Philosophy

Lenin’s critique of the politics of spontaneity in What is to be Done?

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IMAGE: Agitprop poster, 1920s:
“Without revolutionary theory,
there can be no revolutionary movement.”
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In preparing my presentation on Lenin’s What is to be Done? this week for the UChicago Platypus reading group, I found myself returning again and again to his description of the so-called “spontaneity” of the masses.  It was on this supposed spontaneity, of course, that the Economists pinned their hopes of social revolution (should there be one at all).  I noticed that in his critique of the notion of the working class’ spontaneity, Lenin employed a number of categories borrowed from classical German philosophy.  All of these categories pertain to consciousness, and constitute an epistemology of sorts.  I found, moreover, that this seemed to provide a theoretical link to Lukács’ later account of reification.  Though this began as little more than a meditation, I brought it up at the reading group and found that it was well received.  Afterward, Sunit encouraged me to elaborate on this notion and submit my thoughts online. Continue reading →

Continuities and discontinuities in the Russian perception of Europe

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IMAGE: Portrait of Aleksandr Herzen (1848)
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Since the reign of Peter the Great, there have existed a number of continuities and discontinuities in the Russian perception of Europe.  Even at any single given time, there was usually disagreement over how European society was to be interpreted, and whether the qualities it was thought to possess should or even could be emulated by Russia.  Often there was even a consensus about what characterized the West, but opinions were split when it came to the desirability of Europeanization.  As time passed, the set of terms used to discuss Europe changed slightly, and the positions of the various thinkers and schools of thought shifted as well.  Nevertheless, they nearly all agreed that there had been a fundamental difference between the development of Russian and mainstream (Western, Romano-German) European society.  And despite the changing nature of the Russian discourse on Europe, several categories remained fairly constant throughout and were continuously revisited by its participants.  So while the specific configuration of these categories was bound to be different in each age, a few common threads can be established between them.

In explaining the separate path of Western European development, a few factors were consistently identified by Russian intellectuals as accounting for this difference.  Most agreed that the religious establishment of Roman Catholicism had exerted a powerful influence on the subsequent social, political, and intellectual growth of Europe.  This was contrasted with Russia’s inheritance of Greek Christianity from Byzantium, which soon thereafter became estranged from the Western Church.  Many other Russians pointed to the residual impact of the Roman legal code on the political and juridical development of the West.  Some believed that the different geographical conditions of Russia and Western Europe had been a decisive determinant in their respective histories.  The precise relationship of these factors to one another and the particular emphasis given to each point shifted from thinker to thinker, but they were still the most common themes in the Russian discourse on European history.

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Updates

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I’ve diligently read through F.H. Jacobi’s 1785 Letters Concerning the Doctrine of Spinoza in Conversations with Lessing and Mendelssohn and K.L. Reinhold’s 1789 The Foundation of Philosophical Knowledge over the last two days. From here I’m going to proceed to G.E. Schulze’s 1790 Aenesidemus essay, which harshly challenged the claims of Kantian-Reinholdian philosophy from the perspective of Humean skepticism. After that I can finally advance into Fichte’s and Maimon’s contributions to the fate of the Critical philosophy in the 1790’s.

Nothing really new from me today. But you can expect something along these lines in the next couple days. I’m quite confident that this study I’m making will prepare me well for an inquiry into François Laruelle’s notion of “the One.” Perhaps a comment on the new Speculative Heresy blog is in the works.

In the meantime, however, I’ve received the latest revision of my paper on Spinoza and Leibniz from Boston University’s Arché magazine for undergraduate philosophy. This piece will appear in the forthcoming issue. Check out the current articles on their site, however; they have an interview with Jaako Hintikka!

From Kant’s Critiques to the “Spinoza Controversy”

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Today I finished reading Kant’s Critique of Judgment.  This was my first reading of this work in its entirety; it has been my goal (now accomplished) in the last three weeks to read all three Critiques from start to finish, chronologically, interrupted only by reading his essays “What is Enlightenment?”, “Perpetual Peace,” and “Speculative Beginning of Human History.”  While all these works are excellent, the third Critique might be my favorite.  Kant didn’t even realize how good it is.

Now I plan to begin exploring in earnest the famous “Spinoza controversy” that involved Lessing, Mendelssohn, Jacobi and others in the 1780’s and, along with the presentation of Kant’s critical philosophy, dominated the philosophical scene therein.  As a preliminary measure, I’ve been brushing up on Spinoza’s Ethics.  From there, I hope to finally familiarize myself with Jacobi’s work from this period.

Quite happily, my reacquaintance with Spinoza might complement nicely the project that I have been asked to join with regard to Laruelle’s notion of “non-philosophy.”  In revisiting Spinoza’s concept of the One, I might better be able to understand Laruelle’s non-philosophical emendation pf it.

Speculative Heresy

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Taylor Adkins from Fractal Ontology has invited me to participate in a new blog, Speculative Heresy, which will deal with issues of non-philosophy.  “Non-philosophy” refers to a position that has been expounded in the last few decades by prominent French thinkers such as Laruelle.  Authors from the blogs Naught Thought and Accursed Share will be contributing to this effort as well.  I am excited to have received this opportunity, and hope to do my part in this collaboration.

Francois Laruelle Non-Philosophy

Thoughts on François Laruelle’s Preface and Introduction to Principles of Non-Philosophy (as translated by Fractal Ontology’s Taylor Adkins)

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Taylor Adkins, from Fractal Ontology, has graciously shared with me some advanced rough drafts of his continuing translations of François Laruelle’s work from French into English. This morning I read one of the more introductory, programmatic pieces he sent — the preface and introduction to Principles of Non-Philosophy. This outlines in broad strokes Laruelle’s notion of “non-philosophy,” which, from what I gather, is one of the central themes of his work. The work exhibits an uncommon originality in its interpretations of traditional philosophical (and extra-philosophical) problems, accompanied by a casual erudition which appeals to my tastes greatly. Personally, I do foresee problems (or at least significant obstacles) which will present themselves to Laruelle’s enterprise, which may be dealt with more or less adequacy. Given the competence and ingenuity he displays in this short piece, however, I have no doubt that he will make an honest go of it. It would be ridiculous, in any case, to demand an exhaustive treatment or solution to these problems from a work which he openly admits is propaedeutic in its function (i.e., it only aims to be “the most complete introduction to non-philosophy in the absence of its realization”).

What follows are my initial thoughts in response to this piece. I will refrain from idle speculation into those sections which exceed my topical familiarity at present, and focus mostly on some of the references and implications which I take to be most plainly evident in the text. In this way I might perform some small service of gratitude to Taylor for offering his work for discussion, contributing the occasional insights my background makes available for those who are interested. It is quite possible that my own take on what Laruelle is trying to say is mistaken; aware of this fact, I welcome criticism and correction from all sides.

Departing from the continental orientation toward questions of ontology (the logic of Being) and its differential corollary of alterity which has predominated in recent years, Laruelle grounds his exposition of “non-philosophy” in its (ontology’s) traditional rival, henology (the logic of the One). This classification is misleading, however. For Laruelle’s conception of the One is highly idiosyncratic. It differs in many respects from the object of the classical Platonic, Stoical, and Spinozistic henologies — the One(s) which philosophically ground(s) the order of appearances in their modal correspondence and community with one another.

On this point we may elaborate. Specifically, Laruelle seems to take issue with the place the One occupies within philosophies and mystical tradition, as something which is accomplished or realized through the relation of its subsidiary modes. This holds whether the One is reached by speculative/dialectical ascent (as in transcendental and Hegelian logic) or through revelation or religious vision (as in mysticism). This is why categorizing Laruelle’s thought as henological is potentially confused, because any “logic” which is thought to articulate the One cannot be conceived as literal. It can appear only in scare-quotes, since the One “is immanent (to) itself rather than to a form of thought, to a ‘logic.’”

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François Laruelle

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François Laruelle —

This contemporary French philosopher has been brought to my attention by Fractal Ontology’s Taylor Adkins, who has apparently taken up the task of translating some of his works. This is a generous labor for the philosophical community at large, since practically none of his thought has been rendered into English. I must say that my interest has been piqued; Taylor informed me that Laruelle is influenced by J.G. Fichte, a philosopher whose work is largely skipped over or mentioned only briefly in the history of thought. Several translated sections of his work have appeared on the Fractal Ontology blog ( here, here, and here) , which I hope to read in some depth.

Taylor has expressed an interest in discussing Fichte’s work in its relation to Laruelle’s philosophy with me, an opportunity which I welcome enthusiastically. I think we might learn a lot from one another, since our research seems to be developing along similar lines.

Competing Determinisms: Boethius, Kant, and Schelling on the Relation between Fate and Providence

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Reading through Kant’s excellent 1795 political essay “Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch” last night, I happened across and interesting passage regarding the relation between Fate and Providence. Since this is a topic I became interested in through Schelling’s discussion of it in his 1802 Philosophy of Art, it captured my attention with exceptional force. It runs as follows:

The mechanical process of nature visibly exhibits the purposive plan of producing concord among men, even against their will and indeed by means of their very discord. This design, if we regard it as a compelling cause whose laws of operation are unknown to us, is called fate. But if we consider its purposive function within the world’s development, whereby it appears as the underlying wisdom of a higher cause, showing the way towards the objective goal of the human race and predetermining the world’s evolution, we call it providence.[1]

The italicized words are his own, so let it not be thought that I am reading any undue emphasis into his meaning. And, while its mention must be regarded as transitional, a remark made in passim, so to speak, it nonetheless reveals an interesting philosophical tradition underlying the distinction between the two forms of determinism. According to this tradition, Fate operates efficiently/ætiologically (as a causa efficiens), while Providence functions purposively/teleologically (as a causa finalis). This difference was first introduced to discursive prominence by the sixth-century philosopher Boethius, who in his masterpiece The Consolation of Philosophy writes that

[t]he generation of all things, and the whole course of mutable natures and of whatever is in any way subject to change, take their causes, order, and forms from the unchanging mind of God. This divine mind established the manifold rules by which all things are governed while it remained in the secure castle of its own simplicity. When this government is regarded as belonging to the purity of the divine mind, it is called Providence; but when it is considered with reference to the things which it moves and governs, it has from very early times been called Fate.[2]

In other words, viewing the determination of objects and persons, from the standpoint of Fate, their sequence seems wholly natural, impersonal. Conversely, its interpretation as an effect of Providence would have the succession proceed in a spiritual, personal manner.

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Reflection on Kant’s First Two Critiques

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I just finished reading Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason. Having thus reached another benchmark on my journey through the major works and essays of Immanuel Kant, I feel this is a good space to pause and reflect on the substance of Kant’s thought.

Apart from the obvious rigor and judiciousness with which Kant undertook his first two Critiques, the nobility of the man’s thought cannot be too highly esteemed. The distinctions he draws, however tedious, are central to the feasibility of his system. It works as a functioning whole, despite its unfortunate dualisms and the murky connection which ostensibly unites them (“freedom,” according to the second Critique).

So, without going too much into the specifics of Kant’s argumentation (an exhaustive discussion would prove far too long for popular presentation), a few words might be said about the general “direction of fit” in his first two major works.

The Critique of Pure Reason deals with theoretical cognition. It moves from objects given to us by sensory intuition and proceeds to the categories of our understanding and their derived principles by which we make such objects intelligible. The second Critique, by contrast, deals with practical volition. It proceeds from the moral law prescribed by our will to a formal principle (the famed Categorical Imperative) to fundamental concepts of good and evil and then finally to the world of sensibility, which we hope to effect by our rational action upon it. This can be (analytically) organized as follows:

First Critique: Noumenal source of intuition → Sensibility (Aesthetic) → Pure concepts or categories of the understanding (Logic) → Natural principles

Second Critique: Noumenal source of volition → Moral principles → Pure concepts of the understanding (good and evil) → the Sensible world

An interesting incongruity lies between the implied noumenal sources in each case. (The difficulty in any positive description of these sources is obviously compounded by the fact that Kant claims that we cannot say anything about their constitution). In the first case, it would appear that the objects in-themselves (apart from our cognition of them) are the causa noumena of objective appearances. In the second case, it would appear that the transcendental freedom of the will is the causa noumenon of the moral law. Might this be a contradiction? It is difficult to say, because Kant only allows for noumena to occupy a purely negative place in his exposition.

FWJ Schelling, color photograph

Man as an irony within nature

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Schelling and the
presence of evil

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IMAGE: Color photograph of FWJ Schelling
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Western philosophy after Augustine traditionally accorded to evil a merely negative ontological status.† That is to say, evil was considered to be the result of a privatio boni, or privation of goodness. Evil’s essential feature thus appeared in this model as absence. One might well have asked: “What specifically is absent from evil?” — to which it would be answered that evil indicates a lack of the universal goodness contained in God’s original creation. Evil was thought to stem from the imperfections inherent in created substance and the negativity this entailed (“the so-called malum metaphysicum,” as Schelling chided),[1] a postlapsarian fragmentation resulting from the first act of moral evil, or sin.

This explanation was meant as a monistic solution to the theodical problem of the origin of evil. It aimed to preserve God’s predicate omnibenevolence without resorting to a Manichaean dualism.[2] This conception of evil further allowed for the development of modern theodicy, a genre perhaps best represented by Leibniz’s eighteenth century masterpiece.[3] For now the appearance of evil could be seen as only setting the stage, so to speak, for the realization/revelation of the greater glory of God. The drama of this struggle with evil was severely curtailed, however, for the divine victory (the apocatastasis) was already guaranteed from the beginning — or from eternity, rather. The faithful could rest at ease, assured that Providence would prevail. Continue reading →