meron” o ni Edmund Husserl na intensyonal ang

5 Ibid., 36.

238 DISKURSO NG KATARUNGAN pagmamalay ng tao. Kaya sinasabi ni Rodriguez, “Nagprepresensiya ang mga nakatalaga sa kamalayan ng tao.”6 Ngayon, mapag-uusapan ba itong pagprepresensiya? Obhetibo ba ang pag-unawa dito? May mga pilosopong kritikal tulad nina Foucault at Adorno na nagsasabing ang pag-unawa natin sa mundo ay bunga ng mga istraktura ng lipunan. Kung paano natin tingnan ang mabuti at masama, mahalaga at hindi-mahalaga, ang mga ito ay resulta ng pagdirito natin sa isang mundong ginagalawan natin. Kung tama sina Foucault at Adorno, hindi obhetibo ang ating mga pag-unawa. Baka nga walang pagka-ano o katalagahan ang mga nagmemeron maliban sa ipinapataw ng kamalayan ng tao. Ginamit ni Rodriguez na paghahalimbawa ang mga ulap sa kalangitan na hinahanapan natin ng hugis para magkaroon lamang ng kahulugan ang tinatanaw. Para sa kanya, maaaring totoo ang akusasyon ng mga pilosopong istruktularista dahil maraming pagkakataon na nakakatagpo ng tao ang mga bagay, subalit hindi siya bukas dito sa paraang pagpepresensiya ng mga bagay. Sa halip, nabibihag lamang siya sa pagtingin dito sa paraang nakikita. Sa pagkabihag na ito, nakakalimutan niya ang kayamanan ng nagpapakita bilang mailap na katotohanan at hindi mahuli-huli sa konsepto. Kung talagang nakikinig tayo kay Rodriguez, ipinapaliwanag niya dito ang kahalagahan ng “pagka-bulaga” upang muling mabighani sa katalagahan ng mga nagpepresensiya bilang sabay na pagdirito at pag-atras. Sinabi niya, “Depende sa pagkabukas ng tao ang pagtalab ng presensiya bilang hiwaga. At mula sa pagkamanghang ito sa nagmemeron bilang pagdiritong umaatras, nais kong ipaliwanag ang ibang paraan ng pagtingin sa ating karanasan sa presensiya ng nagmemeron.”7 Dito niya ginamit ang talinghaga ng lambat. Ang katalagahan (o ang sangkameronan sa terminolohiya ni Ferriols) ay mayroong pagkakaugnay-ugnay. Nakadepende ang hugis ng lambat sa pagtatalaban ng iba’t ibang punto ng tensyon. Dagdag pa niya, “Binibigyan ito ng matatag na pagdirito ng mga tensyon sa pagitan ng mga butas, linya ng lubid, at buhol.”8 Samakatuwid, ang kondisyon ng posibilidad ng isang “lambat” ay ang laro ng puwang, linya, at buhol. At, kapag ginamit na itong lambat, bibigyan siya ng panibagong hugis ng tubig at pwersa ng paghila. Malikhaing naipaliwanag ni Rodriguez na masalimuot ang laro ng pagpepresensiya na madalas nating tinitingnan batay lamang sa makitid nating pagtingin. Kaya, mahalagang matauhan o mabulaga tayo sa dinamismong ito upang magising sa ating kamalayan ang dinamikong pagmemeron ng ating mga nakakasalamuha sa araw araw. Lahat nang meron (na may sari-sariling laro o dinamismo rin) ay nakapaloob sa mismong

6 Ibid. 7 Ibid., 47. 8 Ibid., 53.

E. DE LEON 239 laro ng katalagahan. Ito, para kay Rodriguez, ang nakalimutan ng tao sa pag- usbong ng mapagkwentang kaisipan. Pinag-usapan niya ang nasabing kondisyon sa pamamagitan ng pagtalakay ng katwiran bilang multiberso.

Ang Multiberso ng Katwiran at ang Patatalaban ng Abot-tanaw

Ang argumento ng multibersong katwiran ay nagsisimula sa tesis na walang kumikilos nang labag sa sariling katwiran, maliban sa mga taong wala sa kanilang sarili. Kung baga, may katwiran ang lahat ng gawain ng isang tao. Subalit, hindi rin natin matatanggihan, lalo na sa mundong mayroon tayo ngayon, na radikal ang pagkakaiba-iba ng sistema ng rasyunalidad ng mga tao. Ginamit niyang halimbawa ang pagtingin sa lupang tinubuan. Ang mga katutubo, sa isang banda, ay nagpapahalaga dito dahil tinitingnan nila ito bilang biyaya ng Maykapal. Samantalang ang mga taong sekular, sa kabilang banda naman, ay maaaring tingnan ito sa ibang perspektibo at pahalagahan ito katulad lamang ng ibang lupa na mapagkakakitaan. Ginamit ni Rodriguez ang halimbawang ito upang patunayan na hindi unibersal ang sentido komun. Nakabatay ito, sang-ayon sa kanya, sa sistema ng pagpapahalaga at pag-unawa sa mabuti ng mga tao. Ngayon, maitatanong natin, saan nga ba nakabatay ang sistema ng pagpapahalaga at pag-unawa ng mabuti ng mga tao? Mayroon ba itong pinag-uugatan? Ano ang naglalagay ng porma ng ating sentido komun? At, mulat ba ang suheto sa dinamismo ng pagpopormang ito ng sentido komun o wala siyang magagawa kundi ang maigapos sa ganitong pagtingin? Para kay Rodriguez, masalimuot ang kasagutan sa sala-salabid na mga katanungang ito. Sabay na “oo” at “hindi” ang sagot sa mga katanungan. Hindi, dahil naratnan na ng tao itong sistema ng pagpapahalaga at pag- unawa sa mundo. Ito marahil ang tinatawag ng ilang mga eksistensyalistang pilosopo na “facticity” o mga naratnan na natin pagkasilang sa ating mundo. Isinilang tayo at naitapon sa isang mundo na mayroon nang uri ng pag-iisip na maaaring bumulag sa atin sa iba pang uring pagtingin sa mga bagay bagay. Kaugnay nito, sinabi ni Rodriguez, “Hindi ito pinili ng tao: naratnan niya ito bunga ng kaniyang pagkapanganak sa isang pamilya, sa isang lipunan, sa partikular na panahon.”9 Nahahawig ito sa pagsasalarawan ni Max Weber (1864-1920) sa kinasasadlakan ng tao sa modernong panahon na tinatawag niyang hawla ng nag-iisang rasyunalidad (iron cage). Nabibihag nga raw ang tao sa kaniyang uring pag-unawa at tipong kapalaran niyang husgahan ang mga bagay bagay base sa makitid niyang katwiran. Kung magkaganoon, hindi ganap na nasa kamay ng tao ang pagtatakda ng sariling sistema ng pagpapahalaga. Subalit, kung talagang

9 Ibid., 96.

240 DISKURSO NG KATARUNGAN taimtim ang ating pakikinig kay Rodriguez, nakikita pa rin niyang hindi ganap ang pagka-paralisado ng tao. Ayon sa kanya, “May kakayahan ang taong mamulat sa mga sistema ng pagpapahalaga na nagbibigay hugis sa kaniyang pagdanas, pag-unawa, at pagpapahalaga, at mula sa pagkamulat na ito maaari niyang suriin at ipasiya ang ibang posibilidad ng pagtingin— subalit naaayon pa rin sa balangkas ng kaniyang kapalaran.”10 Ngayon, bakit nga ba mahalaga ang magkaroon ng balangkas ng pag-unawa ang isang tao? At, ano ang halaga ng pagkakaroon ng multiberso ng mga partikular na sistemang ito? Upang maipaliwanag ang dinamismo ng pagbabalangkas ng pag- unawa ng isang tao, ginamit ni Rodriguez ang pagpapaliwanag na ginawa ni Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). Para kay Kant, lahat ng nauunawaan ng tao ay dumadaan sa pandama. Subalit, ang mga datos na nanggaling sa pandama ay kailangang iproseso ng kaisipan ng tao. Ang mga datos na nakuha galing sa pandama ay hindi pa matatawag na kaalaman. Sa halip, mga elemento pa lamang ang mga ito ng pag-unawa upang magkaroon ng kaalaman. Ayon kay Rodriguez, sa prosesong ito na ginagawa ng tao, tinutulungan siya ng mga a priori upang makabuo ng kaalaman. Itong mga a priori na ito ay hindi bunga ng karanasan. Sa halip, nasa kamalayan na ito ng tao bago pa man niya makatagpo ang mundo. Ito nga ang balangkas na umiiral sa kamalayan na nagtatakda (imposing) kung papaano uunawain ang mga datos galing sa karanasan. Ngayon, kung tama ang sinasabi ni Kant, mayroon ngang mga kategorya na tumutulong sa tao upang unawain ang mundo. Kaya, maitatanong natin sa ating mga sarili kung anong “pagbibigay-kahulugan” ang namamayani sa ating kaisipan? Ito ba ay maka-agham o maka-relihiyon, moderno o postmoderno, sekular o relihiyoso? Mahalaga itong muling pagbigkas ni Rodriguez kay Kant upang maipakita na kung mauunawaan lamang natin na tao talaga ang nagbibigay kahulugan sa katalagahan batay sa kaniyang mga sistema ng pag-unawa, mas magiging bukas tayo sa dinamismo ng buhay. Kaya nga, napakahalaga ng ideya ng “pagbubukas” para kay Rodriguez. Ito ang susi upang maunawaan natin ang nagpepresensiya. Sabihin na nating mayroon na tayong mga paunang balangkas tungkol sa pag-unawa ng mga nagpepresensiya, lubhang mahalaga ang pagkabukas sa mismong nagpepresiya upang magkaroon ng totoong pag-unawa. Sapagkat, gaano man katindi ang impluwensiya ng balangkas ng ating kamalayan, ipinapaliwanag ni Rodriguez na hindi naman nito lubos na mapipigilan ang isang tao na magbukas ng kaisipan sa mismong nagpepresensiya. Kaugnay nito, pinag-usapan ni Rodriguez ang kahalagahan ng konsepto ni Hans-Georg Gadamer (1920-2002) na “pagtatalaban ng abot-

10 Ibid., 97.

E. DE LEON 241 tanaw.”11 Natatauhan si Gadamer na may “abot-tanaw” ang bawat isang tao na bumabalangkas sa kanyang pag-unawa sa nagpepresensiya. Upang mas ipaliwanag ito, sinabi ni Rodriguez,

Madalas, kung nagmumula ang pahayag mula sa ibang abot-tanaw, kailangang unti-unting maunawaan ang sinasabi mula dito dahil ibang mundo ng kahulugan ang pinagmumulan nito. Subalit kahit hindi madali ang pag- unawa sa pahayag ng ka-iba, sinusubukan pa rin na unawain ito ng nakikitagpo dahil meron itong sinasabi ukol sa katalagahan na nais niyang maunawaan—tagpo o may pinapahayag ang sinasabi ng ka-iba ukol sa kaniyang pananaw. Subalit madalas, nakikipagdiyalogo ang tao dahil nais niyang maunawaan ang sinasabi ng kaiba tungkol sa katalagahan.12

Mayroong kabit-kabit na implikasyon ang naunang sinasabi ni Rodriguez. Una, ang multiberso ng katwiran ay nanganailangan ng mahinahong pag-unawa at pag-uunawaan. Hindi ito minamadali at pinipilit. Pangalawa, isang pagkabukas sa ka-iba ang nararapat na temperamento. At pangatlo, na malaki ang kaugnayan sa pangalawa, ang pagkabukas na temperamento ay hindi nagnanais na maunawaan lamang ang diskurso ng ka-iba. Kung tama ang pagkaunawa ko kay Rodriguez, hindi naghahangad ang isang diyalogo na bumuo ng kaisahan o di kaya ay tunawin ang lehitimong katwiran ng iba. Sa halip, ang pagkabukas sa ka-iba ay isang paggalang sa kayamanan na katalagahan. At kung hahangarin natin ang pag- iisa ng mga “abot-tanaw”, pinapatindi lamang natin ang pagkakahon sa mayaman at hindi mahuhuling katalagahan. Samakatuwid, kung tama ang pagkaunawa ko kay Rodriguez, ang pagtatalaban ng abot-tanaw ay isang uri ng pagpapalawak at pagpapayaman ng pag-unawa na mangyayari lamang sa pakikipagtagpo sa ibang pananaw ng tao. Sa pamamagitan nito, natatanaw ng isang bukas sa ibang pananaw ang kakitiran ng sarili niyang paunang-hatol. Nagkakaroon siya ng pag- urong dahil sa pagkamulat sa kayamanan ng diskurso ng katalagahan na dati ay nakikita lamang niya sa makitid at partikular na paraan.

11 Sa ibang pagkakataon, isinasalin ang konsepto ni Gadamer na “fusion of horizons” bilang “pagsasanib ng abot-tanaw.” Subalit, pinapaboran ng manunulat na ito ang salin ni Rodriguez na “pagtatalaban ng abot-tanaw” upang mas bigyan ng pansin na hindi naman nagnanais makabuo ng kaisahan. Sa halip, isa lamang itong gawain kung saan nagbubukas ang isang suheto ng kanyang sarili sa posibilidad na matalaban ng katwiran ng iba. See Truth and Method, trans. by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (New York: The Continuum Publishing Company, 1994). 12 Rodriguez, May Laro, 117.

242 DISKURSO NG KATARUNGAN

Samakatuwid, ang pluralismo (o ang tinatawag ni Rodriguez na “multiberso ng katwiran”) ay mabuti para sa tao. Mabuting mamuhay ang isang tao na may iba’t ibang sistema ng katwiran na nagmumula sa iba’t ibang kapalaran ng tao. Mahalagang tanggapin ito upang hindi makulong ang isang tao sa makitid niyang mundo at tingnan lamang ang mundo sa iisang dimensyon. Dahil alam na niyang mayroon pang ibang pagtingin, napipilitan siyang imulat pa ang kanyang makitid na paningin upang lumawak ang kanyang abot-tanaw. Mahalaga ang pagpapaliwanag ni Rodriguez sa pagiging multiberso ng katwiran lalong lalo na sa pag-unawa natin ng pluralismo sa ating bansa. Dumating na nga tayo sa panahon kung saan hindi lamang tayo namumulatan sa pagkakaroon ng pluralismo, kundi maging sa pagiging lehitimo nito. Sa malinaw at probokatibong paraan ng paglalahad ni Rodriguez sa kanyang aklat, naipakita nito ang kahalagahan at pagka- napapanahon ng kanyang sinulat.

Ang Diskurso tungo sa isang Makatarungang Lipunan

Sa huling bahagi ng pag-uulat at rebyung ito, tatalakayin natin ang balangkas ng isang makatarungang lipunan na minumungkahi ni Rodriguez. Nanggagaling ito sa kanyang pangunahing kaisipan na hindi maaaring ipinataw lamang ang dominanteng katwiran. Sa halip, dapat itong dumaan sa isang pagdidiskurso kung saan walang nagdodomina. Kaugnay nito, ipinaliwanag ni Rodriguez,

Kung tunay na malaya ang mga sistema ng pagdidiskurso, maaari nitong isangkot ang mga kasapi, mula sa kani-kanilang sistema ng katwiran, sa isang proseso ng pagbubuo ng pagkaka-isa habang nananatiling matatag sa kanilang kasarinlan.13

Maaari nating itanong sa puntong ito: paano makasisigurado na hindi magdodomina ang isang katwiran sa prosesong ito? Una, ayon suhestyon ni Rodriguez, dapat malinaw sa mga taong pumapasok sa ganitong diskurso ang layunin at katwiran ng nasabing pagbubuo. Kung pakikinggan natin si Jurgen Habermas (1929--), dapat malayang proseso ito. Nagsisimula ang malayang prosesong ito sa pagbubukas ng kani-kanilang katwiran sa isa’t isa. At dahil dito, nagkakaroon ng posibilidad na makatagpo ng isang katwiran na katanggap- tanggap sa lahat. Samakatuwid, hindi isinasantabi ang iyong personal na

13 Ibid., 170.

E. DE LEON 243 pagtingin sa mundo (dahil hindi naman talaga ito maaaring mangyari). Sa halip, sa balangkas ng diskurso na inihahain ni Rodriguez, inilalagay ng bawat isa ang kanyang sarili sa isang “bukas” na kondisyon upang maging posible ang pagtalab ng katwiran ng ka-iba. Sapagkat maaari lamang mangyari ang pagtalab na ito kung sa simula’t sapol ay hinahangad ito ng mga pumapasok sa diskurso. Ibig sabihin, nauunawaan nila dapat ang halaga nito. Mistulang sinasabi ni Rodriguez na ang mga pumapasok sa isang malayang diskurso ng pagbubuo ng isang dominanteng katwiran ay dapat handang magpasailalim sa mismong laro ng diskurso. Ang pagpapasailalim na ito ay magsisimula sa isang tunay na pagkaunawa sa dinamismo ng katwiran—na hindi tayo ang nagdidikta nito. Ibig sabihin, kailangan nating hubarin ang asal nating kayabangan sa pag-aakalang alam natin ang lahat; at magsimulang maging handa na matalaban ng mismong nagpapatalab o ng mismong tumatalab na Katotohanan. Ito, ayon kay Rodriguez, ang maaaring magdala sa atin sa isang “pantayong abot-tanaw.” Ang pantayong abot-tanaw na ito ay hindi ipinataw. Sa halip, ito ay bunga ng pakikipagsapalaran ng mga kasapi sa isang malayang diskurso. Kung talagang nakikisabay tayo sa pagninilay- nilay ni Rodriguez, makikita natin na hindi madali ang iminumungkahi niyang sistema o pamamaraan. Hindi ito isang “mabaitan” na usapan tulad ng Bible sharing. Hindi rin ito simpleng pagpaparaya (tolerance) lamang sa lehitimong katwiran ng ka-iba. Ang diskurso ng nagtatalabang katwiran ay nangangailangan din ng matibay na pagkamulat sa kani-kaniyang katwiran. Kung baga, handa din dapat ipaglaban ng bawat isa ang tinig ng kani- kaniyang katwiran. Nangangailangan ang malayang diskursong ito ng malinaw na pagkaunawa sa kanyang sariling abot-tanaw. Hindi katanggap-tanggap na papasok sa nasabing diskurso ang hindi mulat sa kanyang katwiran. Nangangailangan ito, samakatuwid, ng kahandaan sa panig ng bawat tinig. Kailangang gawin ng bawat isa ang kanyang “takdang-aralin” na maunawaan o maging mulat sa kanyang mga paunang-hatol sa mundo. Gayundin, kailangan ng bawat isang mamulatan sa pagiging makitid ng pagtingin na ito. Kung tama ang aking pagkaunawa, may relasyon ito sa pilosopiya ni Ferriols na pagkabulaga bilang simula ng pagpasok sa diskurso. Ito nga ang tinatawag niyang “sining ng pamumuhay na mulat sa meron”14.Dahil nauunawaan ng isang tao ang kakitiran ng pinanggagalingan niyang rasyunalidad, bukas na bukas ang posibilidad na naisin niyang makitagpo sa iba upang talaban pa ng rasyunalidad ng ka-iba.

14 Roque Ferriols, Pambungad sa Metapisika (Quezon City: Office of Research and Publications, Ateneo de Manila University, 2002), 51.

244 DISKURSO NG KATARUNGAN

Mahalagang linawin sa puntong ito na nauunawaan ni Rodriguez na wala namang lohikal na kasiguraduhan na kapag namulatan ang isang tao sa kakitiran ng kanyang paunang-hatol ay awtomatiko na itong makadarama ng pangangailangang sumisid sa diskurso. Subalit, may kutob siyang mistulang natural sa tao ang bumaling sa kalooban ng iba at matuto dito. Palibhasa natural na maganda at maayos ang katalagahan, parang natural rin ang pag-akit nito na matuto sa kanya. Kapag pumasok tayo sa mismong laro ng diskurso, mistulang sinasabi ni Rodriguez na wala na sa atin ang desisyon kung saan tayo dadalhin. Isa nga itong pagpapaubaya sa laro. Subalit, mahalaga pa ring ilagay natin ang ating mga sarili sa kagustuhang tumaya sa laro. Wala ngang laro kung walang manlalaro (may pagka-Gadamer). Subalit, dapat nating maunawaan na ang laro ay hindi kinokontrol ng isang tao o ng isang grupo ng mga tao. Nakasalalay ito, ayon kay Rodriguez, sa pagpapatupad ng laro ng nagtatalabang katwiran ng mga manlalaro. Ang pagdodomina sa laro ang nagdala sa atin sa isang mapangwasak na sitwasyon. Ang ating panahon, halimbawa, na dinodomina ng maka- agham at maka-teknolohikal na pangangatwiran ay nagdala sa atin sa isang pag-iisip na magpagpilit at manggagamit. Kung tama ang analisis ni Rodriguez (na may pagka-Heidegger) sa panahong mayroon tayo ngayon, dinala tayo ng dinamismo ng dominanteng katwiran sa isang pagtingin sa mundo bilang nakareserba para gamitin sa hinaharap. Naging isang malaking “gatasan” ang mundo. Pero, kung tama ang aking pakakaunawa kay Heidegger, hindi lang ang mundo ang nasa bingit ng alanganin. Maging ang mismong tao na nagdirito sa mundo bilang “mapilit na manggagamit” ay nasa delikadong sitwasyon din na maibaba sa dukhang kalagayan ng pagiging bagay na nasa harapan mo na maaaring manipulahin. Ito, ayon kay Rodriguez, ang “pagkabiktima ng nakinabang”15. Para sa kanya, anumang lipunang dinodomina ng isang katwirang hindi bunga ng pagtatalaban ng marami at iba’t ibang katwiran ay nagdudulot lamang at patuloy na magdudulot ng isang marahas at hindi makatarungang lipunan.

Ebalwasyon at Kahalagahan

Mahirap tanggihan ang mga mapagmulat na pagmumuni-muni ni Rodriguez. Tunay ngang nagbunga na ang mapanghamong pilosopiya ni Roque Ferriols sa uring pamimilosopiya ni Rodriguez. Kung si Ferriols ang Ama ng pilosopiyang tumalalab sa meron, si Rodriguez naman ang Anak na tumugon sa hamon ng paglundag sa mismong “swimming pool.”

15 Rodriguez, May Laro, 201.

E. DE LEON 245

Ang mismong pamamaraan ni Rodriguez ay isa ring mismong ambag niya sa pilosopiya. Malinaw na malinaw ang proyektong pilosopikal ni Rodriguez na ipamulat sa kanyang mambabasa ang mismong ugat ng problema ng kawalang katarungan. Madadagdag ang librong ito sa listahan ng mga seryosong pilosopo na sumisid sa kalaliman ng misteryo ng Katotohanan hindi upang hulihin ito, ilagay sa garapon, at ipagmayabang. Sa halip, hinahamon niya ang kanyang mambabasa na tingnan rin ang kanyang mga tiningnan at baka sakaling mayroon din tayong makita. Matipuno ang tinig na pinakawalan ng aklat na ito. Habang patuloy na inaalisan ng boses ang katwiran ng mga naisantabi at habang ang nakakarimarim na isyu ng katarungang panlipunan ay nananatiling problema, ang mga temang pinagnilay-nilayan ni Rodriguez sa librong ito ay mananatiling napakahalaga. Ang librong ito ay isang tinig ng pagpupumiglas sa mapalinlang na dominanteng katwiran, sa hindi makataong kondisyon ng buhay na kinasasadlakan nakararaming naisantabing Pilipino, at sa mga maka-syentipikong pagtatangkang ibaba ang isang tao sa nibel ng bagay lamang. Kapaki-pakinabang rin ang librong ito sa mga nagsasaliksik tungkol sa isang diskursong hindi naghahangad ng kaisahan. Kahit na nagbabalangkas si Rodriguez ng kondisyon ng posibilidad ng isang dominanteng katwiran na magdadala sa atin sa isang makatarungang lipunan, maari din naman nating tingnan ang kabilang bahagi ng kanyang diskurso. Sa halip na pagtuonan ng pansin ang pagkakapare-pareho (na sa aking palagay ay wala namang masama), bakit hindi natin tingnan rin ang kabaligtaran? May daan din ng posibilidad ng makatarungang lipunan sa ating pagkakaiba-iba. Baka masyado na tayong nahumaling sa paghahanap ng kaisahan at nakalimunatan ang kahalagahan ng pagkakaiba-iba. Posible din naman na mauwi lamang ito sa isang ideyal na teorya. Maaaring napakaganda sa papel ng balangkas ng isang makatarungang lipunan, subalit mangyayari ba ito sa tunay na buhay? Sa isang lipunang mayroon tayo ngayon, kung saan patuloy na lumalakas ang pwersa ng dominasyon at lalong lumulubha ang distansya sa pagitan ng mahirap at mayaman, posible pa ba na mamulat at magsisi ang mga nakikinabang sa mapang-aping sistema ng lipunan? Kung magkaganoon man, mahalaga pa rin ang pagbigkas ni Rodriguez ng boses ng pag-asa. Hindi pa rin maaalis ang posibilidad na maging bukas ang bawat katwiran sa katwiran ng ka-iba. Kung saan man tayo dadalhin ng posibilidad, dapat pa rin tayong mangarap. Totoong ang talinghaga ng pangarap natin ay isang abot-tanaw. At, habang pinapasok natin ito at humahakbang palapit dito, ito naman ay umaatras. Mailap man itong pangarap at mistulang hindi matutupad, kailangan pa rin nating tumanaw sa abot-tanaw ng ating pangarap upang tayo ay makausad at umunlad.

246 DISKURSO NG KATARUNGAN

At, bilang panghuli, naipakita ni Rodriguez na ang pilosopiya ay naiibang disiplina kung saan ang mga talinghaga (teorya) nito ay mayroong hindi-maubos-ubos-na-halaga kumpara sa ibang disiplina. Kung mababasa ng marami ang librong ito, magdadalawang-isip marahil ang mga ito sa pamimintas na “walang katuturan ang pilosopiya.” Sabi nga ni Heidegger, “Ipagpalagay na wala tayong magagawa sa pilosopiya, subalit kung sisisirin natin ang kalaliman nito, pilosopiya ang gagawa sa atin.”16 At, sa aking palagay, iyon ang aking karanasan at nais ko pang maranasan sa pakikisabay sa pagninilay ni Rodriguez sa librong ito.

Department of Philosophy, University of Santo Tomas, Philippines

References

Ferriols, Roque J., Pambungad sa Metapisika (Quezon City: Office of Research and Publications, Ateneo de Manila University, 1999). Gadamer, Hans-Georg, Truth and Method, trans. by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (New York: The Continuum Publishing Company, 1994). Heidegger, Martin, An Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. by Ralph Manheim (Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, Doubleday, 1959). Rodriguez, Agustin Martin G., Governing the Other: Exploring the Discourse of Democracy in a Multiverse of Reason (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2009). ______, May Laro ang Diskurso ng Katarungan (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2014).

16 Martin Heidegger, An Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. by Ralph Manheim (Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, Doubleday, 1959), 10.