Andrew Feenberg The Ruthless Critique of Everything Existing: Nature and Revolution in Marcuse’s Philosophy of Praxis

The Ruthless Critique of Everything Existing Book Cover The Ruthless Critique of Everything Existing
Andrew Feenberg
Verso Books
2023
Paperback
256

Reviewed by: Dana S. Belu (California State University)

 

The new sensibility, which expresses the ascent of the life instincts over aggressiveness and guilt, would foster, on a social scale, the vital need for the abolition of injustice and misery and would shape the further evolution of the standard of living.” (Marcuse, Essay on Liberation)

 

Andrew Feenberg’s The Ruthless Critique of Everything Existing: Nature and Revolution in Marcuse’s Philosophy of Praxis is a tour de force of Marcuse’s philosophy. It is multilayered and dives deep into the phenomenological-existential dimensions of Marcuse’s work. The book is energetic, ambitious and offers timely insights into the nature of technological rationality as the origin of the current environmental crisis.

The first chapter takes the reader through Feenberg’s personal reminiscences of his professor at UCSD and then on the frontlines of the May 1968 events in Paris. One gets the sense of a continuity between Marcuse’s personal values and his political and philosophical commitments. His integrity underscored his philosophy and endeared him to his students. Chapters two through six switch gears from the personal to the philosophical and weave a complex Marxist, psychoanalytic and phenomenological narrative that advocates for a life-affirming socialist rationality, an antidote to the ongoing hegemony of technological rationality. Marcuse is cast as the philosophical forerunner of the environmental movement and other social justice movements. I will focus on chapters five and six where Feenberg explicitly takes up the relationship between Marcuse’s and Heidegger’s critiques of technological rationality and expands Marcuse’s proposal for overcoming it through the aesthetic cultivation of a life affirming form of reason.

In chapters two through four Feenberg explains Marcuse’s appropriation of Hegel, Marx Freud and the early Heidegger. His critique of Marx’s notion of subjectivity is especially significant. While many readers of Marcuse may already be familiar with the influence of psychoanalysis on his thought, the phenomenological legacy is less well known. His focus on the significance of Heidegger’s phenomenology of world (46-56) for Marcuse’s understanding of Marx’s ontology of labor is especially insightful, as he shows how Marcuse concretizes this world as a capitalist world.

Chapter four “The Politics of Eros” revisits Marcuse’s “performance principle” as an alternative to Freud’s reality principle where the repression of pleasure in favor of work is no longer a natural given but is socially determined. The socialist revolution will release the working body from its desexualized dedication to labor. Feenberg should have emphasized that the emphases on labor, technological production and the desexualized “dedication” to work- in equal measure social coercion and individual compulsion – were life denying terrors under communism and not just under capitalism. By the late 1960s Marcuse was critical of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe and China. Including his specific criticisms of communism would have helped to further clarify Marcuse’s proposal by distinguishing it from technological thinking in communist societies. Moreover, noting the difference between a socialist rationality and the rationality at work in contemporary socialist countries (Scandinavian countries) could have helped to further clarify Marcuse’s call for a new aesthetic sensibility and a new concept of reason that corresponds to it.

In Chapter 5:  The Critique of Technology Feenberg clarifies the Marxist, Weberian and Heideggerian legacies in Marcuse’s account of technological rationality, especially in his One Dimensional Man (1964). This chapter does an excellent job of acknowledging many similarities between Heidegger’s “The Question Concerning Technology” and One Dimensional Man, noting similarities in structure and in their phenomenological retrieval of the Greek notion of potentiality versus the denial of potentiality by modern science. Feenberg shows that by privileging quantification, precision and planning, modern science and technological rationality eliminate potential (150-2) Moreover, he shows how Marcuse incorporates Heidegger’s notion of a “ground plan,” a concept developed in “The Age of the World Picture,” and Husserl’s notion of the life world. And by combining phenomenological ontology with Marxism, Marcuse uncovers a political dimension that drives Marcuse’s thinking forward along a path not taken by either Heidegger or Husserl.

With Feenberg’s help, Marcuse can be seen to recast capitalism as a lifeworld defined by  “projection” (Vorhaben), a way of pushing into one’s possibilities, as Heidegger describes it in Being and Time. The futural temporality of technological rationality could have been fruitfully explored in relationship to the other two temporal ekstases discussed in Being and Time, thrownness and falling. (Heidegger 1996, section 68) The existential inertia of falling renders the tendency to conform to what is present (or actual) almost inevitable. This phenomenological-ontological insight supports Marcuse’s capitalist concretization of “projection.” As he shows, under capitalism, the possible collapses into the reproduction of the actual and the same. (158) Furthermore, both capitalism and communism “expose nature to both representation by science and control by technology” (150) so that neither sees nature as a process latent with potentialities. They see it through the lens of technological rationality, as a mere resource for production and modernization.

But here Marcuse’s position seems even closer to the later Heidegger than Feenberg acknowledges. For instance, Marcuse’s call for a critical appraisal of the technical age put him at odds with the technophilic, liberalist and Marxist camps that extolled the virtues of mechanized progress, and with the technologically reactionary camp, the technophobes, who feared technology and called for its banishment. Marcuse’s proposal for a third way beyond this false dilemma echoes Heidegger’s own ontological injunction in “The Question Concerning Technology” (154) that we don’t relate to technology in a reactionary way by either loving it or hating it, seeing it as “the work of the devil.” (Heidegger 1977, 25)  Marcuse’s call for a new beginning or what he calls a new sensibility from within the provenance of art also echoes Heidegger’s call for the saving power of art at the end of “The Question Concerning Technology” and elsewhere. Unlike Marcuse, however, he does not call for the liberation of our repressed subjectivity but for the cultivation of receptivity. Feenberg’s interpretation helps us see how the two calls complement one another.

Like Heidegger, Marcuse insists that technology is not neutral.  The first of his three theses about the non-neutrality of technology claims that technology has become a “total system and a world” that justifies capitalism. (137) The second thesis states that technology is not value neutral because “even though it serves generic ends such as increasing the productivity of labor, their design and application under capitalism imposes top-down control in production and social life generally.” (137) The third thesis states that, “scientific-technical rationality is a priori adapted to the maintenance of social domination.” (137) This echoes Heidegger’s ontological a priori of technology that runs deeper than social domination. It extends its reach into the past and foreseeable future, since it blocks our awareness of technical rationality as a clearing of being, a mode of presencing and the source of this presencing itself.[1]

The extent to which this reduction is a capitalist domination is left undetermined by Heidegger but he is clear that in the technological epoch (or clearing) the potentialities of people and nature are harnessed only to be cut to order, not allowed free expression. For Marcuse, the suppression of potentiality shows up starkly in capitalism’s devastating treatment of nature, the negation of its free potential. (Feenberg 2023, 142) Two prominent examples are mass deforestation for cattle ranching and logging, both of which raise carbon dioxide and, worse, methane levels in the atmosphere. 

 Feenberg sees Marcuse as one of the first environmental philosophers, one who sees in the environmental movement an erotic and life affirming resistance against the destruction of nature. This movement, exemplified today by organizations like 350.org and Extinction Rebellion among many others, discovers marginalized potentials in nature and society. This discovery is not value neutral but projects a world of harmony and peace, potentials that can be seen once we tune in to “creative receptivity instead of repressive productivity.” Creative receptivity is a condition of the promised socialist rationality. In a socialist society, a new erotic reason will harness potentialities without domination. (169, 177) Unfortunately, the emergence of this erotic reason is threatened on all sides by scientific-technological rationality and its offsprings: exploitation, overproduction and control in all sectors of life, including our moral lives.  This rationality replaces normative rationality as every form of injustice and harm is transformed into a problem in search of technological quick fix. (141) Technology then feeds the death drive rather than the erotic drive and so shapes a society based on competition or strife, essentially a violent society that subordinates most values to the value of profit making. (125) Like Heidegger, Marcuse sees scientific-technological rationality “as complicit in the concentration campus, atom bombs and media propaganda – all the disasters of the twentieth century.” (Feenberg 2023, 148) He sees them as the materialization of life-denying capitalist values. However, contra Heidegger, who dismisses values as subjective, Marcuse recasts values as “objective realities that guide technical practice.” (153) He disagrees with his former teacher that values are technological products that merely “correlate” with technology. Marcuse is less abstract, more philosophically granular. He analyzes actual “social procedures that reduce potentialities to values, to operational components in the bureaucratic and technical systems of capitalism… [and shows that] certain values have a transitive content indicating the blocked potentialities of the society.” (154, my insert)

Marcuse’s profound insight, according to Feenberg, is that only dialectical logic (not formal or transcendental logic) works with substantive or social universals to reveal the bias of formal reason at work in technical rationality. Feenberg’s exposition of this non-neutrality of formal reason is one of the most innovative and exciting contributions of the book, especially for phenomenology and critical theory.  As Feenberg explains it, social universals such as peace, freedom and justice (161) among others, have meanings (essences) that don’t refer simply to their present instantiation but “to a history and to a social context that requires interpretation.” But technological rationality, shaped by formal universals, marginalizes dialectical thinking, the seeing of substantive universals and latent possibilities. Technological rationality prefers the actual, the present-at hand. (162) It ignores social context and history. When the dialectical logic of substantive universals is suppressed the internal contradictions inherent in things are papered over leaving only reified, one dimensional consciousness in play. As a result, social change is blocked and real subjective consciousness is stunted so that what is actual and present is mistaken for what is fundamentally real.

In this truncated reality techno-scientific rationality breaks up the world into problems to be solved and then reduces the problem solving to the use of technical devices. Thus “social crises and injustices no longer call for fundamental change but instead are interpreted as technical problems” (164) In other words, social and environmental injustices are not understood historically but managed by abstract forms of technological rationality that value production, calculability and control regardless of the ends that are served. In sum, under capitalism the value neutrality of technological rationality, as it encroaches upon the social sphere, covers up the possibility of seeing that the very neutrality with respect to bias is its bias and that this bias legitimates domination. Amplifying Marcuse’s insight, Feenberg states that “it is the very neutrality of science that supplies the link between instrumentalism and domination.” (165)  Marcuse refers to this link as “[science’s] neutral character which relates objectivity to a specific historical Subject – namely, the consciousness that prevails in the society.” (165) Only a new form of reason, an aesthetic reason, can de-reify this consciousness and save humanity from itself. By the conclusion of chapter five Feenberg shows that Marcuse and Heidegger agree about the diagnosis of modern technological societies but not about the prognosis. Feenberg aligns himself with Marcuse’s prognosis. Instead of waiting for art to give us a new god or what amounts to the same thing for Heidegger, a new clearing, Feenberg underscores the timeliness of Marcuse’s call for a new form of reason.

Chapter 6: A New Concept of Reason? renews the call for a dialectical understanding of nature grounded in the lifeworld, a scientific socialist rationality that will bridge the gap between, what Marx’s two forms of nature, “sensuous consciousness and sensuous need.” (169) According to Marx, the senses themselves are mediated or humanized by history and culture, i.e., by labor.  Expanding this insight, Marcuse claims that since science relies on the senses, the basis of science is already cultural despite science’s attempt to enforce cultural neutrality. Thus, scientists are never merely “indifferent observers, but are active beings informed by culture” who live in a “historical epoch that objectifies nature in accordance with a specific social a priori.” (169) Whether all human senses have “evolved” into their current civilized form, as Feenberg claims, is somewhat debatable. According to the book Marcuse’s complaint is against a widespread sensuous repression and stultification, not a sensuous evolution.  Marx, in the 1844 Manuscript, describes a classist humanization of the senses, patchy and uneven. The poverty and exploitation of the proletariat condemned them to continuous sensuous deprivation but it does not do this to the bourgeoisie who benefitted from that exploitation and notoriously indulged their senses. Today, the middle class is not the only class addicted to a compulsive cycle of work and consumption that desensitizes the feeling for nature and beauty. This is the result of the instrumentalist a priori that Marcuse criticizes. He suggests that a “socialist a priori, in contrast, recognizes nature as a subject in its own right. Nature’s potentialities are its own, even as it serves human needs.” (170) He hopes that socialist rationality will reclaim the everyday experience of nature as the atelic unfolding of potentialities, from the formalizing clutches of science. This reclaiming requires a return to the lifeworld of everyday experience and to the criterion of life affirmation that together will help us to recognize and bridge the gap between “the existential and the mathematical truths” of nature. (171) One problem with applying this criterion is its relativity. What is life enhancing for a technocrat is experienced as domination of nature by the sustainable farmer. Marcuse’s account does not always help us to decide who is right.

Chapter 6 explains that bridging the gap depends on cultivating a feeling for the beautiful where the beautiful is thought analogically with Kant’s aesthetics, as a singular experience that lacks a concept. Just as for Kant the feeling for the beautiful is a harmony between the interplay of the imagination and the understanding, a feeling for the “furtherance of life” (Kant 1987, 98), so for Marcuse the feeling for the beautiful points to the harmony between the individual and nature. The analogy is limited because Marcuse’s harmonization serves an ultimate purpose, the “pacification of existence” – a social good. This goal, however, is blocked by the current split between science and technology on the one hand, and art and philosophy, on the other hand. The split ensures that reality is reproduced mechanically by the former while the latter develops beautiful and imaginative yet impotent alternatives.

Feenberg leads the reader through three stages of (176-179) Marcuse’s work where he attempts to rethink the bridge between artistic and technological rationality under a socialist rationality. Feenberg incisively targets the limitations and flaws in Marcuse’s plan for a “successor science” – the embodiment of a socialist rationality. (181) Despite shortcomings, Feenberg sees tremendous promise in Marcuse’s phenomenologically informed attempt to return science to “its original logos, the service of life” (183) and works hard to bring it out. To do this he underscores Marcuse’s use of Gilbert Simondon’s concept of “translation” as “the materialization of values … the redefinition of values in technical terms, as elements in the technological process.” (181) The question is how an aesthetic revolution will connect the experiences of nature with the formal facts about nature provided by science? The gap remains, for instance, in persistent denials of climate change, i.e., many people refuse to connect rising global temperatures with global warming supported by science. The scientific reports and predictions are value neutral in the sense that they can serve climate mitigation or harmful industry, though the scales lean in favor of the status quo, the perpetuation of harmful industries. But Feenberg is hopeful that the continued work of environmental groups will correct this default bias. He points out that environmental groups have already reshaped our conceptions of nature from within the lifeworld, just as Marcuse hoped for, so that it is now seen as an organism in need of protection (save the planet!) instead of as a heap of fungible, raw material for further exploitation. Moreover, new disciplines such as environmental science and sustainability studies have grown out of this new conception of nature. Feenberg points out that this is a revitalization of the “epistemic status of concrete experience.” (186)

Furthermore, newly emerging technosciences such as “postnormal science” also support Marcuse’s call for an aesthetic socialist rationality. Postnormal science is fruitfully unstable because it is in constant contact with the public, with social and political concerns (190). Feenberg expands the domain of postnormality to all “disciplines that have immediate effects on the social world and vice versa.” He cites the example of pharmaceutical research where the gap between theory and practice disappears since the “science and the commercial product emerge simultaneously from the lab – the research is the technological application.” (190) Here the existential and the scientific dimensions converge. Moreover, other fields such as “medicine, engineering, and ecology are more and more constrained to construct their objects in terms of norms imposed by social movements, regulation, and public opinion without abandoning scientific methods.” (197) For instance, once a technological concept, “pollution” is no longer an exclusively scientific-technological object of study.  The public’s concern with dirty air and water injected normative criteria into the specialized study of nature and opened new environmental ways of seeing potentialities for cleaning and protect nature.

Environmental science and technology increasingly support the translation of the public’s existential concerns with environmental health and security into concrete earth friendly innovations. The plastic tax and the increased production of electric cars are just two examples. Feenberg recounts others, perhaps the most striking of which is the history of nuclear energy in the U.S.. While it was once considered the highest sign of progress, the mass publicity of several nuclear accidents scared the public and the technology went into abatement. Public safety and security won out over progress and the scientific transcendence of limits. This was a small revolution that transformed a local world. Today, most scientists agree that nuclear energy is a good alternative to the devastation caused by fossil fuel and that it is safer to use than it was in the 1950s. It remains to be seen how the dialogue with a still skeptical general public will go. But one thing is clear, scientists and activists are both moved by normative concerns from within the lifeworld and by a desire for the flourishing of life on earth (not Mars). They are not neutral observers but desiring agents who seek harmony with nature not its domination. And if Marcuse and Feenberg are right then they also seek beauty.


[1] First, according to Heidegger’s “The Question Concerning Technology,” the essence of technology is “nothing technological” but “a mode of revealing,” a historical dispensation, a world. (Heidegger 1977, 16) The technological era continues to unfold under the imperatives of control, order and optimization whose authority is self-legitimizing and derives from the ubiquity of these imperatives. Second, in its essence technology is not merely a value neutral tool, a means for a subject to control objects. Although devices appear neutral means in the hands of subjects, they conceal the way that users are driven to produce more and more tools to maximize their output. This drive is out of control. Finally, since technology’s essence reveals the real as historically a priori and describes this a priori as a relationship between an attitude of challenging-forth and a world that it reduces to a resource (Heidegger 1977, 17), the essence of technology sums up the reduction of nature and things to “standing reserve” or resources.

Bibliography

Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Translated Joan Stambaugh. SUNY Press, 1996.

Heidegger, Martin. “The Question Concerning Technology” in The Question Concerning  Technology and Other Essays. Translated William Lovitt. Harper & Row Publishers, 1977.

Immanuel Kant. Critique of Judgment. Translated Werner Pluhar. Hackett Publishing Co, 1987.

 

 

Arne Grøn: Thinking with Kierkegaard, De Gruyter, 2023






Thinking with Kierkegaard, De Gruyter, 2023 Book Cover




Thinking with Kierkegaard, De Gruyter, 2023




Volume 44 in the series Kierkegaard Studies. Monograph Series





Arne Grøn. Edited by Bjarke Mørkøre Stigel Hansen and René Rosfort





De Gruyter




2023




Hardback 134,95 €




Front matter: 52. Main content: 614

Terry Pinkard: Practice, Power, and Forms of Life, The University of Chicago Press, 2022






Practice, Power, and Forms of Life: Sartre’s Appropriation of Hegel and Marx Book Cover




Practice, Power, and Forms of Life: Sartre’s Appropriation of Hegel and Marx





Terry Pinkard





The University of Chicago Press




2022




Cloth $35.00




200

Gregory Fried (Ed.): Confronting Heidegger: A Critical Dialogue on Politics and Philosophy






Confronting Heidegger: A Critical Dialogue on Politics and Philosophy Book Cover




Confronting Heidegger: A Critical Dialogue on Politics and Philosophy




New Heidegger Research





Gregory Fried (Ed.)





Rowman & Littlefield Publishers




2019




Paperback $44.95 • £35.00




304

Reviewed by: Andrei-Valentin Bacrău (former graduate researcher at the University of Zurich)

The book Confronting Heidegger: A Critical Dialogue in Politics and Philosophy does present the readers with the expected level of critical analysis needed to revise Heidegger’s literature in contemporary philosophical research. Given the discoveries that Heidegger himself was associated with German nationalism through the rise of the Third Reich and during the Second World War, the academic space has brought into question the extent to which Heidegger should be taken seriously. Additionally, Heidegger’s work has grown in popularity with the French scene in the mid-20th century, as well as with contemporary Americans. The notion of whether or not his works should be taught continues to be present in lecture halls and contemporary literature on German philosophy.  Despite the concern towards the researchers that have built their academic careers on unpacking and clarifying Heidegger’s views, we must also address the theme of how we, as an academic community, should proceed with integrating the works of Heidegger in the philosophical literature, particularly within the branch of phenomenology.

This book initially began as an exchange of correspondence between Gregory Fried and Emmanual Faye, which later on accepted commentaries from other scholars within the radar of Heidegger and phenomenological studies. The text contains a wide plethora of arguments both in favor and against allowing Heidegger to be read and discussed within academic circles, between researchers on one hand, as well as with students on the other. During my review and synthesis of the contributions to this text, I shall outline four primary areas of contextualizing Heidegger within the aforementioned theme: philosophical, historical, political, and academic. The philosophical portion shall outline the charges and defenses of Heidegger within the text itself, isolated by the commentaries of the contributors. The historical portion is going to elaborate on the historical scenarios in which Heidegger himself operated, and the extent to which such historical phenomena have shaped his thoughts and writing style. Thirdly, the political discussion is going to clarify how Heidegger’s affiliations with German nationalism influenced not only the nationalistic culture of Germany in the 20th century, but also how this has inevitably lead to the accusations of antisemitism. Lastly, the academic section is going to explore the extent to which the earlier three sections justify either allowing or rejecting Heidegger’s works in contemporary research. Surely, all four aspects of the review are interwoven with each other, in some cases with such convergence that it is perhaps difficult to delineate between them. Since understanding Heidegger’s place within the philosophical space is already a difficult task, this process of correctly delineating between the social contexts which are affected by him is also an obstacle towards maintaining ethical standards within contemporary research. As we shall see with the contributors of the texts, the priority of Heidegger scholars must be disambiguating his intentions and the contexts which were outside of his control, with events which Heidegger himself not only endorsed but supported one way or another.

I. Philosophical

Some of the early traces for understanding Heidegger’s intellectual developments can be found at the beginning of the book. In the section on abbreviations, Fried himself notes that Heidegger holds different denotations on the notion of “being”. Such distinctions are held between the concepts of Sein and Seiendes (xi). Whereas the former emphasizes a state or a particular entity, the latter denotes the state of affairs or a collective. This subtle distinction between sein and seiendes is going to become particularly helpful for understanding Heidegger’s reasons in favor of German nationalism, as well as his exclusion of Jews from the civic discourse. Thomä’s essay includes another significant distinction, although this one is more particularly concerned with the intellectual development and maturation of Heidegger’s thinking. The question is at what point did Heidegger abandon his view of collective subjectivity? Thomä holds that Heidegger clung to such philosophical notions in the late 1930s. The argument states that we can only overcome metaphysical analysis only in so far as we can abandon clinging to the notion of a self or subject (167). Although the book itself does present some chronological debates as to whether or not this shift in Heidegger’s paradigm should be ascribed to the pre-war or post-war period of his thinking, Thomä maintains that it should be ascribed to the pre-war era.

The second aspect of unpacking how Heidegger conceived of the social world, is less abstract and more grounded in our civic activities. Fried’s defense of Heidegger’s Nazism in contrast to the propaganda projected by the Reich, is that Heidegger supposedly was opposed to both biological racism as well as global imperialism (1). Fried continues by claiming that Heidegger’s view supported the platform of Nazism as a bridging mechanism between cultures. Fried’s defensive reading of Heidegger comes to rigorous criticism from Kellerer. Heidegger’s antisemitism became more obvious in his writings since the completion of his Black Book. As Kellerer phrases it, post-1938 Heidegger indeed takes his mask off and uses more direct language that discriminates against the Jewish people (192). Kellerer also recognizes that although Heidegger’s antisemitism is not grounded in biological justifications, it is nonetheless concealed in an obscure writing style. Once Heidegger’s writings are disambiguated, as Strauss also emphasizes, the objective of the writing also becomes clearer. Heidegger’s intentions weren’t simply to push for a discourse of alienating the Jews from civic life but to annihilate any sort of influence or voice they might have had (204).

The main difficulty with disambiguating Heidegger is that he wrote in a seductive style, which brings students in (224). This seductive appeal, explained by Thomä and extended via Fried’s piece, is that it does not appeal to reason or intuitions. Rather, the seduction occurs via insights and revelations which are inaccessible to most people and readers. Despite such hermeneutic obscurations, Fried does maintain that Heidegger should be taken seriously (232). The discussions encouraging the abandonment of Heidegger as a legitimate 20th-century thinker are primarily ideological, rather than philosophical. The ideological-philosophical distinction illustrated by Fried, as well as the implications of Heidegger’s potential anti-semitism and cryptic style of writing are going to be further analyzed in the following sections.

II. Historical

Thus far, I have emphasized two main overarching questions regarding the interaction between Heidegger and the far-right politics of Germany. Firstly, whether or not Heidegger himself was an active participant in such political discussions and secondly, whether or not such participation discharges him from the academic space of philosophical discussions? Fried’s contribution insists that we should delineate between conservative attitudes in Germany and elsewhere in Europe, as well as Heidegger’s import from such discussion in the maturation of his work. Fried’s analysis claims that we cannot trace such anti-semitic attitudes to his earlier works, such as Being and Time (34). Fried’s defense also continues by stating that it was inevitable for Heidegger to at least indirectly present conservative views, since the attitudes of most European states during the 1930s were anti-cosmopolitan, nationalistic as well as anti-modern. Although these attitudes were the building blocks of Nazism, later on, they are not an expression of Nazi ideology. Therefore, a charitable reading of at least early Heidegger should be a German nationalist. Even if we were to ascribe Heidegger Nazi affiliations, Fried claims that we must be wary of contrasting it with the political activities of Nazi Germany. Whereas the political movement during Heidegger’s time supported imperialism and biological superiority via a metaphysical framework, Heidegger himself criticized this reading of Nazism, in favor of some sort of aggressive yet universalist form of the view (16).

Polt’s article emphasizes less of these subtle distinctions of German nationalism and focuses more on how Heidegger used the dialectic method to combat metaphysics, subjectivity as well as machination. Heidegger advocated that the aforementioned notions are dangerous and that they can drive humanity towards the collapse of civilization. This “ontohistorical machination”, as Polt phrases it, leaves “no hint of sympathy here for the victims; instead, he seems to be coldly, distantly, and ironically observing the events of the time” (134).

Polt maintains the defense that we should not read Heidegger as a supporter of Nazism. One of the justifications rests with Heidegger’s condemnation of Hitler’s reckless military policies through the war (119). Such defense results in a reading of the Black Book as a critique of Nazi ideology, while maintaining some sort of position in favor of German nationalism. Polt himself would perhaps agree with this reading since he also mentions that Heidegger’s bitter attitude towards the post-war European state of affairs also contains mixed feelings towards notions of German guilt and their relationship with a perverse understanding of Christianity. Polt’s conclusive remarks leave the readers with an interesting alternative from Fried’s interpretation that Heidegger’s views were in favor of some sort of cosmopolitanism. Namely, Polt’s alternative claims that since Heidegger rejected all moral and political principles in favor of some metaphysical structure, Heidegger must default to some sort of view of totalitarianism to reason through actions and political movements that are not promoted by a mere socialist state (140). Heidegger’s political affiliations have been defended and disambiguated in multiple ways by the contributors to this book. The next section of my review attempts to clarify which reading is more plausible, given Heidegger’s attitudes towards nationalism and the Jewish people.

III. Political

A third significant theme debated through the book is concerned with whether or not Heidegger intends his students and readers to develop sympathy towards Nazism. Fried opens the discussion with two observations. Firstly, that Heidegger’s work has been taken seriously in France and now in the US, and secondly, reading Heidegger does not entail the reader to grow sympathy for German nationalism (7); Fried continues:

For Heidegger, this means resolutely belonging to a particular place, a particular time, and particular people with its particular destiny. It means embracing the radical finitude of being human and radical boundedness to the human community (12).

Although Fried seems to be convinced that we can assess and maintain Heidegger’s work within the academic corpus, there does seem to be the pressing question of what exactly does this maintenance of Heideggerian work mean? Heidegger was undoubtedly a passionate nationalist, even in instances where historians can indeed say that he criticized his contemporary political structures in Germany. Therefore, we must ask ourselves to what extent Heidegger’s metaphysical agenda necessitated a nationalistic paradigm in contradistinction with cosmopolitanism? The contributors also clashed on the questions of ideological limits, rather than only attempting to describe Heidegger’s views of metaphysics and politics.

Kellerer argues that Heidegger’s antisemitism is obvious since the publication of the Black Notebooks (191). There are also other arguments present. Some scholars would say that given Heidegger’s obscure usage of the German language, it is difficult to pin exactly which passages are meant to be taken as anti-semitic. Additionally, Kellerer also extends the discussion surrounding the distinction between German views of superiority based on some sort of biological claim, with Heidegger’s national socialism which does not argue for such physiological superiority. However, this subtle distinction does not entail that Heidegger himself is free from the charge of racial superiority in some form. Since the exposé of GA:96, Heidegger was pushing for “ontologizing” principles of “blood and soil”. In this way, the dialectic struggle embodied in machination has been amplified. While also pushing forth ambiguous notions of “struggle for the liberation of the essence”, Heidegger attempts to distance himself from the notion of biological purity, while also claiming that such reductionist criteria have consistently been found in Jewish literature (193). Kellerer’s piece continues to make it quite obvious to her audience that Heidegger’s antisemitism is not only intentional but also not as subtle as some defenders of Heidegger would like to make it seem. Claims such as the Jew as the parasite, and that all Jews are devoid of any self (Selbst), make Heidegger’s intentions and objectives clear (198).

What is at issue here is intentional philosophical deception for domination and taking power in the spiritual and political fight for Nazism (203).

Dasein is the constant urgency of defeat and the renewed resurgence of the act of violence against Being, in such a way that the almighty reign of Being violates Dasein (in the literal sense), makes Dasein into the site of its appearing, envelops and pervades Dasein in its reign, and thereby holds it within Being (30).

Although this review is not the place to offer a comprehensive overview of Heidegger’s notion of Dasein, I would like to point out particular denotations of this concept, concerning Kellerer’s discussion. Regardless of how ambiguous or seductive the readers of Heidegger might think his philosophy is, it is quite difficult to defend the thesis that Heidegger had no intention of constructing a metaphysical system that initially alienates and then annihilates the Jewish people. The more difficult question remaining, is how the academic space should react to a writer that has such a legacy behind him. The fourth section, addressing the academic reactions to Heidegger, is going to further explore the arguments in favor and against keeping Heidegger as a legitimate thinker in the pedagogical system.

IV. Academics

Regardless of whether the contributors of the book favored the view that Heidegger was promoting Nazi ideology or a less harmful version of nationalism, both sides remain with the burden of addressing the last theme I shall cover in this review. Namely, should Heidegger be taught at all? Should we, as researchers, offer the space for such ideas, and more importantly, what is the pedagogical value of literary works that are borderline disruptive to a minority group?

The beginning of the debates are traced in Fried’s introduction to the book. He argues that we should not merely see Heidegger as a historical byproduct of German propaganda and that we should take him seriously. In this way, we do not jeopardize the careers of researchers working on Heidegger, nor do we discourage students with a growing interest in Heidegger’s thought (xviii). Fried’s concern is that we are “ventriloquizing Heidegger”. To defend Heidegger against over-contextualizing the material conditions and historical scene in which he lived, Fried pushes the agenda that Heidegger’s Nazism was different because it supported a cosmopolitan platform for nations to communicate amongst each other (1). A reoccurring theme during these discussions is how to address the evolution of Heidegger’s ideas beyond his scope and intentions. There seems to be a collective consensus that as long as the Heidegger scholars recognize the delineation between Heidegger’s contributions and the inevitable evolution, then Heidegger enthusiasts can engage with the literature without necessarily being stained by Heidegger’s political ideology.

The attempt to de-legitimize Heidegger has been opposed by Fried in other ways as well. Not only does Fried defer to the interest of thinkers such as Sartre and Habermas in Heidegger’s work,  but also the case that Voltaire, Kant, and Locke also expressed racist views and some of them went as far as favoring slavery (35). Such deferment to other well-known thinkers through European thought surely does bring into question the overall philosophical project of European thinkers. The extent to which this concern is well-grounded is not only left to the readers but I too would like to encourage a growing discourse into investigating the discriminatory biases of European thinkers.

Altman’s piece attempts to find a reconciliation between the charges against Heidegger and the pedagogical value of keeping his work as live options during debates and discussions in phenomenology and metaphysics. The argument “education first” adds to the discourse of delineating between Heidegger as a byproduct of his time and the intellectual import researchers can obtain from him today. Altman continues with an analogy between Heidegger and Elvis. Similarly to the underdog rise to fame of Elvis so too Heidegger enjoyed the spotlight of American academia (117).

Kellerer attempts to pair her arguments with Faye’s methodology. They should not be perceived as attempting to discharge Heidegger from the academic circles. Rather, they attempt to survey the extent to which the Nazi culture of his contemporaries influenced his writings so that the readers of Heidegger have a better grasp of the ideologies at work in his philosophy. Faye also supports Kellerer’s pluralistic reading of Heidegger (190, 238). The rhetoric emanated from all positions in this debate is that we must be careful with the way the debate is being shaped. One of the horns of the dilemma is to completely discourage any discussion about Heidegger due to the tension in his literature and the ethics of human rights. The other horn would be over-celebrating Heidegger and denying the implications, however minimal, that he had with German nationalism. Such projects are particularly difficult because Heidegger himself was using the German language in unusual ways.

The terminology of the Black Notebooks is more explicit than his other works of the same period, probably because many of those works have been manipulated by Heidegger’s own self-censorship or the censorship of the publishers, as we know to be the case in The History of Being. That terminology clarifies and confirms the meaning and conclusion of the 1940 course on Nietzsche. (253)

Faye’s conclusive remarks of the debate correctly illustrate the political outcome of the mid-20th century Germany. Aside from the terrors and atrocities which millions of people have unjustly experienced, we, as a global community, have engaged in an active discourse of human rights. As academic researchers, we must contribute to a civic and academic ecosystem where these rights are not only protected but also encouraged to flourish.

Overall, the impressions of the book are positive. The writing is clear and accessible both to students with minimal exposure to Heidegger’s work, as well as to Heidegger scholars. I would gladly recommend this piece to anyone interested in Heidegger or phenomenology at large. The book offers a wide plethora of debates concerning how we see and read Heidegger in today’s academic space. The only way for researchers to further look into the details of Heidegger’s affinities and philosophy is by enabling a discourse where such discussions are possible and reasoned through.

Alfredo Ferrarin, Dermot Moran, Elisa Magri, Danilo Manca (Eds.): Hegel and Phenomenology






Hegel and Phenomenology Book Cover




Hegel and Phenomenology




Contributions To Phenomenology, Vol. 102





Alfredo Ferrarin, Dermot Moran, Elisa Magri, Danilo Manca (Eds.)





Springer




2019




Hardback 103,99 €




XIII, 190

Reviewed by: Daniel Herbert (University of Sheffield)

While Hegel has long been acknowledged as an important influence upon several figures within the phenomenological tradition, the relation of his system to the movement’s founder, Husserl, has been largely overlooked. Husserl’s few, and – for the most part – unenthusiastic references to Hegel, together with the anti-Hegelian attitudes of his teacher, Brentano, have seemed, for most, to suggest that there is nothing to learn from comparing Husserl’s thought with Hegel’s, however much Hegelian and Husserlian themes are to be found combined in the works of subsequent phenomenologists. As such, the recent collection of essays, Hegel and Phenomenology, edited by Alfredo Ferrarin, Dermot Moran, Elisa Magrì and Danilo Manca, represents a most welcome contribution to current debates concerning Hegel’s legacy for Continental philosophy, and the affinities between Hegelian and Husserlian approaches. The collection leans very much towards Husserl, with eight of its eleven chapters centring upon Husserl’s relation to Hegel. Other members of the phenomenological tradition, customarily thought closer to Hegel, are less well-represented here, although there are very interesting chapters on Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and Ricœur, each of which makes an original contribution to phenomenology scholarship while offering a distinct perspective from which to assess Hegel’s twentieth century legacy.

Although several of the contributors note significant agreements between Husserl and Hegel in earlier works, it is no surprise that the Hegelian motifs in Husserl’s project are most apparent in the posthumous Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Whether or not Husserl himself became conscious of his affinities with Hegel, his successors in the phenomenological tradition were not slow to appreciate the Hegelian implications contained within a post-Kantian philosophy of subjectivity once it has become sensitive to the importance of intersubjective and inherited historical factors conditioning the subject’s understanding of its experience. The first three chapters of the collection are therefore specifically devoted to interpreting Husserl’s Crisis text in the light of such Hegelian motifs. Chapters four and five compare methodological approaches in Hegel’s phenomenology, whereas chapters six, seven and eight make subjectivity their central theme. The remaining three chapters examine Hegel and Husserl by way of Adorno, Ricœur and Sellars.

The first chapter of the collection, by Dermot Moran, delivers a fascinating account of Hegel’s passage from disrepute to prestige during the early history of the phenomenological movement. As Moran explains, Hegel’s reputation suffered enormously in Germany during the second half of the nineteenth century, when the call for a return to Kant left Hegelian speculative idealism discredited as an extravagantly metaphysical position vulnerable to epistemic critique. Brentano typifies the anti-Hegelian attitudes of this period in German philosophy, identifying Hegel as part of an irrationalist wave terminating a cycle of philosophical progress. The monumentally influential lectures of Koyré, Kojève and Hyppolite notwithstanding, however, Moran shows Heidegger’s rehabilitation of Hegel to pre-date these developments in France, so that it is in Germany that Hegel’s journey to phenomenological respectability originates. Moran stresses the importance of Heidegger’s Freiburg lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit in restoring Hegel’s esteem amongst a new generation of phenomenologists, and devotes particular attention to Finks’s Hegelian inheritance and its possible influence upon the ultimate shape of Husserl’s Crisis text.

Husserl’s early disregard for Hegel aside, Moran clearly identifies deep affinities between Hegel’s treatment of subjectivity in terms of historically developing intersubjective Spirit and the concerns of the Crisis, examining possible sources of conscious or unconscious Hegelian influences upon this work. Moran’s assessment of the Hegel-Husserl relationship is compelling, original and productive, opening a route to significant re-evaluation of a pairing frequently regarded as fundamentally incompatible. Moran arguably overstates Hegel’s proximity to Husserl, however, on the crucial and much-contested issue of transcendental philosophy – a matter of decisive importance in assessing Hegel’s place in the post-Kantian tradition. Whereas Husserl never abandons his commitment to transcendental methods following his 1907 Kantian epiphany, Hegel’s consciously anti-Kantian methodology greatly complicates efforts to classify him as a transcendental philosopher in any straightforward, unqualified sense.

The complex relationship between Hegel’s system and Husserl’s later work is further examined in the second chapter of the collection, by Tanja Staehler, which addresses their respective treatments of history and teleology. Whereas, according to Staehler, both thinkers identify a purposiveness in European history, and an orientation towards a telos, Hegel takes the goal of history to have been prescribed in advance by the logic of the Absolute Idea, while Husserl allows for changes in historical trajectory owing to the revisability of its telos. In spite of a common teleological approach to historical understanding, Husserl and Hegel differ very significantly, according to Staehler, in their treatments of the future. For Staehler, Hegel’s omnivorous system struggles to accommodate genuine spontaneity into its grand design, which entails that the horizons of historical possibility completely fixed by a process which achieved maturation in the early nineteenth century. Husserl, however, is better able to acknowledge contingencies of time and culture not anticipated in the historical experience of any given community. As such, the future never loses its potential for radical novelty on Husserl’s account, according to Staehler, who takes Husserl to deny the possibility of an ‘absolute’ perspective from which all historically-conditioned limits of understanding are overcome.

Those who are sympathetic to Hegel shall no doubt take issue with Staehler’s familiar objection that there is no contingency or spontaneity worthy of the title in Hegel’s treatment of history. All the same, Staehler identifies a crucial point of disagreement between Hegel and Husserl, insofar as Husserl treats the telos of European history as originating within a specific historical life-world, whereas, for Hegel, teleology involves the realisation in space and time of a conceptual order originating elsewhere. As such, Staehler is well-supported in maintaining that Husserl’s historical teleology is more modest in its claims than Hegel’s.

Danilo Manca’s chapter – the third of the collection – compares Hegel’s and Husserl’s respective treatments of the history of philosophy, with particular focus upon their differing relations to Kant’s approach to the same topic. Beginning with a discussion of Kant’s position, Manca outlines the notion of a ‘philosophizing history of philosophy’ which Kant introduces to distinguish a narrative of specifically philosophical significance within the events leading from Thales to the Enlightenment. Although the first Critique presents the history of philosophy as a cyclical process of metaphysical indulgence and sceptical renunciation, Manca notes evidence from Kant’s posthumous documents suggesting a more progressive interpretation of the same events, whereby reason’s own nature entails its elaboration over time. According to Manca, Hegel and Husserl are Kant’s successors in the project of a philosophizing history of philosophy, each seeking for an underlying rationale and a generally progressive direction to the same historical sequence of events.

Manca’s contribution is the first of the collection to discuss in detail the shared Kantian inheritance to the Hegelian and phenomenological movements, and his comparison of Hegel’s and Husserl’s respective accounts of the history of philosophy neatly illustrates their points of departure from a common ancestor. Manca notes that, for Hegel, contingencies in the historically-situated articulations of the Absolute Idea are the result of the spatiotemporal medium in which reason strains to express itself, whereas Husserl understands the same contingency to originate in more mundane cultural differences. Ultimately, Manca concludes, Husserl remains closest to Kant, insofar as he interprets the history of philosophy as orbiting around a set of problems, rather than as the unidirectional process by which reason realises itself over an organic series of stages. Whereas, for Hegel, history articulates a conceptual structure outlined in the Science of Logic, Husserl recognises no such extra-historical standard informing history’s development.

Hegel’s critique of immediacy and its implications for Husserl’s foundationalist project provides the theme for Chapter Four, by Chong-Fuk Lau, in which it is argued that Husserl came ultimately to concede the impossibility of the very presuppositionless standpoint to which his epoché had been intended to facilitate access. As Lau notes, Hegel and Husserl are similarly committed to the possibility of a rigorously scientific and presuppositionless philosophy, differing principally over whether presuppositionlessness is the feature of a starting-point or a system taken as a whole. Lau is sympathetic to Hegel’s anti-foundationalism, which he takes to fatally undermine the pursuit of ultimate beginnings to which Husserl is committed in his transcendental phenomenology. According to Lau, whereas Hegel had shown that there is nothing altogether free of mediation, Husserl’s performance of the epoché is intended to facilitate a radical beginning from which all mediation has been expelled. For Lau, there is simply no room for compromise between Husserl and Hegel over this Cartesian methodological issue, and Husserl’s appearance of having moved closer to Hegel by the time of the Crisis is the result of his having abandoned his earlier foundationalist ideals.

Lau’s expert discussion of Hegel compellingly makes the case for a fundamental incompatibility between Hegel’s method and that of the Husserlian transcendental phenomenologist. Whereas, however, he is on secure ground in maintaining that Heidegger or Gadamer represent greater prospects for a phenomenological appropriation of Hegelian insights than is afforded by Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology, his claim that the Crisis involves a complete reversal of earlier foundationalist aspirations is more questionable. The ideal of “European science” to which Husserl re-affirms his commitment in the Crisis does not significantly differ from that which he presents in the Cartesian Meditations, and Husserl does not suppose his greater attention to the life-world to undermine earlier aspirations.

Chapter Five, the first of the collection specifically to compare Hegel and Heidegger, is by Antoine Cantin-Brault and examines Hegel’s and Heidegger’s respective understandings of the Heraclitean logos. In its profounder sense, as the principle (arche) of nature (phusis), logos may, according to Cantin-Brault be understood either as (i) the dialectical and determinate truth of being, or as (ii) the unveiling of that which is concealed. Although Heraclitus does not, Cantin-Brault maintains, explicitly make any such distinction, Hegel interprets Heraclitean logos from the first perspective, whereas Heidegger’s interpretation emphasises the second. For Cantin-Brault, Heidegger’s approach to Heraclitus is mediated by a Hegelian interpretation which he tries, and ultimately fails, to overcome. As such, Cantin-Brault argues, Heidegger is unsuccessful in his attempt to understand Heraclitean logos apart from Hegelian dialectic. Hence, for Cantin-Brault, as for Hegel, Heraclitus is a dialectical thinker, in whose work a process of rational self-articulation is driven by the dynamic relation between certain fundamental concepts. Indeed, Cantin-Brault maintains, it was Heraclitus that first instituted a logos which provides Hegel’s philosophy with its central governing principle.

Heidegger’s changing approach to Heraclitean logos, and his disagreements with Hegel on this matter, are, according to Cantin-Brault, illustrative of differing understandings of the nature of ontology, and Heidegger engages differently with Heraclitus before and after his famous Kehre. Cantin-Brault’s chapter strikingly highlights the very different issues relevant to comparing Hegel with either Heidegger or Husserl, and marks quite a thematic departure from the previous, more Husserl-focussed contributions. This is apparent not only in the respectively epistemic and ontological priorities which distinguish Husserl and Heidegger, but also in their divergent attitudes towards the pre-Socratics. Although Plato marks a watershed for both Husserl and Heidegger, he is, for Husserl, the first true philosopher, and for Heidegger, the initial step to modernity’s ontological forgetfulness.

In Chapter Six, Andrea Altobrando compellingly makes the case that, from the time of his transcendental turn, Husserl came to share with Hegel a commitment to the pure ego as a necessary abstraction from the concrete self. After the initial Humean-Brentanian scepticism towards the unified self which he displays in the Logical Investigations, Husserl moves, according to Altobrando, in the contrary direction, acknowledging the pure ego as a necessary condition of any possible experience. Like Hegel, however, in the Phenomenology of Spirit and Philosophy of Mind, Husserl is not, Altobrando shows, committed to Cartesian substance dualism, but recognises the pure ego as an abstraction from a more concrete self, upon which it is therefore ontologically dependent. Both Hegel and Husserl, Altobrando maintains, recognise a demand to develop a more concrete understanding of one’s ontological identity which is not, therefore, merely abstract. For Hegel as well as Husserl, the pure ego, according to Altobrando, is entirely barren of content, simple, indeterminate and negative, without being unreal. Such an abstract pure ego is, Altobrando maintains, necessary for both Hegel and Husserl in order to accommodate the possibility of free agency and the intentionality of consciousness.

With this discussion of the pure ego, Altobrando highlights a feature of Husserl’s philosophy which might – in view of his well-known Cartesian inheritance – initially be thought to disqualify any prospect of overlap with Hegel, and shows that such impressions are unfounded. What is more, as Altobrando explicitly remarks, the comparison of Hegel’s and Husserl’s respective views concerning the pure ego represents a large and difficult project with very significant potential for re-assessing the prospects for dialogue between Husserlian and Hegelian traditions. As such, Altobrando’s contribution indicates the beginning of an exciting and promising larger project concerning the place of the pure ego in Husserl’s thought and Hegel’s.

Chapter Seven, by Alfredo Ferrarin, examines the much-neglected topic of Hegel’s and Husserl’s respective views concerning the imagination and, in so doing, identifies fascinating and unexpected points of agreement between the two thinkers, along with more predictable disagreements. According to Ferrarin, Hegel and Husserl share, first, a common Humean target, and, second, an understanding of the mind as stratified into layers of capacity which support and build upon one another. Unlike Hume, who recognises only a difference in degree of liveliness and vivacity between the ideas and impressions which furnish the contents of the mind, Hegel and Husserl recognise logically irreducible functional differences between the imagination and other subjective capacities. Such capacities are vertically ordered, for Hegel and Husserl, each of whom maintains that the capacity for sensible perception is conditional and grounded upon that of imagination.

Whereas, for Ferrarin, Hegel stresses the continuities between imagination and perception, Hegel emphasises their discontinuities, but both acknowledge a mutual dependence between the possible representation of the real and that of the unreal. In accordance with their contrasting methodological approaches, however, Hegel and Husserl differ very significantly, according to Ferrarin, in their assessments of the philosophical role of the imagination. Husserl’s eidetic discoveries are presented as the products of phantasy or imaginative variation, whereas Hegel understands the imagination as an intermediate stage on subjectivity’s self-propelling journey towards the pure Idea, wherein the sensible content of one’s representations is abstracted and their logical form laid bare to the contemplation of speculative intelligence. Since for Hegel it is the business of philosophy to transform representations into thoughts, the products of imagination are, in spite of their necessary contribution in facilitating the possibility of sensible knowledge and experience, part of what needs to be overcome in effecting the self-mediated transition from ordinary consciousness to philosophical science.

In her chapter – the eighth of the collection – Elisa Magrì argues that Hegel and Merleau-Ponty confront a similar paradox concerning expression, and pursue a common strategy in response. According to Magrì, the concept of expression occupies a central role in Hegel’s thought and Merleau-Ponty’s, but is in neither case to be understood in terms of the manifestation of a pre-existing logos. Beginning with Kant’s account of genius in the third Critique, Magrì shows that, for Kant, expression involves the spontaneous production of a representation which is communicable to others without having been generated according to a fixed procedure or rule. Expression takes on a broader systematic role for Hegel and Merleau-Ponty, Magrì maintains, both of whom employ genetic description to make sense of its pervasive significance in every aspect of thought and subjective experience. Magrì examines Hegel’s discussions of the concepts of expression and manifestation in the Science of Logic and identifies how their respective shortcomings contribute to the emergence of the self-conditioning concept which is the articulation of its own significance. Hegel’s account of expression in the Philosophy of Subjective Spirit is then explored in depth and its systematic connections with the argument of the Logic brought into view.

Merleau-Ponty is seen to agree with Hegel in treating expression properly understood as the origination of meaning, rather than the making publicly available of a privately originating significance. According to Magrì, expression depends, for Hegel and Merleau-Ponty, upon a complex dialectical interplay of activity and passivity, the importance of which for their respective post-Kantian approaches is difficult to overstate. Such a dialectic is particularly well-illustrated, Magrì suggests, in Hegel’s and Merleau-Ponty’s respective accounts of the processes by which the body becomes habituated to the expression of meaning – a series of developments involving moments of subjectivity and objectivity, interiority and exteriority.

Chapter Nine, by Giovanni Zanotti, represents something of a change in direction for the collection, with Hegel taking a step into the background and his place being filled by one of his most important twentieth century enthusiasts – Theodor Adorno. Zanotti examines Adorno’s Hegelian critique of Husserl’s commitment to a presuppositionless first philosophy grounded in the immediate deliverances of intuition. According to Zanotti, Adorno shows Husserl’s ambitious foundationalist project to fall victim to Hegel’s critique of pure immediacy, insofar as Husserl falsely assumes the possibility of an immediate foundation to knowledge which is yet able to mediate the transfer of epistemic support to propositions to which it must therefore stand in relations of mediation. Zanotti explicitly maintains that Adorno’s critique is effective specifically against such earlier Husserlian works as the Logical Investigations, leaving open the possibility that Husserl may be less vulnerable to such criticisms in the Crisis and related works of that period.

What is especially interesting about Zanotti’s admirably lucid and finely-crafted chapter is the way it explains Adorno’s discovery of an unintended dialectical tendency in Husserl’s work. According to Zanotti, Adorno shows that Husserl is led, in spite of himself but nonetheless through a kind of logic immanent within his position, to qualify the earlier Platonic realism of the Logical Investigations in recognition of a necessary subjective ground for the logical concepts he intends to elucidate without, however, sliding into the naïve psychologism which, Adorno maintains, Husserl was right to reject. As such, Zanotti’s chapter amplifies a theme recurrent throughout the collection – that in spite of his ignorance of and early antipathy to Hegel’s thought, the trajectory of Husserl’s philosophical development is towards increasingly greater proximity to Hegel. This is not to deny, however – as Adorno well-recognises – that the one-sidedness of Husserl’s earlier works indicates a genuine insight.

The penultimate chapter of the collection, by Gilles Marmasse, explores Ricœur’s ambivalent assessment of Hegel’s system and its legacy. According to Marmasse, Ricœur understands Hegel’s absolutist ambitions as a temptation which must be resisted, but the renunciation of which cannot be experienced without a sense of profound loss. For Ricœur, the events of the twentieth century have made it impossible to subscribe any longer to the self-grounding and totalising conception of philosophy which Hegel offers in reply to the finitude of the Kantian system, without having eliminated the appeal of such an ideal. The contemporary predicament is well-illustrated by the remarkable fascination which Hegel’s system retains, according to Ricœur, notwithstanding that it is no longer possible seriously to regard philosophy as party to anything else than a partial interpretation of the multifaceted cultural environment to which it belongs and by which it is conditioned.

Ricœur exaggerates Hegel’s dogmatic proclivities, according to Marmasse, who confronts Ricœur’s familiarly speculative interpretation of Hegel with a more deflationary approach which emphasises the Hegelian ambition to accommodate contingency and particularity within the system without annihilating their status as irreducible moments of a greater whole. Contrary to Ricœur’s inflationary reading, Hegel’s notion of Spirit does not, Marmasse maintains, commit him to any disembodied extra-human agency. All the same, according to Marmasse, Ricœur’s criticisms of Hegel retain, in spite of their shortcomings, a contemporary value and interest, especially in respect of their highlighting of authoritarian implications in Hegel’s theory of the state. Marmasse’s chapter is especially interesting in the way it exemplifies a phenomenon frequently remarked upon in the history of Hegel’s reception – namely, the peculiar allure of his system even for those seeking to identify its failings, and the apparent impossibility of ‘getting beyond’ Hegel – with whom it therefore seems necessary to remain in continued dialogue.

Daniele De Santis concludes the collection with a chapter defending Husserl against charges of the kind raised by Sellars’s monumentally influential critique of the myth of the Given. As De Santis remarks, Sellars’s Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind is often taken as the original source of a Hegel renaissance within analytic philosophy by which Cartesian approaches of the kind which Husserl advocates have been largely discredited. De Santis identifies three aspects of Sellars’s Hegelianism; (i) a ‘three-fold critique’ of givenness, comprising epistemological, metaphysical and genetic elements, (ii) a historical counter-account to a received view of Hegel’s relation to Cartesian philosophy, and (iii) a conceptual holism subsequently embraced by Brandom and McDowell. According to De Santis, Sellars intends for his initial attack against sense-datum theories to open a route towards the rejection of a general picture of givenness of which no philosopher has been altogether innocent. Sellars’s self-described Méditations Hégéliennes are intended to recall Husserl’s Méditations Cartésiennes, De Santis maintains, and therefore to implicate Husserl as complicit in the myth which Sellars means to unveil and dispel.

Identifying a problematic conception of evidence as the core of Sellars’s three-fold critique of givenness, De Santis proceeds to argue that performance of the transcendental-phenomenological reduction, or epoché, leads Husserl to reconceive of the intentional object as the product of acts of transcendental synthesis. Appearances are not mere isolated ‘givens’ according to Husserl, but originate within a normative network of combination-guiding principles which has more in common with Sellars’s conceptual holism than analytic Hegelians have yet to recognise. De Santis’s contribution carries the welcome implication that the so-called ‘Hegelian turn’ in recent analytic philosophy need not preclude productive engagement with phenomenology, any more than phenomenologists have been prevented from making significant contributions to Hegel scholarship or to contemporary understandings of Hegel’s current relevance.

The omission of chapters devoted specifically to Sartre, de Beauvoir and Gadamer and their respective responses to Hegel is perhaps surprising, although a volume addressing each of the major figures of the phenomenological movement would have significantly increased the length of the collection and shifted its focus away from the movement’s founder. Certainly other phenomenologists are more explicitly indebted to Hegel, and Husserl is one of the least obviously ‘Hegelian’ figures of the tradition, but the collection’s unusual attention to Husserl’s widely unacknowledged affinities with Hegel’s thought is, for this very reason, amongst its many virtues. Few other collections offer such thorough studies of the congruences and points of departure between Hegel’s ambitious project and the tradition of philosophical research originating with Husserl, without failing to respect the complex unity of the phenomenological movement as a venture of Husserlian origin. The essays in the present volume – the result of a conference on “Hegel and the Phenomenological Movement” held in Pisa in 2014 – collectively and compellingly make the case for a fresh approach to the relation between Hegelianism and phenomenology, which does not assume Husserl’s basic philosophical orientation to be antithetical to Hegel’s but sees both traditions as responses to a common Kantian heritage and capable of productive cross-fertilisation in the development of anti-naturalist strategies centring upon the meaning-constitutive priority of historical subjectivity. Such a re-evaluation – it might reasonably be hoped – shall be met with enthusiasm by an audience which has become impatient with dismissive treatments of Husserl as a naïve Cartesian, radical only in his uncompromising foundationalism and unmoved by the era-defining concerns which have, since the mid-twentieth century, made Hegel increasingly difficult to ignore for analytic as well as Continental philosophers. While the history of the phenomenological movement has typically been seen as one of successive heretical departures from an original Husserlian ideal of ‘philosophy as rigorous science’ and the greater acceptance of a hermeneutic and historicist approach antithetical to Husserl’s, the present collection invites readers to question such received wisdom by considering the Hegelian potential implicit in Husserl and re-examining his legacy from a perspective informed by Hegel.

Marina Bykova, Kenneth Westphal (Eds.): The Palgrave Hegel Handbook, Palgrave Macmillan, 2020






The Palgrave Hegel Handbook Book Cover




The Palgrave Hegel Handbook




Palgrave Handbooks in German Idealism





Marina Bykova, Kenneth Westphal (Eds.)





Palgrave Macmillan




2020




Hardback 160,49 €




LII, 602

Theodor W. Adorno: Ontology and Dialectics: 1960/61






Ontology and Dialectics: 1960-61 Book Cover




Ontology and Dialectics: 1960-61





Theodor W. Adorno. Nick Walker (Translator)





Polity




2018




Paperback €21.46




384

Reviewed by: Sílvia Bento (Institute of Philosophy - University of Porto)

“I believe that if you look at the writings expressly directed against Wagner, and especially The Case of Wagner, you could readily extrapolate what he [Nietzsche] would have said against Heidegger. And I think if you could actually perform this feat of imagination that I am proposing to you, and envisage such a Nietzschean critique of Heidegger, then for penetrating insight it would surpass anything which I can offer you with my modest powers in these lectures.” (104)

These intriguing remarks, set forth by Theodor W. Adorno in his series of lectures delivered in Frankfurt during the winter semester of 1960/61, can be regarded as the touchstone of Ontology and Dialectics. This lecture course of 1960/61 – and the three Vorlesungen delivered at the Collège de France in March 1961 – first published in 2002 under the title Ontologie und Dialektik, excels in presenting a subtle analogy between Nietzsche’s positions concerning Richard Wagner’s music as a cultural expression of décadence and his remarks on Heidegger’s fundamental ontology as a degenerate movement or tendency against Aufklärung. As presented in Der Fall Wagner (1881), the Nietzschean formulation of Wagner’s music as a “disease” affecting German culture is evoked in order to analyse the philosophical observations on Heideggerian ontology developed by Adorno in Ontology and Dialectics. According to Adorno’s incisive observations, fundamental ontology, as defined by Heidegger, manifests a specifically German posture – considered by Adorno as profoundly deplorable – against Enlightenment ideology. As Adorno asserts, fundamental ontology is a philosophical movement which can be characterized as an abominably vile counter-Enlightenment. The Nietzschean analysis regarding the infamous power of seduction involving Wagner’s music, from Adorno’s point of view, is a “Heideggerian disease” because it profoundly affects the German academic world, which represents a new philosophical movement that is intensely respected and greatly venerated. The bizarreness of this Heideggerian spell, or disease, under which the German intelligentsia seemed to succumb, is often considered by Adorno:

“[…] for in Germany there are now hardly any responsible academic positions or professorial chairs in philosophy that do not feel obliged at least to show that they are somehow worthy of what has been achieved by Heidegger and Jaspers. And even those thinkers who for political and other reasons are extremely critical of both philosophers, but especially of Heidegger, still appear to be captivated – in a way I find really hard to understand since I have never experienced this spell myself – by this kind of thinking and seem unable to sever the umbilical cord entirely in this regard.” (100-101)

According to Adorno, fundamental ontology, Heidegger’s philosophical project, can be regarded as a philosophical tendency which owes its effect and possesses its forces through opposition to idealism in general. It is an anti-subjectivism; in fact, the philosophical question concerning fundamental ontology may be stated in a variety of ways. Adorno puts it thus: fundamental ontology is essentially an anti-subjectivist. Fundamental ontology stands in contrast to a philosophy which remains essentially devoted to a preliminary question, namely the question of how knowledge is possible at all. The coarse obliteration of the philosophical reflection upon the subjective mediation of knowledge and the epistemological relevance of the conceptual thought represents the chief theoretical posture of Heidegger’s ontology as conceived by Adorno.

Fundamental ontology is unequivocally the chief subject matter of Ontology and Dialectics by Theodor W. Adorno. The relevance of such a book – essentially a compilation of 23 Vorlesungen delivered in Frankfurt in 1960/61 and in Paris, at the Collège de France, in March 1961 (we refer to the last three lectures included in the book) – can be described in accordance with the consideration that the positions expressed in Ontology and Dialectics represent as an initial discussion of the Heideggerian ontology developed by Adorno. It should be observed that Ontology and Dialectics presents a philosophical anticipation of the incisively penetrating analysis of the Heideggerian ontology which, ultimately, forms the core of The Jargon of Authenticity, published in 1964. According to the “Editor’s Foreword” included in this edition, written by Rolf Tiedemann, the book Ontology and Dialectics, which expresses the philosophical antipathy to the ontological movement emanating from the Black Forest, evokes a project which Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht had already begun to pursue around 1930, not long after the publication of Being and Time. The project they sought to pursue was that of “demolishing Heidegger” [den Heidegger zu zertrümmern]. The intention of “demolishing Heidegger” pervades Adorno’s work and thought, especially after his return from exile to Germany. As Rolf Tiedemann elucidates, within the German philosophical academic circle developed after the end of the Third Reich, during the political and social process of re-establishing democracy in Germany, Adorno was widely regarded as the pre-eminent intellectual opponent to Heidegger – and Adorno accepted this incumbency. To lay emphasis on the fact that Adorno’s Complete Writings comprise almost 600 references to the name of Heidegger (exceeded in number only by those to Walter Benjamin) is not superfluous. Clearly then, “demolishing Heidegger” was an Adornian philosophical project. Nevertheless, the Adornian critique of Heidegger is not an aggressive refutation of the fundamental ontology that is without merit, nor is it intended to chiefly condemn the political positions adopted by Heidegger. The Adornian objections to Heidegger’s fundamental ontology that are most important are those which excel in revealing the dangerous political and social implications of a philosophical tendency – developed in accordance with the refusal of the cognitive sophistication of philosophy – that, in its instauration of odd cults and bizarre interests, promoted the pseudo-ideal of pre-Socratic irrationalism.

The title of the book, Ontology and Dialectics, alludes to Adorno’ intention of presenting a philosophical contrast between Heidegger’s fundamental ontology and Adorno’s own conception of dialectical thought as negative dialectics. This intention is subtly illustrated in a story involving Gustav Mahler and his literary taste.

“It is well known that Gustav Mahler was passionately interested in Dostoyevsky, who stood for something quite different in the years around 1890 than he does of Moeller van den Bruck. On one occasion, during an excursion with Schoenberg and his pupils, Mahler is said to have advised them to spend less time studying counterpoint and more time reading Dostoyevsky. And Webern is supposed to have responded with heroic timidity: ‘Pardon, Herr Direktor, but we have Strindberg’.” (1)

As Adorno explains, this story is probably apocryphal; nevertheless, this episode involving Gustav Mahler’s literary taste is mentioned by Adorno as a witty elucidation of the relationship between the new fundamental ontology of Heidegger (or, we might say, Dostoyevsky’s new literature) and the tradition of the German dialectic thought (or, we might say, Strindberg’s thought).  However, the emphasis upon the philosophical opposition between the new fundamental ontology and the traditional dialectic thought does not form the heart of Ontology and Dialectics. It is pertinent to observe that this series of lectures, published under the title Ontology and Dialectics, precedes the three lecture courses which form the book Negative Dialectics, Adorno’s masterpiece, published in 1966. The thorough theoretical presentation of such a philosophical project – the delineation of the philosophical singularity and distinctiveness of the negative dialectic thought – is indeed the chief subject matter and the central line of thought developed by Adorno in Negative Dialectics, written between 1964 and 1966. It is worth noting that Ontology and Dialectics, which precedes Negative Dialectics, is especially devoted to the philosophical condemnation of Heidegger’s fundamental ontology.

At any rate, as Adorno conceives it, the concept of Being, in Heideggerian terms, is not actually a concept at all. In fact, according to Adorno’s reading of Heidegger’s ontology, the concept of Being is not supposed to be the highest abstraction, the supra-concept reached by omitting all particular individuation, all particular determination. In approaching such a philosophical account of Being, Adorno intends to lay emphasis upon the fact that the Heideggerian ontological positions should be sharply distinguished from other kinds of ontology – such as the concept of ontology introduced by Husserl, the ontological project developed by Nicolai Hartmann, or the ontological positions advanced by the neo-scholastic tradition. The relentless obliteration of the conceptual dimension of Being defines the decided difference between Heidegger’s fundamental ontology and the traditional ontologies. As Adorno clearly explains, Being, in Heideggerian terms, is supposed to be what is utterly prior and primary, that which is highest and most constitutive. The question regarding Being – over against the highest regions, the highest and most universal concepts of all possible classes of beings – is what is decisive here, precisely because it involves the problem of the possibility of ontology as such, namely whether such a pure doctrine of being can be thought as such independently of the doctrine regarding the order of beings. From Heidegger’s point of view, those doctrines devoted to the ontological delineation of the order of beings – those doctrines which totally disregard the benedictory ontological difference between Being and beings, those ontologies of the ontic developed in accordance to systems of blind conceptual categories, fundamental principles and axioms – it is these doctrines imply an ontological questioning in the naïve sense. They do not represent, as Heidegger insists, the essential task of ontology understood in the radical sense – and this is precisely what fundamental ontology is.

The cult of the concept of absolute originality, the cult of the Firstness, is one of the philosophical oddities bound up with the persistent assertion of such an ontological questioning in the radical sense, as advanced by Heidegger. According to fundamental ontology and, especially, according to its chief claim concerning the ontological difference between Being and beings, any approach which does not involve the priority of Being with respect to beings is already rejected ab ovo and defamed as inferior, as a failure, as a betrayal of the real question. As Adorno asserts: “we are constantly presented with the same invocation, variation or repetition of this premise, namely the priority of Being with respect to beings” (22). Consequently, in repudiating the conceptual sophistication of the traditional philosophical thought (and of the philosophical ontologies), Heideggerian ontology fails to consider that the concept of Being itself is not the original question which fundamental ontology would have us believe. As Adorno attempts to explain – this is, unfortunately a very laconic explanation – the concept of Being deserves to be regarded philosophically as a concept of reflection in the sense of those concepts subjected to criticism by Kant in his “Amphiboly of the Concepts of Reflection” when they are hypostasized – in other words, when they are treated as an expression of true beings as such. On this view of things, the concept of Being is not something very ancient but something rather late and, correlatively, developed in accordance with the conceptual sophistication of critical philosophical thought. It should be observed that, from Adorno’s point of view, the concept of Being is a result, a historical result, attained only through a process, which, in turn, can be characterized as a conceptual and critical philosophical process. The concept of Being, in Adornian terms, is, in fact, understood philosophically as a concept – the highest abstraction, understood in accordance with the development of the conceptual sophistication of philosophical thought. It is not properly a Kantian perspective. This concept of Being as the highest abstraction is already present in Plato and in Aristotle, as Adorno claims, despite the brevity and the laconism of his elucidations.

It is certainly worth noting that Adorno’s reading of Heidegger excels in presenting a collection of problems, ambiguities and contradictions which profoundly involves fundamental ontology. According to Adorno, Heidegger’s fundamental ontology comprises a double refusal: in effect, fundamental ontology is a philosophical tendency developed in accordance with its emphasis upon the rejection of both conceptuality – it is pertinent to mention the delineation of the concept of Being as a non-concept – and reality – and it is convenient to consider the celebrated ontological difference between Being and beings. Fundamental ontology can be described, as Adorno suggests, by its attempt to escape both from mere conceptuality and from any reality simply or immediately accepted as such. This double approach, this double front against a philosophy of concepts and against a philosophy of reality, is precisely what characterises the efforts of fundamental ontology. However, as Adorno elucidates, Heidegger incessantly fails to attain these philosophical intentions.

The Heideggerian cult of language, or the fascination with language, has tremendous significance for Heideggerian ontology. Language as a mediation of Being, or language as the possibility of aletheia and the unveiling of Being, is not philosophically compatible with a coarse rejection of conceptual thought. As Adorno proposes, Heidegger continuously disregards the fact that the concept of Being, in terms of its origin and its legitimacy, is directly bound up with the categorial structure of language. Heidegger’s ontology perniciously explores such a quid pro quo involving Being as a concept – Being as an element of language, entity, and even Being as a non-concept – which cannot be expressed through mere meanings insofar as it is not exhausted by conceptual terms nor by subjectively instituted concepts, and is cut off from conceptual thought. Nevertheless, such a remarkable ambiguity between Being as concept and Being as a what-is-beyond-concept is not acknowledged by fundamental ontology as a deficiency at all, as Adorno explains. On the contrary, it is chalked up as a positive and counted as credit. Why? The enigma, or the touchstone, underlying Heidegger’s pernicious ambiguity is taken as a venerable philosophical position that proceeds from a peculiar account of language that is incessantly proposed by Heidegger: the idea that language as a true, pure and absolute entity, or the idea of language as the domain of the unveiling of Being, is that of an immediate medium, organon or ‘complexus’ of truth that is deprived of any conceptual elements or aspects – and, as Adorno elucidates, also deprived of subjectivity and historicity. Hence, the concept of Being – in accordance with such a conception of language – deserves to be inexorably regarded as an entity beyond mere conceptuality.

In presenting this Heideggerian ambiguity, Adorno reflects more closely upon fundamental ontology as an anti-subjectivism by apparently overcoming subjectivism and the spurious claim that philosophy has somehow escaped its imprisonment within subjectivity (and within conceptual and categorial thought) through this new ontological project. This is intimately bound up with the Heideggerian quid pro quo, acknowledged and presented by fundamental ontology as an element of apparently higher dignity, as “one of the strongest seductions of this philosophy” (46), which arises from “that wavering, negative and inarticulate character of this talk of being itself” (46). Regarding the Heideggerian refusal of reality and the abandonment of the empirical dimension – a claim which involves and justifies the celebrated ontological difference between Being and beings and, correctively, the hypostatization of the word ‘Being’ (by supressing the dialectic of Being and beings) – Adorno draws attention to a conspicuously Heideggerian philosophical posture:  the act of ontologizing the ontic; the repeated ontologising of ontic beings, namely, the human being itself. The anti-subjectivism which involves fundamental ontology is, in effect, the central axis treated by Adorno – that of the ontological conception regarding the human being as Dasein, which permits an elimination of the subjective character, now turned into a determination of Being. As Adorno explains, the ontological interest is profoundly incompatible with the subjective reflection itself. The subjective dimensions of reflection, spontaneity, consciousness and self-consciousness, and, by extension, the subjective dimensions of critical, conceptual and discursive thought, are all totally avoided and obliterated in order to sustain an ontological conception of Dasein as a ‘mode of being’ or, in a developed sense, a “shepherd of being”, where the latter serves as a primitive agrarian metaphor set forth by Heidegger in Letter on Humanism, and serves as an amusing object of Adorno’s attention.

According to Adorno, Heidegger sets out to extirpate subjectivity by transforming it into the scene or arena of ontology. In effect, this ontological kind of thinking, for which Being appears or manifests itself in Dasein, naturally evokes something related to subjectivity; but, at the same time, it loses what was so decisive for this subjective form of thought – in other words, it loses that moment of subjectivity that appears in Kantian philosophy under the name of ‘spontaneity’ and in Hegelian philosophy, under the name of ‘labour’. In fundamental ontology – and this is, as Adorno explains, the phenomenological legacy of the doctrine which Husserl had already developed, namely the idea of the pure intuiting of the thing in question – subjectivity is actually introduced as a kind of pure receptivity; subjectivity becomes that to which Being manifests itself, yet without that moment of activity, or that ‘function’, as Kant also occasionally puts it, properly being acknowledged. Consequently, a philosophical relevant determination of the Heideggerian project consists in “taking up that moment of reflection and subjectivity which is directly opposed to the ontological approach and integrate it into his original project by turning it into a mode of objectivity, turning ‘existence’ into Seinsweise, or ‘mode of being’” (82). It is the absolute precedence of Being over beings, the total precedence of Being over human existence, that concerns us here. This structure – that a particular being is itself ontological – is the defining and distinctive touchstone of the doctrine of Dasein, and it implicitly expresses Heidegger’s intention of avoiding the conflation of his own analysis of Being with the ‘philosophy of existence’ associated with Kierkegaard or Jaspers. Ultimately, as Adorno suggests, this ontologizing of the ontic, this reduction of the ontic being to Being, promotes, in an unexpected and ineluctable way, the superfluity and the dissipation of the celebrated ontological difference, which gives rise to the absolute hypostatization of Being. Indeed, Adorno’s acute reading of the Heideggerian analysis of Dasein deserves an extended treatment, for it excels in considering the anti-subjectivism manifested in fundamental ontology. Nevertheless, we venture to say that Adorno disregards the philosophical relevance of the Heideggerian notion of Befindlichkeit as a singular determination of human being, which cannot be reduced to any subjective or discursive determination developed by critical thought.

The Adornian emphasis upon the anti-subjectivist turn introduced by Heidegger’s fundamental ontology represents a crucial element of Ontology and Dialectics. According to Adorno, this “pseudo-revolutionary form of thought” (121) – which incisively repudiates the axes of modern critical form of thought, declaring itself to be a pre-critical return to naïve realism – expresses “a reactionary mentality” (121), which can be characterized by its philosophical intention of destructing the subjective mediation of thought, the critical moment of thought, in order to extirpate Enlightenment and rational thought. In Adorno’s words, Heidegger’s ontological project imposes itself as a pernicious philosophical tendency which can be described as irrationalism, counter-Enlightenment and, ultimately, return to myth, return to barbarism. In rejecting the question of the mediation of Being, and in repudiating the critical relevance of the thinking subject and the subjective determination of knowledge, Heidegger’s philosophical project, developed in accordance with the veneration of a truth fallen into oblivion (namely Being), expresses an odd return to myth and to fate that elaborates a philosophical project that denigrates philosophizing in favour of a particular relationship to language – an archaic language – that is totally devoted to what is primordial, original or authentic, and, supposedly, purified of conceptual determinations. The analysis of a collection of poems written by Heidegger – characterized by its “inferior character” (162) and “wretchedness” (162) – is an integrate part of Adorno’s emphasis upon the conspicuously archaic moment of Heidegger’s fundamental ontology: the spuriousness of Heidegger’s philosophy and poetry resides in its veneration of an archaic kind of thinking, which manifests an intention to suppress historical and social determinations inextricable to the act of philosophizing.

Regarding Adorno’s remarks on Heidegger’s poems, it is perhaps not superfluous to draw attention to an important aesthetic essay dedicated to Hölderlin’s late poetry: the essay entitled “Parataxis: On Hölderlin’s Late Poetry”, written by Adorno in 1963, which is fundamentally devoted to condemn Heidegger’s approach to art, namely to Hölderlin’s poetry; interestingly, according to Adorno, the Heideggerian commentaries on Hölderlin’s poetry reveal the total absence of aesthetic sensitivity towards the poetic object – the lack of an aesthetic organ (Mangel an ästhetischen Organ), as set forth by Adorno in his essay.

It is convenient to take into account the centrality of the concept of Schicksal in Heidegger’s ontology, for it clearly illustrates the intention of supressing the critical dimension of the act of philosophizing in order to establish a reversion to fate and a revocation of rationality and, ultimately, of freedom. In Adorno’s words,

“the concept of fate or destiny here ascribed to ‘being’ is that of a blindly entangled will – for what is ascribed to ‘being’ in this context bears all the marks of irrationality. In other words, ‘being’ is characterized as something utterly obscure that may somehow be intimated and venerated, but about nothing substantive can ever be said. In the first place, you should clearly observe how this very passage moves directly to the concept of Schicksal or fate, and how this concept of fate, even if it is indeed indexed historically, is furnished with that blind and ineluctable character which belongs to the ancient and traditional notion of fate” (117).

The Heideggerian emphasis upon the concepts of time and historicity is actually designed to deceive: the concept of Schicksal – regarded in its philosophical affinities with the concept of Hörigkeit, or ‘obedient hearkening’, a hearkening to Being which sounds like blind submission – defines and determines Heidegger’s form of thinking. It’s worth noting that Schicksal and Hörigkeit represent Heidegger’s condemnation of the critical thought – the critical labour of the conceptual, as Adorno puts it, according to Hegelian positions – regarded by fundamental ontology as a process of philosophical degeneration. Heidegger annuls critical labour, as if philosophy could assume a historical standpoint beyond history; although, philosophy is enjoined to obey history, which is then, like existence, itself ontologized.

The philosophical purpose of Ontology and Dialectics, as announced by Adorno in the first lectures, consists in throwing light upon the philosophical discrepancies, contrasts and oppositions between fundamental ontology and negative dialectics. We conclude that Adorno leaves untouched a philosophical intention of forming the heart of negative dialectics in Ontology and Dialectics, for Adorno passes in silence the chief lines indicative of such a philosophical intention. In the context of Lecture 23, the last lecture of Ontology and Dialectics, there is a philosophical concept under the name “negative dialectics” that is described theoretically by fundamental determinations, but, interestingly, in order to offer a precise theoretical description of negative dialectics, Adorno proposes to consider the most relevant philosophical condemnations advanced against Heidegger’s fundamental ontology, especially the disapproval concerning Heidegger’s project as a philosophical tendency intended to perpetuate mythical thought. Dialectical thought, in its turn, is described as a philosophical attempt, “by means of cunning, the oldest medium of enlightenment” (240) to dissolve the mythical context of nature, to transcend the immediate context of nature without imposing its own domination, the domination of reason – in other words, dialectical thought “attempts to transcend nature without incurring that sacrifice and rage which would merely perpetuate the same context of nature” (240). As Adorno argues, dialectical thought excels in being the acne of enlightenment – the culminating point of conceptual thought – presented in its critical potential to extirpate the mythical context of nature. In accordance with these observations, it is worth noting that Adorno considers the mythical context of nature under the conception of identity – or, identity principle. Indeed, the idea of such a negative dialectics, as delineated and described by Adorno, implies a critique of identity – a critique of mythical forms of thought. It is the philosophical purpose of negative dialectics to abolish the circle of identity and the correlative identity principle. According to negative dialectics, the philosophical procedure of conceptualization is devoted to the determination of the non-identical; the negative element of thought which cannot be entirely tolerated under the identity principle. Such a principle – the identity principle – does not recognize the prominent prerogative of subjectivity or subjective mediation, which consists in determining the non-identical, the negative element of thought, without extirpating it under the logic of conceptual hypostatization.

In conclusion, it is important to lay emphasis on the logic of conceptual hypostatization. As Adorno argues – and this forms the core of the book Negative Dialectics (1966) – negative dialectics attempt to contradict any positive and unconditionally total dialectic elaborated under the identity principle. To distinguish negative dialectics, Adorno’s own philosophical project, from the Hegelian model of dialectics is, indeed, the theoretical axis of Negative Dialectics: the Hegelian elaboration of the supreme concept of Geist as a philosophical bizarreness which, as Adorno states, implies the pernicious sovereignty of the identity principle and its aspiration for (false) totality. Interestingly, in Negative Dialectics, the Hegelian dialectics – regarded as a model of dialectical thought, and not as the dialectical thought par excellence – there is treated by Adorno a degenerative dialectic, which succumbs to the hegemony of the identity principle and, consequently, to the annihilation of the preponderance of the negative elements of thought. According to Adorno, the hypostatization of the concept of Geist as a superlative entity, developed as an absolutization of the concept of subjectivity, clearly illustrates the process of decline of the Hegelian dialectics – a process of decline due to the assumption of the identity principle. It is not, perhaps, philosophically irrelevant to consider a subtle affinity between Hegel’s Geist and Heidegger’s Sein (advanced by Adorno as against the philosophical intention of elaborating supreme concepts, supreme conceptual entities which subsume the ontic or individual elements or realities under an aspiration for total identity), as an incisive disapproval of both Hegel’s dialectics and Heidegger’s fundamental ontology. The chief purpose of Adorno’s negative dialectics consists in presenting the philosophical prerogative of subjectivity: subjective mediation as an act of spontaneity devoted to determine the non-identity and the negative elements of thought in order to destroy – through the critical labour of the concept – the identity principle (a mythical principle) which governs conceptualization itself.

Is it possible to abolish the identity principle through the labour of concept? Is it possible to extirpate the supreme conceptual entities, such as absolute subjectivity, or Geist, through the act of subjective spontaneity? To present and consolidate the fundamental lines of thought of negative dialectics with conviction represents a philosophical tour de force developed by Adorno. But, as with all tours de force, we are confronted with confusion, perplexity and uncertainty: How philosophically convincing is negative dialectics, Adorno’s philosophical project? The response should be found not in Ontology and Dialectics, but in Negative Dialectics.

John Sallis (Ed.): Plato’s Statesman: Dialectic, Myth, and Politics






Plato's Statesman: Dialectic, Myth, and Politics Book Cover




Plato's Statesman: Dialectic, Myth, and Politics




SUNY series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy





John Sallis (Ed.)





SUNY Press




2017




Hardcover $90.00




334

Reviewed by: Nicola Grayson (The University of Manchester)

John Sallis’ edited text Plato’s Statesman; Dialectic, Myth and Politics is a collection of essays on Plato’s Statesman (Politicus). The dialogue is part of a trilogy that includes Theatetus, Sophist and Statesman, which, together seek to define three key figures; the sophist, the statesman, and the philosopher. Theatetus is concerned with understanding the nature of knowledge, the Sophist seeks to identify traits of the sophist (as distinct from the philosopher) and the Statesman seeks to define the statesman. Though the dialogues do not explicitly address the nature of the philosopher, by eliminating the characteristics ascribed to the other figures we may grasp some of the traits and features a philosopher should possess. One must note the proximity of the conversation in the Statesman to the trial and execution of Socrates as the threat of his impending absence permeates the text and is reinforced by his withdrawal from the discussion. In Theatetus the train of events leading to Socrates death has already been set in motion so that when the conversation of the Statesman takes place it has already been decided that he will go to trial. The dialogue alludes to the coming events, and towards the end the Stranger launches into an assault on the democratic regime (see 299c).

The essays in this collection approach the Statesman as a ‘strange mixture’ of mathematics, politics, ontology, dialectic and myth (1). The Introduction is written by John Sallis who maintains that in order to enable the manifest force of this dialogue to come to light, one must enter into it as another voice in the conversation. John Sallis is Frederick J. Adelman Professor of Philosophy at Boston College. He is well known for his work on phenomenology and is the founding editor of the journal Research in Phenomenology. He is the author of more than 20 books which address major philosophical themes such as the legacy of Platonic thought, art, the imagination, chorology and the elemental in nature. His works include Crossings: Nietzsche and the Space of Tragedy (1991), Chorology: On Beginning in Plato’s “Timaeus” (1999), Platonic Legacies (2004), The Verge of Philosophy (2007) and more recently The Return of Nature (2016) and The Figure of Nature (2016).  The essays in this collection address the Statesman as a work in which several disparate themes are addressed but never properly conjoined. Notable themes include: absence and withdrawal, the role of law, myth, comedy, politics, and the method proper to practicing philosophy.

The theme of absence and withdrawal is always present in Plato’s dialogues as the author himself remains withdrawn; speaking through characters and figures such as Socrates. In the Statesman this theme is developed by removing Socrates as a dramatic figure and concentrating on the presence of the Stranger (who remains unnamed). Despite Socrates absence from the conversation, there is a strange doubling of him in respect to Theatetus (who looks like him) and Young Socrates (who shares his name). Socrates is therefore present despite his absence and the Stranger remains somewhat absent despite his recurring presence. Other themes such as the role of law (in its written and spoken forms) and the complex function of paradigm are significant in relation to the explicit task of the dialogue – to define the nature of a good, worthy statesman—and are given gravitas in light of Socrates’ impending trial.

Likewise, the question concerning the method through which philosophy should be conducted gains significance, in light of the impending threat posed by Socrates’ trial—a theme observed by many essays in the collection. The divisive bifurcation used by the Stranger contrasts with Socrates’ dialectical style and other questions are treated concerning: Where to begin? How to proceed? What is the role of analogy and examples? What is the effect of Plato’s use of figures, characters and dialogue? The Stranger’s method fails to yield insight into the nature of the statesman and so he turns to myth; setting out the myth of two ages. Treatment of this myth is also taken up by a number of essays in the collection which seek to extract meaning and demonstrate its philosophical significance. Various themes combine to influence how one understands the role, function and qualities of a worthy statesman, and by comparison the sophist and the philosopher.

In the Introduction Sallis notes that one should be wary of projecting concepts from Aristotle into the Statesman; he claims that the essays in this collection aim to make manifest the key themes outlined earlier (amongst others) by taking contextual and discursive forms of the dialogue into account. All of the essays seek to enter into the Statesman with attentiveness, reticence, and discretion, and all share in the desire for dramatic content and unique features to be addressed. However, each essay embarks upon a different path in respect to how to interpret Plato’s objectives, trace the primary aims of the text, uncover the rationale behind certain inclusions (and omissions), and, of course, understand Plato’s treatment of the philosopher. The essays attribute different degrees of significance to the key themes highlighted and present varied interpretations in relation to Plato’s methodological decisions.

Sallis describes how the collection of essays is intended to ‘enter into the Statesman in a way that opens from the dialogue itself’ (2). Essays such as ‘From Spontaneity to Automaticity…’ by Michael Naas address key sections of the text, whereas others e.g. ‘Where have all the Shepherd’s gone…’ by S. Montgomery Ewen focus on a particular theme. Essays such as ‘Reconsidering the Relations between the Statesman, the Philosopher and the Sophist’ by Noburu Notomi work to contextualise the Statesman by addressing it alongside the other dialogues to trace how the figures being addressed develop and are present throughout the trilogy. Those such as ‘The Art of the Example…’ by James Risser focus on the Statesman itself in order to analyse the theme addressed as it arises from and is present within this dialogue specifically.

Most texts on the Statesman analyze the work holistically or focus on a specific theme in the wider works of Plato. However, this collection sets itself apart by being beneficial through the different insights it provides regarding a variety of themes. This enables the reader to gain multiple perspectives into the disparate themes contained within the Statesman as whole. It demonstrates the complex multidirectional possibilities for interpreting the features of the topics treated and draws attention to curious aspects of Plato’s method. While the themes addressed are sufficiently treated in other works for the reader to grasp their importance, few texts on the Statesman offer insights as varied and dynamic as this one. The book contains an extensive bibliography which details different translations of the Statesman (in Greek and in English) and it purports relevant primary and secondary texts. The bibliography by itself is useful to Plato scholars interested in contextualising the Statesman or in learning more about how the key themes outlined (and others) are addressed in the Statesman itself and in Plato’s wider works.

The structure of the text involves a loose grouping of the essays according to theme, it is therefore difficult to assess a clearly defined structure in relation to how they are organised. As a result, the reader must leap between disparate themes and interpretations as the collection does not progress sequentially and it is not easy to synthesize  events as they unfold within the dialogue or to develop a structured treatment of each theme. As the dialogue within the Statesman also leaps between disparate themes it is not beneficial to set the essays within a rigid structure as such an arrangement could impose reductive and counterproductive limits on a reader’s understanding. So, although the essays are roughly grouped according to the themes they cover, such rough groupings are necessary as they mirror the content and style of the dialogue in the treatment of these themes. There is  a useful index of relevant terms in both Greek and English as well as biographical details of all contributors so the reader may reference the language structure and trace further works.

In his brief essay ‘Beginnings’ Sallis contemplates a question concerning the nature of a suitable beginning which, in regard to the Statesman is related to the dramatic order of the dialogues within the trilogy. The Sophist and the Statesman are dramatic sequels to Theatetus and all three involve the same people in the same location with a shared task of defining the sophist, the statesman and the philosopher. As the third work in the trilogy, the Statesman does not begin at the beginning and Sallis claims that a ‘palintropic turn’ is required; ‘a turn back to the beginning anterior to the beginning’ and this is a turn to myth (13). In the dialogue the rigour of mathematics gives way to myth as, when Theodorus responds to Socrates’ remark that he owes him much (in respect to the conversation he (Theodorus) arranged between Theatetus and the Stranger to delimit the sophist) Theodorus replies ‘But soon you will owe me triple this…’ inferring that, once insight into the statesman and the philosopher are gained the debt will increase threefold (257a). Socrates argues that the three figures are not reducible to equal, mathematical units, and, as one may appear in the guise of another they are not strictly distinct but are related in community. Socrates begins by marking out the limits of mathematics and for Sallis ‘The Statesman begins with a return to a beginning anterior to its own beginning’ (14).

In ‘Spontaneity to Automaticity: Polar (Opposite) Reversal at Statesman 269c-274d’ Michael Naas focuses on the myth of two ages and the role played by a double sense of αύτόματος as meaning both actively spontaneous and passively automatic. Naas argues that everywhere else in Plato’s dialogues this term is used not to suggest a positive, spontaneous movement, ‘but the lack of any kind of intelligent, guided, or oriented movement’ (4). In relation to the myth of two ages this is significant as, though it is tempting to read the movement of the universe in a positive way ‘as the spontaneous motion of a living being endowed with a capacity for self-movement’ in reality it suggests ‘a lack or deficiency at the heart of the universe’ (5). He uses an interesting (and relevant) analogy to refer to the universe in the age of Zeus as one that is adrift, abandoned, unorientated ‘like a written law without the originary lawmaker’ (5).

In ‘Autochthony, Sexual Reproduction, and the Political Life in the Statesman Myth’ Sara Brill highlights the Statesman’s contribution to ontology and the ontological status of human political phenomena. She conducts a careful reading of the myth of two ages comparing the age of Cronos to the age of Zeus in order to present two forms of generation; generation from others and generation from the same (sexual reproduction). Brill argues that the myth marks human sexual reproduction as the advent of political life; a form of self-rule in imitation of the self-rule of the cosmos that requires us to acknowledge that human political life ‘is grounded in the fact that we are born from others like ourselves’ (5). ‘Where Have All the Shepherds Gone? Socratic Withdrawal in Plato’s Statesman’ sees S. Montgomery Ewen take Socratic withdrawal as key to understanding the dialogue. He draws similarities between Socrates’ withdrawal from the conversation and the withdrawal of the god in the myth of two ages to suggest that philosophy itself is presented as a Socratic withdrawal ‘that grants things the space to become what they most properly are’ (5). He claims that, if read alongside the Phaedo, the Statesman ‘is Plato’s attempt to make sense of a world without Socrates, whose death sets us adrift on our own devices, without the care and concern of the most orderly and godlike of philosophers’ (5).

Walter Brogan interrogates questions of the relationship to time that the Statesman raises as a condition of forming human community. He considers the care for this community that should be exercised by the statesman as that which should take up an appropriate relationship to time to invest in and preserve unity amongst the people. His essay considers the time of myth (before Cronos), the time of the statesman (the time of Zeus, or due measure) and the time of law (constituted by the founding sovereign to withstand the passing of time and ensure survival). Sallis notes that ‘Brogan shows how absence and withdrawal define and haunt the Platonic conception of time in the Statesman’ (6).

Nikolas Pappas focuses on the myth in the Statesman and addresses the question of how the age of Cronos is to be connected to the present age. He notes how the verb διανέμω occurs in reference to both ages but has different meanings; it links governance by the true king in that age, with dialectic by the philosopher in this age. Pappas presents philosophy as resulting from ‘the diffusion of kingship from foreign lands’ and understands the myth as reflecting back on the way that learning from ‘ancient foreigners’ allowed the Greeks to establish philosophy as a private and institutional response to kingship elsewhere (6). In ‘Noesis and Logos in the Eleatic Trilogy, with a Focus on the Visitor’s Jokes at Statesman 266a-d’ Mitchell Miller explores the interplay of intuition and discourse as two distinct methods. He begins with the ‘orienting provocations’ provided by Socrates refutation of knowledge as “true judgement and logos” in the Theatetus, and moves on to the Stranger’s ‘obscure schematization’ of the eidetic field of dialectic to arrive at the discussion at Statesman 227a-278e of the use of paradigms (6). He seeks to show that the Stranger’s odd medley of ‘geometrical and Homeric jokes’ aim to spark an intuition of statesmanship whose ‘self-nourishing’ motivates: the rejection of the initial definition (of statesman as shepherd), a turn to the analogy of the weaver, and the rejection of bifurcation in favour of the non-bifurcatory account of an art ‘that functions as the “limbs” of a well-formed city’ (6).

Gunter Figal addresses the way that topic and method intertwine in the Statesman by interrogating the relation between dialectical training and an objective determination of the nature of the statesman. Figal argues that we cannot determine the nature of political knowledge by imposing one single idea on it; the dialectical exercise therefore fails. Eric Sanday analyses the account of paradigm to show that the Stranger provides us with a method of inquiry that draws on and is guided by wisdom. For Sanday the Stranger’s use of paradigm heralds a gap between 1) the parts of a complex, meaningful whole and 2) the ingathering normativity that challenges and exceeds its articulation. We as philosophers must understand the power of paradigm if we hope to unfold ‘new horizons of intelligibility’, only then can we understand the distinction between the paradigm of the shepherd and the paradigm of the weaver to make sense of our search for the statesman.

James Risser in ‘The Art of the Example’ interprets the section in the Statesman where the need arises to give an account of the use of an example for determining the statesman. Risser claims that this part of the dialogue indicates how the discovery of the statesman ‘cannot be extricated from the experience of learning that approximates a dialectical art’ (7). For Risser, the key lies in the Greek word παράδειγμα which is used in this context to mean both model and example. Risser also submits that the stated need is to introduce a model for how comparative learning occurs and concludes that this model is operative in every example in order to generate the organic unity of the whole that is sought.

Noburu Notomi’s essay addresses the question of the relationship between the statesman, the philosopher and the sophist. Notomi assumes that the trilogy of dialogues pursues a single theme; the nature of the philosopher. This essay addresses the question: What becomes of the philosopher in the Statesman? It draws comparisons with the sophist and the statesman in relation to the distinction between genuine and imitative kinds of knowledge or art. Notomi determines the epistemological position of the philosopher in relation to the other figures, demonstrating that both the sophist and the statesman display the nature of the philosopher in their definitions. In ‘Syngrammatology in Plato’s Statesman’ Robert Metcalf focuses on 293a-299e; the connections between the critique of law and the critique of writing. He shows that what is at issue is not just any kind of writing, but syngrammatic writing which aims to eliminate ambiguity and is a structural feature of the ‘hypergraphic polis’[8]. This raises the question about whether law can be thought on the model of non-syngrammatic forms of writing e.g. soul writing which is hypothesised by Socrates in the Phaedrus.

In ‘Stranger than the Stranger: Axiothea’ Drew Highland imagines a subsequent dialogue between Thaetetus, young Socrates and Axiothea (the purported female member of the academy). The objective is to raise the question for the two youngsters, of the limits as well as the virtues of each understanding of philosophy by comparing the dialectic method of the Stranger with Socrates interrogative method. Highland argues, it is an open question whether Plato intends us to leave behind the Socratic method in favour of the Stranger’s Eleatic formalism. Robert Bartlett’s essay considers the Stranger’s presentation of law as relevant not only to political life, but extending far beyond it. The Stranger proves quite critical of law in general and of divine law in particular; he praises the statesman as one who possesses the knowledge needed to be self-ordering in a way that those who profess to receive their law from the gods are not. This essay presents the anti-theological character of the Stranger’s account of law as an important feature of his political science.

Ryan Drake considers the fate of sophistic persuasion in the Stranger’s elucidation of the best possible regime under law; the legitimacy of this practice has been thrown into question by Socrates throughout the dialogues. Drake notes that, the Stranger remarks that the statesman in a lawful regime will need orators able to engage in ‘mythopoetic persuasion’ rather than teaching as a means of preserving civic order (9). These rhetorical tactics involve a ψυχαγωγία; a ‘leading of souls’ which is distinct from ‘the philosophical ‘directing of souls’ through dialectic’ and these methods are set in opposition. Drake observes that, for the Stranger the rhetoric of sophistry is necessary to the regime of law (but recognises that it is anti-philosophical in nature).

Burt C. Hopkins essay seeks to answer the question of whether Plato’s portrayal of multiple philosophers in the trilogy seeks to show that philosophy itself is something that is multiple (bigger than one man). For Hopkins, Socrates and the Stranger share a vision (of the difference between the whole and all the parts) and this guides their method of “looking into things by dividing them according to forms” (285A). He argues that they possess a common vision of άρχή beyond being and therefore the philosophy of the two labours is one. Gary M. Gurtler explores how Plotinus uses texts from the Statesman for different purposes; some pedagogical in nature. Gurtler argues that Plotinus’ interpretations and reference to examples intended to clarify reveal ‘different assumptions about the unity of Platonic philosophy and the possibility of its retrieval in a thinker like Plotinus’(9).

In summary, the essays within this collection make a valuable contribution to the clarification of the role and practice of the philosopher through comparison with key figures, e.g. the sophist and the statesman. The collection will be of interest to those who wish to further pursue key themes in respect to philosophical methodology such as: the limitation of mathematics, the importance of the good in politics, ontology, dialectic and the power of myth in the works of Plato. It will also be of use to those interested to explore how historical and philosophical events unfolded in the lead up to the trial and execution of Socrates and how this symbolic event is reflected and responded to through the work of Plato.