RELIGIOUS EXISTENTIALISM
Like Heidegger, other writers
were also struck by the phenomenological method that placed human existence at
the center of our investigation of reality. Several philosophical theologians
saw interesting parallels between the existential descriptions of human nature
and religious conceptions of our relation to divine reality. For example,
several existentialist theologians saw a parallel between the fall of Adam in
the Garden of Eden and Heidegger’s conception of inauthentic existence. Just as
divine salvation is the solution to original sin, so, too, is authentic life
the solution to inauthenticity. It is not just that these notions parallel each
other. Instead, according to some theologians, the biblical themes of sin and
salvation are simply mythological ways of expressing the distinction between
inauthentic and authentic life. Foremost among the religious existentialists
were Karl Barth (1886–1968), Emil Brunner (1889–1966), Martin Buber
(1878–1965), Rudolf Bultmann (1884–1976), Gabriel Marcel (1889–1973), Karl
Jaspers (1883–1969), and Paul Tillich (1886–1965). We will look at the
contributions of Jaspers and Marcel.
Jaspers’s Existence Philosophy
Karl
Jaspers (1883–1969) was a professor in Heidelberg and, after World War II, in
Basel. He wrote in several areas, including psychology, theology, and political
thought. He was influenced by Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Husserl, and his
philosophical works develop phenomenological and existentialist themes. His
main publication in existentialist thought is the three-volume Philosophie
(1932).The
human condition, he argues in this work, has deteriorated with the development
of technology, the emergence of mass movements, and the loosening of the bonds
of religion. Each of the sciences has carved out a special area for its subject
matter, and each science has developed its own method. Just as each science
functions within strict subject-matter limits, so, too, the aggregate of all
the sciences is characterized by a limitation of coverage. Thus, each of the
sciences is ill-equipped for dealing with the broader issue of total reality.
We could not explain total reality any better if we attempted to bring together
all of the sciences with their various perspectives. For the central approach
to science is to access objective data, and total reality is not limited to
objective data.
Jaspers’s quest is for the
reality that underlies human life—a reality that he simply calls Existence
(Existenz). We discover this component of our existence through philosophy, not
through science. There are indeed various human sciences, such as psychology,
sociology, and anthropology, but these deal with human nature on an incomplete
and superficial level, viewing us only as objects. He writes, “Sociology,
psychology and anthropology teach that man is to be regarded as an object
concerning which something can be learnt that will make it possible to modify
this object by deliberate organization.” Jaspers does recognize the value and
usefulness of each of these sciences in the context of their respective narrow
goals. His argument, though, is that the task of philosophy is not the same as
that of science. Thus, when studying Existence, philosophers must not mimic the
sciences by treating Existence as an object of thought; this would simply turn
Existence into one among many beings. Thus, although Jaspers does not reject
the technical knowledge of science, he insists that the “practice of life”
requires that we bring to this knowledge some additional reality. All the
principles and laws of science, he insists, are of no avail “unless individual
human beings fulfill them with an effective and valuable reality.” The piling
up of knowledge cannot by itself assure any particular outcome for us. He
writes, “Decisive is a man’s inward attitude, the way in which he contemplates
his world and grows aware of it, the essential value of his satisfactions—these
things are the origin of what he does.” Philosophy, therefore, must be
existence philosophy.
The main task of existence
philosophy, then, is to deal with Existence, and to do this, philosophers must
consider their own immediate inner and personal experiences. Under these
assumptions philosophical thinking cannot set out “to raise philosophy to a
science,” as Hegel had. Instead, philosophy must reaffirm that “truth is
subjectivity” and that philosophizing means communicating not about objects or
objective knowledge but about the content of personal awareness produced by the
individual’s inner constitution. Existential thinking, Jaspers says, is “the
philosophic practice of life.”
Jaspers does not offer any
systematic definition of existence philosophy. Nevertheless, he gives some of
its characteristics. Primarily, existence philosophy is the manner of thought
through which we seek to become ourselves. It is a way of thought that does not
restrict itself to knowing objects but rather “elucidates and makes actual the
being of the thinker.” It does not discover solutions in analytic reflection
but rather “becomes real” in the dialogue that proceeds from one person to
another in genuine communication. Existence philosophy does not assume that
human existence is a settled piece of knowledge, since that would make it not
philosophy but, once again, anthropology, psychology, or sociology. There is
the danger that existence philosophy may lapse into pure subjectivity, into a
restrictive preoccupation with one’s own ego, into a justification for
shamelessness. But Jaspers considers these possibilities as aberrations. Where
it remains genuine, existence philosophy is uniquely effective in promoting all
that makes us genuinely human. Each person is “completely irreplaceable. We are
not merely cases of universal Being.” The concept of Being, for existence
philosophy, arises only in the consciousness of each concrete human being.
If existence philosophy can be
said to have a “function,” it is to make our minds receptive to what Jaspers
calls the Transcendent. The human situation involves three stages. First, I
gain knowledge of objects. Second, I recognize in myself the foundations of
existence. Third, I become conscious of striving toward my genuine self. At
this last stage I discover my finitude. There are certain “limiting situations”
that I face, such as the possibility of my own death. However, when I become
aware of my own finitude, I simultaneously become aware of the opposite,
namely, Being as the Transcendent. This awareness of the Transcendent, which
traditional theology calls God, is a purely personal experience incapable of
specific delineation or proof. It is simply an awareness that everything,
including myself and all objects, is grounded in Being. Central to my awareness
of the Transcendent is my concurrent awareness of my own freedom. In my
striving to fulfill my genuine self, I am free to affirm or deny my
relationship to the Transcendent. Authentic existence, however, requires that I
affirm it. I stand in the presence of a choice—an either-or—without the help of
any scientific proof or even knowledge, only an awareness. In the end I must
express a philosophical faith, which signifies a union with the depths of life.
Marcel’s Existentialism
Like Jaspers, Gabriel Marcel
(1889–1973) centered his existentialist philosophy on the problem of Being,
particularly the human question “What am I?” The central notion of Marcel’s
thought is his distinction between a problem and a mystery. He argues that it
is not possible to answer the question “What am I?” by reducing it to a
problem, analyzing its parts, and then producing a solution. A problem implies
that we lack some information or knowledge and that all we need to do is look
for it, engage in “research,” and thereby overcome our temporary ignorance. A
problem usually revolves around an object or a relationship between objects.
Information regarding objects and their relationships can be gathered and
calculated. But the question “What am I?” cannot be reduced to a problem,
because the I is not an object or an it. Although I am some sort of object,
since I do have a body, my being is a combination of subject and object.
Because the subjective part of myself can never be eliminated, I cannot be
reduced to a mere object, and therefore, the question about my existence is not
merely a problem: It is a mystery. Mysteries, then, are certain kinds of
experiences that are permanently incapable of being translated into objects
“out there.” These experiences always include the subject and are, therefore,
matters of mystery. Marcel believed that the element of mystery is virtually
irreducible precisely because human existence is a combination of “being and
having.” When we have things and ideas, we can express these in objective
terms—for example, “I have a new car.” However, being is always a subjective
matter.
In the end human existence
derives its deepest meaning from the subjective affirmation of Being through
fidelity. Marcel writes that “the essence of man is to be in a situation.” He
means by this that a person’s relation to Being is different from a stone’s.
For one thing, we are the only beings “who can make promises,” a phrase of
Nietzsche’s that Marcel wanted to underscore. To be able to make a promise
places us in a unique relationship with another person, a kind of relationship
that could not possibly exist between two objects. This moral aspect of
existence led Marcel to believe that the ultimate character of a person’s
relationships involves the element of fidelity. Fidelity offers a clue to the
nature of our existence, since it is through fidelity that we continue to shape
our lives. We discover fidelity through friendship and love, which gives us the
power to overcome the “objectivity” of other people and to produce a new level
of intimacy. We commit ourselves to them, such as we do with our spouses.
Making commitments, though, creates a new problem. The future is always
uncertain, and we do not know for sure what other people might do. Our spouses,
for example, might just pack up and leave some day. Should we then just naively
go into these relationships? The way out of this problem is to put a higher and
more absolute faith in a divine and mysterious order. This has a kind of
trickle-down effect and supports our more routine faith commitments between
people. Although Marcel was in no sense a traditional theologian, she
nevertheless found in the Christian faith the basic spirit of his philosophy,
and he converted to Roman Catholicism at the age of 39.
SARTRE
Sartre’s Life
Born in 1905, Jean-Paul Sartre
was the son of Jean-Batiste, a naval officer, and Anne-Marie Schweitzer, a
first cousin of the famous theologian and jungle doctor Albert Schweitzer.
Sartre was educated at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, exhibiting at an
early age his precocious gift for literary expression. While at the École
Normale, he was attracted to philosophy by Henri Bergson, whose Time and Free
Will (1889) left him “bowled over,” feeling that “philosophy is absolutely
terrific, you can learn the truth through it.” He spent the years 1934 and 1935
at the Institut Français in Berlin, where he studied Husserl’s phenomenology.
Sartre wrote his Transcendental Ego (1936) in Germany while at the institute,
and, as he says, “I wrote it actually under the direct influence of Husserl.”
It was in Berlin also that he worked on his novel Nausea, which he considered
his best work even at the end of his career. In that novel Sartre deals with
the pathological feeling we have upon experiencing through intuition the
accidental and absurd nature of existence, the feeling that human existence is
“contingent” and without explicit purpose. Because he could not find words
adequate to describe this philosophical insight to the reader, “I had to garb
it in a more romantic form, turn it into an adventure.”
During World War II, Sartre was
active in the French Resistance movement and became a German prisoner of war.
While in the prisoner-of-war camp, he read Heidegger and “three times a week I
explained to my priest friends Heidegger’s philosophy.” The notes he took on
Heidegger at this time influenced Sartre very strongly and were, he says, “full
of observations which later found their way into Being and Nothingness.” For a
brief period he taught at the lycée at Havre, the lycée Henry IV, and the lycée
Cordorcet, afterwards resigning to devote himself exclusively to his writings,
which ultimately numbered over thirty volumes. As a sequel to Being and
Nothingness (1943), Sartre wrote another major work titled Critique of
Dialectical Reason (1960). His last book was a three-volume work on Flaubert
(The Idiot of the Family, 1971–1972). Although Sartre was influenced by Marxism
and continued to be politically active, he was never a member of the Communist
Party. While some commentators sought to moralize about Marxism, they were not
very successful, Sartre says, “because it was pretty hard to find much in
Marxism to moralize about.” His own criticism of Marxism was that it provided
no explicit role for morality and freedom. Nor should we consider, Sartre says,
“that morality is a simple superstructure, but rather that it exists at the
very level of what is called infrastructure.” Because of his activism, he
resisted personal acclaim, and when he was awarded the Nobel Prize in
literature in 1964, he refused to accept it on the grounds that he did not want
to be “transformed into an institution.”
While a student at the elite
École Normale Supérieure, he met a fellow student, Simone de Beauvoir, with
whom he enjoyed a lifelong companionship. This was no ordinary relationship.
Both were brilliant students. Although she was of immense assistance to Sartre
in his prolific literary work, Beauvoir herself achieved great fame as a
writer. Sartre never published anything without having Beauvoir read it
critically and approve it. While Sartre was honored by the Nobel Prize
Committee, Beauvoir similarly moved to first place among women of letters. At
the time of Sartre’s death, she was considered France’s most celebrated living
writer. Her novel The Mandarins won the Prix Goncourt. Her book The Second Sex,
in which she wrote the oftenquoted words “one is not born a woman but becomes one,”
won her recognition as a feminist. Her literary works gave her money, fame, and
independence. Although Sartre and Beauvoir never married during their fifty-one
years together, they had a strong relationship of loyalty and love. There were,
however, complications along the way. In one of her memoirs, Beauvoir says, “I
was vexed with Sartre for having created the situation with Olga.” This event
became the theme of Beauvoir’s first novel, She Came to Stay, about the
fictional character’s relation with another woman. This made Beauvoir say about
her own situation, “From now on we will be a trio instead of a couple.” Sartre
said earlier that Beauvoir was his “privileged,” but not his only, female
companion. Sartre once said philosophically that “one can always be free”;
Beauvoir asked, “What is the freedom of the women in a harem?” They were a rare
couple—she was tall and strikingly beautiful while Sartre was short and homely.
Together their fame reached around the world.
Sartre lived simply and with few
possessions, finding fulfillment in political involvement and travel, and
needing only a small apartment on the Left Bank in Paris. In declining health
and virtually blind, he died on April 15, 1980, at the age of 74.
Existence Precedes Essence
Sartre’s name became identified
with existentialism primarily because of the lucid, accessible manner in which
he wrote. What appeared first in the heavy language of Husserl and Heidegger
now came forth from Sartre’s pen in the open, captivating style of novels and short
stories. His principal contribution to existentialism is undoubtedly his
lengthy Being and Nothingness. However, for some time his views were best known
from his brief lecture Existentialism Is a Humanism, published in 1946. Sartre
later rejected this piece and defined existentialism in somewhat different
terms. Nevertheless, in this lecture he presents his classic formulation of the
basic principle of existentialism: Existence precedes essence.
What does it mean to say that
existence precedes essence, and how does this formula bear on our understanding
of human nature? Sartre argues that we cannot explain human nature in the same
way that we describe a manufactured article. When we consider, for example, a
knife, we know that it has been made by someone who had in his mind a
conception of it, including what it would be used for and how it would be made.
Thus, even before the knife is made, the knife maker already conceives it as
having a definite purpose and as being the product of a definite process. If by
the essence of the knife we mean the procedure by which it was made and the
purposes for which it was produced, we can say that the knife’s essence
precedes its existence. To look on a knife is to understand exactly what its
useful purpose is. When we think about human nature, we tend to describe
ourselves also as the product of a maker, of a creator, of God. We think of God
most of the time, Sartre says, as a heavenly artisan, implying that when God
creates, he knows precisely what he is creating. This would mean that in the
mind of God the conception of human nature is comparable to the conception of
the knife in the mind of the artisan. Each individual, on this view, is the
fulfillment of a definite conception, which resides in God’s understanding.
Some philosophers of the
eighteenth century, including Diderot, Voltaire, and Kant, either were atheists
or suppressed the idea of God. Nevertheless, they retained the notion that
people possess a “human nature”—a nature that is found in every person. Each person,
they said, is a particular example of the universal conception of Humanity.
Whether someone is a primitive native, in the state of nature, or in a highly
civilized society, we all have the same fundamental qualities and are,
therefore, all contained in the same definition or conception of Humanity. In
short, we all possess the same essence, and our essence precedes our individual
concrete or historical existence.
Sartre turned all this around by taking
atheism seriously. He believed that if there is no God, then there is no given
human nature precisely because there is no God to have a conception of it.
Human nature cannot be defined in advance because it is not completely thought
out in advance. People as such merely exist, and only later do we become our
essential selves. To say that existence precedes essence means, Sartre says,
that people exist, confront themselves, emerge in the world, and define
themselves afterward. First, we simply are, and then we are simply that which
we make of ourselves.
Perhaps our initial reaction to
this formulation of Sartre’s first principle of existentialism is that it is
highly subjective—that we can presumably set out to make of ourselves anything
we wish. However, his main point here is that a person has greater dignity than
a stone or a table. What gives me dignity is possession of a subjective life,
meaning I am something that moves myself toward a future and am conscious that
I am doing so. The most important consequence of placing existence before
essence in human nature is not only that we create ourselves but that
responsibility for existence rests squarely on each individual. A stone cannot
be responsible. And if human nature was already given and fixed, we could not
be responsible for what we are.
Freedom and Responsibility
What began in Sartre’s analysis
as an amoral subjectivism now turns out to be an ethics of strict
accountability based on individual responsibility. If, that is, we are what we
make of ourselves, we have no one to blame for what we are except ourselves. Moreover,
when I choose in the process of making myself, I choose not only for myself but
for all people. I am, therefore, responsible not only for my own individuality
but, Sartre says, for all people. This last point seems to contradict the line
of reasoning that Sartre has so far been developing. For, before I can choose a
course of action, I must ask what would happen if everyone else acted so; this
assumes a general human essence that makes my type of action relevant to all
people. Sartre does in fact say that, even though we create our own values and
thereby create ourselves, we nevertheless create at the same time an image of
our human nature as we believe it ought to be. When we choose this or that way
of acting, we affirm the value of what we have chosen, and nothing can be
better for any one of us unless it is better for all. This all sounds very much
like Kant’s categorical imperative. But Sartre does not wish to invoke any
universal law to guide moral choice. Instead, he is calling attention to one of
the clearest experiences of human beings. That is, all people must choose and
make decisions, and although we have no authoritative guide, we must still
choose and at the same time ask whether we would be willing for others to
choose the same action. We cannot escape the disturbing thought that we would
not want others to act as we do. To say that others will not so act is a case
of self-deception. The act of choice, then, is one that all of us must
accomplish with a deep sense of anguish, for in this act we are responsible not
only for ourselves but also for each other. If I evade my responsibility
through self-deception, I will not, Sartre argues, be at ease in my conscience.
Although Sartre’s moral language
sounds at times very much like traditional moral discourse, his intent is to
spell out the rigorous implications of atheism. He accepts Nietzsche’s
announcement that “God is dead” and takes seriously Dostoyevsky’s notion that
“if God did not exist, everything would be permitted.” In a Godless world our
psychological condition is one of abandonment, a word Sartre takes from
Heidegger. Abandonment means for Sartre that with the dismissal of God there
also disappears every possibility of finding values in some sort of
intelligible heaven. Again, there cannot now be any “good” prior to our choice
since there is no infinite or perfect consciousness to think it. Our sense of
abandonment is a curious consequence of the fact that everything is indeed
permitted, and as a result we are forlorn, for we cannot find anything on which
we can rely, either within or outside ourselves. We are without any excuses.
Our existence precedes our essence. Apart from our existence there is
nothingness. There is only the present. In his Nausea Sartre writes that the
true nature of the present is revealed as what exists, that what is not present
does not exist. Things are entirely what they appear to be, and apart from them
there is nothing.
To say there is nothing besides
the existing individual means for Sartre that there is no God, no objective
system of values, no built-in essence, and, most importantly, no determinism.
An individual, Sartre says, is free; a person is freedom. In a classic phrase
he says that people are condemned to be free. We are condemned because we find
ourselves thrown into the world, yet free because as soon as we are conscious
of ourselves, we are responsible for everything we do.
Sartre rejects the notion that we
are swept up by a torrent of passion and that such passion could be regarded as
an excuse for our actions. He also rejects Freud’s view that human behavior is
mechanically determined by unconscious and irrational desires; this provides us
with an excuse to avoid responsibility. For Sartre we are responsible even for
our passions, because even our feelings are formed by our deeds. Kierkegaard
said that freedom is dizzying, and Sartre similarly says that freedom is
appalling. This is precisely because there is nothing forcing us to behave in
any given way, nor is there a precise pattern luring us into the future. Each
of us is the only thing that exists. We are all free, Sartre says, so we must
choose, that is, invent, because no rule of general morality can show us what
we ought to do. There are no guidelines guaranteed to us in this world.
Nothingness and Bad Faith
There
is an element of despair in human existence, which comes, Sartre says, from the
realization that we are limited to what is within the scope of our own wills.
We cannot expect more from our existence than the finite probabilities it
possesses. Here Sartre believes that he is touching on the genuine theme of
personal existence by emphasizing our finitude and our relation to nothingness. “Nothingness,” he
says, “lies coiled in the heart of being, like a worm.” Heidegger located the
cause of human anxiety in our awareness of our finitude when, for example, we
confront death—not death in general but our own death. It is not only people
who face nothingness, Heidegger says; all Being has this relation to
nothingness. Human finitude is, therefore, not simply a matter of temporary
ignorance or some shortcoming or even error. Finitude is the very structure of
the human mind, and words such as guilt, loneliness, and despair describe the
consequences of human finitude. The ultimate principle of Being, Heidegger
says, is will. Sartre concurs by saying that only in action is there any
reality. We are only a sum of our actions and purposes; besides our actual
daily lives we are nothing. If I am a coward, I make myself a coward. It is not
the result of my cowardly heart or lungs or cerebrum. I am a coward because I
made myself into a coward by my actions.
Although there is no prior
essence in all people, no human nature, there is nevertheless, Sartre says, a
universal human condition. By discovering myself in the act of conscious
thought, I discover the condition of all people. We are in a world of
intersubjectivity. This is the kind of world in which I must live, choose, and
decide. For this reason no purpose that I choose is ever wholly foreign to
another person. This does not mean that every purpose defines me forever but
only that we all may be striving against the same limitations in the same way.
For this reason Sartre would not agree that it does not matter what we do or
how we choose. I am always obliged to act in a situation— that is, in relation
to other people—and consequently, my actions must not be capricious, since I
must take responsibility for all my actions. Moreover, to say that I must make
my essence, or invent my values, does not mean that I cannot judge human
actions. It is still possible to say that my action was based on either error
or self-deception, for if I hide behind the excuse of following my passions or
espousing some theory of determinism, I deceive myself.
To invent values, Sartre says,
means only that there is no meaning or sense in life prior to acts of will.
Life cannot be anything until it is lived, but each individual must make sense
of it. The value of life is nothing else but the sense each person fashions in
it. To argue that we are the victims of fate, of mysterious forces within us,
of some grand passion, or heredity, is to be guilty of bad faith (mauvaise
foi) or self-deception, of inauthenticity. Suppose, Sartre says, that a
woman who consents to go out with a particular man knows very well what the
man’s cherished intentions are, and she knows that sooner or later she will
have to make a decision. She does not want to admit the urgency of the matter,
preferring to interpret all his actions as discreet and respectful. She is,
Sartre says, in self-deception; her actions are inauthentic. All human beings
are guilty, in principle, of similar inauthenticity—of acting in bad faith, of
playing roles, and of trying to disguise their actual personality behind a facade.
The conclusion of Sartre’s existentialism is, therefore, that if I express my
genuine humanity in all my behavior, I will never deceive myself, and honesty
will then become not my ideal but my very being.
Human Consciousness
Underlying Sartre’s popular
formulation of existentialism is his technical analysis of existence. He argues
that there are different ways of existing. First, there is being-in-itself (l’en-soi),
which is the way that a stone is: It merely exists. In one respect: I am no
different from any other kind of existing reality. I exist, just the same way
anything else is, as simply being there. Second, there is being-for-itself (le
pour-soi), which involves existing as a conscious subject, which is what
people do and things like rocks cannot do. As a conscious subject I can relate
to both the world of things and people in a variety of ways. At one level I am
conscious of “the world,” which is everything that is beyond or other than
myself and which, therefore, transcends me. At this level I experience the
world simply as a solid, massive, undifferentiated, single something that is
not yet separated into individual things. Sartre describes this type of
consciousness in Nausea where the character Roquentin is sitting on a park
bench. He looks at all the things before him in the park, and all at once he
sees everything differently, everything as a single thing—“Suddenly existence
had unveiled itself.” Words vanished, and the points of reference that people
use to give meaning to things also vanished. What Roquentin saw was existence
as “the very paste of things”: “The root [of the tree], the park gates, the
bench, the sparse grass, all that had vanished: the diversity of things, their
individuality, were only an appearance, a veneer. This veneer had melted,
leaving soft, monstrous masses, all in disorder—naked.” Only later, when we
reflect, does the world become our familiar one. But, Sartre says, “The world
of explanations and reasons is not the world of existence.” At the level of
Roquentin’s experience, the world is the unity of all the objects of
consciousness.
Sartre agrees with Husserl that
all consciousness is consciousness of something, which means that there is no
consciousness without affirming the existence of an object that exists beyond,
that is, transcends, our consciousness. As we have seen, the object of
consciousness can be “the world” as simply “being there.” But in addition to
the world as a single solid mass, we speak of specific objects like trees,
benches, and tables. Whenever we identify a specific object, we do this by
saying what it is not—we differentiate a thing from its background. When a
chair appears as a chair, we give it that meaning by blacking out the
background. What we call a chair is fashioned or drawn out of the solid context
of the world by the activity of consciousness. The world of things appears as
an intelligible system of separate and interrelated things only to
consciousness. Without consciousness the world simply is, and as such it is
without meaning. Consciousness constitutes the meaning of things in the world,
though it does not constitute their being.
When we view the world as
being-in-itself, as simply being there, Sartre says that “the essential point
is contingency. I mean that by definition existence is not necessity. To exist
is simply to be there.” Contingency means that when something exists, it does
so by chance and not because it necessarily follows from something else:
“Existences appear . . . but you cannot deduce them.” The world we experience
is “uncreated, without reason for being, without any relation to another being;
being-in-itself is gratuitous for all eternity.” The meaning anything will have
in the world will depend, Sartre says, on the choices people make. Even a table
will have alternative meanings depending on what a particular person chooses to
use it for—for example, to serve dinner or to write a letter. A mountain valley
will mean one thing to a farmer and something else to a camper. Here
consciousness shifts us from being-in-itself (simply being there) to
being-for-itself, where consciousness dramatically differentiates the objects
of the world from the conscious self as subject.
The activity of consciousness is
at this point twofold. First, consciousness defines specific things in the
world and invests them with meaning. Second, consciousness puts a distance
between itself and objects and, in that way, attains freedom from those
objects. Because the conscious self has this freedom from the things in the
world, it is within the power of consciousness to confer different or
alternative meanings on things. The activity of consciousness is what is
usually called “choice.” We choose to undertake this project or that project,
and the meaning of things in the world will depend to a considerable extent on
what project we choose. If I choose to be a farmer, then the mountains, the
valley, and the impending storm will have special meanings for me. If I choose
to be a camper in that valley, the surroundings and the storm will present
different meanings.
Marxism and Freedom Revisited
Although Sartre believed that
Marxism was the philosophy of his time, he was aware of a striking
contradiction between his existentialism and Marxist dialectical materialism.
Sartre’s existentialism strongly espouses human freedom. By contrast, Marxist
dialectical materialism emphasizes that all the structures and organizations of
society and the behavior and thinking of human beings are determined by prior
events. On this view freedom of choice is an illusion, and we are simply
vehicles through which the forces of history realize themselves. Whereas Sartre
argued that it is human consciousness that “makes history” and confers meaning
on the world, Marxism holds that the social and economic structures of history
direct its own development. Rather than conferring meaning on the world, our
minds, the Marxist says, discover this meaning within the historical context as
a matter of scientific knowledge. One reason Sartre never became a member of
the Communist Party is, he says, because “I would have had to turn my back on
Being and Nothingness” and its emphasis on human freedom.
In his earlier writings Sartre
focused primarily on the individual and freedom. Later, in his Critique of
Dialectical Reason, he focused more on the historical and social context in
which people find themselves and that has an effect on their behavior. He
thought that Marx succeeded more than anyone else in describing how social and
economic structures develop and how they bear on human decisions. Sartre
accepted increasingly the limitations on human choice—the limitations of birth,
status in society, and family background. Earlier, he sought to describe how
individuals are capable of deceiving themselves by making excuses for their
behavior, as if they were not free to have behaved otherwise—a form of
self-deception. He never did depart from this emphasis on the freedom of the
individual. But he did adjust his thinking under the influence of Marxism by
facing the fact of people’s social existence, or their relationship to other
people, especially as a member of a group—for example, a labor union.
Acknowledging the influence of group structures on human behavior and
consciousness, resulting particularly in labor’s sense of alienation, he
revised his optimistic view of human freedom to some extent.
In 1945 Sartre wrote that “no
matter what the situation might be, one is always free.” As an example, he
states that “a worker is always free to join a union or not, as he is free to
choose the kind of battle he wants to join, or not.” Recalling this statement
some years later, in 1972, Sartre says that this “all strikes me as absurd
today.” And he admits, “There is no question that there is some basic change in
[my] concept of freedom.” In his lengthy work on Flaubert, he concludes that
although Flaubert was free to become uniquely Flaubert, his family background
and his status in society meant that “he did not have all that many
possibilities of becoming something else . . . he had the possibility of becoming
a mediocre doctor . . . and the possibility of being Flaubert.” This means,
Sartre says, that social conditioning exists every minute of our lives.
Nevertheless, he concludes that “I am still faithful to the notion of freedom.”
It is true, he says, that “you become what you are in the context of what
others have made of you”; nevertheless, within these limitations a person is
still free and responsible. This is Sartre’s way of reconciling the fact that
historical conditions affect human behavior with his intuitive certainty that
human beings are also capable of shaping history. In doing this, Sartre sought
to overcome with his existentialism what he considered the major flaw of
Marxist philosophy, namely, its failure to recognize the individual as a “real
person.”
MERLEAU-PONTY
Merleau-Ponty’s Life
Maurice
Merleau-Ponty was born in 1908, and from 1926 to 1930, he studied at the École
Normale Supérieure. The philosophy curriculum at that time was steeped in both
rationalism and idealism. Merleau-Ponty says of his teacher, Leon Brunschvicg,
that he “passed on to us the idealist heritage.
This philosophy consisted largely in reflexive effort . . . [which]
sought to grasp external perception or scientific constructions as a result of
mental activity.” Merleau-Ponty was one year behind Sartre, who also attended
that school. An interesting interview between Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir
describes the relation between the two at that time. Beauvoir: “You were
standoffish with people you did not like. Merleau-Ponty, for example. You were
on very bad terms with him, weren’t you?” Sartre: “Yes, but even so I once
protected him from some men who wanted to beat him up.” Beauvoir: “You were
singing obscene songs; and being pious, he wanted to stop you?” Sartre: “He
went out. Some fellows ran after him there were two of them—and they were going
to beat him up because they were furious. So I went out, too. I had a sort of
liking for Merleau-Ponty. . . . [I said] Leave him alone, and let him go. So
they didn’t do anything; they went off.”
In 1929 Merleau-Ponty came under
the influence of Gustave Rodrigues, director of the Lycée Janson-de-Sailly
where Merleau-Ponty was fulfilling his student teaching assignment.
Merleau-Ponty, the young Catholic, found Rodrigues, an atheist, to have an
“extraordinary character,” leading MerleauPonty to say that “an atheist
resembles other men.” In 1936 he broke with Catholicism as he worked through
his version of phenomenology in his fi rst work, The Structure of Behavior. He
saw active duty during World War II, in 1939 and 1940. He taught at the Lycée
Carnot in Paris during the German occupation and at this time composed his
greatest philosophical work, The Phenomenology of Perception.
From their early days at École
Normale Supérieure, the lives and careers of Sartre and Merleau-Ponty unfolded
as a stormy relationship during which they would be alternately friends and
enemies. With the help of Merleau-Ponty, Sartre organized a resistance network
in the winter of 1941, called “Socialism and Liberty.” Their goal was to bring
about a form of political society based on a harmony between a socialist
economy and freedom for the individual. In a collaboration that lasted from
1945 to 1952, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty published Les Temps Moderne, a journal
aimed at political commentary. While engaged in the journal, Merleau-Ponty
taught at the University of Lyon and then the Sorbonne, and in 1952 he was
appointed chair of philosophy at the Collège de France, a position that he held
until his death. Merleau-Ponty’s political views were progressively becoming
less sympathetic toward the former Soviet Union. In 1950 he wrote an editorial
denouncing the labor camps there:
If there are ten
million concentration camp inmates while at the other end of the Soviet
hierarchy salaries and standard of living are fifteen to twenty times higher
than those of the free workers—then . . . the whole system swerves and changes
meaning; and in spite of the nationalization of the means of production, and
even though private exploitation of man by man and unemployment are impossible
in the U.S.S.R., we wonder what reasons we still have to speak of socialism in
relation to it.
These labor camps, Merleau-Ponty
said, were “still more criminal because they betray the revolution.” Around
1952, while Sartre was moving toward closer ties with the Communists,
Merleau-Ponty left the editorship of Les Temps Moderne. A few years later,
Merleau-Ponty wrote a book, Adventures of the Dialectic, in which he included a
chapter analyzing in detail Sartre’s relationship with communism. The chapter
“Sartre and Ultrabolshevism” ends with this critical sentence: “One cannot at
the same time be both a free writer and a communist.” Actually, both Sartre and
Merleau-Ponty ultimately became disenchanted with communism. As we saw earlier,
Sartre never became a member of the Communist Party because that would have
forced him to give up his strongly held position that people are free. With his
philosophical work still far from complete, and at the height of his
creativity, Merleau-Ponty died on May 4, 1961, at the age of 53.
The Primacy of Perception
In the Phenomenology of
Perception Merleau-Ponty offers a theory of perception in reaction against both
dualist and realist theories. Intellectualists (or dualists), such as
Descartes, argued that not only are our minds distinct from our bodies but our
mental concepts and processes have priority over the sensory data that we get
from our bodies. Our minds interpret sensory information, fi ll in the gaps, and
make it meaningful. Descartes vividly espouses this view here:
When looking from a
window and saying I see men who pass in the street, I really do not see them,
but infer that what I see is men. . . . And yet what do I see from the window
but hats and coats which may cover automatic machines? Yet I judge these to be
men. And similarly solely by the faculty of judgment which rests in my mind, I
comprehend that which I believed I saw with my eyes.
Realists took the opposite view
that we receive perceptions of the world exactly as it is and that our minds do
not organize our perceptions any further. Merleau-Ponty strikes a middle
ground: The perceptual nature of our bodies constructs and shapes sensory data;
our higher mental functions play no such role. In fact, even our higher
intellectual thought processes are grounded in the perceptual framework of our
bodies. He writes, “All consciousness is perceptual, even the consciousness of
ourselves.” The main theme of this theory, then, is the primacy of perception:
By the words, the
‘primacy of perception,’ we mean that the experience of perception is our
presence at the moment when things, truths, values are constituted for us. . .
. It is not a question of reducing human knowledge to sensation, but of
assisting at the birth of this knowledge, to make it as sensible as the sensible,
to recover the consciousness of rationality.
Merleau-Ponty was particularly
influenced by the early-twentieth-century theory of Gestalt psychology, which
held that our perceptual experiences are shaped by inherent forms and
structures that give sense, meaning, and value to our experiences. For
Merleau-Ponty these structures are embedded in bodily perception.
Merleau-Ponty encapsulates his
position in the notion that “I am my body,” thus denying that I can somehow
separate myself as a mental subject from myself as a bodily object. The two
components of myself are united in my lived experience through my body. By
identifying the self as a body, Merleau-Ponty is not espousing the materialist
views in the tradition of Democritus and the atomists. According to traditional
materialism, I am essentially a physical machine, and the mental components of
my life are more or less explained away by the machinery of my body. Instead,
for Merleau-Ponty, the mental aspects of me are embedded in my body; I am a body-subject,
rather than a thoughtless and mechanical body.
The Relativity of Knowledge
Merleau-Ponty says that “in the
final analysis every perception takes place within a certain horizon and
ultimately in the ‘world.’”This follows from the fact that perception results
from a person’s bodily presence in the world. A bodily presence already means
that as a subject each of us is situated in the world at a certain time and
with a unique perspective. The ideas we ultimately have reflect this partial
view and our experience in time so that “the ideas to which we recur are valid
for only a period of our lives.” The thing we perceive is not a complete thing
or ideal unity possessed by the intellect, like a geometrical notion; “it is
rather a totality open to a horizon of an indefinite number of perspectival
views.” This means further that “the things which I see are things for me only
under the condition that they always recede beyond their immediate given
aspects.” For example, we never see all sides of a cube or a lamp or any other
thing. Similarly, other observers will see things from their perspectives.
Moreover, our perceptions occur during the ticking away of time, even though we
are not aware of this sequence of the segments of time. At this point,
Merleau-Ponty asks,
Can I seriously say
that I will always hold the ideas I do at present—and mean it? Do I not know
that in six months, in a year, even if I use more or less the same formulas to
express my thoughts, they will have changed their meaning slightly? Do I not
know that there is a life of ideas, as there is meaning of everything I experience,
and that every one of my most convincing thoughts will need additions and then
will be, not destroyed, but at least integrated into a new unity?
He concludes that “this is the
only conception of knowledge that is scientific and not mythological.” It means,
moreover, that “the idea of going straight to the essence of things is an
inconsistent idea if one thinks about it.” The most we can get from our
perception of the world is “a route, an experience which gradually clarifies
itself, which gradually rectifies itself and proceeds by dialogue with itself
and others.”
A dialogue with “others” assumes
that everyone can in some way share a similar experience of the world. But can
Merleau-Ponty’s theory, which concentrates on each subject’s internal experience
of the world, explain how two people can have a coherent conversation?
Perceptions are relative to each person as a result of our unique perspectives,
since “our body . . . is our point of view of the world.” Merleau-Ponty tries
to solve this problem by using the concept of an “a priori of the species.” As
members of a single species, all human beings perceive certain forms in a like
manner. He says that “as Gestalttheorie has shown there are for me preferred
forms that are also preferred for all other persons.” I will, of course, “never
know how you see red and you will never know how I see it. But our first
reaction to this separation of our consciousnesses is to “believe in an
undivided being between us.” As I perceive another person, “I find myself in relation
with another ‘myself,’ who is, in principle, open to the same truths as I am.”
Even though there are two of us looking at the world, it is not the case that
because of our different perspectives there are “two numerically distinct
worlds.” There is, Merleau-Ponty says, a demand that “what I see be seen by
[you] also.”
Perception and Politics
We might think that
Merleau-Ponty’s account of the relativity of perceptual knowledge would not be
well suited to deal with the problems of political, social, and economic order.
After all, these subjects call for permanent and stable notions of “justice”
and “freedom,” which Plato’s or Kant’s theories might better explain. This
would contradict the existentialist notion that there are no essential and
timeless values, that there is no essential human nature to be fully realized,
and that people must create their own values. Merleau-Ponty has an answer to
this. Right off, he rejects the lofty claims of abstract theories of politics,
justice, and morality. Although Plato and others claimed that such values are
based on “timeless” notions of the human good, these values in fact are simply
reflections of the present circumstances of a particular culture. So-called
universal political values were imposed on us by people who themselves had not
participated in creating those systems of government; as such, such values are
not a blessing but represent the heavy hand of oppression. Invariably, the
so-called universal values turned out to be to the advantage of special groups.
This was one reason Merleau-Ponty found in Marxism a congenial type of thought.
Marxism, while abstract up to a point, was nevertheless embodied in an actual
system, the communism of the former Soviet Union.
Further, Merleau-Ponty argues
that “things” are not all that we encounter through perception. Values are just
as specifically perceived and have the same status as other aspects of the
world. Values are significant, Merleau-Ponty says, “because they are
apprehended with a certainty which, from the phenomenological viewpoint, is a
final argument.” In addition, perception provides us with the important element
of meaning. This is particularly significant when our perceptions encounter the
actual ways people live among each other. From these actual living and working
arrangements, Merleau-Ponty says, we can discover certain background meanings
that reveal the changes and movements of specific groups of people. These
changes are not simply facts, but they reveal the direction of history. This is
another reason why Merleau-Ponty was attracted to communism, for here was a
system and theory that could be observed concretely as the bearer of meaning
located in the aspirations of the whole class of workers. Thus, in the absence
of any viable abstract theories of justice, Merleau-Ponty looked to the only
sure source of political knowledge, namely, perception. Here he felt that he
discovered not the universality of an idea but the universality of the
proletariat, which is the bearer of the meaning of history.
Both Sartre and Merleau-Ponty
were drawn to communism after World War II for similar reasons. It represented
the chief alternative to the status quo, and the turbulent events of the time
called for a new philosophical basis for political action, which they felt
existentialism and phenomenology could provide. But they did not always agree
with Marxism or with each other’s views of Marxism. Their prolonged and heated
disagreements ultimately led in 1952 to the termination of their friendship and
affected their views on communism. As Sartre wrote in 1961, “Each of us was
conditioned, but in opposite directions. Our slowly accumulated disgust made
the one [Merleau-Ponty] discover, in an instant, the horror of Stalinism, and
the other [Sartre] that of his own [bourgeois] class.”
Merleau-Ponty held that it is
possible to perceive in actual society the developing consciousness of the
working class. He saw a relationship here between the individual, the
institutions of society, a scale of values, and reality. Most importantly, he
thought he perceived that the developing consciousness of this class was the
bearer of a rather specific meaning, a meaning that was growing steadily
stronger and was shaping the direction of history. At the center of this
overall perception was the urge on the part of this class to resolve the
contradictions of the workers’ conditions and to organize a humane
appropriation of nature. It also meant “as a universal class . . . to transcend
national and social conflicts as well as the struggle between man and man.”
This was the heart of the promise of communism, which Merleau-Ponty originally
thought was corroborated by his own perceptions. But he was willing to admit
that Marxism would be refuted if the proletariat could not overcome the strong
structure of capitalism, if it could not eliminate violence, and if it could
not bring about humane relationships among people. “It would mean,”
Merleau-Ponty says, “that there is no history—if history means the advent of
humanity and the mutual recognition of men as men.”
SUMMARY
Phenomenology avoids questions
about the so-called objective nature of things and instead explores phenomena
more subjectively from within one’s human experience. Existentialism adopts
this phenomenological approach and further emphasizes the importance of making
choices and personal commitments.
According to Husserl, philosophy
in his day was in a state of crisis by adopting the naturalist view that
physical nature envelops everything there is; this resulted in philosophy’s rejection
of the realm of spirit (i.e., human culture). His solution to this crisis is
phenomenology. Inspired by Descartes’s systematic doubting process, Husserl
argued that we should disregard all our present knowledge and build a
philosophy from our subjective experiences without any presuppositions. The
foundation of the self’s subjective experience is intentionality: consciousness
is always about something. Thus, any object of my subjective consciousness,
such as a house or a person, is constructed by (or “intended” by) me. Our
perceptions give us only fragments of reality, such as seeing a person’s
profile, and our consciousness automatically constructs the person. This
ability of the self to construct the world is what he calls “passive genesis.”
In this process of constructing the world, I do not have access to any external
things-in-themselves behind the world that my mind constructs. The only thing I have access to is the
phenomena as it is constructed and intended by my subjective consciousness. Thus,
he argued, I must “bracket” or ignore questions about whether my experiences
are grounded in an external world. In this way, my subjective self contains the
world and is the center of reality. The realm of the daily world that I
construct and experience, before it gets interpreted by science, is what he
calls the “life-world.”
Inspired by Husserl, Heidegger
argued that any study of the world requires that we first understand our human
existence, which forms our conceptions of the world. He calls this fundamental
human existence “Dasien,” which is German for “being there.” Our first and most
primitive state of human existence is what he calls “being-in-the-world”: we
encounter things in the world as utensils or tools that serve purposes, such as
with a hammer. The different purposes of various objects overlap and
interconnect and create a network of purposes. A second aspect of human
existence is what he calls “concern”: we are concerned about many things. There
are three components to this: (1) facticity, insofar as I have been thrown into
the world without choice; (2) existentiality, where I have the freedom to
transform my life; and (3) fallenness, where I lose sight of my unique and
authentic character and fail to take responsibility for my actions. When acting
inauthentically, I behave as expected, gossip, seek distractions, and deny the
fact that I will someday die. This creates anxiety, which in turn awakens
within me the need to live authentically. Religious existentialists held that
religious themes of sin and salvation are only mythological ways of expressing
Heidegger’s distinction between inauthentic and authentic life. Jaspers refers
to our authentic and genuine life as “Existence.” We achieve this by becoming
aware that everything is grounded in Transcendent Being (which is traditionally
called God), and I affirm my relation to the Transcendent through an act of
philosophical faith. Marcel argued that human existence derives its deepest
meaning through acts of fidelity, which gives us a greater sense of Being.
According to Sartre, the basic
principle of existentialism is that existence precedes essence. That is, human
beings are not defined by a pre-established human nature (i.e., an essence),
but instead we first act and exist within the world, and define ourselves from
that. This gives each of us responsibility for who we are, and we cannot blame
our human nature or circumstances for what we do. We make our choices with a
sense of anguish since, if I act immorally, I cannot escape the disturbing
thought that I would not want others to act as I do. I choose, then, not only
for myself but for all people. Sartre argued that there is nothing besides the
existing individual: no God, no objective system of values, and no built-in
essence. There is also no determinism, which means people are “condemned” to be
free because of the responsibility that this imposes on us. If I am a coward, I
am such because of my own actions. All human beings are guilty of acting
inauthentically in bad faith, by which we play roles and disguise our actual
personalities behind a facade. Sartre distinguishes between two ways of
existing. There is unconscious being-in-itself such as with the existence of a
rock; it is simply there. Then, there is being-for-itself, which is the existence
of humans whereby our consciousness (1) defines specific things in the world
and gives them meaning, and (2) puts a distance between myself and objects,
thereby giving me freedom from those objects. Later in his life Sartre adopted
Marxism and its view that social conditions shape who people are; however,
Sartre still maintained that people are free within those limitations.
Merleau-Ponty offered a theory of
perception in reaction against both dualists thought, such as Descartes’s, and
realist thinking, which holds that we perceive the world exactly as it is.
There is, he argued, a “primacy of perception,” by which he meant that
perceptual experiences are shaped by perceptual structures within our bodies.
Knowledge is relative in that it results from a person’s bodily presence in the
world at a particular point in time and space. Although we each see things from
our own unique perspective, as members of the same species, we also perceive
certain forms in the same manner; he calls this the “a priori of the species.”
Merleau-Ponty argued that we perceive moral and political values the same way
that we do other aspects of the world, specifically when we encounter social
classes and the values they hold.
RECENT PHILOSOPHY
Philosophy has undergone dramatic
changes since the mid-twentieth century. Foremost is the booming number of
people writing in the field. Part of this owes to the remarkable increase in
philosophy professors at colleges and universities around the world, which
reflects both a spike in world population growth and a continually increasing
percentage of people attending college. Not only are there more academically
trained philosophers, but there also are increased expectations in universities
for philosophers to write—publish or perish as the famous motto goes. Thus,
perhaps five times as many philosophy books and journal articles appeared in
the year 2000 as in 1950. A consequence of this literary productivity is that
philosophy is now highly specialized. It is impossible for a single philosopher
to have a full grasp of all the innovative ideas emerging in the different
areas of philosophy. When philosophical output was more manageable, we might
expect a great figure like Kant to singlehandedly alter the direction of
metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, and the philosophy of religion.
Now, the most creative philosophers focus on only one or two of these areas.
An influential writer in one area
of philosophy may be a completely unknown figure to a specialist in another
area. Paralleling other academic disciplines, philosophy now is driven less by
the thoughts of great individual minds and more so by great issues and
movements within the discipline. Some individual names certainly rise to the
forefront in specific areas of philosophy, but the time may have passed to
produce giants like Descartes, Hume, and Kant.
Philosophy is also more
multicultural now than it has ever been. In past centuries leading philosophers
in the Western world were white men who perpetuated a European tradition of
thought. Most notable now is the presence of women in the discipline, who, in
the United States, accounted for one-quarter of the academic philosophers by
the beginning of the twenty-first century. This rising number of female
philosophers sparked an interest in philosophical issues that directly address
the concerns of women. Some of these discussions have a politically
revolutionary tone and draw attention to the ways that male-centered culture
has oppressed women. Other discussions explore how uniquely female ways of
thinking impact traditional problems of philosophy, such as theories of
knowledge, ethics, and aesthetics. Philosophy is also more multicultural in
that it now recognizes the philosophical contributions of nonWestern cultures. This
is particularly so with Asian philosophy, which has a history of philosophical
writings as old as the Greek tradition is in the West. As specialized and
culturally diverse as philosophy is today, at best only a sample of key issues
and figures can be presented here.
THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM
The mind-body problem is one of
the oldest and most explored areas of philosophy. We have seen that Democritus
and other atomists attempted to reduce all human mental processes to the
operations of material stuff, which strictly follow physical laws. Plato, by
contrast, believed that our souls (and thereby our rational minds) are distinct
from our bodies and cannot be reduced to material constituents. Developing
Plato’s view, Descartes attempted to explain how our spiritual minds interact
with our physical bodies. His solution was that messages pass between our
spirits and bodies by way of the pineal gland within our brains—which acts as a
type of metaphysical switchboard. Although Descartes’s specific theory created
more problems than it solved, the tendency in philosophy after Descartes was
nevertheless to accept his radical split between our spiritual minds and
physical bodies. As biologists learned more about the human brain in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Descartes’s mind-body dualism became more
untenable—at least to a scientific way of thinking. For scientists the original
contention held by the atomists seemed more correct, namely, that mental events
are simply the result of physical brain activity. This position—most generally
called materialism —is now the standard philosophical solution to the mind-body
problem. Some philosophers within religious traditions still defend the
spirit-body dualism of Descartes, but the majority of the writers on this subject
are from nonreligious universities and have set Descartes’s solution aside. The
dominant issue is not one of how our
spiritual minds interact with our physical brains. Instead, the concern
is with how our mental experiences can be best explained in terms of brain
activity. Assuming that I lack an immaterial spirit, it is difficult to see how
my mental experiences are simply the result of biological machinery in my
brain.
Ryle’s Ghost in the Machine
The inspiration for most
discussions of the mind-body problem today is the book Concept of Mind (1949)
by British philosopher Gilbert Ryle (1900–1976), who began teaching at Oxford
University in 1924. Ryle contends that the “official doctrine” of mind is
unsound and contradicts virtually everything we know about human mentality. In
its simplest form the official doctrine holds that every human being has both a
mind and a body, that these two are coordinated, but that upon the death of the
body the mind may continue both to exist and exert its powers. Not only is this
basic theory of mind-body incorrect, Ryle says, but it also leads to many other
serious errors as we elaborate on the implications of the theory. One erroneous
consequence of this theory is its implied view that each person has two
parallel histories, one consisting of the events of the body and the other
consisting of what transpires in the mind. Whereas human bodies are in space
and are governed by mechanical physical laws, minds do not exist in space and
are not subject to such laws. A person’s bodily life is publicly observable,
while the activities of the mind are not accessible to external observers and
so are private. This requires us to say that the workings of the body are
external whereas the workings of the mind are internal. It is then a short step
to say that the mind is in the body. This language describing the place of the
mind may be metaphorical, since minds do not occupy space and thus could hardly
be in any particular place. Nevertheless, Ryle argues, we often do take quite
literally this contrast between the outer and inner realms. Psychologists, for
example, assume that sensory stimuli come from outside and from far distances
and generate mental responses inside the skull. All of this suggests some type
of transaction between mind and body. However, no laboratory experiment can
discover this relationship. This also suggests that what goes on inside my mind
is a secret activity, which people on the outside do not have access to. For
example, my mental acts of knowing, hoping, dreading, and intending are private
events.
Because this traditional theory
completely isolates the mind from the body, Ryle calls this view the “dogma of
the Ghost in the Machine.” What Ryle finds wrong with this dogma is not that
some details here and there are ambiguous but that the very principle on which
the theory rests is false. It is not even a series of particular mistakes. It
is, Ryle says, one big mistake of a unique kind, and this he calls a
“category-mistake.” The big mistake consists of representing the facts of
mental life as if they belong to one and the same logical category when in fact
they belong to quite different and separate ones. The official theory is,
therefore, a “myth,” and it is necessary to “rectify the logic of
mental-conduct concepts.”
To illustrate this
category-mistake, Ryle describes the imaginary visit of a foreigner to Oxford
University for the first time. The visitor is shown the museums, scientific
laboratories, and some of the colleges. Having seen these various places, the visitor
asks, “But where is the university?” The question assumes that the university
is yet another institution, or a counterpart to the colleges and laboratories,
or another entity that can be seen in the same way as the others. Actually, the
“university” is simply how all of these components are coordinated. Thus, the
visitor’s mistake consists of the assumption that we can correctly speak of
Oxford’s library, museum, and various other components, and the university as
if the university was the same kind of member in the class to which the others
belong. In short, the visitor mistakenly placed the university into the wrong
category—a category in which it does not belong. In a similar illustration Ryle
speaks of the mistake that a child makes when watching a military parade in
which a division is marching by. Having been told that he is seeing battalions,
batteries, and squadrons, the child wants to know when the division is going to
appear. Again, the child assumes that the division is another unit similar to
the others, not realizing that in seeing the battalions, batteries, and
squadrons he has already seen the division. The mistake is in thinking it
correct to speak of battalions, batteries, squadrons, and a division. He placed
the division in the wrong category. These category-mistakes show an inability
to use certain elements in the English language correctly. What is more
significant, Ryle says, is that people who are perfectly capable of applying
concepts are nevertheless liable in their abstract thinking to allocate these
concepts to logical categories to which they do not belong.
Ryle believes that the Ghost in
the Machine dogma makes a similar error and that “a family of radical
category-mistakes is the source of the double-life theory.” Advocates of the
dogma hold that a person’s feelings, thinking, and purposive activities cannot
be described solely in terms of physics; because of this they conclude that
mental activity must be described in a set of counterpart idioms. Moreover,
because mental conduct differs so from bodily activities, advocates of the
dogma hold that the mind has its own metaphysical status, made of a different
stuff and having a different structure and its own complex organization. And so
they hold that body and mind are separate fields of causes and effects, with
the body being mechanical and the mind nonmechanical.
How did this category-mistake
originate? Although Ryle designates Descartes as the major culprit, the
mind-body dualism has a history extending much further back than the
seventeenth century. Descartes’s specific version was inspired by the view that
scientific methods are capable of providing a mechanical theory that applies to
every occupant in space. From a strictly scientific point of view, Descartes
was impressed with the mechanical description of nature. However, as a
religious and moral person, he was reluctant to agree with the claim that human
nature in its mental aspects differs only in degree of complexity from a
machine. Consequently, Descartes and subsequent philosophers wrongly construed
mental-conduct words to signify nonmechanical processes and concluded that
nonmechanical laws must explain the nonspatial workings of minds. But what this
explanation retained was the assumption that mind, though different from body,
is nevertheless a member of the categories of “thing,” “stuff,” “state,”
“process,” “cause,” and “effect.” Thus, just as the visitor expected Oxford
University to be another, extra unit, so Descartes and his heirs treated minds
as additional, though special, centers of the causal process. From these
conclusions a host of theoretical difficulties arose. How are the mind and body
related? How do they bring about effects in each other? If the mind is governed
by strict laws analogous to the laws governing the body, does this not imply
determinism, in which case such notions as responsibility, choice, merit, and
freedom make no sense? Worst of all, only negative terms could be used to speak
of the mind: Minds are not in space, have no motions, are not aspects of
matter, and are not observable. For these and other reasons Ryle concludes that
the entire argument of the Ghost in the Machine is “broken-backed.”
How, then, should we understand
mental events such as acts of knowing, exercising intelligence, understanding,
willing, feeling, and imagining? Ryle’s alternative to the Ghost in the Machine
dogma is a view now called logical behaviorism, the theory that talk of mental
events should be translated into talk about observable behavior. Virtually every
assertion about the mind involves some relevant facts about bodily behavior:
“When we characterize people by mental predicates, we are not making untestable
inferences to any ghostly processes occurring in streams of consciousness which
we are debarred from visiting; we are describing the ways in which those people
conduct parts of their predominantly public behavior.” Mental terms, then,
refer to the way that people do things, and not to private spiritual states.
Ultimately, all of our mental states can be analyzed through our behavior, and
Ryle denies that our mental states reflect anything more than a predictable way
of acting. For instance, when I speak of human emotions, I do not infer the
working of some interior and obscure mental forces. In favorable circumstances,
Ryle says, “I find out your inclinations and your moods more directly than
this. I hear and understand your conversational avowals, your interjections and
your tones of voice; I see and understand your gestures and facial
expressions.”
Identity Theory and Functionalism
Ryle’s theory of logical
behaviorism has its critics. Even if we accept his critique of Cartesian
dualism, there are problems with his solution that reduces mind to observable
behavior. Ryle’s behaviorism presumes that we can explain everything there is
about mental events by looking solely at sensory input and behavioral output.
For example, I see a lion (input) and I exhibit fearful behaviors, such as
trembling (output). For Ryle these inputs and outputs explain all that there is
about my fear. This, however, seems simplistic. Hoping to avoid committing a
category-mistake himself, Ryle ignores everything that takes place between the
input and the output. But what about the most obvious source of my fear,
namely, my brain? Even Descartes recognized that the human brain plays an
important role in processing sensory data. And, for the past few decades, many
physicians have defi ed death in terms of the cessation of brain activity.
Addressing this problem, identity theory is the view that mental states are
identical to brain activity. For example, if I wish to know something about my
emotions when I see a lion, I need to look at the type of activity that takes
place within my brain. My experience of fear, then, is explained by a series of
neurological events, which occur in different parts of my brain. Identity
theory attempts to bring the whole issue of human consciousness under the
umbrella of science—specifically, neuroscience. Gone are the days when
soothsayers, exorcists, theologians, or even metaphysicians could contribute
anything meaningful to the subject by speculating about the nature of an
immaterial human spirit.
The effort to identify human
consciousness with brain activity is not unique. As noted, Democritus and other
atomists suggested this view, and, more recently, in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, some biologists offered somewhat crude theories of how
brain functions elicit conscious thought. As theories of brain functions have
become more sophisticated in recent decades, so, too, have theories of
mind-brain identity. Two philosophers, J. J. C. Smart and David Armstrong, are
associated with the current version of this theory. Perhaps the most common
criticism of identity theory is that it fails a principle called Leibniz’s law.
Leibniz argued that if two things are truly identical, then properties asserted
about the one thing must also be asserted about the other. Thus, according to
Leibniz’s law, if mental events and brain activity are really identical—as Smart
and Armstrong contend—then all properties about mental events apply to brain
activity, and vice versa. However, as the criticism goes, there are some things
that we can say about mental events that do not seem to apply to brain
activity, and vice versa. First, brain activities are localizable in space, and
mental events do not seem to be. We can, for instance, point to a particular
region of my brain in which neurons are firing. However, we cannot point to a
part of my brain and say, “My idea of a tree is right there.” Second, brain
activities are objectively observable in the sense that we can monitor them
with scientific equipment, and mental events cannot be observed in that way.
Finally, mental events have the distinct feature that they are directed at
something—that is, they exhibit intentionality. For example, I have an idea of
a tree, I wish for a new car, and I think about political turmoil around the
world. By contrast, brain activities are not about anything. They simply are
physical events.
Die-hard identity theorists are
not bothered by any of these problems. In fact, they feel that the more we
learn about brain activity, the more comfortable we will become with pointing
to parts of a brain and saying “an intentional thought is occurring right
there.” Nevertheless, identity theory faces another and somewhat different
criticism. Specifically, it presumes that mental events, such as thoughts and
emotions, must be activities of a biological brain. Why, though, cannot
thoughts occur in nonbiological systems, such as silicon chips? According to a
rival theory called functionalism, mental events depend primarily on the
networks, pathways, and interconnections of mental processes, and not on the
material stuff that the brain is composed of. Functionalists do not deny that
human mental processes are a function of human brain activity. They simply
throw open the criteria of mental activity to include computers, robots, or
other human-made devices that exhibit the relevant processes.
The field of artificial
intelligence attempts to realize the functionalist theory and duplicate
human cognitive mental states in computing machinery. For some time scientists
have tried to replicate human thought processes in some kind of mechanical
form. The 1939 New York World’s Fair displayed a human-looking robot that
mimicked some human activities. At the time the visual effect was convincing,
and many spectators believed that scientists had produced a truly humanlike
creature. However, at that stage of technology, the robot was little more than
a wind-up toy, and it exhibited none of the internal processes that
functionalists would associate with thinking. Computer technology of recent
decades has provided the first viable opportunity for at least attempting to
replicate human thought processes. In some ways the goal of artificial
intelligence today is modest. Rather than attempting to replicate all human
mental processes in machine form—such as emotions, willful activity, and
artistic sensibility—advocates of artificial intelligence focus only on the
thinking process—analyzing sensory data and making judgments about it. The
claims of artificial intelligence advocates are as varied as are their
techniques. Two approaches, though, are commonly distinguished. A weak version of
artificial intelligence holds that suitably programmed machines can simulate
human cognition. Strong artificial intelligence, by contrast, holds that
suitably programmed machines are actually capable of cognitive mental states.
The weak claim presents no serious philosophical problem, since a machine that
merely simulates human cognition does not need to actually possess conscious
mental states. The strong claim, though, is more philosophically controversial
since it holds that a computer can have humanlike thoughts.
Searle’s Chinese Room Argument
The most well-known attack on
strong artificial intelligence is by John Searle, a former student of John
Austin’s at Oxford University and later professor at the University of
California, Berkeley. Searle was bothered by grandiose claims of computer
scientists that a computer program could interpret stories the way humans do.
That is, the computer could read between the lines and draw inferences about
events in the story that we as humans draw from our life experience. Proponents
of strong artificial intelligence claimed that the program in question both
understands stories and explains our human ability to understand stories—that
is, it provides the sufficient conditions for “understanding.” Searle counters
this view with a picturesque thought experiment. Suppose that I, or some other
non-Chinese speaking person, am put in a room and given three sets of Chinese
characters: (1) a large batch of Chinese writing constituting the structure of
that language, (2) a story, and (3) questions about the story. I also receive a
set of rules in English—kind of like a computer program—that allow me to
correlate the three sets of characters with each other. Although I do not know
the meaning of the Chinese symbols, I may get so good at manipulating the
symbols that, from the outside, I answer all the questions correctly, and no
one can tell if I am Chinese or not. According to Searle, it is quite obvious
that “I do not understand a word of the Chinese stories. I have inputs and
outputs that are indistinguishable from those of the native Chinese speaker,
and I can have any formal program you like, but I still understand nothing.”
For Searle this scenario goes against both of the above claims of strong
artificial intelligence. That is, I do not understand the Chinese stories, and
the process I am following does not fully explain the notion of
“understanding.” In short, even if a computer program appears to meaningfully
interpret nuances of a story, the program does not really understand the story.
Searle himself anticipated a
variety of objections to his Chinese room argument. What if a computer program
was embedded within a robot that acquired data by interacting with the real
world, rather than simply being supplied with that data? The robot might ably
interact by means of a video camera and motorized arms and legs. However,
Searle argues, this would still only produce data very much like the data
already embedded in the computer, and nothing significantly new would change in
how the computer processes the information. But what if a computer program
simulated a pattern of neurons firing, rather than simply the interrelations
between words? Searle replies that we still only have a simulation, and not the
real thing. According to Searle, then, a computer program—no matter how
elaborate—is not capable of cognitive mental states. This is a feature reserved
for biological and organic brains. Although Searle denies the extravagant
claims of functionalists and advocates of artificial intelligence, he does not
want to concede victory to either the pure identity theorist or the olden-day
Cartesian dualists. He instead tries to forge a middle ground between the
latter two theories, which he calls biological naturalism. Like the identity
theorist, he believes that mental events are really biological in nature,
specifically involving higher-level brain functions. So, when we investigate
the nature of the human mind, we investigate the brain, and there is no
mysterious spiritual component to our mental events. Like the dualist, though,
Searle is swayed by Leibniz’s law and insists that our descriptions about brain
activity (such as neurons firing) are fundamentally different from descriptions
about mental events (for example, I wish for a new car). Accordingly,
philosophical descriptions of human thinking will never be replaced with
scientific descriptions of brain activity. Each is valid within its own
territory.
RORTY
Ever since Plato, traditional
philosophers have tried to discover the foundations of knowledge. They wanted
to know exactly what is “out there”—outside the mind—to distinguish between
mind and body and between appearance and reality, and to provide a grounding
for absolutely certain truth. By contrast, analytic philosophers scaled down
the enterprise of philosophy to the more modest objective of discovering the
foundations of meaningful language. Sentences or propositions would be
considered meaningful only if they corresponded to objective and verifiable
facts. In this way philosophy would resemble the rigor of scientific knowledge.
But did this shift in the concerns of philosophy represent a major revolution?
To be sure, linguistic analysis clarified some philosophical problems by
demonstrating the frequent misuse of language. More dramatically, several
traditional issues were simply eliminated from the agenda of philosophy when
analytic philosophers insisted that language must accurately represent facts.
What “facts” could be “represented” by language when talking about the “good” or
the “beautiful” or the “just” or “God”? If there were no such facts, philosophy
could no longer speak meaningfully about ethics, aesthetics, religion, justice,
and metaphysics. Surely, we might think, this represents a revolutionary
departure from the traditional concerns of philosophy.
Rorty’s Analytic Philosophy
However, according to American
philosopher Richard Rorty, analytic philosophy did not usher in a major change
in the assumptions of philosophy. In Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature
(1979), Rorty argues that analytic philosophy is not something new but rather a
variation of what Descartes and Kant did, namely, provide a “foundation” for
knowledge. What is new in analytic philosophy, Rorty says, is the conviction
that knowledge is represented by what is linguistic and not by what is mental.
But to say this is to leave unchanged the assumption that as human beings we
possess by our very nature some framework within which the activity of inquiry
takes place. We still have in analytic philosophy, (1) a “knowing subject,” (2)
a “reality out there,” and (3) a “theory of representation” that describes how
reality is represented to the knowing subject. The old account of how we know
is still the same, namely, that the mind is like a great mirror containing
representations of nature, some accurate and some inaccurate, which we then
study by pure “rational” methods. Analytic philosophy does not remove the
assumption that the mind is like a mirror. It simply tries to increase the
accuracy of the representations captured by the mind, as Rorty says, by
“inspecting, repairing and polishing the mirror.” Moreover, to engage in
repairing and polishing the mirror implies the presence of another old
assumption, namely, that there is some reality that is eternally “out there”
but that for some reason is inaccurately represented to the mind. For these
reasons Rorty believes that a truly revolutionary move in philosophy would
require the final rejection of several assumptions. We must first abandon the
traditional mirror imagery—the assumption that human beings are equipped with a
structural framework that dictates how our inquiries must proceed. We must also
abandon the assumption that even before there is thinking or history there is
an “essence” to reality, which to know is to know the truth.
Rorty was himself an analytic philosopher as a
young professor at Princeton University. He was born in 1931 and raised in New
York City as an only child whose parents were freelance journalists and whose
maternal grandfather, Walter Raschenbusch, was an eminent liberal Protestant
theologian. At age 14 Rorty entered the University of Chicago and later
completed his graduate studies in philosophy at Yale University. After a brief
teaching assignment at Wellesley College, he joined the faculty at Princeton,
whose philosophy department at that time was strongly oriented toward analytic
philosophy. For a few years Rorty immersed himself in “doing” analytic
philosophy but finally grew dissatisfied with the piecemeal task of unraveling linguistic
and logical puzzles. After a brief period of professional crisis during the
early 1970s and to the considerable surprise of his colleagues, Rorty chose a
new direction for his studies, toward the pragmatism of John Dewey.
The Influence of Pragmatism
In 1909, on the fiftieth
anniversary of the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859),
Dewey delivered a lecture titled “The Influence of Darwinism on Philosophy.”
The influence it had, Dewey said, was that it introduced a new type of thinking—a
type that influenced Dewey himself. The theory of biological
evolution, Dewey said, emphasized that change is fundamental to everything that
exists. This change represents not only simple rearrangements of bits of matter
but the presence of “organic systems” and their creativity with respect to the
environment. This meant that knowledge could no longer aim at realities lying
behind any notion of the mathematical order of nature or any vestige of
Platonic “eternality.” There is no “givenness” about the world. Philosophy
would no longer enquire about absolute origins and absolute final ends, as in
Hegel’s gradual realization of the idea of freedom or Marx’s final phase of
human society. Philosophy would no longer seek to prove that our lives necessarily
must have certain qualities or values as a result of an earlier cause, such as
creation, or a specific goal. The world, on this view, is not described as
reflecting an eternal pattern, out there, abstractly.
Instead, according to Dewey,
philosophical thinking should begin with our immediate, concrete life
experiences. We would then see human life as Aristotle did. That is, although
we are a part of nature and behave in certain mechanical ways as described by
science, we are nevertheless human. And although we have some characteristics
of other animals, we are nevertheless unique. What makes us unique is that we
are aware of the processes of nature and we can know how we function. We know
where some forms of behavior lead and what values or ends they support or
frustrate. Experience tells us what things are “necessary for,” or “better
for,” or “worse for” other things. We can evaluate things not in terms of some
remote and abstract standards but in terms of some more obvious “ends” built
into the very natural functions of organisms. Human life on this view reveals a
close relationship between the functions of human nature and the various
simultaneous functions of the larger natural environment, which provides wide
choices of ends and values. It is easy to see how the new Darwinian approach to
knowledge influenced Dewey in the direction of pragmatism. Instead of pursuing
a single ultimate truth about reality, his emphasis shifted to a pluralism of
truths, many truths, and the characteristic that these ideas or notions are
true because they “work.”
Rorty was drawn to Dewey’s
pragmatism for these and several other reasons. For one thing, it gave him an
avenue of escape from the severe limitations that linguistic analysis placed on
the scope of his philosophical activity. Pragmatism provided him with a basis
for fi nally rejecting the traditional view that the mind is a reliable mirror
reflecting reality, a notion that assumed that only those thoughts and language
are true which faithfully represent the real world. Since there is no way to be
absolutely certain that a thought or statement accurately corresponds to
reality, it is, he thought, better to think that a statement is true if it
leads to successful behavior—that is, if it “works.” We should look upon statements
as “tools” whose truth is based on their usefulness. Since there are several
types of statements, there are correspondingly several kinds of truths. To view
truth in this manner is to bring back to philosophy the subject matter of many
fi elds. From this point of view, science has no special claim on truth since
it is only one among many areas of practical human concern, along with
politics, ethics, art, literature, history, and religion. Scientific methods
cannot, therefore, provide the sole criterion for truth since there are several
particular kinds of truth.
What especially attracted Rorty
to pragmatism was that its pluralistic view of truth opened up wide areas of
legitimate philosophical discussion. In addition to the analysis of language,
it now became philosophically useful to study novels and poetry to find
insights into human problems that philosophy virtually abandoned. Moreover,
Anglo-American philosophers could more comfortably engage in discourse with
their counterparts in Continental Europe, where the darker themes of dread,
angst, and solitude permeate the works of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and
Heidegger. Rorty discovered that while analytic philosophy isolated itself from
some of the deepest concerns of life, it is possible to overcome this isolation
by expanding the range and type of literature considered worthy of study.
Following this insight, Rorty left the Department of Philosophy at Princeton
and, in 1983, became university professor of humanities at the University of
Virginia. Here, his approach to philosophy relied heavily on literary and
cultural criticism and acknowledged the morally illuminating power of novelists
and poets. Rorty had no interest in, nor did he think it useful to engage in,
“systematic” philosophy. More and more, he believed, the emphasis would be on
“edifying” philosophy, whose practitioners would be concerned with culture and
self-transformation.
The Contingency of Language
If there is one theme that captures Rorty’s
philosophical point of view, it is his conviction that there are no eternal
“essences.” For example, there is no “human nature,” “true nature of the self,”
or “universal moral law,” discoverable by human reason. Instead of a timeless
and stable structure in reality, what we find, Rorty says, is that everywhere
we are confronted with “contingency,” by the ever-presence of “chance.” If
everything is “contingent,” how can there be any meaning to life? If there is no
timeless truth, how can we know whether our lives fall short of their intended
purpose or value? Rorty is aware of these consequences of his pragmatism. But
instead of being intimidated by this bewildering world of chance, he sees in it
opportunities for overcoming contingency by constant self-transformation or
self-creation. Still, he insists that it is philosophically important to
recognize that contingency and chance characterize such fundamental aspects of
our experience as our language, our idea of our selfhood, and our conception of
human society or community.
We normally think of language as
a means by which our vocabulary represents reality to our minds. How can a
vocabulary represent or be the medium of something “out there”? One way is to
use the metaphor of a jigsaw puzzle. By the use of words, it is assumed that we
can describe various pieces of the puzzle so that as the vocabulary changes and
evolves, our language will come closer and closer to what exists out there. But
this assumes that out there are to be found fixed and stable realities capable
of being described.
Take, for example, the language
of science. Galileo created a new vocabulary when he described the behavior of
the earth and the sun in relation to each other. What does this history of the
change in scientific language illustrate? Does it show that Galileo’s new
description represents a deeper insight into the intrinsic nature of the
natural world? Rorty does not think so. “We must,” he says, “resist the
temptation to think that the re-descriptions of reality offered by contemporary
physical or biological sciences are somehow closer to ‘the things themselves.’”
It is not as though the new language has filled in more of the jigsaw puzzle.
Rather, we should use the metaphor of language as a “tool” so that the new
vocabulary of science will simply enable those who create the new language to
accomplish new objectives. There is no necessary line of development in
language any more than there is a necessary line of evolution in nature. We
cannot return to the way nature and its purposes were thought about before the
time of Darwin. Contingency and chance—that is, the more or less random
behavior of things—explain the changes in nature and in language. Physical
evolution did not have to occur precisely as it did. Was it necessary or only
by chance that orchids came upon the scene? And did not Mendel “let us see mind
as something which just happened rather than as something which was the whole
point of the process”? To say the opposite—namely, that the world has an
intrinsic nature that the physicist or poet has glimpsed—is, Rorty says, “a
remnant of the idea that the world is a divine creation, the work of someone
who had something in mind, who Himself spoke some language in which He described
His own project.”
Because our language is the
product of random choices made by those who sought to describe the world, there
is no reason now to be bound by that inherited language. The language of the
past certainly has influenced the way we think. However, we should create our
own new vocabulary if that would be more useful in solving our problems. “It is
essential to my view,” Rorty writes, “that we have no pre-linguistic
consciousness to which language needs to be adequate, no deep sense of how things
are which it is the duty of philosophers to spell out in language.” Truth,
Rorty says, is no more than what Nietzsche called “a mobile army of metaphors.”
The Contingency of Selfhood
Plato gave us the metaphor of two worlds: (1)
the world of time, appearance, and change and (2) the world of enduring,
changeless truth. Our lives involve an attempt to escape from the distractions
of the flesh and the dominant opinions of a particular time and place in order
to enter the real world of reason and contemplation. With this vocabulary Plato
created a language designed to describe the essence of human nature, implying
that there is only one true description of our human situation. As we face the
contingent events of our lives, we are to control our affections by the use and
power of our reason and thereby achieve moral and intellectual virtue.
Theologians offered basically this same metaphor, urging human beings to strive
toward our “true nature.” Similarly, Kant described the difference between our
daily experiences with their local influences on our choices, on the one hand,
and our internal moral consciousness, which reveals for all human beings our
timeless and universal moral laws, on the other. These versions of the two
worlds that we encounter represent the true world as compared with the
deceptive world that we must try to escape.
Rorty believed that Plato, the
theologians, and Kant imposed labels and descriptions of “the self” on our
consciousness as if these were absolutely true descriptions. There are, after
all, alternative ways of defining the self. If, for example, Nietzsche says
that “God is dead,” he implies that there is nothing more to reality than the
flow of events, and the flux of chance. Nor is there any universal moral law or
“true self.” This skepticism leaves the question of how to provide a meaning
for human life. There is no other choice, Nietzsche said, to which Rorty
agrees, than for each of us to give meaning to our own life by writing our own
language and describing our own objectives. In a real sense, each of us must be
involved in transforming our “self,” not by seeking the truth but by overcoming
the old self and by choosing and willing a new self. According to Rorty, “we
create ourselves by telling our own story.” Plato tried to describe human nature
in specific detail when he spoke of the tripartite aspect of the self,
including the physical body, the passions and affections, and, highest of all,
the mind. He assumed that our minds had a clear shot at the truth and could
overcome the contingent events encountered in daily life. But Rorty finds that
quite different descriptions of consciousness have been offered without
assuming a realm of eternal truth. On the contrary, he finds in the writings of
Freud a tripartite description of the self as nothing but the product of
contingent events. The sense of guilt is explained not by an innate knowledge
of the moral law. Rather, as Freud says, “a regressive degrading of the libido
takes place, the super-ego becomes exceptionally severe and unkind, and the
ego, in obedience to the super-ego, produces strong reaction formations in the
shape of conscientiousness, pity and cleanliness.” It may be that the metaphor
of the two worlds has been too powerful to overcome. But Freud replies that,
if one considers chance to be unworthy of
determining our fate, it is simply a relapse into the pious view of the
universe which Leonardo himself was on the way of overcoming when he wrote that
the sun does not move . . . we are all too ready to forget that in fact
everything to do with our life is chance, from our origin out of the meeting of
spermatozoon and ovum onwards. . . . Everyone of us human beings corresponds to
one of the countless experiments in which [the countless causes] of nature
force their way into experience.
The Contingency of Community
How can human beings live
together? That is, how can human beings achieve solidarity and community? Here,
again, Plato drew a tight connection between “the essential human nature” and
the social and political arrangement of the community. Plato thought that the
three classes of society were necessary extensions of the three parts of the
human soul or self. The artisans embody the physical element of the person, the
guardians express the spirited passions, and the rulers are the incarnation of
the mind, or reason. Plato also argued that there must first be a harmony among
the three parts of the private individual if the collective harmony of the
community is to be achieved. All the elements of the self must be subject to
and governed by the highest faculty, that is, by reason. Similarly, all the
classes of society must be subordinate to the ruler. This whole arrangement is
dictated by the structure of human nature.
Rorty disagrees with this notion
that our public life must be based on the antecedent facts of human nature.
Theologians have also offered their versions of the Platonic account of the
origin and justification of political authority, especially in their theory of
the divine rights of kings, while Marx drew from his description of history,
and from the relation of human beings to the material order of nature, a theory
of a classless society. These various vocabularies or languages describing the
good society are contingent on the special perspectives of each author. Each
account focuses on a different concept of “ultimate reality” and a different
view of essential human nature. It is not surprising, then, Rorty says, that
there can be no single concept of community that is required by some true
description of human nature.
For his part Rorty holds that
since there is no absolutely true account available of human nature, there is
no point in looking in that direction for some moral basis of society. The
contingency of language and the contingency of the self mean that there is no
reliable objective information that can lead to the right kind of community.
There is no theory of knowledge that can guarantee the just society—neither
“rationality, the love of God, [nor] the love of truth.” Instead, Rorty agrees with
the insights of Dewey as reflected by John Rawls in his Dewey Lectures:
What justifies a
conception of justice is not its being true to an order antecedent and given to
us, but its congruence with our deeper understanding of ourselves and our
aspirations, and our realization that, given our history and the traditions
embedded in our public life, it is the most reasonable theory for us.
The central values on which to
build a community are the values of freedom and equality, which are the ideals
of liberal democracy. It is not helpful, Rorty says, to ask at this point, “How
do you know that freedom is the chief goal of social organization?” any more
than it is to ask, “How do you know that Jones is worthy of your friendship?”
The preference for freedom and equality and the desire to eliminate suffering
are discovered not by reason but by chance. These values were not always
obvious, nor were they always chosen. They were not always options, for
example, for the Egyptians, nor can they be defended rationally against those
who refuse to accept them. The social glue that holds a liberal society
together consists in a consensus, Rorty says, in which everybody has an
opportunity at self-creation to the extent of their abilities. From the point
of view of his pragmatism, Rorty says that what matters most is the widely
shared conviction that “what we call ‘good’ or ‘true’ [is] whatever is the
outcome of free discussion,” for if we take care of political freedom, “truth
and goodness will take care of themselves.”
VIRTUE THEORY REVISITED
For much of the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries, moral philosophers were waging a war between two camps. On
the one side were empiricists who believed that morality is determined solely
by looking at the consequences of our conduct. If an action produces a greater
balance of happiness or benefit, then it is morally good. If it produces a
greater balance of unhappiness or disbenefit, then it is morally bad. A
representative from this camp is the utilitarian Jeremy Bentham, who argued
that we can very mechanically calculate the balance of happiness and
unhappiness that results from our actions. On the other side of the dispute
were rationalists who believed that humans are naturally implanted with moral
intuitions, similar to other rational concepts, such as the principle of cause
and effect. On this view, an act is morally good if we can rationally assess
that it is consistent with our moral intuitions. If inconsistent, then it is
morally bad. Kant is a representative of this camp. Moral empiricists argued
that, contrary to the rationalists, we simply have no rational moral
intuitions, and the rationalist approach is wishful thinking aimed at
discovering a universal and unchanging standard of morality. Moral
rationalists, on the other hand, charged that the empirical approach ignores
our truly rational nature and reduces morality to the whims of social groups.
Defenders of each side continually modifi ed and strengthened their theories in
response to attacks from their opponents. In recent decades, though, several
philosophers have argued that the entire dispute between these two camps is
misguided. On this view, moral philosophy went astray in the eighteenth century
when it set aside the central notion of ethics, namely, virtue, especially as
developed by Aristotle. Virtues, for Aristotle, are habits that regulate our
more animalistic desires. When we cultivate these virtuous habits, our actions
refl ect our natural purpose as rational and social creatures. The fi rst such
recent defense of virtue theory was by British philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe
(1919–2001).
Anscombe’s Defense
Anscombe was a student of Ludwig
Wittgenstein, and, inspired by her teacher’s views of the philosophy of mind,
she made considerable contributions to that fi eld as well. Her conception of
virtue theory appears in her essay “Modern Moral Philosophy” (1958). Anscombe
notes here that we commonly use several ethically loaded words in our moral
vocabulary. I say that you ought, must, or are obligated to do certain things.
These terms express a kind of moral edict or command. For example, if I say
that “you ought not steal,” then I imply that thieves violate some universal
moral law and are accordingly morally guilty and punishable. Where does this
notion of moral edict come from? She argues that Christian philosophers in the
Middle Ages introduced it. Preoccupied with the concept of divine law, medieval
philosophers believed that God was the ultimate authority behind proper
conduct. Actions such as stealing are sinful, and God demands that we avoid
these actions. Ultimately, for medieval philosophers, all morality involved
obedience to God’s laws or edicts. In more recent centuries philosophers such
as Hume and Kant offered secular accounts of the origin of morality. Hume in
particular was committed to offering a theory of morality that made no
reference to divine authority, but instead was grounded in feelings and other
psychological features of human nature. The problem, though, is that Hume and
others retained the medieval notions of ought and moral law while at the same
time casting off the idea of God as moral lawgiver. Put most simply, according
to Anscombe, the notion of “law” requires a lawgiver, and it makes no sense to
keep talking about obligations to moral laws once we abandon the notion of God
as moral lawgiver. However—and this is Anscombe’s key concern—philosophers from
Hume until the present day discuss notions of ought and moral law anyway.
Anscombe writes, “It is as if the notion ‘criminal’ were to remain when
criminal law and criminal courts had been abolished and forgotten.” Some
philosophers offer questionable explanations of the foundation of moral
obligation, and others concede that the concept of ought has no real content.
Nevertheless, the concepts of ought and moral law are central to current
ethical theories. In fact, such moral edicts are so embedded in contemporary
moral theories that the theories would collapse without them.
There is more at stake here than
simply a theoretical dispute among academic philosophers about the notions of
ought or moral law and the groundless edicts that emerge from contemporary
moral theories. According to Anscombe, some of the moral theories after Hume
have contributed to a dangerous kind of moral reasoning in real life. One such
theory is consequentialism —a revision of utilitarianism that Anscombe
associates with nineteenth-century British moral philosopher Henry Sidgwick. On
this theory right actions are those that bring about the best consequences that
we can foresee. For Anscombe the problem with this approach is that it fails to
distinguish between two completely different types of consequences. First,
there are consequences that involve intrinsic goods, such as telling the truth
and not killing. Second, there are more indirect consequences in which we might
say that the ends justify the means—such as stealing a loaf of bread to feed
one’s starving family. True morality, according to Anscombe, should focus on
intrinsic goods, without attempting to counterbalance these against the second
and more indirect type of consequences. In another essay she provides a vivid
example of how people sometimes blur these two consequences with disastrous
results. According to Anscombe, at the close of World War II, President Harry
Truman used consequentialist reasoning when deciding to drop atomic bombs on
the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. On one side of the balance,
Truman placed the negative consequence of killing tens of thousands of innocent
Japanese civilians; Anscombe contends that avoiding such killing would have
been a fundamentally good thing to do. On the other side of the balance, Truman
considered that the bombs would bring a quick end to the war, and thus serve as
a useful means to an end. Believing that the latter reasoning was more weighty,
he decided to drop the bombs—a decision that Anscombe believes was murderous.
Thus, consequentialism is not only fl awed but even hazardous when applied to
decisions like this. And, in turn, the misguided force of consequentialism
rests on the misguided conception of moral edicts embedded in concepts like
ought and moral law.
What is the solution to this
problem surrounding moral edicts? Anscombe herself is a secular moral theorist
and would not recommend reviving medieval Christian conceptions of divine law.
That is, she would not advise reinstating God as giver of the moral law.
Instead, she recommends that we simply reject all talk about moral law and
obligation and look to Aristotle for inspiration. Aristotle did not speak of
divine legislators or moral edicts. Instead, he described virtues— habits that
regulate our behavior in response to our animalistic appetites. People are bad,
not because they violate moral laws, but because they fail to acquire virtues and
instead develop vices such as cowardice, untruthfulness, unchasteness, or
unjustness. If we adopt Aristotle’s approach, not only will we abandon the
notions of ought and moral law, but we will also abandon all the notions in
moral psychology that philosophers since Hume have relied on, such as “action,”
“intention,” “pleasure,” and “wanting.” This amounts to “laying aside” the
whole discipline of moral philosophy until we have more adequate notions of
moral psychology that are consistent with Aristotle’s notion of virtue. In the
decades after the appearance of her essay, several philosophers took Anscombe’s
challenge to heart by rejecting consequentialism and other traditional
conceptions of moral obligation that involved moral edicts. These new virtue theorists
also explore the psychological underpinnings of moral virtues, attempting to
supplement Aristotle’s discussion with more current accounts of human nature.
Noddings’s Defense
One recent defender of virtue
theory is Nel Noddings, who in her essay “Ethics from the Standpoint of Women”
(1990) sees virtues as a way of articulating a uniquely female conception of
morality. Noddings and other feminist writers argue that much of our
intellectual heritage was not only formed by men but reflects a male way of
looking at the world. There is some controversy surrounding possible
differences between male and female ways of thinking. Male approaches, though,
tend to emphasize following rules, devising strict laws, and finding subtle
logical distinctions according to which we can categorize people and things.
Female ways of thinking, by contrast, emphasize a capacity for nurturing and
caring for others. We see this distinction when comparing vocations that tend
to be male-dominated—such as engineering and mathematics—with those that are
female-dominated—such as social work and education. Much of philosophy has been
driven by male ways of thinking and, perhaps in some ways, contaminated by it.
Ethics, Noddings argues, is a case in point. Kant, for example, argued that
morality is grounded in cold rational duty, even to the point that “acts done
out of love do not qualify as moral acts.” Nietzsche’s model of morality is
that of a warrior who casts aside traditional values and forges new ones. His
theory is “overtly and proudly masculine, and much of it depends directly on
the devaluation of women and all that is associated with the feminine.” Some of
these moral philosophers even blatantly make sexist statements, devaluing the
rational capacity of women and belittling female sentimentalism.
According to Noddings, the
solution to the problem caused by maleoriented ethical theories is to replace
them with ones that are female-oriented. Why, though, not just make ethics
gender-neutral? After all, moral theories aim at universalization, that is,
applying to all people. Focusing on only one gender undermines this. For
Noddings, though, “to construct an ethic free of gendered views may be
impossible in a thoroughly gendered society.” At minimum, femaleoriented
theories need to be proposed to counterbalance male theories, and perhaps at
some future time we can transcend them both with gender-neutral approaches. A
critic might still argue that the traditional activities and attitudes of women
have nothing to do with ethics and cannot serve as a basis for developing any
meaningful moral theory. Examples of tasks commonly imposed on women are child
rearing, cooking, cleaning, and homemaking. These all tend to be menial, and
even exploitive when imposed on women at the expense of more meaningful and
challenging life activities. Not only do men avoid these tasks and the
effeminacy associated with them, but many contemporary women also denounce them
as oppressive. Nevertheless, Noddings believes that even within these
traditional women’s activities we can fi nd a foundation for female ethics. The
theme that underlies all of these activities is care, or the capacity to
nurture other people. Even if contemporary women abandon these tasks
completely, the most oppressive of these activities still reflects an
orientation toward caring for others.
Noddings believes that the
ethical emphasis on care fi ts neatly into virtue theory. The caring attitude
itself is a habit that we cultivate, similar to other virtues such as courage
and temperance. Further, virtue theory and the caring attitude are both
resistant to the harsh rules of traditional moral theories. There is a
spontaneity to both virtuous and caring conduct that involves unique responses
to unique situations. This, though, does not mean that we should simply adopt
Aristotle’s theory of virtue just as it is. Aristotle’s account rests on an
elitist and male-dominated conception of society in which the lifestyles of
women and slaves were of no concern:
Aristotle’s identifi
cation of virtues depended almost entirely on the establishment of exclusive
classes and the activities appropriate to each. The virtues of women and of
slaves were not those of educated citizens. He made no attempt to identify
virtues in one class that might be cultivated in others by extending the range
of privilege or sharing the array of common tasks. If he had made such an
attempt, it would surely have moved in only one direction. One might try to
inculcate the virtues of the highest class into lower classes, but one would
never try to develop, say, feminine virtues in men.
We must, then, expand Aristotle’s
list of virtues by adding ones that refl ect the lifestyles of exploited
groups, particularly women.
Feminists might still question
whether women should identify themselves so boldly with a caring attitude. Just
as nurturing women in the past were exploited, perhaps caring women today may
make themselves vulnerable to the same kind of oppression. They may fi nd
themselves “dependent on men or on welfare in order to care for their children,
and are sometimes physically abused.” Noddings agrees that if only women
adopted the ethics of caring then, indeed, oppression toward women would
continue. What, though, if the attitude of caring was instilled in men, too?
This would force us to recognize that all humans are interdependent, regardless
of gender. With the right kind of moral education, we could instill in people a
virtue of care that contains proper limits and prevents people from taking
advantage of nurturers.
Virtue Epistemology
While interest in virtue theory
has been revived in the area of ethics, it has also expanded into a different,
seemingly unlikely arena of philosophy, namely, epistemology. Epistemology —the
study of knowledge—focuses on the ways that we acquire knowledge and the
standards that we use for maintaining that we know things, such as when I say,
“I know that the car in front of me is white.” The typical way of investigating
knowledge claims is to examine the critical properties of a belief, such as the
evidence supporting my belief that there is a white car in front of me. Virtue
epistemology, though, shifts the emphasis from the properties of my belief to
the properties of me the person. What are the specific mental qualities or
“virtues” that are behind my knowledge claims such as this one about the white
car? One group of virtue epistemologists, known as virtue reliabilists,
maintains that genuine knowledge is grounded in special mental faculties that
allow us to arrive at the truth of things in a reliable way. These
epistemologically virtuous faculties include perception, memory, introspection,
and logical reasoning. For example, for me to reliably know that the car in
front of me is white, I need to have a good perceptual faculty of vision when I
look at the car and a good memory about what the color “white” looks like.
Ernest Sosa, one of the early leaders of virtue reliabilism, describes
epistemological virtues as stable and reliable mental faculties that are “bound
to help maximize one’s surplus of truth over error.”
But a bolder version of virtue
epistemology, known as virtue responsibilism, maintains that the mental
abilities that are truly important for knowledge are good intellectual
character traits, such as inquisitiveness, thoroughness, fairmindedness,
open-mindedness, carefulness, and tenacity. Not only are these traits central
to our gaining knowledge, but they are character traits that a responsible
knower should possess. Inquisitiveness, for example, is a good thing for
responsible inquirers to have, since it prompts us to expand our knowledge of
the world. Thoroughness is good since it has us pursue explanations of
phenomena further than we would otherwise. Open-mindedness is good since it has
us consider alternative explanations of things that we might otherwise
initially reject. By possessing these virtues of inquisitiveness, thoroughness,
and open-mindedness, I might not be satisfied with the explanation that mice simply
spontaneously generate from old rags in my barn. Accordingly, I might set up an
experiment in which I closely monitor a pile of rags and see if a plump adult
female mouse shows up and delivers babies.
This conception of
epistemological virtues parallels more closely the traditional notion of moral
virtues forged by Aristotle. First, just as Aristotle maintained about moral
virtues, these epistemological virtues are acquired through practice and
eventually become habits of thinking. Linda Zagzebski, a leading proponent of
this approach, writes that “the stages of learning the intellectual virtues are
exactly parallel to the stages of learning the moral virtues as described by
Aristotle. They begin with the imitation of virtuous persons, [and] require practice
which develops certain habits of feeling and acting.” Second, each of these
intellectual virtues has a distinctly underlying moral component. Zagzebski
writes,
When people call
others shortsighted or pigheaded, their criticism is as much like moral criticism
as when they call them offensive or obnoxious; in fact, what is obnoxious about
a person can sometimes be limited to a certain pattern of thinking. The same
point can be made, in differing degrees, of a variety of other names people are
called for defects that are mostly cognitive: mulish, stiff-necked,
pertinacious, recalcitrant, or obstinate, wrongheaded, vacuous, shallow,
witless, dull, muddleheaded, thickskulled, or obtuse.
According to Zagzebski, two
features are present when we act upon epistemological virtues. One is our
virtuous motivation: Other intellectually virtuous people would perform the
same act in similar circumstances. The other feature is reliable success:
Through our virtuous conduct we arrive at truth.
There is a major difference
between how virtue reliabilists and virtue responsibilists envision the task of
epistemological virtues. For reliabilists such as Sosa, epistemological virtues
are cognitive faculties that humans typically possess naturally. However, for
responsibilists such as Zagzebski, we must work hard at acquiring intellectual
character traits, just as we do moral character traits. More importantly,
reliabilists and responsibilists differ regarding the general task of gaining
knowledge. By focusing on cognitive faculties like perception and memory,
reliabilists emphasize knowledge of our immediate surroundings, such as
knowledge that a car is white. However, if we wish to push the bounds of
knowledge in more interesting ways, such as discovering new scientific or historical
truths, we need to possess the intellectual character traits that
responsibilists list. For example, Galileo’s great scientific achievements in
astronomy were the result of more than just having good eyesight, memory, or
even logical reasoning. He needed open-mindedness to consider options that were
taboo at the time and tenacity to invent new ways of exploring the
possibilities.
CONTINENTAL PHILOSOPHY
By the mid-twentieth century, a
rift had developed between Anglo-American philosophers of the analytic
tradition and Continental European philosophers of the phenomenological and
existentialist tradition. The two groups differed in methodology, with analytic
philosophers emphasizing logic and language, and Continental philosophers
emphasizing ontological concerns of human nature and action. They also sought
inspiration from different major philosophers— Hume, Russell, and Wittgenstein
for analytic philosophers, and Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre for
Continental ones. In recent decades the gulf between the two has narrowed.
Analytic philosophy is now taught in European universities, and Continental
philosophy has made its way into British and American educational institutions,
particularly within English and literature departments. Recent Continental
philosophy is associated with several “isms” that overlap each other, including
structuralism, post-structuralism, and postmodernism. We will look at these.
Structuralism
Structuralism began in the early
1900s as a theory explaining the nature of language. Its champion, Swiss
linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913), was bothered by standard
nineteenth-century linguistic theories that presumed to find some commonality
between various foreign languages. As tempting as this approach might seem, Saussure
believed it was fundamentally mistaken. Each language, he argued, is a closed
formal system—an entity unto itself—with no significant connection to other
languages or even to the physical objects to which the words presumably refer.
A given language, such as English, consists of an arbitrary system of words
whose meanings are based solely on conventional structures or patterns of use.
A single word is like the thread of a fabric, whose function is determined only
in relation to the surrounding weave of threads; by itself the thread has no
function. For example, a toddler just learning how to pronounce words might be
hungry and say “muck”; by itself this word means nothing and certainly is not
what an adult means by it. An astute parent, though, will understand the larger
context of the toddler’s language abilities and behavior, and recognize that
the toddler means “milk.” Language, in short, is an arbitrary social
institution, and all the pieces of a language derive their meaning from that
larger system of social structures.
Saussure realized that his theory
had implications beyond language and in fact could apply to other systems of
social convention. Following his lead, several writers pushed the structuralist
agenda into the fi elds of anthropology, psychology, intellectual history, and
political theory. The unifying theme of this movement was that any cultural
object or concept gets its meaning from its surrounding cultural structures.
French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss (b. 1908) argued further that the
surrounding cultural structures will typically involve a pair of opposites,
such as male/female, odd/even, or light/dark. These paired opposites give
systems a stable logical structure. For example, the Hindu caste system
involves a hierarchy of social classes that are based on the paired opposites
of purity and impurity: The higher castes are more pure and the lower castes
are more impure. The two key components of the structuralist movement, then,
are (1) the meaning of a thing is defi ned by its surrounding cultural
structures, and (2) the system has a coherent structure that is reflected in
paired opposites. Suppose, I want to understand the meaning of a wedding ring.
It would be futile for me to investigate my own wedding ring in isolation from
everything else in my culture. Instead, I should try to understand the internal
structures of various wedding rings, such as whether they are fl ashy or modest
(paired opposites), and the meanings that these features convey in our culture.
I should also try to understand how wedding rings play a role in the larger
system of cultural structures, such as what signals wedding rings send to
others and how wearing a wedding ring might differ from wearing a high school
ring.
Although structuralism was not initially
developed as a philosophy per se, its philosophical implications soon became
apparent, and it quickly emerged in reaction against Sartre’s existentialism.
Sartre believed that individual people create their own natures through free
choices, and people are not predefined by their social surroundings.
Lévi-Strauss and other structuralists rejected this emphasis on individual
people and the subjectivism that existentialism implies. Just as wedding rings
are defi ned by larger social structures, so, too, are people, and we cannot
view ourselves as free, independent agents stripped of our social context. We
must always use other people as a basis for understanding ourselves. By the
1960s structuralism overshadowed existentialism as France’s most popular
philosophy.
Post-Structuralism
Post-structuralism—which appeared
in the 1970s—is both an expansion on and refutation of structuralism. Like
structuralism, post-structuralism has branched out into several disciplines,
perhaps most notably in the fi eld of literary criticism. Consider, for
example, what structuralists might say about interpreting a novel such as Gone
with the Wind. We might be tempted to see this book as a somewhat historical
discussion of the U.S. Civil War. However, structuralists would argue that the
meaning of particular passages in the book rests mainly on the structures
within the book itself, which is a closed system. Further, the structures in
the book involve paired opposites of war/peace, wealth/poverty, and
love/strife. Post-structuralism pushes the matter further. First, if Gone with
the Wind is truly a closed system, then I must exclude any fact or
consideration outside of that novel, such as what I might find in a history
book on the Civil War. I must even set aside the author’s intentions, which
also rest outside of the novel, such as what I might fi nd in a biography of
the author. Whatever meaning the book has depends on what I the reader think
about the book as I enter into that closed system. Since each reader will
likely have a different interpretation of the book, the book will have no
definitive meaning. Second, post-structuralists will argue that if we look
carefully for so-called paired opposites within Gone with the Wind, we will
find this to be an oversimplification. For example, although the book does
contain elements of love and strife, we also see indifference: “Frankly, my
dear, I don’t give a damn,” as Clark Gable expresses it in the movie.
Similarly, we don’t see only wealth and poverty, but middle-level income as
well. Structuralists believed that paired opposites provided logical coherence
to closed systems. But once we reject this notion of paired opposites—as
post-structuralists recommend—then we are left without any internal logical
structure of the book. Each reader, then, will play with the book, bringing his
or her own meaning to it.
In philosophy, post-structuralism
is most associated with French philosopher Jacques Derrida (b. 1930). Unlike
other post-structuralists who focus on literary criticism, Derrida targets
philosophy books. He argues that throughout the history of Western thought
philosophers have built their theories around key opposing concepts, such as
appearance/reality, opinion/knowledge, spirit/matter, and truth/falsehood. On
face value these opposing concepts might support the structuralist theory that
philosophical systems have a coherent structure, which is reflected in paired
opposites. However, just as we should reject paired opposites in novels,
Derrida believes that these philosophical concepts are also suspect. Through a
technique that he calls deconstruction, he attempts to show that all of these
paired opposites in philosophy are in fact self-refuting. For example, Husserl
emphasizes a distinction between what is present to our consciousness
(phenomena) and what is absent from it (whether the world exists). But when
Husserl himself explores what is actually present to our consciousness, he fi
nds that the “present” principally includes memories of what happened in the
past and anticipation of what will occur in the future. The problem now is that
neither the past nor the future are really “present” to our consciousness.
Thus, Husserl’s initial distinction between presence and absence collapses: The
two concepts are in fact intertwined. Derrida believes that we can similarly
deconstruct all of the standard paired opposites in philosophy. For example,
with the appearance/reality dichotomy, when attempting to describe reality, my
descriptions seem to be based solely on appearances, such as what appears to my
senses. Similarly, with the matter/spirit dichotomy, when attempting to say
something about spirits—my own spirit or a divine being—my descriptions are all
grounded in some material reality. Because the internal logic of such philosophical
systems is fl awed, no such system offers an adequate description of the world.
According to Derrida, one of the
more central dichotomies underlying philosophical discourse is that between
speech and writing. Rousseau drew this distinction most clearly. Speech,
Rousseau argued, is our natural form of communicating feelings, and as such it
conveys what is real and certain. Writing, by contrast, is a degraded copy of
speech. Because writing only indirectly conveys our
feelings, it relies on a series of conventional devices that ultimately distort
truth and are the source of illusion. However, Derrida argues, both speech and
writing involve basic elements of language, such as conventional use of symbols
and strict rules of grammar. In fact, we might argue that writing is a better
vehicle of language than speech because established conventions are so central
to language, and, on Rousseau’s reasoning, writing relies on conventions more
than speech.
Postmodernism
Post-structuralism and the
specific technique of deconstruction make quite skeptical pronouncements about
the success of traditional philosophical systems. Post-structuralists also cast
doubt on the possibility of finding meaning to the world beyond what we as
individual observers impose on things. It seems that the whole historical
enterprise of finding a unified meaning of things is fatally flawed. In Western
civilization the problem started during the Renaissance and Enlightenment
periods—the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries—when scientists and
philosophers ushered in a new and modern way of viewing the world. Scientists
hoped to find a unified system of physical laws that govern the natural world
around us. As an addendum to this scientific plan, philosophers described the
mechanisms of human thought, thereby explaining Philosophy how human beings and
human culture fit into the larger natural machinery. The philosophical theories
of humanism, rationalism, empiricism, and idealism all reflect the basic
assumption that the world is one and a single explanatory system governs
everything. All beliefs and values that we form are grounded in this unifying
system. This modern conception of things was passed on through the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries, right down to the present time. The modern notion of a
unified world system is a nice fairy tale, but a fairy tale nonetheless. We
need to step beyond this modern conception of things into a postmodern frame of
mind.
Postmodernism is not a single
philosophical theory; to be so would be self-defeating. Instead, it is an
umbrella movement that covers a variety of critiques of the modern conception
of things. Post-structuralism is perhaps the most dominant of these, and for
this reason the terms postmodern and post-structural are often used interchangeably.
However, much of recent philosophy targets modernism and thus would also count
as postmodern. Rorty rejected the standard conception that there are “essences”
to things, such as human nature. Anscombe challenged the “lawgiver” assumption
behind modern moral theories. Feminist philosophers reject the largely
maleoriented manner of imposing rigid schemes on things. We even find hints of
postmodernist attitudes in earlier times, such as with Nietzsche, who rejected
traditional value structures of the masses. Even American pragmatists such as
Dewey rejected fixed solutions to standard philosophical issues and argued that
there is no “givenness” about the world. Much of postmodernist discussion
extends well beyond the discipline of philosophy, which is only one
manifestation of modern culture. Literature, music, art, theater, film, and
architecture are also under the sway of modernist attitudes of unified order,
symmetry, and harmony. Postmodernist writers, musicians, and artists thus
attempt to break the traditional molds of their respective genres.
POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
Some major developments within
recent political philosophy have involved enlarging on well-established
theories of the past, rather than the construction of all-new theories. Two
cases in point are the theories of John Rawls (1921–2002) and Robert Nozick
(1938–2002), whose views are both firmly grounded in traditional social
contract theory, while, at the same time, pushing the concept in diametrically
opposite directions.
Rawls: Justice as Fairness
Rawls was a philosophy professor
at Harvard University for nearly 40 years, and among his various writings, the
most influential is A Theory of Justice (1971). In this work he argues that
social policies should be grounded in the notion of fairness. We create a fair
set of guidelines through a process whereby we ignore our actual economic
position within society and thus make decisions impartially. The guidelines we
arrive at will guarantee equal rights and duties for all, and also regulate
wealth in a way that would benefit both rich and poor. This view permits
governments to restrict an individual’s accumulation of property for the
betterment of others. The heart of Rawls’s view is a version of social contract
theory that he devised as an answer to what he saw as inadequacies with
utilitarian social theory. The key problem with utilitarianism, for Rawls, is
that an individual’s rights may be violated if the consequences of doing so
benefit society as a whole. For example, we could conceive of a situation in
which enslaving a minority group of people would bring about the greatest good
for the greatest number of people. Rawls believes a theory of justice that is
grounded in fairness avoids this problem, since the rules of justice would be
agreed to in an initial contractual situation which is fair for all people
involved, including the minority group in question. He titles his view “justice
as fairness.”
For Rawls, the starting point of
forming a just society is what he calls “the original position,” which is a
hypothetical community of people who are rational, equal, and self-interested.
These people are not trying to start a new social system, but, instead, seeking
to establish a mutually beneficial set of principles that will reform and
regulate all rights and duties within their system. They are, he argues, “the
principles that free and rational persons concerned to further their own
interests would accept in an initial position of equality as defining the
fundamental terms of their association.” In establishing this foundational
guideline, the people see themselves behind a veil of ignorance. That is, they
assume to be ignorant about their actual position in society, such as how rich
or powerful they are. He writes, “I shall even assume that the parties do not
know their conceptions of the good or their special psychological
propensities.” This assures that they will not create a foundational guideline
that gives them special benefits.
The original position, then, is a
state of impartiality and equality. It is impartial since, behind the veil of
ignorance, there is no special consideration given to one’s natural assets,
such as one’s personal education and wealth. “For example, if someone knew that
he was wealthy, he might find it rational to advance the principle that various
taxes for welfare measures be counted unjust. On the other hand, if he knew
that he was poor, he would most likely propose the contrary principle.
To represent the desired
restrictions, one imagines a situation in which everyone is deprived of this
sort of information.” It is also a state of equality, since all have the same
right in determining the foundational principle of justice. These, then, are
the basic parameters of the original position, and it should be left up to the
negotiators themselves to stipulate more specifically what things they should
presume to be ignorant about. For example, Rawls feels that our society has
already reached agreement about religious tolerance and racial injustice, so we
may not need to place these behind the veil of ignorance. However, “we have
much less assurance as to what is the correct distribution of wealth and
authority,” and, thus, knowledge of our actual wealth and power is something
that we would place behind the veil of ignorance.
The aim of the original position
is to arrive at precise rules of justice that are most acceptable to everyone.
As we set up the parameters of the original position—exactly what we should
place behind the veil of ignorance—we will be able to evaluate proposed
principles of justice according to our common moral intuitions. We can then
adjust the circumstances of the original position so that it gives rise to the
notion of justice that conforms with our intuitions. This “going back and
forth” from the original position to one’s actual intuitions on justice is
called reflective equilibrium. However, Rawls argues that this does not involve
an appeal to self-evident moral truths about justice as intuitionist
philosophers in the past have done. Rather, “its justification is a matter of
the mutual support of many considerations, of everything fitting together into
one coherent view.”
Behind the veil of ignorance, Rawls argues,
the negotiators would adopt two specific rules of justice: one that assures
equal rights and duties for all, and a second that regulates power and wealth.
They are these:
• Each person is to have an equal
right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for
others.
• Social and economic
inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both (a) reasonably expected
to be to everyone’s advantage, and (b) attached to positions and offices open
to all.
The first principle generates
specific rights and duties, such as those regarding speech, assembly,
conscience, thought, property, arbitrary arrest, and political liberties of
voting and holding office. Every
rational and self-interested person would want these to the fullest extent
possible. The second principle regulates the fair distribution of wealth and
power. To understand how these principles work, Rawls suggests that we start
with the assumption that all rights, duties, wealth, and power should be
equally distributed among all members of society. But, if certain inequalities
would then make everyone better off, then these inequalities are permissible
according to the second rule above. For example, it is cumbersome for each
citizen to have equal political control. Everyone benefits if political power is
concentrated in the hands of a few, as with representative democracies. Thus,
“the general conception of justice imposes no restrictions on what sort of
inequalities are permissible; it only requires that everyone’s position be
improved.” Any equality may be permitted, perhaps even slavery, so long as each
person benefits from that inequality, including the slave. According to Rawls,
this is the point that makes his theory of “justice as fairness” superior to
utilitarianism. For, under utilitarianism, an individual slave’s unhappiness
does not matter, so long as general happiness is served by that inequality.
“Injustice, then, is simply inequalities that are not to the benefit of all.”
Rawls recognizes that Part A of
the second principle is the most controversial aspect of his account. He calls
this the “difference principle,” and it has two implications. First, people
with fewer natural assets, such as education and wealth, deserve special
considerations. Differences in natural assets are the result of what is
sometimes called the natural lottery. The natural lottery is arbitrary, and
therefore the principle of redress dictates that we should compensate those
with fewer natural assets. For example, he suggests, “greater resources might
be spent on the education of the less rather than the more intelligent, at
least over a certain time of life, say the earlier years of school.” It would
be unrealistic to attempt to eliminate such natural distinctions altogether,
but there are ways of structuring society so that these differences work for
the good of the less fortunate as well as for the more fortunate. Second, Rawls
argues that even rich people should agree to give up some wealth for the poor,
since in the end they gain simply by being in a society of mutual cooperation.
For, “it is clear that the well-being of each depends on a scheme of social
cooperation without which no one could have a satisfactory life.”
On the political spectrum from
conservative to liberal, Rawls’s theory falls on the liberal side, and is often
classified as “welfare liberalism.” What makes it liberal in character is that
wealthier people in society need to give up some of their wealth to the less
fortunate members to help redress the unfairness of the natural lottery. Behind
the veil of ignorance, we would recognize this as the fair thing to do.
Further, behind the veil of ignorance, I would want to enact such liberal
social policies as a kind of insurance policy to protect me personally since,
once the veil of ignorance is removed, it may turn out that I am one of
society’s less fortunate people who could benefit from a redistribution of
society’s wealth.
Nozick: Minimalist Government
Shortly after the appearance of
Rawls’s Theory of Justice, Harvard University philosophy professor Robert
Nozick published his book Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), which was quickly
seen as a conservative answer to Rawls. Nozick argued that the role of
governments should be minimal and limited to securing our rights—especially the
right to property. Governments are not justified in taking away private
property against our wills, even when it is for a good cause such as helping
needy people. Nozick’s theory is often classified as “libertarian” in the sense
that it aims to preserve as much of our individual liberty as
possible—especially economic liberty, even if that means that there will be a
wide gap in society between the wealthy and the poor.
For Nozick, only a government
with very minimal responsibilities is justified, and anything beyond that would
violate our rights. There are some anarchist political philosophers who believe
that no government is justifiable since they all are coercive and restrictive
by their very nature. But Nozick does not go quite that far. There is a natural
justification for minimalist governments with a very narrowly defi ned role of
protecting its citizens. In the state of nature, he argues, each person is
entitled to protect himself against others. Being on guard to protect one’s
home twenty-four hours a day is a daunting task, and the first significant
development beyond private attempts at self-defense would be the creation of
mutual-protection associations. To make our lives more manageable, “groups of
individuals may form mutual-protection associations: all will answer the call
of any member for defense or for the enforcement of his rights.” These would be
something like private security companies, which would protect their members’
property and punish violators. While different protection associations might
develop different mechanisms for resolving conflicts, “most persons will want
to join associations that follow some procedure to find out which claimant is
correct.”
Once I become a member of a
mutual-protection association, the association would limit my right to individual
retaliation, thus eliminating the confusion that would arise from one vigilante
retaliating against another, and then another against another, and so on. To
make the protection process more efficient, each protection association would
develop procedures for handling conflicts with clients of other protection
associations. Conflicts between different associations would soon lead to the
development of a common system that judges between competing claims. In time,
it would be natural for smaller associations to join together and create a
dominant protective association, and, in turn, these would eventually develop
into minimal states. From the formation of tiny, private protection
associations to bare-bones minimal states, each stage in its advancement is
justified and unavoidable: “Out of anarchy, pressed by spontaneous groupings,
mutual-protection associations, division of labor, market pressures, economies
of scale, and rational self-interest there arises something very much
resembling a minimal state or a group of geographically distinct minimal
states.”
Nozick argues that “The minimal
state is the most extensive state that can be justified. Any state more
extensive violates people’s rights.” It is reasonable for governments to
acquire the power to protect and punish offenders, but it is not justifi able
when governments force us to give up some of our property to pay for other
projects, such as welfare programs. The philosophical term for the reallocation
of society’s resources is called distributive justice, and Nozick argues that
the term itself is a biased one since it presumes that the redistribution of
private wealth should even take place. Thus, distributive justice is not
justice at all, and, Nozick says, the only theory of property ownership that is
consistent with the concept of a minimal state is the theory of entitlement.
Entitlement has two main components. The fi rst is the principle of justice in
acquisition whereby we initially acquire property by just means, such as making
an object from raw materials that no one owns. The second is the principle of
justice in transfer whereby we voluntarily transfer that property to another
person by just means, such as through a gift or sales contract. If the world
were completely just, the following three points would “exhaustively cover the
subject of justice in holdings”:
1. A person who acquires a
holding in accordance with the principle of justice in acquisition is entitled
to that holding.
2. A person who acquires a
holding in accordance with the principle of justice in transfer from someone
else entitled to the holding, is entitled to the holding.
3. No one is entitled to a
holding except by (repeated) applications of 1 and 2.
Any other mechanism for
reassigning property will violate our rights. When, for example, the government
taxes us to improve the conditions of the poor, this is really just forced
labor since I will be working for the benefit of others without any choice or
reward.
Nozick says that his entitlement
theory follows what he calls an historic principle for distributing wealth,
that is, it considers how we came to acquire our property. While this, he
argues, is the only just way of considering the distribution of wealth, other
theories disregard historical ownership. They focus instead on only the current
distribution of ownership as it appears right now in the current-time-slice.
For example, utilitarianism holds to a current-timeslice position since it
advocates distributing wealth based on the greatest good for the greatest number
right now, without considering how we arrived at our wealth. Similarly,
governmental welfare programs consider only the currenttime-slice by focusing
on how much money people have right now, and then take from the wealthy to help
the poor. What is wrong with current-time-slice approaches is that they
consider only some end result —such as utility, or social welfare, or the
elimination of poverty—and not the historical back story. For Nozick, most
people reject current-time-slice approaches since “they think it relevant in
assessing the justice of a situation to consider not only the distribution it
embodies, but also how that distribution came about.”
In addition to offering a
conservative libertarian vision of social justice that is distinct from Rawls’s
welfare liberalism, Nozick also criticizes specific components of Rawls’s view.
In particular he questions the rules of justice that Rawls derives from the
original position since, Nozick believes, they unfairly benefit the poor at the
expense of the rich. Nozick theoretically grants Rawls’s account of the
original position—many critics of Rawls would not grant even that much. His
objection is that people in the original position will not accept Rawls’s
second rule of justice that requires that the rich make sacrifices for the
poor. We have seen that, according to Rawls, the rich sacrifice something to
benefit the poor, but, in exchange, the rich also receive a greater gain by
being in a society of mutual cooperation. This is sometimes called the minimax principle:
a minimum loss produces a maximum gain. Nozick objects, though, that it is not
clear how much the rich gain from mutual cooperation. The rich might prefer a
principle of justice that would cost them much less, even if it has less
cooperative benefit.
Further, Nozick considers these
to rival proposals from the poor and rich respectively:
“Look, better endowed:
you gain by cooperating with us. If you want our cooperation, you’ll have to
accept reasonable terms. We suggest these terms: We’ll cooperate with you only
if we get as much as possible . . .”
“Look, worse endowed:
you gain by cooperating with us. If you want our cooperation, you’ll have to
accept reasonable terms. We propose these terms: We’ll cooperate with you so
long as we get as much as possible. . .”
Based on how Rawls develops the original
position, it is no more outrageous to establish an agreement that produces a
higher benefit for the rich, than one that produces a higher benefit for the
poor. Thus, for Nozick, Rawls’s endorsement of the difference principle is
arbitrary. Nozick also criticizes Rawls for ignoring the manner in which
natural assets are acquired. We noted above that, for Rawls, all natural assets
are arbitrary, such as people who become rich through inheritance. But Nozick
responds that people are entitled to their natural assets if they were acquired
legitimately. Consider, for example, that a group of students take an exam, do
not know how they did, and must decide on a procedure for assigning grades.
They consider several procedures. An equity principle would have the result
that all students receive the same grade. An historical entitlement principle
would have the result that grades would be based on the number of correct
answers given, and this, in turn, would hinge on how much a student studied. A
strange reverse entitlement position would have the result that the highest
historical entitlement scores are swapped with the lowest historical
entitlement scores. Even stranger is that, in the eyes of the students, the
historical entitlement and reverse entitlement principles might be on equal
footing, since the students do not yet know how they performed on the test.
Nozick’s point is that Rawls’s veil of ignorance locks us into a position where
we can only consider a principle of wealth distribution if it is not based on
historical entitlement—how we came by it. That is, the veil of ignorance will
only allow for end-result principles of distribution, such as equality, that
are not historically linked to how we came by our wealth. The problem,
according to Nozick, is that we should accept end result (nonhistorical)
explanations only if all historical entitlement principles fail first. True
entitlement assumes that the past history of the property owner is central to the
legitimacy of his claim to ownership. The veil of ignorance, though, strips us
of any knowledge of our history, and, thus, the principles of distributive
justice that we arrive at will rest on end-result principles.
SUMMARY
Recent philosophy is driven more
by a diversity of movements than by individual authors who single-handedly
reshape the discipline. One prominent issue is the materialist approach to the
mind-body problem. According to Ryle, the traditional dualist conception of the
relation between mind and body was that of a “ghost in a machine”: human bodies
are in space and are governed by mechanical physical laws, while minds do not
exist in space and are not subject to such laws. The problem with this view,
Ryle argued, is that it commits a category mistake: it assumes that there is
some thing or substance called “mind” over and above a person’s various
behavioral dispositions. Ryle’s view, now called logical behaviorism, is that
talk of mental events should be translated into talk about predictable and
observable behavior. Ryle’s position, though, ignored the important fact that
our brains are the source of our behavior, and a rival view called identity
theory addressed this oversight by maintaining that mental states are identical
to brain activity, but are just viewed from two different perspectives.
Although identity theory confines
mental states to biological brains, an alternative theory called functionalism
allows for other complex physical structures such as computers to also have
mental states. What matters is the network of connections that generate mental
states, not the specific physical stuff of which those connections are
composed. An important type of functionalist theory is that of artificial
intelligence. Weak artificial intelligence is the view that suitably programmed
machines can simulate human cognition, whereas strong artificial intelligence
maintains that suitably programmed machines are actually capable of cognitive
mental states. Using his now famous Chinese Room argument, Searle criticized
the possibility of strong artificial intelligence: even if a computer program
appears to meaningfully interpret nuances of a story, the program does not
really understand the story the way that the human mind does. For Searle,
biological brains are required for human minds, yet, at the same time, mental
states cannot be understood merely in the language of brain activity.
Rorty argued that contemporary
analytic philosophy has not fundamentally changed the direction of philosophy,
since, like Descartes or Kant, it also assumes that the mind is like a great
mirror containing representations of nature. That is, there is (1) a “knowing
subject,” (2) a “reality out there,” and (3) a “theory of representation” that
describes how reality is represented to the knowing subject. According to
Rorty, the entire philosophical metaphor of the mind as a mirror must be
rejected. Drawing from Dewey’s pragmatism, Rorty argued that there is no fixed
external nature that the mind must mirror. Rather, everything we encounter in
our experience is contingent and subject to change. Language is contingent in
that it is the result of random choices made by people before us who sought to
describe the world. The self is contingent in that we each transform our “self”
by overcoming the old self and choosing a new self. The community is contingent
in that there is no reliable objective information that can lead to the right
kind of community. New versions of virtue theory have been of particular
interest among women philosophers. Anscombe argued that the secular modern
moral theories of consequentialism and Kantianism are fl awed in that they rely
on an empty concept of the moral law. The notion of “law” requires a lawgiver,
and it makes no sense to keep talking about obligations to moral laws once we
abandon the notion of God as moral lawgiver. Virtue theory, according to
Anscombe, offers a better approach since it advocates the development of
virtuous habits without relying on concepts of the moral law. Noddings argued
that Aristotle’s list of virtues needs to be expanded to include those that are
relevant to the female experience, particularly the virtue of caring for
others. Virtue epistemologists argue that the concept of a “virtue” applies to
theories of knowledge just as it does to moral theory. Traditional epistemology
emphasizes that knowledge is grounded in specific properties of belief,
specifically that my belief is true and justifiable. Virtue epistemology
maintains instead that knowledge is grounded in having appropriate mental
qualities or “virtues,” such as inquisitiveness, thoroughness, and
fair-mindedness. In contemporary continental philosophy, Saussure’s theory of
structuralism maintained that language is an arbitrary social institution, and
all the pieces of a language derive their meaning from that larger system of
social structures. Lévi-Strauss argued further that cultural structures will
typically involve a pair of opposites, such as male/female, odd/even, or
light/dark. Post-structuralists, who reject the assumptions of structualists,
often focus on literary criticism and hold that each reader of a particular
book will likely have a different interpretation of it, and the book will have
no definitive meaning. Derrida applied this approach to philosophy. Past
philosophers, he argued, built their theories around concepts of paired
opposites, such as appearance-reality, which might imply some coherent
structure. But through the technique of deconstruction we discover that all
such paired opposites are self-refuting. Post-structuralism is part of a larger
movement called post-modernism, which disputes the modern assumption forged
during the Enlightenment that the world is a single explanatory system that
governs everything. Two dominant writers in contemporary political philosophy
are Rawls and Nozick. Rawls argued that social justice is a matter of fairness,
and we address problems of unfairness in a social contract situation.
Negotiators step behind a veil of ignorance that prevents each from knowing his
or her actual status in society. Since each negotiator must face the
possibility that he or she is poor and in need of help, each then adopts rules
of justice that require some redistribution of wealth. Nozick argued the
opposite position that in a social contract situation we would opt for a
minimal government with no redistribution of wealth. Negotiators would
recognize the benefit of paying for private protection agencies that would
guard one’s property and punish offenders. These would naturally expand to
small governments, which have only policing responsibilities. But beyond this,
Nozick argued, governments have no authority to tax their citizens for welfare
or social programs.
