Immanence, Transcendence and Essence
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Dr Peter Critchley Immanence, Transcendence and Essence IMMANENCE, TRANSCENDENCE AND ESSENCE The Dialectics of Progress 2013 Dr Peter Critchley Critchley, P. 2013., Immanence, Transcendence and Essence: The Dialectics of Progress [e- book] Available through: Academia website <http://mmu.academia.edu/PeterCritchley/Books ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I would like to thank literary linguist and artist Margherita Muller for allowing me to use several of her paintings in order to clarify and develop certain arguments in the text. Her work is thought provoking and has continually conjured up words and images in my own mind on the central theme of immanence and transcendence. Margherita’s work can be viewed on her own site at http://margherita-muller.co.uk ABOUT THE AUTHOR Dr Peter Critchley is a philosopher, writer and tutor with a first degree in the field of the Social Sciences (History, Economics, Politics and Sociology) and a PhD in the field of Philosophy, Ethics and Politics. Peter works in the tradition of Rational Freedom, a tradition which sees freedom as a common endeavour in which the freedom of each individual is conceived to be co-existent with the freedom of all. In elaborating this concept, Peter has written extensively on a number of the key thinkers in this ‘rational’ tradition (Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Dante, Spinoza, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Habermas). Peter is currently engaged in an ambitious interdisciplinary research project entitled Being and Place. The central theme of this research concerns the connection of place and identity through the creation of forms of life which enable human and planetary flourishing in unison. Peter tutors across the humanities and social sciences, from A level to postgraduate research. Peter particularly welcomes interest from those not engaged in formal education, but who wish to pursue a course of studies out of intellectual curiosity. Peter is committed to bringing philosophy back to its Socratic roots in ethos, in the way of life of people. In this conception, philosophy as self-knowledge is something that human beings do as a condition of living the examined life. As we think, so shall we live. Living up to this philosophical commitment, Peter offers tutoring services both to those in and out of formal education. The subject range that Peter offers in his tutoring activities, as well as contact details, can be seen at http://petercritchley-e-akademeia.yolasite.com 1 Dr Peter Critchley Immanence, Transcendence and Essence The range of Peter’s research activity can be seen at http://mmu.academia.edu/PeterCritchley Peter sees his e-akademeia project as part of a global grassroots learning experience and encourages students and learners to get in touch, whatever their learning need and level. 2 Dr Peter Critchley Immanence, Transcendence and Essence Immanence, Transcendence and Essence 1 INTRODUCTION: THE CASE FOR ESSENTIALIST PHILOSOPHY .......... 4 2 THE DIALECTICS OF PROGRESS ........................................................... 17 The End of Progress .................................................................................... 33 The Drift Towards Catastrophe ................................................................... 37 Technology and Domination ........................................................................ 38 3 THE DELUSIONS OF JOHN GRAY ........................................................... 41 4 CAMILLE PAGLIA ON IMMANENCE AND TRANSCENDENCE ............ 61 5 THEOLOGY AND THE SEARCH FOR GOD ............................................. 79 6 PLATO, ART AND ETERNITY ................................................................ 109 7 THE FINITE IN PURSUIT OF THE INFINITE ........................................ 113 8 THE VISIONARY MATERIALISM OF WILLIAM BLAKE ..................... 130 9 THE PARTICIPATORY UNIVERSE ........................................................ 165 10 UNDER WHAT STARS TO PLOUGH THE EARTH? ............................. 181 11 BEYOND HEROIC MATERIALISM ...................................................... 205 12 DANTE: THE WAY OF TRUTH AND LIFE ........................................... 217 13 BIOLOGY AND NATURAL SELF-ORGANISATION ............................. 226 14 TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM AND NATURALISM ......................... 242 15 ESSENTIALISM AND ATOMISM .......................................................... 261 16 ESSENTIALISM, PURPOSE AND HUMAN AGENCY ........................... 292 17 ARISTOTLE AND ESSENTIALISM ....................................................... 296 18 HEGEL AND THE TELOS OF HISTORY ............................................... 300 19 MARX’S ESSENTIALIST METAPHYSICS ............................................ 306 20 THE TRANSCENDENCE OF THE IMMANENT CONTRADICTIONS OF CAPITAL ..................................................................................................... 327 21 ALIENATION, HUMANISATION AND IDOLATRY .............................. 337 3 Dr Peter Critchley Immanence, Transcendence and Essence 1 INTRODUCTION: THE CASE FOR ESSENTIALIST PHILOSOPHY Since Nietzsche announced the death of God, there has been a tendency to think that we are living in a godless universe. This is mistaken. Instead of a thoroughgoing secularisation, these theological and, indeed, teleological assumptions have come to be detached from their true objects and, instead, have come to be attached to secular powers, which in turn have become new idols determining the fate of human beings. That Nietzsche announced the death of God is well known. Much less well known is that he demanded a thorough revaluation of all values, involving the shedding of all the theological assumptions which underpinned the belief in God. I argue that this revaluation of values has not happened. Instead of the end of religion, we live under the sign of a secular myth of progress. Detached from their true moral object, theological assumptions have come to be attached to new gods, the new idols of capitalist modernity – the state, bureaucracy, capital, money, commodities. These idols are the social powers of human beings in alien form. In the place of the salvation promised by the Judaeo-Christian tradition and in place of the reason and freedom promised by the Enlightenment, there is a secular religion of ‘progress’ in which salvation is conditional upon the propitiation of new gods of monetary and state power. The old theological and teleological assumptions have come to be attached to industry, science, technology to create a secular religion which promises salvation through progress. This progress is not measured in terms of human or spiritual growth, but in terms of economic growth, state power, military expansion, space exploration ….. We now have planetary engineers like Stewart Brand asserting that, through their technology, men have become as gods. Whereas God was conceived to be in the world but not of it, these new ‘men as gods’ are of the world but not in it. They are busy creating a surrogate world, a Heaven on Earth, a Heaven created above, beyond and against the Earth. Every natural resource will be used up in order to create a heaven out of and outside of the Earth. The foundations of life on Earth will be destroyed in the process. 4 Dr Peter Critchley Immanence, Transcendence and Essence Whereas the Judaeo-Christian tradition is founded upon the moral autonomy of human beings from indifferent natural cycles and biological imperatives, the secular religion of progress attempts to achieve transcendence in terms of technical autonomy, an endless expansion of technical and economic power that is of the world but not in it. On a planet of finite resources, this endless journey into the infinite can only end in ecological destruction and catastrophe. Detached from our biological matrix, we may exist for a while in the outer landscape of ‘the machine’; but we will die in the inner landscape. Planetary engineering is threatening to abstract human power so much from Nature that Nature ceases to exist. This will achieve a complete transcendence, but only at the cost of detaching human beings from the ground of their being. This means not so much the end of God as the end of Nature. And the end of human nature. As biologist Jonathan Kingdon warns, we have become ‘orphans of our own technology’. ‘Drawn further and further out of our biological matrix we have become more and more dependent on an all-embracing but loveless technology to see us through.’ We have become totally reliant on our morally neutral and neutered technology in seeking to ward off starvation, disease and the rigours of climate. This has encouraged us to think and to act as though natural limits have been abolished. They have not. Human beings can produce and consume and expand to the extent that they have been only through an almost complete detachment from their local environmental and biological underpinnings. We have become so ensconced in the technosphere that we think that the biosphere no longer exists. This is an illusion, fuelled by a subsidy from a nonrenewing capital reserve. Instead of living off Nature’s interest, we have been dissipating the capital. As Kingdon comments: ‘This cuckoo syndrome is a luxury that can only be temporary.’ When finite resources are exhausted, the repercussions will be swift and harsh, hitting with all the impact of the old amoral natural necessity. And technology will be little help. Technology is us, it is we who have to change. 5 Dr Peter Critchley Immanence, Transcendence and Essence We cannot make