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BEYOND CAUSALITY and TELEOLOGY* by Georg Lukdcs

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BEYOND CAUSALITY and TELEOLOGY* by Georg Lukdcs THE DIALECTIC OF LABOR: BEYOND CAUSALITY AND TELEOLOGY* by Georg Lukdcs Marx says the following concerning the essence of labor: "We presuppose labour in a form that stamps it as exclusively human. A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labour-process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its commencement. He not only effects a change of form in the material on which he works, but he also realises a purpose of its own that gives the law to his modus operandi, and to which he must subordinate his will."1 This expresses the central ontological category of labor: through labor, a teleological goal becomes realized in material reality, thereby forming a new objectivity. Thus, labor becomes in one respect the model of all social praxis. In the final analysis, labor always materially realizes teleological projects - even if it does so through the broadest mediations. Of course, utilization of labor as a model, guiding man's social activities, cannot be stretched too far. A consideration of the most important differences points especially to this essentially ontological relationship, precisely because they reveal that labor can serve as the model for understanding other social and teleological projects, since labor constitutes essentially their basic form. A basic experience in the everyday life of all people is the bare fact that labor is the realization of a goal. It explains why it is an ineradicable aspect of all thinking, from everyday conversations to economics and philosophy. Therefore, the problem that emerges here is not whether or not labor is teleological. Rather, the real problem lies in giving a truly critical and ontological analysis of the almost unlimited generalization of the elemental fact - from everyday life to myths, religion and philosophy. Thus, it is not at all surprising that great thinkers, such as Aristotle and Hegel, who dealt extensively with social realities and who most clearly understood the teleological nature of labor, require only minor additions rather than decisive corrections in order to retain the validity of their structural analyses even today. The actual ontological problem emerges because particular teleological projects such as Aristotle's and Hegel's are not restricted to labor and, broadly speaking, they are not even restricted to human praxis as such. *This is part of a recently completed work by Lukacs which will appear in German sometime next year. It has been translated into English by Adolph W. Gucinski. xKarl Marx, Capital, vol. 1, Moore and Aveling trans. (Moscow, n.d.), p. 178. Dialectics of Labor 163 Instead, teleology is elevated into a general, cosmological category which develops an insoluble antinomy and opposition found throughout the history of philosophy between causality and teleology. It is known that biology and medicine deeply influenced Aristotle's thought. In fact, greatly fascinated by the overwhelming effective purposefulness of organic life, he assigned a decisive role to objective teleology. Likewise, Hegel, who depicted the teleological nature of labor more concretely and dialectically than Aristotle, made teleology the moving force of history and thus of his total world view. Such a contrast permeates the history of religion and thought, from the beginnings of philosophy to Leibniz's pre-established harmony. In considering teleology as an objective, ontological category, we must emphasize religious thought. While causality is a self-based principle of self-movement which maintains this character even if a causal chain begins with a c&nscious act, teleology is essentially a projected category: every teleological process maintains a goal-orientation through a goal-oriented consciousness. Thus, in this context, to project is not the same as becoming conscious, as is the case with other categories, such as causality. Rather, consciousness begins by projecting a real process, i.e., a teleological process. Thus, projecting here has an irreducible ontological character. The teleological apprehension of nature and history does not refer only to its purposefulness or its orientation toward a goal. It also means that its existence and both its partial and its total movement as a process, must have a conscious initiator. The need implicit in such a world view — and not only in the philistine writers of eightennth-century theleogy but also in detached and great thinkers like Aristotle and Hegel — is fundamentally human: it is the need to make existence meaningful, from the course of the universe to the events of individual life. This primitive and fundamental need obtains in the thoughts and feelings of everyday life — even after the development of science destroyed the religious ontology in which the teleological principle could eosmically live an unrestrained and full life. Here we are not just thinking of the atheist Niels Lyhne, who, at the sick-bed of his dying child, attempted to influence the teleological course directed by God with prayer. This attitude certainly belongs to the fundamental, psychically moving forces of the everyday world. Hartmann correctly formulates this attitude in his analysis of teleological thought: "There is a tendency to ask at every opportunity just 'for what purpose' (wozu) it had come to be that way. 'For what purpose' did that have to happen to me? or, 'for what purpose' must I go through such suffering? 'For what purpose' did he have to die so early? We are urged to ask this question whenever an event 'happens to us' in some particular way, even if it is only an expression of destitution and helplessness. One simply assumes that the event ought to serve some good. One seeks a meaning or a justification in it, as if an arrangment existed which gives meaning to all events taking place." He also points out on the linguistic and expressive level of thought that "for what purpose" can change into 'why' without essentially reaching the 164 TELOS fundamental dominating interests.2 It is very understandable that because of the deep roots of such thoughts and feelings in everyday life, a radical break with the rule of teleology in nature, life, etc., is made very rarely. This religious need spontaneously and strongly influences realms lying beyond those of the immediate, individual life, and remains defiantly effective in everyday life. The dichotomy can clearly be seen in Kant. He ingeniously describes the ontological essence of the organic reality in his definition of organic life as "purposefulness without necessity". He destroys the superficial teleology of the theodicy of the predecessors with a critique that recognizes a transcendental teleology in the simple usefulness of one thing for another. By showing how it is possible that structures of being can originate from only causally-necessary and thus, accidental inter-relationships, he opens the way toward the correct understanding of this realm of being. The internal movement, adaption, and reproduction of the individual species of these structures of being are recognized as lawful and are rightfully defined as objectively appropriate for the respective structures. However, Kant ends by obstructing the path leading from these conclusions to the real problem. As usual, he effects this obstruction methodologically by directly attempting to solve ontological problems by means of epistemology. Since his theory concerning objectively valid knowledge is exclusively directed toward mathematics and physics, he must reach the conclusion that his own ingenious insight is epistemologically irrelevant for the biological sciences. Consequently, in one well-known passage he says: "... it is absurd for men to make any such attempt or to hope that another Newton will arise in the future who shall make comprehensible by us the production of a blade of grass according to natural laws which no design has ordered."3 The difficulty of this statement can be seen in its refutation already implicit in the first Darwinian formulation of the theory of evolution less than a century later. After his lecture on Darwin, Engels wrote to Marx: 'Teleology remained in one respect undestroyed; this has now occured." Although expressing reservations about Darwin's method, Marx concludes that Darwin's work "contains the natural and historical foundations for our view."4 An even more significant consequence of the Kantian attempt to pose and answer ontological questions in epistemological terms is that the ontological problem remains ultimately unresolved by stopping thought by the "critically" determined limitation of its actual range without providing either a positive or a negative solution within the framework of objectivity. This leaves the door wide open for a final admission of the possibility of teleological solutions through transcendental speculation — particularly in terms of the critique of cognition — 2Nicolai Hartmann, Teologische Denken (Berlin, 1951), p. 13. 3Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, English translation by J.H. Bernard (New York, 1951), p. 248. 4Marx and Engels, Briefwechsel, vol. II, pp. 447 and 533. Dialectics of Labor 165 even if Kant failed to recognize them in the realm of science. We are thinking primarily of the conception, later decisively important for Schelling, of the intuitive intellectus archetypus. Although we human beings do not possess it, its existence indeed "entails no contradiction"5 for Kant, who for this reason could not have been in the position of resolving these problems. Thus, for us, the problem of causality and teleology appears also in the form of the unknowable thing in itself. No matter how often Kant may reject the demands of theology, the denial remains restricted to "our" cognition. That is, theology claims to be science. But, to the extent to which it wishes to be such, it remains subject to the authority of the critique of cognition.
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