Critique of Rationality: Judgement and Creativity from Benjamin to Merleau-Ponty (Studies in Critical Social Sciences) (Studies in Critical Social Sciences, 99) 9789004272736, 9789004272644, 9004272739

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Critique of Rationality

Studies in Critical Social Sciences Series Editor David Fasenfest (Wayne State University) Editorial Board Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (Duke University) Chris Chase-Dunn (University of California-Riverside) William Carroll (University of Victoria) Raewyn Connell (University of Sydney) Kimberlé W. Crenshaw (University of California, la, and Columbia University) Heidi Gottfried (Wayne State University) Karin Gottschall (University of Bremen) Mary Romero (Arizona State University) Alfredo Saad Filho (University of London) Chizuko Ueno (University of Tokyo) Sylvia Walby (Lancaster University)

VOLUME 99

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/scss

Critique of Rationality Judgement and Creativity from Benjamin to Merleau-Ponty

By

John Eustice O’Brien

LEIDEN | BOSTON

Cover illustration: Ground Swell by Edward Hopper. Oil on Canvas, 1939. Source: Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase, William A. Clark Fund); National Gallery of Art. The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov lc record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016034431

Want or need Open Access? Brill Open offers you the choice to make your research freely accessible online in exchange for a publication charge. Review your various options on brill.com/brillopen. Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 1573-4234 isbn 978-90-04-27273-6 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-27264-4 (e-book) Copyright 2016 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, ma 01923, usa. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents Preface ix Acknowledgements xvii List of Figures xviii

part 1 What Crisis of Rationality? Socrates, Make Music... 3 1 Overview 4 Institutional Challenge 5 Social Restructuring of Judgement 8 Another Epistemology? 10 Political Aesthetics after Marx 12 2 Meaning as Critical for Social Sciences 16 The Origin of Meaning 16 Phenomenology 18 Merleau-Ponty’s Apperceptive Project 20 Préobjectivity: A Better Ambiguity? 21 Theoretical Voices on Deep Structure 23 Marx Critique 28 3 Isaiah Berlin’s Romantic Uncertainty 33 Western Rationality’s Limits? 33 Children of Two Worlds 33 Romantic Undefinability 35 Beyond Enlightenment 38 Pre-Romantic Good 39 From Hume to the Germans? 41 Romanticism’s Parents 43 Romanticism Restrained 48 Kant’s Reserves 48 Schiller’s Tragic Romanticism 50 Fichte’s Freedom as Necessity 55 Romanticism Unleashed 57

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The French Revolution and Goethe 60 Against Old Fashioned Virtue? 62 Subjective—Objective Reversal? 64 Romanticism’s Politics 65

4 Walter Benjamin’s Aesthetic Critique 67 Benjamin’s Doctoral Trial 67 What Does the Figure, Aesthetic-Critique, Intend? 70 Pure Language or Creative Expression? 72 Historical-Materialism or Historical-Idealism? 74 Lost in the Paris Arcades 76 On Critique 78 Hegel and History 81 Benjamin’s Leap into Being 86 What is Mental Reflection? 88 What is a History of Problematics? 90 Knowledge of Nature 92 Connaissance Esthétique 96 Political Esthetics 100 Benjamin’s Translator Emerges 102 Immanent Critique 104 Three Principles of Judgement 107 Productivity of Bad Art 108 Unprincipled Objectivity 109 Were the Early Romantics Misread? 110 Irony of Ironies: There are Two 111 The Paradox of Irony 112 From Disqualified Illusion to Potent Fetish 113 Between the Seams with Irony 114 Critical Eschatology? 115 On the Impossibility of Ironic Suicide 115 There is Form and There is Form… 116 The Idea of Art, Then 118 Unity and Diversity 120 Determined Idea 121 Transcendental Leverage 123 Symbolic Form as Fact and Manner 125 Novel Supremacy as Romantic Poetry 126 The Intention of Prose 128 Romanticism as Cultural Figure 129 Prosaic Appreciation Outmaneuvers Bourgeois Beauty 130

Contents



Each Critic for Herself 131 Closing on Isaiah Berlin 133 Closing on Walter Benjamin 134 Revolutionary Possibilities 136 What’s to be Done? 137

PART 2 Phenomenal Apperception 5 The Crisis of Western Rationality 143 Existence as Fine Art? 143 Introducing Merleau-Ponty 146 6 Phenomenology of Perception 150 Not Sartre 151 What is Phenomenology? 154 What is Perception? 156 Préobjectivity 164 Historical Materialism as Social Being 167 Existential Conception of History 172 Dialectics from the Greeks to Marx 176 Temporality 179 Political Aesthetics 184 Freedom 187 7 Merleau-Ponty’s Sociology 192 Anthropology and Psychoanalytics 194 On Husserl 195 Appreciation before Comprehension 197 Husserl’s Crisis 198 Historical Relativism as Anthropological Fact 200 Philosophy and Sociology 201 Historical Consciousness 202 Being Expressed as Phenomenological Method 202 8 Merleau-Ponty’s Shadow’s Husserl 205 Husserl’s Intellectualist Phenomenology 205 Merleau-Ponty’s Engaged Phenomenology 210 In the Wake of the Negative 213 Intersubjective Flash of Meaning 214

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Mobius Ribbon of Being 216 Intentionality and Constitution 217

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Aesthetic Consciousness 219 Overview 219 Summarizing Merleau-Ponty 220 Préobjective Precocity 224 Consciousness and Bodily-Being 229 Consciousness as Active Presence 232

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Closing Issues: Consciousness over Mind? 239 Remaining Questions 239 Auto-critique 241 Meaning: The Material of History 241 Rational Analytics of Brain 243 Consciousness is More than What You Think 246 An Appeal to Social-Philosophy 249 Consciousness vs Conscious-Access 253 The Risk of Systemic Exuberance 255 Intuition and Public Choice 262 Social Cognition 267 The Elusive Seat of Consciousness 271 Summarizing Our bi Studies 274 Political Aesthetics: Consciousness and Society 275 Closing 280

Bibliography 285 Index 295

Preface This is a critique of rationality, including a suggestion for amelioration of the negative cultural condition thus identified. Part 1 of the book contains an assessment of the problem of rationality, with Part 2 providing a proposal for rectification of that problem. The novel offering described by the end of the work depends on a modified model of human being, recentered on the capacity of what is labeled aesthetic-consciousness, as the real-time basis for appreciation of and participation in the web of relations that constitute a social world. Not directly anchored in any orthodoxy, the perspective developed here was none the less derived from a careful reading of many important texts, with only a few highlighted here. To begin, the critique of rationality is anchored in a movement that began in Germany at the turn of the 19th century just after the French Revolution (1789) and completion by Immanuel Kant of his third Critique of Judgement (1790).1 In a way, by bringing the revolutionary spirit to bear as the basis of a critique of Kant, it was among participants to that movement that the central question concerning us here was first raised. Our issue is less with the details of what occurred then than with the still unresolved ambiguity associated with the epistemological problems raised at that time. For that reason, it was decided to deal with the Romantic critique by using two 20th century commentaries as point of entry, a study of which supplies the meat for the central chapters of Part 1 of this book. The first is the type-script from a set of lectures given by Isaiah Berlin in Washington d.c. in 1965, providing a social-historical description of what he identified as the roots of Romantic Movement. The second text is the published version (in French translation) of the doctoral thesis of Walter B ­ enjamin, rendering an incisive exploration of the social philosophical mission and lingering issues associated with the early German Romantic Movement. As a preliminary notice it should be recognized that this yet to be translated into English text provides an invaluable opening for understanding Benjamin’s ­critique perspective, which over recent generations has assumed looming importance in the humanities and critical social sciences.

1 The first part of Kant’s third critique was a Critique of Aesthetic Judgement; there he discussed four forms of what he called reflective-judgement: the agreeable, beautiful, sublime and the good. He considered reflective judgement as of limited general power; differing with that assessment was an essential motive for the Early German Romantics.

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With the problem thus specified, in Part 2 of the book, we rest our proposed resolution for the Romantic’s ambiguity on the intellectual shoulders of the French social philosopher, Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The middle chapters, then, consist of careful studies of three of his important texts. On that basis, we construct a model of what we postulate as aesthetic-consciousness (which he labeled as perceptual and historical consciousness). This involves an essentialist argument in counterpoint to the usual view about the mainspring of human action as if centered in the rational cognitive capacities of the mind. Since as we conceive it, aesthetic consciousness is both a social construction and social expression, our treatment of the problem of knowing, doing, acting, judging and creativity shifts the center of gravity of human experience out of the mind into the social world. To justify the pivotal out-reaching, in-taking action that we attribute to aesthetic-consciousness for human existence, we assiduously extract from Merleau-Ponty’s work the attention he gives to what he identifies as the “préobjective” disposition for meaning that supplies the energy animating human consciousness thus conceived. By that, aesthetic consciousness is thus proposed to be the default state of human realization in the world. Although Merleau-Ponty does not use the term in the texts we study, this amounts to a postulate about the species-being unique to humans and their social world. Although never reduced to tabular form, the study thus involves an argument pitting cognitive rationality, centered in mind, versus apperceptive rationality, centered in consciousness. Consciousness is a term of broad use, including application by specialists in the study of brain centered cognitive processing who reference it as conscious access. That refers to the process by which, for example, a subject in a laboratory focuses on the shape of an image following instructions to provide an identity for it. Counter to that, our reference to aesthetic consciousness refers to consciouspresence. In the example above this would be the state of consciousness that is generically necessary for both the laboratory subjects and the experimenters in order that what occurs in the joint space they occupy is understandable (logically and meaningfully) as a research test, rather than, for instance, a therapy session or an exercise in ouiga-board reading. If we are accurate, consciousness-presence is a precondition for consciousaccess, which is precondition in turn for cognitive activity that links external sensory conditions to ideas that fit with the intellectual-conceptual arrangements of mind. If consciousness presence holds that originating position for human experience, then its defining qualities and capacities are predispositions for the intellectual—conceptual activity rather than vice-versa. That chain of logic justifies our postulate that, drawing its energy from the p ­ réobjective field

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that founds the species-being of humans, aesthetic-consciousness establishes the frame for objective rational activity. As we see it, while the end point of rational cognitive activity is truth, the end point of aesthetic-consciousness is meaning. If that is so, then it is the quest for meaning that drives engagement in the social world, establishing the basis of truth as that might be established by the tools of cognitive rationality. If for some reason, the method for establishing rational or cognitive truth is dissociated from the frame of aesthetic-consciousness, even if objectively valid, truth thus established will be subjectively meaningless because in violation of the species-being of humans. Taken from the top then, our critique of rationality is the claim that Western determination by technically advanced methods of rational investigation has extracted the pursuit of truth from the frame of aesthetic-apperception on which human integration in society depends. As a result, in spite of endlessly multiplying production of technical accomplishments, the resulting organization of society based on that technical accomplishment is foreign to the species-being of humanity, resulting in a crisis of alienation. Although only indirectly associated, ours can be read as an elaboration of the Marx critique of alienation, which he leveled during his early years. At that point in his work he focused on the essential aspects of humanness: a particular consciousness of being human as it materialized historically; as a set of practices in which labor in the most general sense transforms the natural world into a social world, marking the dialectical movement of human experience called society. The way young Marx put this is well known: It is therefore in his fashioning of the objective [world] that man really proves himself to be a, species-being. Such production is his active ­species-life. Through it nature appears as his work and his reality. The object of labor is therefore the objectification of the species-life of man: for man reproduces himself not only intellectually, in his consciousness, but actively and actually, and he can therefore contemplate himself in a world he himself has created. marx, 1974/1844: 329

From that premise, we argue that the excessively, one might say obsessively technically-instrumental world now created in the image of the rational knowing mind, does not reflect what humans are as aesthetic-beings. We humans seek not only release from material necessity in technical-material terms, but to do so in a fashion that assures meaning in the world of our collective constitution. Should this imbalance not be righted, then one can only expect the

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crisis associated with the internal contradictions of the structuring order of Western Society to intensify. Our critique of rationality is not aimed at discrediting the use of means— ends evaluation as the basis for action. Nor is it assumed fallacious to purse the ends that date from the Enlightenment: progress, justice and freedom are unarguably noble goals. What is challenged is the limited view of the better means with which to attain those results: as if under every circumstance, instrumental logic holds the secret for global well-being. If the means to every end is anchored by intellectualist-conceptual rationality, then the deeper dimensions of human meaning are unattainable; yielding hard-core forms of material productivity of throw-away value. Immediate interest in this project is a derivative of issues raised in a p ­ revious book (O’Brien 2014), which included six case studies of high profile cultural critics. The question concerned the nature of critical practice, the qualities that distinguish it as a way of intellectual life and the practical question of what differences it makes in practice. Invariably, work of that sort is normative, rendering it difficult to evaluate. Yet, if the tools of scientific rationality are blind to the truth of social life, yet that truth is discernable—at least in the eyes of major cultural critics, what is its basis? Where does it hide when canonically faithful scientists enter the room, yet seemingly jump to the fore when social philosophers rise to the occasion? Thus the point of our study: to identify the lieu of emergence of this uncanny capacity for recognizing existential, social, political truth as necessary condition for good judgement and creatively as the occasion demands. Our critique of scientific rationality as epistemological practice is not intended to deny the validity of its work but only to move beyond what appear to be its limitations. However, proposing a different epistemological logic is sufficiently challenging to conventional thought as to raise powerful opposition. Unsurprisingly, traditionalists in the laboratory sciences find our view unjustified. Is the difference a matter of fact or only of belief; and if the latter, how is this issue to be treated? This perplexing quandary brings to consciousness an interesting study published some years ago, When Prophecy Fails (Festinger et al.: 1956). The work is a classic contribution to critical work since it demonstrates the resistance to change in belief within a tight community of meaning. The work is often used as a metaphor when discussing belief driven practices with important social consequences that refuse all factual discretization. An example of this metaphorical use was provided rather recently in a New York Times Op-Ed column by Paul Krugman (2012). To clarify what he considered an extremist political

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position that proved remarkably resistant to the truth, he opened with the following observation: Back in the 1950s three social psychologists joined a cult that was predicting the imminent end of the world. Their purpose was to observe the cultists’ response when the world did not, in fact, end on schedule. What they discovered, and described in their classic book, “When Prophecy Fails,” is that the irrefutable failure of a prophecy does not cause true believers— people who have committed themselves to a belief both emotionally and by their life choices—to reconsider. On the contrary, they become even more fervent, and proselytize even harder. krugman 2012

Leon Festinger, the head of the original research team, used the study to explore the soundness of a theory he favored. When faced with painful dissonance, which refers to serious contradiction between alternative strongly held believe systems or between such belief and an external evident fact, rather than changing the mind, true-believers often become even more committed to the falsehood. It is hoped that the central postulate raised in this volume will be treated with the seriousness of its intention and not dissipate into empty polemics among participants of opposing epistemological belief systems. Still, raising a critique of rationality of this profound form and the accompanying proposal for a reformed treatment of the nature of human nature is admittedly unusual. A word is in order about what lead me down this path of critical practice. I first confronted this epistemological puzzle about the limits of rationality as an undergraduate student. Although fascinated by mathematics and physics, I had early on been demythologized about Science after learning of alternatives for standard Euclidean Geometry. Every school child is taught about a basic theorem of geometry—that parallel lines never cross, as needed to prove which geometrical propositions are reducible to law-like statements. Alas, ­Bernhard Riemann (1826–1866) offered a bouquet of geometries with which one could prove the usual claims without recourse to the existence of parallel lines. This raised the possibility that the lines of the universe are curved inward. If that pertains for the force-field lines exuded by gravity fields, this would announce closure of the cosmos and certify that ours is a finite world. But, if Euclid was right, then parallel field lines never cross, remain endlessly divergent, establishing that our cosmos is open because of infinite dimension.

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There is no way to validate those contrary positions about the universe. When I first learned of this—remarkably late in adolescence, I must admit, it struck me as strange that the laws of science are ambiguous about an issue as fundamental as the shape of our world. And if the shape of the world is unspecifiable, then what about the myriad of lesser qualities and dynamics about which scientific certainty is rather regularly announced? How might we not conclude that at its edges, rational science is mythic? This led me to a dangerous undertaking: I enrolled in electives in both psychology and sociology. Thereupon I confronted narrative treatments of the world from the inside of people out to society; and of the world from the outside of society into the heads of people. When I took my confusion about the status of mathematical laws to my physics advisor, he treated the issue with indifference. When I took my psychology questions into the sociology classroom and vice-versa, I was regarded as a bit of an apostate in both camps. Then there was my pillar of wisdom: the professor of educational philosophy. Steeped in John Dewey, he trusted in the belief that education could do well for both individuals and society. This would depend, of course, on an open-minded approach to inquiry and treatment of life events as a learning laboratory. Yet, when I considered what was occurring in the rest of the university, the spirit of questioning, the celebration of ignorance as the first step to learning; well those disposition seemed absent. Why was I sensitive to the fact that the standards of not just science but of education were inconsistent with the standards of truth, harmony and good orderly experience on which human well-being depends? There seemed to be something unreasonable about the contemporary practices of the allegedly rational social and scientific practices. Yet, why was it possible for me to know this, but not to certify it generally believable terms? The answer now seems evident, or at least sufficiently so that the central postulate implanted in this book might be taken seriously. The reason that I was duped by the educational system was not the fault of the school or my professors. To the contrary, since their minds, roles and institutions were social constructions, they were preforming just as they ought. Still, why was I aware of this, as have been selected figureheads over the centuries such as Voltaire, Schiller, Marx and Foucault? Or in everyday terms, in schools and businesses, in agencies of government and international organizations: why is the problem of the limits of rational discourse a source of tension that distorts the social relations within them, yet remains largely impervious to analysis much less for change for the better as merited by those who suffer because of it? Conclusion: there must be some capability that renders humans sensitive to the way social relations play themselves out, on the basis of which a­ ppreciation

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of the good, just and harmonious is possible as predisposition toward meaning in life. Otherwise there would be no basis for the awareness of the malevolent, exploitive and discordant conditions that issue from distorted life in society; and no legitimate motive for cultural criticism either. The research reported in this book is aimed at identifying the essential quality of human being that allows for this sensitivity to truth as meaning and thus well-being in the global sense and the negative response to its opposite. The result challenges conventional admiration of Western Civilization as factory for technical mastery, because once a certain level of awareness is attained, the existential crisis it fosters for the people under its spell becomes undeniable. As an exercise in auto-critique, to close this study, it was decided to briefly examine the work done on consciousness by neuro-biologists in brain-imaging laboratories. Work of that sort supplies implicit defense of the power of ration­ alist epistemology that is the target of critique in this book. It behooved us to examine how our postulate stacks-up to the conventional standards of science. From that brief exploration of neuroscience study of consciousness, we located evidence about social cognition as activity of consciousness, the existence of which seems certified by laboratory data, but the interpretation of which exceeds the range of available models of mind-centered determination. We interpret this as evidence that the power of human awareness is considerably more extensive and penetrating than only what we think. On that basis, we feel comforted in our postulate about aesthetic consciousness as crucial attribute of human being; supplying an explanation for the missing form of active agency hinted at by the Early German Romantics; and implicit in the critical appraisal of that Movement by Walter Benjamin. If we are right, then this work can contribute to clairify a major point of epistemological ambiguity that has bothered Western intellectuals for more than two centuries. Since the story is long, it seemed wise to set off from familiar grounds. What immediately follows in our Introductory Chapter 1 is a summary of the core argument to be developed in this book. There we elaborate on the way the presence-of-absence (a Merleau-Pontian Figure) of man-in-society and ­society-in-man, points to the socialized press for the expression and appreciation of meaning as préobjective orientation for social life. Then in Chapter 2, we discuss how beyond its centrality for Merleau-Ponty’s project, the figure of préobjective-consciousness that anchors human experience in a field of social experience captures remarkably well the otherwise difficult to explain presence of the symbolic aspect of social organization as raised over the last two centuries in the critical social sciences. This latter point is certified by a brief review demonstrating how the postulate advanced in this book is not only fascinating for individual penetration of

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the mystery of social action and the possibilities for its amelioration; but also for comprehending the seemingly unfinished projects associated with a number of major intellectual luminaries, including Descartes, Rousseau, Hegel, Comte, Durkheim, Weber, Bergson and Lukács. The rest of Part 1 is occupied by the two ironically interesting chapters aimed at untangling the obscure ambition of the profoundly precocious participants in the Early German Romantic Movement. Of unexpected value from Chapter 4 is how this careful reading of Walter Benjamin’s doctoral thesis on the Romantic Movement provides a largely unexplored entry into the life-world and work of this master of cultural criticism. John Eustice O’Brien Spring 2016

Acknowledgements This book is dedicated to the globalized cosmos of graduate students, those multi-lingual, multi-national, multi-cultural, multi-disciplinary intellectual astronauts on whom the future of the struggle marking the 21st century depends. More immediately, it is with considerable appreciation that I acknowledge the us and French publishers of the works from which citations are taken to illustrate the position featured in this study. I salute all publishers who continue to put before the public the writings needed to keep the critical spirit alive. Unless otherwise referenced, as found in this book, the argument and modeling developed to support it have not been previously published. Given the intricate nature of the project, I must express my appreciation to the editor of Critical Sociology and this book series Studies in Critical Social Sciences, David Fasenfest, for his encouragement and support during the two years needed to finish the research and compose this manuscript. Additionally, without the dauntless efforts of the editorial staff in the History Division of Brill, the final makeup leading to its production would have been impossible. Throughout, without the support of my partner, Josiane Martin O’Brien, there would have been no way to assure the balance needed to pursue this project in cultural criticism with a fully engaged yet disciplined attitude. As final personal note, appreciation is in order for the open-mindedness of the eminent neurobiologist, Jean-Pierre Changeux, with whom, early on Sunday mornings, I often debated issues raised in this study—particularly bearing on what laboratory research can and cannot tell us about consciousness, at the Café de Flore, in St. Germain, Paris.

List of Figures 1 Four faculties of aesthetic consciousness: Their consequences for ­judgement and creativity 234 2 Predisposition of consciousness for neuronal-objective cognition 247 3 Global neuronal workspace redesigned: Five dynamic brain subsystems 252 4 Consciousness: Expresses bodily being 255 5  Social World → Préobjective Field → Aesthetic Consciousness → Mental Cognition 261

Part 1 What Crisis of Rationality?

∵

Socrates, Make Music… Twenty-five hundred years ago, Socrates was forced by conservative leadership of Athens, to drink fatal poison as penalty for encouraging the youth of Athens to judge for themselves. Speaking of Socrates in prison, waiting to die; and of this as the initial incident demonstrating the danger of mounting a critique of western rationality—which in classic Greek terms is identified with the Apollonian disposition; and desiring a rebalancing of the West in favor of aesthetic consciousness identified classically as the Dionysian disposition; writing of the Birth of Tragedy, young man Nietzsche implored the world to take seriously the Socratic challenge of Western history: For, with respect to art, that despotic logician [Socrates] experienced sporadically the feeling of a gap, a void, a half reproach, perhaps of a neglected duty. As he told his friends in prison, there often came to him the same recurring dream phenomenon, which always said the same thing: ‘Socrates, make music’. Up to his last days, he comforted himself with the thought that his philosophizing was the highest art of the muses and did not really believe that a deity wished to remind him of that common popular music. Finally, in prison, in order completely to unburden his conscience, he even agreed to make the music for which he had so little respect. And in this frame of mind, he composed a proemium to Appollo and rewrote some Aesopian fables in verse. It was something resembling a daemonic warning voice which forced him to undertake these exercise, it was his Apollonian insight that he, like a barbarian king, was failing to understand a noble image of a god and was, through his failure to understand, in danger of sinning against its deity. This mention of the Socratic dream-phenomenon is the only sign of an apprehension on his part about the limits of the logical nature: he must have asked himself the following question—perhaps whatever is not intelligible to me is not necessarily immediately unintelligent? Perhaps there is a domain of wisdom which excludes the logician? Perhaps art is even a necessary correlative of and supplement to science? nietzsche 2000/1872: 79–80

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chapter 1

Overview This book is a critique of creativity and judgement, exploring what might be done to fortify them. Each is crucial for the stability, sustainability and governability of society and for the integration and expression of human being in the social world. The cultural orientation throughout is in this case Western, even if the problems and potential are applicable in Eastern societies as well. An assessment of the current historical condition of the West reveals increasing instability, unsustainability and ungovernability, with individuals experiencing a failure of integration and depletion of opportunity. On the personal side, felt alienation accelerates. On the societal side, the mechanisms of the economy are running beyond control and the processes of politics are submerged in discord; with those two vectors of action hooked into a politicaleconomy that escapes surveillance of the citizenry, indicating a crisis of democracy. As the lynchpin of Western civilization, with every regime losing its legitimacy, we face a crisis of the Modern Western Historical Condition. This crisis of the West truncates liberty, placing most everyone in a situation of necessity and obligation, which is the anathema of creativity and judgement. Yet without the latter, the repair of current conditions or movement toward alternative features is unachievable. Whether reformists or revolutionaries, the possibility of rectifying of the malaise of Modernity is blocked by the perverse power of its presence. Rather than only a problem facing the erudite, the problem we pose in this book looms large for those interested in a stable future for Western political states. Although we will not delve into this at length, the exercise of good judgement and creativity depends on the capacity for critical assessment of current events including the roles and programs that shape their expression. In turn that capacity is an essential ingredient of informed citizenship. Discussed in the West with particular acuity in response to the fascist developments that came to dominate corporate arrangements and some state regimes, this is conventionally approached under the rubric of critical thinking. Unfortunately, under the weight of a solidly technical curriculum as one finds in schools of engineering and management, training becomes tactical and instrumental rather than critical. Our use of the figure of critical consciousness is intended to approach the world quite differently. It is usually assumed that the time to develop the capacity for critical thinking is during the school years. While an ideal of general appeal, the practice

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Overview

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is often restrained when the terminal high-school students or older college cohorts begin to turn well intended critique against the institutional arrangements. This raises the issue pointed to in the epigraph that opens the book: beginning with Socrates, it has proven dangerous and occasionally mortally so for teacher(s) to encourage excessively independent thinking on the part of the youth of the city. In the years leading up to ww-ii, Bertrand Russel—who had as a young man served time in jail for opposing the King of England on the issue of ww-i; well, concerned with the drift into fascism, he collected a set of short essays, now out in a fresh edition titled, Let the People Think. (Russell 2003 /1941) More recently, in the us, stimulated by work by Robert H. Ennis (1991); 1962) has led to establishment of critical thinking programs aimed at attempting to teach enterprise executives how to think critically (Harvey and Jenkins, 2014). Without elaborating further, the following is a summary from a long available paper, identifying what Ennis considered the ten basis issues to be tackled in educational programs aimed at intensifying preparedness for critical thinking: Ennis (1993: 180) identified the “actions a learner must take to think critically”. As summarized by Jenkins (2012: 96) they are: judge the credibility of sources; identify conclusions, reasons, and assumptions; judge the quality of an argument, including the acceptability of its reasons, assumptions, and evidence; develop and defend a position on an issue; ask appropriate clarifying questions; plan experiments and judge experimental designs; define terms in a way appropriate for the context; be open-minded; try to be well informed; and, draw conclusions when warranted, but with caution.

Institutional Challenge

We are focusing on a socio-cultural problem in the classic sense: generated at the structural level of society, experienced symptomatically as dissonance at the personal level. For lack of collective mobilization, individual action is futile to alter institutional conditions. Thus the smoldering signs of rampant dis-integration such as refusal to vote are recurrently punctuated by the most volatile signs of blind frustration, including mass violence. Today’s Western governments are unable to overcome growing distrust of all by each; there is no way to assure the short-term security, opportunity and acceptance on which individual well-being depends. Domestic action thus turns coercive, since as it is said, the state is the holder of the legitimate use of force. Attempting to control the raw evidence of alienation, the institutional response is to impose security at all costs; transforming society into

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an ideological prison, degrading tolerance of diversity and the opportunity for each to do the best she might. The cycle is vicious indeed. State violence cannot redress the violated state of affairs in the West. Renovating institutional problems depends on their sound analysis. Institutions are historical material; the systems and structures that sustain French versus us society are the materialization of the history of France versus the usa. Institutions are not stand-alone entities; they arise as components of nested sets, formally constituting general systems. As we will touch on periodically throughout this book, the entwined quality of institutional arrangements means that it is not possible to repair them in isolation. An initial observation presents itself: the malaise of Western Modernity is so general that in spite of variation in local history, its corrosive signs are evident in otherwise diverse societies such as France versus usa, or Germany versus Spain. Since all those societies are rooted in the Modern Historical Condition, there must be some powerful underlying factor associated with that cultural groundwork that allowed the promise of progress to turn back on its civilized realization. We hope to pinpoint the source of this tragic turn in the emergence of the Modern West, and from there, propose a resolution. Backing up about five centuries to the roots of Western Modernity, we arrive at the Italian Enlightenment. That movement shifted the grounds of collective life by reconceptualizing the nature of humankind. Rather than powerless to act except under direction from aristocratic-ecclesiastic authority, it was for the first time considered reasonable that human beings might act effectively on their own authority, to yield a good-life for all. This enlightened possibility was based on a new vision of human potential, from a predetermined entity shaped at birth to a being-as-constant-becoming, with human existence as work-of-art. (Burckhardt 1990/1860) Yet a further assumption remained unexplored: that freedom implies the burden of self-responsibility, which might only be realized via collective cultural events. Rather than absolute in some metaphysical sense, Enlightenment freedom is an action term. Today’s freedom is an intention that can only be realized in the events of tomorrow; based on judgement and choice referenced on the conditions of yesterday. This was to be achieved thanks to a major alteration in the source of cultural power: from vertical authoritativerationality as royalist-ecclesiastic mandate down to (wo)men; to horizontal or political-aesthetic-rationality as intersubjective expression of community. Enlightenment freedom was conceived as both collective in origin and expression, with the result labeled democracy. Exercise of this new authority was to be moderated based upon harmony and fit at the level of being, through elaborated schemes of social relations,

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driven by enlightened intention. Willingness in pursuit of the good, right and just would assure a press for communality, yielding progressive movement for both society and individual. This would put an end to the pre-modern barbarian world, with perpetual peace being only a matter of time. Yet something went wrong: rather than treating life and society as works of art to be appreciated in their expression via the unfolding of a world of mutuality; for the sake of efficiency, due to the pressures of the moment, the process was short-circuited. The aesthetic basis of enlightened authority was amputated, leaving its rational instruments intact. A new hierarchical order emerged based on rational power measured by capital control. As a result, the West has been teetering for five centuries, forced to use evermore elaborate technology to build artificial and imposing crutches to maintain its integrity. The problem with technology is rigidity; the challenge of the human movement demands flexibility, adaptability and spontaneity. The recurrent failure of the technoadministrative fix for those dynamic, organic problems announces the cultural contradiction of the West. Modernity was not meant to be mistaken, or perhaps overtaken is the better term—by brutal ambition, opportunism and depersonalization of collective responsibility. The lie need not have assumed the pose of truth, but it did. (Machiavelli 2008/1517; 2012/1513–32). Descartes (2004/1641; 1999/1637) was confident that thanks to faith inspired judgement, free acting individuals could filter the true from the false and would naturally act in accordance. Leibniz (1969/1710, 1968/1714) was convinced that modern ways would result in the best of all possible worlds; Adam Smith (1977/1776; 2002/1759) was sure that the disposition to truck and barter would assure the wealth of nations; Kant (2009/1795; 1981/1785) saw in modern enlightenment the possibility of moralethical rectitude and perpetual peace. The trenchant turnabout by the instruments of progress against that cultural promise exposed the fragility face of the dialectic of modernity (Adorno and Horkheimer 2001/1944; Horkheimer 2010/1930; 1999/1937). Movement in the direction of freedom as the realization of opportunity via technical means had positive results in the short run, but cumulative and deleterious consequences in the long run. For unexplainable reasons, the pursuit of creativity and opportunity was reduced to the expression of tactical rationality in which aggressiveness soon wore the costume of competence. Rationality was transmuted into technical activity, generating a material life-support system by constraining freedom rather than expanding it, thus muting the imagination needed to conceive of a world otherwise. The train of Modernity runs on time, but on trajectories largely indifferent to the needs of the passengers it carries.

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This playing out of the cultural contradiction of Modernity is the heart of the tragic, which as displayed by the fore-note from Nietzsche has been a latent potential of the West from the time of Socrates. The difference between the ancient Greek world and the Western Enlightenment is that now this rational capacity has been fully unleashed in frightening fashion. Some—such as Ann Rand (1957), herald this as the highest accomplishment of humanity. Au contraire, the hubris of myth brought the Ancient Greek society to its knees; the hegemony of Western techno-instrumental rationality may achieve the same end for the entire world.

Social Restructuring of Judgement

Rectifying the crisis of Modernity requires resurrecting the aesthetic potential of human being and with it the advantage it merits in partnership with the rational potential. Doing so would be fast work were it not for one objection: to suppose that some aspect of the world order—namely humanized or existential truth, requires exercise of politically-aesthetic consciousness implies the validity of a non-rationalist epistemology. Backhandedly, that is to suppose that rationalist epistemology—as now followed in the laboratories of the natural and material sciences is limited in its reach; as if some forms of truth, perhaps the most vital for human affairs, are inaccessible for it. That is a frontal threat to modern science, which purportedly guarantees endless progress precisely because it incarnates instrumental, depersonalized rationality as its only principle. We are hardly the first to point out a potential loose thread in the cloak of Modernity; nor will our proposal for its rectification constitute an ultimate repair. Without concern for the battle this raises with the rationalist sciences, in what follows we are going to trace the struggle to overcome its domination in hopes of reorienting the consciousness of Western populations. This will require a rigorous critique of the contemporary impasse, perhaps confirming the end of Modernity. To deal with this historical problem, our study starts at the end of the 18th century, in the midst of the admittedly short-lived Early German Romantic Movement. In the wake of Kant, its participants were the first to mount a direct attack against the unrealizable virtue of excessively rational methods, favoring instead the perceptive power of the aesthetic potential of humans. It seemed reasonable for them that social harmony, beauty and justice are not only interlinked thanks to how they mean, but that such meaning can be directly appreciated by an open consciousness that is not foreclosed by the intellectualist, conceptualist machinations and rational tools.

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As we will show in our study of their work, the Early German Romantics were discredited from the start, since not just their point of view but their expression in texts violated the then classical standards. Admittedly they are hard to read, which is why we rely on two long exegetes of their work; one more recent and cynically critical by Isaiah Berlin, and a second more distant and resonant by Walter Benjamin. These studies—which compose Part 1 of this book will establish two points. That the Early German Romantics were on the right path for opening a then unexplored avenue of truth; and second, that they were unable to realize their initiating ambition. Although not without sounds of alarm from Nietzsche among others, during the 19th century the technical-instrumental machine of the Modern West took off at full steam. The Industrial Revolution was announced, fueled by the bellicose expansionist ambition that continues to animate the Concert of Europe. Technical progress is like a self-inflating balloon; to continuously expand its reach, endless growth in population is essential. That places infinite demand on the finite stock of natural resources, while pushing population growth beyond the limits of environmental carrying capacity. Attendant difficulties could formerly be avoided in the short-run within powerful nations via foreign conquest, either military, economic or both. And today? Lest we forget, the least bit of the social is the meaning seeking, meaning generating, meaning responsive human being. Yet individuality thus conceived is necessarily active only when embedded in logical-meaningful relations of production. By the exclusive reward of rational action, technical instrumentalisation of society gradually transforms creative competence into insipid subservience, stripping the human conscience of its opportunity for self-expression. Soon, all can march and count, but fewer and fewer can dance and sing. We arrive again at Nietzsche’s esoteric lament: “Perhaps there is a domain of wisdom which excludes the logician. Perhaps art is even a necessary correlative of and supplement to science. So, Socrates, make music”. And what of the rest of us, today? The solution we propose cannot be reduced to a formula. As necessary alternative to the dominant rationalist approach, we propose a modified epistemology, recentered on aesthetic-consciousness. We get to this by drawing on the phenomenological work of an unusually creative 20th century French socialphilosopher, Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The core of Part 2 of this book is devoted to a study of his exceptionally dense work, which will justify its place in the critical social sciences and our use of it in this research. As a clue in advance, Merleau-Ponty proposed a model of perceptual or historical consciousness that has the virtue of sidestepping the hook of

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contemporary rationalism without denying the legitimacy of the work by its adepts. He treated consciousness as worldly engagement, which is why his aesthetic was political rather than psychological. Unfortunately, he died young and thus did not fill out his program. We are taking the liberty of expanding and formalizing aspects of his work based on the special treatment he gave to the meaningful nature of human being in the world. If he was right, then primary mediation for worldly experience as con­ sciousness depends on a set of uniquely human préobjective dispositions. Consciousness thus defined establishes the field of meaning for both selfawareness and relations with others. The lieu of experience is dialectically transient, identifying what he referred to as the intermonde, the between and among of engagement as meaning, for beings expressed as humans experience it. More than only a static presence, due to its political-aesthetic motor, préobjectively constituted consciousness remains dynamically attached to the panorama of worldly-existence, unfolding like a ribbon of time through the cosmos. This serves as the frame for the objective events governed or at least registered by cognitive action of the brain. As the frame for assessment of meaning, aesthetic consciousness is thus the seat of intention and judgement. Its guiding energy issues from the préobjective field by socialization to meaning, which is why all peoples have languages and other universalizing institutions. But each also has its local history, which is why no two languages are fully inter-translatable, why family forms differ, or why doing business in different countries is never identical. As if the radar of existence, aesthetic consciousness is the active part of being, or more formally put, the active intention to meaning, which diffuses the ongoing assessment for judgement of value about objective possibilities; on the basis of which existence is guided along its world-line. This explains the possibility of préobjective discernment, based not on the means-ends analysis associated with technical action, but on meaning-judgement analysis associated with symbolic action.

Another Epistemology?

Meaning as intention for judgement defines the symbolic cycle of consciousness. As the basis for what individuals do in every situation, its activity is palpably evident. Yet being purely symbolic, it is only materialized via objective choice to move, speak or interact—or not. Unlike the objective actions which it occasions, the very préobjectivity of aesthetic consciousness renders it opaque to laboratory study. None the less, we postulate it exists. Are we to be believed?

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To buttress the validity of our postulate about political-aesthetic power at the end of this book we present a brief critique of neuroscience research conducted in Brain Imaging laboratories. Our intention is not to challenge the validity of that line of study, but only to demonstrate its practical limits. That brief dip into the heady world of Nobel Prize science demonstrates in a way that was unimaginable two-centuries ago the problem with the modern scientific cannon that so incensed the Early German Romantics. Exclusive reliance on the methods associated with that paradigm block access to logicalmeaningful or aesthetic facets of human experience; not because such experience is ephemeral, but because that method is insensitive to it. Findings from bi studies demonstrate limits in the interpretative power of hyper-rational science. While this will not prove us right, unexplainable evidence from their experiments indicates a larger reach of consciousness than the rational model can account for; opening a window of support for our alternative postulate. Assuming our postulate is valid, what advances does it promise for the critical social sciences? Most directly our political-aesthetic thesis offers an enlarged if modified treatment of the Durkheim premise that societies cohere thanks to the existence of what he labeled collective-consciousness; the importance of which is the explanation it provides for what is known as the externality and constraint of normative social-facts. Similarly, our postulate about the préobjective potency of the dispositions of consciousness also explains the possibility of Weberian authority, independent of its type. Leaving aside the details, the rational faculties are {intellectual—conceptual}, the configuration and qualities of which have been under inspection since Descartes first laid them out (see the Sixth of his Metaphysical Meditations 2004/1641); as later elaborated most significantly by Kant (2007/1788; 1968/ 1781 & 1787). These faculties are now treated as the exclusive domain of mind, an attribution which we question. None the less their function is vital, being the basis by which images entering into consciousness are, well, rationalized: which is to say translated into understandable forms according to categories established by common convention and stored as memory. Having escaped specification until unearthed by our thick reading of the work of Merleau-Ponty, we formally postulate existence of a second pair of {expressive—perceptive} faculties, which we label apperceptive. They allow realization of—and responsiveness to—social forces by individuals, for whom living into the future is materialized as the interplay of imposing on—and drawing in—meaning from the world. Importantly, relations among all faculties is dialectic. From a comparative cultural perspective, a reasonable argument could be made that the Indian cultural aesthetic is apperceptive, with its

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{perceptive—expressive} faculties overriding its rational, {cognitive and rational}; explaining what is known in the West as its deep spirituality—which from a lay-perspective it is, and generically. Primitive tribes studied by anthropologists are similar to India in that regard, but referred to as mythic rather than spiritual by Westerners. When we arrive in the West, above all in the usa or England, somewhat less so in France or Italy, the cultural domination of techno-instrumental rationality is ultimate, because the intellectual—conceptual faculties are treated as sovereign. Sidestepping detail, it might also be reasonably asserted that tribal societies identified as primitive—of which most have already been exterminated, suffered from an underdeveloped technical potential that weakened their position in face of environmental challenges both natural and human. While the solidarity engendered by their mythic orientation demonstrated the supportive and stabilizing benefits of the symbolic side of aesthetic consciousness, the resulting vulnerability suggests serious underdevelopment of their political-aesthetic acuity. Using the Incas or Aztecs are examples, it seems that they could not appreciated the potential symbolic violence (Bourdieu 1979; 1989) that would befall them if they treated Westerners decently. Western societies are imbalanced in the other direction; dancing and singing are treated as ephemeral distractions, not to be confused with high-value instrumental work aimed at the only future that adds-up for them, namely wealth. The literature on modernization and development deals with such questions, not with the language of balance but with that of necessity. From that point of view, technically advanced societies (Germany for instance) are taken as the mark to be achieved with the aesthetically refined societies (India for example) treated as if backwards and in need of reform. Human freedom and creativity depend on the potential full reach of aesthetic consciousness as we identify it, as necessary for the construction of and participation in a social world of unity and integrity. Without that, individuals confront an alienated world, as they are forced by necessity to assist in perpetuation of institutional forms that do not comply with their fundamental needs. In combatting that malaise, why always advocate Westernizing Eastern societies; why not Easternizing the West as well?

Political Aesthetics after Marx

Rather than only an intellectual problem, over the centuries, once the rationalist capture of social forms reached a certain level, the destruction of alternatives accelerated. The struggle for meaning under domination thus

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assumed a confrontational profile, which brings us to political aesthetics as theme of this book. It brings us also to Karl Marx, but in a somewhat unanticipated fashion. As for politics, rather than focused on electoral or representative issues, here the approach is sociological. Politics in that sense concerns the way the relations of production are structured in a society, how categories of members are woven into the web of labor and benefit that results, and what response this has in terms of struggle for comfort and advantage. Like 19th century America, the Greek Golden Age deployed a slave-labor based strategy with debate and choice left to the elites, who benefitted handsomely from that arrangement. Under such conditions, one often wonders: given their numbers, why do slaves rarely rebel? Sifting to contemporary West, the same is often asked about the working and services classes, who labor for minimum compensation to assure the pleasure for oligarchs. Whatever the period of reference, politics is a logic of enactment, either in support or opposition to the systems and structures that frame collective life. For that reason, explicitly or not, the political vector is a defining quality—though surely not the only quality, of the real-world engagement for adults. As commonly understood, Marx took umbrage of the capitalist politicaleconomy. Because his critique mobilized popular unrest against oligarch interests, the response was to shroud his work behind an ideology of contempt. Beyond specialists, Westerners are largely unaware of the reach of his erudition. As presented in diverse texts by Lukács (2010/1911; 1990/1919; 1975/1920s; 1968/1916), during his career, Marx—and Engels covered virtually all grounds of history and society, not just the economic and political, but also literature and the arts. That should not be surprising since their general principles would have been considerably less so if pertinent for grasping the technical-instrumental understructures of society, but insensitive to the socio-symbolic modes of expression and production that play a part in its constitution. Although his published work address issues one at a time, what Marx focused on in a given text must not be taken as a signal of the disqualification the other subjects of his interest. The place where his pages demonstrate the wide reach of his attention are in Notebooks composed during 1957–58, and eventually published in France as the five-volume Grundrisse (Marx 1968). This work constituted a preparatory step before launching into his twentyfive-year research on Capital (Marx, 1976/1867; 1885; 1894). There his historicalmaterialist grasp of the movement of society is evident, as he explored the dialectical oscillations between technical politics driven by capitalist substructures and political aesthetics driven by the human condition as collective

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materialization. Since the notion of dialectics indicates that the meaning of either term in a binary is vacuous without including that of the other, there is no way to separate his politics from his aesthetics; which is why his work is widely identified as the origin of political-aesthetics. It is in that sense that the term pertains for this book. Importantly, rather than as a structural force aimed at a teleological end given in advance as is case with the Hegelian dialectic, the Marx dialectic declines an ongoing horizontal movement that may continue indefinitely. As he considered it—and Merleau-Ponty carefully described it, there is a constant energy for convergence in the structural dispositions and responses of each element in the dialectic pair, countered by oppositional tendencies inevitably associated with the disjunction between means and ends. And we are speaking here of human content. In opening his Grundrisse, Marx’s announces two basic principles. First, “In the strongest sense, man is a political animal; he is not only a social animal, but more than that, an animal that cannot become an individual except in society.” (Marx 1968/1957–58 v-i: 33) Here we see the dialectic relation between the individuality and society; the nature of (wo)man implies the existence and continuous production by and of the other, namely society. The result is the ongoing generation of social order, which is the essence of politics; for which the principle of stability is balance among interests and intentions, as the essence of aesthetics. From there we arrive at a second of his principles, highlighting what he considered the fundamental nature of society as the dialectic unrolling of production of the system of society itself and of the categories of human identities therein: Production not only furnishes a material for a need, but a need for the material. When consumption disconnects from its spontaneity [in primitive market sense] …it is stimulated by the object: the felt need is due to the sensation produced by the object. Like every other product, the object of art creates a public responsive to art and susceptibility for appreciation of beauty. In this sense, production creates not only the object for the subject, but again a subject for the object. marx 1968/1957–58 v-i: 33

Thus we see the how the unstoppable power of the technical cycle of commerce can degrade the fragile existence of social-man. Driven by a rapacious appetite for profit at all costs, capitalism fuels endless expansion of the technical apparatus of society; producing the consumer goods, which in turn

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produce the consumers who depend on those goods for their fictive social identity. The same mechanism eventually reaches every societal institution— families, schools, religions, associations; which in turn produce the types of individuals that fit best with technically productive standards. Meaning is transmuted into economic value, and humans are transformed into market commodities; but not entirely and that is the difficulty. This is certified in 2016 by the fact that 40% of first level usa university majors take a degree in business; and the heads of the top twenty-five us hedge-funds together gain more income than composite earnings of the entire population of us kindergarten teachers. The economic consequences of these practices know no limits (O’Brien 2015; 2016). As Marx points out, even the fields of fine art cannot escape, such that Western society today produces market enhancing art and dispositions to art consumption by the manipulation of taste. Before launching head-on into our critique of rationality, a final word about the words to be used is in order. As vehicle for being, acting, and knowing, thanks to its dialectic interplay with the intersubjective social world, it is not possible to rely on the discourse of rationality to explicate the aesthetic presence or force of engaged human consciousness. Put simply, a different worldview demands different language. In what follows, like the pallets of color that allowed Cezanne or Picasso to do their work, the reader will be mesmerized—but hopefully not put to sleep by talk of meaning, deep structure, symbolic form, mental reflection, freedom and judgement. Then there is phenomenology, with its dialectics, its historical materialist dynamics, and once again, the freedom it reveals. Along the way, political aesthetics plays itself out in a préobjective field of meaning as intention and realization; with expanded consciousness as the core for the construction of society, and freedom as its realization. As an end, the possibility of creativity is reinvigorated, which might open the potential for reform if not revolution as a means to other possible futures than the one now determined by our tragic if not totally exhausted Modern historical condition.

chapter 2

Meaning as Critical for Social Sciences On the deserted island the day Robinson Crusoe saw those human footprints in the sand, what did his shift in consciousness signal about the power of the social world? Was it not the need for meaning, without which objects and events of experience give rise to deleterious worry? Why so? Whether in family, association, enterprise, or even prison, the associational frame that generates the coming into being of meaning assures the ongoing panorama of support on which human sanity depends (Whitehead 1985/ 1925; 1978/1929). When events lack a social anchorage, consciousness goes blind: this is what occurred with Crusoe until he finally encountered Friday. Personal steadfastness goes hand with social integration. Yet both consciousness and community are on the move, which is why the relation between them is dialectic rather than linear and determinant. That is not to suggest that meaning is stable, as if once set in place, timeless values might satisfactorily govern social affairs. Yet its ubiquitous quest animates the momentum of consciousness. Excessively ambiguous objects of experience generate fear; which is why knowing the cause of a strange noise in the night is essential for the light sleeper to fall once again into slumber. Yet the process is non-rational, non-intellectual, non-cerebral. What is the mysterious quality of human consciousness that perpetually generates and seeks resolution for the need of meaning, propelling most into social relations as the sole mode of production for the good-life?

The Origin of Meaning

What is meaning: what is its source, how is it stored and what explains its influence, access and modification? Life in society is a problem of navigation: extracting the meaning of events, judging how to proceed, showing initiative, adopting to circumstances; evaluating the process in real-time terms, while seeking a maximum of well-being with a minimum of collateral damage. Simplified as the tension between what we think versus what we do, the question of meaning is the bridge between them. Because the basis for action in a non-contradictory fashion, when meaning is obscured, the result is dissonance at the level of consciousness and discord in social relations. Yet what if assessing, judging then acting realistically yields local well-being at the cost of

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collateral damage elsewhere? What if the extraction of benefit and advantage for some occurs at considerable cost to anonymous others? Then is not the meaning of existence signaling an emergency, the resolution of which imposes itself? The challenge of self-responsibility surfaces at that interface, and it is here that we focus our study. This problem has been recognized since the Greek Classic Age. Aristotle approached meaning as an aesthetic problem, which is to say as radically contextual; a proposal that modern commentators tend to reserve for matters of high art. Plato approached meaning from the angle of understanding, which is taken today as a discourse about rational comprehension concerning linear causality for material existants. Unraveling the problem of meaning from the side of Aristotle is promising, but discredited as concerns the concrete dimensions of experience. The intellectualist rational view from Plato is treated as receivable in the material sciences but is mute as concerns the systems of human relations that define and nurture life and community. Is human existence modular or holistic? Although this research is not intended to test between Aristotle and Plato, as concerns the problem of meaning, an Aristotelian approach has the upper hand. Accordingly meaning is the dialect generation between judgement as assessment of events and intention as engagement, oriented by collective representations. If meaning is a social construction, what makes that possible? (Dreher. 2015).1 To investigate this, we set our sights on practical relations of society as totality in which human action is situated. Thus our frame is again dialectic, between individuality and totality, anchored by the figure of meaning. Equivalent to the function of gravity in physics, an intersubjective frame for meaning seeking furnishes the force or authority that orients and stabilizes social order. Still the parallel between physical and social forces of orientation is limited. Due to the possibility of freedom, the dialectic dynamic between structuring authority and patterned order is much higher in social systems than in physical ones. For most practical purposes, ordinary relational issues in physical systems can be treated as if unidirectional determinist constitutions. An equivalent proposition is patently absurd in reference to social systems. Animated by the interplay of meaning and understanding for judgement and intention, a further remarkable feature of social systems is their negentropic potential. They are information driven as well as information generative and thus capable of internal renewal needed for their own continuation. 1 This contribution by Dreher was to a special issue of Cultural Sociology, among a set of paper offering a 50th anniversary review of the work by Berger and Luckman (1966) on social constructionism.

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As non-living entities, physical systems are entropic; the energy within them is limited, and consumed constantly by the requirements of their organization. Unless replenished from external sources, the energy of physical systems dissipates, leading to collapse for lack of form. Much less so for a social order. Phenomenology Although its qualities are ubiquitously detectable, it is impossible to directly study the meaning orientation that drives human social action with ordinary empirical methods. We believe this is so because meaning is seated in consciousness as presence, which is purely symbolic material. A method must be used to study this phenomenon that can treat with equal finesse both poles of the dialectic relation between meaning-oriented individuality and the communities of meaning that serves as reference.2 The intersubjectivity of social experience must be treated not simply as an attribute of humanized events, but the drive force that explains them. Confronting this methodological puzzle is the point of phenomenology, which is why we place Merleau-Ponty at the center of this study. Phenomenology is a broad intellectual movement of variable dimensions that developed in Europe during the 20th century. Beginning with Edmund Husserl, its practitioners were convinced of the need to establish a method for reaching transcendental truth about human experience that is not foreclosed in advance by intellectual prejudices. The objective was to overcome the same rational bias that a century earlier had motivated the critical project of the Early German Romantics. However, by then having been influenced by the rationalist approach known as positivism, most 20th century phenomenologists including both the movement’s founder, Edmund Husserl and his famous student, Martin Heidegger, were unable to achieve the objective. The issue of intellectual prejudice is puzzling. Under ordinary circumstances, we all use what we learned about past experience to facilitate moving into and fitting with the fast moving social requirements of daily life. We interpret what is going on in reference to what we already know. When faced with novelty, we tend to discount it as bizarre or unimportant, or else try to impose a standard of meaning on it that fits with our own prior thinking. A third possibility 2 Dreher (2015), discusses this as the problem of concordance of what he labels relevances; that of the situation, predating engagement by a social actor vis-vis and that which is intrinsic to the actor before arrival. Unfortunately the theory of relevances that he proposes is mute about how to explain this occurrence.

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is to treat it as a learning situation and attempt to expand one’s socio-cultural horizon. A common mark of youth is learning before action. Once adulthood is reached there is a tendency to assume that the base of personal knowledge is sufficient to serve as an adequate guide for the rest of the life. The benefit of thinking one’s way through life is that by using the prior stock of formal and informal knowledge, most of the time, most individuals are able to interpret experience in a consistent and self-stabilizing fashion. However, when exclusively guided by prior thinking, we are literally pre-judging experience in advance, which effectively means that we see only what we already know rather than what is really there. The more rational we are, the less we are open to see life as it is. This quandary is exemplified by the alleged difference between the engineer and the artist. The artist produces works that are one of a kind, while the engineer designs works intended to be standard through countless duplications. The artist appreciates things of the world in their uniqueness, but this disconnects each from all and results in radical subjectivity. The engineer studies objects to ­ascertain their standard qualities, based on a universal standard of evaluation. As concerns human being, acting and relating, the point of phenomenology was to develop an epistemology or way of knowing that was as open to the novelty of human experience as might be the artist, yet capable of drawing from such experience understanding of a universal quality like that developed by the rational practices of engineers. Is that possible? Specialists in the rational sciences think not, which was precisely the complaint that long ago moved the Early German Romantics into action; and us, today. We follow the lead of Maurice Merleau-Ponty because in our judgement he is the only 20th century social philosopher to offer a solution for that phenomenological puzzle as we lay it out. However, he did not complete that work; leaving an opening that our research is intended to fill. To finalize his project, it is necessary to confront the model-of-man problem. Is human being by nature an engineer before artist, or an artist before engineer? The cannon of the rational sciences is based on the unstated assumption that the engineering approach to rationality is the true model of human capacity. Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology depends on the assertion that not only is human existence and society a work of art, but that human beings are artists as necessary prerequisite for being rational engineers. We favor his choice: that (wo)man is an artistic-engineer rather than an engineer who now and again appreciates art. This shifts the existential control of human experience from brain to consciousness as real-time immediate presence, via perception and expression of meaning.

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Merleau-Ponty’s Apperceptive Project

Merleau-Ponty demonstrated how appreciating the larger-than-life movement of events depends on a perceptual grasp vastly exceeding the range of objective detail we take in by the senses. Although not unlimited in content, the scope of that capacity is accreted via socialization as the defining quality of civilized life. Accessible and expressible at the level of consciousness, it is an ongoing predisposition for being actively in a social world. This large frame of reference is carried into every scene as the basis for establishing the meaning of objective details; based on their place in events, and of events in reference to more or less totality of existence. Since each personal frame of reference is historically constructed and thus variable in terms of extension and depth, how is it possible for there to be a general human disposition to meaning in advance of objective detail? Merleau-Ponty’s project rests on a bold postulate: that the frame for seeing and registering the details of human events and social constructions depends on a pre-objective foundation. Acreage in that foundation is the source of the palette of intentions, anticipations and perceptions, universally characteristic of the conscious presence of all humans. This préobjective terrain furnishes the symbolic clay out of which the social forms of cultures are generated. It is ever-evolving because the practices based on it by human consciousness vs-à-vis the world, interact dialectically. In a relativistic world, rather than a cosmos of fixed coordinates, it is said that timespace operates like a rubber sheet, the dimensions of which depend on the physical events localized within it. (Capek 1991; 1991/1983; 1991/1959; 1999/1959; 1999/1950; 1987; 1959; 1953).3 A préobjective basis renders human consciousness like the relativistived cosmos; with expansion, contractions, distortions and reformations, depending on images that arise within it. Existential qualities associated with this field of préobjective constitution include anticipations such as completeness, totality, unity, harmony, fit. Because of its authority, the playing out of this frame of meaning in daily life leads to selective action and perception that certify human choice in the face of structural fundamentals. Choice is the practical expression of judgement, which is necessarily based on the value of options; returning us once again to the figure of meaning as the essential feature of experience. 3 As this book was going to press, the announcement of the purported discovery of Gravitational Waves suddenly brought the metaphor of space-time as rubber-sheet onto the front page of smart-phone browsers. Independent of what may be the truth or not of that report, the rubber-sheet figure was used extensively by Milic Capek (1909-1997) in incisive writings on the subject that spanned forth-years.

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For those unfamiliar with his work, Merleau-Ponty’s double thesis was published as two separate books: Structure of Behavior (M-P 1990/1942) and the Phenomenology of Perception (M-P 1962/1945).4 In the classic style of the Paris Sorbonne, the first study was to identify the problem for which the second was to offer the solution. Since his solution is what interests us here, we draw extensively on the second of those publications. His program took Merleau-Ponty out of psychology into the domains of history, anthropology and sociology. As developed in detail in Part 2 of this book, the main lines of his perception-based epistemology can be summarized as follows. Rather than formulated as a chain of logical deductions, he based his approach on a synthetic model of being-in-the-world, capturing the logical and meaningful reality of human experience in its expression. He described his perspective by use of a key set of figures: concerning what he labeled the “préobjective realm” (M-P 1962/1945: 12) that serves as the basis of “existential meaning” (M-P 1962/1945: 182) for objective social events; perceptively accessible thanks to the deployment of what he called our “historical consciousness” (M-P: 1964 [1960]: 138) as purveyor of “operative intentionality” (M-P 1962/1945P xviii) and site of “esthetic judgement” (M-P 1962/1945P xvii).

Préobjectivity: A Better Ambiguity?

Of the cenral elements listed above, the most controversial is the claim of existence of a préobjective field, as the source of authority for meaning, and the universal attribute of humanness that establishes the possibility of coherent judgement and action. For positivists, this insistence may be a test of patience beyond reason. However, we are dealing with a world of meaning and not with material properties. Because objectively unknowable, meaning necessarily remains ambiguous until it is appreciated. That ambiguity is in the promising rather than terrifying sense; with the fecundity of the possible certified by the impression of meaning in advance of its experience. As attested to by the opening lines of one of Merleau-Ponty’s most important documents, when approached open mindedly, ambiguity offers an opening for creativity. In his “Eulogy to Philosophy” (1951), composed as inaugural lesson for his entry into the College of France, he put it this way: 4 Subsequent references to Merleau-Ponyt’s texts, will be abbreviated as (M-P, Year of Publication: Page).

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The philosopher is known by an inseparable taste for evidence and the appreciation of ambiguity. Should she fully submit to ambiguity, the [negative] result is equivocation. But among better philosophers, rather than a menace, confrontation with ambiguity contributes to the foundation of certainties. Thus it is necessary to distinguish the bad from the good ambiguity M-P 1953: 14.5

What is the source of the good ambiguity that he lauded in this text? Is it not the préobjective field of truth that imposes upon us, forcing us to realize the limits of unambiguously objective truth, and the exciting possibility inherent to social ambiguity of a yet to be discovered realities? Merleau-Ponty contended that pre-objective predispositions to meaning allow both for making sense of the world and for putting sense into it by relational action. If so, then the meaning of objective detail depends on the préobjective disposition of consciousness, anterior to the acquisition of cognitive knowledge about either self or world. Because tuned by this préobjective field, human consciousness exudes a phenomenological intention realized as a certain set of anticipations: that meaning adheres to experience, that communication adheres to relations with others, that an aura of stability and continuity defines the human condition. Thus this préobjective ground is also the origin of possibilities of relational harmony and fit with the reality of existence. It assures the truth by coherence (or at least non-contradiction) of what we take as meaningful; on the basis of which it reasonable to use it as the standard for assessing the essence of the aesthetic. Merleau-Ponty referred to that state of readiness for awareness and expression as the point of origins for human being. Exemplified metaphorically, he discussed the vanishing point use by painters: allowing the representation of objects and acts of a compositional totality in an illusionary fashion that cohere meaningfully at the level of consciousness for viewers. The details pinned to a canvas are framed implicitly by lines of orientation axed on a unified perspective; converging in a point, the existence of which is appreciated as if real, yet is objectively absent. In a similar fashion, appreciating the truth of life and acting accordingly is a continuing consequence of human consciousness. Like the vanishing point for Merleau-Ponty, the historical materialization of a non-objective horizon of 5 All translations from the French are by the author. All emphases within quoted texts are of the original, all other emphases are the author.

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meaning provides an orienting, harmonizing potential for reality, linking the past to its possible futures and elsewhere with the current moment as presence. He contrasted this préobjective realm with objective facticity, stressing that the former is context of meaning for the latter. He developed this by description of human action as immediate, lived experience. Given the unusual quality of this central figure, it is important to be clear how he developed it in his writing. He introduced this préobjective figure in his Phenomenology of Perception, (M-P, 1962/1945) where he demonstrated its meaning in use rather than by formal definition. Examples include: the “pre-objective individual” (P xvii); “preobjective realm” (P 12); “pre-objective space” (P 27); “pre-objective relationship” (P 96): “pre-objective standard” (P 267); “pre-objective situation” (P 267); “pre-objective experience” (P 267); “pre-objective being” (P 275); “pre-objective present” (P 433). Before moving further, a note is in order regarding the place in his work of the aesthetic figure. In addition to his thesis-related writings, Merleau-Ponty also confronted the problem of aesthetic appreciation as an issue of highart in a brief but illuminating essay: The Eye and the Mind (M-P, 1985/1961); which followed earlier studies of painting, particularly around Cezanne (M-P, 1964a/1945). He dealt with the same theme, of the implanting of the resonant metaphysical pulse in good literature, in a critical essay on creative work targeting Simon de Beauvoir’s first novel (M-P, 1996c/1945). Whatever his early inclinations, by the end of the German Occupation of Paris after wwii, Merleau-Ponty’s attention was decidedly focused on politics. Because of the humanist side of his aesthetic disposition, it was unthinkable to be blind to socialism. Yet by pragmatic commitment to community he was unable to level categorical condemnation of the deeply troubled world proffered by the modern capitalist state. As will be developed in the last section of this chapter, as a master of the dialectic both as mode of action and of intellectual approach, his writings on state and society through the 1950s exemplify a ­political-aesthetic vision in keeping with that announced by Karl Marx a ­century earlier.

Theoretical Voices on Deep Structure

Existence of a préobjective field of dispositions, available to human consciousness as frame of reference for evaluating discrete events and social relations, has enormous implications. It supposes a generalized intention to community, in advance of particular communities as social constructions. Which is why

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the institutional forms of actual communities are generally evaluated against common criteria; as more or less equitable, open, progressive, secure, creative, reliable, governable, etc. If so, it also explains the universal appeal of human rights principles: the wrongness of slavery, other forms of economic exploitation and child abuse; the rightness of a sustainable access to the means of survival for everyone, etc. That inclination as engagement in advance of action is also associated with a press in the direction of the reduction of uncertainty. It is based on the assumption that the products of human handiwork, whether things or patterns of relationships, have a meaning or motive and thus express a logical intention with which human consciousness is inclined to resonate. This disposes humans in support of human-relations as the yield of cause and explanation, discernable for the astute observer, as an à priori interest to establish meaning in any event. Causation is a fundamental issue, having lead Aristotle long ago to identify its four modes of expression (formal, material, efficient, and final). However, when powerful circumstance influence the human condition in ways that defy simple causal diagnosis, a common response is an appeal to magic, often institutionalized under the name of shamanism or religion. Otherwise, as summarized by Whitehead (1985/1925), when perplexed by a problem that defies logical explanation, people will concoct an illogical one. In this study we explore the possibility that rationality stripped from its aesthetic origins leads to the construction of senseless—if not monstrously dehumanized societies; signaling the illogical quality of rationality when pursued exclusively as its own end. Yet what proof is there that our critique of hyper-rationality as drive force of technical efficiency is not itself a specious fabrication? In addition to the evidence we draw from laboratory studies of brain activity and consciousness as discussed at the end of this book, there is ample common sense corroboration of this postulate. What is referred to as buyers-regret certifies the existence of a longer term integrating force of consciousness that counters the non-integrative frequent short-term choices of consumer market behavior. Why does this occur? Or why do individuals report a sense of alienation when forced to work by necessity in organizations that place material profits in advance of human satisfactions? The postulate of préobjectivity as motor force of consciousness provides an integral explanation for a plethora of such claims about why societies cohere as they do, and their varying effects depending on how they are organized. Without that force driving a common response to social action, how else can we explain the puzzling tendency to form imaginary images that mirror the

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world of social action, and then to live by those rules—or norms, as if external to those who formulate them? Or again among intellectuals, why the tendency to rely on extra-rational strategies of discernment as tools for behavioral research? A celebrated example of this is the psychoanalytic theory and analytic technique developed by Freud (1966/1917; 1966/1909). Considering the original model and its many subsequent variants, why so wide a confidence in the validity of Freud’s operating postulates, backed by enormous investments in its exploration and application—and then countered by such a powerful refusal on the part of other interests to acknowledge its truth? How are we to explain the intellectual censorship that arose a few years ago in response to a planned exhibition of the legacy of Freud’s work at the Library of Congress Museum in Washington D.C.; which was abruptly cancelled before it could open based on the evaluation of the Standards Committee of the Institution that there is no scientific, which is to say, rational basis to take Freud’s legacy seriously; “that his theories have been discredited” (Koch, 1995)? Not unrelated is the insistence by C. Wright Mills (2000/1959) on the sociological imagination as essential analytical tool in the critical social sciences. By full human engagement in interactional events, it is possible for the astute researcher to directly perceive the material evidence of the normative forces associated with the observed patterns of social relations. Like Freud on clinical sensitivity, Mills’ convictions about the power of discernment facilitated by the receptive willingness of the sociological imagination rests on the assumption of the ability to appreciate the truth of events without distortion by intellectual prejudgements. Husserl (1964/1905), the reputed founder of phenomenology, endorsed a thesis of a similar nature, believing that by bracketing out prior mental conceptions, fully open researchers could gain access to the immediate truth of human experience. What are we to make of this tendency among serious researchers to discipline their research in keeping with the paradoxical claim by Einstein (2002) that open-mined anticipation is the secret of discovery? If one is looking to explain systematic behavior, why is the recommended approach to regard the scene with a proverbial third-eye treated as fantasy? Is that not necessary to open the observer to the préobjective force of existential engagement, as operative groundwork for meaning? However, there remains human freedom, with the possibility that local behavior may surface in countercurrent to universalist dispositions such as fair-play. This explains the pertinence of research on the confidence man by Goffman (2008/1956; 2004/1952); demonstrating the vulnerability of individuals to being manipulated by the lie precisely because they are disposed in advance to anticipate the truth.

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The list of intellectuals who over the recent centuries have attempted to attach a concrete label to the equivalent of Merleau-Ponty’s préobjective disposition as vital to understanding order in the social world, is impressive. A sample of those who qualify for inclusion follows; each of whom formulated an original solution for the problem of truth as personal virtue and intersubjective glue, allowing the possibility of community and society. • René Descartes (1596–1650) affirmed that truth is certified by clear and distinct ideas, as understanding of elementary components of phenomenon, identified by rational, reductionist analysis. Validity of judgement was to be assured by virtue of natural light and a continuous divine presence, yielding judgement that could never be wrong; because nature is stable and god is perfect, it thus being impossible to ever be deceived, for trickery or deception is always indicative of some imperfection. (Meditations 20004/1647: iii & iv.) • Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), was concerned about the relation of the individual to society. He was convinced that by nature, innate human goodness mediated relations between individuals in society, assuring as promise the common good in return to each for commitment to the structural unity of society for all. Assured as expression of a general will depending principally on the development of a system of education that would prevent corruption of the common interest by particular interests. (Emile, ou De l’éducation 2009/1762; Le Contract Social 2001/1762.) • G.W.F. Hegel (1770–1831) focused on the macro-structural possibility of society. He posited existence of a universal World Spirit (zeitgeist) informing dialectically both the possibility of Humanity and the gestalt of Society (as thought, social practice and material culture); expressing authority via structuring institutions and derivative social relations. This referred first to the historical character of a people, and later to Civilization as a whole; with that Idea, as pre-existing presence in history paradoxically operating as teleological pull into the future, toward what amounts to a Leibnitzian best of possible worlds. (Phenomenology of the Spirit 1991/1807.) • August Comte (1798–1857) proposed a positivist model of society as social construction, within which the various fields of knowledge emerged, one after the other, applying the methods of science to all domains of natural and human reality. Sociology as science of society was the most general and last discipline to develop, the findings of which should allow application of rational principles for social ordering. Potential dehumanizing effects of excessive structure would be countered by a positivist theology, playing a christianity-like role for civil society; leading to a religion of humanity,

Meaning As Critical For Social Sciences

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•

•

•

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prompted by scientific-philosopher-priest, aimed at lifelong moral education, promoting harmonious reordering of all social institutions. (Traité de Sociologie 1999/1851–54.) Emile Durkheim (1858–1917) postulated society as web of common meaning and value; materialized as a matrix of social facts; in reference to which deviance citified the moral boundaries of normative action, external to those affected, imposing constraint on individual volition. He claimed this authority as universally evident because of the existence of collective consciousness: acting as regulative device, it is the totality of beliefs and sentiments common to members of a society having a life of its own; linking generations together; facilitating a division of labor, propagating societal cohesion. (Division of Labor in Society 1964/1893; Rules of Sociological Method 1982/1895) Max Weber’s (1864–1920) central issue was methodological: how might researchers comprehend the nature and sense of social action. He assumed that rationality—expressed as means-end logic, drove all human action; but that personal freedom for appraisal of options rendered actual behavior only subjectively rational. Researchers are no different, resulting in at best subjective understanding (Verstehen) within a community of knowers; with precision enhanced by strategic use of ideal type modeling to assess the meanings and values driving communities of action. (Objectivity in Social Sciences 1949a/1904; Meaning of Ethical Neutrality in Sociology and Economics 1949/1917.) Henri Bergson (1859–1941) proposed a psychological constructionist model of society based on what he supposed to be a double level of perception; providing consciousness of the details of concrete experience that blend with one another in mutual continuity; into a total experience or stream of consciousness, obtained as immediate intuition of reality, assuring personal integration and the possibility of society. (Introduction to Metaphysics 2012/1903; Creative Evolution 1963a/1907; Essay on the Data Immediately Given to Consciousness 1963b/1889.) George Lukács (1885–1971) was concerned with the destruction by capitalism of the social totality and with it the possibility of harmony between the soul and form of existence, between life and structure of society; through invasion of the total outer and inner life of society by commodity exchange as universal structuring principle; transforming everything human and historical into a thing of ghostly objectivity; imposing a second nature on human kind, with destruction of organic necessity that otherwise links labor as production, and humans in the production of society; with the individual able to do no more than look on helplessly while its own existence is reduced

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to an isolated particle and fed into an alien system. (History and Class Consciousness 1990/1923; with Ch. 1, “What is Orthodox Marxism?” 1990/1919.) The above summary of the work of eight major figures of Western demonstrates the variety of ways that have been attempted to specify the source of meaning and symbolic truth as the foundation of stable society. More encompassing than any in that list, Merleau-Ponty’s proposal looms large as a potential foundation for them all. If the angle of attack of these eight theorists is triangulated, one way to describe their zone of convergence is in préobjective realm of worldly being and substrata of meaning that intrigued Merleau-Ponty during the 1950s, and us today. Others might have been included above. Consider Adam Smith, recognized champion of neoliberal capitalism. As economic historians are well aware, he preceded his famous text on, The Wealth of Nations (Smith 1977/1776) by a crucial prior text that demonstrated what he took to the regulative principle of market behavior, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Smith 2002/1759).

Marx Critique

Swinging to the other side of the capitalist spectra, we find Karl Marx. No champion of the general well-being as if fostered by the hidden hands of the superior economic classes, he was sensitive to the problem of alienation: the transmutation of humans into market commodities and the elimination of organic access to their species being (Paolucci 2005; Wattenberg 1982). This raised the problem of false consciousness, the twisting of the manner of collective address by the tunnel voice of market value, the elevation of money capital into an exalted position of religious like fetish, as if out of reach for political debate.6 In all this we see, as if the reverse side of Adam Smith’s (2002/1759) moralsentiments thesis, an immoral state of political-economic practices. But that 6 Even if resolving this issue is not our problem, as specialists are aware, there is considerable debate about what is referred to as the Marx theory of human nature (Archibald 2009). The issue concerns whether such a nature precedes social experience or is a production thereof. Focusing on the préobjective armament of aesthetic consciousness, we approach the issue from a level deeper still; arguing this to be necessary acquisition of those living entities who qualify for designation as possers of a human-nature, as well as a predisposition for social action of a meaningful nature. Thus stated, the playing out of that interaction is the dialectic of existence, the materialization of which informs both human-nature and social-nature.

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is well known. What is not so quickly appreciated is that the Marxian antithesis is a dystopic swipe at the happy-land utopia of modern capitalism, which would make little difference, were it not for the truth of the original detail: human consciousness of meaning, as justice and equanimity, against domination and exploitation is a built in feature of human condition; the functional precondition not only for the possibility of manipulated need that allows the Modern West to limp onward, but also for the collective awareness that revolutionary alternatives exist, as do workable approaches for their attainment. As for Merleau-Ponty, the Marxist issue is more complex. Analytically, he reflected the historical materialist method as developed by Marx back on the substance of Marx’s revolutionary critique, focusing on how to promote change in societies under advanced parliamentary governance. As he saw it, the Marx critique was less about the capitalist concentration process than about the d­ istorting place or priority it had come to occupy in the Western political-­economy. Capitalism is a meaningless motorizing mechanism except in reference to the structures of social arrangements that its appetite for ­concentrating efficiency fosters. Once in operation, the diverse social interests of a community battle for benefits, explaining the class warfare that inevitably arises. Under parliamentary regimes, those interests are then represented and the debate over shares of well-being occupies the central arena. Since money talks in political debate, the ends will always maximize the benefit of financial elites. Because this outcome follows from debate, it is then enshrined as being of democratic origin, transforming criticism into sedition. It would be more just were the ways and means of distribution placed in abeyance until the real question of the means and ways of capital concentration were set right. Yet that rarely happens; or at least not peacefully. Which brings us to what Merleau-Ponty discussed as the future of the revolution. For classical Marxists, that future is an outcome, attained when the capitalist form is replaced by a socialist form of political-economy. For Merleau-Ponty, that future is the drive force of freedom, as préobjective disposition of the members of every human community, which constantly holds open the right to debate and the need for change in face of the ever modifying horizon of the human historical condition and its operative environment. Which is it: revolutionary future as more or less stable post rebellion achievement of a workable, legitimate socialism? Or is that future a built in tension for every community of organized action, between the present as disposition of means and ends, and the possibility of more responsible means and ends in the future?

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In post-war France, most of the vocal participants in the political Left favored the revolutionary model of rebellion and overthrow; but this seemed unworkable as practice since after a non-stop string of wars, the price of wanton destruction—which might be unavoidable should a rebellious revolution begin, was too evident to be overlooked even by revolutionary idealists. None the less, this was the side favored by many, and most famously by Jean-Paul Sartre. Unfortunately this was opposite to Merleau-Ponty’s treatment of the issue, with that difference playing into the tragic split in their friendship, and as fallout, the effective silencing of the call for radical change that continues to haunt France more than half-century later. Merleau-Ponty believed that intermediary action was needed to promote what must be treated as an easier, softer, or at least more peaceful move toward a socialist or at least socially responsible revolution. The key, accordingly, was to be the organization of true Leftist political parties. They would mobilize the support needed to promote the future of the revolution from within the legitimate structures of parliamentary democracy. A tempered version of this logic led to the formation of European social-democratic parties, which are principally concerned with governance aimed at maximizing stability, with little if any revolutionary ambition in their program; which also eliminates progress. While surely taking the lead from Marx, his consideration of the future of the revolution was different—less from than of late Marx, than from how the subject was treated then Europe. The way Merleau-Ponty read it, late-Marx had moved from attesting to the revolution’s future as arriving inevitably at the endpoint in proletariat socialism, to considering it as an ongoing struggle, such that even under nominally socialist regimes, the press for freedom from unnecessary institutional constraint must always be part of the human agenda. We will not go into to detail about what Marx and Engels wrote on this issue, and in which the alteration in view stressed by Merleau-Ponty is quite evident. These include The Class Struggle in France (Marx 1985/1849–50) and The Eighteenth of Brumaire (Marx 1852) which dealt with the gnawing problem of why the revolution centered in Paris of 1848 turned into a bourgeois takeover of royalist terrain with little if any gain for the people; and then later, why the Commune as the Paris uprising of 1871 ended in a slaughter of the resistants and establish of reactionary control of Paris that lasted for more than a century. As for radical strategy, if there is no preparation for the future of a revolution, then the initial flash, no matter how dramatic, is likely to go nowhere, other than to be followed by a reactionary backlash that further reduces human liberty and popular well-being. Yet many harshly militant post-Marx Marxists from Lenin to Sartre argued that the movement is assured simply if enough

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energy can be mobilized to overthrow the dominating government… at gunpoint as needed. Following his habitual dialectic tactic, Merleau-Ponty dealt with the future of the revolution in a double-meaning fashion. First he was concerned about the practical steps needed before the triggering of any future revolutionary uprising, if there is real intention for permanent institutional change. A key for him was the existence of political parties, ready to construct a system of order on new grounds. On this point Sartre disagreed; he did not believe that a viable revolution is ever planned and considered political parties as another form of disquieting bureaucracy. To the contrary, Merleau-Ponty contended that those who considered themselves real Marxists were caught in the rhetoric of revolution as upheaval, which was actually a manipulated re-telling by bourgeois historians of a false story about 19th century rebellious futility; intended to discredit the analysis of Marx by generating discord among those of revolutionary ambition. Shifting from his support of a more traditional revolutionary position in the first years after the Liberation of Paris (M-P 1980/1947), his argument with Sartre and his revised general critique during the 1950s of the then dominant hard-core attitude around the French Communist Party generated heated controversy. While Sartre remained iconoclastic on the matter, Simone de Beauvoir (1955) wrote an intensely critical rejoinder against Merleau-Ponty’s treatment of Sartre in the Temps Modernes; the Paris review that MerleauPonty had helped establish with Sartre, and for which he had served as its political editor. His chapter in the Adventures of the Dialectic (M-P 1955) where he leveled an incisive critique of Sartre, stirred up a huge wave of controversy. Seminars were held and papers published about it, starting almost the day Merleau-Ponty died. With an early death putting an end to his work, it is unclear how MerleauPonty might have advanced his political position further. His posture was generally positive and based—at least implicitly, on the force of the préobjective realm that we have been talking about. He assumed integrity and responsibility, particularly on the part of public intellectuals, which was a major difference with Sartre. In spite of the negative evidence from the Nazi German extermination camps and the gulags of Stalinism, at the level of the human condition he was uncompromising in his insistence for liberty, opportunity and acceptance as guidepost of public action. Reading him it is difficult not to recall—in secular humanist terms, the tragic message announced in the title of Reinhold Neibuhr’s classic book, Moral Man and Immoral Society (1932). If the revolution as Merleau-Ponty considered it is the intention of liberation as motor force of collective action, then it is an unstoppable energy. None

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the less, even if it takes less than nothing to mobilize that emotion when conditions of exploitation become general, it takes a great deal more than nothing to assure that the energy potential of revolutionary consciousness can be eventually materialized historically as institutional justice. He considered it important to study past revolutionary efforts, as lead in for change toward a more livable future. It was for evaluating the possible futures of the revolution that any single real revolution might have a practical future. While he considered this to be the appropriate work of intellectuals and political parties of liberation, Sartre rejected this as critical busy-work. By the 1960s most of Merleau-Ponty’s surviving contemporaries had grown ambivalent about the value of evening speaking of revolution; with subsequent generations of French intellectuals—excepting a few like Althusser, tragically indifferent about it. As for political-aesthetics, by the time of his death, Merleau-Ponty seemed a bit aghast at the progressive disregard of the future of the revolution as conscious call for liberation by the intransigent conservative capitalist forces that by the end of the 1950s had taken the helm of the ship of state in Europe. This frustrated the ambition favoring peace and tolerance, based on ­creativity and good judgement; issues that continue to smolder ominously today, agitating with worrisome effects the already undulating, unstable plaques of the global-political economy; and now in the 21st century, threatening to shatter the still nascent and adolescent-like possibilities of a true European Political Community.

chapter 3

Isaiah Berlin’s Romantic Uncertainty

Western Rationality’s Limits? It is one of the instructive ironies of the history of ideas that a principle introduced by one generation in the service of a tendency or philosophic mood congenial to it often proves to contain, unsuspected, the germs of a contrary tendency—to be, by virtue of its hidden implication, the destroyer of that Zeitgeist to which it was meant to minister. lovejoy 1964/1936: 289

With the above observation, A.O. Lovejoy opened a chapter on Romanticism toward the end of the William James Memorial Lectures he gave at Harvard in 1933. In our judgement, the intellectualist-rationalism derived from Western Enlightenment is such a principle. It promises a means for the pursuit of the good life as unending progress via technical action, without noticing that the good life is a form of social experience dependent instead, on meaning. Today, the Wester human habitat teeters under the burden of instrumental progress, in the futile attempt to replace the lost sense of existential meaning by a plethora of technical gadgets that erode the social fabric. We will propose a remedy for this rational malaise, which requires understanding its roots. Since the first critique of rationality was mounted by the Early German Romantics at the turn of the 19th century, they set the argument which endures to this day. A study of their intentions can clarify the prospects and limits of Western Rationality as epistemological theory and social-organizational practice. To better expose its contemporary relevance, in this book we will focus on the aftermath of that Romantic movement, by drawing on two lucid commentaries; first as delivered more recently by Isaiah Berlin and the other on a careful study undertaken early in the 20th century by Walter Benjamin. Berlin comes first.

Children of Two Worlds

Isaiah Berlin dealt with the Romantic Movement in a series of lectures he ­delivered in 1965, at the National Gallery of Art, in Washington dc. As summarized by John Gray in a brief Introduction to the published text, the ­Romantics

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi 10.1163/9789004272644_005

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“reacted against” what “all Enlightenment thinkers shared”; namely three “­basic assumptions” that constitute the “rationalist Western tradition”. Which are that: … all genuine questions can, in principle, be answered; these answers can be known by methods that can be learned and taught to others; and all the answers must be compatible with one another. berlin 2013/1999: xiii1

If so, by eliminating the worry of terminal ambiguity and thanks to the compatibility postulate that opens the unreal possibility of a theory of everything, henceforth truth could be discovered but never created. Whatever that technical utility, Western rationality thus unknowingly eliminated the possibility of true novelty and by that freedom as well. That was the point of the Romantic critique. Favoring responsibility only to the forces of pure inspiration—which they did not consider intellectual at all, it was, according to Berlin, “the Romantics who introduced ideas of originality into the arts” (ib: xiii). It was not until the flowering of Romanticism in the early nineteenth century that novelty was seen as being in itself a valuable attribute in a work of art; only then had we come to believe that the task of the artist was to bring something new into the world. IB: xiii

Reaching far beyond the fine arts, the Romantic commitment to the possibility of creative experience as the essence of freedom based on good judgement stimulated a true epistemological revolution. With that, and as if from ­nowhere, history suddenly surfaced as the crucial property of human experience, leading during the 19th century to the development of the social sciences as analytical rather than only descriptive disciplines. Central in that was development by Karl Marx of the historical-materialist method of research, which by mid-20th century became the crucial armature for the critical social sciences. The essential is not the vernacular style of Berlin’s transcribed lectures, which is entertaining indeed, but the way he tacitly unraveled the political underpinnings of the Romantic impulse without denying its application for the fields of fine art. While not entirely agreeing with his tendency to gallop across the Modern Age as if his were an exercise in Proustian reconstruction, the utility of his position for our purposes is what it reveals about ­contemporary 1 In this Chapter, all references to the Isaiah Berlin’s book are abbreviated: (ib: +page).

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treatment of the Romantic Movement: the predisposing factors that set the stage for it, the essential of its program, and its fit with alternative currents of social-political thought. With those lectures, Berlin’s evident bias favoring intellectualist-rationalist doctrine—against which Romanticism was manifestly opposed, provides the grounds for a light and ironic entry into what is a fundamental and yet to be resolved issue: just what is freedom of expression and judgement, and what it its meaning in the social world? Berlin’s book is a text-transcript of those 1965 lectures; which were never reworked by Berlin, and thus only edited for posthumous publication in 1999 by Henry Hardy. As background for these lectures, Berlin delivered a few impromptu observations which are useful for framing his position. As taken off archive tapes by Hardy, even if “among them [Berlin] could not possibly count himself”, these lectures were “intended for genuine experts on the arts” (ib: xxi). However, and somewhat unexpectedly given the manifest subject, in addition to speaking of the Romantics in relation to the arts, he “proposed to deal with political and social life, and moral life as well.” He justified this with the intriguing claim that when the early Romanticism were active in Europe (late 18th, early 19th centuries), “there was a kind of tyranny of art over life” (ib: xxii). While indicating a possible 20th century misunderstanding of the problems of aesthetics as approached by the Romantics; and while these lectures by Berlin suffer a bit from his not teasing out the full implications of this claim; and while this tiny example highlights Berlin’s tendency to hyperbole; none the less that last simple phrase probably captures most accurately both the historical condition that gave rise to the Romantic movement, and the misfortune of reducing the result to a simple rationalist announcement: as a “tyranny of art over life.”

Romantic Undefinability

Berlin opened his lectures with the announcement that he was unable to define the intellectual category of Romanticism. He affirmed none the less, that, The importance of Romanticism is that it is the largest recent movement to transform the lives and thought of the Western world. …the greatest single shift in the consciousness of the West that has occurred, and all other shifts which have occurred in the course of the 19th and 20th centuries appear …in comparison less important, and at any rate deeply influenced by it. IB: 1–2

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With that as groundwork he laid out his plan. Given that the Romantics had opened a path for a “transformation of consciousness”, with their work as centerpiece, his lectures would cover “the history of human consciousness”; with his “thesis” being “that the Romantic movement was … a gigantic and radical transformation, after which nothing was ever the same” (ib: 4–6). Even if later active elsewhere in Europe, when concerning himself with the origins of the movement, he chose to “confine his attention to what occurred in the second third of the 18th century… not in England [or] France, but for the most part in Germany” (ib: 6). Since Berlin was a social historian, he was intrigued not only with the content of the Romantic critique, but with the conditions that led up to the movement. Although his narrative about this is sketchy, as he considered them, intellectual conditions before Romanticism arrived were dominated by “a belief in the application of universal reason both to human affairs and to artistic practice, to morals, to politics, to philosophy” (ib: 7). Thereafter occurred a series of interrelated “revolutions”, associated with, signaling, causing, well he’s not sure: but in the wake of which became evident one of the “great upheavals in human consciousness” (ib: 8). This occurred on three fronts, of which the last was central to his lectures, namely: “the Industrial Revolution; … the great French political revolution; … [and] the Romantic Revolution” (ib: 9)2 During the period from “say 1760 to 1830 …, there was a great break in European consciousness” (ib: 9), which by the end of that time left Europe quite different. Part of this was a shift regarding ethical issues, somewhat away from dominance by technical implications of action, in the direction of the symbolic, humanized meaning and implications. At the level of organization this modified consideration of human individuals as aggregated by destiny within bodies, categories or groups; seeing rather that the organization of society was the product of structures of social relations that might well be arranged differently. As Berlin put it, By the 1820s you find an outlook in which the state of mind, the motive, is more important than the consequence, the intention is more important than the effect. [As a result, dispositions such as] purity of heart, 2 This description of the tripartite revolutionary transformation that occurred at the frontier of the 18th and 19th centuries is a particular example of the general-system perspective that I used as orienting framework in my Critical Practice book (OBrien 2014). If a total cultural transformation occurs, it must necessarily occur on three dialectically related fronts of the culturally defined normative order: at the levels of the Technical, Organization and Symbolic order of the society.

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integrity, devotion, dedication… entered into the very texture of normal moral attitudes. IB: 12

Berlin contends that on leaving behind those classical figures, there was also a significant alteration in “the attitude towards tragedy” (ib: 13). Although he exemplifies this with a less than fully convincing reference to the work of Schiller,3 his ultimate point is well taken: with the Romantics, “there is a collision of what Hegel afterwards called good with good.” Thereafter, either one is a “philistine”, a moral opportunist of the disagreeable sort, or dedicated to humanist values that prove irreconcilable across actual situations and conditions. (ib: 15) As this first lecture continued, Berlin wandered through English, French and German literary history demonstrating at once the breadth of his Oxford education and the apparent lack of consistency between the ways those who participated in it attached emotional, moral or aesthetic images to the Romantic Movement. While in terms of traditional philology, the result justifies his claim that the term, Romanticism, cannot be easily defined, he implies the need to find a rationalist definition for this movement, which by definition was aimed at demolishing the all-rationalist logic. As if a surprise, he summarizes Romanticism by stating: It is, in short, unity and multiplicity. It is fidelity to the particular… and also the tantalizing vagueness of outline. It is beauty and ugliness. It is art for art’s sake, and art as an instrument of social salvation. It is strength and weakness, individualism and collectivism, purity and corruption, revolution and reaction, peace and war, love of life and love of death. IB: 22–23

Even if these pairs of referents appear just as indicators, it might have helped had Berlin noted that Romanticism introduced the dialectic into Western action, locating it at the center of all that is alive and in movement, whether for social institutions or human beings. Berlin effectively concluded that the Romantic energy altered the foundation for being in the West. As others (Capek 1991; 1991/1983; 1991/1959; 1999/1959; 1999/1950; 1987; 1959; 1953) considered it, the shift was not simply from a flat earth to round, as had occurred some centuries earlier but from a space-time terrain of fixed dimensions to an event driven process inscribed on a rubber 3 There is a chapter on Schiller in my previous book (OBrien 2014).

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sheet.4 While the full implications of this dramatic alteration in world-view was not appreciated until the likes of Marx, Darwin, Lamarck, Nietzsche, Freud and Einstein had done their work, this transformation or revolution of Western consciousness proved to be cataclysmic. Although progressively exposing his skepticism about Romanticism, Berlin none the less closed that first lecture on rather positive terms: There was a Romantic movement; it did have something which was central to it; it did create a great revolution in consciousness; and it is important to discover what this is. IB: 24



Beyond Enlightenment

Although it is commonly accepted that the Romantic Movement arose in opposition to the overburden of rationalism, that doesn’t say much. Thus Berlin necessarily attempts to specify the essence of the Enlightenment, from which rationalism is a derivative. Reiterating the summary provided by Gray in his Foreword, the “rationalist Western tradition” was based on three principles: all “genuine” questions have answers; there is a universally available inductive method for answering all question; and the answers thus attained will not be in contradiction with each other. The result is a symbolic version of “Utopia”, thanks to a perfect coherence among all “true propositions” (ib: 26–28). One of the supposed benefits of a rationalist vision is its elimination of mystery and the de-legitimization of ambiguity: only questions with ­potentially technical answers are taken seriously. Accordingly, from the late 15th century onward, intellectuals were generally pleased to see the gradual disestablishment of the political force of religion because of its non-rational underpinnings. That advance was countered in practice, of course, since as ­demonstrated in London with the Church of England, and Berlin with Protestantism, then the Papal Roman Church for the south of Europe, religion continued to assure itself a place in the Modern political world by changing its costumes, and ­asserting its rational foundations in history. The difficulty with the rationalist view is due to the central role of its particular method as expression and achievement. This assures a unified standard 4 The intriguing studies by Capek, of European origins who did early work in France, inspired Merleau-Ponty, who cited Capek during the late 1950s in his lectures on Nature (1995/1955– 1960: pp. 148–155).

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as scientific method, for addressing all problems. Meeting that exigency requires accepting a derivative postulate: that understanding the laws of nature, of events, depends on the use of analytical reductionism. This implies that all entities or events are logical constructions from standard stocks of elementary components, with observable variations being only in patterns of their aggregate composition. If so, then truth is to be discovered and not invented much less created; a position opposed by many including William James (1896: 1909). With analytical rationalism, one explains the whole only by its decomposition: human being is explained by dna; materials are explained by atomic structures; bio-diverse life by photodynamic cells. The cosmos is explained by relations among its stars, with the composite exercise aimed at a theory of everything based on a unified energy model. Whatever the utility in the range of its application, this approach leaves out a great deal of importance. Unfortunately, the whole is typically not just more than a sum of its parts, but qualitatively different. Thus, whatever the Romantic disfavor of western rationalism for aesthetic reasons, there were plenty of scientific reasons for an equivalent level of disbelief, well before the French Revolution.

Pre-Romantic Good

As Berlin saw it, before the Romantic rupture, the early moderns were convinced that “virtue consists ultimately in knowledge” (ib: 31). This continued the early Greek view dating from Socrates, who assumed—rather Romantically one might say, that it was inevitable for humans to do good if they knew the truth about themselves and the world. Thus the dictum associated with the Oracle at Delphi, know thyself, was the path not just toward virtue but toward a good society as well. Until the mid-18th century, “the dominant aesthetic theory … was that man should hold up a mirror to nature” (ib: 31). Famously, the late 20th century American pragmatic philosopher, Richard Rorty explored this theme (Rorty 1989); demonstrating that in spite of the Romantics, up to our own day, little has changed. Over recent centuries what has shifted is less the habit of using some mirror as a means of certifying the justice of one’s act, than altering the mirror to assure the resulting image is never disagreeable. Now at the opening of the 21st century, contemporary art, including literature, which includes all original thought as well, is complemented to the extent that it decorates life as after-the-fact rationalization, rather than leads human existence as future anticipation. We live in an epoch of the high priced artifact, shunning the contemplative potentiality of true art.

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If, as was assumed in the 18th century, “nature seeks after beauty and perfection”; and if mirroring that ambition is the object of art; since we all exist in the same natural presence, why is not all art, all creativity of a superlative quality? Tragically, even if everywhere nature were of vast inherent beauty, all humans are not of equivalent grand quality. Thus it stood under the classical formation, that “there are certain persons more eminent than others”, (ib: 33) and it is to them that the masses were to turn for leadership in every domain—spiritual, political, social or aesthetic. As said soon after the Italian Renaissance, it proved logically rational and aesthetically compelling that self-perpetuating aristocracies dominate collective life. The elitist self-serving power of that result became evident, which is why the Romantic uprising was as much political and societal as artistic or literary: against a priori domination and for creative liberty. The simplicity of their argument was essential to its appeal. I find myself thinking back to the pleasure of a youngster, doing designs on the hidden face of notebooks with a geometer’s compass. The regularity of the result was strangely pleasing, but was it art? Yes, for a rationalist of the sort I was raised to be, but not for a Romantic. Berlin cites the French Enlightenment luminary, Fontenelle, that, “A work of morality, of politics, of criticism, perhaps even of literature, will be finer, all things considered if made by the hands of a geometer.” After all, who better understands the “rational interrelationships of things” (ib: 32)? Thus the belief during the period leading up to the Romantics that a single parameter of quality pertain: “just as mathematics deals in perfect circles, so the sculptor and the painter must deal in ideal forms” (ib: 34). Before the Romantics, everything was assumed naturally there, to be discovered, perhaps then better arranged in service to humans. In science this led to the fascination for eclectic fact gathering—a practice still far too common, where the “main aim was simply the accumulation of data upon which general propositions could be constructed” (ib: 35). Even if method unassociated with theory is empty, the ambition behind this philosophy of science was laudable. Since, …the major proposition of the age… was that we were progressing, we were discovering, we were destroying ancient prejudice, superstition, ignorance and cruelty, and we were well on the way towards establishing some kind of science which would make people happy, virtuous, and just. IB: 36

It is not possible to say just how Berlin came to these judgements. As with elsewhere in his lectures, he took considerable liberties with his sources. For

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instance, completely missing the ironic determination of this first master of critical voice, and overlooking his rejection of the logic of the Grand French Encyclopedists, Berlin mistakenly associates Voltaire with unjustified faith in progress as the inevitable result of inventory-science and bereft of deeper thought.5 While there were surely many of that belief in the 18th century, and while recognizing the importance of the Romantic Movement, it strikes me as naive to assert that an excess enthusiasm for the classical scientific model does not continue to dominant today. What explains the intellectual ecstasy associated with Nobel Prize Science, better than the self-satisfied celebration of this arcane, nearly alchemic belief in reductionist analysis as pathway to cosmic laws?

From Hume to the Germans?

What Berlin identifies as a “deeper breach” in the foundation of the Enlightenment was made by Hume (2000/1748). Since that fellow’s works are far from totally transparent, and since his style was rarely polemic, the depth of this critique is difficult to assess. None the less Hume’s arguments raised serious questions about the supposedly “seamless garment or harmony of necessary connections” that were then said to characterize the natural conditions in which we humans find ourselves (ib: 38). Based only on observations that a particular event regularly follows temporally after some antecedent, Hume doubted that we could ever really understand causation. As concerns our knowledge about our material conditions, he was a rather insistent psychological idealist; believing that faith in our belief concerning what is about us in the world, rather than a certain path to its factuality is the best we humans can achieve (ib: 39). In essence that was a return to Descartes, for whom clear and distinct ideas as a basis of confidence in truth were in the end, a matter of faith rather than sensate proof. Even if those early cracks in the Enlightenment edifice came from work done in France and England, Berlin is determined to show that the Romantic Movement owes its true origins to Germany. Strangely enough, or perhaps not, what he advances is a logical argument not unlike the one by Gibbon; that in the wake of the collapse of the Roman Empire, over the first five centuries of our era, the Papal Church conquered the hearts and minds of its leaders, eventually gaining nearly dictatorial control over the princely powers in Europe. 5 For detail on Voltaire, see Chapter 2 in OBrien, 2014.

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(Gibbon 1960/1776–89) The other interesting aspect of how Berlin builds his argument is that he gets to his conclusion based on what appears to have been for him, the unrecognized application of an historical-materialist reading of that happening.6 To be clear: Gibbon argued that the takeover by the papal church of the West in the early centuries of the first millennium-AD amounted to the filling of a gap in the chaotic symbolic structure of Europe following the collapse of the Roman Empire. Until that time, under the hand of Empire, the civil population was, if not exactly free, not alienated either. With the collapse of Empire, the meaning of existence was sucked out of the remaining decadent structures of Roman society. This led first to a secular form of asceticism (most evident among the Stoics), and then a formal if ultimately brutal expression via the monastery movement, which in the end allowed the papist religion to capture the imagination and then the practices of Europeans from all levels of society. This process attests to the way that societal chaos associated with irreversible decadence (which is when the elites of a society recognize that they are living beyond their collective means); with that condition productive of wide-scale alienation, and thus open to a proselytizing takeover. Under close reading, the European Romantic movement, at least as it developed in Germany two centuries ago, was a sort of spiritual seeking after a renewal of meaning, not because the once dominant Roman Empire had collapsed, leaving all classes of the German people alienated, but because unlike its neighboring reference object, France, Germany was caught in what seemed at the time as an unsalvageable condition of savage medievalism. In spite of the fact that a very large number of people effectively spoke the same German language and considered themselves ethnically members of that race, there was absolutely no capacity for political unity. The facts are astounding. As Berlin points out, “The Germans were governed in the 18th century… by three hundred princes and twelve-hundred sub-princes.” Beneath that there was the tragic residue of the Thirty Years War, which was fought largely on German grounds, with such violence as to have reduced the population of German speaking people by half. In the wake of that history, for the Germans at the beginning of the 19th century, “there was no Paris, there was no center, there was no life, there was no 6 For an elaboration of my particular treatment of historical-materialism as method of research procedure, see OBrien, 2014; where it is argued that this method is now the standard for critical studies in the historical social sciences, used even by those who oppose the substantive content of the critique of capitalist political economy by Marx—who developed the method in the first place.

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pride there was no sense of growth, dynamism and power” (ib: 42). There was structurally propagated alienation and an associated general state of personal disaffection. Whereupon, “German culture drifted either into extreme scholastic pedantry of a Lutheran kind …or else into a revolt against this scholarship in the direction of the inner life of the human soul” (ib: 42). In practical terms this was the opening for “the pietist movement”, with “emphasis on spiritual life, contempt of learning”; intended “to bring comfort and salvation to a large collection of socially crushed and political miserable human beings” (ib: 43). This surfaced in public as “highly personal and violently emotional literature” often taking as object a “violent hatred of France” and everything its people represented. As Berlin summarized, “this was a particular form of anti-cultural anti-intellectualism and xenophobia—to which the Germans were, at that particular moment, especially prone” (ib: 45). Pointing out rather casually but accurately how it was against this nasty situation was that “Goethe and Schiller fought all their lives” (ib: 45), the above somber picture appears to be an accurate depiction of the German historical conditions that was first materialize as the Early German Romantic movement. To believe Berlin, German Romanticism was to a great extent the result in the symbolic sector of a cross-border war against the then superior cultural development and civic integration of France. The Romantic vector blossomed to the extent that it offered what amounted to a personal path by which to escape from reality. However, reality had its own material lessons to deliver, as when—even if ultimately defeated, Napoleon invaded Germany and then tried to continue to Moscow. Later, the German angst was somewhat reduced by Bismarck’s leadership in the development of the German Federation, which justified one more counter attack against France, and one more occupation of Paris by the Germans.

Romanticism’s Parents

In the preceding lecture and a bit in passing Berlin “introduced the obscure figure of Johann Georg Hamann”, whose rebellious attitude anticipated that of the Early German Romantics. This fellow’s anti-Enlightenment message is said to have been broadcast “in the most open, violent and complete fashion”. In spite of the power of the preaching, it was of little impact at the time, since, “as everybody knows”, the 18th century “was the age of the great triumph of science”. His anti-Enlightenment attack on rationalism fell on deaf ears (ib: 54). Driven by a preference for “quality against quantity”, the crux of Hamann’s position “was that God was not a geometer, not a mathematician, but a

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poet”. He was appalled when “his friend Kant said to him that the science of astronomy had finally come to an end”; because there was nothing left to discover. Not so for Hamann, who was enthused by the “old mystical belief”… again to believe Berlin, “that the voice of God speaks to us through nature” (ib: 56). Extreme for the 18th century, Hamann’s anti-rationalism was in sharp contrast to the then dominant view in France; contributing to the hardening of the generic critique of the French that, following the ejection of Voltaire from the court of Frederick the Great, reigned in Germany for decades.7 For instance, while Dennis Diderot was esteemed in France for his intellectual integrity and humanist orientation and his appreciation for the technical advances of science, on the other side of the Rhine river, he was among those “upon whom the Germans… looked as … noxious representative of the new materialism, the new science, the new destruction of all that was spiritual and religious in life” (ib: 59). Although Berlin does not, we must point out that in the ensuing centuries there was a dramatic reversal of intellectual-cultural roles. Now at the opening of the 21st century, no nation on earth is more determined by the logic of techo-administrative, materialist rationality than Germany; with comparatively few in the Western orbit more oriented by the muted and largely imponderable, symbolic currents of humanist culture than France. Since the evaluative issue is different from the facts of the matter, and while useful research might be done to investigate this cross-border turnabout, there are no à priori grounds for praising or condemning either the Germans or the French. After all, as Berlin notes, “there is a passage in Diderot where he speculates upon the nearness to criminals of artists, because they both defy rules” (ib: 60).8 Berlin’s object was not to philosophize on the nature and form of creativity, but to describe as he sees them, The roots of German Romanticism. Even if he wished a broader approach, his discussion is more about aesthetics than politics. Because, once the seeds of the Romantic Movement were sewn, the point

7 Voltaire’s was asked to leave the Hanover Court in Potsdam, where he had been in residence for three years as personal guest of the King; he was then chased by the law into Switzerland, with this incident triggered by Voltaire’s having belittled the posturing of then head of the German Academy of Sciences. See my Chapter on Voltaire (OBrien, 2014). 8 It is unknown whether Diderot was the first prominent westerner to note that creativity necessarily constitutes an act of positive deviance. For a discussion of this phenomenon in a doctoral thesis I directed, see Burkhardt, 1988.

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of creativity became the setting aside of conventions, to better respond to the easily muted voice of nature from within. Yet what was the nature of that voice? Rather than harmony, unity, stability and purpose as characterized the classic view, the new judgement was that “conflict, collision, tragedy, death—all kinds of horrors—are inevitably involved in the nature of the universe” (ib: 65). This view, observes Berlin, “lies at the heart of the whole violent doctrine of personal self-assertion which is the core of the German Storm and Stress” movement (ib: 66); contributing to the unstable intellectual condition in which the early Romantics came to ascendancy in Germany. The above grim summary of the “atmosphere which developed in Germany in the 1760s and 1770s”, was the opening for a brief mention of Goethe and his famous work, The Suffering of Young Werther (Goethe, 1774) which Berlin evaluates as “the only worthwhile, valuable work which the Strum und Drang produced.” Whether this assessment is justified, it is clear that through this widely read and hotly discussed novel, Goethe portrayed a classical world of severe contradictions; in which at least to believe Berlin, “there is no way in which Werther can avoid suicide” (ib: 66). As promised, we discover the names of the “two men who were … the true fathers of Romanticism:” Kant and Herder. This announcement is curious since Berlin admits that unlike Herder, Kant was “acutely hostile” to the movement. Evidently sensitive to this controversy about Kant, Berlin devoted the rest of Lecture-IV to Herder. Berlin asserted that “the doctrines of Herder …contributed very powerfully to the Romantic Movement and arose quite naturally out of the milieu” of that age (ib: 66). There are two points to be noted here. First, to assert that Herder’s position arose quite naturally out of the historical milieu is a historicalmaterialist observation. Second, Berlin considered Herder a doctrinaire, implying that mainline German Romanticism was as well. As humanities students from around the world know, hooking Herder with German Romanticism is obligatory. The difficulty is deciding just what Herder said, what he meant when he did so and with what intention. Being too much of a pragmatist (in the vulgar sense, I’m afraid), to get swept up such in polemics, Berlin cut short that debate by reducing Herder’s position to three points: One is the notion of what I shall call expressionism; the second is the notion of belonging, what it means to belong to a group; and the third is the notion of ideals; true ideals—being often incompatible with one another and that cannot be reconciled. IB: 67

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Accordingly, the first “notion” is simple: expressionism being the claim that “one of the fundamental functions of human being is to express, to speak” (ib: 67). Thus, “a work of art is the expression of somebody …always a voice speaking; … of one man addressing himself to other men.” This renders infinitely large the category of creation and art, since, “any artifact of human hands is in some way the expression of the attitude to life, conscious or unconscious, of its maker” (ib: 69). On the receiving end, then, “when we appreciate a work of art, we are put in some kind of contact with the man who made it, and it speaks to us; that is the doctrine.” That position was an invitation to the contextual theories of aesthetic appreciation that have arisen since then: that “the biography, the psychology, the purposes” of authorship are essential to how a work can be read (ib: 69). If the “doctrine of art as expression” is valid—of “art as communication”; and assuming that we are all artists in this sense, this signals that “every man seeks to belong to some kind of group, or in fact does belong to it, and if taken out of it will feel alien and not at home.” On this basis, says Berlin, “the whole notion of being at home, or being cut off from one’s natural roots… of belonging to a group, a sect, a movement, was invented by Herder” (ib: 70). Thus to believe Berlin, it was not Rousseau the French social philosopher but Herder the German literary critic who sowed the seeds from which the historical and behavioral sciences eventually sprung up; taking form as cultural anthropology, sociology and social-psychology. According to Herder, the way one is connected to others is via “words”; which are not the “invention” of the individual, but “already passed to him in some kind of inherited stream of traditional images.” This was seen as linked to national culture; for Herder, most importantly the German one, such that all authentic expressions by Germans for Germans “have some palpable common gest.” This principle was assumed to be general, on the basis of which one might differentiate among peoples, between Germans, for example, compared with the Chinese or French (ib: 70–71). As Berlin saw it, although preceded by Hamann, the work of Herder thus set the stage for the “anti-rationalism… as understood in the 18th century”: … it clearly follows that objects cannot be described without reference to the purposes of their makers. The value of a work of art has to be analyzed in terms of the particular group of persons to whom it is addressed, the motive of him who speaks, the effect upon those who are spoken to, and the bond which it automatically creates between the speaker and the spoken to. IB: 71–72

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Being anti-rationalist does not imply a state of meaninglessness; if anything, it implies quite the opposite: a deep penetration of meaning for all parties to any event. The other crucial point is that this view is limited to humanizedexperience, which is to say social objects that are the creation of human action. No-one supposed that we might get the message about nuclear physics by the way atoms speak for themselves—even if explosively. Berlin’s principal frame for comparison was cultural: German versus French in the 18th century, with the Romantic impulse beginning to shine in Germany, as opposition to the excessively formulistic French rationalism emanating from the West side of the Rhine. On the German side that confrontation marked “the beginning of the whole notion of historicism, evolutionism, the very notion that you can understand other human beings only in terms of an environment very dissimilar to your own.” This he contends marked a great difference with what he refers to as the “rationalist, universalist, objectivist cosmopolitan thinkers of the French 18th century” (ib: 73) against which, as he saw it, the Early Romantics struggled. There is an air of Germano-centrism in Berlin’s narrative; as if the Romantic movement was only a knee-jerk response to the humiliation felt in Potsdam due to the overwhelming power of the Century of Louis xiv; and not at all ­occasioned by the alienation derivative of the rampant social injustice and desperation that hung over Germany in the wake of its particularly violent 17th century. However that ethnocentric tendency was even more evident in Herder’s world-view; who assumed that people are absolutely content to be as they are, as long as they are with their own people, in their own country, speaking their own language. It is presumably unnecessary to elaborate the way Herder’s discourse fueled the out of control German nationalism that erupted in the 20th century. While today, rigid nationalism is seen as dangerous, it was then considered differently in Germany, faced as it was with the daunting challenge of political unity. However, given the geopolitical view of those times, national unity and integrity were assumed essential for economic self-sufficiency of each country; which in turn would maximize the harmony of the Concert of Nations by minimizing the propensity for war. Be that as it may, Herder was “one of those rare thinkers who really did absolutely adore things for being what they were, and who did not condemn them for not being something else. For Herder, ­everything was delightful” (ib: 74). Driven none the less by a principle reinforcing the necessity of national, cultural, namely internal consistency, the viewpoint of Herder was as dangerous as it was tantalizing. Because,

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…each human group must strive after that which lies in its bones, which is part of its tradition. Each man belongs to the group he belongs to; his business as a human being is to speak the truth as it appears to him; the truth as it appears to him is as valid as the truth as it appears to others. IB: 779



Romanticism Restrained

Having detailed in the previous lecture the extent to which Herder had, “plunged a most terrible dagger into the body of the European rationalism, from which it never recovered” (ib: 78), Berlin next discusses some others who contributed hesitantly but effectively to laying the bricks for what he considered the dead-end road toward Romanticism: Kant, Schiller and Schlegel. Emphasizing the paradox of movement itself, Berlin opens by noting that, “Kant hated Romanticism. He detested every form of extravagance, fantasy … exaggeration, mysticism, vagueness, confusion. Nonetheless, he is justly regarded as one of the fathers of Romanticism” (ib: 79). Although less vociferously, the same was the case with Schiller, with only Schlegel of the three being an active proponent of the movement.

Kant’s Reserves

Berlin builds his case for including Kant in the list of founders of Romanticism, based not on Kant’s rational conceptualist writings, but on his moral philosophy. Kant insisted on freedom in choice-making as the essential of human being. As the drive toward will via selfhood as expression, this theme was also central for the Romantics; thus the justification of including Kant in this text. Both quantitatively and chronologically, Kant’s project was rationalist before it was moral; or at least his prolific writings were abstract and rationalist during his early years and more selective and political toward the end. Lest we forget, moral issues concern the relations of individuals in the web of society, which is why the term is principally a political referent. To draw on Kant’s moral position, one is obligated to focus on his political writings, of which two continue to draw attention. The first is political in fact but because of the danger of censorship when he composed, less 9 Compared to its treatment by Walter Benjamin in the next Chapter, Berlin suggested an aggressive position on the part of the Romantics, as if they were oppositional, contradictory, and somewhat unstable if not dangerous.

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so  in e­ xpression: “Addressing the Question: What is Enlightenment” (Kant, 2007/1784)? The second is longer and more developed, concerning the question of “Perpetual Peace” (Kant, 2009/1795). Again it must be stressed that whatever his intellectual aspirations, the documentation behind the interpretations Berlin put in these lectures was sketchy. Since he never followed through on his announced intention to write a fully developed book on this subject, we remain in the dark about the basis of his commentaries on Kant, as well as about the many other European intellectual figures he drew on to build this case. That undoubtedly explains a certain debate about the justice of Berlin’s historical-political writings among specialists on 18th and 19th century Western intellectual history. Kant’s (1784) newspaper article questioning Enlightenment concerned more the impassive quality of the then German hereditary government in the face of evident political injustice, than the more elegant issue of moral truth. The abstract quality of this political critique was apparently intended to reduce the possibility of censorship. From what was occurring then in France with its build up toward revolution in 1789, he had become aware of the possibility of a different social order than the autocratic one which at the time held his people in its grip. Germany of his day was directed by elitist, self-serving interests in a dictatorial, exploitive, often cruel fashion, largely indifferent to the general well-being. The majority of his fellow countrymen were driven by necessity to comply with the dictates of a repressive regime. Kant did not judge that necessity is in itself negative, but that it is unacceptable as motive for citizenship if there is no reciprocal return of more expansive freedoms of person for those who work under its yoke. This complex dialectic, although not expressed as such by Kant, was evidently clear to him when he wrote that newspaper article; establishing the essential political moment of the Kantian worldview. Berlin seems to have overlooked the significance of that position, choosing instead to focus on other aspects of the text.10 The philosophical core of this thinly disguised political critique was necessarily Kantian in nature: that the greater good in society is assurance of the opportunity for each to do her best, which means freely; and that the greater evil is the use of others as instruments, as means to an end, which is exactly what occurs under elitist political regimes of the sort he then saw around himself. As Berlin summarized it—and in the extreme as was his style, Kant was

10

Although perhaps unknown to many, Michel Foucault constructed a highly illuminating text around his own reading of this news article by Kant: effectively turning Kant of the Enlightenment back on Kant’s critique of Enlightenment. See Foucault, 1961.

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“particularly rabid against any form of domination; … He is really the father of the notion of exploitation as an evil” (ib: 82). Drawing also on the famous “Perpetual Peace” text (Kant 1795), Berlin continued in his synthesis to affirm that Kant was an early harbinger concerning the “alienation of human beings from one another and from their proper purses” (ib: 83). All of which is true enough, although a case can be made that Schiller was both chronologically ahead of and much more pointed about these matters than Kant. Independent of nuance, as Berlin rightly points out, much of the inspiration for Kant’s text on peace came from his witnessing— from a safe distance, the French Revolution, particularly the constitution it generated in 1790 which was “acclaimed” by Kant, as a “great liberating act” (ib: 89). Thus the justice of Berlin’s summary, that although “not normally thought of in these terms, there is no doubt that [Kant’s] moral philosophy is firmly founded upon this anti-authoritarian principle” (ib: 90).

Schiller’s Tragic Romanticism

Berlin then discusses Friedrich Schiller, contemporary to and critic of Kant, who also contributed background for the Romantic Movement. Even if still popularly read, and in spite of the continuing appeal of parts of his theater, this German social philosopher, historian, theater composer, and famous collaborator of Goethe, is woefully unstudied. This leads to a spectrum of misunderstandings, a handful of which characterize what Berlin said about him in this lecture. As discussed in other writing (O’Brien, 2014, particularly Chapter 3), Schiller’s work emerged in the same historical climate as did that of Voltaire. A strong political statement for freedom and against domination was central to Schiller’s more popular writings from his first theater piece, The Robbers (1781)—for which he went to jail after just finishing his studies, until his last, William Tel (1804). However, since that is his most discussed writing, the fact that it was delivered with more emotional punch than academic erudition, sidetracks attention away from politics and into the theater arts. Less often recognized is that along the way, in addition to serving as intimate colleague and saving inspiration for Goethe, he also conducted major studies of European political history, carried out the first intellectual critique ever of Kant, and worked in a highly original fashion on the complex social-philosophical problem associated with the Aesthetic Education of Man (1795). Berlin’s (ib: 91) referring to Schiller as the “faithful disciple” of Kant is a serious twist of the facts; as it would be to suggest that the inspiration or motor

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force for the later works of Schiller came from Goethe rather than the other way around. Further it seems unjustified to assert that Schiller was the purveyor of any “doctrine”, much less that “it derives directly from Kant” (ib: 93). Rather, by proposing a way beyond the terminal incertitude of the famous Kantian antinomies, if anything, Schiller did posterity a favor by the way he attempted to repair late Kant. Although earlier and in a more actively engaged fashion, Schiller like Kant was swept up in the late-18th century historical turmoil, concerning the contradiction between ecclesiastic-royalist political regimes and general wellbeing of citizens. While this came to a head as revolution in France but not Germany, intelligent and informed German observers such as the two of them were strongly influenced by the then emerging spirit of equality and social justice. This was eventually captured in the figure of freedom, which masks a plethora of meanings, conflicts about which have dominated political debate ever since. There is freedom of thought versus of expression, and if the latter, under what circumstances and with what power of announcement. There is freedom as natural versus constructed by society, with arguments about whether politics is to determine it, guide it or reinforce it. There is freedom as initial state of human being versus freedom as grant generated according to the terms of a well ordered society. There is freedom as end in itself versus as means for assuring adaptation to shifting external conditions. Above all there is freedom as opportunity versus as responsibility, and if the latter, with what or whom as its object. While both Kant and Schiller voiced a call for freedom, with the interesting distinction he drew between private versus public freedom, Kant insisted that the demands of a well-ordered society come first, and individual expression second. If so, then there is little revolutionary content in the Kantian project, at least not in the sense of the term as associated with what happened in France. Schiller stressed the use of judgement, not to determine when to act freely versus when to comply, but as the basis of self-evaluation in relation to how one acts in the world. By that he wove the world into self-evaluation, leading to what might be considered a conception of freedom as political engagement based on self-responsibility. The distinction is capital: between intellectualistrationalist freedom of the Kantian sort versus the view favored by Schiller (and Voltaire before him, I might add); of freedom as the intellectual courage to act forcefully—yet gracefully, when the moment is opportune. Although I do not plan to retrace the sinuous steps in the development of Schiller’s project, nor that of Kant as developed in my 2014 study, the point is that quite different from Kant, Schiller voiced an active, immediate call to

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popular mobilization against repressive political regimes. Of course this was not done without a certain nuance. Like Marx a century later, Schiller was of pacifist disposition, rendering it difficult to call for rebellion when violence would invariably lead to the looping of heads, and not always those most deserving. Schiller had confidence that ordinary people might take effective political action, which in the 18th century was of revolutionary inspiration. But he acknowledged that in order to carry off a popular rebellion toward revolution, it is necessary that ordinary people possess the capacity for good judgement and responsible action; how might that preconditions be assured? The legitimate opening for continuous revolution on an as-needed basis, in the interests of general well-being and social justice, flies in the face of the justification by Machiavelli for royalist/bourgeois leadership; as raison d’état that has dominated the West since the Age of Discovery in the late 15th century (Horheimer, 1930).11 For at least five centuries, to justify the domination of Western countries by oligarch families and ruthless business entrepreneurs, with the comfort of those few depending on the exploitation of the many; in a culture system woven together hand in robe with the Papal church, it has been assumed that ordinary people are hapless and hopeless in organizing the pursuit of their own well-being; thus elevating domination from the dark place of political evil to the lofty region of high moral responsibility. This conundrum concerning the right to rule in favor of superior categories versus the rights of ordinary people, explains the continuing failure of democracy; which is now deployed as a management strategy by the agents of the Western elite as justification for perpetual promotion of their economic master’s best interests. However, working just at the dawn of the debate about the possibilities and realization of democracy, in the face of brutal political domination that characterized existence in their day, neither Kant nor Schiller were able to anticipate the ease with which the call of political freedom could be hijacked by special interests. The Kantian approached to freedom was based on the assumption that everyone has a moral core, which will yield good works, via an intuitive sense of responsible social relations. However he remained vague about how this 11

As discussed elsewhere in my earlier study of this early text by Horkheimer (OBrien 2014, Ch. 1), at least to believe Horkheimer, at the core of the continuing political misadventure of Modernity is the position affirmed by Machiavelli not just that the political lie is often the wisest path for political leadership, but that assuring the continuing prosperity of the economic elites is the sina qua non for the stability of every political regime; which is highly arguable.

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connected to what actually occurs in the world, saying nothing about what to do should that high moral mission be derailed. For instance, one might simply trust that if democracy were to be announced and a few details of its implementation laid out, the world would invariably, one might say, naturally, work well politically, and for the better of humanity. Just a bit later, Hegel built that proposition into his studies and erected an entire theory of societal achievement upon it. Although Hegel was convinced that it is only a matter of time, as is evident from what occurred over the ensuing two centuries of Western nationalist war-making, the peaceful achievement never arrives automatically. Even ­today with Iraq, Egypt, or Syria; no matter how it is evaluated, the destruction of an existing structure of social order based on the promise of democracy inevitably results in social chaos, death, destruction of value, and reduction of life ­expectancy for a population; with the principal beneficiaries being foreign carpet baggers, and the only possibility of order being imposition of a foreignguided imperial regime. Although Schiller did not have the data we have today, which now certifies the naivety of the Kantian moral project as opening for political change toward general well-being, he was evidently aware of this shortcoming in principle. This lead him to consider the end of reason differently than did Kant, aimed not only at assuring the integrity and unity of the conceptual structures of the mind, but by dealing directly with the socio-political structures of society. Based on personal experiences in the confused and querulous German principalities of his day, and based also on serious study of the historical underpinnings of that tragic state of affairs, Schiller, unlike Kant, could see that simply to eliminate a despot would not change a society. Once free to act and interact in their own best interests, a people still need to be assured of the tools for self and political responsibility. Put differently, if a people already had the tools for self-responsible collective social action, would they not have already demobilized the elite demons who oppressed them, and instituted a different form of societal order? From this we see that nearly two centuries before Gramsci, Schiller raised the question: given how the law of large numbers is on their side, why do common populations so willingly and pacifically tolerate a degenerate existence of harsh necessity, to assure by their work the well-being of a chosen few? Schiller’s solution was to propose that the standard of judgement and responsibility of the ordinary people be enhanced by what he called, famously, the Aesthetic Education of Man (Schiller 1795). This was to be a form of civil (then called moral) general education, that would provide the tools for activation of the full potential for political engagement among everyone. Although

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not often directly tied with Schiller as inspiration, this is the same logic favored by the much appreciated usa social philosopher, John Dewey (1910; 1927). The point of Schiller’s aesthetic education project was not, as asserted by Berlin that freedom was to be achieved, “by means of art, liberation by art” (ib: 99). That statement suggests a serious misunderstanding of the notion of political aesthetics, which in the end, identifies the initiatives of Schiller. The Shiller project was aimed at provoking and awakening the full aesthetic consciousness of people, as a necessary step to assuring that they might perceive as wisdom the principle, act locally, affect universally. That is the standard of good judgement: to see the relation (dialectically as we would say today) between the details of the social actions necessary for the successful local conduct in a community of concern, in relation to the larger horizon of a people, society, nation, and perhaps the world itself. There is clear resonance here with the Kantian moral imperative—act as if the standards one follows were the law of the land (Kant, 1981/1878). Rather than simply assuring harmony and calm for the rational mind, for Schiller the aesthetic ambition is linked to collective social action aimed at structural change, even if that achievement may require active rebellion to open the way. A difficult aspect of Schiller’s project was the way he introduced the notion of play into his revolutionary rhetoric. This occurred discretely in his famous Aesthetic Letters, and can only be appreciated when taken in light of that larger text. Given the patience needed to penetrate those extremely dense pages, it is understandable that Berlin seems to have misread the meaning of play for Schiller’s program. To be clear about what play was not for Schiller: contrary to the statement by Berlin, it was not, “that the only way in which human beings can liberate themselves is by adopting the attitude of game-players.” Even if said like this by Berlin as a way of keeping his lecture audience awake, this use of irony to draw attention to a vital element of the Schiller project is seriously misleading. Particularly when he reinforced it with a questionable metaphor—of the type for which a Voice from Oxford is notorious; failing to see that Schiller’s use of the term play had nothing in common with imaginary instances, such as to cite Berlin, “impersonate Red Indians and [then] imagine ourselves Red Indians” (ib: 99); as if we can be anything we wish as long as we so choose it, and freely. Beyond the issue of this tragically misplaced, anachronistic, and frankly silly metaphor, for Schiller, the aesthetic problem was hardly a matter of children playing political peek-a-boo. For Schiller the notion of play represented his effort to move beyond the vicious and inescapable circle of Kantian antinomies, generated by the irresolvable conflict between the natural bio-necessity of our animalist instinct, and

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the higher enlightened rationality or reasoning aspect of our human nature. The problem was to explain the unity of experience, of self, with others, in the world, which is evidently the way existence really is, even if all the time remaining intellectually unexplainably. Schiller proposed the solution be sought not by more rigorous intellectual analysis, but by reconceptualizing the unexplainable as the true political art of existence in society. When he “pleaded the cause of the beautiful”, this was intended to get to the true nature of man as being in harmony, both internally and societally. Thus he stressed the “cosmic” sense of aesthetic potential, via deployment of “structures of true political freedom”, put into the everyday world by “artists of political education.” Or, as summarized in my earlier writing, Shiller’s use of the notion of, “putting life into play as full expression of human vitality”; must “not to be confused with the Shakespearean image of life as stage, on which all of us are actors” (Schiller 1795: i–iii; cited in O’Brien 2014, 200–203). As Berlin rightly concludes, the idealizing position of Schiller is linked to the classical moral stance of the Greeks. There is some humanizing mainspring, common to all individuals, which predisposes them to act in harmony with themselves, with others, with nature through time. This allows him the conclusion, that “this is a kind of Utopia in which Schiller’s thought, more or less, ends. It is not very convincing…” (ib: 100). While the first part of that last citation is descriptively valid, the second element is evaluative and ­subjective. After centuries of empire building based on pirating, slave trade, violent ­conquest and cruel colonial practices, the sounds of human decency that surge from Schiller’s writings could hardly be expected to find a receptive ear in a properly bred English fellow. Fortunately there are other ears.

Fichte’s Freedom as Necessity

Playing a significant role in the development of what is labeled German Idealism, Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s work followed from Kant, and anticipated Hegel. Although the basis is indefinite, Berlin placed Fichte in his trio of “restrained Romantics” because of his insistence on and thus effort to develop a theoretical justification for individual freedom. Excepting the work of Voltaire and a few others, during the 18th century Classic Period the notion of individual freedom were largely ignored. When it began to surface during the Romantic period, it was often disabused, since from a rationalist perspective, freedom is easily condemned as the frivolous expression of personal irresponsibility. In a world constituted by it, would the

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result not be potentially chaotic, since pushed to the extreme, it suggests a selfdetermining state of personal consciousness, almost like the infantile illusion of being center of the world. Fichte inclined in that extreme direction, with his view later rectified a bit by Hegel. But as merely a higher-order idealist, Hegel could only save the Fichte project by leaving aside practical considerations of human experience in favor of the continued expansion of a then already overordered society.12 Fichte was concerned about how one becomes aware of one’s self, to stipulate meaningfully the “I”, as in the Cartesian I am? This comes about, and rather logically in my opinion, as a result of being active in the world. The world is composed of and by others, who serve as intermediaries to the satisfaction of individual wants and needs. However, remaining faithful to Kant, too much so, it would seem, Fichte was unable to take seriously the material world or its social production as the collective product of the work of a community. He preferred to remain locked within the black-box of isolated consciousness, as if a sort of window for viewing others in the world, but not really allowing the penetration of external material considerations to enter in the constitution of self. Still Fichte denied that our lives “depend upon contemplative knowledge;” rather, “life begins with action”. This led him to the position, according to Berlin, that “we do not act because we know;” but, “we know because we are called upon to act” (ib: 102). However this is easily pushed to the extreme, resulting in a radical self-constructionist view of existence: “Things are as they are, not because they are so independent of me, but because I make them so; things depend upon the way in which I treat them” (ib: 103). While Berlin considered this “a kind of early but extremely far-reaching pragmatism”, which he associates with William James among others, there is 12

The interplay between the Hegelian macro-institutional effort to repair the Fichtian will to freedom points to a continuing dilemma in the West. If one backs the Hegelian position as political philosophy, which has become the dominant inclination in Europe, then well-ordered government is the priority and individual freedom optional at the margins. Operationally and in the extreme, this freezes the dialectic represented by those alternatives, blocking social progress by locking political action in bureaucratic governmentalism. (This potential is explored in the work of Nicklas Luhmann, and its danger discussed by Jurgen Habermas.). Although not necessarily the result of geopolitical conspiracy, the explanation for this development is evident. During the past two centuries, Hegelian ­Idealism took root as the core of German nationalism, which in the extreme is a justification for political fascism. Now in the 21st century, without having shed its traditional admiration for that Hegelian disposition, Germany has taken charge of the European Community. One must question the wisdom of these developments.

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a major difference in fact between Fichte and James. While surely both considered the world to be a source of inspiration for the content of consciousness, for Fichte this was supposedly motivated by an entirely internal desire to know, be and act for, oneself; by comparison, James (and John Dewey as well) considered the same external worldly stimulation as motivated by the need to live successfully with others in society. Society and its macro-structures were anathema for Fichte, since he considered them a source of “necessity”, which made his heart “contract painfully” (ib: 101). If so then the only pathway toward opportunity was to create it oneself, leading to a view of human existence as the frantic pursuit of “continuous action”, with each of us obliged to “constantly go on generating and creating” (ib: 104). Although I am unfamiliar of any known link, I see the footprints of this dimension of Fichte in the work of Ann Rand (Atlas Shrugged: 1957); propelling all individuals and institutional actors in a constant mad dash for selfaffirmation, no matter what the cost. While this theme of self-creation through the pursuit of one’s own project was central to the aesthetic motive of Romanticism, Fichte moved well beyond that to suppose that a nation is itself a spirit-being, whose “business is to be free…[which] means to be free of other nations;” and “should other nations obstruct it, it must make war”. As Berlin summarizes, “So Fichte ends as a rabid German patriot and nationalist” (ib: 105). Still, it is easy to see how a certain group of German artists and others were fascinated by Fichte’s idea of freedom, incorporating, …a mystical notion of men creatively lunging forward for the purpose of not being frozen, not being dead, not being oppressed by anything which is static… whether institutions, moral principles, political principles, artistic principles or anything else which is not made by them and which is not in process of constant fluid transformation. IB: 105



Romanticism Unleashed

Consistent with his plan to explore its roots, it is not until this next to the last of his lectures that Berlin finally gets to the individual—Friedrich Schlegel, with whose work most studies of German Romanticism begin. He intends to demonstrate Schlegel’s profound influence on “the entire movement, not only aesthetically, but also morally and politically” (ib: 107). Although Berlin never elevated this observation to the level we do, the notion of aesthetic

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consciousness as studied in this book is precisely that expression of humanized being which includes the political, moral and creative elements of human potential. In that direction, the European Romantic movement played a major part for opening the way. Schlegel acknowledged being influenced by Goethe, principally via his Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship novel (1989/1795–6); and also considered the French Revolution, then the work of Fichte, as laying important groundwork for his interests. However, in spite of the importance given by the Early Romantics to that second major novel by Goethe—of the telling struggle by Wilhelm for self-realization as the end of freedom; Goethe was personally at odds with the Romantics, and they likewise kept their distance from him. None the less, the contemporary reputation of both Goethe and German Romanticism is advertised as if the work of the man and the inspiration of the movement were hand in glove affairs. There are strange consequences of that questionable practice of recuperating Goethe as if central to that Movement. This was highlighted by what turned out to be a much contested exposition at the Louvre museum in Paris, of German Romantic / Expressionist Art; for which the opening présentoir was the huge classic dream-land image of Goethe, supposedly in perpetual inspiration of the rising of freedom, nurtured by nature, above and beyond the dust of German réelle-politique. It is truly difficult to decide what to make of the political uproar generated by that show at the Louvre. The German arts establishment was ready to call on its government to have France ejected from the European Community for the unconscionable way they hung the works; implying an historical narrative was intended by the chaining of images and materials; subtly announcing that 19th century Romantic German art led most naturally into 20th century German nationalist fascist art; as if the terminal realization of a political aesthetic inspired by Goethe. Had today’s Germans more closely read Fichte, they would have known that the meaning in a hanging is largely in the eye of the beholder; suggesting a continuing pain about the ongoing denial of the way not just art, but above all German nationalist business determination from the 19th century led to a pair of world wars in the 20th century. Beyond suggesting a certain limitation in the aesthetic consciousness of the German art establishment, a curious aspect of the show was the way the famous and gigantic portrait of Goethe in the Roman Campagna (1786) by Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein was granted pride of place, as entry piece into the exposition; as if Goethe was the force behind a movement that in fact he seriously questioned. However, nothing in the political attack about this showing by Germans against the Paris Louvre officials indicated the least concern with that rather flagrant misuse of Goethe.

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Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) never wrote a treatise on the arts or creativity; instead leaving behind only a set of cryptic writings prepared for a journal he established in 1789 with his brother (August): the Athenaeum. That journal is widely considered as the original source for German Romanticism. Since Schlegel preached the value of leaving aside all preconceived values, his aphoristic writing represented in practice his determination in theory not to follow the classic code in the composition of text. Thus, a bit like Nietzsche or the Bible, but for quite different reasons, one can easily build contradictory cases depending on how one chooses to cite Schlegel’s words. As summarized by Berlin, he recommended that participation in the creative arts cease being an exercise in copying nature, as had been the classical standard; to be produced rather as self-expression by the artist, “with some kind of power, force, energy, life, vitality bursting forth” (ib: 114). Thus summarized is the Romantic call for rampant originality. Yet the problem: a painter, for instance, who wants to do a work, while avoiding copying classical forms of nature or life, is still obliged to put some sort of image on the canvas. But what sort? The answer is the symbol, or for the author, an allegory. This implies the artist or author penetrating the real, in pursuit of a certain “notion of depth” (ib: 118). But there is an inherent openness to the result of a tableau, or an incompleteness to the phrase in the text, such that, if one is of Romantic inspiration, then “no matter what I say I always have to leave three dots at the end…” (ib: 119). As emphasized in my 2014 book, in spite of its considerable necessity as the basis for critical creativity, extended existence in a state of ambiguity tends to be psychologically disconcerting. Many are willing to adopt any ideology, back any political subterfuge or endorse any false sense of dedication rather than face the openness of the future and the uncertainty that implies. By accepting the philosophy of Schlegel concerning the indeterminate quality of art, and thus throwing aside any concern with customary forms, the German Romantics lived under a cloud of self-perpetuating ambiguity, yet all the time hoping to stop just short of self-imposed alienation. As Berlin points out (ib: 125) this may well explain the origin of the much discussed condition of angst that to this day is associated with being German, particular among the unfortunate who oscillate between believing they think too much and thinking they believe too much. In a nearly messianic fashion, the German Romantics sought to get in tune with the infinite, which is by definition, a never ending task. The result says Berlin took two forms of obsession. The first was nostalgia as the empty desire to finally arrive home with the comfort of the familiar. Using an image offered by another major contributor to the movement and to Schlegel’s Athenaeum

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Novalis (1772–1801), (who insisted on the “fragment” as art-form), the result was “the search for the blue flower… [as] an attempt either to absorb the infinite into myself, to make myself at one with it, or to dissolve myself into it” (ib: 121). This detail may help explain the continuing significance a century later to that zone of the palate, central to the famous Blau Reiter (Blue Rider) artistic movement (~1911–1914); inspired by Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944), as elaborated in his still studied short text, On The Spiritual in Art (Kandinsky, 1911); perhaps even contributing to the intuition behind the Blue Period (~1901–1904) of Picasso. The other pscyho-emotive quality that grew from excessive enthusiasm for German Romanticism was (excuse my dots)… paranoia. Berlin refers to this as the “more pessimistic” version of Romanticism which still “obsesses the 20th century to some extent”. He contrasts it with the more “optimistic version” of this, according to which, by stripping aside all structures we humans might find ultimate liberty. The paranoiac view was that liberty was a hollow hope; that “the universe is not to be tamed in this easy fashion;” … that there is “something in the dark depths of the unconsciousness, or of history,” perhaps “even hostile in nature;” which resists every effort to overcome. (ib: 123) This paranoia, he says, took “all kinds of different forms… [including] crude forms, such as the conspiracy theory of history” (ib: 124). While it is comforting to discover a narrative that explains a major tragic fact: namely how the contemporary joy at smelling a death-dealing, opportunistic-driven, pride-oriented conspiracy hiding beneath glib reality, has become a standard cover-up for the deviant side of human organization. Still, it is difficult to accept that the Romantics, even its German branch, should be blamed for this. After all, as demonstrated in the realm of political esthetics since Antigone (Sophocles: ~497 bc – 406 bc), most public figures who are troubled by paranoia, ought to be.

The French Revolution and Goethe

At this point in his lectures, Berlin summarized briefly how the French Revolution (1789) and the Wilhelm Meister novel by Goethe (1989/ 1795–96) left their mark on Schlegel, and by that were of fundamental importance for the early development of the Romantic attitude in Germany. For those born in recent generations in the usa, the radical nature of the French Revolution compared to the light-weight coup d’état aspect of the American Revolution is probably not evident or even understandable. Whereas the us revolution was principally an exercise in building new public

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institutional structures in a place where there were none pre-existing, the French Revolution was principally an exercise in putting to end a very well developed and historically durable system of social relations and governance that had been in place for more than a thousand years. On the European side, the late 18th century revolutionary outbreak first occurred in France, which, dating from the time of Clovis (466–511), had been the leader in the movement toward national unity and cultural development that eventually characterized all the major European national groups (Gibbon: 1960/1776–1789; particularly Volume vi). When the Bastille was demolished and Louis xvi lost his head to the guillotine, France was the European model to be followed and standard to be met in all domains, whether political, intellectual or aesthetic. French was the language of the well-read throughout Europe and the basis of diplomatic communication. By toppling that structure, the symbolic foundation of the most developed continent on earth was irreparably broken, as the legitimacy of the standards of reference for the how and why of Europeans was cast aside. Thus to say that the Romantics were marked by this event suggests a reversal of causation. It would probably be more accurate to say that the Romantic Movement was one of the many residual effects of that political revolution, demonstrating the ineluctable tie between politics and aesthetics. As for Goethe, being a forcefully individualistic promoter of high culture, ahead of all else, he wanted creativity to rule. However, he was a structuralist before its time, insisting on good orderly direction and personal discipline as essential measures of the general good. We might say he had a somewhat tempered view of personal freedom, appropriate of course to the European Royalist—Bourgeoisie elites who dominated Europe in his day, of which he was a product and which supplied the reference group for the misesen-scène of his life and work. While he was acknowledged at the time as a source of a certain inspiration by the Romantics, particularly Schlegel, his reciprocal view of the positive benefit form that movement for him was less flattering. As summarized by Berlin, speaking of Goethe, He looked with a certain nervousness upon these Romantics, whom he, and Schiller too, regarded as rather rootless Bohemians, third-rate artists (which some of them certainly were), persons of rather wild and inconsequential life whom nevertheless, because they admired him so much and worshipped him so well, he did not wish altogether to despise or to ignore. IB: 129

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The problem in the end with the Romantic impulse in Germany was that it represented a dedication to anti-structuralism, in a society that was structured in concrete. This fits with the note by Berlin, and again speaking of Goethe, “­Toward the end of his life he said Romantism is disease, classicism is health, and that is his fundamental sermon” (ib: 130). This confronted the Romantics with the dilemma of standards: if there is no yardstick of quality with which to measure it, how is one to choose between high creativity and low-grade shlock? Yet higher quality was their ambition, the attainment of which was viewed as frustrated when the act of creation was overdetermined by tradition modes and forms. The German Romantics opened a set of question in the symbolic realm for which the only standard of closure would be the acceptance of utopia; the same was the case with the French Revolution in the political realm, which explains the continuing importance of both—as ambitions if not as achievements, more than two centuries later.

Against Old Fashioned Virtue?

If we take Berlin for his words, German Romanticism constituted an attack on the virtue of rationalist intelligence or at least its expression in art. For a rationalist, virtue is a benefit of systematic intelligence, which is why many evaluated that movement as not only decadent but dangerous. Was it really possible to leave everything in the hands of free-spirits? Recommending neither a higher-light to follow or a lower-path to be shunned, might the essence of the aesthetic message of art deteriorate into inconsequentialism; as if the only sustainable motto is life is hell and then you die. The way Berlin put this is direct: “Romanticism attacked and gravely damaged… the old proposition that virtue is knowledge, a proposition that was explicitly enunciated… for the first time by Socrates” (ib: 136). What he does not add is that for Socrates, rather than abstracted from experience, knowledge was savoir faire; which in Chicago means know-how: aimed at the practical problem of participation in the City, by acting self-responsibly in pursuit of general well-being. Was not this also the intention of the Early Romantics? The problem with the rationalist view is the follow-on assumption that we humans are disposed to be conscious, clairvoyant and consistent: but once knowing the true way, will we really be universally inclined in its support? If so, then good orderly direction is assured at the collective or societal level thanks to the power of the intellect of Westerners to get to the truth. This possibility is never advanced naively; no one denies that ultimate truth may very well evade us, and that debate about its content is inevitable. But at the end of the day,

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the classic belief is that there surely will be a gradual convergence around the truth, which will set us all free, in so far as we benefit by its pursuit. As political project, the Romantics deflected attention from that absolutist view of virtue and the good life in favor of a relativist or situationist view. This shifted emphasis from unqualified pursuit of the good life, in favor of relative well-being as the pursuit of a strategic life. From there, the argument about the standard for assessing good-works was lowed, from the transcendental and universal to the situated and individual. This implied also a shift in the artistic—creative motor force, from intelligence to will. We see here a line into Nietzsche, himself influenced by the Romantics and in turn an unannounced silent collaborator in Berlin’s study. The vision of life as accomplishment was thereby altered: from the use of the intellect to unearth and then fit with the secrets of reality, to the exercise of a strategy of existence, as the expression of will. Yet will for Romantics was to be driven by aesthetic energies of harmony and meaning rather than intellectualist energies of knowledge and power. From that alone it is evident that Michel Foucault was no Romantic. The Romantics inspired an alteration in the roadmap of being and meaning on two related fronts. First, rather than as “a body of facts to which we must submit”, life was reconceptualized as the pursuit of self-expression. Thanks to the use of the will—for meaning rather than power, “not knowledge of values, but their creation, is what men [hoped to] achieve.” Thus, continues Berlin, “you create values, you create goals, you create ends, and in the end you create your own vision of the universe, exactly as artists create works of art” (ib: 138). So much for a reformed view of human action as political esthetics. This new conception of the nature of individual action was accompanied by a radically revised view of the field of existence. In order for this new free-­ spirited individual to make a life for self, it was necessary to do away with apriori constraints. Thus a further postulate central to the German Romantics was, “that there is no structure of things. There is no pattern to which you must adapt yourself. There is only, if not the flow, the endless self-creativity of the universe.” Accordingly, existence consists of “a process of perpetual forward creation” (ib: 139). As is evident two centuries later, the Romantic appeal to freedom was ­easily distorted. Some, like the French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre used it to j­ ustify a form of intellectual anarchy that eliminated debate by its rigid intolerance of alternative premises. In its more lyric form, and with varying levels of ­intensity, its adherents approached the experience of self and others as if plotted on story­board, charting a sequence of self-certifying undertakings, a bit equivalent to the eight tests of Ulysses. However, two centuries ago, in its initial

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phases this appeal to freedom was treated for the most part, well, Romantically rather than tragically or pathetically. Even if by this philosophy, life is a journey with no definitive outcome other than death, come what may, the adventure is as beautiful as each cares to make it.

Subjective—Objective Reversal?

One of the major twists in social philosophy that is difficult to concretize concerns the {subject—object} relation. Under the classic model that the Romantics wished to leave aside, {intellectual—conceptual} knowledge played a key part. Presumably there were, you or I, as subjects, and things of the world, as objects to be known. Resting on a base of arguments developed by Descartes and extended by Kant, the question was not about the existence of this binary division, but about the way to validate the connection. How can I be sure I know the world for what it is, and that my ideas are not just a special subjectivity, real enough for me perhaps, but holding little certifiable validity beyond that? In side stepping that important issue, largely because of a lack of formal philosophy among the participants, the effect on the position of self and the world for the Romantics must be established by approximation. However, by shifting the power of being-creatively back to the individual, the objective position of priority, which is to say objectivity as such, became an attribute of individuals, with worldly things, events and experiences transformed into the passive state of subjectivity. Thus there was no longer the test of truth based on the ability to apply a scientific formula to relations among mere external things, because “you are trying to apply a formula to something which evades your formulation” (ib: 140). The Romantics believed that application of the analytical logic that dated from the Scholastics of {subjective—objective} cut the umbilical cord between being and life. Reinvigorating creative forward movement meant putting an end to that practice. But, “how… [might] one … understand reality … without positively distinguishing oneself … as subject, and reality on the other hand as object” (ib: 140)? Furthermore, once stripped of the standard of external objectivity, what is one to do if the motive arises to create an expression with generalized meaning for others? The answer generated by the German Romantics for this logical imbroglio, was that this could be attained, “by means of myths, by means of those symbols … which … encapsulate the dark, the irrational, the inexpressible … deep darkness,” of existence in the world” (ib: 141). Or as summarized by Berlin, “All art is an attempt to evoke by symbols the inexpressible vision of the

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unceasing activity which is life” (ib: 142). Thus we arrive at the works of art, “at the heart of the Romantic Movement—the attempt to break reality into fragments, to get away from the structure of things, to say the unsayable” (ib: 142).

Romanticism’s Politics

Since Berlin was a political historian, his interest in the German Romantic Movement focused more on the consequences of the Age of Revolution for the political frame of the West than on delving into the intricacies of aesthetics at the center of the Romantic intrigue. While surely not originating with him, nor without appeal on the part of conservative German interests, Berlin saw a rather definitive line of predisposing influences from early 19th century Romanticism into 20th century German political tension. Beneath his carefully nuanced argument lurks the following postulate about the political reach of Early Romantic pessimism: This view of great images dominating mankind—of dark forces, the unconscious, of the importance of the inexpressible and the necessity of discounting it and allowing for it—spreads into every sphere of human activity, and is by no means confined to art. It enters, for example, into politics…. IB: 144

Berlin fails to note that what applies for art is not necessarily in tight concordance with organized social practices; because the intersubjectively meaningful construction of community is more than a simple aggregation of individual initiative. It is true that the Romantic’s disqualification of fixed structures put in question not just hereditary monarchy or self-perpetuating aristocracy but also fixed views about political-economic arrangements. But that targeted the rigidity and intractability of the Ancient Regime, in anticipation of its replacement by a society of movement, initiative and freedom. As critics have ably pointed out, the justice of art granting symbolism a free hand, when transformed unrestrictedly into politics results in a chaos of free-spirited action. However, Romanticism also endorsed a back to nature movement, according to which intrinsic organic realism was assumed to assure a forward moving, yet well integrated present both individually and collectively. Given the tension between those views, it is unsurprising “That …we encounter revolutionary Romantics and reactionary Romantics. That is why it

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is impossible to pin Romanticism down to any given political view, however often this has been tried” (ib: 147). A lot occurred between the 1820s when the early phase of German Romanticism ended, and the 1960s when Berlin gave these lectures. There was the development in France in the mid-1800s of another stripe of Romanticism, a subject Berlin touched on briefly in closing lecture and not in an altogether flattering fashion. There was also English Romanticism, Byron, and all that; which Berlin also acknowledges in passing without much interest. As indicated by the following verbal flashes with which we will close our study of his work, the ambiguity of Berlin’s final assessment of the value of the Romantic exercise is indicative of the power of their ineffable ambition to resist objective instrumental evaluation. We owe to Romanticism… the freedom of the artist … [the] whole notion of the plurality, of inexhaustibility, of the imperfection of all human answers and arrangements. IB: 168–169

So far, so good. But, he also points out that, “Fascism too is an inheritor of Romanticism, not because it is irrational … nor because of a belief in elites … [but] because of the notion of the unpredictable will either of man or of a group;” … allowing for the will of the leader as expression of the will of the people, accompanied by the, …hysterical self-assertion and the nihilistic destruction of existing institutions because they confine the unlimited will, which is the only thing that counts; … [by] the superior person who crushes the inferior because his will is stronger …. IB: 168

chapter 4

Walter Benjamin’s Aesthetic Critique

Benjamin’s Doctoral Trial

We turn next to Walter Benjamin’s doctoral thesis: Le Concept de critique esthétique dans le romantisme allemand (1986/1920). In it we find a penetrating, political-esthetic unraveling of the challenge of intellectualist rationality mounted by the Early German Romantics. Originally done in German, eventually published also in French, this text is yet to be translated into English. In this probing study of the culture-critical method of the early German Romantics, he raised issues related to consciousness and judgement that still wait to be resolved. Approaching his text is easier by recalling what Isaiah Berlin revealed about the Romantic ambition: to leave aside intellectualist-rationalist modes of thinking and knowing, so as to open consciousness directly to aesthetic experience. Social-philosophical writing requires respecting the mode of discourse of the cultural form under scrutiny; so, in keeping the faith with the Romantic ideal, to downplay all formalisms Benjamin decentered his discourse with a constant shift in voice. The result is an unusual style that his university doctoral dissertation committee was nearly unwilling to pass it. As Isaiah Berlin noted, even if the history of the Romantics is yet to be fully established, its effects are apparent in every intellectual movement since then. Whereas Berlin opened by stating that Romanticism defies definition, Benjamin’s attack on the issue offers other possibilities. In addition to supplying the reader with a new view of the tensions and problems that drove Benjamin’s entire career, examining his treatment of the Romantic problem will clarify the challenge of the research reported in this book. To resolve that Romantic enigma, we will propose a modified model of consciousness and judgement, of human being in the world, which is ontologically defendable and epistemologically coherent. The proposition is described in Part 2 of this book. Its theoretical basis is drawn from work by Maurice Merleau-Ponty on phenomenology of perception and action. Since the justification is more crucial than the model, as we get to unraveling Merleau-Ponty’s project, though of a different style, we will see that his texts are a match for Benjamin’s thesis in erudite obscurity. The Romantics sought an alternative for the rationalist, {intellectual— conceptual} model of both knowing and being that then dominated Western

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi 10.1163/9789004272644_006

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culture. Serving well for practical, technical objectives, extreme rationalism deflects attention from the problems of civilization: muting debate about moral values—the good, right and just. Correcting that cultural misdirection is no small undertaking since the issue has been developing since the Italian Enlightenment, five centuries ago. Why not shift intention from solutions by mind, in favor of consciousness as the site of immediately given perception and action. Implied but not realized by the Romantic ambition, that treatment of consciousness as historical and perceptual presence was the formal trajectory taken by Merleau-Ponty. Achieving that end demands a reconsideration of the nature of human being, about which we provide a proposal at the end of this book. As with most doctoral theses, Benjamin’s is no easy read. It is an elaborate analysis of heteroclite pieces of text, composed a century earlier by members of the Early German Romantic group. They refused to accept the possibility of a manual of Romanticism. Not being clear just what bounds to place on its content, Benjamin was required to apply what amounts to a Romanticist reading on the Early Romantic effort. As for style, the result is not unlike what James Joyce (1922) applied for a reading of his own mind—incarnated in his central character, for Ulysses. ­Perhaps a wonderful way for a novelist to fabricate a fictive existential tale, use of a Romantic style of writing poses problems of composition for a doctoral thesis—particularly in a Humboltonian university. Most university committees expect a thesis to demonstrate the logical application of a method for systematic exploration of an argument, anchored in evidence and woven together by an integrated conceptual perspective. Had Benjamin framed his thesis research using that conventional template, he would have been forced to draw on theories and modes of empirical analysis that would have assured in advance the impossibility of reaching the Romantic project of interest. The impasse in which young man Benjamin found himself is a potential problem for every student in the social-historical fields. It is particularly pressing when the target of study is innovative if not revolutionary. Well before the Romantics began, Friedrich Schiller in Germany showed the same resistance to rational formalization and encountered major career difficulties as a result. Then following Benjamin by a generation, Foucault suffered due to the same form of personal resistance (O’Brien 2014).1 Benjamin overcame the hurdle and on presenting and successfully defending his thesis in philosophy at University of Berne, Switzerland, he was granted 1 For a recent study that illustrates how the flooding of universities with non-academic money imposes restriction that throttle creativity, see Stengers (2013).

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his doctorate summa cum laudé in 1919. After minor editing, it was published the following year (1920), simultaneously in Berlin and Berne, but under slightly different titles (Benjamin 1986/1920: 7).2 After finishing his studies, Benjamin attempted to qualify for his habilitation, as prerequisite for getting a professorial post in a German university. To meet that requirement, in 1925 he composed and submitted a post-doctoral thesis at the University of Frankfort, entitled, The Origin of German Tragic Drama. The work was judged as “unreadable” and rejected by the faculty, which then included Marx Horkheimer. Although he later published this study as a book in 1928, that negative judgement about the quality of his composition ended his academic career before it had really started (wb: 8). Whatever the practical implications, he probably shed few tears about not ending up with a post as university professor. In correspondence, he referred to the moral difficulty he had faced when attempting to “bend with convention”, by trying to qualify as a serious academic. At the time he served as juror for Benjamin’s unrealized appeal for the German Aggregation, Horkheimer was beginning his own career, having just been appointed as first ever Professor of Social Philosophy in the history of the German university system (Horkheimer 2010/1930: Introduction). He soon acceded to the directorship of the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfort; which under his leadership was transformed into the world recognized Frankfort School of Critical Studies. Even if he sided against Benjamin’s application for aggregation, Horkheimer was struck with the young student’s intellectual acumen. Ironically, then, in tandem with Theodore Adorno, he later used his Frankfort Institute authority to provide financial support for Benjamin during his most productive years; and later still, steered the 1973 publication of Benjamin’s complete works; which is the source of the 1986 French translation of his thesis that serves as the basis for this chapter of our book. Benjamin’s reticence to comply with then existing German university standards, particularly by rejecting philology as analytical tool, was not without good reason. The problem that concerned the Romantics and then Benjamin, was how to make sense of a text, particularly old one dealing with abstract issues. Demonstrating a precocious historical sensitivity, he was intolerant of translations, particularly those asserted as word-for-word, as necessarily inaccurate and thus misleading. He contended that as science, “philology is 2 Further references to (Benjamin 1986/1920) will be abbreviated (wb: +page). This is a French translation of the original in German; all English citations are translated from the French by the author; no published English translation is available.

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unworthy of its name” (wb: 10), since the procedure involves unrealistic agreement among scholars about the use of particular words and phrasal constructions in old texts. Later, in his famous text on “The Task of the Translator” (wb: 10), where he used as case example the Tableaux Parisians by Baudelaire, he announced: The task of translator [who takes on a work to translate] is to extract and put into his own words the pure language exiled in the foreign tongue; …[so as] to liberate by transposition in transposing the pure language captive in the work. WB: 10

Creative work is self-contained expression, which speaks directly to the reader. General Standards only partially reveal the meanings from creative usage of words; since their meaning are defined in relation to the work in which they used and, to believe Benjamin, exclusively so. If not by philology alone, then something further is needed to make sense of a work. Resolving that issue was to be supplied by the Romantic method of aesthetic-critique. Because of its unusual style, appreciating Benjamin’s thesis poses problems of translation. Thus the French edition of reference used here includes an “Introductory” essay (wb: 7–25) by the French philosopher, Philippe LacoueLabarthe, who along with Ann-Marie Lang was responsible for its translation from German. Keying this first part of our discussion on the descriptive and interpretative material found in that “Introduction” will accelerate presentation of the historical, personal and intellectual conditions that drove Benjamin’s career.3

What Does the Figure, Aesthetic-Critique, Intend?

Benjamin’s text is a meta-critique of the aesthetic-critique, as action and consequence. This points to the double nature of the notion of critique. In French, the term describes both a product of human action—something that has been done; and a process of human action—as a special form of undertaking. Here, we rely on the English language distinction, between critic as the individual who produces the work, versus critique as its product. The point of the activity is enhancement of judgement and informed choice about cultural 3 For more on the issue see Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy (1978).

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practices, hopefully including suggestion for modification of relationships and institutions. Although his study of the aesthetic-critique was intended to be purely methodological, he was obliged to given minimum attention to the substance of their attention. They were primarily concerned with literature, highlighting writings of Goethe or Shakespeare as particularly revealing of the meaning of creative originality. Other than for expletive reasons, there is little inclusion of specific literature works in Benjamin’s thesis. With rationality as the culprit under scrutiny, Benjamin undertook a meta-critique of the Romantic aestheticcritique, for which our study here is a critique of the third-degree. Benjamin treated the aesthetic-critique as not simply an all-purpose form of intellectual activity that might be aimed at any object of history, but as a generic enterprise of universal ambition, perhaps constituting the most fundamental of all intellectual approaches. It potentially yields the ultimate access to the experience of human consciousness in the world. Establishing a self-centered position in a social world not of our personal constitution, consciousness is the historical materialization of human being. It rolls on to continuously track, record and narrate personal existence as collectively defined. Constituting the background for thought, the project of consciousness is to make sense of being in the world.4 It is a problem-solving orientation, related to survival: a natural undertaking that is active before mental activity of an exacting nature. The faculties of consciousness make possible thoughtful understanding in a community of meaning; including self-understanding. That is the basis for judgement, taken in reference to a common objectives that encompasses individual well-being. This points to the political-aesthetic intention of consciousness.

4 In philosophical studies of self-awareness, reliance on a sort of dualism of consciousness as replacement for the traditional Cartesian dualism of mind versus body is much debated. One way this is plotted is to suppose a multi-phasic consciousness, which some authors refer to as “phenomenal consciousness” differentiated from “access consciousness” (Peacocke 1995: 92); Wright, Smith and Macdonald 1998). The former is somewhat analogous to perceptualhistorical consciousness as discussed by Merleau-Ponty; the latter suggests deployment of an in order-to disposition as discussed by Alfred Schutz (1997/1932) and derived from Husserlian intentionality. Our proposal of political or aesthetic consciousness is intended to cover equivalent grounds without direct appeal to any dualism, by reconceptualziing consciousness as the multi-dialectic site of human being in the world. Accordingly, thought experiments are replaced by life experience as self-certifying events of worldly being. In the final chapter of this book, where we discuss Brain Imaging research, the dilemma of duality of consciousness will be dealt with again.

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We must not elevate the concept of aesthetic-critique to a state of uncommon magnificence, rendering it iconic, stripping it of practical value. To do so risks rendering it analytically sterile. The same risk attaches to many other notions that express a transcendental ambition (i.e. truth, good, evil, god, devil, beauty, justice, etc.); yet each continues to play an important role in how social experience is formulated and expressed. More than only revealing what thought does when it is said to be reflecting, the aesthetic-critique of consciousness certifies the basis that renders all such qualities classifiably human.

Pure Language or Creative Expression?

In the few lines cited earlier about the question of translation, Benjamin used the image of pure language that is captive in a text. How is text informed that way, allowing expression of meaning that resonates with the way existence is actualized among readers? Surely it must be there, since by study and reflection, it is commonly appreciated for what it is; or can it? Is there really an essence of meaning under the surface of words, of art, of life? To believe Lacoue-Labarthe, rather than an instrument of communication “pure language is a purely intransitive” (wb: 11); pointing to nothing past, present or future beyond itself, saying just what it says and no more. That implies not just that when writing, an author deploys a special usage of words as part of the creative process, but that once there, the text as a work with words as its body might not say anything other than what it did at its origin. If so, then the painting of the Card Players by Cezanne, or of Water Lilies by Claude Monet, simply are as they are; are transformed into a meaning laden pure language, constant for all time. Benjamin evaluated that as an “exotic” or “esoteric” conception of the process of textual procreation and appreciation, which is not how it was approached by the German Romantics, or by him. This view was also overtly rejected by Maurice Merleau-Ponty who in a text on the problem announced his negative position with the title, “The Phantom of Pure Language” (M-P 1992/1951). The postulate of an internal finality for a creative work based on a meaningproof pure-language is also contrary—but for different reasons, to the belief in the invariably strategic use behind all public writing as advanced by Jean-Paul Sartre (1988/1948); and contrary also to its potential as tool for rousing social movements as advocated by Bertolt Brecht (1992/1957) with his revolutionary theater. It is also quite opposite to the thesis of New Criticism which places the emphasis for a reading on the context of creation and appreciation of a work rather than on the words themselves (Culler 2006).

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Although Benjamin did not go this far, he was intuitively aware of the aesthetics or social-political judgement dimension of this linguistic problem well before it was spelled out rationally. Still, if not seeking to return to a purelanguage reading of art, Benjamin was certainly inclined to trust the process of returning directly to the text, with a minimum of a-priori conceptual baggage. In that way he was somewhat in concordance with Husserl, who proposed what he labeled bracketing as critical opening into phenomenology. Lacoue-Labarthe cites Benjamin’s correspondence on these points, including where Benjamin discusses—in order to discount its possibility, “that literature is capable of influencing the ethical world and the action of humans, by furnishing motives for action” (wb: 12). To achieve that effect, a work must be mediated, which is to say must be critiqued by reference to some external, contextual standard, sociologic, economic, Freudian, or other. But he considered that real “poetic” creations in themselves cannot be approached by formal mediation. In this, Benjamin was not only in opposition to Sartre, Brecht or Gramsci for that matter, but in implicit opposition to the possibility that textual messages might be used to alter consumer or political preferences. As history has shown, propaganda works wonders, both politically and economically. The key is the way words are built into narrative scenarios, which furnishes the extra-contextual energy of the result. Benjamin was half right about the lack of influential fecundity in words; also half wrong. As indicated by the tragic message that lifts its wings out of his Thesis on History (1968/1940), not to mention the confirmation that he saw its truth by his choice to suicide rather than live on: it is apparent that before the end of his years, real world confrontations generated by fascist Germany in Europe lifted the veil to reveal the horrid danger due to the power of words. As a student he believed that to achieve an accurate reading, one would grasp the words and phrasal structure in reference, not to the world as mediated in some fashion, but by viewing the work as if a primal creation, in opposition to the well of “silence” which is the only true alternative to what a given work says. Benjamin refers to this as his “notion of a style and of an objective mode of writing”. (wb: 12) He was unable to follow completely the aesthetic principle of un-mediated reading of the work of the Romantics. He was obliged to comply, at least marginally, with university convention by loosely framing his thesis conceptually, thus mediating his analysis by framing it in some accepted intellectual-conceptual perspective. Denying its justice, he went along with that, hesitantly. It is not until the “Appendix” that he was able to express to some degree his true take on the problem; which even if informative, LacoueLabarthe does not recommend reading first; so we won’t.

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Historical-Materialism or Historical-Idealism?

Benjamin considered its “messianic” ambition to be the crucial quality of German Romanticism for working up literature; as if the end were nearly to “found a religion” (WM: 15). His exposé was intended to avoid a cultural history of Romanticism, which was another form of study that he rejected. This would seem to preclude use of a historical-materialist method, favoring what could be labeled in counterpoint, a historical-idealist method.5 He affirmed that, “a messianic ambition … was the historical essence of Romanticism,” which as violation of academic convention was unsuited for him to investigate. (wb: 15) The way he put this was, “One will not as was often the case present this as the historic essence of Romanticism. Otherwise said, one holds out of play that mode of questioning as appropriate for the philosophy of history.” He decided that a sincere study of the “mystique” ambitions of aesthetic-critique among the German Romantics was incompatible with the university demands for a certain rational logic of “science”. To meet a minimum standard of university erudition by linking his study of a general framework, it was natural that he turned to German philosophy, which led him back to Kant. It might have led him to Hegel or Marx, but even if evident in Benjamin’s dilemma, the dialectic seems not to have been his style. While Kant would not agree, it seems inconsistent to use Kantian tools to study Romanticism without any opening toward a philosophy of history; which Benjamin was also attempting to side-step. Perhaps for that reason, in his correspondence he discussed the relevance of Kant by implying that one should read Kant as literature: It is absolutely true that in all great scientific creations it is necessary to include the aesthetic value (and inversely) and by that I am equally 5 Given any object of interest about which one sets out to know, since all knowing is comparative, the methodological possibilities are limited: either one compares what is to other elements contemporary to it (synchronically), or one compares its present state to some antecedent and subsequent condition as it and you, the observer, travel through time (which is to say diachronically). The choice depends on the identification of comparable qualities or categories, about which the measurement of similarity or difference can be recorded. Benjamin denied the use of categories that are theoretically derived, but also the pertinence of qualities that are important and stable enough to be measured across time. For these reasons, he effectively closed off the possibility of research as conventionally discussed, forcing him to fall back on the power of immediate appreciation by aesthetic consciousness of the nature of the object and its qualities. Independent of the validity of this position, its consequences for text writing are striking and occasionally confusing. It is difficult to compose a text about an analytical historical question without ever using either the language of analysis or history.

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persuaded that the prose itself of Kant represents a major plateau of the great prose of art. WB-13

Whatever its initial depth, Benjamin’s enthusiasm for Kant was short lived. Within three months of taking on Kant writings, he announced in correspondence that other than its “ethical interest”, which remained unspecified, that “Kant’s work was totally inappropriate” for the sort of study he had in view. At the same time, and perhaps in a contradictory vain, Benjamin asserted the need to “follow word for word the Kantian philosophy”, and to devote his study to the “infinite task” opened by Kant (wb: 18). In composing his thesis, none of this ambition was preserved. Although difficult to evaluate from such distance, it appears that Kant’s three famous critiques proved too much for Benjamin, as they have for many others over the generations. None the less, as with Schiller,6 who consciously decided to pass over the first two Kantian critiques and concentrate on the third, that of the Critique of Judgement, which is to say, Kant’s critical aesthetic; Benjamin used Kantian terminology in the title of his thesis without directly weaving Kant into his conceptualizations. Even if only to reject it formally, given the dominance of the Kantian perspective in German Universities at the time, it is difficult not to see traces of Kantian influence in the way Benjamin lanugaged his argument. Exposing what is labeled today as the tension between off versus on the record statements, there was a certain oscillation between what Benjamin said in his correspondence and what he did in his thesis. The former attests to the impact of Kant on his thinking, yet the latter shows little direct evidence of it in his analysis. It was as if Kant were Benjamin spiritual guru, rather than intellectual coach. Although the specifics are difficult to find expressed in the body of his thesis, based on a cited line from his correspondence (wb: P21), one might even conclude that the central argument that motivated Benjamin was purely Kantian: assuming that Kant’s third Critique of Judgement represented a radical turn away from rationalism: Only since the German Romantic movement has the idea imposed itself that a work of art could be grasped in its true nature to the extent one contemplated it for itself, independent of its relation to any theory or moral standard, and that it would be sufficient just to study the work, to get at its truth. That relative autonomy of the work in relation to art in 6 See OBrien 2014, Chapter 3, for discussion of Schiller’s Correspondence.

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general or more correctly its dependence in a uniquely transcendental fashion vis-a-vis art in general was the essential presupposition of the Romantic critique. [Therefore, my work for the thesis] will consist of demonstrating that the Romantic critique [of literature, of art] essentially presupposes the aesthetic theory of Kant. WB-13

While the first part of the above citation from 1918 is an accurate description of the core of the Romantic thesis, based only the on its structure, it seems that the last line of the citation was the thesis of Benjamin’s thesis. Yet the Romantics were openly critical of Kant; suggesting misunderstanding somewhere along the line, perhaps on the part of the translators.

Lost in the Paris Arcades

In spite of Benjamin’s difficulty with authority, including Horkheimer’s place on the faculty that rejected his qualification for German professorship, some years after finishing this studies, he was integrated (rather loosely) by Horkheimer into what came to be known as the Frankfort School of Critical Studies. To qualify for financial support, he was obliged to submit a document to the Institute, demonstrating the deserving quality of his intended research. He did this and the burden of critiquing Benjamin’s document fell on the shoulders of Theodore Adorno. The incident is well known, although the emotional undertones are open to judgement. The project on which Benjamin was working in the 1930s was his Arcades Project. The brief text from that work, Paris Capital of the 19th century, is treated as the most important of his writings. However, the published text was but an introductory theme piece, initially intended to exemplify what he was going to explore based on thirteen years of field study in Paris, (1927–1940), during which time he amassed field notes filling 1,200 pages when they were finally published in 1982. Given the effort, why the hesitation to publish more work about it in his lifetime? It was surely not because the study was unimportant. What he appears to have done, as he strolled about Paris as participant observer, was to get a grip on the way the Bourgeois philosophy of history had taken over the Western civilization, with the evidence most visible in the developed centers of Europe, of which he depicted Paris—from a political aesthetic perspective as its 19th century capital.

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By the 1930s, the famous Parisian Arcades had become very important both commercially and socially. These were small alleys cutting between major thoroughfares, centrally located in the city; not large enough for auto-traffic, covered with glass roofs, with the pedestrian surface tiled in a decorative fashion. Catering to bourgeois tastes, on either side of the arcade were wall-to-wall boutiques of the specialized and attractive variety that are common in Paris to this day. Benjamin evaluated these covered alleys of elegance and exclusivity as generating a symbolic message of economic desire and want, which is a core element supporting the bourgeois attitude. He spotted the way the atmosphere of the arcades, as service for the bourgeois flâneur, which means ‘stroller’ in English; well he sensed the aura of meaning implied by that scene, as manifestation of the force of capitalist economics, embodied, carried and perpetuated by the bourgeois life style as urban way of life for the elites. At the same time, those passing in that effete scene we generating an attitude of exclusion to lesser social categories of Parisians, resulting in what a generation later Pierre Bourdieu (1979) would label, symbolic violence. Independent of the sociological, aesthetic or other dimension of his fascination with Paris arcades, while Benjamin was working on this project, given his need for funds, it was necessary that he produce a document about his research and send it to Horkheimer’s Institute for critical review. Adorno was the reviewer, and the result was not easy for either of them. At the time, Adorno (1903–1969) was the young tiger of the Institute, charged by the not much older Horkheimer (1895–1973) to do the heavy lifting in the Frankfort School. He took seriously the proposal by Benjamin for the continuation and completion of his Arcades Project and treated the document he received with a stern academic eye; raising serious questions about its conceptual foundation and methods of procedure. As already established, Benjamin rejected academic conventionalism and this set him up for trouble. Read from a distance, Adorno’s critique was admittedly unyielding: pointing out the lack of formal conceptual foundation beneath Benjamin’s pragmatic research intention. While a free-spirited artist might proceed anyway, with its subjectivity treated as an aspect of its charm, standards are not like that in academia. In the end, this overview piece as reviewed by Adorno (1999/1970) was the only portion of the project that was ever published until forty-years after Benjamin’s death, when his working notes were finally cleaned and made available to for the public. The demand imposed on Benjamin by Adorno for some explicit conceptual or theoretical foundation as frame for the work should not have come as a

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surprise. Even if the formalization of Kant was not to be called on, the famous distinction of soul-versus-form by Lukács (2010/1911) was already well known; since at the time of the establishment of the Institute in Frankfort, Lukács had participated in some of the organizing meetings. It should have been possible to draw on those figures developed by Lukács as a basis for decorticating the bourgeois history materialized in Paris as centered in the Arcades. However, as Benjamin’s text arrived on Adorno’s desk, the tragedy of impending European war was on the horizon, with Benjamin already living in Paris on the run from the Nazis. As the same time, the difficulty of rationalizing the historical-material project of Marx had already led Horkheimer to compose his famous text, Traditional and Critical Theory (Horkheimer 1999/1937) as an orienting statement of the Institute. That climate of turmoil undoubtedly contributed to the tension generated by Adorno’s stiff treatment of Benjamin’s Arcade Project text. In the aftermath of this critical encounter, Benjamin’s work on this project came to a halt. Tragically, this was followed only too soon by Benjamin’s actual death, at his own hand, in a moment of desperation when he was caught by the Spanish Fascists at the border between Spain and Portugal: attempting to flee France, to take a ship for the usa because of what he believed would occur in the hands of the German Nazis were he—as a Jew, to have been returned to Paris as his Spanish captors were considering.

On Critique

What then is the Critique-Esthétique about which Benjamin was concerned? In language he did not use, a critique is always a critique of something; always use of some method for putting under scrutiny a cultural project of interest, to describe its presence, perhaps explain its past, and narrow speculation about its future; with attention for what it says or means in reference to collateral circumstances and objects in its field of being. On that last point, Benjamin oscillated, sometimes speaking as if a work was to be studied in isolation to all else, and other times implying that a work can only make sense when taken in context. Determining what that method was, how it worked and with what utility and limitations was not easy. The Early Romantic Movement had been shortlived and under-theorized. Not only was it put into motion without formal preparation, but those who participated in it abhorred theorizations. As new way of addressing an old problem, it spread about by other means, drew in adherents, and for a time was quite fashionable.

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Through the 18th century in Europe, the generic tool for extracting meaning from a work was called philology. Defined as linguistic history, the philological problem seems arcane to the ordinary mind, since what words mean in a customary language seems self-evident. Once words are detached from the pool of conventional usage to be put into a text by an author, they rest impassively there, as a block, forever. The times change, the sense of words shift, and debates open about what was intended or meant. The issue is intensified when languages alter at their base or recede from common use to be replaced by others. This leads to translation and from that point on, the issue of the preservation of the real meaning of a work shifts from simply a matter of opinion into the realm of formal standards. After centuries or thousands of years of shifts in world-views, the problem turns into intellectual detective work, aimed at determining from the study of often fragmentary versions and commentaries, not just what the words mean in a text, but what words were actually included when it was composed. In the mid-19th century, a generation before Benjamin, when Nietzsche came to philology, the focus was on the careful study of a text as an assemblage of words; as if the words said all that was of importance. He, among others, later including Benjamin, judged that as a limited procedure, implying that meaning is contained within a paragraphs like textual straightjackets. If so, then this same quality should guide composition, which if applied, would lock the creative writer in a vice of conformity. The Romantics approached texts with the equivalent of religious zeal. They attempted to identify the spirit within a literary work that explains the power of its symbolic capacity to seize the regard of subsequent generations of readers. The fact of the existence of that capacity is evident. Quality literature, theater and poetry generates a palpable form of immediate resonance for readers; one needed only consider the force of the Christmas Carroll (1843) by Dickens, the essays (Self-Reliance; The Over-Soul) by Emerson 1990/1841) or the poetry of Baudelaire (Les Fleurs de Mal—the Flowers of Evil: 1857) to appreciate that some x-factor lends a superior power to the result. In oratorical politics this is also evident with the speeches of a Martin Luther King, J.F. Kennedy or Gandhi. How might we fault the development of a literary interpretive movement, aimed at aesthetic-critique, intended to free that deeper spirit of meaning for the large mass of words which carry it, exposing its spontaneous properties, dynamics and durability? In spite of the ambition, the spirit of the Movement, as critical aesthetic method was as elusive as the life-force of the texts that its members attempted to unearth. Still the revolutionary potential of that possibility about unbridled awareness cannot be underestimated. Drawn to the limit, it implies that

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the creation and subsequent expressive power of great works depends on a ­dualistic energy of authorship, treated as the dialectic reversal of the receptive quality of readership. It implies a compositional and appreciation process that is partly logically approached and partly spontaneous free expression; associated not with Cartesian forms of true understandings or the Kantian categories of mind, but with the composer’s dance of being, as historically embedded authorship; and the reader’s openness to appreciation, when face-on to such work, as art. While it is one thing to assert that this compositional dynamic characterizes a story like Moby Dick (Herman Melville; 1851) or Ulysses (James Joyce; 1922), the assertion signifies that the same applies to the texts of Kant or Descartes or Hegel. If the Romantics were exact, then every work, whether science, fiction or philosophy is a mixture of history and circumstance, with the genius of authorship depending on how that menu is constituted and served up in words; and on the sensitivity of audience dependent on how the consciousness of others is opened as presence to the result. The aesthetic-critique is best considered a process rather than a terminal operation. Benjamin elaborated this view in his discussion of the flâneur strolling about a city like Paris as the best means of appreciating its essentially. The result is a distinct sense of place, as is. The same is true with art: to appreciate it, one wanders about in its presence. Penetrating a museum is the usual way this is done, ambling from room to room, from one context to the next, seeing a given work from the point of view of itself, as well as in reference to the rest of the place, and its contents, and the sequence of absorptions that mark the passage of the individual art appreciator. Since each moves a bit differently and is before, among, between the different works in a unique flow, the aesthetic appreciation of the detail is somewhat variable from one museum goer to the next. Yet there is the sense of totality as the Romantics identified it, of the work as a whole signaling the meaning of Art; unless of course it does not. This is why the effect of passing an afternoon at a car show or sales fair of fishing gear does not yield the same aesthetic effect does an afternoon in the Picasso Museum in Paris. That is the truth of good art: a work—or retrospective of an artist, attracts a plenum of audience, with each taking away an individualized dose of appreciation, linked to the self-appreciation that they arrive with, and which is changed by the exposure. This personalizes the process, leading to heightened sense of literary or art works as of deeper meaning, as well as having a sort of therapeutic self-evolution promoting effect for the audience—viewer, reader or flâneur. The anti-Enlightenment deployment of the Romantic critical aesthetic represented the attempt to get beyond the over-intellectualized strategy of

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drawing meaning for literature by appealing directly to the emotion or innate spirit of a work. This approach is sometimes labeled anti-enlightenment, as if the Enlightenment was a rather restricted intellectualist philosophy of human existence. At its origin centered in Italy, the Enlightenment was as aesthetic as it was rationalist in ambition; but it was subsequently captured and twisted by the rational calculating arguments of economics and the technical sciences. Never stated precisely, rather than an anti-intellectual strategy (which in fact was the preference of some), the Romantics used intellectual understanding as the starting point, in reference to which one hoped to go further, reaching the deeper essence, the subtle aura of Idea of Art implicit in the work. The Romantics were convinced that classical standards had been too intellectual, rational, conceptual; writing was too formally formatted to allow the fully human aspect of the real to be implanted in a work and then appreciated by its audience. For lack of better words, the result was a new stress on passion, sensibility, hue. Novalis, for instance, believed that the only way to achieve this was to transform all writing into poetry. This is not to suggest that the Romantics were joy-driven optimists. They saw the world as not just tragic in the theatrical sense but worrisome if not downright dangerous. In addition to themes of bountiful nature, open skies, welcoming gardens, they believed also that quality literature should express—when appropriate, trepidation, disgust or horror.

Hegel and History

It is difficult to say just where young-man Benjamin stood on issues related to the 19th-century Marx critique of society, or the neg-Romanticism of Nietzsche for that matter. Knowingly or not, he seems to have identified in Romanticism a critical approach that was in clear opposition to Hegel. This turns on the meaning of history, which for both Hegel and the Romantics was crucial, though differently. Between 1822 and 1831, Hegel lectured on the Philosophy of History, with the variations later collated for publication in 1899. It was here that the oppositional posture of Hegel against the principles of Romanticism were most clearly articulated. Coming after the Early German Movement had dissolved, the direction of influence was from them to Hegel and not the other way around. It is unlikely that Benjamin was unfamiliar with this material by Hegel and the question concerns its place in his work. Hegel contended that history expresses a reason or logic that is understandable by the rational individual; as a direct, one-on-one form of mentalist

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knowing. He did not consider reflection as equivalent to reasoned thought, evaluating the former as only subjective, unlike reason which is fully objective. With his treatment of history Hegel championed the intellectualist-conceptualist cannon that the Romantics opposed. In the “Introduction” to these lectures, he differentiated what he referred to as Reflective History from Philosophy of History. It was the latter which he attempted to practice, the center piece of which is Reason. Accordingly, The only Thought that Philosophy brings with it to the contemplation of History is the simple conception of Reason; that Reason is the Sovereign of the World; that the history of the world, therefore, presents us with a rational process. …In Philosophy [this conviction] is no hypothesis. It is there proved by speculative cognition, that Reason… is Substance, as well as Infinite Power; its own infinite Material underlying all the natural and spiritual life which it originates, as also the Infinite Form—that which sets this Material in motion. …It is its own material which it commits to its own Active Energy… developing the Natural … and Spiritual Universe [as] the History of the World. hegel 2004/1837: 97

Given that definition, the world is there to be known as the immanent fact of its History, which unrolls thanks to its Reason, and can be known thanks to our reasoning. None the less, art and literature are themselves spaces of capture for history, with some truth planted within, which art-appreciation is aimed at gathering in. The Romantics argued that Reason alone was not enough, necessitating a sophisticated form of engaged reflection to get at the truth of art. The tool to be added was iterative reflection. However, reflection implies that the apperceptive act puts something into the scene, rather than only drawing it out as would be the case for cold reason. Certifying this proactive view of human experience as crucial to the epistemological encounter was the key interest of the Romantics, but anathema for Hegel. In this Introduction, Hegel recognized the work of historians as involving a mix of rational and reflective activity, aimed at teasing truths out of a past; but his Philosophy of History was to be more than that, dependent only the fact and exercise of Reason, with no place for reflection. To him who looks upon the world rationally the world in its turn pre­ sents a rational aspect. The relation is mutual. But the various exercise 7 The capitalization of key terms was a signature of authorship for Hegel.

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of reflection—the different points of view—the modes of deciding the simple question of the relative importance of events (the first category that occupies the attention of the historian), do not belong in this place. hegel 2004/1837: 11

Although stressing the potency of Reason as both source and receptor capacity, the essence of History that intrigued Hegel was no less ephemeral than was sought in art by the Romantics: namely, Spirit. The nature of Spirit may be understood by a glance at its direct opposite—Matter. As the essence of Matter is Gravity, so, on the other hand, we may affirm that the substance, the essence of Spirit is Freedom. hegel 2004/1837: 17

From attention to the figures and style of Hegel on Philosophy of History, we arrive at the crucial distinction between his program and the Romantics. As Berlin attempted to establish by his reading of the Romantic project and Merleau-Ponty emphasized, the essential quality or spirit of experience for both art and life, is meaning. That is not to deny freedom, which Hegel treated as a terminal potential, but to treat it as a phenomenal quality that allows material experience to carry meaning dynamically, depending on the human qualities of events. Hegel attempted to formally separate aesthetics and politics. As he stated in his Philosophy of History lectures, the materialization or phenomenalization8 of the Idea of Reason is the State. For the Romantics or Merleau-Ponty on the other hand, since the spirit of existence is driven by meaning, the realization of that humanized spirit of meaning would be materialized or phenomenalized as community. Since his writings are notoriously elliptic, it is both difficult and risky to propose a summary of his position. None the less, drawn from his most famous text, the Phenomenology of the Spirit (Hegel 2004/1837), the following is a brief approximation of what he had in mind about the key figures of Rational Will and Spirit as State; as foundation of freedom and politics, based it would seem 8 Phenomenalization means the coming into material reality of an idea; as a business enterprise is the coming into reality of the idea of business in a society; the term has the same value in philosophy that the notion of institutionalization has in the critical social sciences. These figures are the source of considerable debate, concerning the active or passive role of human individuals in the process; often involving arguments about human agents versus human actors.

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on humans who are united by a common god consciousness. That theological element is a much discussed enigma associated with Hegel’s more down to earth position about the State and its rational principle: • “Essential being is the union of the subjective with the rational Will: as moral Whole, the State is that reality in which the individuals has and enjoys freedom” (Hegel 2004/1837: 38). • “Truth is the Unity of the universal and subjective Will; the Universal found in the State, in its laws, its universal and rational arrangement. The State is the Divine Idea as it exists on Earth” (Hegel 2004/1837: 39). • Forming an “organic whole; The State is embodiment of rational freedom, realizing and recognizing itself in an objective form. …the Idea of Spirit in the external manifestation of human Will and its Freedom. …where successive phases of the Idea manifest themselves in it as distinct political principles” (Hegel 2004/1837: 47). • “The State as the moral Whole and Reality of Freedom, as the objective unity of these two elements” (Hegel 2004/1837: 48). • “The general principle which manifests itself and becomes an object of consciousness in the State is that cycle of phenomena which constitutes the culture of a nation. The definite substance that receives the form of universality and exists in that concrete reality which is the State—is the Spirit of the People itself. The actual State is animated by this spirit, in all its particular affairs—its Wars, Institutions, etc. But man must also attain a conscious realization of this his Spirit and essential nature, and of his original identity with it. Morality is the identity of the subjective or personal with the universal will. … [and] The conception of God, therefore, constitutes the general basis of a people’s character” (Hegel 2004/1837: 50). As origin of the figure reason of state, the Hegelian view concerning political aesthetics concurs with that of Machiavelli; that the state as work of art incarnates not the wishes of the Prince, but the Idea of State order. Unlike a state model, a community model of collective existence is horizontal and cellular rather than hierarchical in construction, and thus the notions of fit and harmony mark a very different view of historical conditions for community than for state. In community, their joint treatment as political-aesthetics is fully appropriate, but not so with Machiavelli or Hegel. Benjamin’s was a littéraire rather than critical social scientist, practicing social philosophy by intuition rather than formation. He was unable to separate the truth of ideas from that of social existence. It may have simply been because Hegel followed the Romantics rather than preceded them, that though

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himself following Hegel, Benjamin concentrated his critique on Kant; who offered a fine way to think logically about the problem of art and the beautiful, without the danger of attempting to directly appreciate either. As for the Romantic alternative to rationalism, there were a few key spokespersons that merit attention. First, there was Friedrich Schlegel—not to be confused with his older brother, August, who though with less significance also contributed to the development of the German Romantic activity; and then the German poet, Novalis (1975/1796) who captured the Movement with the figure, “system as absence of system”. Benjamin keyed his study of the Romantics on slices of text, typically referenced as the “Fragments”, by Friedrich Schlegel (1996/1897–98); published in a journal he co-founded with his brother called Athenaeum; to which he was a regular contributor. Unlike the fragmentary residue of ancient writings, Schlegel’s fragments were purposely so: intended to portray as fact the false necessity of elaborate literary development or formal commentary, as with the classical style. Setting aside the rationalist-intellectual habits of mind, the only way to seize the truth of one’s world is via some form of immediate discernment. In fact, the much abused notion of intuition only designates that humans possess a facility to grasp the resonant potential of the recorded human experience of others, in the immediate aesthetic sense. Rationalists reject intuitionalism as hocus-pocus, while intuitionalists spurn the rationalists as rigid formalists who are blind to meaning. The Romantic project passed beyond the bounds of normal science, into the realm, not really of feeling and sentiments but of direct appreciation. This expression of engaged reading inspired a new genre of literary creation. Rather than rational, linear narrative centered on decisive central action, the scene was set in the open air, the forest, near the sea; with anxiety and hope oscillating between frenzy and serenity, calmed by compassion and justice—but sometimes with a sword. The result was not politically neutral. Novalis, for instance, proposed that humanity might be saved, not by rational science, which was more a source of problems than not, but by poetry as inspiration for unity among contraries and the progressive overcoming of limitations by common pursuit of better living, not via chemistry, but via beauty and trust. After the early Romantic Movement passed into history, there was gradual extension of the horizon of its critique, which as proactive expression appeared in literature in the form of the modern novel. With stories woven of social text resonating with images drawn from the then also emerging critical social sciences, this new form of literary expression concretized and perpetuated the Romantic aspiration, tightening the relation between the imaginative

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arts and the sciences of the real. Reflection was allowed to intrude into the rational realm in ways that clearly would not have pleased Hegel but which Nietzsche would have found entertaining. This intensified the ambition of authors and artists to bring reality out by art, yet to do this without the cognitive, intellectualist analytic that rapidly came to characterize the social sciences; marking a durable flight from formalist domination that in a way transformed the by then moribund Early German Romantic Movement into in a legend. By the 20th century, it became difficult to differentiate narrative of novels of degraded heroism from the portrayal of the real by the historical social sciences. Durably evident now in the 21st century, this supports the position of the American cultural historian Hayden White (2010; 1973), that as a mixture of fiction and fact all texts are at once literature, history and philosophy.

Benjamin’s Leap into Being

Benjamin opened his thesis with a breath-gasping drop into the obscure depths of human consciousness. The resulting view of the world is as if from many meters beneath the sea, reported by a young expert in the dangerous test known in French as apnée: seeing how far down you can dive while holding your breath, and still resurface alive. His begins with a statement; at once a definition, a postulate and a path of investigation: Thought reflects itself in self-consciousness; that is the fundamental fact from which proceeds all considerations of logical-rational-understanding on the part of Friedrich Schlegel, and also, in large part, Novalis. The relation of thought to itself such as it presents itself in reflection is viewed as the nearest relation to thinking in general, with all other forms of thinking being only an extension thereof. WB: 47

The thesis text is divided into two parts, the first on “reflection” and the second on “aesthetic-critique”. Reflection is the process of consciousness by which we circulate thoughtless in our daily pursuits. The obscure zone of experience it marks is the site of aesthetic-critique, as reference for the problems of meaning and judgement. It is the state of being engaged, humanly, live and direct, giving dynamic definition to the self and the world, with the notion of meaning describing the fit between them. This occurs prior to cognitive theorizing or understanding.

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The full title of his first Chapter is: “Fichte on Reflection and Position: Immediate Understanding; Limitation of Position; Limitation of Reflection” (wb: 31). Accordingly, Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) served as a bridge from Kant into 19th century German thought, providing a takeoff point not just for the Romantics, then Hegel, but also, for Marx. Although it is subtler than this, the Romantics (in a more down to earth fashion) and Hegel (in a more ethereal totalizing way) remained closer to the lead of Fichte, while Marx based his opening on its rejection. Fichte was an idealist. Rather than placing priority on worldly experience as do the materialists, he stressed consciousness as orienting position for human being. Since even for realists, consciousness does exist—as do worldly social relations really exist even for idealists; this nuanced distinction is the source of both confusion and sophistication when it comes to appreciating the work of the Romantics and above all of Hegel and Marx. Although he opened in a way that suggested he would anchor his study in Fichte, Benjamin’s approach to German Romanticism was almost exclusively targeted on the early development of that loosely defined movement, based on inspiration drawn from two somewhat lesser known Friedrich Schlegel and Novalis. Stressing “the relation of thought to itself”, Benjamin continued by identifying reflection as the “most frequent type of thinking” that occupied the Romantics, of which “imitation, manner and style” were the major concern. He backs this with reference to an early text by Schlegel: “The power of the activity that allows the return to one’s self, the faculty to be the Me of Me, that is thinking. Such thinking has no other object but ourselves” (Schlegel 1996/1897–98). However, as indicated by the chapter title, behind this view by Schlegel concerning “the thinking by thinking of self” lies the inspiration of Fichte; who just a few years earlier had published a text, On the concept of the doctrine of science or of that which one calls philosophy (Schlegel 1996/1897–98). Although Benjamin did not elaborate about it, the general chain of influence ran from Kant’s critiques of reason, to Fichte’s study of mental reflection; as inspiration for Schlegel, who modified it from thinking to reflection, and by that opened the path for German Romanticism. Working before Hegel wrote his Philosophy of History, the influences between them is unclear; however, they were as determined about the importance and power of reflective judgement as Hegel was later about reasoned understanding. In the long run, it was the Hegelian view that came to dominate German philosophy, wiping out Romanticism, and establishing the contours of Western rationalism to this day. The question facing Fichte, the Romantics and Benjamin for that matter was: what does the mind or consciousness do? This is a functional question,

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which takes for granted that what the mind is, is what it does. Backing into the 17th century, for Descartes (2004/1647), not only was the mind that which does thinking; but what any of us is, in essence, as a “thinking thing”. While few disagree with Descartes about the fact of mind, the debate following him turned on the issue of mechanism which explains its supposedly fail-safe workings. Descartes relied on a divine-interventionist explanation to explain the possibility of mental certainty—purportedly because the gods never fool us. For evident reasons that was rejected by humanists. Kant came up with new view of the mechanism of reason, proposing the mind as an internal, self-regulating system containing a labyrinth of basic conceptual categories.9 Fichte put his finger on another possibility: rather than focusing on mind, the point of departure about awareness ought to be one of position, with that centered in consciousness. To use a contemporary metaphor, this was to treat human consciousness as like a sophisticated gps, flashing attention to its current contents vis-à-vis its dynamic surrounding; which by mental reflection allows appreciation and diffusion of meaning, providing the basis for judgement about alternatives, remaining all the time existentially anchored in a social world. For most 21th century young people, issues of mind and consciousness are taken for granted, with emphasis less about mental conditions than social, economic or political behavior. What is taken as of mental importance is concentrated mostly on feeling or emotion. Two hundred years ago, the focus among intellectuals was quite different. In the interim, rather than coming up with a resolution for the problem of thought’s work or the presence of consciousness, these issue were relegated to the arcane hallways of metaphysics, then dropped from common debate.

What is Mental Reflection?

As the Romantics considered it, without recourse to rational cognitive intervention, reflection is the process by which consciousness takes in hand the content of its own processes. As developed in Part 2 of this book, from a systems point of view, this is to suppose that as the site of reflection, consciousness 9 Hegel’s néo-theological view of religiosity is remarkably parallel to Descartes’ god as permanent presence to mind. Kant’s view of error freedom depended on the postulate that every new entry into mind must fit conceptually with what is already there; thus internal noncontradiction is the regulative principle of truth, without need for external validation by attention to facts of existence from the historical world.

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mediates mental activity of mind and worldly experience related to sensory activity. The content of consciousness is fed partly by intake from that worldly experience, arriving in real-time as life moves along; and partly from the workings of mind, as material form memory is extracted and reworked. Consciousness is thus the energy generated by the dialectics of self and world for human being, as a symbolic field-force. As with the force of gravity in physics, being purely symbolic, other than by its effects it is not possible to detect consciousness presence as the potential for expression of meaning. Ambient-reflection is a useful way of describing the continuous presence of consciousness as world resonating process. By it, the images of consciousness play with themselves, with recombinant effects that modify those images or generates new ones; explaining creativity and dreams, hopes and fears; anticipating dialogues, encounters, situations, in advance of actual occurrences or in retrospect play-back of whatever once was. As we will see at the end when discussing Brain Imagining research, ambient-reflection thus defined is the default state of human being, as recorded by brain activity, but not necessarily generated or controlled by it. Fichte, Schlegel, Novalis at the beginning of the 19th century, or even Benjamin at the beginning of the 20th century, were working when the mind was taken as an intellectual problem rather than a psychiatric one, at the center of which was the notion of reflection, defined as thinking about what one is doing while doing it. Fichte focused on the work of the mind in what we might call the first degree of reflection: he was concerned with the interplay of “reflexive thinking and immediate knowledge”. He focused on practical action with its constant cycling, dialectically as we could say, between self, paying attention to its own inner monitoring and the facts of immediate knowledge, concerning practical choices linked to one’s place in the world. First stage reflection: thinking about action; second stage reflection: thinking about thinking. Without the second, there is no basis judgement, for guiding discrete choice among true alternatives. But if one gets caught in second stage reflection, an infinite do-loop might result, with the individual unable to act at all. Thus the problem of reflection is intrinsically linked to its power and utility. Benjamin’s mission was to describe the aesthetic-critique as essential contribution from German Romanticism. When we arrive at Chapter 3 of his thesis, his reflection opens on the concept of concept, discussing the postulates that must be in play in order to accept a conceptual logic. He concludes that the notion of “concept” is only possible in reference to a “system” of which it is a constituent. Thus this chapter’s title, {System and Concept}; with each pole implying the other, signaling a dialectic relation, although he does not use that term.

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As a first step in concretizing this claim about the systemic nature of concept, in reference to aesthetics, he announces that: “art implies Totality”. But as he saw it, Totality is easily taken as “mysticism”, which seems to suggest that Totality cannot be known in any detail, but only by its effects, as organizing principle or force of order among the elements or constituent sub-systems which it envelops. Indeed, the Romantics were ultimately condemned in part for the impracticality of their position, as if only of interest to mystics. That is how it is in the West with isms. Some are treated as both practical and agreeable, such as capitalism; others are considered real but reprehensible, such as socialism; a third type is considered neither real nor practicable, like mysticism. Which is only to underline that the power of a concepts is always in reference to the socio-political system in which it figures. As he proceeded, Benjamin oscillated between issues of history versus philosophy. By tradition, the difference between those disciplines is precisely the focus of philosophers on the transcendental dimension of concepts, independent of the temporal evolution in their meaning; which in history developed as the history of ideas. His approaching the concept, as a concept and not in its substance, is neither philosophy in the usual sense, nor historical in so far as he attends to its temporal movement. The evident solution for him was to reconceptualize the issue, which he did famously.

What is a History of Problematics?

Benjamin wanted to be clear: his was not to be a history of Romanticism, nor a history of the concept of aesthetic-critique, but a history of “problematics” (wb: 76); which to this day remains a rather ethereal if accurate description of undertaking. To exemplify, the problematic of knowing is ignorance. While that truism seems obvious, its importance is underappreciated. It implies that the solidity of any field of knowledge is certified by the magnanimity of the unanswered questions that it insists on confronting. Further, when a new intellectual or aesthetic movement arises, its significance is determined by the nature and quality of the problematic that it defines, and by that, attracts its adherents. By conventional inversion, the interplay between a problematic and the discipline that arises to attack it is set aside, in favor of celebrating the discipline in terms of its attainments. Focusing on the known rather than the unknown, while comforting, is misleading. None the less today, rather than in terms of the ignorance that perplexes its specialists, physics is celebrated in terms of what its adherents consider as its laws and so on with the other disciplines,

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professions and technical specialties. A university ought to be considered a site for the ongoing celebration of ignorance; after all that is what those who haunt its halls have in common (Firestein: 2012). While each of us differ, one from the other, in terms of what little we know, we are all common in terms of the infinite extent of our ignorance. Pursuit of a problematic requires use of a method: yet, what comes of searching in a dark room depends on whether one uses as method, a white stick, a stick of dynamite or a light-stick. Benjamin’s worry about the constraints of academic convention led him to sidestep the use of not just conventional logical conceptualisations (particularly of Kantian derivative) but formally recognized methods. Fortunately, at the time he did his thesis, the historicalmaterialist method developed by Marx had penetrated the German University environment, and this is the method he unknowingly used. By its bipolar nature, that method of dialectically linking {historicity and materiality} fits hand in hand with the {system and concept} polarity that interested Benjamin. History is the Totality within which the materiality of a concept establishes itself. That may imply history is a mysticism; but then why not? However, Benjamin was open to a range of possibilities for Totality, claiming that it might be “culture…harmony, genie, irony, religion, organization or history”. (wb: 80) By focusing on it this way, it appears that his orienting problematic was Totality. Whether consciously or not, the first challenge when using a historicalmaterialist method is deciding where to begin one’s research: what is to be the breadth and depth of factors to be taken in consideration to explain the evident given in the present? For Benjamin the answer about beginning was anywhere and anytime; or as he put it definitively, one must “start in the middle” (wb: 78). Which comes across about as well as the idea of celebrating ignorance, and for the same reason. In any case, this way of expression opened his commentary to condemnation for being not only a vulgar mysticism, but foolishly illogical. Although with larger concerns, Benjamin’s targets for study were texts, principally composed by German Romantics a century earlier. His call for a commencement—as beginning in the middle, was conceptual rather than literal.10 This is similar to my judgement about reading Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory (1995b/1970). Indeed, one can start at any chapter of that publication and then read in either direction. That is probably the better way to approach Adorno’s manuscript since, as published in book-form, the parts were assembled 10

For a study of Beginnings see the book by that title by Saïd (1997/1975).

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posthumously, with no certitude regarding his intention about the sequence value of those parts. For Benjamin, middle-reality, between {concept and system} is “language” (wb: 87); which strikes me as roughly equivalent to what Foucault called “discourse” (O’Brien 2014: Chapter 5). There are different frames of meaning and images, metaphors and parallels, by which an author might language her text. In principle, the perceptible material that participants in a movement such as Romanticism share is a world-view as captured in and articulated by a common linguistic framework. Even if of apparently independent inspiration, this view by Benjamin also fits with the linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure, which got its start at about the same time, anticipating also the development of ordinary language philosophy (Ludwig Wittgenstein) and hermeneutics (Hans-Georg Gadamer). Getting to the sense of the concept of aesthetic-critique via a study of the way it was languaged, necessarily implied for Benjamin that the result would be not just mystique but esoteric; mystique since it demanded reference to history as Totality and esoteric in the sense of being doubly mystic; because the Romantics who supplied the texts studied by Benjamin, had been themselves into an equivalent form of mysticism with their writing. This doubling of the mystic, with esoteric effects, by his own admission transformed Benjamin problematic into “magique”: realized as the double directional study of aesthetic-critique, systemically enfolded as concept. Taken in hand by use of the historical-materialist method, by the end of his argument, the concept of aesthetic-critique implied a back and forth between the critic and the world: outward as “productive” and inward as “appreciative”. Thus critique as action in the world is also action on the world. While surely not unilaterally destructive of its object by intention, nor passive either, deployment of the aestheticcritique encouraged by the Romantics was intended as a world transforming undertaking.

Knowledge of Nature

Chapter 4 of his thesis finalized the layout for his study. Had he been following the standard format, here he would have summarized the background con­ ceptualizations, determinant theory and method of procedure used for the study. What followed would then be—in principal, a presentation of his data (the sources of his observations), the results of his analysis (his findings such as they are) and his interpretation of the meaning of the entire exercise, theoretically, practically, or both. But no.

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Since Benjamin was reticent about academic formalizations, his treatment of this document was as untypical as was his problematic. He was angling to establish that the essence of the notion of critique, active at the heart of every intellectual or artistic movement, is the pursuit of a particular commoncuriosity on the part of some identifiable intellectual community. He assumed further that as he worked, unresolved issues raised by Romantic Movement continued to trouble the German philosophical community. Driven by some form of troubling curiosity, the members of a movement or discipline are thus engaged both individually and as a community of aspiring knowers, in the process of reflection, in active research on the topic. More than only the ambient condition of the individual consciousness of each, reflection is also the iterative interchange between them and promising objects of the world. With, one supposes, increasingly penetrating intensification of knowledge or awareness, individually and collectively, about those objects and the problematic or curiosity that propels them; with the results being put into the world, one way or another, as literature.11 Benjamin’s was a far less original epistemological orientation than one may have supposed. At least in comparison to how knowledge is generated today about “nature” or the natural world by the members of a discipline like chemistry or rocket science, his was not a particularly novel perspective. However, his intention was to go beyond ordinary material questions, asserting that a valid theory of knowledge must necessarily pertain not only for how we know about the natural world in physical science terms, but how we know of the aesthetic world, the aural-symbolic atmosphere if you will, of the humanizedmeaningful world. Applying the same epistemological strategy but to a radically different frontier is to suppose that there is a theory of knowing that is equally telling when attempting to make sense of the solar system as it is for reaching the truth of a work of art. This ambition, implicitly aimed at certification of “the concept of aesthetic-critique in German Romanticism as a unified theory of knowledge”, transformed his project from the banal to the extraordinary; but can it be done?12 11

12

Literature is used in this essay inclusively, referring to any form of communicative media, text, music, dance, theater, architecture, paintings, happening, oration, happening, etc. Even a conversation qualifies, with its actual dynamic reduced temporally, but its enduring potential (or historicity) perhaps enduring for generations or centuries. Writing a bit earlier than Benjamin, Dilthey (1833–1911) also addressed this issue of interpretative understanding, or verstehen, as the problem of taking the role of others, individually or transculturally, so as to really penetrate their life-world and the meanings of their ways of social action; thus transforming the problem into the realm of social sciences. This fed into the debate about the truth-value of hermeneutics which drew in the likes of

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We should not consider Benjamin’s intentions as particularly grandiose. All he really attempted was the conduct of quality research for a PhD thesis, aimed at an important lingering intellectual question. In spite of his defiance about convention, his compliance was betrayed by the universality of his method. Paradoxically, to assert that he was demonstrating the universality of a theory of knowing that bridged the gulf between the hard sciences and the aesthetic world, even if valid, was inconsistent with what the early German Romantics supposed. They were insistent about leaving aside the question of science and restricting their concern exclusively to the world of art. Since they never theorized their work, until Benjamin set to it a century later, the power of their approach remained unspecified; resulting in a major underestimation of its reach. Benjamin began exploring the problem of knowledge and understanding with the following announcement: “A critique implies knowledge of its object.” That evidently requires that one have a “theory of objective knowledge” (wb: 91) the precision of which is the point of his next nine-page chapter. The key as he saw it is “reflection”, which denotes both, a process for thinking about the object of interest and a form of self-activation or iterative judgement, which has the interesting effect of modifying the person who is thus thinking. In terms of humanized-meaningfulness, reflection modifies the world in which it occurs, including the self-awareness of the thinker, by hooking the presence of the observer to the presentation of the aesthetic object of concern. As this reflection continues to propagate, to think is thus seen to be “to know oneself immediately” (wb: 92), which is to say directly and non-conceptually. However, via feedback or dialectically, “the medium of reflection becomes a system”, which imposes itself on both the thinker and its object. That system may be considered as nature, art, religion or otherwise. However it is later conceived or labeled, that “medium”, which envelops the thinker is, at the level of consciousness, universal: treated from the interior as if including an entire world. This leads to the interesting position that there is no “not me” for he or she who reflects in this fashion: there is only “I”, who does the thinking or reflection, with those terms being used interchangeably. (wb: P93) The only facts of existence that arise to demand a place in consciousness (which as we say above is the entire world of the thinker); the only objects of consciousness are those that make themselves known by some form of worldly Bergson, Heidegger and Husserl; and eventually Gadamer who linked this into aesthetics with his argument about the truth in art. While the others came after Benjamin, Dilthey drew his initial inspiration about this directly from the Romantic Movement in Germany. Whether he influenced Benjamin as a graduate student is not clear.

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announcement. As promised by Benjamin rather magically, the results come across as decidedly mystical or esoteric. Is it reasonable to assert that my awareness of every other living entity, such as a tree in my garden, generated resonance in my awareness because of the way it speaks to me? While this may pertain for other people, or a dog or horse, it is not clear that a flower in the forest speaks out to the world in quite the same way as does a vicar in church from her pulpit. Whatever the source, the only way this connection can occur is via some form of immediate absorption at the level of consciousness of the knowing individual, linked to or imbedded in a world. From there, we arrive at another paradoxical claim that concerns the ageold issue of subject (she who does the knowing) and object (about which she knows). To believe the German Romantics as read by Benjamin, there is “not any knowledge of an object by a subject. All knowing is an immediate connection in the absolute, of if you wish, in the subject” (wb: 96). Although Benjamin does not do so, we might propose to compare this form of immediate or spiritual resonance to the way a magnet and a wire carrying an electric current operate. There is evident interaction or “direct connection”, without any material signs of how this occurs. Something equivalent must apply for the reflecting individual in the world of her making. This is not to suppose that there is no possibility of separateness between the thinking individual and her world. Rather, an “object” is identified precisely by its “lack of connectedness” with the subject of reflection; which is not the same as denying those natural influences. As summarized earlier, the German Romantics considered knowing as a form of ironic expression: they believed humans are capable of appreciating more than we can understand, or at least that the grasp of the truth of things, as when before a work of art, precedes its intellectual understanding. As discussed in the second half of our book, {intellectual—conceptual} or rational understanding is an archive activity and not a process of immediate awareness; and thus more limited than the {expressive—perceptive} presence in the world. The Western rationalistic approach to knowledge is by considering the subject and object as distinct, and then that the perception of object by subject is one thing, distinct from knowledge about object by subject, with the argument being about the mechanics of the link and subsequent interpretative evaluations. Not so for the Romantics, and as far as I can judge, not so as experienced by any of us in the world. The point is repeated by Benjamin with a variety of phrasing, the most succinct of which is that, “With the Romantics, the mediums of reflection, understanding and perception, coincide” (wb: 99). As elaborated somewhat earlier in the text,

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The [conventional] theory of perception has no influence on the theory of critique.... It is clear that such a theory [a critical theory of knowing] cannot yield any difference between perception and understanding.... Given that optic, understanding is every much as immediate as might be in general, perception. WB: 97

For the Romantics, irony in the sense of the immediate appreciation of the meaning of experience was possible only by treating the world and ourselves as if coincident in “a work of art” (wb: 100).

Connaissance Esthétique

According to Benjamin, the Romantics had a “metaphysical credo”, not as formal theory or developed position but as direct belief: that art is the most “fertile… medium for reflection” and that high level critique is realized as the “objective knowledge that is revealed in/as/of that medium of reflection.” This is connected to the “metaphysical intuition according to which everything real is a thinking being” (wb: 103). Being a product of rationalist modernity, my usual understanding of that image is drawn from Descartes, which is not the way that Benjamin intended it, nor the Romantics for that matter. Even if eventually clarified, such vagueness is intrinsic to the text. Benjamin constantly wove his own judgements into a report of what he took to have been the basis of critical judgement among the early German Romantics. Even if regularly drawing on citations about how this was approached, principally from Schlegel and Novalis, their lack of conceptual precision matched Benjamin’s, yielding a strangely compelling, if frequently ambiguous narrative. Treating art as a continuous creation, in the sense of event as Alain Badiou (2002/1998) uses the term, is certainly justified. But as unremitting coming into being, is there ever an objective end about art to be known? If not, then was the Romantic’s metaphysical credo an empty illusion? The Romantics took poetry as the highest form of art, with that term applied generically to all forms of text. They were not particularly concerned with the plastic arts, believing that language was the profound means by which the passing reality of human existence was given a permanent form. Applied to individual works of poetry thus defined, the assertion of the constancy of creation implies that once composed, a quality work sort of sits there, with its shimmering resonance, ready to be taken up, taken in and appreciated by

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whoever may chose. This also suggests that, like life with others, literary composition is a mysteriously self-generating disposition, an up from nothing act of pure creativity, charged with unexpected potential. As with novels when they are a largely fictive report on what’s real or given before the author starts writing; or in the end, like poetry, in its development, each work tends to speak for itself, actualized as if lodged in a container consisting of the book by its author. Presumably the same pertains for the visual arts, from Mona Lisa to Annie Hall. Is so, then to get at what art is, rather than with distant intellectual detachment, the critical approach requires “a deployment of the fact of the reflection… of the esprit [of the critic], in/into the formation” (wb: 107/8) which constitutes a given work of art. More than only the radical penetration of the work by incisive analysis, in the sense of a reflective-being, the Romantic critique thus supposes the critic to be one with the work. The process is dialectic: “In so far as critique is knowledge of the work of art, it is self-knowledge also; and in so far as it judges the work, this occurs as/with self-judgement.” There upon, reports Benjamin, “the idea of a self-judgement founded on reflection, even out and beyond the domain of art, was not a foreign possibility among the Romantics” (wb: 108). Suppose we are before a work of art, or in a gallery with a retrospective showing of the work of Matisse. If the German Romantic postulate is valid— assuming one is fully engaged, then being there, critically, is a creative reading by reflective consciousness of the creative expression of each work. Being there would stimulate ambient reflection, as the activity by which critical consciousness oscillates its regard between its interior contents and the externally visible images, figures, or whatever. In the course of these dialectic cycles, often continuing well after leaving a showing, the content of consciousness plays with itself, reflecting dynamically, leading to original modes of awareness, perhaps flashes of insight. It is likely that the play of ambient reflection of this nature is the prelude to the conscious insight that marks the breakthrough associated with all true creativity. This would pertain not just for literary greats like Shakespeare or Proust, but those of science, from Einstein to Freud. Although Benjamin did not extent the discussion in this way, it appears that this interplay of consciousness as ambient reflection, as the generative act of creativity, is of universal potential, with the range of the result being limited only by situational or historical factors. It is thanks to the work of the early Romantics that this meta-insight was first clarified, explaining the value of the work by Benjamin as he attempted to anchor the process conceptually. Consider first entering a gallery with Cézanne. Initially there is little engagement and often a certain confusion of consciousness. But if the presence is

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strong art, its speaking to us propels its essence into our critical consciousness, exerting a force of arrangement or rearrangement on ambient reflection, imposing a focus and insisting on being properly appreciated if not fully understood. Thereupon, arrive two important moments for consciousness in real time. First is what might be called an aesthetic transformation, when the sense of the art comes into focus, dissolving the confusion of consciousness, with a subtle gesture of discovery: ah ha.... That is the creative experience as expression from within the critic, intercalated with the creative expression of the art from without, in the gallery. This process appears to sketch what Benjamin discerned as at the essential dynamic of the aesthetic-critique as intended by the early German Romantics. But then there is a problem: that auto-creative process, generated by the workings of ambient reflection continues, potentially unabated, all the time, even when sleeping and mostly unconsciously at that. Suppose one continues to wander about in the gallery; it closes, one returns anther day, another and another; each time with more penetrating realization of what that art says for itself, and what appreciation of the experience says about me, and how this judging leads to intensified self-awareness on my part, as selfjudgement. Wonderful. But would the process ever stop, with some terminal announcement: that is what Matisse said with his art, or what his art says of itself? The Romantics were concerned about this never ending potential; as might occur not just for a critic, but also for an excessively scrupulous author, who finds herself spontaneously inspired—day after day, to modify a half-drafted story at three-o’clock in the morning; or for someone composing, then revising and recomposing music. When might it be said that the iterative cycle of appreciation or creation is finished: that’s enough; it’s done? We encounter the potential dilemma of the excessively scrupulous, endless reflecting—and revising, critic; potentially trapped in a human-consciousness equivalent of the computer-age infinite do-loop. Benjamin dealt with this directly: As reflection in and about it, all critical connaissance of a creative work is nothing other than a higher degree of the spontaneously springing forth of consciousness. That intensification of consciousness, in/by critique, is in principle, infinite; critique is thus the medium where the limitation of the particular work is methodically set aside or delayed, to be finished as the transfer to the infinitude of the art; in so far as it comes from itself, the art work as medium of reflection is infinite. WB: 110

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Rather than the analytical problem common to the ordinary natural sciences, where breaking the whole work into pieces destroys the possibility of grasping the sense of the composite entity, the problem with critique is that, “the particular work of art must be dissolved in the medium of art”, as whole. In human terms, this suggests that critical engagement is metaphorically equivalent to the Indian spiritual view that each entity is but an expression of the greater cosmic being. Each work of art is art as such, to the extent that it carries the consciousness of the critic to the universal condition of arte. Still the end point is to touch the fundamental potential of expression of this or that work, leading to the “discovery of the hidden dispositions of the work itself, which executes the hidden intentions of it as, art” (wb: 111). Thus, he concludes, “It is clear: for the Romantics, critique is less the judgement of a work than the method of its achievement” (wb: 112). As mixture of promise and possibility, the finality of a human creation is always mysteriously beyond us. “In regard to the absolute in/of art, every work is necessarily unachieved, or—which is to say the same thing—it is unachieved in regard to its own absolute Idea” (wb: 113). So, the critique is in quest of the absolute Idea in a work of art, which is without reference except in relation to the absolute being of Art as such; with this double layered ambiguity energizing what Schiller considered the sublime, which in the hands of the critique “presents the pure and achieved character of the individual work of art”; giving us, not “the reality of work, but its ideality” (wb: 113). While there is no particular materiality to that sought-after ideality, it is the fact or truth of the work that is the target of critique. Not many are able to attain this level of engagement. In reference to translated texts, which must be considered by world-class critics, assuming that the work is high art, the challenge is considerable. To achieve a critical standard that the Romantics might accept, “it is necessary that a poetic esprit and a philosophical esprit penetrate each other reciprocally, with full force” (wb: 113). This would demand of the critique (as translator) considerable accessibility of both her {rational and aesthetic} faculties (see Part 2 for details), which is possible, but difficult to achieve. The conduct of critique at this level of sophistication necessitates going beyond the one-dimensional “rationalism” that dominated critical thinking during the Classic Age (18th century). Schlegel is referenced as having attained this to a greater degree than any other, providing a “criteria for the work of art…: of an imminent and determinant construction of the work itself.” Or, “the cardinal principle, following from Romanticism, of all critical activity [is] the judgement of works according to immanent criteria” (wb: 115).

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Political Esthetics

Benjamin opens the next chapter by stating: “The Romantic theory of the work of art is the theory of its form” (wb: 117). While this seems to point to a particular theory about to be explicated, it comes across as somewhat contradictory with his constant acknowledgement that the German Romantic Movement was bereft of serious theorization. He may have used that language by necessity, required to be faithful to the standards of academic discourse, as if in hope of getting his thesis past his mentors. The other unusual aspect of announcing this as a theory of form, is that it sounds similar to the language of Lukács in his Soul and Form study of literature (Lukács 2010/1911), which had come out just a few years earlier. According to Lukács, as if an exoskeleton, form frames a work from the outside, to hold in place and render communicable its soul. Not so for the German Romantics, for whom form was that which informs the work from within, as its essence or truth, built into it by the artist/author/ creator. Thus the notion of form as used here by Benjamin in reference the Romantics and their reading of poetry, is soul as used by Lukács, when discussing the modern novel. That turnabout is equivalent to the reversal of the meaning of the notions of objective versus objective that occurred with the weaving of the then recently discovered works of Aristotle into Western literature, marking the end of Scholasticism.13 Derivative of the postulate of art-work as the medium of reflection that occupied Romantic critical consciousness, is the claim that, “form is by consequence the objective expression intrinsic to the work: it constitutes its essence.” Conversely, “it is by its form that the work of art is a center of living reflection”. If so, then taking in view the “spiritual germ” of the work and “it’s ever enlarging reflections”, the critical process of “auto-conception” in the consciousness of the critic exposes the limit of the particular work of art at hand, as well as assures that her appreciation rises to the level of “the conception of art in general” (wb: 117). This suggests that with sufficient time before Mona Lisa in the Louvre in Paris, for example: following iterative cycles of reflection, critical consciousness will have access to the true essence of the work, realized in reference to all arte, as provocative standard; with that dialectical process assuring a resonance between the way the work speaks of itself as a particular entity and of 13

The reversal of the meaning of objective and subjective is a story in itself; a brief discussion is attached as a footnote to a paper, “On the Problem of the Intrinsic” by Kenneth Burke (1945/1965: 125).

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the world of art as general concept; mediated of course by critical reflection of the critic. If so, then leaping forward to today’s 21st century, with sufficient rereading and reflection, a critical study of Grapes of Wrath (Steinbeck, 1939) could provide a sense of the concept at the center of that novel as work of art, as well as revealing much about the concept of the 20th century American novel as art genre; not to mention what it says about the deplorable state of the human condition in a society of advanced capitalism. The German strain of Romanticism suggested access to a certain critical other-worldliness or at least a totalizing this-worldliness, arrived at, paradoxically, by focusing intensely on individual works of good art. One might call on two dominant metaphors for getting a grip on that process: spiritual in the humanist sense or political in the ideological sense. Either great works inspire critical appreciation of the absolute energy of art, culminating in a cosmic factum; or provide evidence of total engagement by the critic as expression of a political aesthetic on behalf of the human community. Drawing particularly on Novalis, according to Benjamin, the early founders of the movement addressed both fronts, with the second being favored. With particular lucidity, Novalis discussed the Romantic method not only in relation to art, but in reference to “public morality” (wb: 120); which in America means politics and in Europe means the civil moral-order that knits a people into a sustainable community of social relations. He drew attention to the political force of a King or other state leader, arguing that the energy behind this role is not based on the self-assertion of a sitting ruler; depending rather on the collective will of the people, as political intention of common consciousness, exerted by them, over whom the king rules. This implies that the legitimizing force of a people for its political leadership is the source of its authority for imposing direction on them, and not the other way around. This view of the relation between civic legitimacy and political authority is quite opposite from the way the decidedly non-Romantic Foucault approached the subject during the 20th century in his analysis of, “governmentality” (Foucault 1976; 1984a; 1984b).14 However, it generally fits with the analysis by Habermas (2005/1974) in his Legitimization Crisis; highlighting the famous intellectual tension between Habermas and Foucault, (Foucault 2007/1978);

14

Foucault’s critique of “gouvernmentality”, was aimed at exposing what he took to be the unjustified intrusion via rules and regulations of government against individual liberty. He first signaled this concern in his Discipline and Punish (1975); thereafter it was in the first of his three-volume Histoire de la Sexualité (Foucault 1976; 1984a; 1984b) that he most developed this argument.

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pointing out also the ambiguous influence of the Romantic movement up to our own day. The treatment by Novalis of the relation between civil organization and political leadership highlights a key operative postulate of the German Romantics. As the political disposition of a civic community informs and thus gives life to the legitimacy of its political leadership and of the political order in general; so the critical force of an aesthetic community informs creative work, bringing to life the truth of art in general. In Benjamin’s words, … it is sufficient to replace citizen by work of art, and king by absolute of art, in order to obtain a brilliant announcement about the manner by which, according to the Romantic conception, the formative force of reflection imprints the form of the work [of art]. WB: 120

Demonstrating the power of political aesthetics as alternative to political rationalism, this reversal of judgement about culture forces and creative forms was a direct expression of the Romantic ambition for “overcoming of rationality,” not only in art, but in life. By comparison and unlike Habermas (2007/1981; 1979/1976) with his emphasis on communicational constructivism, Foucault took rational politics as a clear-cut power issue, imposed on a people independent of their will; in response to which he struggled to identify some counterstrategy that might enable the members of a political community to minimize constraint from overbearing political structures. Not so for the Romantics who took political aesthetics as the given: that a community must necessarily already inform its political order, or else, short of overt tyranny, the regime would fall. Consistent with the position of Rousseau, this is a communitarian explanation not just for generation of art, but for politics as well, suggesting why Foucault’s politically defensive Biopolitics project, (Foucault 2004/1978–79) expressed little activist potential. By comparison and contrary with much common opinion about its impassivity, as discussed in the previous Chapter on Isaiah Berlin, the Romantic Movement harbored considerable proactive energy for political engagement.

Benjamin’s Translator Emerges

Four years after he finished this text for his doctorate, Benjamin composed one of his more admired essays, “The Task of the Translator” (1968/1923). The essay

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was eventually transported to New York City for publication in English (1968) by Hannah Arendt, thereafter occupying a permanent place in the American literary cannon. While that essay was new, its cardinal figure had already appeared in his doctoral dissertation. The early German Romantics, Schlegel, Novalis and the others, were well read, with a reach extending well beyond Germany. This included classical exposure to Latin works, and contemporary studies of major writings in French and English. Since not all were fluent in all these directions, the problem of translation pressed heavily. Accepting the texts of Goethe—or at least his Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship (Goethe 1989/ 1795–96), as a standard for high achievement, they were drawn principally to what continues to be treated as world-class literature, such as Shakespeare. But, were they really reaching the inner spirit, the essential concept that presumably defines such great works—given that as read by Germans, the internalization and later composition of their commentaries implied necessarily, even if only silently, the transportation by translation, of that hidden sprit of the work— from English into German? Suppose an early German Romantic anglophile read and then wrote critically about Shakespearian works such as Richard ii (~1595), The Merchant of Venice (~1597) or Macbeth (~1606). How might reviewers for a Romanticism journal (of which the Schlegel brother’s Athenaeum was the original) decide that the critique was well done; that the critic had gotten a sense of the otherwise elusive form that establishes the work as high art from within? Or was there to be no comparative basis? Contrary to the Enlightenment, the Romantics did not conceive the [sought after] form as a rule of esthetic beauty, nor the observation of, as necessary prerequisite for the production of a pleasant or sublime effect of the work. Form, for them, was not itself a rule, any more than it was subordinated to a rule. WB: 122

Determined to be original, the Romantics were leery of editorial standards. They believed that there was an alternative method for appreciating art—and life: a sort of total immersion of consciousness in/with the work, that carried the reflection of the critic beyond its existing limits. The more such exposure, the more expansive this universalizing effect, as a teleological strain toward the ultimate limit of reality. As mentioned above, this implies a mixture of “public morality” (as political aesthetic standard), and transcendental spirituality (as non-religious standard), depending on how the Totality

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that englobes all aesthetic particulars of the human condition is conceived. If so, The idea of art as medium [for consciousness to accede to its ultimate potential] thus created for the first time the possibility of a non-dogmatic and free formalism, of a liberal formalism, as the Romantics referred to it. [Thus] the Romantic theory [of critical method] established the validity of forms [with a sense reaching back to Plato] independent of the Ideal of formations. WB: 122

Benjamin’s intention was to explore that possibility: “to determine the philosophical carrying force of such a position, concerning as much it’s positive as negative aspects” (wb: 122). The key was to sustain the position that there is a particular quality to a work of high art, appreciation of which transports the critic toward the infinite of aesthetic awareness. For that to occur, it is necessary that the each work be informed by some captivating and universalizing figure of higher humanity, which while necessarily ineffable in rational terms, can be grasped none the less. Benjamin’s establishing a philosophical justification for the Romantic critical method thus demanded his successfully theorizing, not only the nature of art, but the essence of human creativity.

Immanent Critique

The Romantic method depended on the possibility that critical regard could actually expose the “immanent tendency” (wb: 123) that gives life to a work. Is it realistic to claim that such works really display a form of life all their own with which the critic might establish a referential bond? At this stage in his study, young man Benjamin appeared optimistic that the lacuna at the center of the Romantic project masked its own resolution; that, “the problem of the immanent critique sees its paradox disappear in the Romantic definition of the concept of critique” (wb: 123). This is possible if the germ or spirit that informs a work imputes to it the capacity to speak to us with minimum autonomy. This sinuous reasoning is as difficult to grasp intuitively as to describe in a text. The writing of the early German Romantics is either manifestly poetic or composed as if it were, even when the point of expression, like what I’m writing here, is demonstrative or indicative.

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The key in assuring that the Sphinx of high art comes out of its silence, lies with the notion of immanence: that a work of art knows what it’s about and expresses that with immediacy for the critically willing. Yet how can the critic get the message “in an incontestable manner”? What Benjamin announced was that, “the Romantic concept of the aesthetic-critique permits us to untie that double paradox”. This is so to the extent that “the immanent tendency of a work of art, and by consequence the criteria of its immanent critique, is the reflection [in the consciousness of the beholder] that is its basis, of which the form is the imprint” (wb: 123). Such tortured rhetoric attests to the opaque resistance to straightforward explanation of the Romantic project. In truth, however, such reflection is not at all the criteria of judgement except to welcome, from the very beginning, the basis of another sort of critique that does not have as vocation to judge and for which the essential is not in the estimation (establishment of value) of a particular work, but in the presentation of those relations with the entire ensemble of works, to finish with the Idea of art. WB: 123

Was theirs a truly revolutionary proposal? At the end of the 19th century, Germany was intellectually under the spell of a neo-Kantian analytic, anchored in a neo-Hegelian Totality. In that regard, Benjamin observed, In total opposition to the conception that one has today of its essence, [Romantic] critique is thus, in its central intention, not a judgement but, on the one hand, an achievement, completion, systematization of the work, and on the other, its [the work’s] dissolution in the absolute. WB: 123

Did the Romantics distance themselves only half-way from the intellectual cannon of their day, content to reject the Kantian analytic of self-imposing judgement, but remaining lodged, all-in-all, in the Hegelian Idea of metaphysical (rather than historical-material) Totality? Did they weave together potentially contradictory claims: that the detail of a work will be totally grasped in its uniqueness, as, at the same time, its artistic imprint dissolves in the absolute of what arte is? Worry not: The two processes, as we will see, finish by coinciding. The problem of the immanent critique sees its paradox disappear in the Romantic

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definition of the concept of critique: excluding all judgement of/on the work, it would be absurd that it gives an immanent criterion to the work. The critique of the work is much more its reflection, which, of course, could only deploy the germ that is immanent to it. WB: 124

Facing a real work in a gallery, a critic would on the one hand, receive at the level of consciousness the imprint of the creative germ or spirit that informs and is immanent to it, and which for that reason would be pressing itself on her awareness. Then following sufficient rounds of reflection, the proactive expression of critical consciousness would orient or situate that reflected imprint of the work’s informing essence, in the cosmos of grand arte. That cycle of reflective consciousness, {receptive—expressive}, would constitute a true dialectic inter-action. But can it be so? It is, if indeed art works are informed with a germ or spirit, which speaks to us in such a way as to imprint that form in our consciousness, intuitively or independent of rational volition, i.e. immanently.15 In French from Latin since 1370, immanent means, “reside within”, or “the cause that resides in the acting subject”, or “that which is contained in the nature of a being”. Unfortunately, in English the word is reduced to mean only “subjective”. A subjective critique in Anglo-Saxon opinion implies not really dealing with what is there, but only revealing what is peculiar for the eye of the beholder. Thus the term’s antonym, transcendence, is often the focus for attention, re-spun as transcendent, arriving finally at transcendental, which was the key term in what Kant labeled initially his transcendental critique. But that Kantian critique was precisely the rationalist epitome against which the Romantics revolted. Resisting Kantian rationalism in his studies, Benjamin neither secured a university post after his doctoral studies nor published further works that met German academic standards. He did not accept the validity of a transcendental critique, except in the sciences. Which is why, when discussing the paradox of the dissolution of form in the work, as realization for the Totality of the idea of art, he attached the very informative note: “An equivalent paradox, as coming from within itself, does not exist in the domain of science but very much, however, in that of art” (wb: 123). Benjamin never accepted uncritically the

15

In a critical essay oriented by Simone de Beauvoir’s first novel, I’Invitée (1943) [VEng: She Came to Stay], Merleau-Ponty (1996c/1945) reached a similar judgement, affirming that quality depends on implanting the metaphysic in the material of the text, of art.

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method used in the science, affirming rather that its contradictions are of a much more transcendental nature: and if so, that the exact sciences are much less so that reported. If the methodological force of the Romantic critique is valid, why is it so rarely in evidence? And if it is applicable for questions of art, where notions such as fit, harmony, accord and interlacement apply, why not also as for the social relations of society, where similar concepts of congruency pertain? Why only for art is the specificity of the inner-being of each oriented by and in a way dissolved into the greater whole of all; is not that true also for a political community? Which as I see it is the case, explaining the bridge between this exceptionally refined and much under studied research by Benjamin of German Romanticism, and the larger issue of freedom as expression and judgement of meaning in the deployment of a political aesthetic.

Three Principles of Judgement

The key to understanding how their method of immanent critique saved the day for the German Romantics is to accept that the truth of art lies within each quality work; and as that comes forth to consciousness, it links the critique not only to the spirit that informs the work uniquely, but also with Great Art as worldly aesthetic. In opposition to the classical transcendental method as reworked by Kant, rather than something imposed on art by a critical community based on standards of judgement from beyond, the Romantic process draws on that which is within the work, as artistic presence, as potential for the making, before the critic arrives on the scene.16 Benjamin continues by noting that, “assuredly, this critical theory also extends its consequences as far as the theory of judgement of works of art.” Thereupon, and rather surprisingly, even while admitting that there was no statement on their part about this, he summarized these “consequences for the theory of judgement”, according to three principles: “The immediacy of judgement; the impossibility of a scale of positive value [for art works; and], the uncriticisable character of bad art” (wb: 124). One arrives before the work; if it is art, it grabs space in or activates critical consciousness, thus certifying the first principle, that art announces

16

Developed in greater detail, this is the truth-in-art thesis that drove Hans-Georg Gadamer’s unduplicated study of hermeneutics, summarized in his Truth and Method (1989/1960).

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itself as immediately given fact. “The simple possibility to critique a work signifies the positive character of the judgement of value that it carries.” However, it all depends on what is immanent to the work, of which its particular form defies comparison. This validates implicitly the second principle, that there can be no comparative scale of value for a collection of works of art.

Productivity of Bad Art

Now we arrive at a most interesting issue. What is the anticipated response when in a gallery, for instance, surrounded by the florid indifference of what is hanging about, the critic remains unmoved because no aesthetic impact is experienced? Or what of lousy books: faced with works which fail to resonate with the aesthetic consciousness of readers, is silence really more likely than overt contempt? The technical term that the Romantics used to designate the attitude that responds, not only in art but in all the domains of the life of the esprit, to the principal of the impossibility to critique that which is bad, is annihilate. This signifies the indirect refutation of that which is null with silence or with ironic eulogy, or by the glorification of that which is good. Mediation with irony is in the spirit of Schlegel the only mode permitting the critic to confront that which is null. WB: 125

Establishing thusly the use of irony as method for discussing that which merits to be ignored, the Romantic’s position poses difficulties for the project of Hayden White. In his Metahistory White (1973). raises the ironic method to that of high intention, or at least to high critical tactic (O’Brien 2014: Chapter 7). For the Romantics, when for lack of creative value there was nothing positive to say about a work, if not entirely ignored it was to be annihilated by irony.17

17

It may have been that secretly agreeing with the Romantics as read by Benjamin, Hayden White was ironizing about irony; he argued further that irony is the dominant trope issuing from the historical condition of late Modernity, signaling that the West has gone inauthentic if not totally meaningless; as confirmed, we might add by rampant alienation, generalized self-doubt and joy-killing violence.

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Unprincipled Objectivity

About the three principles listed above, Benjamin insists—ironically, that: It must be repeated that, on critique, the first Romantics did not give a coherent exposé of these important concrete determinations, that the striking formula in its systematic acuity was relatively foreign to them, and that in practice they did not rigorously observe any of these three principles [of judgement]. WB: 126

Rather than searching particular indices of these principles and their use by the Romantics, he thus “proceeds with an analysis of this concept [aestheticcritique] according to their most properly philosophic intentions.” This required turning the Romantic critical method back on the work of the early Romantic critics. Benjamin asserts—without saying it, that their intention was immanent from their work; speaking directly, at least to him, revealing by its regularities the underlying principles that structured or systematized their project. As generic strategy, (i.e., turning Husserl back on his work, or Descartes back on his work, or whomever), this can be a very useful critical strategy. None the less, it can be attacked by rationalists on scholastic grounds, for affirming the consequent; or simply rejected as the equivalent to after the fact mind-reading of authors (Wimsatt & Beardsley 1946; Frye 1957). While Benjamin admits that commonplace ironic method can be the “most subjective” strategy possible, as employed by the Romantics, it was “the regulator of every form of subjectivity, of contingence and of the arbitrary in the genesis of a work of art.” Rather than externally or artificially imposed, they considered this form of “evaluation as immanent to the investigation and the factual knowledge of a work” (wb: 126). From there we arrive at the stunning observation that: It is not the critic but the art itself that delivers the judgement on itself, either by its admission into the medium of critique, or in rejecting it, estimating, precisely by that, as undeserving of critique at all. WB: 126

This mode of critique refined the identification of works of art from those which were not. While as tactic it transforms straight lines into humor, as critique, irony is the ploy that renders art creative. And, as Benjamin adds, if we consider the historical durability of the result,

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The validity of the critical judgements of Romanticism is found to be amply confirmed. They have determined down to our [or at least Benjamin’s] days the fundamental appreciation of the historic works of Dante, Boccace, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Calderon, as well as of the phenomenon contemporary to them: Goethe. WB: 126



Were the Early Romantics Misread?

The affirmative position taken by Benjamin on the feasibility of the Romantic project was in opposition with much of the opinion at the time of both its production, and his.18 In between, Nietzsche showed sympathy with the perspective of the early Romantics, but shared with Goethe a greater admiration for Classicism. This colored Nietzsche’s writings, adding to his unusual style of delivery, which independent of content, allows many to discount its importance. Today, on us campuses, a sampling of Nietzsche finds its way onto the philosophy reading list term after term; as those of Benjamin appear in literature departments. But what of the Romantic method of critique? According to Benjamin, “Most authors underestimated the force of the objective intentions of the early Romantics” (wb: 127). This most often occurred because of a serious misreading of Friedrich Schlegel who played such an important role in those developments. As with Freud, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Lukács, Descartes, Marx, or even Kant for that matter, the argument about Schlegel turns on the question of his early work versus work of maturity: which is one to take most seriously? Although there was also a question of usage about the Romantics when they were active, for my purposes, the principle ambiguity in this case touches a point already raised: that of irony? Does use of that figure of reading dissolve the pretense of seriousness or just slice it from another direction? Is irony a false fix for failure of flash-in-the-pan work or a way of extracting a different essence from the presence of that which is past? Is critical justice possible from a judgement expressed by a belittling grin? Perhaps as an ethical issue, bad art is nothing to joke about. Many took Schlegel’s rather frequent use in practice of his “theory of irony” as sign that even he 18

The continuing debate about the feasibility of the Romantic project indicates its long term influence. In his well-regarded study of The Great Chain of Being, A.O. Lovejoy (1964/1936: Lecture ix) treats the entire affair, not with irony but skepticism; which during the 20th century was usually reserved for the unrecoverable historical objects.

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doubted the serious potential of the Romantic critique. But as described by Benjamin, this superficially caustic practice was capable of revealing the distinction between art and kitsch, by providing a way to discuss it with a twinkle. It was not until a few years later, at the beginning of his Arcades Project (1927–1940) that Benjamin introduced the then rather recently coined notion of kitsch in his texts. It is clear that he was convinced as a student that some referent of this nature for lower grade art would be useful as counterpoint when discussing the Romantic option. Rather than as admission of the objective impossibility of the Romantic approach to art, Benjamin argued that irony was used to belittle what the Romantics considered to be the irrational non-objectivity of the then dominant standard of judgement; as a “manifestation of a lively perpetual opposition to the then reigning ideas” (wb: 128). Aside from its use by Schlegel or others, Benjamin admits that the diversity of the “traits” of which irony is woven makes it difficult to define; but not to recognize. Touching its object as it does, irony exposes irreducible complexity to the world about itself. However, “in so far as these states of things are not tied to art but rather to the theory of knowledge and to ethics, it is necessary for us to by-pass that for now” (wb: 128).

Irony of Ironies: There are Two

Challenging us with what might appear as terminal ambiguity, he charged forward none the less; observing that “for aesthetic theory, the concept of irony has a double signification” (wb: 130). At least at the time, one usage was focused on excessively and the other rarely taken into account. On might ironize on the “matter” of art, as in the details of narrative style or manifest message of a work, which unfortunately tends toward irrecoverable subjectivity; or one might ironize on the form of the work, which when rightly done, inscribes its unity even more rigorously with the markings of arte as such. The problem is that “the total difference between ironisation of form and ironisation of material content has not been recognized with sufficient clarity” (wb: 130). At first glance, Benjamin was right: in ordinary usage, as a style of reproving judgement, little is more subjective that irony. How might we consider otherwise the belittlement of a soup that others find tasty, for which, who says so, is the unarguable comeback? In such cases is not the critic applying some selective external standard to ridicule the work of others, which for the Romantics was a major offense? Still, there is another possibility: might not a poet

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or painter build irony into her work, the critical appreciation of which implies rendering an ironic reading of the scene, with uplifting rather than destructive results? Benjamin emphasized this distinction, between a work that is informed ironically at the time of its creation—often with sophistication, versus taking a work and “submitting it to a legislation by art” in order to disparage the result. Yet, within the limits of form, as if the sign of creativity, the poet may simply “play” with the material of composition, color, sound, narrative movement. Little different that a child in the sandbox, while perhaps “ludique” by resonance, the result is purely “subjectivist irony,” deserving of harsh treatment from critics (wb: 129). Ironic superficiality in content renders unsustainable the aesthetic illusion on which the moment of Great Arte depends. However, if the form has the needed integrity and assuming seriousness to the work, then ironic anticipation on the part of the critic can raise its spirit to a higher appreciative plane and by that traverse the moment of illusion back to the base of fine art.

The Paradox of Irony

If a work of questionable quality is taken in hand ironically, the likely result will be “destruction of the illusion” (wb: 131); thus annihilating the carrying force of the work. On the other hand, it may be that the work has sustaining merit none the less, such that in spite of the intention of the critic, it endures critical ironisation. This confirms the power of its ironic in-formation, as an objective fact, with important consequences for its subsequent treatment; explaining the common admiration ‘with a cough’, of the works by Picasso. To illustrate this unanticipated sensitivity of ironic material to critic at its own hand, versus irony as creative form, Benjamin points out that “it is the ­dramatic form [theatrical or novel] that allows itself to be most easily ironized”. An example of this discussed by Schlegel was the classic Greek comedy of Aristophanes (wb: 130); the success of which owes to the way that it “irritates without destroying” the ironic illusion. Rather than twisted as if a bad joke, an ironic attack of such work puts on display the “creative play within itself” intrinsic to high-irony, and by that certifies the “purely aesthetic statute” of irony as form. The difficulty of grasping this double edged irony is evident by the tangled dialectic of Benjamin’s effort to summarize it: …the ironisation of the illusion… thus attacks the illusion without destroying it and it is with this irritation that comedy must target the

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perturbation of the illusion. A relation of that sort [between a work and its critique] shows a striking parenthood with the [Romantic] critique, which none the less gravely and irreversibly dissolves the form, to transform the particular work of art into a work of absolute art, in order to Romanticize it. WB: 131

Initially condemning as bad work, art that is susceptible to ironic critique is itself sufficiently ironic that its critical appreciation, at least if one is a determined Romantic, can elevate a work’s form well above ground zero of annihilation. Or, the paradox of ironic critique turned back on itself is that demolishing the illusion of content often is but an intermediate step in certifying the quality of its form.

From Disqualified Illusion to Potent Fetish

Can the product of critique be properly digested when it is ingested with a grin or grimace? Might not Romanticism of the illusion, yield illusion of second degree, as the transformation of form into fixation? Might the intrinsic in art, which the Romantics stove to diagnose, allow the overt announcement of a work to speak with less force than the subtle voice within it? Maybe so, but do we have time anymore to know? In the course of the 20th century, with the emergence of communication as first industry of production, the transforming of the fetish of art into a hard sell message has stolen away the possibility of fragile appreciation that the Romantics aspired to demonstrate. Does any hope remain for productive irony of the sort they anticipated, if by the time work arrives before a public, its trailers have announced its content with so much certainty as to incarcerate the common mind in a prison of fixed content, well in advance of its viewing or reading? Although unexpressed in his thesis, on further reflection, this was evidently Benjamin’s concern also, motivating composition of his highly regarded essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (Benjamin 1968/1936). This was written much later, when he was already in France, well after Hitler had been democratically elected in Germany and well after antiJewish police had taken hold of that country. He concluded that since that which is mechanical is under technical control; and since technical control, at least in Germany, had become the basis of its politics; even if that defines fascism by an elaborate argument—perhaps explaining why he never used the

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word; it was Benjamin’s judgement that ultimately the display of art would be for political objectives. So it became, not just in Germany, but throughout the West, pointing to the negative if not terrifying dark-side potential of political-aesthetics.

Between the Seams with Irony

The irony of content (or “matter” for Benjamin) must not be confused with irony of form. The first is to speak with biting humor about a work, while the other is “present to the same work as an objective moment.” Unfortunately, the Romantics “never formulated this distinction that none the less is very clear” (wb: 130). In order to arrive at the admiring level of high art, “the ironisation of form consists in its [content’s] deliberate destruction,” as necessary to go beyond the uniqueness of this or that work. In this context they asserted that, “of all the forms, dramatic form allows itself to be most easily ironized.” Indeed, the dramatic form, particularly comedy “held the greatest power of illusion and could thus support a strong dose of irony without totally dissolving” (wb: 130). Of the classic Greek comedies, Aristophanes was Schlegel’s prime example of this; about which it was said that illusion was so creatively construed that it could not be undone no matter what the critical approach; rendering his tragedy impossible to laugh about. By “ironisation of the illusion”—which is the key in this affair, a critic could attack the illusion without “destroying it”, generating irritation with the piece but persistent joy in regarding it. As an evident classic example, this brings to mind Voltarian irony, particularly well-executed in his Candide (Voltaire 1968; 1759). Voltaire aside, Benjamin wraps this up by noting that ironic critique, delivered from within the work, and then appreciated from beyond it by a later critic, “shares a striking parenthood with the [Romantic] critique.” It does not, however, as does the fundamental Romantic critique, “gravely and irreversibly dissolve the form to transform the particular work of art into a work of absolute art, in order to Romanticize it” (wb: 130–131). Even theater which is shabby as art may be susceptible to sophisticated ironic treatment. But only if of sufficiently high quality in the construction of the ironic illusion that informs it, can the work handle an ironic test of endurance with its integrity maintained. This suggests that higher-grade irony occupies a status all its own: neither high art, perhaps, nor entirely discountable

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kitsch either, but accomplished work which endures, refusing to be hissed off stage by subsequent generations of critics.

Critical Eschatology?

It is difficult not to consider this thesis as exemplifying a “discourse on last things”, which to believe the New World Encyclopedia means that it is an eschatological undertaking in other words. After all, the idea of dying as precondition to being born again is consistent with the promise of achieving the plateau of Grand Art when facing a quality work, thanks to “the destructive aspect of the [Romantic] critique, and the decomposition to which it submits aesthetic form” (wb: 131). Thinking of Picasso, is that it? Is his cubism sufficiently informed by a second degree of Romantic irony, that it can persist in its illusion with such energy that it carries its critics to that ultimate aesthetic station? Or reflecting further on Picasso, is even quality irony only simplest kitsch? Of the material covered in the closing three-page paragraph of this chapter, an important distinction is drawn between Romantic irony and Romantic critique. Approached head on, the destination is evident but the path hardly straight. “The destructive aspect” of Romantic critique is the “decomposition to which it submits” art’s various forms. (wb: 131) This sacrifice is a means to a greater good, the attainment of appreciation of what arte really is. This dishonor of the particular for the good of the general may be either an instance of tragic necessity or of hegemonic domination. Resolution of that question leads again into political aesthetics, which is thus difficult to continue to avoid.

On the Impossibility of Ironic Suicide

As method of critique, Romantic irony is reserved for works that do not quite measure up, but which none the less call out for decisive response. Although Benjamin failed to notice, this undeniable potency is probably because irony is a figure of history and sociology, which is to say politics. First stage irony bypasses the deception of the surfaces of art by the unconditional rejection of its content. While still a critical exercise, it “rests on a subjective, light-hearted reflection” that achieves its effect by “annihilating the matter”, read content, of the work. While it is “negative and subjective” in regard to the content of art works, “in regard to form it [may be], to the con-

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trary, positive and objective.” “It is the positivity appropriate to that [second] sort of irony that distinguishes it from the [Romantic] critique,” which like it, is “oriented toward objectivity” (wb: 131). If full-force Romantic critique passes over content to dissolve form on the way to an objectification of arte, irony destroys content to objectify form, thereby certifying the durable justice of the critical inspiration that informs its creative production. As exemplified by the Romantic’s acknowledgement of the rightness of Aristophanes comedy, irony may inform the work of a great artist who is not motivated by transcendental aesthetic ambition. Still, if of sufficiently creative quality, ironic composition evades utter belittlement by the spectra of Romantic critical irony. Rather than being discounted out of hand, in the final analysis, it can always be taken lightly. Ironic treatment of content of a work cannot do away with high quality irony as form: that would be aesthetic suicide, which fortunately proves to be logically impossible. As an appeal to cases, we might consider Woody Allen’s better work, such as Annie Hall (1977) and Manhattan (1979); or, The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, of Sérigo Leone. Is that more than kitsch? Being informed by the figure of irony, under critical scrutiny, does it jell or fizzle? If the former, it transforms the experience of causal spectacle into a cinematic scene of artistic magnificence, perhaps reaching such heights to be reflected on stylishly in New Yorker magazine. Otherwise the best it deserves is to be ridiculed by on-line critics, with an Allen or Leone pummeled with very low blows.

There is Form and There is Form…

When it comes to German Romanticism, the solution for ambiguity is to notch-up the complexity. As a final twist of the shrewd: “In order to, finally, render this relation intelligible”… between irony and critique, “it is necessary to introduce a double concept of form” (wb: 132). The determinant form of the particular work, which one might distinguish as the form of presentation, is the victim of ironic decomposition. Over and beyond that, however, irony opens the sky of eternal form, of the idea of forms, which one might name the absolute form, and that assures the survival of the work which receives from that sphere its indestructible persistence, following from the empirical form, the expression of its isolated reflection, which has been consumed by [ironic critique]. [Or,] ironisation of the form of presentation is in a certain way the

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storm that raises the curtain before the transcendental order of art, at the same time that it unveils the work which demurs immediately in it as mystery. WB: 132; emphasis the author19

To believe Benjamin, unlike what “Herder thought”, the work of art is not …a mystery of substance [but] a mystery of order as the revelation of its absolute dependence in regard to the idea of art, as the fact that is eternally and indestructibly revealed. It is in this sense that Schlegel knew of the limits of the visible work, over and beyond which opens the domain of the invisible work, of the Idea of Art. WB: 133/4; emphasis the author

As if this dialectical roller-coaster needed another loop, Benjamin saves one final switch-back to close on the problem of the work versus art for the German Romantics. Using particular examples then available, similar in those times to the cinema as discussed today, this study …permits us to understand why the Romantics were not prepared to accept irony as a disposition of the esprit, demanding rather that it be presented in the work. … Irony is not an intentional behavior, like zeal or sincerity. One would not see it as a custom in action, the indicator of unrestrained subjectivism; to the contrary it is necessary to accord to it all its value for the objective moment in the work itself. It represents the paradoxical attempt to construct the work again, by demolishing it: to reveal [by its resistance to that effort of negation] the relation of the work to the Idea [of art]. WB: 134

By that dramatic shift of register, Benjamin unravels how the work of the German Romantics, even if unintentional, explained the potential for irony to achieve a respectable place in finer galleries, by its intimate association with the Idea of Art. Whether any of the work of Allen, Leone or Picasso merits space in the gallery of history will not be debated further. As for Benjamin’s study, having arrived thanks to irony on the porch of the Idea of Art, he devotes the next chapter to its specification. 19

Here we see Benjamin (1968/1940) anticipating what he added many years later as Thesis ix in his Philosophy of History.

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The Idea of Art, Then

“The aesthetic theory of Romanticism culminates in the concept of the Idea of Art, within which one should search the confirmation of all the other doctrinal elements and the key of the final intentions” (wb: 135). With that as opening, Benjamin launched into the final and longest chapter in his doctoral thesis. Given its declarative form, one might expect a synopsis of this study and of the early German Romantic Movement. Nothing about this project is that simple, since its complexity renders the notion of synopsis inapplicable. To say that for the Romantics, the Idea of Art was the “medium of reflection”, is to see this grand Idea, potentially cosmic in reach, as the groundwork for critical consciousness, against, on and toward which the critic takes into account creative work. Rather than its details, “the organ of reflection … is the form”… that gives life to the work. As we will recall, independent of content, if the form does not speak to the critic with an adequate aesthetic resonance, it discounts itself as art. This leaves the door open for ironic treatment, the details of which we will not repeat. Assuming that a work qualifies as art, where does which take critical consciousness? To use a mechanical example, the idea of art is like a chessboard, and the diverse forms of art like different pieces. If a given work is informed with sufficient aesthetic determination, it—or more precisely the form it incarnates, has a place on the board; if not, then not. Pursuing the metaphor, even if the form of a chess piece is fixed by its composition, its power depends on what other pieces are on the board; such that the playable force of the game at any time is a contextual effect, with the importance of any potential move determined by how a particular piece is situated. More than only a sum of its parts, that dynamic explains how the typology of the forms links them into an ever-évolutive system, which changes as the game continues. At the level of the “medium-of-reflection of forms … all the forms… unify to constitute the absolute form of art.” This occurs due to what Benjamin refers to as the “chaining together” of all the genres, or what I would call their interlacement. “Thus, for example, the tragedy, for the spectator, chains itself in a continuous manner with the sonnet” (wb: 135). With a certain play of intuition, Benjamin contends that this explains a major “difference between the Kantian concept of judgement and the Romantic concept of reflection.” Rather than imposing a Kantian standard as external yardstick against which to decide how a work measures up; with iterative cycles of reflection and open-minded consciousness, the Romantic critique

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achieves the placement of the work in the “réglemente continuum of forms” that establish high art. To recall further the distinction between “form of presentation” of works and the “absolute form” encompassed by the Idea of art. As I understand it, in painting, cubism and realism would be forms of presentation; in writing, irony, drama, novel, science, history, and poetry receive that label. In reference to what concerned them most, “poetic ideas are, in the Romantic conception, forms of presentation” (wb: 137). All of them are art forms, which on the aesthetic plane of the idea of art establish a chain or unity; each painting telling a world-resonant story, each poem generating a world-resonant image, each novel unrolling a world-resonant narrative, etc. There also is the distinction between matter and form. Nature, society, the human psyche, etc., might be the matter taken up by an artist in a novel, history, poem, painting, opera, or any other genre of work. The Idea of Art is literally the all-in-all of that, in the sense that “their Idea of unification is the organic germ that [in]forms them” (wb: 137). It is not uncommon to generalize to all genre of art. The early German Romantics were concerned principally with written texts, liturgical, historic, dramatic, astrological or otherwise, and of course, poetry and song. Given that field of consideration, they identified the most inclusive form of art as poetry. “More explicitly, the 116th fragment of the Athenaeum destined Romantic poetry to reunite all the other separate genres of poetry” (wb: 136). For the Romantics, poetry was the generic label for every mode of textual composition and, given the above logic, the most inclusive thereof; but, “the Romantic poetic genre is the only one that is more than a genre, being in a way the art even of poetry” (wb: 136). The way this was discussed by the Romantics often assumed grandiose style, drawing on language easily confused with religion or other types of mysticism. For example, as cited by Benjamin, Novalis asserted that, Going from one to the other, and thus from one to all, art and science, in a rhapsodic or systematic movement, [the Idea of Art] busies itself to gather up everything: [it is] the poetic art of things of the spirit, the divine (divinitoire) art. To which Benjamin adds, That prophetic art is assuredly the [Romantic] critique, which furthermore Schlegel also called divine. WB: 137

Although by the time Benjamin finished this thesis, Freud was quite well known in the then developing field of psychology, that was not the case a cen-

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tury earlier. Thus the secular reference to the power of intuition, which today might be applied to the Romantic conception of aesthetic consciousness, was unavailable to the Romantics. Images available in late 18th century were medieval or classic; with the later recalling the Greek view that a poet is inspired by the Muses, the gods that inspired literature, sciences and arts; underscoring the esoteric inclination of the Romantics.

Unity and Diversity

Committed to the possibility of aesthetic unity, the Romantics were opposed to classical regimentation, which they believed had muted if not destroyed the potency of individual creativity. Rather than a report on nature or material conditions, poetry for them was determined by—driven by, the intention of, the Idea of Art. In spite of that commonality, each work was of individual creation. How to get beyond that potential contradiction, between creative uniqueness and teleological unity? Rather boldly, graduate student Benjamin resolved this by calling on a ­Platonic figure concerning the vital distinction between impression and reality, to fashion a hook with which to snare Schlegel. “Very simply, Schlegel made a faulty interpretation of a rightful and valuable motif” (wb: 138). That is because, to cite Merleau-Ponty, “nothing is more difficult than to know precisely what we see” (M-P 1962/1945: 58). The interesting aspect of Benjamin’s strategy for bridging that logical gap in his narrative is that by trumping Schlegel with a card faced by Plato, he was using a classical foundational argument. Yet like Schlegel and the others, ­Benjamin was allegedly opposed to the authority of classical principles; demonstrating an irony of truth: no one is completely consistent. In trying to avoid leading others to assume that the Idea of Art is somehow lodged in the material of composition of works, according to Benjamin, Schlegel “committed the ancient confusion of the abstract with the universal;” which he got to “in the course of his Study of Greek Poetry” (wb: 138). It was there that he formalized the organic image, according to which, …all the classic poems of Antiquity are linked reciprocally, inseparable; they form an organic whole and are not perceived correctly except as one single poem, the one where poetry itself manifests its perfection. In an analog manner, all the books of accomplished literature must be only one single book.

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WB: 139

Although the argument sounds duplicitous due to its dialectal weaving, according to Benjamin, the result was that “the Idea is the work and the work also is the Idea when it surmounts the limitation of its form of presentation” (wb: 139).

Determined Idea

If beginning with works of art, critical consciousness accedes to the Idea of Art as such, it is evident that the originating force that explains the power of great works as well as that of critical consciousness is lodged in the idea. In this context, the very controversial concept of transcendental poetry is of an easy and none the less rigorous explanation. Like that of progressive universal poetry, it is a determination of the Idea of Art. WB: 141

The radical nature of this claim is inestimable. The initiative for human ­action as creation and as appreciation is in the first instance, determined not by the state of mind of the individual creator or critic, but by the aural force of the a­ esthetic ideal as social fact. This is often asserted in relation to language, as determined by the nature of humanized being itself. But, the claim by the G ­ erman Romantics goes a step further with the assertion that even more ­fundamental than language, is meaning: which only has reality vis à vis the aesthetic groundwork on the basis of which humanization of being is possible. In reference to the poetry of life if you will, since in the totalizing sense, Poetry represented the summation and culmination of aesthetic attainment, “Romantic poetry” is an unattainable intention or ambition, “eternally becoming and never accomplished” (wb: 139). That implies a generalizing sense of the notion: “An idea is an infinite series of propositions, of irrational grandeur, impossible to specify, incommensurable; …but one can establish the laws of its progression” (wb: 140). In mathematics, the idea of real-number indicates a series of this same definition, as in astrophysics does the cosmos; most of the sciences are operational to the extent that the calculus postulate is valid: sizes, energies, volumes, masses, and charges can be sliced into an infinitely small series of their own nature,

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or accumulated into a mountain of content that follows that same logic. The unusual aspect of the Romantic application of this manner to think the world via Poetry is not its logic but only its application in aesthetics as expression of the Idea of Art. It is likely that the masters of the sciences will squirm at this comparison, alleging that different from the Romantics, their use of this logic is always ­anchored in empirical facts. The Romantics—at least as read by Benjamin, anticipated this critique, and argued against this “modernist miscomprehension… conceiving the infinite progression as a simple function, in part of the indeterminate infinity of the task, and in part the empty infinity of time” (wb: 140). That critique evaporates when one recalls that the “medium-of-­ reflection” is in this case the “medium of forms” of works of art; which taken into consciousness implies the progressivity in the sense of a “direction and putting in more and more precise order” of all creative work; with as intention, the aesthetic realization of “beauty… as eternal transcendental fact”. We might, in that last sentence, replace the notion of beauty with time, space or world; with human society, energy, size, location—or consciousness; all of which are equivalent forms—to apply here the Romantic figure, of the aesthetic truth of human being, as ‘beauty’ in action. The active principle in this view of “supreme beauty” as never fully accomplished aesthetic project is the engaged consciousness of the creators and ­critics; not in the sense of, ‘we-always-become-better-poets’ but of an unceasingly more englobing deployment, and intensification of poetic forms. This is not to suggest the, modern… [sense of] progress… [as] a certain relation, purely relative, among the diverse degrees of culture. It is like the entire life of humanity, an infinite process of accomplishment, and not simply a process of becoming. WB: 141–142

The Romantics were convinced that the problem for humankind is not to ­generate the ultimate force for remaking the world but the ultimate condition of consciousness from which to view it. Art is the taking in of the energy of being and capturing it in some form of communicable media. Appreciation of the result is energized by what comes from the work, on behalf of the world, to the consciousness of the critique, and potentially to the rest of us as well.

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Transcendental Leverage

More than metaphor, for the early German Romantics, the notion of “transcendental poetry” designated reality itself. One image cited was as the “original Me”; designating the point of reference from which experience begins, generated by the exuberance of humanized nature itself; as necessary before the details of experience such as sensory impression, thought or understanding might be practiced. In the West it is common to associate the originating with the notion of Christian god, principally indicating, as pointed out by Saïd in an elaborate study of Beginnings (Said 1997/1975), that even if impossible as fact, positioning the origin for history is a central element establishing cultural integrity for a people. Since the result is usually mythical, for most Westerners it fits best in a house constructed of néo-Christian religious timber. For the Romantics to locate that site of origins, of time, of history, as me before all experience, was a secularizing step in their project that unsurprisingly hastened its rejection among the bourgeois Christian elite. If the essence of the poetry of existence is reflection, “the highest task of culture” is to be a master of the “me” thus constituted. Concern for practical problems, food, clothing and shelter, as well as social problems such as respect via relations with others in the production of the means of well-being; according to the Romantic doctrine, all that becomes secondary to ambient reflection as the taking into account of who one is, as well as the isness of others, society, the world through time. To arrive in that place of aesthetic Totality, where not the heavens among the gods but down-to-earth human terms take priority, implies a truly transcendental perspective. In that spirit of “Transcendental Poetry”, of the primal “Me of all mes”, Novalis confirmed the power of this “act of reflection” or “auto-penetration” when he announced, “The famous point beyond the world is given. Archimedes can now hold to his promise” (wb: 142).20 20

“Give me where to stand and I will move the earth”: is a line attributed to Archimedes in year 50 and referenced by Novalis about 1800. Archimedes was the original great ­geometry and inventor of useful implements that in large scale still explain many modern machines. In violation of the then dominating christian belief in the eternal fixity of the earth in the cosmos; totally confident of his engineering capacity and his knowledge of mechanics, he was convinced that earth dynamics involved a real cosmic displacement, which under the right conditions, could be influenced by the acts of men. This would require having the right machine beyond the earth stabilized in such a fashion that it could exert the force needed to nudge the earth into a change of trajectory.

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How is one to specify the active agent, capable of producing texts that “coincide with the Idea of art imprinted in the absolute work” (wb: 143). Might just anyone achieve it? While the Romantics were less sure about the individual determinants of such capability, they were convinced that they would recognize good art when they criticized it; that there simply were …certain poems that seemed to have a totally different character… as if mankind was in dialog and that some unknown spiritual being gave him, miraculously, the possibility of developing the most apparently evident thoughts. WB: 142

Unsurprisingly, while the Totality of poetry was an “organic” whole, as for the details, “transcendental poetry was found to be extraordinarily complicated to situate in any particular circumstance” (wb: 143). Although not satisfying for all critics, the Romantics sought protection for their approach by drawing on the analogy of philosophy. Yes, said Schlegel, considered as a whole, poetry drew together “the ideal and the real… by analogy with philosophical terminology” (wb: 143); and why not? It is routine to go from the real fact of numerous male—female couples, each with a number of children, to the representative notion of family, and from there to the transcendental universalization of the Idea of Family as social institution. Or we move from real political acts to the Idea, in fact Ideal of Political Justice; etc. If so, by analogy, why not the move of consciousness, from the reality of a certain body of poetic works, paintings or novels to the timeless, transcendental Ideas of Poetry, Plastic Art or Literature? The challenge, of course, is how to constitute the body of real references by which the ultimate Idea anchored. As generic process, who can deny that the reflection of consciousness moves from particular cases to general ideas, then by iterative processes, oscillates between the two levels, leading to a refined appreciation of each? This is the double stage of reflection that was so dear to the Romantics, concerning both poetry and poetry of poetry.

Today it is interesting to wonder whether, when the ozone layer is destroyed by heartless commerce, will there be an effort to put all the rockets on one side of the earth, to be shot off in tandem, to propel spaceship earth to get far enough away from the Sun to avoid turning the living matter on its surface, which includes folks like you and I, into a slowly simmering vegetable stew?

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Particularly when the point was to clarify a position, owing to his poetic mode of expression, what Schlegel said was difficult to decipher. For instance, he had “characterized Greek poetry as real, and modern poetry as ideal” (wb: 144). This indicated the distinction between “metaphysical idealism and realism,” which at the time, under a dark shadow of Kant, had assumed looming dimensions. Rather than tangle the issue in that intellectual knot, Benjamin summarized this in the following self-confirming form: Poetry-of-Poetry… is poetry conscious of itself; and as, according to the Romantic theory, consciousness is only an intensified spiritual form of that which it is consciousness, consciousness of poetry is itself poetry. WB: 145



Symbolic Form as Fact and Manner

The notion of symbol is a central figure of aesthetic consciousness. It is in this sense that the German Romantics drew on it as confidence in the capacity to identify works of awe-inspiring quality. For them, the symbol occupied two registers, one concerning content as built into work by the artist, the other being worldly impact as appreciated by the critique. First, the quality of a work was associated with symbolic power of its content. It answered the call of “absolute poetry” in so far as it “made allusion to a mythic content” of the sort taken in force symbolically by classic Greek works. The other “unique distinctive mark” of quality work is its expression of the symbolic “imprint” of the “absolute form of Art” as captured by the consciousness of the critique. Put otherwise, “In relation to the Idea of Art”, the ­symbolization inherent to a great work announces the “reality of existence” as its “meaning”; which “thanks to [critical] reflection… is conferred on works of transcendental poetry” (wb: 146). There is an evident snare in this seemingly straightforward position. ­Although the force of the work supposedly resonates with critical consciousness almost in spite of the will of the critic, it is not really until this is ­announced back into the world that the stature of great art is conferred on the work. Is it never the case that qualified critics responded differently to a work, and if so, what is to be made of dissention? Avoiding that conundrum, Benjamin focused on what he saw here as a distinction between “profane form and symbolic form”, or “symbolic form and critical form”, which the Romantics themselves never discussed in those terms. They believed rather, as with our earlier discussion of irony, that the symbolic

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presence in the work is one issue and its force of expression as appreciated critically is another. As I see it, the two are bound dialectically, although this too was not formally discussed two centuries ago. For them, it was simply recognized that the double-level symbolic nature of creativity and appreciation that struck the critique when faced by a quality work, were inseparably involved in what they called the “domain of the absolute” (wb: 147).

Novel Supremacy as Romantic Poetry

With their project the German Romantics exposed a linguistic issue that remains unresolved because perhaps unresolvable: how is it possible for a given work, statement or word for that matter, to constitute a unique, unambiguous referent as meaning, while at the same time opening to the infinite zone of the inexpressible and all inclusive? This is hardly a trivial question since every announcement worth the label must answer to it. Take a superficial example: reference to my coffee cup in a café where I’m working is a singular instance of clear talk; but it is also a pointer to the role and function of a certain type of public space, with general attributes, some more positive than others, appealing to a universally recognizable plane of tacit understanding. How does that work? That just this—yet everything also binary quality of humanized events was affirmed by the Romantics to characterized all art that carries critical ­consciousness to the “domain of the absolute”. As Benjamin identifies it, this implies resolution of the tension between the “reflexive auto-limitation… and auto-enlargement” that must be conjointly deployed in order for a work to achieve that ultimate stature. Even if Benjamin had set out to identify the philosophical underpinnings of their project, the Romantics themselves moved not from the position of theory down to art’s work, focusing rather on particular art products. As they were concerned, the type of poetry that achieved what I would label this referential synthesis in its “supreme symbolic form” was the novel. What the Romantics admired in the novel as form was the enclosed quality of the story-told, which can be constructed or composed with total “absence of constraints or exterior rules”. It was because of this “freedom that the novel could reflect on itself [iteratively], reflecting each time at a superior level the diverse degrees of consciousness that always engender novel consideration” (wb: 148). To believe Benjamin, the novel as form allowed accomplishing what otherwise might only be achieved by creative use of irony; which as we discussed

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earlier, amounted to the preservation of the ironic form as attested to by the way an ironic critique could erode the basis of its content, but only ironically. In other words, the content of quality irony is the false masquerading as sincere, but it is truly, sincerely presented—as irony form; which is easily unmasked by the adroit critic, who thereby certifies the power of irony. At the end of a critical cycle of irony, one’s consciousness is locked at the level of the contradictions of the real, from which transcendent escape is not automatically forthcoming. Assuming it is well done, like irony, the novel can achieve a comparable effect of auto-certification due to the fictive integrity of its story as plotted. ­However, this is not dependent on the imperturbability of the novelist-form, which can be transcended by the critic as essential step toward higher consciousness of art. While the critic is busy exposing the made-up quality of its story, this exposes also the power of the novel to convince readers with invented narrative; appreciated in such a way as to arrive at the highest reaches of Art. In the course of iterative cycles of critique, moving between ordinary standards that apply to the work and the ethereal strata as ultimate art; transiting with each pass the specific novel in all its concreteness, transporting aesthetic consciousness to the level of high art.21 An additional paradox is that “the novel never exceeds its form”. It is a fictive story, after all, and whatever it achieves with a reader at the level of distraction or fantasy, no one ever forgets that it’s all made-up. That is its auto-limiting quality, which is intrinsic to the plot. While not exactly free-form, the result is thus free of imposed form. “It is this that neutralizes in it the form of presentation, which governs it by its purity only and by its rigor” (wb: 148). One aspect of the novel that captured the imagination of the Romantics was use of the episodic figure as basis of construction. Even for stories written in the single-day motif, such as Joyce’s Ulysses, the whole is a fabricated gambit of episodes, each a mini-story all is own. Like the ascension of a mountain with its rises, dips and above all its switchbacks, the reader is carried forward by a convoluted narrative energy that is relaxing and transcending rather than laboriously exhausting. This exposes what Benjamin labels, at least as translated into French, as the “relented nature” (slowed down nature) of the novel; its deliberate, focused, self-limiting, construction, which mismanages time as a ploy to draw in readers. Were that not the case, were the novel as form not capable of drawing in and holding readers in this fashion with a tale of complete

21

The third chapter of Edward Saïd’s Beginnings (1975), a careful study of Conrad’s N ­ ostormo (1904), is an impressive recent example of literary critique as high art.

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fabrication, how else could we explain the continuing attraction of works like Tolstoy’s War and Peace (1869), which in its first edition measured 1,200 pages?

The Intention of Prose

Whether the same holds for its logic, the position was clear: “The novel is the highest of all symbolic forms and Romantic poetry is the Idea of all poetry itself.” There we see the source of the identity of their program: “the expression, Romantic, in its essential meaning, is to say, laid-out like the novel” (wb: 149). Or, “in so far as it was the summation of all poetry, in the sense Schlegel intended in his aesthetic theory, the novel designated the poetic absolute.” ­Accordingly, he said, “A philosophy of the novel … would be the cap-stone of a philosophy of poetry in general” (wb: 149). For this, the famous Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship novel by Goethe (1989/1795–96) was then their most reputed illustration. We might recall from a previous section that the “fundamental conception” of the Idea of Art as captured in poetry implicated a continuity of forms anchored in varied content. From there, in so far as “art is the continuum of forms”, then “the novel… is the tangible manifestation of that continuum.” And this, “thanks to its prose” (wb: 150). In “the figure of prose” the Romantics found the structuring principle of great art; which until then had had never been fully appreciated. “In that intuition, paradoxical in appearance but in truth very penetrating, [the Romantics] invented an entirely new foundation for the philosophy of art.” Accordingly, “the Idea of poetry is prose… the ultimate determination of the Idea of art.” Thus even if anchored empirically in their favored reading of Goethe or other laudable texts, this transcendental position freed the Romantic critique from an “exclusively empirical relation to Wilhelm Meister,” or any other particular work. (wb: 150) This is quite a claim: prose is the imprint of Art on real experience, informing each high quality work, insuring also its force of expression back into the world of critique. Incarnating a tale all its own, each work of good art stamps its story on the world: imposing its prose as power and expression, in a somewhat Nietzschian sense, we might say. This force of construction explains what is now known as the social-text. Considered at the vast level intended by the Romantics, it reveals the mystery of the humanization of the world, as creative agents impose a prosaic temporality on otherwise inanimate reality, as l’art de vivre.

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Romanticism as Cultural Figure

Benjamin closed his thesis on the theme of prose: arguing that, as revealed by the aesthetic-critique of the early German Romantics and certified by the reflexive resonance it fosters in critical consciousness, great Art enforces its aesthetic power on the world. This effect is reciprocal or in fact dialectic, from art works to worldly being: due to the way the truth of the world is imprinted in or informs the creation of great art. And this, “thanks to its prose.” Relying on a letter dated 12jan1798, from Novalis to A.W. Schlegel, Friedrich Schlegel’s older and far less illustrious brother, Benjamin underlined the importance of the notion of prose for the Romantics. While the term carries the spirit of higher literary art, the term prosaic, which the Romantics employed interchangeably with it, implies the commonplace, elementary or vulgar. Thus an additional paradox of great works: that which is admirable and enduring is woven of pedestrian elements, with the art residing in the imaginative quality of the weaving. “In prose, all rhythms are linked and woven together, they combine as a new unity, prosaic unity, that Novalis called, Romantic rhythm. So that, Poetry is the prose among the arts” (wb: 152). Benjamin’s assessment is beyond appeal: “This conception of the Idea of poetry as prose determined all the Romantic philosophy of art”; explaining the “historical consequences” of the movement “in posterior artistic schools, such as those of French Romanticism and German néo-Romanticism that succeeded it”. This prosaic designation also “instituted a particular relation at the interior of a much larger Romantic circle,” with consequences not limited to the poetic fields, but entering with full force into the “history of ideas” (wb: 153).22 This exposed the philosophical undercurrents of the movement, with additional consequences for European intellectual development. Benjamin points to another recognized Romantic poet, Friedrich Hölderlin (1770–1843), thanks to whose work the Romantic vision had major impact in philosophy. As a later, rather than founding participant in the movement, Hölderlin was concerned less with its foundations than its expression. Even 22

History of Ideas or Idea of History: A.O. Lovejoy (1964/ 1936) formalized the term, history of ideas, as the epistemological essence of what he labeled The Great Chain of Being, and in 1940 founded the journal, History of Ideas, intended to encourage study of this phenomenon. At about the same time, a somewhat counterpoint position—of history as social construction, was developed by R.G. Collingwood (2005/1946) in his description of The Idea of History. Benjamin’s treatment of history involves a subtle interplay of both views; for Merleau-Ponty, the interplay between those views is at the root of his treatment of the dialectic expressed by the materialization of history as ongoing event.

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though his non-poetic writings were meager, it was he none the less who brought to attention the principle of the “sobriety of art… as the fundamental idea of the Romantic theory of art” (wb: 154). This implies a calm, quite interior that necessarily accompanies the work of reflective consciousness, linked with the intriguing triptych: “Discourse—prose—critique”. According to B ­ enjamin, that “schematic” laid out in practical terms the mission associated with deployment of the Romantic project, “such as it still remains, at least in part, yet to be developed” (wb: 155).

Prosaic Appreciation Outmaneuvers Bourgeois Beauty

Benjamin used Hölderin’s opening to cool out the critics who were turned off by the anti-beautiful treatment in the Romantic Idea of art. After all, while arguing against the justice of applying external standards for the judgement of works, the Romantics were categorical nay-sayers about Classic works. Not without some validity, this was taken as the assumption of a higher-ground stance on the part of the Romantics, for whom the debate on quality was the more vital concern. The Romantics were offended by classicism because they believed it turned artists into decorative mechanics: “But the true author must not also be a fabricator” (wb: 156); because that implies production of temporary, venal and rapidly forgotten merchandise. To the contrary, “it was about well-made works, penetrated by the prosaic spirit, that the Romantics were thinking when they announced the principle of the indestructibility of authentic formations of art.” And speaking of “poetics in the strict sense, the novel is the prototype” (wb: 157). The chastisement arose because of their focus on form—conceived in such a special way, that the theme of beauty in the ordinary sense was evacuated from their critique of art. It has already been shown that form is not the expression of beauty but of art conceived as the Idea itself. In the end, it was the concept of beauty that had to disappear in general from the Romantic philosophy of art, not only because, according to the rationalist conception, it is mixed up with the imposition of rules, but above all because beauty, in so far as object of agreement, of pleasure, of taste, does not appear reconcilable with the strict sobriety that, according to their new conception, determines the essence of art. WB: 157

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From there he concluded: The doctrine according to which art and its works are essentially, neither the modes of appearance of beauty nor the manifestation of an immediate and inspired emotion, but a medium of forms that hold their own on their own terms; a doctrine of this sort, since the Romantic period, has never fallen into the zone of the forgotten, operating more or less as the spirit that presides over the development of art. WB: 158



Each Critic for Herself

Although beginning this study with the problem of critical method, ­Benjamin closed it on the question of the effect of the Romantics back into the community of art and politics. Then and since, their announcements challenge many standing interests. By stressing an unusual conception of artistic form and denying the importance of beauty as understood tactically, they seemed to v­ iolate the very idea of art about which they alleged to be concerned. When they rebuked those who enforced or attempted to comply with classic standards, what did this say about the galleriests, museums and private holders of what up to then was taken to be quality work? What was the motor force behind this unusually powerful, nearly revolutionary critical interest that was restricted in its expression for use by some purists in the appreciation of fine art? On one hand, as if intending to avoid polemics, the Romantics rejected all pedagogical ambition; they did not go into public to argue for their view, to convince others of its rightness, or to convert the masses to their project. Attempting to shape or format others would imply regimenting judgement, which was opposite of their goal. Thus the call: “those who desire to be informed please take charge of it themselves” (wb: 159). If the critique was not intended for pedagogical application, it was also, “not essentially a judgement or opinion.” For that reason, it is “principally impossible to distinguish [the critique] from the work.” That implies that quality art is always critical in the Romantic sense, as on similar terms, quality critique is a work of art. Still, while the critique touches the fact of art, there must be, “between critique and judgement—in the sense of simple opinion—the most rigorous distinction.” The reason given is simple as statement but complex as referent: while “the critique has no need of motivation” since it is the act of ambient

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reflection taking into account a work, “a non-motivated judgement would be an absurdity.” To assume a motivated position is to base behavior on anticipated outcomes, usually some practical institutional or personal payoff. That points to the way economists analyze human undertakings; in that case as economically motivated. So what was the motive that drove the early German Romantics? Was questioning the better method for appreciating the truth of art an inherently politically loaded issue or did the stir that they caused result principally because of the way they wounded the egos of those who had produced and then owned the classic art that they disdained? More recently, Barthes spoke of political innocence, which is to say of the possibility of a disinterested or neutral position when dealing with literature or art. The way that graduate student Benjamin raised the issue right at the end of his thesis suggests that he was not just writing a critique of the Romantic project, but also building a defense for his personal reticence to follow the classic academic style when composing this report on his research. There is no necessary reason that a critic be completely disinterested, nor that judgement be slanted in advance. While never resolving this issue, Benjamin wrapped up his reading of the Romantic Movement in terms that portray it as having been an unusually affirmative project, with nothing less than general well-being as the drive force. The Romantics, …searched less to mount a small war against bad literature than to bring attention to good literature, and by that, annihilate the rubbish. In the end, the appreciation of critique rested on establishing, certifying the totally positive value of its medium, which is to say, of prose… The critique is the presentation of the prosaic content of each work. WB: 161

And to be clear: The critic takes the word prose in both its significations: according to the form of expression, it is taken in the literal sense, as the use or deployment of a non-constrained discourse; but in regard to its object, it is taken in the figurative sense, because that object [the Idea of art] is the eternally sober consistence of the work. Process or formation, that critique is a necessary function of the classic work. WB: 161

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Closing on Isaiah Berlin

What do we learn from this pair of studies of Early German Romanticism by Isaiah Berlin and Walter Benjamin? Independent of content, we see different methods of critical procedure for approaching an historical moment embedded in text, particularly if already well studied and the originators are long dead. Berlin took on Romanticism as a historian, attempting to explain what it was and how it came into being. He focused on what the Romantics had proposed as alternative to what had come before. He considered that creativity involves development of new culture objects or approaches to challenge, reform or replace ulterior ones that are judged deficient or erroneous. As Berlin put it, the Romantics critiqued the rationalist Western cannon as an incomplete guide for epistemological practice. He summarized what they took to be the negative qualities of universal reason and the positive qualities of their alternative, Romantic method. However, since Berlin was an ­idealist rather than materialist, and not really a dialectician at all, he focused little on the problems of practice that concerned the Romantics or the content of knowing or appreciation that they hoped to better illuminate. He mainly attended to the ideational differences with what he took to be the postulate of universal reason of Kant and Hegel, versus Romanticism as guide for knowing and action. The summary of that evaluation follows, consisting in fact of Berlin’s assessment of the largely negative or oppositional stance assumed by the Romantics against the rationalist tradition and the instrumental society that it promoted: • Against the assumption that all genuine questions can be answered, by use of a common, impersonal, rational method, with non-contradictory results; • Against the effort to apply rational analytics to questions not only of artistic practice, but also morals, politics and philosophy; • Against the claim that virtue consists ultimately in rational knowledge; • Against the Scholastic separation between {objective—subjective}; • Against belief that there is a body of facts to which we must submit life; • Against the effort to develop a formula for everything. Berlin was less exacting in his summary about the affirmative Romantic alternative to intellectualist-rationality. Partly this is because he was not an epistemologist but a rational-idealist historian; and partly because the Romantics were themselves extremely inexact in identifying the parameters of the alternative that they proposed. What follows is an outline of Berlin’s summary of the affirmative Romantic alternative to rationalist tradition:

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• The Romantics pursued a transformation of consciousness, oriented by originality, totality, belonging, and depth; celebrating the fragment as art-form; • They stressed expressionism or art as communication—as always a voice speaking; signaling from deep within that everyone seeks to belong to the group, rather than alien or not at home; • Oriented by freedom as creation of values and a vision of the universe, in which statements of knowing always have three dots at the end…. Although Berlin does not point this out, his evaluation of the key points of the Romantic critique against the rationalist cannon was opposed by Hegel in his Philosophy of History lectures. Hegel contended that the Idea of Reason is the Universal Sprit of human History; and that reason rather than reflection is the only way to truth. After the dissipation of the early German Romantic Movement, Hegel’s view gradually conquered Western intellectual activity. Now two centuries later, the research reported in this book is effectively aimed at getting beyond the impasse implicit to strict Hegelianism. Finally, although mixed with hope, there was a dark-side to Romantic consciousness, according to Berlin; with political consequences through the years fueling the aspirations of both revolutionary Romantics and reactionary Romantics.

Closing on Walter Benjamin

Working from the side of social-philosophy, Walter Benjamin approached the Romantic Movement differently than did classical historical Berlin. In no way contradictory, each provided a rich description of a very difficult to unravel project. As indicated by the title of his thesis, Benjamin’s objective was to establish the bien fondé of the Romantics aesthetic-critique as alternative to the intellectualist-rationalist epistemological method. Such a method involves assumption about the way knowing is linked to reality, as well as a strategy for accessing knowledge thus defined. The role of a critic is both to demonstrate the shortcomings in the existing method, and the soundness and advantages of the alternative. Such a job is beyond a doctoral thesis, indicating the ­outrageously bold ambition of young man Benjamin. In the end, he minimized negative comments about the Cartesian-Kantian rationality (probably in deference to his thesis committee) and focused on what he considered the strengths and utility of the Romantic method. First, he took up the key figure of Aesthetic-Critique associated with the movement and attempted to identify the qualities of the individuals who put

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that method into practice. The following summary portrays the grand lines of Benjamin’s view of the aesthetic-critique as intentional disposition as envisioned by the Early German Romantics: • One holds to a somewhat messianic, mystical view of truth as self-revealing, accessible via extended, profound contemplation of Art—and the art of Life; • One treats all human Life is as if works of art, even if Formal Art is the most fertile source for the appreciation of creative truth; • Critical or reflective-consciousness is needed to be open to the revelation of truth of the human condition that comes from within the work of art; • One is less motivated to mount a war against bad literature than to bring attention to good literature and by that, annihilate the rubbish. The second concern of Benjamin was to specify the aesthetic-critique as practice. As proposed by the Romantics, what conceptual tools are appropriate for guiding one’s approach to humanized experience so as to fully appreciate its sometime disagreeable and even tragic truth value? As portrayed in his doctoral thesis, this is how Walter Benjamin described the tools of the aestheticcritique in action: • Perception is an exercise of coincidence between appreciator and work, which overcomes the false split {subject—object}; • Irony is a principle tool of reflective appreciation, which by dissolving content, reveals—for good works, universal form as interiorization of the Idea of Art; • Judgement arises from the way the work is unraveled by irony; if neither content nor form resist ironization, that Annihilation signals Bad Art; • The notion of comparative Beauty has no place in the Romantic aestheticcritique, since judgement as appreciation imposes no external scale of value; • Reflection by consciousness replaces reductive analysis by mind. Whereas Berlin took Romanticism as a historical object to be studied in terms of causes, qualities and consequences, young man Benjamin attempted to get at its interiority, with an exacting analysis of the ontological and emergent qualities of the aesthetic-critique as epistemological practice. Benjamin’s work exemplifies a critical perspective from the angle of social-philosophy as the historical-material inquire in action, while Berlin’s approach is that of a contemporary historian analyzing an event from the dead past. In addition to this distinction between an essentialist versus externalist study of the ­Movement, Berlin’s text is a transcription of a series of lectures intended for the general

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public, while Benjamin composed, with one would suppose considerable redrafting, a carefully crafted argument, intended for classically educated university professors. Paradoxically, while Benjamin was a Romantic by vocation and thus personally contrary to the rationalist cannon, in order to get past his academic jury, his thesis work was drafted at least on the exterior in a classical fashion. Berlin on the other hand was by training an avid rationalist, yet he was able to take a rather Romantic free-hand in his treatment of the Movement because he was lecturing for an audience of ordinarily educated people. The double twist made visible by this crossing of Benjamin’s erudite analysis—aimed at Romantic discovery, against Berlin’s somewhat playful ironic description of its analytic structure, in unison constitutes pragmatic evidence of a certain undeniable truth about the power of the aesthetic-critique, even if at the time of its development, in Germany just after the French Revolution, those involved in the early Romantic movement were unable to explain or demonstrate it in a compelling fashion.

Revolutionary Possibilities

The primary accomplishment of the Romantic Movement was to place in question the rationalist logic of modernity. While that helped shake up the blind confidence in the idea of progress based on fixed causes, rational efficiency and effective control, the modernist rampart of reason continues to resist attack. That self-perpetuating force, explored by the Romantics and others since then, is not based on literature but on the politics of economics, a central postulate of which is that when transformed into technical institutional tools, the rationalist logic of modernity assures the continued progress toward the good life… for the few who determine the political orientation of the modern economic mechanism. What if any is the relation between aesthetics and politics? As concluded by Benjamin’s study, the early German Romantics held no overt political ambition. Even if they intended to remain politically innocent before their ­critique, the possibility was denied them by the simple fact that every public act is political. Their study of art as opening to its truth constituted an explosive ­mortar-shell for the facade of the modern order. Defense of Modernity demanded a ­relentless counter-critique. The arguments developed by them had to be turned ­side-wise, belittled, defanged if you will. Its proponents had to be shunned or attacked as empty proselytizers, as irreverent mystics, as ­hollow posturers.

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It is possible of course that there was no truth in the Romantic critique; that modern rationality, certified by instrumental progress, really does yield the best of all possible worlds. But then, maybe not. Which is why we follow this First-Part of our study with a Second Part; to propose a resolution for Romantic critique by a reformed view of human-being in the world; focusing on what we label aesthetic-consciousness as originating presence in the social world. Our proposition is easier to explain than to activate. If pursued, it would accelerate movement of West in a post-modern direction. The end point would be the reactivation of personal judgement and the reinstatement of free-will. This would be achieved by a generating a radically re-centered equilibrium of the rationalist, instrumental logic that has dominated the Modern historic condition since the Age of Discovery; with that distortion balanced by infusion of a strong dose of aesthetic logic, an opening toward which was provided by the European Romantics. Their critique was but a starting point. What is needed is a path for continuity, and for that we turn next to the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty; who focused on how human social experience as continuous creation of a self and a world imposes its monogram as durable institutions, as does reciprocally, the world on the events of human being with it.

What’s to be Done?

The formula to be explored concerns the dialectic relation of individuals visà-vis the world of productive relations. Individuality implies freedom, which depends on the exercise of judgement and choice; which in turn are active principles associated dialectically with the capacities to perceive the qualitative potential of the world and express oneself in that world. The world is in part natural and in part humanized; with the humanized aspect having taken the high ground over the natural part in Western societies during the last five centuries. The regulative principle of the natural world is harmony and complementarity among differentiation through mutual accommodation as experience. The regulative principle of the humanized world— above all in the West, is maximization of fit based on minimization of differences through management of essential diversity in the interests of resource efficiency. Humans can discover themselves in their species-being in the natural world of experience, but less and less so in the Western humanized world of efficiency. As the reach of the humanized or institutional forces expands, access to the natural world is reduced, with humans working in association with others in social relations of production, the aggregate product of which is a world that

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is progressively alien to their species-being. The felt destabilization ­defining alienation arises when the experience of species-being is overwhelmed by objectification of existence in the interests of efficiency. Calling on figures that date since Marx, the use-value from meaningful association in productive ­relations diminishes as anonymous exchange value of the output of production mounts. This is one indicator at the human level of the contradiction of capitalism: maximization of market value gradually erodes the experiential value of existence in capitalist society. This observation was formally recognized nearly two centuries ago and is the basis for the revolutionary struggle. The question is how to achieve revolution without destroying the basis of governability? One possibility is a shift in the basis of judgement and choice among Westerners, and proposing a basis for this is the point of this book. This is not about utopian unreality or naïve realism; the structural resistance to change is massive. But with each cycle of world crisis, the noose tightens on the neck of the social body, on which capitalism depends for its profits. Compassionate capitalism is the ultimate oxymoron. It and its agents must be put under tutelage of political regulation. For that to occur the notions of freedom and choice will have to shift in priority from consumption to creativity. Which brings us to the individual. This research is conducted from an institutional perspective of which two principles are central: no institutions, no society; and without peril for life, humans cannot withdraw from association. Humans are conscious beings driven by the intention of consciousness for meaning in existence. Meaning is the yield and glue of intersubjective association and thus the power of every institution as social field-force. Associations are driven by social relations of production—of society, of institutions and of life. They are the leading edge of the waves of meaning on the basis of which individuals are woven into those associations and participate in their perpetuation. Every form of association means something; else it will not be perpetuated. Under current conditions, humans are thus obliged by their species being to affiliate and labor in associations of production, focused on consumption rather than creation, the result of which is a self-alienating world. While it may have been the case in some prehistoric era that the necessity of meaning was underdeveloped or not developed at all, that is no longer the case. However, the basis of experience remains species-being, such that ­harmony and fit among difference appears to be the regulative principle of humans. Aesthetic consciousness as discussed in this book is the artisanal-well of meaning-seeking and meaning-appreciation, irrigating species-being as humanity. Rational intelligence is the vector of calculation on which function in

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the Western humanized world depends and the drive to possession which is to say consumption is oriented. Over the past centuries, rational intelligence has become supreme in determining survival chances of the humans as biological creature, gradually deactivating aesthetic consciousness; leaving Westerns lost in a humanized world driven by principles of efficiency and consumption, and thus alienated because bereft of access to a natural world of association based on creation of harmony and fit. If alienation is to be overcome, then social revolution is necessary in the West. That cannot occur until there is a liberation of individuals as expression of aesthetic consciousness, allowing the resurgence of judgement and choice as the drive force for creativity rather than mechanical adaptively. The key figures in this are aesthetic-consciousness and political-esthetics. The two are woven together, representing the individual vis-á-vis the institutional end of the dialectic. Both ends count; neither can exist except in reference to the other. Promoting the free play of that dialectic would be the basis of the needed revolution in the West.

part 2 Phenomenal Apperception

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chapter 5

The Crisis of Western Rationality

Existence as Fine Art?

To recapitulate: The West suffers a crisis of Hubris, not from overexcited chase of empty pleasure, but from a form of intellectual tunnel vision that leaves those affected unknowing in its grip. Were this restricted to philosophers or others who haunt the halls of science, the result would be less bothersome. Public information is overdetermined by what issues from those rational haunts; leaving ordinary Westerners in a fog of uncertain truth. Two centuries ago, the Early German Romantics first attempted to confront this problem. They hoped to develop a non-rationalist mode of aesthetic appreciation that might serve to penetrate the zone of human creativity that remains opaque to reductionist, intellectualist methods of the technical sciences. Their targets of interests were not just works of art in the high-culture sense, but life in society as work of art in the classical humanist sense. They were unsuccessful in their effort and the issue remains unresolved to this day. It is possible that the problem they identified is false; that rational reductionism and its associated empirical approach is the only valid epistemology. We think not, and this book is an investigation of that old question, aimed at suggesting a new resolution. We opened with a text by Isaiah Berlin, who with dauntless determination to save rationalism from criticism, laid out an elaborate study ironically intended to demonstrate that the Romantic Movement never really existed. This was balanced with a reading of Walter Benjamin’s doctoral thesis, who took seriously the challenge raised by the early German Romantics against the then expanding domination of intellectual activity by radical Kantian practices. We side with the judgement of Benjamin. The problem is less the futility of the Romantic’s ambition or the inexistence of the problem they spotted, than that by being so contrary to the reductionism that it sought to counter, their position was discredited before it could flourish. In defense of Berlin’s negative assessment, it is important to underline that here we are speaking of the early German Romantics, who first raised the contra-rationalist flag; which is quite different than the later expressions of this movement, particularly in the second half of the 19th century, which developed in England, Germany and above all, France.

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The Romantic activity that interests us here was admittedly short lived. It erupted in Germany in the wake of the French Revolution of 1789, then dissipated by the time Napoleon Bonaparte restored—by a coups d’état, the ­monarchy in France. With particular attention to literature, the early Romantics judged rationalist epistemology as inadequate to explain the universal appeal of quality in communities of high art. To explain judgement and the creativity that it enables, they called for liberation of consciousness from the over-burden of thought. They rejected formal philosophy and rational disciplines, which they considered a block to the open-mindedness they hoped to cultivate. The romantic free-spiritedness they endorsed survives to this day as appropriate posture for artists and aesthetes of every stripe—but is distrusted for serious intellectual work. Why so? Following among others, Nietzsche, Marx, Freud, William James and John Dewey, Maurice Merleau-Ponty noted in turn how the intellectualist-­ materialist blockage that the romantics had struggled unsuccessfully to overcome was of greater reach than previously imagined. As Kant demonstrated—­ without proposing a means of its attainment, not being able to engage in aesthetic appreciation is a warning sign of not being able to engage in political good judgement. Kant’s first critic, Friedrich Schiller went further, to propose that if harmony in the largest sense is a question of taste rather than truth, then so is truth itself. None the less as rational pressure mounted to dominate the West in the Industrial Age, the right and the good were soon evaluated as whatever wins and sells, with the pragmatics of power and money establishing the frontiers of action. As we are about to study in detail, Merleau-Ponty attempted to lay out a sound method for overcoming this difficulty. He had the benefit of 20th c­ entury European thought, which included other critiques and efforts to overcome the stasis of Western rationality. By the 1930s it was evident that more was called for than only revoicing the appeal for being and knowing otherwise. Soliciting a radically different approach to appreciating truth, this put him in opposition to the dominant view among natural scientists. A special feature of Merleau-Ponty’s effort was related to the political ­urgency that then confronted Westerners. He took seriously the frantic preWWII call by Husserl (1965/1937), concerning the “Crisis of European Man”. The climate in Europe was stricken by political fascism, threatening the values of humanity. It was as if the internal contradictions of Western Modernity would bring its edifice to ruins—sooner rather than later. This opened a fundamental question in the history of Western thought: what is Modernity? The basis of that historical condition is usually taken to be the Enlightenment. Yet, which phase, in which European country, in the hands of which authorities is its essence to be found? Libraries are filled with studies

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of this problem, the digestion of which is left to others. For our purposes, the question is simple: is it reasonable to support a vision of Enlightenment based exclusively on practices of reductionist scientism and the radical instrumentalism that this promotes; or does that result in an insidious form of intellectual shortsightedness? Does not the core of Enlightenment also include another dimension of ­consciousness, equal with if not taking precedence over rationality as conventionally conceived? What of human freedom as self-responsibility based on society as civic intention for equity and tolerance as measure of justice? Does not value-free science foster a value-free treatment of humanity? What then is to be made of even-handedness, open-mindedness and a balanced existence for everyone the world over? Does not the meaning of cold facts count? Is there not a moral responsibility associated with technical reason that extends beyond whether the trains run on time? By the end of wwii and the halt of the Nazi takeover of Europe, these had become burning questions. Is Modern Enlightenment principally about ­technical productivity as the highpoint of human excellence or is there an underlying basis of political aesthetics concerning harmonies, rightness and equanimity that must be confronted, lest the dangerous pursuit of technical mastery transform the entire world into a dehumanizing fascist empire. After two world wars of destabilizing nationalist violence, intolerance and alienation in 20th century Europe were at an all-time high. Merleau-Ponty questioned the wisdom of searching a fix for that malaise principally with the tools of Western rationality. What of the apparently deactivated capacity of Europeans to judge the truth of civic experience, which allowed fascism to creep in and take Western civilization by the throat? His target was the ­human  ­community, positioning his project under the figure of political aesthetics. The classic existential qualities that concerned him, the good, the just and the beautiful, can in principle be used as evaluative criteria for any feature of institutional relations. That only pertains if there is some larger context, in reference to which judgement of fit and discord for particular possibilities and actions can be evaluated. In society as a system materializing the history that constitutes it, the cumulative effect of those evaluative criteria is the basis of symmetry; of how the domains of being, action and production fit institutionally with everything else. Symmetry is also a property of another system which concerns use here: that of human consciousness. When new content entering consciousness fails to fit with what is already there, the resulting tension is labeled dissonance. At minor levels, dissonance is exciting and stimulating, leading to curiosity and creativity or pursuit and/or prudent avoidance depending on its nature.

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If allowed to build excessively, the result is disruptive, leading to ineffective, blocked or rigid action. Consciousness rather than thought is the basis of judgement, which in turn makes possible creativity. Good judgement depends on a minimum of consistent information about choices and possibilities. It is in this way that the a­ esthetics of consciousness dovetail with the aesthetics of politics in the largest sense; automatically exposing domination, exploitation and threat as counterpoint to equality, justice and good will. In summary, the crisis of Western rationality is due to unjustified belief that the fundamental problems of human being, with others, in society, through time, can be managed exclusively by the disciplined application of an analytic logic played out as scientific rationality: with not just domination of nature, but of human being as the goal. Over the past century, racing into the future guided only by those tools has led to freedom and opportunity for a few, at the expense of rigidity and necessity for most. Merleau-Ponty was certain the solution was not to be found in improved regulation of political and economic practices unless an alternative way of knowing and being was recognized. Far from a radical alarmist or Western declinist, he proposed a solution, and then was obliged to justify the new theory of knowing that he favored.1

Introducing Merleau-Ponty

What is a non-rationalist and non-intellectualist theory of knowledge? ­Conventionally, epistemology refers to a theory of knowledge or method of knowing; and ontology aims at a theory of existence. While what is sets limits on the methods by which it might be known, under the terms of rational ­sciences, the two are customarily treated as if distinct. Not so for MerleauPonty, who, because of his dialectic approach to the appreciation of meaning of events, denied the possibility of untangling the relation between being and knowing. He based his non-intellectualist model of individuality and of the world on the postulate that there is no clear distinction between the existential quality of human being and its factual presence in a world. Due to high interactivity, without separation between the symbolic and material faces of events, the importance of the world and its things is determined by their meaning or value. 1 The strong political thread running through Merleau-Ponty’s work is treated here ­secondarily. For a penetrating study of his politics see: Chollet 2011: Chapter 7.

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His treatment of human experience focused on the entwinement of totalities rather than their elementary construction. His concern was with events of presence: which arise at the interface between human consciousness as a personal system of being in the world and society as a world structuring system.2 Consistent with his non-reductionist view, rather than starting inside the mind, Merleau-Ponty focused on the way experience is anchored in consciousness as action in the humanize world; amidst a population sharing a common approach for the assessment of meaning of events, as the basis for personal judgement and creativity. Collective forces are prior to individual awareness and action, with the initiating energy from community to individuality, or from social system to humanized existence. The disposition to seek meaning that propels all people into social relations and communities is inherent to the human constitution, given in advance of cognitive instruction based on the force of what MerleauPonty referred to as a préobjective realm. That predisposition is the active ­power of human social experience: like it or not, to avoid alienating isolation, each human is impelled to seek relatedness with others, even if only to attack the result as dangerous or vain. The risk with that view is the possibility of falling into the fallacy of ­reification. It is not much of a gain to replace the reification of mind or cognitive agency—which is the rationalist’s predilection; with a project for the study of humanized events that depends on the reification of intersubjective ­consciousness in action, as the material manifestation of a mysterious préobjective intention. Merleau-Ponty proposed a model of human-being and its world, enlaced in a fashion that avoids contradictions between them. Constituted as he imagined it, this allows the possibility of ethical, civic and aesthetic coherence as a standard of judgement for the meaning of local experience, allowing creative exercise of collective choice. His work terminated prematurely when he dropped dead of a heart attack at forty-nine years of age, in his Paris office, while preparing a lecture on the Méditations of René Descartes. Two generations later, confusion continues to reign about what he intended, how he went about it, what termination he reached in its development, and above all, whether the result is valid. 2 To recall: Intellectual Conceptual Rationalism as research strategy is based on analysis of the least bits of entities (Descartes referred to them as simples); assuming, more or less, that the whole is knowable by an equation, whose parameters are associated with its diverse elemental components. A holistic onto-epistemology is radically different, depending on a comparative-historical or appreciative strategy.

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To sketch the grand lines of his project, we will focus on a handful of key notions and terms that he used in his writing: dialectic, time, presence, consciousness, being, perception, appreciation, and social action. Following the treatment used for the studies Romanticism by Berlin and Benjamin in Part 1 of this book, we will read carefully a few of his texts, demonstrating both the way he built his argument and the particulars of his project. Far from a traditional academic, the images he developed in his work ranged widely across the social sciences. He was concerned with what he considered the arbitrary and dysfunctional boundaries between philosophy, sociology, history, and anthropology. This is highlighted in a text derived from a conference he delivered in 1951, focusing specifically on the interface between ­philosophy and sociology. Importantly, Merleau-Ponty’s trans-disciplinary view largely bypassed ­psychology. This is easily misunderstood both because he used the term psychology to identify some of his writings and drew on Husserl, the founder of phenomenology, whose early works bore that label. However more than only a social-psychology, Merleau-Ponty’s was a psychology of historical social action; or perhaps better put a historical-materialist psychology. This was inspired by his reading yet unpublished writings from the Husserl archives just before the outbreak of wwii. After 1935, there was, clear evidence of a shift in position by Husserl about the social and historical dynamics of phenomenological consciousness; on the basis of which Merleau-Ponty took off in his original direction. This will be dealt with by a study of his texts, composed later in his own career, where he discussed the differences between his own project and the traditional phenomenology of Husserl. Because of its unusual appeal to judgement and creativity over determination and reactivity, Merleau-Ponty’s view gets little attention in the ­Anglo-American world. At the same time, because of its historical-materialist and dialectic dynamics, he is equally misunderstood among European intellectuals. As we move through this part of the book, by demonstrating that his was a different treatment rather than a misunderstanding of Husserl’s earlier program, we will be able to better highlight the originality of his approach. After completing our studies of Merleau-Ponty texts, we then propose a formalization of his project. Having died before he finished his work, this incompleteness calls for closure which is what we hope to provide; by suggesting that aesthetic consciousness is the systemic energy of human action in the social world. If we are right, social relations of production occur in fields of meaning, institutionalized in structures of relations of production, language and the rest; with which consciousness thus conceived can resonate allowing individuals to participate meaningfully in social action.

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Finally, our proactive model of consciousness, based on an expansion and reconfiguration of the nature of human nature, necessitates a modified model of human being. Whereas the dominant model dating roughly from Descartes and fortified by Kant stresses the {intellectual—conceptual} or rational faculties, centered in mind; we argue that there are two additional {perceptive—­ expressive} or apperceptive faculties, also dialectically related; with all four being dispositions of aesthetic consciousness as we conceive of it. A few schematic representations of the result are included to aid those who learn visually. Beyond the logical architecture of our theorizing, we attempt to assess the truth value of our central postulate by a brief appeal to Brain Imagery (B-I) studies. The recent generation of B-I inquiry reveals intriguing issues related to the nature of consciousness. Yet the reported findings signal qualities of conscious-presence that are unexplainable with the rational-empirical model of brain control. We believe that the theoretical argument and model of ­aesthetic-consciousness developed in this book helps reduce the ­interpretative ambiguity associated with Brain Imaging research as regards human consciousness. This indicate open space in the way human being is understood, buttressing the possibility that our claim about the existence of aesthetic-­ consciousness as preemptive existential force is valid. In closing we take a final look at open questions related to the critical social sciences, exemplified by the work of Durkheim and others, a century ago. All in all, we argue that minimum corroboration via convergence is sustained for our central postulate; leaving it to the reader to evaluate the validity of our research and the legitimacy of its interpretation; the presentation of which is the purpose of this book.

chapter 6

Phenomenology of Perception We open our study of Merleau-Ponty’s work by focusing on his two-part d­ octoral thesis. Composed as a pair of related works, the first, The Structure of Behavior (M-P 1942) was submitted and published under the German ­Occupation. The second volume, completed during the Occupation and published immediately after the Liberation of Paris is his Phenomenology of Perception (M-P 1945). The first identifies the problem which concerned him, for which the second contains the proposed solution. In France, the war and occupation, then liberation and cold war tore apart relations as fast as they formed and shifted the context of meaning as quickly as they could be recorded and shared. In the aftermath, the basis of common judgement was seriously distorted, political institutions were in shambles, with even families blistered by misgivings. For most other European intellectuals of his generation, the perspective and awareness needed to keep reality and its truth in sight had been shot through by a decade of propaganda, false promises, state terrorism, brutality and commonplace opportunism. That MerleauPonty or any of his Parisian colleagues managed to rebuild an integral career of study and scholarship is a testimonial to the latent possibility for rising beyond objective chaos, to find meaning in existence. Merleau-Ponty’s interrogations were profound and the reach of its application vast. For the sake of expediency, most of the material cited in this chapter will be drawn from the second volume of his doctoral thesis, the most famous of his publications. Five major topics will form the backbone of this brief exposé of that work. They are (1) The post-war Paris context, significantly including Sartre; (2) An operational definition of phenomenology as he employed the term; (3) The special treatment of the dialectic that marks his arguments; (4) His use of a historical-materialist method of inquiry; and (5) The terminal point in his program: freedom as cornerstone of humanbeing in the world. Although listed separately, because of the way he worked, all five of those topics are woven into most of his pages. Appreciating each requires minimum attention to them all, so that the content discussed below in each section is considerably less distinct than the headings suggest.

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Phenomenology Of Perception



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Following the strategy developed in my previous study of critical practice ­(OBrien 2014), when unraveling the production of a cultural critic, I treat both the worker and her work from a strongly contextual angle.1 In the case of ­Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961), the geopolitics of war over money, territory, power, and above all against socialism, was the defining macro-event in his world. Still, for reasons associated with intellectual life in Paris, a much more personal window can be opened to expose the constraints and hesitations, the promises and anticipations behind his work. His was a penetrating, note-­ taking, ­critique-exploring form of library scholarship. Throughout his productive years, the major proximate influence on his program was Jean-Paul Sartre. Although bereft of the structural links like those that knit Schiller with Goethe in Germany at the end of the 18th century, beyond their independent originality, the work of neither Merleau-Ponty nor Sartre can be fully understood without reference to the other. While what occurred between them in Paris between the mid-1930s and 1960 assumed varying forms of initiative, responsiveness and provocation, considerable evidence could be assembled showing that Merleau-Ponty spent a great-deal of time, using his exceptional dialectical compositional skills, trying to counter announced positions of his comrade turned antagonist, Sartre. Sartre was agile at attracting aid and attention, with intellectual ­stimulation and challenge coming from Merleau-Ponty, balanced on the social-emotional side by Simone De Beauvoir. Through two difficult decades, the three of them were together a great deal, like intellectual musketeers in an atmosphere of complicity. However, when the fatal day came in the early 1950s that the differences between Merleau-Ponty and Sartre erupted as terminal conflict, De Beauvoir (1955) took up the pen in an attempt to save the good-name of her unrequited lover; supporting Sartre against what she apparently felt to be the unjustified critique against him by Merleau-Ponty. To back up a bit, in the late 1930s, with the political storm clouds darkening over Western Europe, Maurice Merleau-Ponty was teaching high school philosophy and writing his doctoral thesis. As the cannons were being positioned, the intellectual debate in Paris cafés oscillated between existentialism and phenomenology. The structural difference between the two perspectives is murky: for existentialists, existence tends to be gloomy (Schopenhauer) but 1 The case-analytic approach used in this study does not comply with the tenet of New Criticism, which admittedly pertains principally for fiction. As treated here, the intentional fallacy is not fallacious. For elaboration see Frye (2006/1956) and Culler (2006).

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at least it is under control of the individual as freedom. For phenomenologists, being is more symbolically constrained yet more optimistic none the less since there is asserted to be some deeper level of reality behind the evident that holds promise of meaning beyond the moment. Of the many French students working on those issues at the time, the two who eventually made the greatest mark were Sartre and Merleau-Ponty. They became close friends and silent admirers; remained that way through wwii, and after the Liberation, together sponsoring publication of the still important French intellectual review, Les Temps Modernes. Sartre (1905–1980) was two years ahead in school. Preferring literature over the close readings of the heavier academic work of others, and thus not choosing to write a doctoral thesis, Sartre’s publication stream started earlier than Merleau-Ponty’s. Although the labyrinth of influences that motivate an author are difficult to assess even for the author, beyond disagreeing with Descartes, and being a bit bored by Hegel, it appears that Sartre found comfort in the nihilistic existentialism of Nietzsche. While frustration of self in a crowded social-political world seeps from the pages of both of them, unlike Nietzsche, Sartre was disposed to at least search for a way out of existentialist hell. Then there was the discovery of Husserl and phenomenology. Although introduced to it in Paris in 1930, thanks principally to a two-year stint in Berlin (1933–34), Sartre got to Husserl before Merleau-Ponty. However, he mostly attended to Husserl’s early work, with important consequences for his treatment of phenomenology. Although he seems to have appreciated Husserl’s thesis about the possibility of direct access to things in themselves, the central thing of concern for Sartre was his self. One way to consider phenomenology as existential strategy is as seeking authentic being via total openness to worldly experience. Doing so suggests the possibility of self-dissolution, leaving a fully exposed ego floating like a caste-off clamshell in the sea of being. Sartre seemed worried about that possibility, since for him the question of ego was capital. Hardly blind to the issue, ­Husserl before him had worked to differentiate his view from that of Descartes, ­attempting to assure that rational-ego is radically different from—and not necessarily destroyed by—the force for expression of phenomenological being. Like many Parisian students in those years, dealing with the legacy of ­Descartes was in order, and Sartre (1936) set off to rethink ego; in reference to which neither Descartes’ (too disembodied) nor Husserl’s (too undetermined) model would do. Still his insistent existential individuality, linked as it was to the futile challenge of self-mastery, led him to pair his work on ego with research on emotions (Sartre 1939). Along the way, his fascination for us novels—of which he read hundreds, as tactic for framing 19th century French

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literature, led him to compose perplexing yet successful books and theater pieces; in which (La Nausée) the central personage was one minute an isolated ego, in confrontation with an autodidact, lost in a library trying to rebuilt self intellectually by reading everything from A to Z (Sartre1938); and later on (Huit Clos) a forlorn bundle of inexpressible sentiment who after landing in hell discovers that it is impossible to escape the resentful, judgemental regard of the others sharing the hot seat for eternity (Sartre 1947). Unlike Sartre, savoring the solitude of reading, reflection and writing, ­Merleau-Ponty set out directly on what turned into a fifteen-year trial toward a doctorate, composing a thesis in the double volume style dating from ­Descartes. From a theoretical angle, like Sartre he saw the limitations in Descartes work, as well as drew different inspirations from Husserl. But a ­Nietzschean nihilist he was not, closing the door on the possibility of falling into the self-centered void of radical existentialism. Before detailing the consequences this had for Merleau-Ponty’s program, a moment must be spent on the question of politics. As public intellectuals, the differences between Merleau-Ponty and Sartre were striking. For Sartre, when going before the public, an intellectual should behave much as a politician—with conviction taking priority over content and clarity. For Merleau-Ponty, particularly in public, one should behave like a professor, with the truth value of content certified at all costs. Unlike Sartre, Merleau-Ponty agreed with Kant who stressed the importance for the intellectual to keep her private positions out of the public sphere (Kant 1784). For better or worse, Merleau-Ponty treated this difference as an ethical issue, which was impossible for Sartre due to his denial of moral standards. The matter lay dormant until after wwii, when it surfaced with force in the office of their review, Les Temps Modernes. Editor-in-Chief Merleau-Ponty rejected one of Mast-Head Director Sartre’s articles on the basis of unjustified opinionization; setting off a still simmering debate in Paris (Aron 1956; Garaudy et al. 1956; Touchard 1956) about intellectual integrity and the mission of socialism and the justification of critical position about Left-politics on the part of influential intellectuals. Arrival at a permanent spit between them required considerable skirmishing with words. Sartre (1951–54) published a series of articles on Communism in his journal defending his position; Merleau-Ponty—having by then resigned from their journal, set aside his other work to compose a long essay, Les Adventures de la Dialectique (M-P 1955), the central chapter of which unravels the inconsistencies in “Sartre’s Bolshevism”. In response to this, De Beauvoir (1955) picked up the pen and in her enthusiasm to defend Sartre, practically accused Merleau-Ponty of defamation; which in France is punishable by jail.

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Quickly the debate was deflected by commentators from the question of intellectual integrity to one about, my road to socialist liberation is more authentic than yours! In fact, as with Rome, any road to socialism would be of considerable value. As for personal consequences, Merleau-Ponty and Sartre never spoke again.2 As for intellectual consequences, the possibility of constructing a social philosophy of liberation was truncated in Paris; and as for political consequences, the French momentum aimed at establishing an alternative to Machiavellian real-politics (the extreme form of which is fascism), has yet to fully recover.

What is Phenomenology?

Phenomenology is a perspective on the coming into being of the meaningful, which applies for every form of durable human relationship. With it, one treats world events in a fashion similar to art: as aesthetic figures that refuse fixed categorization. It is a natural expression of consciousness as a form of presence: aimed at reaching reality from within it. Its standard of reference is the living world, which is évolutive if anything at all. Interlaced with its objects of interest, the phenomenological aim is to appreciate the meaning of world and human being from the interface between them. Since its target is meaning, and meaning shifts with circumstances, its yield is dynamic; a form of monitoring rather than assessment of fixed dimension. For instance, from the Christian Bible to the Picasso Museum in Paris, what one gets out of experience often shifts from one reading or presence to another. Why so; how can meaning be modified from one day to the next by an encounter with a timeless objectivity? Like a river from which one never draws the same water twice, the flux of meaning associated with human events is sign of their movement, propelled by the locomotive of existence. Either this line of talk is whimsical fantasy, or there must be some layer of presence behind the evident that operates as if a symbolic gravitational force, orienting the engagements of people in the objective world in such a way that meaning is sought and imposed as a prerequisite for life together. The ambition of phenomenology is to describe that possibility, establish its parameters and demonstrate its practical benefits. The main struggle to specify the details of phenomenology dates from ­Edmund Husserl in the early 20th century. After working on the problem for 2 For a careful report on the conflict situation with Sartre, leading up to the resignation of Merleau-Ponty from the Temps Modernes, see: Caeymaex 2005.

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thirty years, with the issue supposedly well in hand, he delivered a pair of lectures in Paris, titled: Cartesian Meditations: Introduction to Phenomenology (Husserl 1929).3 The attempt he made there to differentiate his program from that of Descartes stimulated the important writings on the ego and emotion by Sartre (1936; 1939). The opaque renderings of phenomenology by both Husserl and Sartre soon drew Merleau-Ponty’s attention, setting in motion the relentless interrogation that marked his career. Merleau-Ponty’s solution was phenomenal: first rather than reconceptualizing ego, he shifted attention to consciousness by transferring the center of ­human existence from the cognitive-mind to bodily-being in the world. ­Second, rather than focusing principally on the puzzle of objective experience, he shifted attention to the préobjective aura of meaning that marks and makes possible such experience. Third, rather than treating it as an end in itself, he shifted attention to its continuously mobilizing of humanized existence, generating the double dialectical—diachronic and synchronic pulsations that propel movement in a phenomenal world. Leery about the misguided use of standard terms as if words were other than the things they intended, he had to use some words none the less. Our commentary will concentrate on the more telling figures that mark his texts. One is about the double-dialectic mentioned above, as a critical methodological orientation associated with his existentialist view of historical materialism. Second, in reference to individual existence, the origin of social experience as a frame of meanings is located at the interface between human being as perceptual or historical consciousness and the préobjective realm that constitutes the humanized field of action. A contentious feature of his program is this emphasis on préobjectivity. This figure concretizes his radical break with the rationalist method favored in the natural and laboratory sciences. He did not deny rational science but only argued as to the limits of its canonical method. From the side of the rationalists and intellectualists, such a limitation is unthinkable. In this book, we will treat the Merleau-Pontian project as a valid description of phenomenology as practice. If he was right, then other than for having offended some members of the world’s academies of science, why has his work not been moe frequently solicited for having advanced a solution to a centuries old problem? As a non-rationalist epistemology, phenomenological practice depends on the activation of a form of meta-empirical consciousness of which the defining orientation is perceptual and historical. This is the explanation for 3 This publication is a revised version of the lectures given by Husserl in Paris, February, 1929.

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real-time awareness of collateral happenings as well as temporal passages and anticipations implicit to the given moment. None the less, he never proposed a convincing model of human being for which the deployment of consciousness thus configured is a logical expression. Completing his program necessitates a reworking of the model of man based on a revised treatment of consciouspresence on one hand and brain centered cognitive activity on the other. ­Suggestions about that are provided at the close of this book. It is important to be clear about the postulates proposed by Merleau-Ponty as grounding for his program. If he was right, humanized life implies a complex of préobjective dispositions, the central tendency of which can be best summarized as the intention for society: no one can get along without others, and getting on with others implies common engagement in a community of meaning. It is possible to argue that this is the result of evolution. If so it is probably as much Lamarckian as Darwinian in emergence. Whatever the explanation for its origin, association in common among members of a community of meaning with that préobjective realm explains general agreement that there is meaning in objective experience ranging from the content of holy books to that of museums. The same pertains for encounters with others and the institutions of society through time. However, that is not to say that the content of meaning as appreciated is identical for everyone; much less that the content of all holy books or quality museums merits attention. Even if the details vary locally due to personal, contextual and historical influences, historical consciousness equips each of us with an apperceptive opening toward the meaningful substrata of events. In order to be effected, that disposition must be intersubjective, linking us in advance of particular experience into communities of relational understanding. Phenomenology is the disposition for access to that realm of common ­disposition made possible by the webs of meaning that assure its integrity. Thus a major revelation of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology in practice is that society is a pure symbolic matter of human intention before it is concretized or materialized in the objective relations of a society and its technical institutions.

What is Perception?

Developing and justifying the préobjective postulate as disposition of consciousness, explaining the structuring of behavior as prelude to appreciating the meaning of factual experience is the point of Merleau-Ponty’s ­Phenomenology

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of Perception. Before publishing the work, he composed a brief “Preface” for the book, providing a summary observation of highlights for the work. As process rather than accomplishment, phenomenology … can be practiced and identified as a manner or style of thinking that existed as a movement before arriving at complete awareness of itself as a philosophy. … It is a matter of describing, not of explaining of analyzing. … less a question of counting up quotations than of determining and expressing it in concrete form; …[by it] we will find in ourselves, and nowhere else, [its] unity and true meaning. M-P 1945: viii

As he saw it, “the real is a closely woven fabric” (M-P 1962/1945: x). To grasp its value, he often considered the world as a work of art, with individuals in it holding equivalent stature. Whether due to the mechanics of evolution or the result of some unusual singularity affecting our distant ancestors, in hologram fashion, we are all disposed by humanization to dance to the music of existence, resonating in events of meaning, with nature, in society through time. Treating self as a position, situation or presence precludes reference to ego in the conventional sense. However, turning to consciousness as a critical ­referent for ordinary human being requires jousting with modifiers. In the Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty’s preference was for “perceptual consciousness”, which still suggested a far too static pillar of being. As with each of his major figures, its sense is contextual; which he designated by reference to a predisposing intention as differentiated from the more conventional view of human action as steered by rational inquiry of mind: The discussion of traditional prejudices has so far been directed against empiricism, but in fact it is not empiricism alone that we were attacking. We must now show that its intellectualist antithesis is on the same level as empiricism itself. Both take the objective world as the object of their analysis, when this comes first neither in time nor in virtue of its meaning; and both are incapable of expressing the peculiar way in which perceptual consciousness constitutes its object. Both keep their distance in relation to perception, instead of sticking closely to it. M-P 1962/1945: 26

This is an abbreviated argument about the perimeters of reductionist sciences. He believed the latter as too limited, explaining the high ambition of his project. If he was accurate, it was thanks to the working of perceptual

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c­ onsciousness and not issue of a struggle by brain that Einstein appreciated cosmic dynamics in a new way; or Darwin, bio-species dynamics; or Freud, psycho-dynamics; or Marx, capitalism as political-economy. This is not to belittle the difficult rational, cognitive work by which each of the above proposed an algorithm, structural model or process objectively concretizing the flash of consciousness that marked their inspiration for the discovery. Not because of those examples but as a truism none the less, as Husserl observed, anticipation is the crucial step in invention. After calling on the term often in his book, by the time Merleau-Ponty got to its final chapter, he cut the debate short with the assertion that, “All consciousness is, in some measure, perceptual consciousness” (M-P 1962/1945: 395). This treatment of the power of perceptual consciousness does not constitute a violation of the presumption of positive science if we recall that the issue here concerns the meaning of objective reality and not its material ­content. Merleau-Ponty illustrated this by a description of organ playing as musical event: … during the performance, the stops, pedals and manuals are given to [the organ player] as nothing more than possibilities of achieving certain emotional or musical values, and their positions are simply the places through which this value appears in the world. Between the musical essence of the piece as it is shown in the score and the notes which actually sound round the organ, so direct a relation is established that the organist’s body and her instrument are merely the medium of this relationship. Henceforth the music exists by itself and through it all the rest exists. M-P 1962/1945: 145 4

Phenomenal truth exposes the fragility of shared states of meaning, which while based on valid human predisposition, can be destabilized by fear under uncivilized conditions, as well as open to ideological manipulation when the instrumental forces of society are transformed into tools of subterfuge for illicit powers. Speaking only of ideology, when that form of manipulation takes hold, consciousness yields to rational direction by brain, and even on earth, tragic action may follow. That was the condition in the 1930s under which H ­ usserl ended his career and Sartre and Merleau-Ponty began theirs; e­ xplaining the 4 Merleau-Ponty buttressed this claim by a citation from Swan’s Way, by Proust (1913): As though the musicians were not nearly so much playing the little phrase as performing the rites on which it insisted: Speaking of the musical flow, “Its cries were so sudden that the violinist must snatch up his bow and race to catch them as they came.”

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challenge of attempting to deal with the problem of human truth in a social world bereft of institutional stability. Although he founded his work on a critique of rationality and intellectuality, to avoid polemics, Merleau-Ponty tried to stick to observable examples of his admittedly radical position. For instance, the question of hallucination provided a contra-intuitive test of the distinction between appreciation of truth as expression of perceptual consciousness and the assessment of facticty by the tools of cognitive science. Merleau-Ponty discussed it like this: Why do empiricism and intellectualism fail to understand hallucination, and by what other method is there some chance of succeeding? …The two doctrines presuppose the priority of objective thought, and having at their disposal only one mode of being, namely objective being, try to force the phenomenon of hallucination into it. In this way they misconceive it, and overlook its own mode of certainty and its immanent significance …. For empiricism, hallucination is an event in the chain of events running from the stimulus to the state of consciousness.5 In intellectualism, an effort is made to get rid of hallucination properly speaking, to construct it, and to deduce what it might be from a certain idea of consciousness. The cogito teaches us that the existence of consciousness is indistinguishable from the consciousness of existing, and that therefore there can be nothing in it of which it is unaware, and that conversely, everything that it knows with certainty it finds in itself; that consequently the truth or falsity of an experience must not reside in its relation to an external reality, but be capable of being read off from it as intrinsic denominations, without which they could never be recognized. Thus false perceptions are not genuine perceptions at all. M-P 1962/1945: 335–336

Use of the problem of hallucination demonstrates Merleau-Ponty’s preference for extreme case analysis to reveal the fault line in rational-intellectualist claims. Although important for drawing out otherwise difficult differences to appreciate, under normal circumstances, due to their inherent rarity such ­litmus-test cases are often discounted for that reason alone. A related angle for research of an equivalent nature was to focus on the counter intuitive quality of early child development. This was useful to avoid 5 With this line, Merleau-Ponty opened the issue about the limits of cerebral-cognitive rationality that we deal with in Chapter 10, in our review of Brain Imagery studies related to consciousness.

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always focusing on the adult world, where the labyrinth of ideas and understandings is difficult to unravel. For instance, in order to demonstrate the limits of the model inspired by Descartes, Merleau-Ponty called on the work of Piaget (1926: 1927); supporting the assertion that development of subject-centered objective awareness in childhood unfolds intersubjectively. The perception of other people and the intersubjective world are problematical only for adults. The child lives in a world which he unhesitatingly believes accessible to all around him. He has no awareness of himself or of others as private subjectivities, nor does he suspect that all of us, himself included, are limited to one certain point of view of the world. That is why he subjects neither his thoughts, in which he believes as they present themselves, without attempting to link them to each other, nor our words, to any sort of criticism. He has no knowledge of point of view. Bypassing intermediary steps, he then concludes: My awareness of constructing an objective truth would never provide me with anything more than an objective truth for me, and my greatest attempt at impartiality would never enable me to prevail over my subjectivity (as Descartes so well expresses by the hypothesis of the malevolent demon), if I had not, underlying my judgements, the primordial certainty of being in contact with being itself, if, before any voluntary adoption of a position I were not already situated in an intersubjective world, and if science too were not upheld by this basic given. M-P 1962/1945: 355

Whatever the modifier, whether in philosophy or sociology, consciousness is a far from static statement of presence. For instance, in the following phrase he knits together consciousness and préobjectivity as if parties in a dialog: It is a question of recognizing consciousness itself as a project of the world, meant for a world which it neither embraces nor possesses, but towards which it is perpetually directed—and [of recognizing also] the world as this pre-objective individual whose imperious unity proscribes to consciousness its goal. M-P 1962/1945: xvii

His phraseology is neither hyperbole nor irony; as much as any human being ­expresses meaning by her way of being in the world, so does the world in which she is situated express its own meaning. With that view of

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i­ndividual a­ ppreciation of truth, centered in engaged and embedded worldly ­consciousness, the usual distinction between subject and object dissolves. Rather than located at the margins of the objective sciences, phenomenological practice and presence constitutes their foundation: The whole universe of science is built upon the world as directly experienced, and if we want to subject science itself to rigorous scrutiny and arrive at a precise assessment of its meaning and scope, we must begin by reawakening the basic experience of the world of which science is the—Second Order expression. Science has not and never will have, by its nature, the same significance qua form of being as the world which we perceive, for the simple reason that it is a rationale or explanation of that world. M-P 1962/1945: viii

The validity of a phenomenological transformation results in a retooling of the nature of truth; which arises at the dialectic crossing of expression and appreciation: Truth does not inhabit only the inner man, or more accurately, there is no inner man; man is in the world, and only in the world does she know herself. M-P 1962/1945: xi

Thus the subject of his major book must be understood differently also: Perception is not a science of the world, it is not even an act, a deliberate taking up of a position; it is the background from which all acts stand out, and is presupposed by them. M-P 1962/1945: xi

Earlier, our reference to the image of art was hardly gratuitous. Playing on the important differences between Husserl on intentionality and Kant’s attempt to approach it rationality, Merleau-Ponty exposed the contours of relational meaning implicit to the phenomenological method. We can now consider the notion of intentionality, too often cited as the main discovery of phenomenology, whereas it is understandable only through the reduction. All consciousness is consciousness of something;

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there is nothing new in that. Kant showed6… that inner perception is impossible without outer perception, that the world, as a collection of connected phenomena, is anticipated in the consciousness of my unity, and is the means whereby I come into being as a consciousness. What distinguishes [phenomenological] intentionality from the Kantian relation to a possible object is that the unity of the world, before being posited by knowledge in a specific act of identification, is lived as ready-made or already there. M-P 1962/1945: xvii

If that is the case, like a Cézanne painting, the subject of an important paper by Merleau-Ponty (1996d/1945), the world and its objective content is lived before it can be scientifically studied or cognitively known. So he continues: Kant himself shows in the Critique of Judgement that there exists a unity of the imagination and the understanding and a unity of subjects before the object, and that, in experiencing the beautiful, for example, I am aware of a harmony between sensation and concept, between myself and others, which is itself without any concept. Here the subject is no longer the universal thinker of a system of objects rigorously interrelated, the positing power who subjects the manifold to the law of the understanding; in so far as he is to be able to put together a world—he discovers and enjoys his own nature as spontaneously in harmony with the law of the understanding. But if the subject has a nature, then the hidden art of the imagination must condition the categorical activity. It is no longer merely the aesthetic judgement, but knowledge too which rests upon this art, an art which forms the basis of the unity of consciousness and of consciousnesses. M-P 1962/1945: xvii

As principles in practice, the process by which I admire a sunset and perceive you nearby doing likewise, is the basis of the unity of my consciousness for me, and of yours for you; but also and more importantly, of mine and yours and yours and mine—as unity of consciousnesses. The same pertains in reference to

6 Here Merleau-Ponty cited a Kant text, “Refutation of Idealism” (1787), which was an addition to the second edition of his Critique of Pure Reason (first edition, 1781); aimed at dealing with the alleged skepticism that follows from how some read Descartes, concerning the claim that knowledge of external world is inexistent or at least highly dubious.

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my presence with others, actually or implicitly, when invoked for any common activity from education to sports, from religion to politics. For objectivist scientists, admission of variability in the treatment of material elements of life is a sign that the meaning made of it is subjective. That is the basis of the accusation of solipsism—of a situationally limited truth-value, from which every stripe of phenomenology frequently suffers. If one assumes that perceptual or historical consciousness is anchored in an intersubjective community, which due to variable histories diverge over time, how is it possible to assert that the result of this method sustains a universal standard of truth? Historical awareness implies the giveness of the social web in a community of meaning. The fact that everyone is a member of such a community by rearing, assures a common préobjective awareness that allows humans to recognize intuitively, without necessarily understanding objectively, the nature of foreign ways of life and language.7 Merleau-Ponty dealt with this issue as follow: We must therefore rediscover, after the natural world, the social world, not as an object or sum of objects, but as a permanent field or dimension of existence: I may well turn away from it, but not cease to be situated relatively to it. Our relationship to the social is, like our relationship to the world, deeper than any express perception or any judgement. It is as false to place ourselves in society as an object among other objects, as it is to place society within ourselves as an object of thought, and in both cases the mistake lies in treating the social as an object. We must return to the social with which we are in contact by the mere fact of existing, and which we carry about inseparably with us before any objectification. M-P 1962/1945: 362

7 This is a testy position that since wwii has been discredited in some circles as having been disproven by the events in Germany that gave rise to the Holocaust. The most famous attempt to unravel the issue politically was undertaken by Hannah Arendt, in her landmark works, the Origins of Totalitarianism (2004/1951); and The Human Condition (1958). Her objective was not to save phenomenology from dissolution at the hands of Nazism, but to save Western Civilization from the generalization of Fascism. That required hooking fascism with anti-Semitism using as bridge, Nazi politics; which may have been unfounded. The question remains: how was it possible for the entire German “decision class” to ignore moral responsibility for that exercise of human slaughter? Does this not prove Merleau-­Ponty wrong? The short answer is no; it does prove however that the danger of ideology is real; Ideology being the hijacking of the intention for meaning that is préobjective fueled by the human condition, via the tactics of instrumental communication that can twist the common consciousness in such a fashion that capacity for sound judgement is effectively deactivated.

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This striking declaration necessarily depends on recognition that the primary fact of humanized being is not natural but the social, which in operational terms refers to society in the largest sense. This demonstrates his confidence that his philosophy was tied inherently with sociology, a theme he developed in another paper, an examination of which provides the body for a later ­Chapter in this book. Préobjectivity Although interested in ideas philosophically, the practical issue for MerleauPonty was to make sense of normative events that define a community and shape movement for individuals. Since truth in that case concerns meanings rather than cold facts, the political implications of his position are manifest. But then so are the aesthetic implications, since politics is aimed at harmonies among contraries; tuning the affair dialectical from beginning to end. He treated human being and worldly being on equal terms. His target was direct experience, unconditioned by prior intellectual—conceptual c­ ategories. Judgement of truth of that nature was for him the fundamental expression of freedom; with the practical measure of liberty being existence under a minimum of non-negotiable constraint or institutionally perpetuated inequality. If freedom and good judgement are dialectically related in the operational realm, then each depends on the other as a condition for its realization. Where freedom is blocked, good judgement is arrested, and the political energy needed to mobilize pressure for change is stymied. This is the danger of ideology as mentioned above. Merleau-Ponty was confident that his method supplied an opening to surmount the possibility of being imprisoned in the rational discourse of the absolute present; within which truth is no more than the matter of words; since stripped of their historicity, the playing out their meaning is imperceptible; effacing both judgement and creativity. To realize that possibility, the capability for self-responsibility and social engagement must depend on dispositions predating cognitive response to local social action. It was this necessity that led him to postulate as phenomenological fact, a universally accessible préobjective realm associated with human being in a social world. The proposal is as subtle as is its objective demonstration. Since it was in his Phenomenology of Perception that he provided the most complete description of his project, it is there where the figure is most developed. However, his use of this reference in later courses given at the College de France, demonstrated his rigorous insistence on the figure’s bien-foundé.

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For instance, in 1954–55 he focused seminars on the problem of “Institution and Passivity” (mp 2015/1954–55). Drawing out in detail the profound quality of that theme is beyond the ambition of this book. But in brief, what he dealt with was the way that institutional structures require for their actuality the continuous engagement of social-humans. For instance, in order for a police force as institution to be actualized there must be police agents on one side and citizens to be policed on the other, with the all of it woven into a system of shared meanings. Suppose an adequately socialized foreigner arrives from a pacifist country, where there is no police force. Suppose she arrives in the town square, charged with life, involving a strange dance of police agents and citizens? The individual will be passive, yet aware that there is meaning to the event, even if untranslatable into her existing frame of reference. Under those circumstance, in advance of labelable objective comprehension, all three actor types are unified by some deeper level of consciousness. In this text, the notion of préobjective is repeatedly drawn on to underwrite Merleau-Ponty’s highly unusual way of explaining this sort of deep-seated disposition toward meaning that draws individuals into social event, including events about which the objective meaning is ambiguous.8 Préobjective disposition to meaning is thus the ground-work for social relations, in advance of formalist construction by intellectuals or cognitive assessment by ordinary people. This postulate was associated with an uncommon treatment by Merleau-Ponty of another important figure, that of intentionality. Intentionality describes the driving force of action by humans. If a world of fixed coordinates differs from one of dynamic, time defining events, then rational intentionality must differ from phenomenological intentionality. According to rational discourse, intention is an act of human will of the sort that generates market or voting behavior, or leads people to eat lunch. Since Freud, this has been modified at the margins by noting how intention often issues from unconscious motives, yielding a sort of disguised rational intentionality. Before the beacon of phenomenological experience, the question of consciousness—vs—unconsciousness slips to second-plan: phenomenal 8 In these lectures (mp 1962/1945: 201–293), Merleau-Ponty used other popular treatments of the nature of consciousness to differentiate the special intention implicated by his use of historical or perceptual consciousness. Along the way, he challenged the Freudian notion of unconscious, certain treatments of dreams, discussions about memory in general, and about the erratic application of the notion of symbolism as way of missing the point about passivity, which is simply the absence of institutional presence, and institution, which is ­engagement via consciousness in a normative event of worldly-being.

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i­ntentionality is not assumed to be linked to will at all. Rather than affirming that conscious intention of rational mind determines the general direction of existence, one says that the mind is a sort of elaborate muscle, like the motor in an automobile, for which phenomenological consciousness serves the function of an ultra-sophisticated gps; orienting by feedback the labors of mind. This view of intentionality in a pre-objective world by a phenomenological consciousness poses a challenge for ordinary understanding. While it is hardly necessary to restate the long citation on the issue found in the previous Section of this Chapter, it is important to draw attention to certain of Merleau-Ponty’s major observations on the subject. Rather than a willful, conscious or instrumental act, intentionality is first of all dialectic: an anticipation in consciousness of one’s personal unity as well as the means whereby one comes into being as a consciousness. In everyday terms, this is the drive force that raises existential question vaguely formulated in terms such as, who am I, where am I, and what am I doing here? This is the impulse toward self-monitoring in relation to one’s situation related to what is called self-consciousness and self-care. In practical terms, meaning is the response to existential questions of this nature. For Merleau-Ponty, intentionality thus considered is anchored in the perception that before being posited by mind, the world is lived as ready-made or already there. This disposition is necessarily generalized, and from it, everyone assumes that everyone else is naturally disposed in a similar fashion. That explains the universality of intention, expressed as an aesthetic force, implicitly aimed at harmonizing being and doing with others in a common world. The result is a strain toward a unity of imagination and understanding, of subjects before the object of life. Assuming it is achieved with reasonable stability, one is aware of harmony not as a universal thinker in a system of objects; not as if a power over all the pieces in the puzzle of life; but as enjoying one’s own nature as spontaneously in harmony with the laws of understanding; in which aesthetic judgement as the hidden art of imagination, forming the basis of the unity of consciousness and of consciousnesses. As Merleau-Ponty approached it phenomenal intentionality is a disposition for existence as an aesthetic totality and for better or worse, objective experience has meaning in reference to it. He linked the figure of intentionality as origin with the unity of consciousness: not just mine for me or yours for you, but of ours in a community of ­consciousnesses. Intentionality as unstoppable self-concern linked dynamically to others is thus the materialization of the préobjective disposition for being human in a social world. That in turn is the basis of aesthetic ­judgement—­subsumed by the figures of beauty, justice, and goodness; which

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rather than being products of it, serve as inputs for rational judgement of objective circumstances. Within the préobjective landscape, phenomenal judgement provides ­humans the capacity for the appreciation of movements and harmonies of technical actions and productions, based on patterns of meaningful relations. This expression of intention is not as willful pursuit of local advantage but a préobjective disposition in advance of local action. In sum, Through this broadened notion of intentionality, phenomenological comprehension is distinguished from traditional intellection, which is confined to true and immutable natures; and so phenomenology can become a phenomenology of origins. M-P 1962/1945: xvii–xviii

Development of such a phenomenology was precisely the intention of his thesis.

Historical Materialism as Social Being

Merleau-Ponty defined his concepts by demonstrating their meaning in usage. One is thus obliged to triangulate the use of key figures by sifting laboriously through his texts. Although not exactly interpretation, the result is rarely definitive, since the sense as appreciated depends on which of his paragraphs one studies and in which order. To begin with his treatment of historical material dynamics is based on a strong view of humans are social beings, and individuality as a social construction; each materializing a certain history, expressed via a conscious presence. Rather than anchored as if in social-cement, individuality is still a free-willing capacity, which can exert force to modify social relations and press for alterations in structures as well. Individuality and structure are thus dynamically linked because dialectically entwined; mediated by general préobjective intention for community and structured by webs of social-relations. In a paper we will study more closely in the next Chapter (M-P 1990/1960) on the relation of Philosophy and Sociology, he dealt with this by reference to what he labeled as the social in and of human being; using the related figure of my social as equivalent to a place in society for an individual on the move. He used those figures to discuss dialectic dynamics as the ongoing structuringyield of historical-materialist forces. Writing in the personal-pronominal style that he favored, he summarized this complex point as follows:

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When regarding myself, the social is not simply an object but above all my situation, and when consciousness of this social-which-is-mine awakens in me, everything synchronic becomes present to me; by traversing it, all the past that I am able to consider as the synchronicities as they were in those past time, come to me also, and all the convergent and discordant action of [my] historical community is effectively given to me in my living present. M-P 1990/1951b: 112

It is important to underline that this identifies the double dialectical moment associated with the life of each consciousness presence: pressed synchronically by contemporary forces and events and diachronically by past events pressing toward possible futures; based on and propelling a dynamic anchorage in a historical community as event. In the above citation, he only refers to synchronicity, but that must be understood in the full sense of his intention. As put in a paper delivered in 1951 on the Phenomenology of Language, [Because] … diachrony envelops synchrony …synchrony is only a ­cross-section of diachrony, [and] the system realized in it never exists wholly in act but always involves latent or incubating changes. It is never composed of absolutely univocal meanings which can be made completely explicit beneath the gaze of a transparent constitution consciousness. M-P 1990/1951a

With that in mind—of humanness as social-being energized by a field of meaning, it is easier to deal with the 1,500-word Footnote on historical-­materialism that he attached to the end of a central Chapter in the second volume of his thesis (M-P 1962/1945: 171–173). Far from a gratuitous addition, the Note provides a condensed summary of his project and the central place in it of his special view of historical materialism (subsequently as H-M). Since this Note is the only place in his entire thesis that the H-M figure is found, it may have been added at the time of publication. Had it been present when the original composition passed under the nose of the Nazi Occupational censors, there may have been serious trouble. Fascism detests not just certain religions or ideologies but any form of socialism, a hint in the direction of which is always linked to the use of the H-M figure because of its origins in the writings of Karl Marx. There is historical materialism as a content of critique offered by Marx in his elaborate study of Capital; and the historical-materialist method that he developed as the tool for that elaborate study. Because development of the method

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was anchored in the substance of Marx’s work, treating it independently from the content of his critique is uncommon. None the less, the H-M approach has become the method of preference for institutional analysis, serving a vital function in all the disciplines of the critical social sciences. Although Merleau-Ponty attends to both the Marx project and method, here we are concerned principally with the method and not the content. It is very versatile and from a logical point of view, its application depends only on accepting certain assumptions about the institutional constitution of a social world. Beyond that it is value neutral. That non-dogmatic quality linked with the elegance of its application by Merleau-Ponty, contributed enormously to the power of his results. As indicated in the “Table of Contents” for the original French version of the second volume of his thesis, we are about to study a, “Note on the Existential Interpretation of Dialectic Materialism”. It opens this way: One cannot get rid of historical materialism… by impugning reductionist conceptions and causal thought in the name of a descriptive and phenomenological method, for historical materialism is not linked to such causal formulations… and… could be expressed in another language. [For instance] it consists just as much in making economics historical as in making history economic. M-P 1962/1945: 171

The crucial twist here consists of making economics historical versus making history economic. To the extent that the essential dynamic is dialectic, as economic activity is historicized by its action, history is institutionalized by economic processes; with the interplay between the two contributing to the movement of history and the setting of a direction for society. However, that expresses a general principle; for it is equally true that the H-M project makes the family historical and makes history a story of evolution of family practices; with the same in relation to education, religion, politics, etc. Every social institution is at once generator of and expression of a certain history, with the history of society an ongoing and ever evolving narrative, knit from the historical threads of the institutions that compose it. Since historical materialism is linked by derivation from Marx with politicaleconomics and in the modern West economic factors dominate politics, ­Merleau-Ponty took care to clarify how he considered its role in collective life: The economics on which [H-M] bases history is not, as in classical ­economics, a closed cycle of objective phenomena, but a correlation

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of productive forces and forms of production, which is completed only when the former emerge from their anonymity, become aware of themselves and are thus capable of imposing a form on the future. Now, this coming to awareness is clearly a cultural phenomenon, and through it, all psychological motivations may find their way into the web of history. M-P 1962/1945: 171

Here we see the crucial fact about economics from an H-M perspective. It is not found in accountant’s ledgers, but in the force of the social relations of ­production underwriting those ledgers, as those thus engaged emerge from their anonymity, become self-aware and are thus able to help shape the future. Primary market behavior (a peasant selling eggs on the side of a road near her farm) is not economics in the institutional sense. It becomes so when many farmers (or factory workers, boutique operators or investment bankers) leave their private world to unite in social activity, bringing into awareness their common being, allowing collective effort to inform their common future. While useful as a personal referent, the H-M phenomenon indicates the generic process describing the coming into being of collaborative relations and by that, the constitution of sites of social power on behalf of particular categories of social actors. Merleau-Ponty adds, importantly, that this activation via awareness of common status among categories of similarly placed productive individuals is a cultural phenomenon; giving rise to the generalized ­psychological motivations (such as a profit motive) which enter into history— as a psychic yield of collective processes and not as their cause. With a touch of irony, he exemplified this aspect of H-M as process in reference to its potential not just for social reform but societal revolution: A materialist history of the 1917 [Russian] Revolution does not consist of explaining each revolutionary thrust in terms of the retail price index at the moment in question, but of putting it back in the class dynamism and interplay of psychological forces, which fluctuated between February and October, between the new proletarian power and the old conservative power. Economics is reintegrated into history rather than history’s being reduced to economics. M-P 1962/1945: 171

More than a tool for appreciating its dynamics, the dialectic interior of the H-M process animates the coming into being and momentum of a society and

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its institutions, including the lived existence of its members and development of their motivations. Yet this dynamic quality is often overlooked. Historical materialism, in the works inspired by it, is often nothing but a concrete conception of history which brings under consideration—­ besides its obvious content (the official relations between citizens in a democracy, for instance), its latent content, or the relations between human persons as they are actually established in concrete living. ­[However] when materialist history identifies democracy as a formal regime, and describes the conflicts with which such a regime is torn, the real subject of history, which it is trying to extract from beneath the juridical abstraction called the citizen, is not only the economic subject, man as a factor in production, but in more general terms the living subject, man as creativity, as a person trying to endow his life with form, loving, hating, creating or not creating works of art, having or not having children. M-P 1962/1945: 171

Because of its interplay with the human dimensions of common existence, how is one to best position the institutional facet of economic processes and forces in the larger social lattice? The key lies in accepting the mutual interdependence of individuality and institutionalization. Historical materialism is not a causality exclusive to economics. One is tempted to say that it does not base history and ways of thinking on production and ways of working, but more generally on ways of existing and co-existing, on human relationships. It does not bring the history of ideas down to economic history, but replaces these ideas in the one history which they both express, and which is that of social existence. M-P 1962/1945: 171

Consistent with the above, rather than a thing with abstract qualities susceptible to study and management, economics is a label for a conjunction of vectors of historical actions and movements, partly connected with the sustainability of society, partly with its guidance, and partly related to the allocation of its mechanisms for control. Merleau-Ponty recognized the potential deconstruction of economics that might seem to be the result of this expanded treatment of its nature. … this interpretation of historical materialism may appear ambiguous. We are expanding the notion of economics as Freud expands that of

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sexuality; we are bringing into it, besides the process of production and the struggle of economic forces against economic forms, the ­constellation of psychological and moral motives which combine to determine this struggle. But does not the word economics thus lose all definite meaning? M-P 1962/1945: 172



Existential Conception of History

Merleau-Ponty dealt with history using a materialist treatment of existential dialectics. Toward the end of this Note on the subject he elaborates this theme, carefully differentiating his personal view of H-M from the divers others that circulated in post-WWII Europe. Existentialism for him was about living and being, in community, with ­others through time; with balanced attention to self-responsibility and societal integrity, self-interest and common interest, institutional formation and change. Rather than its deconstruction, this resulted in a treatment of economics requiring simultaneous attention to both its institutional productions and the personal-social meaning of the process of those affected. This is what shifts economics out of a zone of pure isolation into to a form of engagement; which is why his project was concerned with political-economics in the full sense of the term. Even if an existential theory of history is ambiguous, this should not be a matter for reproach. Ambiguity is inherent to the nature of all living things, since from an institutional perspective, polity and society are equal partners in all process of production. At least since the emergence of industrial capitalism, it is only at the approach of revolution that history follow lines dictated by economics. As in the case of the individual life, sickness subjects a man to the vital rhythm of his body, so in a revolutionary situation such as a general strike, [technical] factors governing production come clearly to light, and are specifically seen as decisive. Even so we have seen just now that the outcome depends on how the opposing forces think of each other. M-P 1962/1945: 172

From an existential perspective, another remarkable aspect of an H-M ­perspective is the political character of its dynamics: capturing the tension

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for balance among contradictory tendencies, which under conditions of significant cleavage becomes a power struggle. Even if all are vital for steady state reasons, it is during moments of struggle that the meaning of particular ­institutional factor surges to the forefront. Although Merleau-Ponty’s attention at the time was focused particularly on economic factors, the larger reach of this observation is self-certifying. It is all the truer, then, that during periods of depression, economic factors are effective only to the extent that they are lived and taken up by a human subject, wrapped up, that is, in ideological shrouds by a process amounting to self-deception, or rather permanent equivocation, which is yet part of history and has a weight of its own. Neither the conservative nor the proletarian is conscious of being engaged in merely an economic struggle, and they always bring a human significance to their action. In this sense there is never any pure economic causality, because economics is not a closed system but is a part of the total and concrete existence of society. M-P 1962/1945: 172

From an existential angle, objective details, economic or other, make a difference not as just cold calculations but also in terms of their meaning; based on the total structure of relations of production that inform a society. A revolution is possible when the strain toward stability is exceeded by the dissonance associated with some form of excess or deficit, placing in jeopardy the social existence of the living subject; menacing the creativity of people, in their attempt to endow life with form; loving, hating, creating or not creating works of art, having or not having children, etc. There are cold facts none the less: An existential conception of history does not deprive economic situations of their power of motivation. If existence is the permanent act by which man takes up, for his own purposes, and makes his own a certain de facto situation, none of his thoughts will be able to be quite detached from the historical context in which he lives, and particularly from his economic situation. Precisely because economics is not a closed world, and because all motivations intermingle at the core of history, the external becomes internal, and the internal external, and no constituent of our existence can ever be outrun. M-P 1962/1945: 172

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The interplay between self-responsibility and social reality is a historical and ongoing drama of consciousness within institutional history: … the economic and social drama provides each consciousness with a certain background or even a certain imago which it sets about deciphering in its own way and, in this sense, it is co-extensive with history. The act of the artist or philosopher is free, but not motiveless. Their freedom resides in the power of equivocation …or in the process of escape…; it consists in appropriating a defacto situation by endowing it with a figurative meaning beyond its real one. Thus Marx [as free and self-creating and], not content to be the son of a lawyer and student of philosophy, conceives his own situation as that of a lower middle class intellectual in the new perspective of the class struggle. M-P 1962/1945: 172

With remarkable agility, Merleau-Ponty brings attention back to Marx the man, to exemplify the fact that not even the inventor of the H-M perspective was beyond incarnating its truth. While from there, as concerns H-M, the rest is history, for the founder himself, the very human qualities of his existence remained to the end original and creative, shaped by but not determined by situational givens. Rather than denied, the importance of thought is reconceptualized in H-M: Thought is the life of human relationships as it understands and interprets itself. In this voluntary act of carrying forward, this passing from objective to subjective, it is impossible to say just where historical forces end and ours begin, and strictly speaking the question is meaningless, since there is history only for a subject who lives through it, and a subject only in so far as he is historically situated. There is no one meaning of history; what we do has always several meanings, and this is where an existential conception of history is distinguishable from materialism and from spiritualism. M-P 1962/1945: 173

This strong statement in favor of the authenticity of individuality as situated freedom, self-responsibility and creativity must not be taken as suggesting that in the end, Merleau-Ponty reduced his structural and institutional position to a human individualist level. Deflecting that possible misreading of his position, he approached the end of this Note by stressing the figure of unity, of institutions, of dispositions, of ways of worldly being:

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Every cultural phenomenon has, among others, an economic significance, and history by its nature never transcends, any more than it is reducible to, economics. Conceptions of law, morality, religion and economic structure are involved in a network of meanings within the Unity of the social event, as the parts of the body are mutually implicating within the Unity of the gesture, or as physiological, psychological and moral motives are linked in the Unity of an action. It is impossible to reduce the life which involves human relationships either to economic relations, or to juridical and moral ones thought up by men, just as it is impossible to reduce individual life either to bodily functions or to our knowledge of life as it involves them. M-P 1962/1945: 173

Unity as totality is the preeminent quality of being, organizing, appreciating and reforming society. For individuals in personal terms, institutions in structural terms, and ideas in transcendental terms, significant situations are marked by the rising to the fore of particular forces and influences. There are unpredictable repercussions due to the creativity of the dialectical materialist motor-force that drives society onward. Thus his closing observation for this Note: In each case, one of the orders of significance can be regarded as dominant: …in the sphere of co-existence, one period of history can be seen as characterized by intellectual culture, another as primarily political or economic. The question whether the history of our time is pre-eminently significant in an economic sense, and whether our ideologies give us only a derivative or secondary meaning of it is one which no longer belongs to philosophy, but to politics, and one which will be solved only by seeking to know whether the economic or ideological scenario fits the facts more completely. Philosophy can only show that it is possible, starting from the human condition. M-P 1962/1945: 173

As an existential conception, rather than a snare looming over the present from a reactionary past, historical materialism provides a method based on openings toward possible futures. It is acceptance of the unity of diversity as society, of struggle for priority among particulars, of a consciousness in presence that appreciates more than it knows. Above all it is dialectics in action; the special view of which—as developed by Merleau-Ponty, is the topic of the next section of this Chapter.

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Dialectics from the Greeks to Marx

Merleau-Ponty was convinced that historicized truth is meaningful, collective and intersubjective: tracking the materialization of struggle for meaning as society, harboring always within it a revolutionary potential. His project was to establish its access, relying on dispositions generically available to anyone who is perceptively open and engaged in the world; based on the interplay of the individual and community, between the local and the universal, the disposition and the incarnation, between the intention and the act. The energy that drives the process is identified by the term, dialectic, and it surfaced frequently in Merleau-Ponty’s texts. Since for him it was conceived as imminent rather than material being, it is a continuing event without objectivity; like the rhythm of a dance or the theme of music it is best appreciated or perceived by engaging or expressing oneself as a participant in its propagation. Treating it as fundamental, by unraveling its dynamics he aimed at a philosophy of origins. Although he dealt with it in his thesis, it was not until the 1950s that he devoted a full text to the topic (The Adventures of the Dialectic). As he saw it, The dialectic is neither the idea of reciprocal action, nor that of the solidarity of contraries and their depassement, nor that of a development that brings into being itself, nor the hybridization (transcroissance) of a quality, that installs in a new order a quantitative change qualitative up to then: these are the consequences or aspects of the dialectic. Taken in themselves or as properties of being, these relations are prodigies, curiosities or paradoxes. They do not become clear until taken in our experience, at the junction of a subject, of that being and of other subjects: between those contraries-there, in that reciprocal action, in that relation between a within and a beyond, between the elements of that constellation; in that coming future, which not only becomes [for us] but becomes for itself, there is place without contradiction and without magic for the relations of double direction, for the reversements, for contrary and inseparable truths, for the depassments, for a perpetual genesis, for a plurality of plans of order. M-P 1955: 281–282

For readers who are disposed to the visual representations of ideas, this depicts perceptual or historical consciousness as a ball of presence, in dialectic relation with other contemporary forces, technical, organization and symbolic. Since consciousness is always consciousness of something, in this case, the

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­object of consciousness is self-engaged in community; as a dialectic constitution, situated and conditioned by contemporary influences, propagating an aura of meaning of existential value. Dialectical presence is an event traced by its movement on a world-line, propelled by a certain past and impelled by a certain range of possible futures; with the tension {past—future} also involved in the project of self-resolution by which perceptual and historical consciousness is composed. The result is a double dialectic (synchronic and diachronic) of self-constitution, based on being with others, in nature and society through time. I label the result, Being-Expressed. From an ordinary objective point of view, which would only be possible if the dialectic dynamics came to a halt, the result is admittedly ambiguous. But: It is precisely this dilemma, which the notion of existence, properly understood, enables us to leave behind; and what we have said above about the existential conception of expression and significance must be reapplied here. An existential theory of history is ambiguous, but this ambiguity cannot be made a matter of reproach, for it is inherent in things. M-P 1962/1945: 172

Merleau-Ponty considered existential ambiguity as the opportunity for the realization of freedom. One is linked to a past but not chained to it; one is drawn toward a future but not determined by it; one is in exchange with contemporary events but independent of them; as long as living continues, the freedom of movement onward is also freedom of choice. Neither circular, synthetic nor terminal, Merleau-Ponty’s was a dialectics of action as historical event. However, over the centuries the notion of dialectics has assumed a variety of definitions and usages. Given the complex result, it is important to bear in mind how past thinking contributed to his formulation. For the Greeks in the line from Plato, the dialectic indicated a form of logical argument aimed at clarifying understanding; identifying the crucial characteristics of some phenomenon usually of a noble nature such as justice, integrity or loyalty; by comparison and contrast with other notions proximate to it. This implied that truth is a problem of clear conceptions and ideas; in keeping with this tradition, Descartes and Kant among others are identified as Idealists. Aristotle approached the problem of truth as an empirical problem. He too stressed the process of comparison and contrast, but focused on worldly forms of an objective nature—plants, animals, birds, fish, etc. He developed an elaborate categorical scheme for classifying the entities found in nature based principally on their causes, composition and function. This is the train

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of thought favored in the empirical and laboratory sciences, with its adherents broadly classified as Materialists. If the Platonic and Aristotelian approaches are considered conjointly, it is apparent that the problem of truth is associated not just with what particular entities are characteristically or how they are known logically, but with their place in the world, and above all, with their relation to the human condition. Since the human condition includes the capacity to modify the elements of pre-existing reality, there is a high interactivity between what is, the causes and functions of what is, and the human condition. That interactivity, shifts the dialectic from a problem of ideas about experience to the facticity of its meaning; locating precisely the problem that intrigued Merleau-Ponty. Not only is the dialectic of being a fact of human experience, but it appears to drive and define it. As the interplay between the constitution of the world and the human condition, it puts the focus on the coming into being and movement of the world and of humans as part of that. It is a historical perspective, anchored in material reality. Which is why, as noted in the previous part of this Chapter, Merleau-Ponty referred to his as an existential interpretation of dialectical materialism. Although educated about Plato and Aristotle and highly studied about ­Descartes and Kant, the proximate influences on Merleau-Ponty’s dialectic were Hegel and Marx. Each of them also considered it as a process associated with the composition and movement of the humanized world. Focusing on the relation between generally held ideas about a quality society and the actuality of society as given, Hegel considered the Idea of Society as structuring principle, to be the dominant orienting factor behind the movement of material circumstances. Marx, on the other hand focused on the struggle among categories or classes of humans at the material level of existence, with societal movement motorized by the stains and tensions among the institutional forms. In this, Hegel’s work was more in keeping with the classical Platonic thread while Marx’s emphasis on categorical experience in the material world is more closely associated with Aristotle. A Hegelian tends to treat the world from a distance, studying central Ideas on the basis of which there is a gradual movement in the direction of a lawabiding Society. A Marxist perspective is more concerned with unraveling the crucial collective engagements and struggle that arise to perpetuate or seek to modify the system of social relations that defines a working society. In the Marx model, human agency is much more directly responsible for current social conditions; whereas for Hegel, societal processes follow a course mostly determined by the interplay of institutional forces beyond the immediate influence of the individuals affected by them.

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Finally, there is the question of the end of the dialectic interplay between human beings and their social world. For Hegel, the process of modification and evolution at the institutional level of society should continue until a utopic state is achieved, under the rule of law, accepted as legitimate by its citizens, assuring coherence, unity and durability; with the whole functioning like a giant enterprise based on the principle of Best Social-Political Practice. For Marx, since left on its own society tends to become perilously distorted as advantage for powerful interests, the only possible end of the dialectic as struggle would be a permanent revolution—as permanent achievement, that is; whereupon a different and socialist situation would be achieved of a just and equitable society, without structurally reproduced, economic inequality. Merleau-Ponty treated dialectical change as the motor force for ongoing modification in the social. For that reason, when he attached the modifier, permanent, to the figure of revolution, this was not indicating the possibility of a terminal state, but only as the enduring energy that animates the political aesthetics of every human system, from the dyad, to family, to group, community and society. He discussed this treatment of revolution as permanent feature of social existence most elaborately in the “Épilogue” he attached to his Adventures of the Dialectic (M-P 1955: Pp. 281ff). Elsewhere he often dealt with it in a lyric language that may have distracted readers from its importance: Even the decision to become a revolutionary without motive,… and by an act of pure freedom, would express a certain way of being in the natural and social world, which is typically that of the intellectual. M-P 1962/1945: 447

Temporality In the period between 1750 and 1850, a decisive novelty was recognized that shifted the treatment of human experience: namely the discovery of the importance of time. Beyond the evident observation that time passes, it came to be seen that with the passing of time there are alterations in the conjunction of circumstances that mark that passages, with major consequences of a collective and political nature for what is likely to come to pass in the future. The present is infused by temporality and thus transformed into an event, ­propelled by a past, impelled toward a future, buffeted by important contemporary influences. While not its cause, the French Revolution (1789) was a major marker in this temporal revolution. Demasking the fallacy of the divine right of kings was

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a crucial sign that human institutions are social constructions, coming into being, formatted, altered and dissolving based on human action. While in the language of aesthetics, this is also recognition that life is more than only metaphorically a work of art, Merleau-Ponty would probably have added the further observation that as concerns the human condition, there is no such thing as art for art’s sake. This temporal revolution brought history to life; making possible on the academic front what is known today as institutional studies; on the personal front leading to therapies intended as personal change; and on the political front confirming as reasonable the possibility of revolution—and counter revolution. As a historicized project, the innovation of Hegel was to treat the grand lines of the human adventure as inevitable movement in the direction of a stable society based on a particular idea of justice; and the innovation of Marx was to recognize the temporal dynamics and interactivity between material conditions and the categories of individuals who compose a society, in the struggle to shape a world of freedom without exploitation.9 Although initially Merleau-Ponty may have considered it otherwise, by the end of wwii, after the truth of the Nazis in Germany, then of the Gulags in Russia had come out, he was convinced that the practical achievement of a societal utopia—of either Hegelian or Marxian form, was unlikely. Moving beyond those mentors led to both a political and conceptual turn. He too had been struck by the power of time, which rather than invalidating the figure of dialectics as key to appreciating the dynamics of social movement and the being of self, led him to reinforce confidence in it. The second to the last chapter in his Phenomenology of Perception is devoted entirely to an extensive exploration of “Temporality”. There he explored the lived experience of historical consciousness from a dialectical angle, delivered in mind-twisting slices of text. An astrophysicist studies time to understand the cosmos; Merleau-Ponty studied time to understand the human subject—you, me and the communities we constitute. Anyone of us, any society or institution, is a pulsating temporal bubble of meanings, pressing for expression or suppression. To understand us as we are, it is necessary to appreciate temporality as it is. “If we succeed to understand the subject, it will not be in its pure form, but in searching for it at the intersection of its dimensions.” Those dimensions are dynamic, which 9

Two other prominent figures that invoked the power of temporality were: Freud, who temporalized the conceptualization of human psychological infrastructure as a basis for his formulation of psychoanalysis; and Einstein, who temporalized the conceptualization of physical dynamics as the basis of his special and general theories of relativity.

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requires exploring their interactive unfolding. Thus, “It is necessary to consider time in itself, and it is by following its internal dialectic that we will be driven to rebuild our idea of the subject” (M-P 1962/1945: 470). As vital constituent of human consciousness, rather than a category of fixed dimensions—customarily only three, temporality is a process. Also contrary to the popular view, rather than flowing, it is better considered as a procedure. To demonstrate this point, he uses a river as metaphor, with its origin in the Alps from a melting glacier, following its bed to an estuary, then disappearing in the Mediterranean Sea. The reason the idea of flow applies neither to time nor to a river is that the process “is not the result of successive events [melting ice, moving water, empty into sea], or better put the very notion of event does not have a place in objective reality.” The notion of event only pertains for lived reality. The objective content of the world as it is, is just that, without passage of any sort; like the books on my shelves, nothing moves… unless some human observer is there to move them; or in reference to the movement of a boat on water, as seen by a human subject. This is subjectivity in action, as action: “Time supposes a view of time” (M-P 1962/1945: 470); and that supposes a viewer to put the procedure of time in motion as consciousness. Thus, “that which is past or future for me is [only] present in the world.” It is therefore reasonable to say of things, that “the future is not yet, the past is no more, and the present, in fact, is only a limit, at which time shifts gears ­(effondre).” Because of the absolute isness of the objective world, what “the human being lacks in order to be temporal, is the non-being of elsewhere, of otherwise and of tomorrow.” It is not that the objective world is “too tightly limited”, but that it is “too full for there to be the place for time” (M-P 1962/ 1945: 471). This paradox is difficult to consider, even metaphorically. One example is what occurs with big-city apartments, which invariably become too small for their contents. They cannot be cleaned, because cleaning requires at least twice the floor space as the areal—footprint of all the material objects in them; if not, there is no place to put what is, to clean beneath and around it. True luxury is not to have a cleaning person, but having sufficient empty space to allow efficient cleaning. Since the beginning, time is like that: it cannot flow because as a plenum, there is no vacant zone for the present to flow into, so as to make room for the past-becoming. It is judicious to notice that …all on their own, the past and the future retire from being and pass to the side of subjectivity, to search—not some real support [to materialize

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them objectively; or to find an objective materiality to hang on to], but to the contrary, to search the possibility of non-being that accords with their nature. M-P 1962/1945: 471

This demonstrates the absurd aspect of the conventional view of time as passage of frames. In such a world, there would be no place for the past to go, yet remain objectively present without destroying the present by occupying it; nor would there be a waiting room for the future’s becoming. So, “we might gain nothing to transport the time of things into us, if we return in consciousness to the error of defining it as a succession of nows.” Yet this is what happens when “psychologists”… attempt “to explain consciousness of the past by memories, and consciousness of the future by projections.” Here Merleau-Ponty references the view of Henri Bergson (2004/1896), with whom he disagreed; observing instead that “the body is not a receptacle of engrams, but an organ of pantomime, charged with assuring the intuitive realization of intentions” (M-P 1962/1945: 472). Only as experienced presently, does time framing have meaning; “Prospection is in reality a retrospection and the future as anticipated is a projection of the past” (M-P 1962/1945: 473). Time is thought by us before the parts of time; [with] temporal relations [then making] possible events in time. If so, we would not say that time is a given to consciousness; saying more precisely that consciousness deploys or constitutes time. By the ideality of time, finally, it ceases to be enclosed in the present. M-P 1962/1945: 474

The present is not available to consciousness “except by the relations it poses between itself, the past and the future” (M-P 1962/1945: 474). As totality, time cannot exist except in reference to its three parts, the existence of which is invalidated logically when they are considered independently. Time in its unity makes its own being, without ever existing for a single moment. Or, in keeping with William James, time is perceived as a constant becoming that effectively, never arrives. The challenge is to accept the “notion of time, not as an object of our knowledge, but as a dimension of our being” (M-P 1962/1945: 475). In other terms… the objective body is not the truth of the phenomenal body, which is to say the truth of the body such as we live it; it is only a

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poor image, and the problems of the relation of soul and body do not concern the objective body that has no conceptual existence, but the phenomenal body. What is true is that our open and personal existence reposes on an initial foundation of acquired and stabilized existence. But it might not be otherwise, if we are temporality, in so far as the dialectic of the acquired and the future-becoming is constitutive of time. M-P 1962/1945: 493–494

The phenomenal-body is a temporal constitution, the site of historical consciousness; with dialectic dynamics generating its life. Accordingly, ­ ­Merleau-Ponty accepted that the constitution of each term in a dialectic ­couplet requires inclusion of the other. However once its temporal quality is recognized, rather than risk of entropy or collapse, the dialectic force becomes self-perpetuating with the horizon of possible futures virtually limitless. This refocuses the human condition on the questions of self-responsibility and ­liberty, because properly considered it is source of the truth for life itself. Aimed at a philosophy of origins, he generalized the figure of dialectics to encompass the fundamental referents by which existence is tracked: {life—death}, {present—absent}, {humanized—natural}, {perception—­projection}, etc. The next step was to consider the dialectic process as the operator that ­motorized the interplay between what is and what might me. That requires infusing being with temporality, building a strain toward convergence between the two poles even if the stability of the process depends on the ability of each pole to maintain its distinct identity. This justifies the common dictum—at last concerning life, that nothing is constant but change. Rather than a mystical overarching Hegelian Idea pressing society toward the inevitable achievement of an ideal form, Merleau-Ponty’s dialectic—like that of Marx, is a down to earth struggle among institutions and interests, involving agents and actors who are not necessarily motivated by any higher calling. None the less, humans do seek stability, security, the regularization of the means to a decent life, and are disposed to mediate self-interest by collective, social concern. Rather than a vertical tension between an Idea and actual political-economic practices, the dialectic establishes horizontal or temporal tension in the present, between the past as pool of examples and the future as fountain of potentials. This is not to say that ideas are irrelevant or that rational calculation discounted; but only that society as movement is by its nature evolving as continuous expression of the strain between as-was and as-might-be, considered from the perspective as-is. There is no terminal condition ultimately compatible with the good life of community. The world at large is dynamic and forever changing The dialect

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signals an ongoing process giving life to social relations, enduring as long as does the shared consciousness of society which incarnates it. Before moving on, Merleau-Ponty’s practical enthusiasm for the dialectic as a way of life must be underlined. Starting with his doctoral thesis, he framed his books in pairs. It started with The Structure of Behavior (1943) and the ­Phenomenology of Perception (1945).10 Each volume is a dialectical study of its own, with the pair related dialectically as well. The first demonstrates the necessity to treat human consciousness as independent of material-sensate determination; with the second demonstrating that the truth of material-­ sensate-, which is to say worldly-experience, can only be grasped by a fully free and open consciousness. The result was to treat both human being and worldly being in both volumes, but in reverse order if you will; with their truth a dialectic composite, comprehendible in the nebulous zone between them. Thereafter, his display of dialectics became dramatically evident in the polarized titles he chose for his writings: not as ironic tropes, but for revelatory purposes. Examples are his: “Language Indirect and the Voice of Silence” (M-P 1952); Sense and Nonsense (1966); “Philosophy and Sociology” (M-P 1951); ­“Einstein and the Crisis of Reason” (M-P 1960); “Everywhere and Nowhere” (M-P 1956); “The Eye and the Mind” (M-P 1961). The binary and oppositional quality of those titles exemplify in material terms the position he advanced in theory: that, “the dialectic is only found in that type of being where the junction among subjects is made”; in “the place of their common residence… of their exchange and reciprocal insertion” (M-P 1955: 282). Although he did not repeat it each time he picked up his pen, as with all the others, the works beneath these titles demonstrated his conviction about the dialectic interplay between the préobjective realm and objective events.

Political Aesthetics

Merleau-Ponty also used works of art and literature to demonstrate how meaning is not just implanted in, but issues from creative works in ways anchored 10

When Merleau-Ponty began his thesis in the later 1930s, the practice at the Sorbonne was a double thesis-document for a doctorate: a first, anchoring the project in theory and tradition and a second describing the original contribution of the candidate. This practice dated from René Descartes, three centuries earlier; who’s still well regarded principal works were—as “practical” contribution, his Discourse on Method (1637), composed in French; with his Metaphysical Meditations (1641), composed in Latin, serving as the theoretical anchorage and justification for his Method.

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to the context of their appreciation. By that he returned to the question that drove the early German Romantic discussed in Part 1 of this book. Examples of his writing along this line include a text featuring the first novel by ­Simone de Beauvoir (M-P 1996c/1945); another on Cezanne’s challenge when ­trying to paint Mt. St. Victoire in the South of France (M-P 1996d/1945); and a third on the unusual essay style of Sartre, in which for comparative purposes he referenced the classics of French literature from Proust to Baudelaire (M-P 1996/1947). As their stories go, while a painting by Cezanne was obviously intended to accede to an aesthetic standard, Sartre’s essays were instrumentally motivated; with de Beauvoir’s first novel partly art and partly political, since it is a thinly disguised biographical account of her tenuous relations with Sartre during the 1930s, when a particular other-women turned the situation into a ménage à trois. But that is not why Merleau-Ponty wrote about them; his aim was to unravel the nature of the creative process. Aesthetic expression draws its power from how its creator—the artist, implants a metaphysical, which is to say, extra-textual, extra-material and human figure at the center of a work. Necessarily defying objective precision, it is via that other dimension of reality—the préobjective, that meaning animates the resonance that disposes people to be drawn into the presence of works of art. If his project of existential phenomenology was valid, this helps explain the mysterious access any of us might have to the truth of art. The authority of art depends on its aesthetic energy, which focalizes intention toward harmonies or meaning within, away from discord of significance beyond the work. Merleau-Ponty believed that a similar intention characterizes all forms of social relations. Harmony is a macro-symbolic referent for what sociologists call norms: referring to recurrent relational regimes that put pattern into the world; aligning otherwise dispersed elements of human activity into durable patterns. Beyond a minimum of integrity, normative behavior is open to diverse possibilities; including the intriguing beauty of high-crime or the sublime of violence. Still there is a larger society within which particular social forms are situated, the stability of which is also of aesthetic order. The encompassing realm of meaning for institutional life is political aesthetics; with the meaning of all forms of concerted action—including revolutionary action, evaluated in reference to the fragile aesthetic forces of society as totality. Moving to the level of society as system required a racial expansion of the epistemological possibility. How might we handle the aesthetic facets of institutional truth—the good, the just and the beautiful; in relation to the structure

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of community and its components—administrative, economic, educational and religious? The challenge to grasp existential events in terms of the harmonies they suppose and the discords they expose—or not, was a recurrent theme in his work. As if a cinema production, phenomenological truth is like projection of a moving image based on a set of sedentary slides. The existence of the drama is taken in as a reality of its totality, at once everywhere and nowhere. The effect is similar to the discernment of the theme of a piece of music, ever-present yet inexistent. For paintings, this effect arises as a panorama appreciated from a distance, beyond the brush strokes. In literature, it is in drawing real life out of a narrative, composed entirely of strings of life-less words. Merleau-Ponty’s writings cycled between practical aspects of social experience and the abstract currents in philosophy. This was necessary for exploring the basic postulate he examined: of human-being as continuous transformation through time, expressed in the {self—world} nexus. That is manifest by the interplay of central themes in his work, including, {literature and life}; {metaphysics and commitment}; {violence and peace}; or, {humanism and terror}. Treating the resulting ambiguity as an opportunity, his social philosophical texts exude a profoundly lyric and aesthetic dimension. Although the emphasis varied according to the moment, the aesthetic objectives were generally similar: security, opportunity and acceptance of the self and other; sustainability, governability, and social responsibility for the structures and systems of society. That is the basis for his otherwise abstract rhetoric about society as intention via a “becoming of meaning in its institutions”; as a “mixed milieu”, for which the important components are “truth, revolution and history” (M-P 1955: 168–169). Merleau-Ponty called on systems-institutional images to demonstrate the irony of society: in spite of being the crucible for human existence and identity, as a collective entity owing its being, continuity and future to no one in particular, a society is an impersonal body. Yet human actors and agents do count, which is where the unrolling dialectic process takes over. Thus, speaking of a political party as exemplifying social institution, he observed: It is, like everything that exists, like everything we exist within, a thing in the process of becoming expression, a movement that calls up something to follow, a past that is going to make itself known in the future, in brief, a being recognizable as a certain manner [for action]. M-P 1955: 172

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Freedom We terminate this study of Merleau-Ponty’s widely recognized Phenomenology of Perception on the problem of freedom, the establishment of which is essential for taking his program seriously. By way of review, he set out to develop a philosophy of origins, as the coming into being of being; of which the practical referent is the worldly presence of social-man. Drawn out by attention for both individual and collective life, he demonstrated how humanized experience is a matter of presence: the materialization of the history of a certain way of worldly being, dynamically oriented toward a future, which constantly annihilates the possibility of constancy. A first danger for any phenomenology is solipsism: even if valid does it not imply that each of us—each community, is frozen in its own stream of moments as an isolated subjectivity, bereft of implications for others?11 Not so in this case; Merleau-Ponty demonstrated that the préobjective force at the base assures incarnation of meaning institutionally, with experience intersubjective from the beginning. Woven by meaningful practices into webs, each one, each society is its own presence; the totality of experience is not the sum of those parts, but a humanized prelude, as ground for expression of each particular instance or action. It develops thanks to that préobjective field of being in reference to which matters of presence are possible. Similar to what is labeled today as conceptual art, providing a frontier for the possible without specific content, or a bit like the charm of mathematics according to Badiou (2015; 2002/1988), the result is a disposition that allows and assures the continuous emergence of arrays of meaning, that bubble like artisan wells as the basis of human relations and self-appreciation. This leads to a second problem. If intersubjectivity is given as intentional disposition before any specific intentional act, on that basis are we not each formatted in an overdetermined fashion that renders us monadic micro-­models of a totalizing One? If so, would the result deny not only the possibility of individuality but of the freedom supposed by it? Demonstrating the contrary led Merleau-Ponty to close his thesis with this chapter on Freedom; providing also a place for a brief summary of his project.

11

Concern that his project might be condemned for solipsism surfaced frequently in his texts; at the end of the chapter on Freedom (M-P, 1962/1945: 357–361), he devoted a number of pages to it.

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The central pages of that last chapter are mostly concerned with the exposing a final time the potency of préobjectivity for human experience. It has practical effects, interpersonal, social, institutional and cultural: such that, “I must… in the most radical reflection, apprehend around my absolute individuality a kind of halo of generality or a kind of atmosphere of sociality” (M-P 1962/1945: 448). For the sake of precision, we might set off metaphorical referents he uses to exemplify how préobjectivity anticipates, frames and informs the details of experience; with the vector of insertion and response constituting an atmos­ phere of meaning. Your worldly being is situated in a social environment (P 447); within a social coexistence that is functional and generalized (P 449). It is a zone of generalized existence within which everything appears through the medium of a natural world, as place of all possible themes and styles (P 450); in which your being and that of others is a field of presence (P 451). M-P 1962/1945

Parallel with the much quoted line by Sartre (1943), condemned to be free, Merleau-Ponty buttresses his view of freedom by developing a similar ­ ­argument. However unlike Sartre—or Nietzsche, rather than judging the social-cultural context as a costly burden if not outright block to freedom, ­Merleau-Ponty treated it as the naturally occurring source of the energy that feeds freedom in its dialectic moment. The question of the relative power of the environment vis-à-vis individual initiative needs to be confronted. Merleau-Ponty resolved it by appeal to the dialectic quality of the relation of what is beyond versus within the situation. Our freedom does not destroy our situation, but gears itself to it: as long as we are alive, our situation is open, which implies both that it calls up specially favored modes of resolution, and also that it is powerless to bring one into being by itself. M-P 1962/1945: 442

Contextual givens are important but not determinant. As an example, there are marathon-racers who after a competition are disparaging about the pavement, as if it were the source of their pain; others treat that unyielding solidity with admiration, since without its resistance—compared to beach sand for instance, one could barely run at all. External factors are a source of energy for being, in dialectical relation with our intention for autonomous movement.

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According to Merleau-Ponty, this is the inevitable expression of having been thrown into the world by birth, it is a fate for each to be free.12 The central phenomenon, at the root of both my subjectivity and my transcendence towards others, consists in my being given to myself. I am given, that is, I find myself already situated and involved in a physical and social world; I am given to myself, which means that this situation is never hidden from me, it is never round about me as an alien necessity and I am never in effect enclosed in it like an object in a box. My freedom, the fundamental power which I enjoy of being the subject of all my experiences, is not distinct from my insertion into the world. It is a fate for me to be free, to be unable to reduce myself to anything that I experience, to maintain in relation to any factual situation a faculty of withdrawal, and this fate was sealed the moment my transcendental field was thrown open, when I was born as vision and knowledge, when I was thrown into the world. M-P 1962/1945: 360

Smuggled into the end of the above quotation is a summary statement of ­Merleau-Ponty’s model of humankind: I am born as vision and knowledge. This is the dual edge of freedom. We are each born with the intention to know—in the sense of absorbing as intelligence the meaning of experience so as to act in a self-sustaining fashion. We are also born as vision, which is to say as intention to perceive what occurs around us in such a way that it is meaningful. This dialectic interplay of perception and expression is the original disposition that leads to our relations with others via communicative activity and to the construction of a life consistent with it. Since this is a process model of existence, an essential aspect of freedom is its relation to time. As discussed earlier, time is a matter of consciousness which passes but does not flow. That passage is marked by a relentless shifting of regard, with the of about which consciousness is always concerned, constantly refocused. A fly on the wall disturbs my writing; to be followed by new consciousness on my part of… an itch on the back, or of the crack in the window, or of the residue of my sandwich on a nearby plate? Whatever the content of subsequent consciousness, that shifting of attention occurs thanks to the 12

The figure of “thrown into the world” is famously attributed to Heidegger (1973 / 1927); in his thesis documents, there are sufficient references to Being and Time, to demonstrate that M ­ erleau-Ponty was familiar with Heidegger’s work, but also unaccepting of the “for itself” versus “in itself” distinction that is another figure of Heideggerian fame.

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pre-given disposition as intention to make sense of current events and react in a legitimately explainable fashion. The fly on the wall occasions the drawing out of meaning, as the interplay of me and my history, and the possible futures in which I am implicated. This concretizes my choice as expression of freedom. In the final sentences of his Chapter on “Temporality”, Merleau-Ponty ­theorized the type of experience occasioned by that fly on my writing table. Its arrival expands my world of consideration and calls into action various scenarios, based upon the meaning or value of the details. The force behind it is issue of the préobjective present, giving rise to a situated-intentionality. After all, were I on a farm, the buzzing of a fly in the barn would most likely activate a quite different chain of response. As my living present opens upon a past which I nevertheless am no longer living through, and on a future which I do not yet live, and perhaps never shall, it can also open on to temporalities outside my living experience and acquire a social horizon, with the result that my world is expanded to the dimensions of that collective history which my private existence takes up and carries forward. The solution of all problems of transcendence is to be sought in the thickness of the préobjective present, in which we find our bodily being, our social being, and the pre-existence of the world, that is, the starting point of explanations, in so far as they are legitimate—and at the same time the basis of our freedom. M-P 1962/1945: 433

Without eliminating my freedom but rather as its source, I am informed by the pre-existence of the world about me, which includes the possibility of a fly in my ointment, and the need for response. Still I am disposed by its socio-historical content, with a range of options of a sizeable but surely limited range, about which I remain free to choose. Each option is treated in reference to its potential as a legitimate explanation if later I explain what occurred. An American from Waco Texas might legitimately draw a revolver and try to shoot the fly off the wall; or a Tibetan Buddhist might legitimately move slowly to the window, open it wide and patiently wish the fly out to its freedom. A third observer, humanized on an equivalent préobjective realm, ought to be able understand the legitimacy of the options for Texans versus Buddhists, yet not chose to act like either. When denying freedom as self-responsibility, there is a tendency to blame— a boss, a neighbor, a government, or even the weather; as if there were no real choice. I may want to elude self-responsibility for a lack of discipline by placing the weight on some mobile entity beyond me: that fly, for example. But,

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What for us is primary consciousness is not a transcendental Ego freely positing … itself… from start to finish; it is an I which dominates diversity only with the help of time, and for whom freedom itself is a destiny, so that I am never conscious of being the absolute creator of time, of composing the movement through which I live, I have the impression that it is the mobile entity itself which changes its position, and which effects the passage from one instant or one position to another. M-P 1962/1945: 276

The shaping of free choice is driven by meaning that is intersubjective both in content and as disposition. It is as if the options of scratching my back, closing the window, or cleaning my dishes are drawn from a giant dictionary of meaning, such that later I might explain what occurred when relating to others the distraction of a buzzing fly. Given by destiny, freedom is thus restrained rather than total. It would not make good telling if I suggested that the fly stimulated consideration of suicide or selling my computer to take up stamp collecting. For every phenomenal event, freedom is occasioned by the world of my bodily being, the meaning of which is framed by the disposition to render consciousness and action understandable for others. That préobjective intention of intersubjectivity drives actual threads of consciousness and action. Throughout, the shifting of the regard from one possibility to another is the pointer that justifies the observation that time is not around me, does not transport me, but is a matter of consciousness. Or, freedom is material evidence of my constitution of time; and time is material evidence of my fate to be free. He summarized freedom’s non-objective being like this: In the name of freedom, we reject the idea of acquisition, since freedom has become a primordial acquisition and, as it were, our state of nature. Since we do not have to provide it, it is the gift granted to us of having no gift, it is the nature of consciousness which consists in having no nature, and in no case can it find external expression or a place in our life. … To choose is to choose something that freedom sees, at least for a moment, as a symbol of itself. M-P 1962/1945: 437

Thus the last line of his two-volume thesis: “Man is but a network of relationships, and these alone matter to him” (M-P 1962/1945: 456).

chapter 7

Merleau-Ponty’s Sociology The next text to be studied focuses on the interplay of philosophy and sociology, which as Merleau-Ponty (1990/1951)1 considered them, are distinct yet dialectically related. Accordingly, sociology establishes the material context in which the value or meaning of philosophical truth might be interpreted; and philosophy establishes the epistemological or theoretical context for access to truth that constitutes the limits on validity of a sociological method. The purpose of philosophy is meaningless except in reference to society as understood by its science as a sociology; as the immediately given facts of society and community are uninterruptable as general principles without a philosophical framework as guide. While the above generalization may strike non specialists as intuitively reasonable, in the long century since sociology was formalized as a discipline, the level of intolerance between these two fields has intensified. Merleau-Ponty rejected a closed-frontier approach to academic life, and in this paper he challenged it head on. His opening is brutally frank: Philosophy and Sociology have long lived under a segregated system which has succeeded in concealing their rivalry only by refusing them any meeting-ground.... Both… have now progressed far enough to warrant a reexamination of their relationship. M-P 1990/1951b: 98

He acknowledged that all disciplines are more or less autonomous, yet interdependent; “Every science secretes an ontology; every ontology anticipates a body of knowledge”. The segregation of philosophy and sociology arises in large part because each is “reduced to its ideal type; ultimately endangering ­sciences of knowledge just as much as philosophical reflection” (M-P 1990/1951b: 98). There is a myth of “the science of things” and another of “the mind’s absolute autonomy”; unfortunately, “these two myths sustain one another in their very antagonism”. By sticking to their respective territories, the resulting ­“segregation is cold war” (M-P 1990/1951b: 99). 1 First published in Cahiers Internationaux de Sociologie, 1951.

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To overcome that barrier, he drew images from each to highlight aspects for the other. Like a moral violation, “…the movement back and forth from facts to ideas and from ideas to facts is discredited as a bastard process, [as if] neither science nor philosophy.” Yet to cut off ideas from “the world, others and ourselves” is foolhardy. There are “obscurantist consequences of this rigid segregation.” If the two disciplines “ignore one another”, the scientist is blocked from “deciphering meanings which is her reason for being” and “the essence of her work.” This renders the “social fact… alien to her… as if her study owed nothing to the experience which, as social subject, she has of intersubjectivity.” The relation, {sociology—philosophy}, is dialectic generator of intersubjectivity: the basis of shared understanding that allows and defines a human community (M-P 1990/1951b: 99). Merleau-Ponty critiqued sociology for its strain toward objectivism: the claim that truth is in the facts of experience rather than in how meaning is drawn from those facts of experience. This is related to the extreme positivism sometimes associated with the work of August Comte; as if social truth comes directly from impersonally drawn raw data. Merleau-Ponty’s critique went deeper still, against the work of Descartes and Kant. Each in their way was inclined toward a positivist objectivism that is blind to lived human experience. He favored a comparative epistemology, with the truth of social e­ xperience as is, assessed as meaning, drawn by contrast with what was or might be otherwise. He referred to this as the generation of “imaginary variations” on the given; imputed as an essential tool by which social scientists establish ­“sociological meaning” (M-P 1990/1951b: 100). There is evident resonance here with the notion of sociological imagination referred to by C.W. Mills. Perhaps Merleau-Ponty was the inspiration for Mills’ emphasis on that much discussed methodological figure. ­Whatever the ­attribution, only by some call on a more general zone of meaning is it possible  for social researchers to make sense of their data, subsequently ­allowing  their  sorting as social facts along the lines of Durkheim, or their ­classification as ideal types in keeping with Weber, or social-systemically à la Parsons. Rather than as an abstract itness, the truth of humanized events is in their meaning. Meaning in turn concerns the pertinence of the historical object of interest in reference to lived experience, which is life in community. Meaning is thus evaluated not against timeless categories of the mind, but against alternative ways of being-meaningfully in the world, established by the imaginary venturing of well-informed reflective consciousness. At least until we arrive in a world dominated by Smith and his clones from the film Matrix, without

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meaning as truth considered in this sense, not only is society impossible but humanized survival as well.

Anthropology and Psychoanalytics

Although this study of the relation of the social sciences and philosophy focused principally on sociology, Merleau-Ponty also drew examples from the historical development of anthropology and psychoanalytics. His attraction for the first of those fields was due to his close relationship and respect for the work of Claude Levi-Strauss. Levi-Strauss, in turn worked in the wake of ­Marcel Mauss—nephew of Durkheim, who emphasized the symbolic-­meaningful aspect of culture, as opposed to stress on tools and techniques as favored by Anglo-Saxon anthropologists. On that basis he proposed what he labeled a cultural anthropology which is respectable in France, but continues to be at odds with the more positive-objectivist and instrumental-materialist anthropology that is dominant in Anglo-American schools. This points to another unfortunate rift in the halls of the social sciences. In France today, it is still common to consider anthropological field work as practical application of a phenomenological method, and it was Merleau-­ Ponty’s work that opened this possibility. To make this point, he referred to studies where anthropologists tried to identify the structure of the family as core unit in native cultures. One technique was to have children specify the members of their family, into the grandparental generation, then discuss the relations between them; allowing a charting of the relational patterns, on the basis of which the family-tribal structure might be empirically, rationally, objectively certified. Merleau-Ponty’s retort was clear: the resulting tables of ­“correlations do not have sociological meaning” until we find a way to grasp “the underlying dynamics of the social whole” which is a culture system, “by throwing this experience in and out of focus” (M-P 1910/1951b: 100). He also drew on Psycho-Freudian examples of field research, concerning studies of sexual practices among tribal members, again by anthropologists aimed at generating statistical findings. Unfortunately, “this tells us nothing about the relationship with others and with nature which define these culture types.” All of which is necessary to really grasp the meaning related to “the body as vehicle of being-in-the-world”; or “the body as a structuring’ principle” (M-P 1990/1951b: 101).2 2 This may have inspired Foucault to focus on the theme he labeled, bio-politics; not only had he taken seminars from Merleau-Ponty as a student, but was appointed to fill the Professorial Chair at the College of France vacated by Merleau-Ponty at his death.

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His general point is clear: “It is essential never to cut sociological inquiry off from experience of social subjects.” Data must be treated “as if enveloped in a certain unique view of the social and of nature which is characteristic of the society under consideration;” as “the hidden principle of all its overt functioning.” To the contrary, were “objectivism or scientism to succeed in depriving sociology of all recourse to significations…” this would “save it from philosophy only by shuttering it off from knowledge of its object;” with the result being a “mathematics of society”.3 Viewed otherwise, “at the moment of interpretation, she [the sociologist] is herself already a philosopher.” Conversely, it is also true that “the philosopher is not disqualified to reinterpret facts” gathered in social research; and for whom, “this segregation” is equally bad. “After all, the philosopher always thinks about something.” Even if “science purchases its exactness at the price of schematization” (M-P 1990/1951: 101), it still deals with the same world as that into which the philosopher plunges prior to thought. Maintaining the distinction between the natural attitude and the world of constituted being, Merleau-Ponty went further. He argued that the truth about the two disciplines is not just expression of a “reciprocal” link between formally separate poles of reality, but that they are related by “reciprocal envelopment” (M-P 1990/1951: 102); which is dialectics by another register.

On Husserl

To differentiate his view from the founder of phenomenology, Merleau-Ponty briefly traced the development of Husserl’s thought about the problem of material certainty using a phenomenological approach. He began by discussing what he often referred to as the distinction between early—and late-Husserl. At the start of his career, during the period 1900–1920, consistent with traditional Kantian rationalism, Husserl argued that facticity and philosophical power are distinct, with the latter the necessary condition for precision of the former. For instance, in reference to “language”, Husserl argued that knowing one is not enough to make sense of foreign ones; it is necessary to have “first constituted a schema of the ideal form of language and of the modes of expression” which make meaningful talk possible. From there, any given ­language, German or Latin, for instance might be “reconstructed by a synthetic 3 Although Merleau-Ponty accepted social facts as Durkheim defined that, reference here to a generalize regard as field of meaning for interpreting the significance of particulars must not be confused with the notion favored by Dilthey of reification as a vehicle for development of interpretive-historical understanding.

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o­ peration;” with the “ideal sphere” being supreme, and philosophy treatment of it “occupying the highest ground” (M-P 1990/1951b: 103). Yet, “this [early] stage of Husserl’s thought called our whole historical experience of social relationships into question in the interest of determining ­essences.” He acknowledged, says Merleau-Ponty, that historical experience does present us with many social processes and cultural formations such as “forms of law, art, and religion.” Yet, in regard to facticity, nothing about ­“historical changes” in these domains “provides a true standard of their value” (M-P 1990/1951: 102–03). So why be concerned? Because, the result is denial of the active presence of history in current events. Repudiating history blocks dialectical access to truth. Yet on its own, “history… cannot judge an idea” other than when it “borrows surreptitiously from the ideal sphere” (M-P 1990/1951: 103); which shifts it back into philosophy. With this strategy one is blind to the world as movement. As with any “other men”, philosophers “are within the Weltanschauung [historical world) rather than only have a Weltwissenschaft [historical world-view]”; and it is within that context of action where they can make their dispassionate judgements of the truth. Otherwise, philosophers may unjustifiably “devote themselves entirely to thinking about the present”, as if theirs is an a-historical mind, dealing with an a-historical world. But, when history is put into the equation, then sociology slides back on stage, giving rise to a “true philosophy [that] would allow us to think about the present as well as the past and the eternal;” not as factual givens but as the dialectical generators of experience” (M-P 1990/1951: 103–04). Merleau-Ponty contended that by the end of his career, Husserl had undergone a major change in situation, leading in turn to a change in mind. This came about during the 1930s, as a result of experiencing the arrival of fascism in Germany, deployed by Nazi politics. When in the second part of his career…Husserl returns to the problems of history and … language… we no longer find… a philosopher-subject, master of all that is possible; [Rather, by now, he is concerned with language as deployment of meaning] inherent in a certain system of speech… which… is present to us just as immediately as our body. M-P 1990/1951b: 104

The result was a “rediscovery of the subject in the act of speaking, as contrasted to a science of language that inevitably treats this subject as a thing.” This new focus on historical events reaching beyond the moment versus incidental ­facticity locked in an imagined here-and-now, contrasted Husserl’s

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new “­phenomenological attitude” to his former “scientific or observational attitude”. “Rather than via a reductionism”, it permits “direct access to the living language present in a linguistic community;” with language “like an organ” that expresses a certain potential depending on its “original insertion into the whole” (M-P 1990/1951: 104). This indicated an alteration in the treatment of reflection (as the working of consciousness) on the part of Husserl. It was no longer taken to be a removed, synthetic return to “a pre-empirical subject.” Rather, “reflection must become aware of its object in a contact or frequentation which at the outset exceeds its power of comprehension.” Thus the philosopher …realizes that he is situated in language as he is speaking; [that] present speech is an operation in our linguistic field of presence … [as] a more acute awareness of the way in which we are rooted in it. From now on, [for Husserl] the absolute condition of a valid philosophy is that it passes by way of the present. M-P 1951: 105 4



Appreciation before Comprehension

Merleau-Ponty’s stress on being as field of presence is not to be confused with what by the 21st century has come to be known as presentism. The earlier concern was with the situating of experience in the flow of events and not about the structure of time. Thus, philosophy and sociology are particular forms of presence, in the sense that each implies a focus of consciousness on the part of the researcher intended to maximize its resonance with the focus of consciousness among the subjects of her research. As strategy of experience, presence implies a dialectical relationship between knower and known, on the basis of which meaning becomes accessible for appreciation. From there we arrive in the life-world: “we do not have to wait until Husserl recognizes that the Lebenswelt is phenomenology’s principal theme to note 4 Merleau-Ponty’s emphasis on Husserl’s shift in position from a rather pure Idealism to a “constructivist phenomenology” (M-P, 1962/1945: vii), continues to be a source of considerable debate. Not only did he raise the point in the first page of the Preface for his Phenomenology of Perception, but he returned to it as needed along the way in composition of his thesis. Whether justified or not, his reliance on what he perceived as the historical shift opened by Husserl (taking seriously the givens of “structures of the world of experience” M-P, 1962/1945 Note-1: 365) was of foundational status for development of his own program.

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the repudiation of formal reflection in his thought.” There is no longer a seeking to establish a “geometry of what is lived,” once there is “… recognition of the life-world, and thus too of language as we live it.” Thus it was reasonable that late Husserl would … just be bringing the movement of all his previous thought to completion when he writes in a posthumous fragment that transitory inner phenomena are brought to ideal existence by becoming incarnate in language. M-P 1990/1951: 105

But if “philosophy no longer consists in passing to the infinity of possibilities or leaping into absolute objectivity”, then certain other “investigations… by ­linguists” should have unknowingly “tread upon the ground of phenomenology;” including in particular, “Saussure.” Because, “in reality, philosophy’s whole relationship to history changes in the very movement of reflection which is ­trying to free philosophy from history.” Rather than a “radical distinction between the natural and the transcendental attitude,” the two “encroach upon one another, such that every fact of consciousness bears the transcendental within it.” Rather than forcefully asserting a clear distinction between “fact and essence”, as evidenced from his “first formulations to the later ones,” Husserl became sensitive about “the overlapping of the two orders;” which is why “historical criticism” bereft of history can never understand a “given institutional order,” such as language” (M-P 1990/1951b: 105–06). With history as sociology taken into account by philosophy, reflection demonstrates the presence “not only of individual minds… but also a community of minds coexisting for one another and as a consequence invested individuality with an exterior through which they become visible.” Thus the philosopher at the outset, is not discussing mind or minds, but is “situated… within a dialogue of minds” (M-P 1951: 106). Exploring the movement from minds to community of minds, as an exterior by which the nature and content of minds become visible, attests to the materialist quality of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology: rather than minds over matter, existence as constituted, concerns historically situated matters over mind.

Husserl’s Crisis

What are we to make of Husserl’s “enigmatic formulation… in the texts of the Krisis of European Man, when he writes that, transcendental subjectivity is ­intersubjectivity” If that is true, and “the transcendental is intersubjective,

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how can the borders of the transcendental and the empirical help becoming indistinct?” If so and as Merleau-Ponty believed, then, “the transcendental descends into history,” and “subjects [like you and me] …no longer know themselves to be subjects simply in relation to their individual selves, but in relation to one another as well” (M-P 1990/1951: 107). By that argument he arrives at a strong statement of self-hood as social construction, with the relation being dialectical. Still, he acknowledges, it is only in “the unpublished manuscripts of the final period” that Husserl becomes clear about this: of the “encroachment” of the “study of significations and the study of [social] facts”, which is necessary unless in reference to the factual world, all “signification would be empty” (M-P 1990/1951: 107). Unlike most other Europeans then interested in Husserl, as a graduate student in the late 1930s, Merleau-Ponty had gone to the rudimentary ­Husserl ­Archives to read the unpublished manuscripts left behind by Husserl at the time of his death. On the basis of that research Merleau-Ponty drew conclusions about a change in position about history and society on the part of Husserl that was contrary to the common view around Paris in the 1950s. He consequently favored, then followed only to modify a late-Husserlian reading of the state of phenomenology during the inter-war period. The result was to conclude that late Husserl had gone socio-historic or anthropological, which most of his contemporaries in Europe did not accept. This became a source of contestation; explaining why shortly after his death, Merleau-Ponty and his work were cast into intellectual purgatory.5 Merleau-Ponty judged this shift in position on the part of Husserl, as ­indicating a vital direction to be followed if phenomenology was to be saved from the idealist irrelevance into which it was then drifting. Merleau-Ponty apparently would have elaborated this point further but as he acknowledged in a footnote, even with additional personal notes taken from the Husserl archives, he had agreed not to cite the documents formally until the material was officially edited for publication. The editing process of Husserl’s papers took considerable effort and the published texts that came out moderated the historical turn that Merleau-­ Ponty’s identified in the raw archive documents. Did the archive team occlude the anthro-historical declinations from that late-Husserl material, so as to preserve the continuity from the early to late work by Husserl? Did Husserl ­remain committed to the supreme power of transcendental consciousness with little evolution in consideration of the interface between mind and its world, or 5 The same fate followed Descartes, but more formally; after his death his texts were banned at the Sorbonne for nearly a century.

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from timeless-transcendence to historical-constitution? Lost in exuberance, had young-student Merleau-Ponty read something absent into those documents? We will never know for sure; other than that acceptance of the official version of Husserl is still debated. While as general statement, phenomenology addresses the problem of being-in-the-world, the question of initiative or origins is unsettled. Is extraction of meaning for experience achieved as an act of isolated human consciousness, prepared in advance by bracketing to allow its detachment from p ­ rejudice? Or is it drawn from the circumstance of bodily-being, as consciousness-­incarnated, in the world? The former is the position of Husserl’s official interpreters; the latter is consistent with Merleau-Ponty’s argument about the existence of a préobjective realm that feeds historical consciousness to energize convergence toward standards of meaning for the objective events.

Historical Relativism as Anthropological Fact

Since these differences with Husserl and his intellectual legatees were of such importance for understanding both Merleau-Ponty’s perspective and the ­circuitous nature of his argumentation, we must look more closely at that unusual footnote where he disclaims authorization to cite what he said about what he read in Husserl’s archives. The Note is clear enough: It is to be hoped that we shall soon be able to read, in the complete works of Husserl,* the letter that he wrote to Lévy-Bruhl on March 11, 1935, a­ fter having read La Mythologie Primitive. Here he seems to admit that the ­philosopher could not possibly have immediate access to the universal by reflection alone—that he is in no position to do without anthropological experience or to construct what constitutes the meaning of other experiences and civilizations by a purely imaginary variation of his own experience. M-P 1990/1951b: 107

Unusual as it is, in the first line of the above Footnote at the point of the ­asterisk, Merleau-Ponty planted a second Footnote, providing details about the editing of Husserl’s writings then under way. This second Note reports: In the process of being published at The Hague by Martinus Nijhoff, under the direction of H. L Van Breda. The editors have not granted us any rights to quote the few unpublished excerpts to be found here. ­Consequently, we ask the reader not to expect any more than a foretaste

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of texts whose only authorized edition is being prepared by the Husserl Archives of Louvain. M-P 1990/1951b: 107

Although the developments associated with Husserl’s relation with Lucien Lévy-Bruhl were important, this is not the place to explore in detail the anthropological resonance that reading his book seems to have generated for Husserl.6 As for Merleau-Ponty, after weaving into his presentation a bit more context from what he read in those uncitable archives, he closed this section of text as follows: Husserl goes so far as to write that on the path of that already largely developed intentional analysis, historical relativism is incontestably justified as an anthropological fact… M-P 1990/1951: 108

That is a very strong statement. From reading Husserl’s notoriously disorganized drafting notes, he was assured that Husserl had become personally ­convinced that phenomenological intention implies assuming a historicalrelativist position as incontestably justified fact. While this conflicts with the usual reading of Husserl, the importance for us is what it necessitated on the part of Merleau-Ponty. To remain consistent, he was obliged to justify his phenomenological methods as assuring access to the truth (meaning) of lived ­human experience only to the extent that research was exacted and crafted in keeping with a relativist historical anthropology. The problem with any relativism is, relative to what? What is to be the ­platform that serves as standard, relative to which the meaning of objective events is ascertained? As discussed earlier in this book, Merleau-Ponty dealt with this issue by postulating a préobjective realm, as the foundation of humanized being in the world. In the next Chapter, we will provide more ­examples of how he used this figure in his critique of Husserl’s project.

Philosophy and Sociology

By the end of his career, “how does Husserl conceive of philosophy?” Referring to the last line of the letter cited above, as “giving us an idea” thereof, it is that 6 Seventy-five years after Merleau-Ponty wrote this text and a century after Husserl corresponded with Lévy-Bruhl, there is still debate about the importance of this for Husserlian phenomenology. See: Sato (2014) and Giovannangeli (2012).

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“philosophy must accept all the acquisitions of science… and thus historical relativism along with them;” with historical relativism implicitly signaling the social sciences. This does not imply philosophy becoming just another exact science; the challenge rather would be to “set itself up in a dimension where no scientific knowledge could dispute it.” Accepting social-anthropology, that one is “in the fabric of the culture she belongs to,” does not eliminate philosophical thinking as such, but only understanding what history does. The same dependence upon history which prohibits the philosopher from arrogating to himself an immediate access to the universal or the eternal, [also] prohibits the sociologist from taking the philosopher’s place in this function and giving ontological value to the scientific o­ bjectification of the social. M-P 1990/1951b: 108

From there he concludes, “It is precisely the prejudice of absolute thought that historical sense discredits.” Neither philosopher nor sociologist can condemn the other, without unjustifiably, “placing herself outside history… and claiming the privileged position of absolute spectator” (M-P 1990/1951b FR: 137).

Historical Consciousness

The implications of this study for the ties between philosophy and sociology, triangulated with anthropology, are evident. “In reality, it is the very concept of the relationship of mind to its object that historical consciousness invites us to reshape.” That is to recognize the dialectic entwinement of being in the world, due to, “my thought’s inherence in a certain historical situation of its own, and, through that situation, [inherent also] in other historical situations which interest it.” Only when engaged in the world fully, via that expanded form of consciousness, is the range of awareness enlarged beyond the objective isness of details to the meaning of events of presence. “If history envelopes us all, this lets us understand that the truth which we are able to have is not obtained against that historical inherence, but because of it” (M-P 1990/1951b: 109).

Being Expressed as Phenomenological Method

Merleau-Ponty’s is a theory of being-expressed. Whether personal, social, political or other, the origin of experience as logical and meaningful can only be

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expressed or perceived in reference to the totality of materialized history. The unrolling of existence may not be pleasant, but it will make sense. “My contact with the social world in the finiteness of my situation reveals a me that is the point of origin of all truth” (P-M 1951 FR: 138). He elaborated that point of view with various images, of which the following is an example: One calls science and sociology the attempt to construct ideal variables that objectivize and schematize the functioning of the effective communication [of being in the world]. One calls philosophy the consciousness that we should guard of the open and successive community of living alter-egos, speaking and thinking, the one in the presence of the other and all in relation with nature, such as we take to be behind us, around us and before us, at the limits of our historical field, as the final reality from which our theoretical constructions retrace the functioning and for which they ought never be substituted. Philosophy never defines itself by a certain domain that is its own: it speaks only, as for sociology also, of the world, of humans and of the mind. It distinguishes itself by a certain mode of consciousness that we have of others, of nature or of ourselves: it is nature and human being as presence and not flattened by a secondary Hegelian objectivity, but as they offer themselves to us in our current commerce of knowing and action with them; as nature in us, others in us and us in them. Consistent with that, one must not say only that philosophy is compatible with sociology; it must be said that sociology is necessary for it as constant reminder of its tasks, and that each time that the sociologist returns to the live sources of her savior, to that which operates as the means to understand the most distant cultural formations, she spontaneously generates philosophy… Philosophy is not a certain know-how, it is the vigilance that never lets us forget the source of all knowledge. M-P 1990/1951b: 139

In closing this chapter, it must be noted that however comforting public intellectuals may find this proposed integration of philosophy and sociology, taking that seriously implies a considerable burden for practitioners of both disciplines. When I perceive that the social domain is not only an object, but first of all my situation, and when I awaken in me the consciousness that is my social being, it is all my synchronicity that becomes present to me, which

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is, in traversing that domain, all the past that I become capable of truly thinking as the synchronicity that it was at the time of its being, it is all the convergent and discordant action of the historical community that is effectively given me in my living present. M-P 1990/1951b: 141

Summarized, this is an historical-materialist depiction of personal being. Each of us is a historical consciousness, a dynamic worldly-presence, in movement toward its future, constituted in part diachronically by the energy of its pastpresents and partly synchronically by relations of production within the active social environment.

chapter 8

Merleau-Ponty’s Shadow’s Husserl

Husserl’s Intellectualist Phenomenology

The final text of Merleau-Ponty’s (1990/1959) to be studied is a contribution he made to a collection of essays honoring the one-hundredth anniversary of the birth of Edmund Husserl (1859–1938). This paper provides an integrated critique of the ‘old master’s work’, demonstrating what aspects Merleau-Ponty admired and drew on, what limits that work displayed, and how his own approach to phenomenology was similar and different. Providing along the way also a lucid description of the ways and means of what in the social science is known as ethnomethodology, this paper addresses a theoretical problem of universal importance for critical scholars from any field. How should one appropriately deal with the intellectual tradition of long dead authorities, given that their work was necessarily historically condition by circumstances that to some extent relativized the result. Then, what is one to make of the torrent of subsequent commentaries and application that such work necessarily gives rise to, leading up to the moment of its fresh analysis? As announced in its title, “The Philosopher and His Shadow” (M-P 1990/1959), this is all about Husserl: but from two critical positions. First, what did Husserl say and how did his position evolve over the years of his life; second, how had his work been treated by his followers working in his shadow since his death. From that as background, in the second part of this essay, Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961) provided what turned out to be the last formal discussion of his own perspective to be published before his death. With his opening phrase, “establishing a tradition means forgetting its origins”, Merleau-Ponty laid the dialectic trap associated with one of Husserl’s own announcements. On the occasion of this “commemoration” to Husserl, he underlined the difficulty of dealing with a man’s work who by then had become legendary; observing that “precisely because we owe so much to a ­tradition, we are in no position to see just what belongs to it.” Between “an objective history” and “a meditation disguised as a dialogue”, …there must be a middle-ground on which the philosopher we are speaking about and the philosopher who is speaking are present together, although it is not possible even in principle to decide at any given moment just what belongs to each. M-P 1990/1959: 159

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The difficulty with interpreting the work of another is not due to the false distinction between “inevitable distortion vs literal reproduction”; rather (citing Heidegger) it is due to the “unthought-of element of his works,” which are there, one must suppose, but only between the lines. Because, “to think is not to possess the objects of thought: it is to use them to mark out a realm to think about, which we therefore are not yet thinking about” (M-P 1990/1959: 159–60). Which brings us to the shadow metaphor of the title: beyond a report of its content, “thinking again” about what the other person thought about allows us to enter the zone-between issues; the liminal zone of …the reflections, shadows, levels, and horizons between things …which are not things and are not nothing, but on the contrary mark out by themselves the fields of possible variation in the same thing and the same world. M-P 1990/1959: 160

Without a minimum of harmony between things and worlds, between dead author and live reader, the possibility of comprehension is blocked. Thus the point of this essay was “to try to evoke this unthought-of element in Husserl’s thought in the margin of some old pages;” which Merleau-Ponty acknowledges may “seem foolhardy.” Yet he defends the strategy, against those who prefer a more traditional form of reading, narrowly relying on original texts, then citations of those who originally commented those texts, with the chain followed down to the current commentator. While not exactly dispatching the scholastic study of past masters as an empty process, he clearly shows his preference for a different approach. Thus the opening part of this paper is a critique of critical method; justifying his treatment of Husserl’s work, using a phenomenological and historical-­ materialist strategy, rather than the rational-analytical, linear-historical and determinist approach of the empirical sciences. A first issue to confront about Husserl is that famous “phenomenological reduction”: as the central tool in his method, it remained even for him an “enigmatic possibility.” Importantly, this reduction is not a “prior step or preface to phenomenology”, but “the beginning of inquiry.” It is inquiry as such, “since inquiry is, as Husserl said, a continuous beginning.”1 Reduction is a particular form of radical “reflection”, a returning to—or “re-entering” ourselves.

1 Although Said in his study of Beginnings, Said (1997/1975) cites Merleau-Ponty, whose work he drew on considerably, it is not clear if he was well-versed also in the texts of Husserl.

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Thus, “it is not the unreflected that challenges reflection; it is reflection which ­challenges itself” (M-P 1990/1959: 161). Reduction refers to starting research by first putting aside all the mental prejudgements that might color appreciation of the world as it is; viewing objects of interest with fresh eyes. The process is ongoing and never fully achieved; demanding vigilance on the part of the researcher to avoid imposing pre-set evaluations on what is occurring; to assure that the answer to the question of meaning of events is not determined in advance of their investigation. It is difficult to constantly take into account what one is while all the time tracking what is occurring with the world. Merleau-Ponty refers to this continuous turning back of consciousness on itself via reflection as the dialectical cycling between {perception and expression} that defines his own phenomenological method. The terms bracketing and reduction are often interchanged, with the former referring to setting aside of prejudices before the facts of observation, and the latter to the resulting condition of consciousness which due to that process is freshly ready to record the raw facticity of events. This orients the researcher with a form of ‘natural attitude’, open as if a precocious child, to self and the world. For adults, who are supposedly no longer naive but draw on what they have learned as guide for action, this process seems contradictory; because, going “…beyond the natural attitude, is not natural”. Rather, it is “nature reintegrated to the consciousness” (M-P 1990/1959: 161–162). But this is not the whole truth. [Even if,] mind without Nature can be thought about and Nature without mind cannot, [there is no particular reason that] we have to think about the world and ourselves in terms of the bifurcation of Nature and mind. M-P 1990/1959: 162

Reflection “…does not take us …from objective to subjective, but rather unveils a third dimension in which this distinction becomes problematic.” To consider experience “as if framed by a binary opposition” is to falsely assume domination by “…an I …as pure knower; [who] objectifies” whatever it beholds. ­Unfortunately, the result is a “purely theoretical attitude”, the yield of which is existentially meaningless because it …is not philosophy. It is the science of Nature; … [or perhaps] a certain philosophy which gives birth to the natural sciences and which comes back to the pure I and its correlative, things simply as things, stripped of every action-predicate and every value-predicate. M-P 1990/1959: 163

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What is the seat of this third dimension of awareness, before which the polarity objective—subjective dissolves? As developed by Merleau-Ponty in the previous text we studied, this is the perceptive-expressive state of “historical consciousness” (M-P 1990/1951: 109). By that worldly presence, we are open to details and situations, as we search the meaning of things and events; constituted not just by what they bring to us immediately, but as framed by the ­action and value predicates expressed by our social world. If we accept the possibility of consciousness accessing this third dimension of being, we can appreciate his use of the image Prose of the World (M-P 1992/1952) as title for another of his writings. Not to be confused with a purely theoretical or idealizing attitude … [or a] scientific naturalism, …Our most natural life as humans intends an ontological milieu …which we speak with and because of, as much as about M-P 1990/1959: 163

This is a radical claim: more than only conforming to or resonating with our world, we speak with and because-of it, as well as about it. “…We know far more about [things] in the natural attitude than the theoretical attitude can tell us—and above all we know it in a different way.” To speak of the “natural attitude” refers to “our natural relationship to the world as an attitude, that is, to an organized totality of acts.” It “really becomes an attitude—a tissue of judicatory and propositional acts—only when it becomes a naturalistic thesis” (M-P 1990/1959: 163). Yield from deployment of the natural attitude is the result …thus not even in principle translatable in terms of clear and distinct knowledge [à la Descartes], but which—more ancient than any [conventional] attitude or point of view—gives us not a representation of the world but the world itself. M-P 1990/1959: 163 2

2 This definition of the natural-attitude is not only is more fundamental than was Husserl’s use of it, but here is a clear critique of Descartes; who is at the center of the intellectual debate that drove Merleau-Ponty from the beginning. According to Descartes, truth was affirmed to the extent that one had clear and distinct ideas; but, before it is possible to have an idea about the world, which is to say, an appreciation of its meaning, it is first necessary that one is a being-expressed in that world of meaning. That being-expressed is the basis of natural, historical, perceptual consciousness or the natural attitude as it is labeled here; and thus defined is the prerequisite for good judgement and creativity.

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Rather than a state of exception, Merleau-Ponty’s version of natural attitude is the basis of being: To what is fundamental and original in theoretical consciousness, [natural attitude] opposes what is fundamental and original in existence. Its rights of priority are definitive, and reduced consciousness [associated with rational mind] must take them into account. M-P 1990/1959: 164

Existence is thus appreciated as historical or situated; rather than only a frozen-itness, it is a being in movement, with conscious awareness of that third dimension having definitive rights of priority. The truth is that the relationships between the natural and the transcendental attitudes are not simple, are not side by side or sequential, like the false or the apparent and the true…. It is the natural attitude which, by reiterating its own procedures, seesaws [dialectically] in phenomenology. M-P 1990/1959: 164

If so, then In the last analysis, phenomenology is neither a materialism nor a philosophy of mind. Its proper work is to unveil the pre-theoretical layer on which both of these idealizations find their relative justification and are gone beyond. M-P 1990/1959: 165

The remaining problem is crucial: if we descend into that “realm of our archeology”, that layer of “infrastructure”, will this still “leave our analytical tools intact,” with which to unravel “what upholds our own and the world’s life?” M ­ erleau-Ponty’s response to this rhetorical question exposes his essential critique of Husserl; who “as we know, never made himself too clear about these question.” Although his student, Michel Foucault was dubious about the ­possibility of truth from this archeological exercise, for Merleau-Ponty it assures access to origin of meaning, at “… the vortex of absolute consciousness” (M-P 1990/1959: 165). In anticipation of the second part of this paper where he lays out his solution for the problems left unanswered by Husserl, Merleau-Ponty provides “a few words …signaling unthought-of elements to think about”. Central here is “the element of a pre-theoretical consciousness, which is charged with

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­accounting for pre-givens, those kernels of meaning about which man and the world gravitate” (M-P 1990/1959: 166). To summarize his critique of Husserl’s thought and its evolution, MerleauPonty concluded that by stressing the criticality of bracketing or reduction, Husserl opened onto an ambiguity that he never clarified: how can rational mind use its own tools to arrest its native process of categorizing the world in advance of experience? Is that possible? However, as alternative, if one descends as archeology to the level of a pre-theoretical awareness, as the basis of natural-being or historical-consciousness, might that not be the basis for refining the pre-given kernels of meaning by the work of historical consciousness? Merleau-Ponty’s response was positive: “there is undoubtedly something between transcendent Nature …and the immanence of mind; …and it is into this interval that we must try to advance” (M-P 1990/1059: 166).

Merleau-Ponty’s Engaged Phenomenology

Merleau-Ponty’s speaking of “constituting consciousness” established a major difference with what Husserl treated as “absolute consciousness”. The first is a process model of continuing and every working consciousness; the second a sort of imperial model of being in total conscious control. The absolute version is a postulate associated with empirical rationality. It supposes consciousness as an action center of human experience, based on access at least potentially to universal timeless truth as evaluated and stocked by mind; in relation to which science rectifies, adds to and distributes content so that the world in which one lives might be exploited for maximum personal advantage. This would necessitate a rigid link between consciousness and ­cognitive or brain centered rationality, with brain-work providing the base for objective consciousness experience. By contrast, Merleau-Ponty’s constituting consciousness is postulated as a humanized state of ambient awareness that precedes the accumulation of particular objective content. As ongoing process, by it, not only might humans ­enjoy ­time-consciousness as Bergson emphasized, but also a predisposition to ­appreciate the meaning-laden quality of events associated with the passing of life. Constituting consciousness is an ongoing event of awareness embedded in events of existence. Such consciousness is engaged rather than passive, an agent of meaning rather than only its receptor. By that processes, there is a strain for pattern generation of an intuitional nature—as the energy behind the development of social norms and personal habits. Its realization knits

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i­ndividuals into the tissue of social relations which constitute a world. This continuous unfolding of consciousness is the basis for rational or goal oriented behavior, of which cognitive mental activity is a most sophisticated example. Rather than the Husserlian absolute consciousness as a function of mind, for Merleau-Ponty consciousness is the basis of existential presence, made possible not because of the internal cognitive activity, but due to the préobjective orientation implicit to socially-embedded bodily-being as lived realization of humanness, in the world. As he says, “My body is the field within which my perceptive powers are localized” (M-P 1990/1959: 166). From that starting point, Merleau-Ponty developed his view of perceptual and historical conscionsness. It is not simply an existential disposition limited only by variable mental constraints, but a radically contextual form of presence in being—which apparently never sleeps. By it, as participant in the movement of history, each individual is intersubjectively linked in real-time with contemporary social dynamics. To concretize this image of bodily-being as expressive-perceptive nexus, Merleau-Ponty discussed what occurs as “… my right hand touches my left”. Under the circumstances, as “I touch myself touching, my body accomplishes a sort of reflection.” The result is not a relation between—or mechanical linking of—“one who perceives to what he perceives”; in thus acting, “the body is a perceiving thing, a subject-object,” of a unified, undifferentiated nature. This “description” alters “our idea of the thing and the world”; the body is “an intentional fabric” which by its interactivity in and with the world, expresses a dynamic-of-consciousness, where, rather than distinct, “subject and object [are] articulated …in terms of the other” (M-P 1990/1959: 167). So “all understanding and objective thought owe their life to the inaugural fact that …I am that animal of perception and movements called a body.” But: Certainly there is a problem here. What will intentionality be if it is no longer the mind’s grasping of an aspect of sensible matter as the exemplification of an essence, no longer the recognition in things of what we have put there? M-P 1990/1959: 167

This points to a nihilistic potential: that phenomenology might lead to dissolution of the rational {intellectual-conceptual} possibility of knowing anything with precision, rendering conscious awareness as like floating in a dream. This can only be avoided by affirming some form of external validation. Or: “The things perceived would really only be being if I learned that they are seen by others, that they are presumptively visible to every viewer who warrants the

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name”. Being in itself will appear only after the constitution of others; “the key is accepting that my body is a perceiving thing” (M-P 1990/1959: 168). Rather than individual subjects constituting things and the world of objects, we reach things of the world directly by being in their world among them, with that meaningful truth certified by a co-presence (at least potentially) with others. The process of co-witnessing generates intersubjective appreciation as an event; establishing a fabric of common disposition among a community of knowers, prior to the possibility of rational knowledge. As the double dynamic of historical constitution, intersubjectivity is the germ of the norm. It is generative of tacit agreements about the meaning of events that endure beyond the moment of their initial recognition. In ­principle, the process is évolutive, as new information prompts a reworking of judgement, reorienting the vectors of presence, and reshaping the future thanks to the trans-historical power of truth. This points to another important. The notion of history as basis for experience is not a reactionary appeal, as is the case for instance in the us, when ­today’s Supreme Court bases judgement on a constitution written two-­ hundred-fifty years ago. If present being is the materialization of a certain history, then part of the present is taking into account that the future evolved into this ­present, changing along the way. If so, then part of this present also takes into account that it is itself evolving into a future, which though undecided for the moment, will most probably occur within a certain range of possibilities. On that basis, the historicity of human being (and its institutions) is a pastreferenced future-generating presence. The importance of others as validating the truth of one’s personal experience draws into this dynamic presence the contemporary and collateral faces of a world. That has radical implications, such that when I shake the other woman’s hand, it is no different that when my right touches my left; there is simply an “extension of co-presence” which was there from the start: “she and I are like organs of one single intercorporality” (M-P 1990/1959: 168). Although he developed it more radically, as Merleau-Ponty notes, this is not fundamentally different from the position taken by Husserl at the end of his career, from whom “the experience of others is first of all esthésiological;” which is to say an aesthetic of meaning based on a disposition for congruent awareness with others. Yet there is the caution. One must not fall into a discourse of “comparison or analogy, of projection or introjection” (M-P 1990/1959: 168). Getting to the world using the {expressive—perceptive} interplay of human presence must not imply scripting the world and then perceiving it as if it is a reflection of the content of mind-driven consciousness. To do so would fall back into the rational positivist trap, such as is done by movie producers, from which phenomenology is intended as escape.

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Still the labyrinth darkens: to accept that being is validated based on compresence with another body is one thing. But how is this to be extended to another mind, without returning to myself and then restoring “projection or introjection?” No issue: compresence with another body is to be with another mind as well, since that is the human unity. “It is the woman as a whole who is given to me …” (M-P 1990/1959: 169). While I will never be able to “think the other person’s though, I can think that she thinks.” More importantly “I am present at her seeing,” under our mutual gaze. Merleau-Ponty’s description of the constitution of other as intrinsic to establishment of a world and of self within that, is necessarily dialectical and thus elliptic. It is not an act of thought but one of being-withness, or engagement in an existential conversation, in reference to a common prose of the world. “If the other person is to exist for me, she must do so to begin with in an order beneath the order of thought.” This is possible pending a constant letting go of self-fixations: “my perceptual opening to the world …is more dispossession than possession …[which] institutes no death struggle of consciousness” (M-P 1990/1959: 170). The other person becomes actual when a different comportment and a different gaze take possession of my things. [Each of us] …can create the alter ego which thought cannot create, because [the other] is [also] outside herself in the world. He who posits the other woman is a perceiving subject, the other person’s body is a perceived thing, and the other person herself is posited as perceiving. It is never a matter of anything but coperception. I see that this woman over there sees, as I see that as I touch my left hand, it is touching my right. M-P 1990/1959: 170

This is realized because, “…sensible being …holds the secret of the world, others, and what is true; [because] Nature …is the whole of the objects”, there for “all communicating subjects”. The process is inevitably partial. “There are ­certainly more things in the world and in us than what is perceptible in the narrow sense. The other person’s life itself is not given to me with her behavior” (M-P 1990/1959: 171).

In the Wake of the Negative

Even if inhabiting a world of others, our situation is necessarily limited. Yet there is a certain unseen truth associated with what is validly perceived. For instance, from a position on only one side, I can appreciate the fact of the other

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side of the mountain before me. Merleau-Ponty applies an equivalent logic to all social-relational experience, concluding: This is what animalia and (wo)men are: absolutely present beings who have a wake of the negative. A perceiving body that I see is also a certain absence that is hollowed out and tactfully dealt with behind that body by its behavior. But absence is itself rooted in presence: it is though her body that the other person’s soul is soul in my eyes. Negativities also count in the sensible world, which is decidedly the universal one. M-P 1990/1959: 172

The wake of the negative is the mysterious presence of absence associated with all collective human experience, drawing out discovery, as each of us attempts to grasp the essential meaning of others. Our human experience is possible because we each inhabit a community of common attention. This principle prompts Merleau-Ponty to raise the hypothetical question: “So what is the result of this as far as constitution is concerned?” At least regarding humanized reality (i.e. the truth as meaning of institutions such as democracies, capitalisms, gender opportunities or socialisms), this is achieved as expression of “intercorporality”; which he refers to as a “layer” of pre-theoretical, pre-thetic or pre-objective order”. So, “logical ­objectivity is not self-sufficient; it is limited to consecrating the labors of the pre-objective layer, existing only as the outcome of the logos of the esthetic world” (M-P 1990/1957: 173). While rational faculties cannot function except after the apperceptive faculties have established groundwork, like the perceptive—expressive pair, their interplay is dialectic: “…the forces of the constitutive field do not move in one direction only; they turn back upon themselves” (M-P 1990/1959: 173).

Intersubjective Flash of Meaning

Existence is a continuous enactment, in relation to others and nature, in society, through time. A world streams from the advancing front of perceptualhistorical consciousness in the same way that a text flows from the point of an author’s pen. Constitution is ongoing, from body to thing, diffusing waves of meaning that break on the events of the world. The body is nothing less but nothing more than the thing’s condition of possibility. When we go from body to thing, we go neither from p ­ rinciple

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to consequence nor from means to end. We are present at a kind of propagation, encroachment… which prefigures the passage… from the ­solipsist thing to the intersubjective thing. M-P, 1990/1959: 173

The solipsist critique indicated above arose regularly in Merleau-Ponty’s writings. In this case it was raised in reference to the accusation that for Husserl, “solipsism is a thought experiment;” an “isolating method of thinking.” (M-P, 1990/1959: 173). Some might accuse him similarly and thus the need for being clear on the matter. Entwinement of singularity and commonality is similar to a fractal-­ realization. There is a fracturing of the totality of communality as individualized préobjective disposition; leaving each fragment (i.e. each human ­consciousness) with a personalized historic identity that is at the same time oriented by meaning laden forces that reflect the totality (i.e. society) to which it owes its origins. The result is a radical critique of individuality, which beyond important situated distinctions, is the parallel expression of intention toward what Merleau-Ponty referred to as the social, which is concretized as society. When described in only a few words, the phraseology is serpentine: If we could really cut the solus ipse (isolated individual consciousness)3 off from others and from Nature… there would be fully preserved, in the fragment of the whole, which alone was left, the references to the whole of which it is composed. M-P, 1990/1959: 172

That thought experiment of cutting one individuality away from the social fabric by which it has meaning must not be confused with reality. Even if the exercise is “justified intuitively”, it does not give us “the isolated (wo)man or the isolated human person.” And even if it did work, the result would “still be a human subject, still the intersubjective object of understanding itself and still positing itself as such.” Different from transcendental solitude, what is the lesson from reported or felt solitude? “To say that the ego prior to the other person is alone, is already to situate it in relation to a phantom of the other person, or at least to conceive of an environment in which others could be” (M-P 1990/1059: 173). 3 Latin: solus = alone; ipse = oneself; referring to an itness that is all alone with and in itself; which for Merleau-Ponty is impossible except in reference to a world of others; such that the solus ipse would define a condition like an ostrich with its head in the sand or a child covering its eyes: acting as-if all alone in a crowd.

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This position is similar to the retort by Gabriel Marcel, a French philosopher and existentialist contemporary of Jean-Paul Sartre, to one of the more audacious of the latte’s claims about the exclusive universality of bad-faith. They differed about the justification for faith, with Sartre the atheist arguing that true faith is a self-justifying myth. Marcel’s rebuttal was simple: there can be no such thing as bad faith—at the time a signature figure in Sartre’s work, without the possibility of authentic faith as its dialectical existential identifier. Or, it is obvious that, “The solitude from which we emerge to intersubjective life is not that of the monad.” We are always already “intermingled” in a “primordial generality” vis-à-vis which we experience life “in a precise system of myself— others” (M-P 1990/1959: 174). To summarize: “egotism and altruism exist against a background of belonging to the same world.” If so, “the fact that we die alone does not imply that we live alone.” Still, “…we cannot legitimately consider ourselves instruments of a soul of the world, group or couple [but] …must conceive of a primordial We that has its own authenticity…” Thus, “my body” and that of the other, “belonging here and now to the same world,” as certified by what Merleau-Ponty takes to be “the flash of meaning… in the absolute presence of origins.” Which is there as constituted by being one-with-other in the same “perceptual field” (M-P 1990/1959: 175).

Mobius Ribbon of Being

Throughout his work, Merleau-Ponty stressed the “marvel of carnal existence” (176). “Constitution is neither just the development of a future which is implied in its beginning, nor just the effect which an external ordering has in us…” Rather, being-expressed intersubjectively unfolds in what he refers to as “layers of carnal-perceptive experience;” with each layer being “prior to and posterior to the others, and thus to itself.” He notes parenthetically that “no doubt this is why Husserl does not seem to be too astonished at the circularities he is led into in the course of his discourse;” including “circularity of the thing and the experience of other people;” as well as “circularity between Nature and persons.” Although Merleau-Ponty does not use the term here, the non-disturbing aspect of those and other binaries associated with human experience is that they are related dialectically rather than oppositionally. With the end of the article in view, he returns to an interest that initially drew him into phenomenology. How are we to explain why “these adventures of constitutive analysis—these encroachements, reboundings and c­ ircularities—do

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not seem to disturb Husserl.” The phenomenological solution is not a claim of access to “essences contrary to factual truths.” Still, there is the worry. Is this theory only describing “one more instance of consciousness assuming the right to confine itself to its thoughts against all challenges?” Not really, since we are embedded bodily in “the world’s spectacle”, at the ­“junction of Nature, body, soul, and philosophical consciousness.” If so, then “the ­transcendental field has ceased to be simply the field of our thought and has become the field of the whole of experience.” Thus we arrive at the social-anthropology or collective constitution of phenomenological consciousness; a delicate position to articulate, because constitutive analysis has that back bending quality. I only know what is and where existence is going by tracking its roots in the world. The world is my world of meaning, which is collective and intersubjective. As if a magic train that lays its own track in advance of its movement, each path forward is guided by recurrent attention to where one has been and the nature of the terrain of passage. This is hardly obvious. None the less “the reason why the retro-references of constitutive analysis do not have to win out over the principle of a philosophy of consciousness…” (M-P 1990/1959: 177) is because of their entwinement. A dialectic relationship implies that the meaning of either alternative is drawn in part from the dynamic existence of the other. None the less, there is the risk of this turning circular, into a “phenomenology of phenomenology”; which would return control to the mind. Because there are indeed “problems of mediation between the world of Nature and the world of persons…” that are intrinsic to what he calls in this paragraph, “intentional analysis”.

Intentionality and Constitution

There is always a mystery beyond us that escapes detail, which is none the less active in framing our perceptions and actions. It envelops the shadow of being-meaningfully, implicated in the title of this article: the philosopher and his shadow. Thus the text closes with the enigmatic statement: “The philosopher must bear his shadow, which is more than simply the factual absence of future light” (M-P 1990/1959: 178). The “practical” reflective act of the phenomenological method is to “drift constantly … from the naturalist to the personalist attitude”. Rather than from “naturalist or personalist attitude to absolute consciousness;” or between “interior and exterior;” or about “non-philosophy … [vs] philosophy”; or expressing “transcendence… constituted… in the immanence of

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c­ onstituting ­consciousness;” the better way to summarize his position is that, “…behind transcendental genesis, [is] a world in which all is simultaneous” (M-P 1990/1959: 178). Getting to know that world by engaging in it is MerleauPonty’s project. He concludes by clarifying his position on the evolution from early to late Husserl: “Originally a project to gain intellectual possession of the world, constitution becomes increasingly, as Husserl’s thought matures, the means of unveiling a back side of things that we have not constituted.” The challenge is to engage in that back side of things, as the origin of rational or cognitive experience; for access to the préobjective order that so intrigued Merleau-Ponty.

chapter 9

Aesthetic Consciousness Overview In this Chapter we have two objectives. First, is to summarize what we drew from Merleau-Ponty’s texts about the possibility of access to truth as meaning. This is taken in reference to society as an environmentally responsive ­system; with the c­ ollective—intersubjective force of that interplay (as endless ­negotiation, mutual adjustment and resolution of conflicts among objective intentions) ­serving as regulative principle for development, movement and change at both individual and institutional levels. Second, we present an original model of human being as aesthetic consciousness. Our modification elevates the dialectic pair of what we label the apperceptive, {perceptive—expressive} faculties to equivalent status with the conventionally accepted rational, {intellectual—conceptual} faculties; with their real-time function seated in consciousness, the evidence of which being the capacity for judgement before decision and freedom as epitomized by creativity. The ontological implications of this modification are less radical than its epistemological implications. If vested of faculties as we suggest, the function of consciousness is primary to that of mind; explaining the evident capacity of human beings to know more than is understood. If we are correct, consciousness constitutes the search-light on the world by which humanized or meaning-oriented action is grasped and deployed; furnishing the dynamic groundwork for rational cerebral activity. We propose this modified treatment of consciousness as the logical endpoint of the argument developed by Merleau-Ponty from his study of what he labeled perceptive or historical consciousness. With it we specify the site of the predisposition to meaning, realized in society and issue of the illusive préobjective intention that so fascinated him. As we see it, completion of his project requires accepting this reconceptualization of the existential foundation of human-being. Based as it is on the work of Merleau-Ponty, aesthetic consciousness as we lay it out evades the intellectualist-rationalist snare exposed by our critique in Part 1 of this book. That is due to its capability for mediating both préobjective and objective intention. That subtlety explains also the difficulty of justifying it; with our postulate thus open to attack as empty metaphysics.

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Signaling the closure of our study with the Chapter that follows, to buttress our position we offer a limited auto-critique based on a review of what has been established about the working of consciousness in research using BrainImagery procedures. This may seem illogical, since we argue throughout that the yield of findings from that form of research is inadequate to address the question of humanized experience and its symbolic web of self-constituting meaning. Yet that is the point: from a look at what is arguably the most classically scientific approach to the study of human consciousness, we hope to demonstrate that loose-ends generated in bi laboratory studies supply ­evidence that comforts the central argument of this book. While the results remain indicative rather than confirmatory, we believe we can show how this research reveals activity at the level of consciousness that defies logical explanation by templates drawn from the rationalist cannon of science; but which is susceptible to explanation on the assumption that human consciousness and the society that realizes it, is reconceptualized as we suggest.

Summarizing Merleau-Ponty

In the opening Chapters of Part 2 this book, we studied: (a) the second volume of Merleau-Ponty’s doctoral thesis—Phenomenology of Perception, composed about 1940; (b) his writing on Philosophy and Sociology done in 1950; and (c) the last paper he composed on Husserl’s heritage, in 1959, just before he died. That selection of texts provided an overview of how he developed his project through the two decades that marked the height of his tragically brief career. The summary of his project that follows is in narrative free-form. Merleau-Ponty elaborated a crucial figure that we consider as the base of his phenomenology: the préobjective realm. When woven into sentences it appeared in the following way: “logical objectivity is not self-sufficient; it is limited to consecrating the labors of the pre-objective layer, existing only as the outcome of the logos of the esthetic world” (M-P 1990/1959: 173). We focused our commentary on the significance of the notion of préobjective disposition for clarifying the interplay of human experience and society as object of interest in the critical social sciences.1 He used the figure of préobjectivity as referent for the tissue of intentionality that characterizes human being in the world. He spoke of it this way: the ­figure, 1 Not every commentator on Merleau-Ponty’s work places equivalent importance on his use of préobjectively as informative concept; for instance, in a five-hundred-page study of his phenomenology by Dillon (1997/1988), the term, préobjective is absent.

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préobjective, identifies the epistemological field of possibility for meaning, accessible as a profound layer of being, which is the domain that ­constitutes Nature in its original and primary sense; where everything is simultaneous, ­potentially framing the existence of everyone, as the site of the possibility of intersubjective meaning in the social world. Rather than passive acquisition, access to that préobjective domain is assured by what Merleau-Ponty refers to as a charnel participation in the world. It is the domain of common presence for people; the site of primordial consciousness as expression of being in the world, bodily; which under normal circumstances—like the sea for fish, is beyond ordinary attention for those within it. Its articulation is the breath of existence: as intention to communicate, associate, affiliate and congregate, in propagation of an intersubjective community of meaning. Engagement in that pré-théorétique, préthéique or préobjective order is the platform of possibility for the social, intellectual, physical, natural and ­metaphysical dispositions of human-being. This influence is unstoppable. As ­Merleau-Ponty points out, even in isolation, the standard of reference is the social world. He refers to this existential force as presence of absence, which in everyday terms explains the recurrent attempt—at least among Westerners, to establish a stable response for the question: who am I and what am I doing here? Intellectualist-rationalist methods of contemporary science are insensitive to this layer of being; treating it as metaphysical or intuitional and thus subjective in the sense of having pertinence only for the eyes of the composer. Kant acknowledged existence of this reality, which he labeled intuitional, but claimed it to be inaccessible; which it is for those who treat consciousness as limited to what can be catalogued by the tools of the rational {intellectual— conceptual} faculties. Undeniably, there is also an objective layer of experience, populated by material objects and social action. It is here that the Cartesian-Kantian, rationalist epistemology pertains, assessing the field where the things are found in reference to which Husserl called for a return to the things, themselves. However, if the objects found in the objective realm have meaning beyond their lifeless existence, then the events of their being presuppose existence of the préobjective domain described above.2 Without that, the meaning of such objects can 2 Among the many real-world examples used by Merleau-Ponty to exemplify the way ­judgement and creativity are based on the meaning of events drawn out by the dialectic interaction between intention and situation is the following: the angle of the slope of a mountainside only has meaning for those who intend to climb it. See M-P, 1962/1945: 251–254.

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only be established correlatively, in reference to others of like sort. That is to deny the historical frame of reference for experience, resulting in a circular epistemology, which Merleau-Ponty discounted as only a phenomenology of phenomenology. The relation between what he referred to as the deeper layer and superior layer of existence (i.e. the préobjective versus objective realm) is dialectic: neither is possible without the other. Their forces… return contra one another, explaining the historical (trans-temporality) energy of the result. That dynamic quality of existence also explains the possibility of intersubjectivity; as the common anticipation of meaning in gestures and words, in language and world-view, in situations and institutions, for events in general. Having been initially inspired by him, for critical reasons Merleau-Ponty attempted to advance beyond Husserl in a systematic fashion. First, he focused on the dependence of intersubjectivity on the existence of a historical and social-anthropologic zone, providing a common existential foundation for the participants in webs of meaning. He emphasized how Husserl had recognized the importance of this historical dimension in his late work and had hinted about it in his early work. Merleau-Ponty attempted to follow this line of reasoning through to its ends. It is unclear if he had a full resolution in view; due to his early death, we will never know. As guide for research, Husserl’s psychologically based phenomenological method depended on informed use of the mind (labeled bracketing) to control its own tendencies to prejudgement in advance of the evidence about human events. Merleau-Ponty evaluated that as essential in every case for research, but not sufficient to get to the truth of meaning of social events. Applying instead a phenomenology of worldly-being, he believed it necessary rather to alter the regard or zone of attention, not from details to generalities or from particulars to universals as it was put by the Scholastics. Rather the need was to shift the perspective to the level of the social-historical context, which is the origin for both perception and expression as meaningful experiences. Application of his episteme-ontology transforms research into an exercise of reading the Prose of the World, where the meaning of details is related to the events where they are situated, just as the meaning of art as existence is related to the event of its creation and/or appreciation. That points to the aesthetic interface of human experience, explaining why Merleau-Ponty drew his examples not just from philosophy, history, sociology, anthropology and psychology, but also from art and literature. If he was correct, the totalizing préobjective zone as origin of meaning is the brute facet of the human condition in a material world, with community, through time. Merleau-Ponty sought to validate this elaborate postulate by demonstrating how it fit with, went beyond or explained the contradictions in related work by

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other researchers and theorists. His critique of prior work was not about the accuracy of the assessment of material facts by usual empirical methods, but concerned their interpretation.3 Interpretation is the intention to draw out the meaning of experience and this is the central issue for phenomenology. The first volume of his double thesis, The Structure of Behavior, was the original printed record of this aspect of his critical strategy. One of his preferred examples of prior work that escaped rational explanation but which could be clarified by his world-oriented phenomenology was Gestalt psychology. Studies in that field demonstrate the power of the r­ elational context to modify how normal human beings perceive sketches of figures and geometrical forms in a variable fashion, because of interaction effects between object-vs-ground of visual images. In spite of massive evidence of the gestalt effect, there is no empirically verifiable explanation for it. Either it is unfounded or else it comes about by the way brute consciousness engages iteratively with what it encounters; as oscillating attention between primary objects, the immediate ground for observation and the larger cultural-­historical context of occurrences; guided internally by the intention to produce a meaningful reading of reality that can be understandably communicated with others. By shifting the regard among those difference levels of the perceptual-­ expressive universe, it is possible to judge what is there in a fashion that carries intersubjective merit, because the situated conscious includes the presence of the absence of the communities of reference that are implicated in the problem at hand. This process draws on and contributes to the amorphous totality of the sea of systems of meanings that we inhabit. The requirement of intersubjectivity lifts the problem from only identification of what is there, to how it stimulates communication among observers, in reference to a larger community of meaning; indicating that events in the human world are constituted in reference to their place in a collective history of human intention; which is why the evaluation of meaning is fundamentally a social-problem. In his Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty expanded his post-­ Husserlian postulate, by giving his phenomenological perspective a more properly theoretical form. Along the way he used his approach to clarify ambiguities associated with the work of his intellectual predecessors; including in addition to Husserl, Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Durkheim and Bergson. He attempted to demonstrate that his innovative postulate was sufficient to ­surmount the shortcomings of those other theoretical approaches by applying a more decidedly open and worldly perspective. 3 The notion of interpretation is not discussed by Merleau-Ponty in the same way that it was developed by Dilthey, 1991/1883; elaborated by Heidegger, 1973/1927; theorized by Gadamer (1989/1960); or and more recently, critiqued in France by Paul Ricœur (1969).

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As exemplified by reference to the work of Husserl, his methodological argumentation proved laborious in application. We recall the striking dialectical force of the elliptical title that Merleau-Ponty (1990/1959) gave to the paper: The Philosopher and his Shadow. Philosophers work on the world and after they die—assuming sufficient prominence, their work leaves a trace, such that others who follow them, work in its historical shadow. However, even during their own lifetime, each intellectual lives in the symbolic shadow of his or her own history. Existence is expressed in a structure of social action and relations, framed by a multitude of historical shadows of meaning, which we inhabit and which inhabit us; furnishing the context for evaluating the details of events and experiences and above all, propelling each of us to confront the question of meaning. What is the origin of that integrating potential for meaning in the production of a life? Whether intellectual, artistic or otherwise, this shadowy residue is pervasive not just for those who create it, but potentially for all who follow. Explaining the incredible reach of this effect justified further the postulate of a préobjective order, constituting and activating the field of meaning related to social action that stabilizes collective life and facilitates social change at any given time, and more importantly, through time. If indeed the key intentional disposition of human being is meaning-related, the necessity to seek meaning as the basis for participation in social relations is the fundamental human appetite. The structure of meanings for a group or community is thus the roadmap for movement within it. When access to that system of meanings is blocked, then the intersubjective dynamic is frozen and rather than forward leaning, the flow of information is fractured, then encountered museum-like as if only signposts of the past. By derivation, this phenomenological process explains the dialectic of love, the security of an orderly career in a stable organization, the patriotic élan for citizens under a political regime that delivers security, opportunity and ­acceptance; and the contrary—the alienation, violence, self-destructive tendencies for humans who are in situations bereft of those positively meaningful qualities. This explains also the vitality of sound communities, of the interplay between the sciences and arts, and within the sciences themselves; allowing— as underlined by Merleau-Ponty, no barriers between philosophy, sociology, anthropology and history.

Préobjective Precocity

It is safe to assume that society is as it is, because human beings are as they are. However, like the origin of the cosmos and planet earth, at least for now

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we consider the origin of social-man, as unresolvable. It is a form of worldlybeing given in advance of constitution of societies by culture groups. Thus our postulate: that objective social action is driven by the human dependence on the intention to meaning, with that intention itself being by definition préobjective in reference to current circumstances. Not just theoretically as did Merleau-Ponty, but practically, how might we demonstrate the reality of that fundamental predisposition, which renders humans dependent on the establishment of society at a level of refinement that vastly exceeds what would be necessary were they only constrained by ­physical necessity related to bio-organic survival? Admittedly a bold postulate to propose, the functional distinctions between contemporary and archaic societies and culture groups does not invalidate the claim that humans are woven by necessity into local worlds of common interest. There are no societies bereft of structures based on webs of meaning, of which spoken languages and their rules of usage are important material manifestations. That universality indicates the content-free quality of the predisposition to meaning, allowing enormous variability in how social organization is achieved locally; demonstrating in turn that universality at the préobjective level does not mitigate the notion of freedom of action at the interpersonal level, other than to impose the requirement of the exercise of judgement as essential for participation in meaning-filled social life. The implications of this postulate are substantial: of a universal disposition for a common interest as apriori force of societal organization; materialized in reference to what in the West are labeled moral standards, rendering substance to the field of awareness deployed by aesthetic consciousness. We contend that this postulate survives the anthropological critique of variability in the organization of societies both in the contemporary world and through time, historically. If we are right, then every society is aesthetically correct as precondition for the possibility of there being within it a politically correct. Or, societies are guided by forces resting on a political-aesthetic foundation. While the objective details are arguable, the principle of aesthetic balance around human ­values is the regulative force that allows not just interpersonal accommodation even among strangers, but political deliberation to lead to institutional agreements. The same dynamic pertains in the endless negotiations that establish the working relationships of everyday life, for us all. As concerns geopolitical conflict, the postulated personal and thus institutional strain toward harmony is certified by the invariably temporary pursuit of warfare. Even if the winners assume it their right to tell a self-justifying story about such events, only madmen suppose war as a steady-state condition. Not just interpersonal social experiences but macro-political experiences exude

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this universal quality because they are based on an affirmatively intended human disposition to meaning as intersubjective obligation aimed at coherence in social relations. Our key postulate thus implies a general strain toward civic decency as universal attribute of institutional practices in all societies. But if so, whether Eastern or Western, why are so many societies chronically decrepit and cruel if the collective human intention that explains their emergence is decent and socially responsive? What of caste and class systems linked to hereditary practices; does not harmony imply absolute equality in all social affairs? If so, do not the contradictory facts demonstrate the emptiness of the postulated human intention for aesthetic meaning as strain toward societal balance? Not at all, and to the contrary. The fact that opportunists willingly profit from slave trading or equivalent forms of market exploitation of others; or that engaged citizens can be led by an elite to become complacent participants in genocide; furnishes evidence of the existence of a human predisposition for the good, right and just—as prior to the organization of society. Without those affirmative moral ­standards— better referred to as human standards, there would be no universal recognition, as there is even on the part of those who are in complicity with such practices; recognizing that slavery, cruel exploitation and genocide are, well, inhuman. The moral objection to such practices; against the unmitigated ­effects of class, caste and gender related conditions, validates the truth of our postulate; with Merleau-Ponty supplying a theoretical explanation for the existence of this principle. Advancing a logical justification for a contested argument based on the structural necessity of its opposite is a well-tested argumentative form. It was raised in other circumstances during the 1950s in France, in a debate that pitted Gabriel Marcel against Jean-Paul Sartre. Discussed briefly elsewhere in this book, they differed about what Sartre took to be the universal deployment of bad-faith and the impossibility of its opposite. As Marcel point out, without good-faith as its precondition, the existential possibility of bad-faith dissolves. Merleau-Ponty reasoned similarly in Paris seminars given in the mid-1950s at the College of France, while discussing the distinction between “perceptive consciousness and imaginative consciousness” (M-P 2015/1954–55: 248ff). As a lecturing strategy, he often used examples of personal social interaction to exemplify his theoretical position, focusing in this case on the initial steps by which social encounters begin; emphasizing the importance of the opening maneuver that sets the stage for subsequent physical or verbal exchanges among the participants.

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How are we to explain the way the stage is set mutually by participants to social encounters before any content is laid out? Why is the decision implicit in advance of a meeting that it will end with a negotiated posture indicating common understanding, even if the participants arrive with highly divergent interests and prior experiences; and even if the final point is agreeing to disagree? Why the universal emphasis—either formally or informally, on protocol before joint action, requiring establishment of a relationship about the terms of understanding before business might be conducted? In each situation, the challenge for individuals is to read the scene accurately, with this occurring before there is specific content on the basis of which to have valid proof of the demands that will be encountered. Without question, the process of anticipation plays a vital role in social experience and explaining it was a central task for Merleau-Ponty in those mid-1950s seminars. Yet how is it possible for individuals to be symbolically situated as participants in social encounters with others before the actual encounter begins? Reduced to a dichotomy, the possibilities were captured by Merleau-Ponty as the distinction between perceptive consciousness versus imaginative consciousness. He contended that individuals of sound judgement are able to perceive at the level of conscious-presence the coming into being of social relations as opening moves, so as to act in ways that maximize the possibility to harmonize (aesthetically) with what actually occurs once the encounter begins. Elsewhere he referred to this process as the result of the uniquely human capacity to generate a spectrum of imaginary variations on reality (M-P 1990/1951b: 100). Does this not sound like a mind reading, a micro version of astrology or at least mental gamesmanship, practiced in advance of social encounters; or perhaps as the seeking of mental assurances in advance of the facts, with little basis in reality other than as evidence of pre-encounter anxiety on the part of those involved? Is not this form of social anticipation better considered the expression of fantasy-enhanced imaginative consciousness rather than a valid effort of good-consciousness as motor-force driving sane social relations? Merleau-Ponty explored that debate in those 1950s seminars. If there is validity to perceptive consciousness thus conceived, its commonness among all experienced participants to social experience in advance of concrete action supports the underlying postulate of préobjective intention to meaning. But as is evident, this suggests a form of intuitionalism that rationalists reject as absurd. On that basis, Merleau-Ponty’s position was constantly challenged by his former close collaborator, Sartre, whose tactical rationality is legendary; resulting in a tacit intellectual sparing match between them that colored many of the texts written by Merleau-Ponty’s in the post-war period—including the lecture Notes for these mid-1950s seminars.

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Sartre contended that the préobjective disposition discussed by MerleauPonty indicated little more than day-or-night dreaming or neurotic fantasy. Is it only reverie? Why should we trust the soundness of préobjective imagining that precedes and sets the stage for ordinary social action any more than the mythic imagination of a Roman Emperor who bases decision on the advice of his Seer who in turn takes her signals from the way crows fly at Sunup? In those 1950s seminars, rather than using the loaded term of truth, ­Merleau-Ponty speaks of “adéquation”, as the standard against which fantasy, bad-faith, or “imaginative consciousness” is to be compared. He argued that “perceptive consciousness” is adequately anchored in the real of reality, to facilitate the e­ xercise of good judgement in social situation; thanks to the préobjective disposition of meaning, common to all parties to such situations, without which collective human experience would differ very little from that of a pack of wolves. Again it must be underlined that this préobjective and intersubjective intention to meaning as harmony related to social context is bereft of objective content. However, without it, the objective content of social relations would have no durable meaning. We are discussing a predisposition and not a reworked version of the much discussed Kantian moral imperative. If we are right, each human is a consciousness with refined disposition for apperceptive and rational presence in the world, driven by necessity toward mutual accommodation in a durable fashion with others and nature, through time. This symbolic social intention is materialized objectivity in society; based on shared meanings about problems and solution, the most important of which concern communication, leading to languages. The details are constantly shaped by the interplay between symbolic intention and technical realization, with as result, each society being a complex general system. The organization of society is thus buffered on one side by symbolic exigencies of relational meaning, and from the other by technical exigencies of productive efficiency. Unfortunately, the rational epistemology that has been a target of critique since the time of the Early German Romantics and against which MerleauPonty offered an alternative, leads operationally to societal domination by the technical sector, with progressive sacrifice for expression of humanized ­meaning from the symbolic sector.4 This has led to a condition where ­societal organization has become more technically productive but less meaningful; 4 This indicates the general system quality of societal organization; which I treat formally using an original model (the {petos} Model) developed in other research, a schematic ­representation of which is attached as an Appendix to a previous publication; OBrien 2014.

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yielding a form of dehumanization, which now in the West assumes crisis proportions. Far from reversing those deleterious consequences and the alienation that it yields, our critique of rationality and postulate about aesthetic consciousness none the less opens a path in a promising direction.

Consciousness and Bodily-Being

It is difficult to identify a zone for access to this esoteric sounding “pre-­ theoretical level”, this “third dimension” of human being as “origin of meaning”. Since its universality is postulated as implicit in existence, it must depend on some quality intrinsic to everyone. To believe Merleau-Ponty, by its appreciation and expression we are led to consider the “unthought-of elements” of our way of being, central of which is “pre-thoeoretical consciousness, charged with accounting for pre-givens, those kernels of meaning about which individuals and the world gravitate” (M-P 1990/1959: 165–166). Even if valid as description of the process by which we are humanized for participation in a social world, the question of agency resists specification. In his writings he oscillated between the figures of bodily-being and historical-consciousness. As a radical dialectician, the distinction between them is more formal than actual. But when composing paragraphs, use of either term suggested denial of the reality of the other. Thus his writings on this issue were characterized by a certain level of conceptual ambiguity—which he abhorred, concerning existential ambiguity—which he embraced. Here at the end of our book, we might focus again briefly on his text about Husserl’s shadowy heritage, published in 1959. It was the last text he completed dealing with the question of consciousness, which he treated as the site of human agency that traces the trajectory between préobjective and objective domains. For objectivist critics, elevating consciousness to this level implies a view of humans as ghosts-without-form, drifting about social space like shapeless amoebae: seeking meaningfulness as existential nourishment. For historic reasons, following this philosophical path carries one’s argument into the arena of transcendental consciousness, which since Kant has proven perilous. Alternatively, transcendental consciousness implies a universal human sameness programmed by social life; producing an inevitable Hegelian-like strain toward particular patterns of life and Society. This suggests the reification of custom, treated as if natural law, eliminating the possibility of diversity and by that of human will as free judgement and creativity. Accepting existential freedom (a virtue of existential ambiguity) as foundation for the very existence of philosophy, Merleau-Ponty argued against that

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transcendental view of the human condition. Still he insisted on a standardized logic of existential selfhood, by focusing on form rather than content. In his last text on Husserl, he wrote about this from the angle of perceptual or historical consciousness. Yet in parallel research, he approached the problem by appealing principally to another of his favorite phenomenological figures, that of brute bodily-being. From that second angle, rather than society shaped by a gaggle of abstract human consciousness’s floating formlessly in a préobjective field, we arrive in a world of physically identifiable bodily beings, interactively, sensually and perceptually, projecting their way through life with choices and options judged in reference to a universal framework of préobjective intentionality toward meaning. While use of the figure of bodily-being may be easier for readers to identify with than the more ethereal sounding notion of perceptual-historical c­ onsciousness, resolving the challenge of practical existence in a complex world is no easier if human actors are conceived as if physically-sensual bodilybeings than as if symbolically-resonate historical-consciousnesses. Whatever the case, at the end of his career—and his young life, Merleau-Ponty devoted considerable energy to exploring the utility of the figure of bodily-being as incarnating the essential qualities of (wo)man-in-the-world. Unfortunately, this led him into other intractable difficulties. Worked on in fits and starts over a period of years, that final research by Merleau-Ponty was left scattered, such that there is no way to be sure how to order the fragments. His research assistant (Claude Lefort) assembled the material as best he might and published it under the title of Visible-Invisible (M-P, 1979/1964). As for the binary-figure of that title, the visible aspect of human existence in the world is as bodily-being; while the invisible aspect is as perceptual or historical-consciousness. In his early writing he stressed the latter figure, and in his last working notes gave preference to the former figure. When he died, he was unable to surge beyond that dialectic—as we attempt to do here, by proposing a major modification in the treatment of human-being based on a more compelling and inclusive model of human consciousness. Although Merleau-Ponty emphasized that existential ambiguity (as not understanding completely our most elementary experiences) is an inevitable derivative from our anchorage in the préobjective realm: “An existential theory of history is ambiguous, but this ambiguity cannot be made a matter of reproach, for it is inherent in things” (M-P 1962/1945: 172). However, the fragmentary quality of that last work is a source of conceptual ambiguity (as logical confusion) of an entirely undesirable nature. As one specialist put it in reference to that Visible-Invisible document, since

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…as it stands, incomplete, it remains unclear how he intended to extend the line of thought further…. Thus… there is a genuine sense of a thinker stopped in midair, and it is just not clear where the trajectory of his thought would have carried him. baldwin, 2004

In spite of the wispy quality of the image, our choice is to rely on the figure of consciousness rather than use the more concrete image of bodily-being as active agent of phenomenal being.5 By this we displace Merleau-Ponty’s terminal struggle to anchor his view of existence in a dynamic view of carnal experience, with a treatment of existence as expression of consciousness, which if somewhat disembodied, is no less responsive and proactive. The risk with our proposal is that we are defeated in advance by the danger that apparently led Merleau-Ponty to shift his attention; related to the transcendental problem touched on earlier.6 A crucial Kantian concept, transcendental consciousness implies a universal capacity to recognize, know or appreciate the world in a common fashion, assuring a unifying basis for, among other things, the expression of moral ­judgement. The problem with Kant’s treatment of consciousness, followed more or less by Husserl with his use of the notion of noema, is that it leaves an insurmountable practical gap between experience of and things in the world, which denies direct access to meaning. As practice, this version of the transcendental implies that social standardization is the outcome of rigid sociocultural formatting, which many since Kant (Sartre, for instance, and MerleauPonty as well) judged to be a constraint on liberty; and by that in contradiction with other Kantian announcements. Thanks to its ever evolving rather than fixed content, Merleau-Ponty’s view of historical consciousness avoided the transcendental issue all together. Which is why we follow that lead. Additionally, he argued that the difficulty was not about consciousness as disposition, but about its link with objective details of experience. About this, we also agree. 5 As Gress (2012) points out, Merleau-Ponty oscillated between the use of these two figures, with the weight of the evident supporting our preference for consciousness as principal site for phenomenological agency. 6 Transcendentalism is an old term in America, linked with many great names, the first and perhaps foremost being Emerson (1990/1841). His version inclined consciousness in a spiritual direction, which was more humanist than religious; a theme picked up subsequently by William James (1896; 1902), John Dewey (1975/1909; 1971/1934; 1961/1916) and Henri Bergson (2008/1932). The objectivist strain of American pragmatism would have none of such talk; criticized famously by Richard Rorty (2009/1979; 2007/1989).

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Consciousness as Active Presence

Although we agree with his critique of Kantian transcendental consciousness and the danger of relying too heavily on the figure, rather than backing away from the notion of consciousness as he seemed to do in his final unpublished writings (M-P 1979/1964), we propose to reconceptualize consciousness in a fashion that avoids the Kantian related transcendental issue and the Husserlian idealist limitation, while still fitting with the Merleau-Pontian position. Since by that choice we enter into the smoky lands of intentionality, this is not without risk. When associated with motivation, conscious-­intentionality can be differentiated as either, in-order-to realize some imminent aspect of being, versus because-of an immanent aspect of being. Alfred Schutz (2013; 1997/1932) is famous for having articulated that dichotomy, both aspects of which he assumed were active in any real choice. Of the many examples he gave of this, the most deliciously is in reference to Don Quixote and his windmills: Does not Don Quixote gear into the outer world if he attacks the windmills, imagining them to be giants? Is not what he does, determined by motives valid within the world of working, namely, his in-order-to motive to kill the giants and his because-motive to live up to his mission as a knight which involves the duty to fight bad giants wherever they are met? Is all this not included in the hierarchy of Don Quixote’s life-plans? Schutz, 1945: 53

In keeping with the position of Merleau-Ponty, the model of consciousness we propose is dialectic; with the real-time action being precisely the iterative movement between those two motive forces. In order to capture its working principle, consciousness must be redesigned in terms of structure, function and deployment. We label the result, aesthetic-consciousness. We contend that aesthetic-consciousness is energized based on the availability of four fundamental faculties; a rational {intellectual—conceptual} pair and an apperceptive {perceptive—expressive} pair.7 These faculties are dialectically related within and between the couplets. The composite result of their 7 The difficulty with the notion of apperception is that, like the notion of transcendental, this term is also trapped in the Kantian narrative. Our use of the notion of apperception is not Kantian; here it does not refer to a synthesizing capacity that allows the mind to render rational the raw material of existence. Merleau-Ponty often discussed this touchy issue, an example of which it the following:

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dialectic interaction is manifest as behavior. That is not to suggest that all ­behavior is consciousness. We are concerned with the volitional action that renders judgement visibly evident, with the meaning of options intimated as practical choice. Existence thus described is an ongoing event of dynamic social relations, in continuous movement, with the inner motor force anchored in aesthetic-consciousness and the details of action incarnating judgement. Since each social act is a choice and thus expression of freedom, in the final analysis engagement is always creative, guided by the fit of alternatives with their meaning as rendered by consciousness, in engagements as material expression of judgement. This validates the classic claim of existence of (wo) man and society as work of art. (Burckhardt, 1990/1860). The following Schematic representation (see Figure 1) depicts the dynamic relations we intend when referring to aesthetic-consciousness and its four faculties. The postulated qualities of human consciousness are as follows: • The four faculties are dialectically related within and between the ­rational— appreciative configuration; • The Rational {Conceptual—Intellectual} Faculties are active synchronically; defining an absolute present as source of power without dynamic energy. They are not a source of duration which is their functional limitation. • The Apperceptive {Expressive—Perceptive} Faculties are active diachronically; responsible for the continuous advancing of being as source of energy drawn from the tension between past and future; this is without stable institution base of power, which is their functional limitation. • Together the four faculties demonstrate the existential logic of Aristotle’s four causes. • Consciousness thus constituted brings life into being, escaping the grip of the inexistent absolute present, which is the terminal existential state of material objects until worked on by external humanised forces. The task of a radical reflection, the kind that aims at self-comprehension, consists, paradoxically enough, in recovering the unreflective experience of the world, and subsequently reassigning to it the verificatory attitude and reflective operations, and displaying reflection as one possibility of my being. What have we then at the outset? Not a given manifold with a synthetic apperception which ranges over it and completely penetrates it, but a certain perceptual field against the background of a world. Nothing here is thematized. Neither object nor subject is posited. In the primary field we have not a mosaic of qualities, but a total configuration which distributes functional values according to the demands of the whole. (M-P, 1962/1945: 241).

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Figure 1  Four faculties of aesthetic consciousness: Their consequences for judgement and creativity

As an active, living principle, human consciousness is characterized by four rather than only two fundamental faculties. We further argue that in its relationship to mind, consciousness provides the frame within which or in response to which the latter functions; with reflection by consciousness primary to thought by mind, rather than the other way around. If so, as worldlypresence, human consciousness mediates relations between the préobjective realm and everything objective or perceptively sense-evident: including self, others, society and nature, through time. The label, aesthetic-consciousness, signifies the relentless challenge of consciousness, handling the synchronic-diachronic dilemmas of {within—­ versus—beyond}, {alone—versus—among}, and {as-was—versus—as-mightbe} inherent to both personal and collective responsibility. This issue is balance: maintaining a shifting equilibrium between a politic of self-assertion versus one of worldly constraint. The resultant establishes the uniqueness among standard types that defines individuality within community for a social world. Maintaining a live connection with that process is the principle of aestheticconsciousness as we conceive it. According to the conventional model (as opposed to ours), the work of the first pair of {intellectual—conceptual} or rational faculties is treated as

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­quasi-mechanical rather than living and dialectical, with this activity centered in the materiality of brain rather than in the force-field of consciousness. Perceptive-expressive activity is then treated as a sensory function, stimulusresponse in nature, with the interplay also under control of mind. The ­problem with that extant model of mind-centered action is that in spite of its fit with the epistemology of modern science, no one has successfully been able to justify the realism postulate, according to which homophily is achievable between images of reality in the bio-mechanisms of mind and the nature of historically dynamic reality beyond the body. Nor is the interactivity enigma resolved, providing a reasonable explanation for experiences such as what it means to say: my one hand, shakes my other hand. As post-hoc residue signifying activity related to the reflex-arc of desire, the problem of meaning largely eludes direct rational accounting. With his extensive research Merleau-Ponty called into question the rational reductionist method of empirical research. As he saw, endorsement of an underdetermined intellectualist ontology of human being, lead to an excessively limited epistemology—as theory of perception and expression. However, he did not focus on how this limiting treatment of human capacity for knowledge had occurred hand in hand with a restricted view of human consciousness; or that a reworking of the latter was needed in order to justify the novel phenomenological method that he proposed. Going beyond what he proposed, our model is intended to rectify these ­various shortcomings. With its {perceptive—expressive} faculties as dialectic conduit, the worldly function of aesthetic consciousness is affirmed to be mediation with its agency expressed as judgement, providing the grounds for creativity. Assuming full engagement of those faculties, human existence as conscious-presence in the world englobes bodily being in its entirety; which is why, as constantly underlined by Merleau-Ponty, there is no separation ­between body and mind. Aesthetic consciousness mediates between sensual functions and the world occurrences; a role currently attributed rather mechanically to nerve clusters such as the eye or finger. It is the lieu for the intake and output of experience, playing its crucial role by negotiating meaning; achieved by the way new ­perceptive and expressive content is judged to fit (or not) with the patterns already available to consciousness. Judgement expresses intentional harmony of existence as dominant predisposition of being-consciously in the world. It is materialized when aesthetic evaluation is put into action as principle of social action. Although consciousness is a historical construction and thus constantly under strain for change, in the short term it exudes a certain stability ­allowing

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an integral vision of self and the social world. Because of this strain toward ­stability, consciousness can be confused or surprised; such as when the physically absent phantom-arm of the recent military amputee is reported to be ­sensually present as if a true fact of consciousness. Radical alteration in consciousness appears to be rare, and when it occurs, is customarily labeled a spiritual or conversion experience. The central dynamic of such events can be interpreted as the spontaneous reactivation of the apperceptive faculties of consciousness, which for one reason or another have been dormant. As the lieu of perception and expression, consciousness mediates bodily ­being in its totality; rendering humans responsive to crowd-effects, whether attracting or repelling, as well as resonant to stimulations of menace or support from institutional events, others or natural occurrences. Confusion of consciousness is the surpassing of the range of its integrational energies by this or that event or phenomenon. Whatever the particulars, from lightning bolts in the night to outrageous public action; from presence before an evident lie by a politician to a manipulated communication from a loved one; this resonant dynamic explains the flooding of consciousness by fear, which by definition is disorganizing for consciousness; or of its opposite, labeled faith, hope, compassion—or love. This dynamic presence is anchored not in a rational understanding but in the préobjective order of human being as such. When faced by excessively strange events, an admittedly non-rational response is possible: called panic, excitement, fear, terror, passion, alienation or otherwise. Such effects are often bundled symptomatically as trauma, neurosis or burnout; reflecting in any case a serious derangement of meaning for the human condition. Effort to pretend it away using cognitive rationalizations of mind results in the lie; autonomous misappropriation of the horrifying potential of such incidents in the interests of coherence with préobjective dispositions is known as denial. If indeed this expanded expression of consciousness is the originating site for action and being, rather than mind driving consciousness, consciousness frames the work of mind. However once integrated meaningfully into consciousness, the content can then be treated by the tools of mind; calling forth the {intellectual—rational} faculties to assist in the archive function of memory; which can be retrieved iteratively as motivation for willful action, often in violation of the intentional harmony of aesthetic consciousness; explaining the sense of regret at the level of consciousness when its standards are ­contradicted by mind-driven willfulness in action. Because the activation of memory is mediated by consciousness, linked to real-worldly being, Halbwachs (1925) was quite right in affirming that rather than simply a heteroclite web of free floating ideas, memories are concrete

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expression of a lingering attachment to communities, objects, places, characteristic sounds and the like. This effect was captured masterfully by Proust, in his description of the power of the crumb of the madeleine cake in the tea cup to reawaken the vivid memories of summers at grandmother’s place in the country. He did this again in unraveling the tragic romance of his famous fictive character, Swan; who was haunted by sad memories each time he heard a particular melancholic tune played on a piano; reminding him of enchanting evenings at bourgeois dinner parties in the presence of his eventually lost love, Odette (Proust: 1954/1913). Under this expanded treatment, aesthetic consciousness serves as interface between the préobjective and objective orders of experience. That interface is the focal plane of meaning, which as was said above is contextual; rendering not just the meaning of external events comprehensible because related to a human group or community, but also the meaning of self or group or community in reference to the objectified world as totality. That dialectical integrating or harmonizing function explains the choice of the aesthetic modifier for consciousness thus renewed.8 Still the activity of consciousness is historically dynamic, in contexts woven of social relations of production. In its quest for meaning as truth, aesthetic consciousness generates by its judgement the essential aesthetic qualities of harmony or fit: commonly labeled the good, the just and the right—or their negation. As depicted schematically above, with our model we visualize human consciousness as a continuous presence that announces human-being in the world. It includes ongoing expression of both bodily-being and mindful-­being; established dynamically in a dynamic social world. While the details of ­content vary from New Delhi to Berlin, or from Hong Kong to Paris, resonating like a tuning fork due to préobjective humanized energies, its properties and intentional forces are similar everywhere. As Merleau-Ponty points out, were that not the case, it would be impossible, not to translate different languages, but impossible rather for cross-cultural parties from both sides to recognize each language has meaning for which completely accurate translation is possible. This is not because people from different cultures are different in terms related 8 Merleau-Ponty introduced the aesthetic figure in virtually every text he wrote; this was partly to explicate it as key to appreciating his phenomenological epistemology and partly to differentiate that use of the figure from its Kantian treatment, where it is proposed in terms of the transcendental aesthetic. As with Merleau-Ponty, our use of the figure of aesthetic refers to the interactive process by which meaning is put into and drawn out from social action; it is an epistemological referent indicating a universal quality of human disposition, but without transcendental implications for content.

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to the central discussion in this book, but because they are not different. What is different and the source of cultural, institutional or personal footprints are the objectified details of the way different dyads, groups and communities, ­woven of intersubjective meanings, construct and maintain their social world; propegating the opportunities and constraints for a given population in relation to its operating environment.

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Closing Issues: Consciousness over Mind?

Remaining Questions

Our critique of rationality raised many questions. Rather than condemning its cognitive expression as only empty technical process, our proposed solution is to reorient attention to the virtues and power of consciousness, which appears to be the fundamental human force before all. Is that so? To set the scene for our critique, we opened the book with a pair of 20th century studies of the Early Romantic movement, the first more descriptive, by Isaiah Berlin and the second more analytical, by Walter Benjamin. We clarified the Romantic challenge against intellectualist-rationality and its reductionist, empiricist epistemology. According to the objectivist cannon which they eschewed, truth is a lifeless product of decontextualized, disembodied analysis of details of phenomenon, based on cognitive guidance of mind; on the basis of which—applied with the discipline of engineers, technical knowledge might be enhanced without limit; thus assuring maximum Western Progress. About this, the early Romantics said: stop. They argued that this epistemology is limited because of lack of fit with the essence of human being. Rather than mind determined and driven, they argued that human being is the movement of life itself, oriented by the interplay of consciousness and the world. If so, then the function of brain is secondary to the dynamic articulation of the symbolic experience of consciousness. Rather than pointing to something beyond it, this symbolic field is charged by meaning, the appreciation and expression of which defines the process of being conscious, humanly. That critique of rationality proved more complex than the Romantics were equipped to handle. For want of resolution, the problem lay smoldering ever since. This is not to say that the19th century saw no effort to deal with this. Indeed, the social sciences emerged as an effort to handle the practical expression of human symbolic experience as first raised by the Romantics. Unfortunately, once fractured into distinct disciplines, the historical human sciences were unable to resist seduction by reductionist empirical methods of the natural sciences, often leading to their discredit as subjective or ideological. In the mid-20th century, the French social philosopher Maurice MerleauPonty offered what we consider an attractive resolution to the problem raised by the early Romantics. To certify that, in Part 2 of this book, we drew on material principally from three important texts; his Phenomenology of P­ erception

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(M-P, 1962/1945); an essay on Philosophy and Sociology (M-P, 1990/1951b); and a study of Husserl, The Philosopher and his Shadow (M-P, 1990/1959). We ­scrutinized his treatment of the phenomenal creature he called (wo)man-inthe-world: a view of the human actor not as if mind-centered, but as the dialectic expression of bodily-being engaged via historical-consciousness in social experience. Although intended by him as a supplement rather than replacement for it, his treatment of human existence as a meaning appreciating, meaning generating project necessarily challenged the Western cannon of rationality. If valid then either the conventional epistemological cannon would have to be reworked, or else Merleau-Ponty’s work must be treated as art rather than science. This signals a common problem with being original; one necessarily confronts the customary and comfortable. In his case the difficulty was double: rather than reducing his project to a series of arguments, he was obliged to put his proposal on display; transforming his texts into a narrative style more like Proust than Descartes. Merleau-Ponty conceptualized consciousness as a dialectic field, a cauldron of energy generated from the interplay of awareness and action in a social world. He studied this using a historical materialist method, exploring the double dialectic of synchronic and diachronic tensions that animate the presence of consciousness. Taking seriously Merleau-Ponty’s explanation for the nature of human being in the world, led us to reconceptualize the default condition of human consciousness as constant animation by perceptive and expressive experience, dialectically related to prior content of mind as articulated by intellectual—conceptual faculties. Is our treatment of the human condition empty metaphysics? Not if the symbolic domain of which consciousness is the issue is realized materially in the world by meaning laden action and gestures; which from a historical materialist perspective, it is. None the less the sensory invisibility of ­consciousness—necessarily related to its being behind, beneath and before rather than a product of cognitive activity; this fleeting quality renders it difficult to register with laboratory techniques. Compelling evidence of the primacy of this perceptible if unmeasurable symbolic domain is none the less evident in social action, where the meaning is dependent on collectively or intersubjectively established relations. We identify the human-centered register of this field as aesthetic-consciousness. Assuring deployment of the symbolic material of meaning, it is the site from which issues the framework for judgement, decisions, goal oriented action, and above all, creativity.

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Auto-critique Arriving now at the auto-critical stage of our work, we pose three questions. Did we cover the essential of the Early Romantic’s critical problem? Did we successfully unravel Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological method, to expose its potential as resolution for that problem? Did we establish that his mode of resolution is plausible to the extent that human existence is recentered as what we label, aesthetic-consciousness? The Romantics recognized the inability of rational understanding to fully appreciate the quality of beauty in art and more generally, of harmonies and discord in the social world. If the thinking about this from Descartes to Kant was incomplete, some novel approach to understanding (epistemology) was called for. There is no rational approach to creativity. The success of Shakespeare’s literature, Picasso’s art or peaceful existence in a just society cannot be captured in a mathematical algorithm. Tracing that problem to its end led us to engage in an analytic of meaning, as generative intention for the field-force of consciousness. The result of its expression is a constant deployment of human energy aimed at anchoring personal expression in concrete situations of society. Lodged personally, consciousness is dialectically contextual. Its details are framed by ever larger and more encompassing levels of meaning, the most encompassing of all being the préobjective field as developed by Merleau-Ponty.

Meaning: The Material of History

The disposition to meaning imposes frames on events in advance of the objective experience within them and existence entails participation in creation of the world. Intentionality thus conceived configures and manages the web of meanings that establish consciousness; communicated, perpetuated, reinforced by collective processes. Thanks to the play of aesthetic-consciousness it is possible for individuals to reconcile the dialectic tension between what one brings to the world as exertion or self-expression and what one takes in from the world as perception. It is the locus for evaluation of fit of the elements of the social world, including one’s own, based on evaluation of harmonies, conventionally discussed as the good, the true and the beautiful; or their negation: the manipulation, the lie, and the exploitive. The result is political judgement; which is oriented by reciprocities of every nature, justifying the treatment of public judgement as meriting the label, political aesthetics.

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The constitution of each individual consciousness is a specific or local manifestation of the flux of the préobjective field into which everyone is born to be raised. This can be exemplified metaphorically by reference to what occurs when pieces of iron are placed in a magnetic field. Whatever the mixture of prior molecular orientations within them, after passage through the field, the polarity of their molecular structure is reoriented in parallel. Following magnetization, each piece contributes to reinforcing the energy of the field. This occurs internally and invisibly for the objects involved, but the effects can be detected, as each piece is informed by the field force. Although its function and effects are accepted without question, the ultimate explanation for why this occurs remains unaddressed. It is similar for the préobjective field of meaning that defines micro-­ communities. The predisposition to communicate by gesture and sounds, to attribute historical significance to oneself, others and nature, provides the ground for practices of a durable, normative nature, independent of content. Why it emerged in the long-past prehistory of humanity no one can say. Once those capabilities reached a sufficiently developed level, they became transmissible and necessarily had to be, in order for offspring to survive to adulthood. ­Humanization occurs as each new entrant is informed by it, as primary effect of being born into it or as a secondary effect via experiential leaning. Existence within the préobjective field of meaning transforms most humanoid creatures into human beings. The disposition to meaning is not driven by particular objective detail; it is cognitively unmediated resonance with that meaning as the well of energy for social-being. Just as a piece of metal once magnetized can be demagnetized, the local content associated with those informing dispositions can be altered as the communities of meaning shift and evolve; or can shift individually due to moving between micro-communities of meaning. Whether one prefers to consider this as did Jean-Jacques Rousseau or Karl Marx; or as John Dewey or William James; the validity of their diverse approaches for understanding the human condition rests on the premise that there really is a human condition. We are convinced that the conditioning initiative that renders beings human is the préobjective field as Merleau-Ponty developed it. Recentering the essence of human experience from mind to consciousness poses an additional problem due to the immateriality of consciousness. It implies that each of us radiates an intention to meaning, of an open and spontaneous rather than cognitively calculating nature. Merleau-Ponty refers to this quality of being consciously as a presence as absence. This signals what for many laboratory researchers is a mysterious, intolerably ambiguous quality. Aesthetic consciousness is admittedly without fixed dimensions: there can be expansion or reduction in its reach, based on existential experience; with

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associated shifts, often substantial, in the range of phenomenon that it might appreciate or express itself through. As the objective detail that it attends to evolves, the content taken in or constituted becomes available for the intellectual machinery of the mind to take up for conceptual sorting, sifting and classifying; identified as cognitive activity, including what is considered factual memory. Are we right? It is difficult to assess the validity of our postulate about aesthetic consciousness as critical human property. One important criteria of this is non-contradiction among the diverse steps in its development. We believe we meet this standard, since our historical approach imposes a certain consistency to our position, as well as by the fit of key elements of our proposal with the independent work of Merleau-Ponty. Another standard for validation is the practical reach of the framework. It is possible to develop a model with conceptual integrity that has limited practical application or perhaps none at all. We believe we have covered this ground in so far as the faculties of aesthetic-consciousness possess the epistemological reach needed not only to explain the possibility of the assessment of truth as advanced in the empirical sciences, but also allow access to truth of an evaluative or socially constituted nature within communities of meaning. A third consideration is the fit of one’s position with other treatments of the same problem. The most rational, empirical field in the exact sciences that treats the question of consciousness is neurobiology. Not only are findings from that field treated with considerable respect, but its specialists often propose that their explanation for consciousness largely exhausts the question. If so, our proposition is empty. Since the burden of demonstration is ours to assume, we will tackle this issue head-on by a brief review of the study of consciousness by Brain Imaging researchers.

Rational Analytics of Brain

A considerable body of laboratory research has accumulated in the last thirtyyears using brain imaging (bi) techniques to attempt to unravel the events associated with human action. Most bi researchers identify consciousness as linked with brain activity, as if the latter determines the former. Since we argue quite the opposite, this concluding exercise will help illuminate the virtues and limits of each approach. The question is simple, the argument complex: how does our study of aesthetic consciousness fit with the studies of consciousness in brain research? Are we conscious of being in the world because of the workings of brain; or is consciousness as meaning-laden, meaning-seeking worldly presence the

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necessary prerequisite for the technical cognicity of brain? Is the socially constructed world the environment for aesthetic consciousness, which in turn is environment for brain and its bodily disposition; of is brain-guided objective experience the basis for the diverse expressions of consciousness and human action? To explore this question, we focus on an article published in the prestigious review, Neuron, by Dehaene and Changeux (2011): “Experimental and Theoretical Approaches to Conscious Processing”. They propose that dynamic work from within brain, which they model as General Neuronal Workspace (gnw), “gives rise” to conscious activity. Are they right, are we right or are we both right but in a complementary fashion?1 The article opens this way: “Understanding the neuronal architectures that give rise to conscious experience is one of the central unsolved problems of today’s neuroscience….” Thus they attempt to establish “a causal link between subjective conscious experience and measurable neuronal activity.” As we evaluated it, the interpretations drawn from bi research on brain activity related to consciousness incompletely handles the expressive-perceptive ­territory of human experience. We hope to demonstrate that this is because the symbolic quality of conscious-presence limits its detectability by rationalist-­reductionist laboratory methods; which from our side reinforces confidence in its existence and importance. Although Dehaene and Changeux (hereafter referenced as D&C) propose a systems-perspective for explaining the function of brain, they treat the relation between brain and conscious activity as if causally linear; with intention to demonstrate how “…an external or internal piece of information gains access to conscious processing, defined as reportable subjective experience.” The authors are evidently aware that their pivotal claim constitutes an empirical-rationalist intrusion into a realm that is customarily reserved for philosophy. To avoid being seen as naive, they refer to work by a number of philosophers, from Descartes (1569–1650) through William James (1842–1910) to Daniel Dennett (1942–). How convincing is the result? Their global neuronal workspace or gnw model of brain was developed in the 1990s. It is intended to show that rather than a fixed one-to-one correspondence of discrete cortical regions with particular human physical of perceptional actions, the brain functions as a general system, with high 1 Our concentrating on just a few aspects of their work on neuronal activity and consciousness may mislead readers about the enormous laboratory and theoretical work by the ChangeuxDehaene extending back more than thirty years. See for example: (Changeux 2012/2008; 2011; 2005; 1985/1983. Changeux and Dehaene 2008; 1989; Dehaene and Changeux. 2011a; 2011b).

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i­nteractivity of a complex nature among neuronal regions, allowing it to do more than simply map objective details of human experience. Their model specifies brain as … a unique global workspace composed of widely distributed neurons that are strongly connected at long distance by axons; with a series of specialized and modular processes, as perceptual motors of memory, evaluation and attention. changeux 2007

Although the details are not provided about just how this occurs, brain activity is thus postulated as the motor-force for capacities customarily associated with primary consciousness, including evaluation and attention. A difficulty with general systems models is that the results of their application cannot be reduced to a formula. Since Descartes, rationalist science is defined as the establishment of mathematical laws of worldly events; thus systems-oriented work is not universally applauded. Whatever the risk, like D&C, we use a system strategy, but to explain society as a general institutional system, proposing an original {petos} Model intended to do the job (OBrien 2014: Appendix). In a similar fashion, Ilya Prigogine (Prigogine 1968/1962; Nicolis and Prigogine 1977; 1989) used this approach to explain d­ ynamic physical systems in general. Thus we can only applaud, the enthusiasm of Changeux for addressing the functioning of brain with a systems-­theoretical approach. If  they are accurate, the brain exhibits self-­ organizing and emergent behavior of a non-linear nature; allowing for novelty, error, breakdown and repair, depending on circumstances; orienting by an ­internal drive force which like gravity for the cosmos, remains unexplained. By treating brain as system in the way D&C do, is it possible to explain the human capacity to be what Descartes called thinking-things? Probably yes, if brain function is limited to work undertaken in a rationalizing mental ­workshop; but probably no, if one hopes to explain the proactive capacity for judgement and creativity under the socially situated constraints that characterizes human experience as field of action. Carefully avoiding overstating their case about this, they periodically note that “understanding the neural basis of consciousness remains one of the principal enigmas of the cognitive sciences” (Changeux 2007). As for detail, with their laboratory studies, D&C explore “conscious processes as following from cognitive tasks that demand [mental] effort”. This is examined by presenting a stimulus to subjects under a scanner, to which they respond while brain activity is monitored using imaging technology.

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But attention: if the brain is a general system, then what constitutes its environment? General systems are necessarily open; with tensor relations vis-á-vis an operating environment. If the environment for brain is the body, we return again to the largely discounted {body-mind} dualism of Descartes. Nor does it seem reasonable that the world in its raw sense serves as environment for brain, since in spite of rather remarkable internal capacities, brain is bereft of the means for direct access beyond the body. We propose that the necessary mediation between world and brain is provided to humans thanks to aesthetic conscious. From there, as a field of intersubjective meaning, the environment for consciousness is the social context of humanized action, framed by a symbolic web known as society. We cannot expect that bi scanner data will be able to account for this ­symbolic disposition of consciousness as field force of meaning-driven social action. However, even if its detail eludes a reductionist measurement, its generalized presence, as intention toward meaning, must be active within the bi laboratory, as a precondition for the objectivity of what is measured. If we are right, then consciousness of this expanded and fundamental nature intrudes on the details of research protocols, having effects for the data as recorded, which must either be rejected as noise or error, or else be discussed from a humanist rather than technical-empiricist perspective. That lacuna is what interests us about bi research.

Consciousness is More than What You Think

As a first step we offer the following brief critique of 2011 Neuron article by D&C, which we analyze from three fronts: logically, philosophically and historically. In the brief “Introduction” to this article the authors specify the problem: to understand “the neuronal architecture that gives rise to conscious experience” (D&C: 200). The causal direction of influence from brain to conscious-access is stated as a postulate, but is never tested as a hypothesis. What if consciousness as general disposition to meaning occasions objective brain activity rather than the other way around? Then the two parameters (neuronal architecture and conscious experience) presented by D&C as if causally related, are in fact correlates, with each being dependent on a third condition. We believe that a third foundational condition points to the préobjective capacity we identify as aesthetic-consciousness; as valid candidate for covering the ground left unexplained by rationalist-empiricist methods such as those used for bi research. If we are right, then the lines of influence about which D&C are concerned would be related as depicted schematically in Figure  2. The préobjective

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Figure 2  Predisposition of consciousness for neuronal-objective cognition

d­ isposition of aesthetic consciousness would establish the field force within which brain-centered cognitive activity and objectively assessed social experience might co-vary, even if sometimes negatively, depending on details. Early in their Neuron article, D&C differentiate the “conscious state from conscious contents”. There is the “intransitive” use of the term, as “state of consciousness… of wakefullness or vigilance”; and its “transitive” use as “conscious access to and/or conscious processing of a specific piece of information” (D&C: 200). To avoid confusing their readers about the “ambiguous” quality of this key concept, they thus follow the common procedure of slicing it in two, only to leave aside the first use of the terms, to concentrate on the second option. Unlike them, we focus on a vastly enlarged consideration of what they identify as the intransitive facet of consciousness. As we present it, consciousness is not really intransitive at all, but a proactive potential, a humanizing existential force, continuously constituting the foundation for both the worldly action and cerebral cognitive activity. There is nothing objectionable with applying the transitive-intransitive dichotomy to the figure of consciousness. Many interesting terms associated with the human condition are similarly bi-polar constructions. Two examples are: conflict as state of a system and as description of a certain form of process within a system; and similarly with figure of coordination. This important form of interactivity is a bit different from another which is related, namely the double sense of a single word. For instance, in French, the word, apprendre means

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both to teach and to learn; because to teach is a learning process and to learn is a teaching process. Clearly the last alternatives {teach—learn} are related dialectically: neither can be understood without reference to the other. However, the same dialectic principle applies for the double sense of the notions of both conflict and coordination. When we arrive at the question of consciousness as state versus function, it seems logical to assert that those dispositions are also dialectically entwined, rendering it impossible to focus on one without attending to both. The conditioning factor for dialectic action is existence of a system in reference to which the state-versus-functional qualities of given existential ­dispositions can have meaning. In our case, what is the encompassing system that serves as frame of meaning within which the interplay of the two facets of consciousness might be mapped? The environmental problem emerges again: what is the environment for social being if not a community of meaning? In previous sections of this book, we explored Merleau-Ponty’s development of the notion of a préobjective realm: a zone of symbolic potential, common in form—but open in content, for all humans. This is postulated to be the root of intentionality for meaning by which consciousness is constituted; a social-anthropological predisposition to formulate and communicate meaning in a socially legitimate, intersubjectively understandable fashion, based on interdependence in a community of support and opportunity; as necessary prerequisite for personal and collective survival. It is surely true that brain is involved in processing all aspects of consciousness in action: shifting, comparing, filtering content related to it, into and out of memory, with detectable alterations in blood flows in the head recorded by bi technology as this occurs. But without consciousness as state of presence in the world, how might there be concordance between the collective meaning of social action and its immediate objective content? For that to be possible would not consciousness as meaning-resonant disposition need to constitute the frame within which cognitive choice, decision and judgement become rational possibilities? We believe this to be so. In defense of their opposite approach, D&C summarize a considerable number of collateral “experimental studies of the brain mechanisms of consciousness access”; along the way offering a critique of both procedural and interpretive technical issues. The most recently developed laboratory technique in their field, widely used for about twenty years and the method of choice for D&C, is Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). A brain scanner monitors, one flash at a time, the concentration of blood in the various regions of the brain and by that generates a “global image of brain activity evoked by a visible or invisible stimulus, integrated over a few seconds” (D&C: 202). There are other laboratory monitoring techniques that are more useful

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for l­ongitudinal studies—of an admittedly limited temporal length: namely, Event-­Related Potentials (erps) and Magneto-Encephalography (meg). The latter are older methods, dating from the 1960s (D&C: 203). Whatever the technique, the experimental treatment consists most often in variations in visual stimuli or other cognitive tasks such as solving a mathematical problem. To prepare for presentation of their model, they also discuss laboratory studies that are interpreted as demonstrating “higher-level representations of intentions and their expected sensory consequence” (D&C: 207). This level of interpretative significance is needed to justify the later claim that laboratory subjects exhibit self-awareness as meta-consciousness; that during experiments, subjects are conscious not only of the objective task they are asked to confront, but also of themselves in that problem-solving role. Without that, their subjects would be non-consciousness during the experiments; which is not impossible, but would invalidate their claims about conscious access. Even if current research does not justify concluding that brain activity can differentiate conscious-access to objective action from consciousness-of-self, this is the direction that these researchers believe their work is leading. If achieved, that could be interpreted as confirming as initially postulated, that all human action is governed by a “neuronal architectures that gives rise to conscious access”. The evident issue concerning self-consciousness is that it also occurs at two levels. For example, as biomechanical truth governed by brain, a subject may be aware that she has teeth and other oral apparatus with which to consume food. But that level of objective self-consciousness does not deal with the question of the meaning of different menus. To cast the question in the shadow of anthropologist Levy-Strauss, assuming a first level view of self-consciousness, one could explain the mechanics of eating; but not why, for symbolic and intersubjectively founded reasons, peoples differ about which foods are first to be cooked rather than eaten raw.

An Appeal to Social-Philosophy

The laboratory studies discussed by D&C are open to a number of different, potentially contradictory interpretations. To avoid being derailed by theoretical drift that might erode confidence in the integrity of their model, they leave the bi laboratory and enter into the philosophical realm, in search of subsidiary arguments about conscious-access and its relation to brain. Although others are mentioned (Descartes, for example), the major philosophical figure that is drawn on in their article is William James (1842–1910). He appears at three different points in the development of their argument,

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certifying the level of confidence D&C have that his work comforts their own model of conscious activity. Indeed, James has a substantial reputation: he is applauded in the usa for his pragmatism; and his Principles of Psychology (1890) is not only used by D&C to justify citing him as father of that discipline, but the approach he emphasized during his early career is embraced for its radical empiricism. However, the James version of empiricism is not equivalent to the materialist, reductionist epistemology underwriting the studies cited in this article by D&C. With privileged access to sophisticated technology for studying the function of brain, why is it necessary for an empirical research team to seek support for their interpretations from philosophy? Unfortunately, empirical data of the sort generated by laboratory research is largely correlative, resisting causal modeling with certitude. For living systems, there is no way to construct a view of the whole from the study of relations among parts. As pointed out during the 1850s in France by avowed positivist August Comte (1999/1851–1854), without theoretical interpretation, the ease of application of laboratory protocols can quickly yield mountains of uninterpretable eclectic facts. While it is customary to use accepted conceptual perspectives after the facts are gathered, it is preferable to also introduce theory in advance, so as to narrow the field of inquiry and reduce the empirical noise generated along the way. It is not clear what theoretical framework guided the studies by D&C. Merleau-Ponty targeted the same problem. As he saw it, meaning is the pragmatic web of experiential awareness, necessary for being a human in the world. It is préobjective by nature and in action, establishing the frame for consciousness as presence, and subsequent meaningful appreciation of objective factuality. It imposes intention on human engagement for meaning as basis of integration and action. Is it not also the operative pre-disposition for both subjects of laboratory research and the scientists who conduct studies? Repeated use of citations from James was intended by D&C to bridge the logical gap between the data they had access to and the problem of consciousness that interested them. By falling back on this deductive philosophical logic they implicitly acknowledge a limit in the rationalist epistemology that was the critical target for the Early German Romantics; supporting our proposed resolution based on the work of Merleau-Ponty. But then, what of this use of William James? His writings cover vast territory, and what one draws from his work depends on which parts of it one studies. While it is true that he preached in favor of epistemological pragmatism and by that favored radical empiricism; for pragmatic reasons he was not a rationalist of the type that the Early German Romantics set out to counter. In practice he

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was more of a Romantic than not, or perhaps better put, a phenomenological empiricist before the hour. We might recall Isaiah Berlin’s (2013/1999) lectures on Romanticism as discussed in Part 1 of this book. He summarized the three principles of the ration­ alist cannon against which the Romantics militated: that every question has a rational answer; that all answers can be obtained using rationally objective, impersonal technical methods that are universally transmittable; and that the answers to all questions fit with, or at least fail to contradict all other answers. While it is true that in the early work that developed into his Principles of Psychology, James sounded as if highly invested in inductivism, there were already statements of a form that continued to multiply as his thinking matured, indicating a decidedly holistic, meta-theoretical and non-reductionist view of experience and knowledge about that. Do not the following citations suggest that James adhered to a position on truth as meaning, as evident from studies of human initiative and independent of empirical cognitive study? “There is only one indefectibly certain truth… that the present phenomenon of consciousness exists.” Will to Believe james 1897

“Reduced to their most pregnant differences, empiricism means the habit of explaining wholes by parts, and rationalism means the habit of ­explaining parts by wholes.” Confidences of a Psychical Researcher james 1909

Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events. ­Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking “Lecture-VI: Pragmatism’s Conception of Truth.” james 1907

The third section of the D&C paper contains a visual schematic of their gnw Model, representing brain as a general system with five-quadrants of which each is a specialized coordinating sub-system. Based on considerable attention to other laboratory studies, they are confident in identifying the five zones of cerebral activity as: an evaluative system of which central issue is values; a long term system of which central concern is the past; a perceptual system of which central concern is the present; an attention system of which central concern is focusing; and a motor system of which the central concern is the future. Only the last of the five is identified as brain output. (Dehaene, Kerszberg & Changeux 1998).

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As summarized in the following statement, for any actual operation, even if coordination appears to be centered in one of the five neuronal zones, the resources of the entire brain are engaged. The global neuronal workspace (gnw) hypothesis proposes that associative perceptual, motor, attention, memory and value areas interconnect to form a higher-level unified space where information is broadly shared and broadcast back to lower-level processors. D&C: 209

Figure 3 (below), is our representation of the D&C five domain model of brain as work-space, redesigned to indicate a temporal movement from past through the present into the future. We impute a dynamic to their model of cerebral activity in keeping with human being in movement. Although they lay it out somewhat differently, the important issue for us is that the entire brain system is internal to the physical body. This points to the perennial question of mind: how does it gain access to world? The evident solution is that brain activity is linked to historically materialized action thanks to the real-time functioning of humans in the social world. If not, what explains the connection between what subjects are doing when their brain is being scanned and what the

Figure 3  Global neuronal workspace redesigned: Five dynamic brain subsystems. Brain model after Dehaene and Changeaux, 2011

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c­ omputers harvest as graphic representations of blood flow intensities in the various regions of the superior cortex? Temporalizing the issue shifts attention from the technical question of the structure of brain to the operational one of human functioning in the world. Other investigators from their field have also proposed unitary descriptions of brain function, one way or another reified as consciousness action in the world. D&C mention the four most popular of these functional images of brain as: “supervisory system”; or “serial processing system”; or “coherent assembly formed by re-entrant or top-down loops in the context of the maintenance of invariant representations of the body/world through reafference”; or as “global workspace for information sharing [using] the theater metaphor… of consciousness as a narrow scene that allows a single actor to diffuse his message.” They discuss each of these images, with accompanying documentation linking each of the four with prior research. D&C then attempt to establish that their gnw Model provides a synthesizing description of the functional-structure of brain which takes in all four of those most accepted images. By that seamless integration of perspectives, requiring rejection of the truth of none of them, they offer additional backing for their model. Furthermore, it fits with the rational cannon, assuring that every empirical truth, established by an objective and universally method, shall not be in conflict with any other. None the less, arriving at that level of generalization for their model ­required a further shift of registers: from discussion of its heuristic utility for understanding the opaque inner workings and hidden mechanisms of consciousaccess by brain, to its dynamic reification as structure and process: effectively arguing that their model is a valid typological layout of brain, with particular symbolic links and iterative actions that not only control the performance of the human body, but serve the same orienting function for consciousness. In functional terms, this suggests that body experience and consciousness are unified in brain.

Consciousness vs Conscious-Access

Searching additional support for their five-domain model, D&C also reference James in a discussion of what they label as the supervisory system of brain. ­Intending greater precision about what that integral cerebral function is, the only figure they specify is consciousness. But, they do not consider supervisory consciousness as equivalent to conscious access, linked to objective details human experience. The point of their citation of James, then, is to replace a

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f­ unctional argument of consciousness with an evolutionary argument: that in the course of long-past history, consciousness came into human being secondary to brain as they model it. Thus the presumed utility for them of the following “words of William James”; from Chapter 5 of his Principles of Psychology (1860): “Consciousness appears as an organ added for the sake of steering a nervous system grown too complex to regulate itself” (D&C: 209). On face value, that claim seems valid: that a certain elaborate development of a nervous system in living creatures was probably needed to allow the possibility of consciousness. For instance, elementary creatures such as shrimp are bereft of consciousness as we human experience it. But, that is not to say that nervous system complexity rather than consciousness accounts for the advantages that distinguishes the human race from other living species. Importantly, James did not say that fully mature, complex, higher cerebral brain—of the sophisticated nature represented by the D&C brain model, was necessary for human consciousness to arise. We do not judge that to have been an oversight on his part. Rather, it would appear that use of this citation from James led D&C to read more into the referenced material than is there. Admittedly, the texts of James cover vast territory, with subtle shifts in attention not only through his years, but depending on what stimulated particular compositions. From our study of his work, it seems misleading to suggest that he intended to say that consciousness is reduced to the status of a philosophic second, derivative of some more fundamental nervous system center of control; namely, brain. Specifically, we direct attention to his Gifford Lectures, given in Edinburgh in 1901–02. There, his position seems to comfort our view of the priority of consciousness rather than their view of the primacy of brain. If you have intuitions at all, they come from a deeper level of your nature than the loquacious level which rationalism inhabits. Your whole subconscious life, your impulses, your faiths, your needs, your divinations, have prepared the premises, of which your consciousness now feels the weight of the result; and something in you absolutely knows that that result must be truer than any logic-chopping rationalistic talk, however clever, that may contradict it… Our impulsive belief is always what sets up the original body of truth and our articulately verbalized philosophy is but its showy translation into formulas. The unreasoned and immediate assurance is the deep thing in us, the reasoned argument is but a surface exhibition. Instinct leads, intelligence does but follow. james 1902

James does not model human being as we do, nor include the term préobjectivefield as did Merleau-Ponty. Yet, what else is one to make of his reference to

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Figure 4  Consciousness: Expresses bodily being

intuitions and instinct; as the source of our impulsive belief as what always sets up the original body of truth; about which our articulately verbalized philosophy is but its showy translation into formulas?2 If we read James correctly and accept the structure of brain as D&C model it, how might we avoid supposing that its relations with the world of social action is mediated by a more or less autonomous and world-defining consciousness? If so, Figure 4 would better represent the system that they discuss; with the body as interior aspect of human being, including interactively, brain; then with consciousness mediating the human relation with the social world.

The Risk of Systemic Exuberance

Although we encourage expansive thinking, since we confront it ourselves, we are particularly sensitive to the risk of intellectual overreach when proposing a comprehensive general theory of the type discussed by D&C. Scholarly 2 James (1902) titled this text, Varieties of Spiritual Experiences. A self-avowed agnostic, there was nothing religious about his use of the term spiritual. He insisted on the power of non-­ objective consciousness, as immediately given source of the awareness and necessity of meaning and harmonies.

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­ urgatory is full of committed researchers who have climbed the orderly steps p in the generalization of their favored perspective, only to discover that the top rung of their learning-ladder collapses due to intellectual overburden. G.W.F. Hegel (1770–1831) is often cited as the last great systems theorist: he proposed an integrated theory that wrapped together human being, ideas, society and historical movement. Those who support his basic thesis rarely agree on just what he meant, and those who claim to understand his program, tend to reject its self-announced totality. Hegel himself was plagued by this quandary, reportedly sighing on his death-bed, the only person who ever understood my work was my best friend, and even he did not really understand it. He is used today as a standard of reference for social modeling, but only on an as-needed basis. Nearly two centuries later, Talcott Parson (1902–1979), the Post-WWII incarnation of the discipline of sociology in the us, for which he founded the department at Harvard, saw his retirement surprisingly short of accolades for the way he hauled his famous agil Model (Parsons 1956; 1973) out every time anyone asked him to speak. A century earlier, August Comte (1798–1857), who not only founded the discipline but coined the term, sociology, repeatedly tried to kill himself by jumping into the Seine River near the Sorbonne in Paris because by the end, he had become so determined about this science of society as the pinnacle discipline of all scholarly undertakings, that he couldn’t get a job, was reduced to survive off the charity of his friends and forced to deliver his lectures in vacant Paris fire stations. The ignominious fame of grand theorists points to a perplexing question about scholarship: why the skepticism each time a researcher sets out to propose a general framework covering important but otherwise disparate details of social experience? It may be just another issue of power. Galileo was nearly torched for proposing an alternative to Copernicus; and Marx was chased about Europe for proposing an alternative to German hereditary imperialism and the capitalist political-economy that it underwrote. Evidently the acceptability of a theoretical generalization depends on who benefits from the comprehensive view thus profered. While Einstein clearly invalidated Newton, nobody says a word; and had various parties—Steven J. Gould most famously,3 not worked to patch over the cracks, the critique 3 One of the contributions of Gould in collaboration with Eldredge (1972) that bears on this argument about consciousness and brain is the notion of “punctuating equilibria”. Rather than a long regularly rising evolutionary slope from bacteria to brain, it is likely that evolution followed a track of rapid organic alterations and reorganizations, followed by long periods of stasis; one of which we humans are probably experiencing today. In the process, it is far

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­riddled evolutionary model of Darwin would probably already have been relegated to the archives. Steven Hawkins Big Bang Theory of the universe, explaining why the world is as it is, because of what occurred clear back at the first second of time, is surely an imagination stretching case of mythological wisdom, which none the less generates enormous speaking fees and book contracts. As for The Theory of Justice, by neo-liberal economist John Rawls, few question it even if the justpractice it supports results in a situation where the heads of the twenty-five largest New York hedge funds earn more than all the kindergarten teachers in the us taken together. Freud is a tough case: since there is nothing materially dangerous about taking him seriously, he is difficult to discount; yet his revolutionary theory of personality challenges conservatives since the political equivalent of neurosis is alienation and to discuss that might require thinking differently about Western democracy. One alternative to denigrating each general theory on its own grounds is simply to deny the possibility of a unifying view of reality, no matter what its content or reach. Perhaps the most determined effort in that direction since Nietzsche is found in the work of the globe-trotting French intellectual, Alain Badiou. Although he would object to it being said that he has a perspective, he has one none the less. Its main pillar is the notion of event. Accordingly, everything that happens is an event, which due at least in part to the endless ­shifting of time, assures that like proverbial snowflakes, each event is unique. If so, beyond that general truth, no more detailed general categorization is possible, and thus no general theory either. For Badiou (2015; 2002/1988), as unique happening, every event is thus revolutionary, or else it never occurs. There is a more or less important before and after for all events, with existence a matrix of entwined events, punctuated by ubiquitous revolutionary occurrences. By our formalization, the evident theoretical quality of this perspective is manifest, even if he denies the possibility of theory. Yet if we take him seriously about the inexistence of the one or unity in the sense Hegel discussed that, the political consequences are striking. If he is right, then there is no ultimate grounding, benchmark situation or condition in reference to which the validity of particular research findings might be evaluated or the possibility of a better world or human progress might be reckoned. This reduces truth to its announcement. It is here that Badiou finds ­comfort in Nietzschian nihilism. Yet he overlooks the aesthetic presence implicit in Nietzsche’s worldly wanderings, which it must be recalled was from unlikely that consciousness as we discuss it arrived as a form of living presence long before—and as an enabling precondition for, cognitive process of brain.

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a­ ssociated with a forlornness rather than abject rejection of politics. (Badiou 2015/1992–93; 2002/1988). Whatever its rightness, were we to endorse the position of Badiou, we would never have undertaken the research of which this book is the report. On the other hand, were we only Nietzschian, we might well continue out work, but pessimistically. Since we are neither, we will continue, and optimistically. For those who hope to take systems-thinking seriously, the key is not to establish that sets of correlated facts fit a model, but that there is a fundamental world-pertinent energy source that explains the system and its categories, as a system. Is it sensible to argue that even if internally systematic, brain-power generates the field force that drives social systems and renders them coherent? Alternatively, if consciousness might drive the social system, it too must be a system in its own right. If so, there must be a unifying energy source that is the origin of its central tendencies and establishes its frontiers. We argue both that consciousness as we define it plays that world-generating role, and that the energy available to it is generated dialectically by the productive relations that weave together individuals and social groups. If so, the symbolic links which carry that energy are not, in the first instance, electro-impulses between synapses in brains and their extensions into body limbs, but in the fabric of productive relations in which individuals are engaged. Having been born into a human community—which is a system of productive relations of meaning and existence, each of us is a socially constituted consciousness. We are products of that nature, well before we might take up the abacus and count. Consciousness draws energy from two sources beyond itself; otherwise ­entropy will result. One source is the brain-centered body with which it is associated and the other is the social world in which its bodily-being is submerged. Both play a part in the constitution of consciousness, with the dialectic relations between them centered in the presence as absence of its social world; explaining the shimmering flickers with which the private life of human being is experienced; the material report about which is commonly referred to as emotion. When the result is in aesthetic equilibrium, then inner and social life is balanced; when not, there is dissonance. The content of consciousness thus has two masters: the intellectual-conceptual regulative system guided by brain and the expressive-perceptive presence of worldly forces. In events of acute tension, the rule of the world wins out over brain; and when consciousness finds that intolerable, there is alienation. Still there is freedom of consciousness, as the recurrent modifying of ­attitudes to its past and possibilities. Always active, aesthetic consciousness performs to support and modify the cognitive platform sustained by brain; and performs also in the world, with nature, others in society through time, to formulate, reform or revolutionize a social world.

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While it is possible that the originating energy for consciousness is bodilybrain power, we think not. We argue that initiating potential runs in the other direction: social world, to and through consciousness, to brain. To start with brain would imply its being self-constituting and self-sustaining; capable of generating its own meaning field, with that energy exclusively dependent on its own internal interaction; its biology. As a totality unto itself, there would be no world beyond brain and it would be pure subjectivity. Debate about the autonomy of brain is often framed by the thought experiment of a brain in the vat. First discussed formally by the American Hillary ­Putnam (2004/1981), this is a modern elaboration of the possibility raised by Descartes. If we have only mind or brain to rely on as basis for judging truth from false ideas, what if we are overpowered by the equivalent of a malicious devil that tricks us constantly? Descartes was not a cognitive empiricist and thus had to advance a purely formal argument against that possibility. As discussed in his Metaphysical Metalations text (Descartes 2004/1647), his much debated solution for fail-safe intellectual judgement was based on the premise that we were created by god, that god’s continuous presence inspires our thinking full time, that god is good, and thus there is no way that god would ever trick us into thinking a falsehood was true. Putnam raised the problem in more abstract and cognitively modern terms. To summarize, he supposed autonomous brain power for being is a contradiction in terms. He decided that this would result in history-free mind; a condition both unimaginable and unreasonable. Historicity is essential for the constitution of life and this comes from real experience in a dynamic, ever changing world by an entity capable of resonating with it. Therefore, mind cannot function as if an autonomous brain-in-a-vat, but must have direct access to worldly experience. As with Descartes before him, Putnam’s use of the notion of mind occupies the place we attribute to consciousness and not that of brain as treated empirically in bi studies. An opponent to Putnam’s position was another American, Daniel Dennett (1981; 1992) who argued that consciousness is the pure product of physical and cognitive processes. Dennett is a radical material evolutionist and avid reductionist neuroscientist, willing to argue that moral sentiments are evolutionary residue along with all other human qualities. Unsurprisingly, Dehaene and Changeux cite Dennett in support of their position, while we would prefer the view point of Putnam in support of ours. Not pushing the argument about autonomy of brain to the extreme of exhibiting a vat-like existence, while D&C insist that the world exists, they do not represent it in their model. This leaves their treatment of brain bereft of a meaningful external referent. How is brain energized? Either via a tireless god in the machine, as this form of hypostatized self-sufficiently has been identified

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since Aristotle discussed it in reference to classic Greek theater; or else brain is fully organic, exhibiting a self-fertilizing, ever growing capacity enriched by the biochemistry of enzymes. Under either of those scenarios, bereft of external links, brain development would be limited to recombinant development, without the capacity of novelty, creativity or originality; rendering the notion of human freedom, empty. By leaving out both work-done on the world and meaning, yet complying with the standards of formal exactitude that is the mark of intellectualist-­ rationalist science, the D&C brain-system model exemplifies the target of criticism behind the Early German Romantic movement; as well as signals an opening for the phenomenological proposal of the man-in-the-world at the center of Merleau-Ponty’s research. As we adopt his view of perceptual or historical consciousness, there is support for the postulate that the principle (or energy source) orienting human being is the meaning (as value) drawn from the préobjective field of worldly experience; as taken in (similar as intention but variable in content) by ­historical-consciousness (of individuals) via the {perceptive—expressive} or apperceptive faculties; with that value matrix serving internally (and stochastically) to frame brain-system activity, of the {intellectual—conceptual} or rational faculties; as guide for both will-guided and existentially open social behavior. This lattice of forces and relations is schematically summarized in Figure 5; emphasizing a particular order—but not a hierarchy, among relations between world, consciousness and brain. Figure  5 depicts a macro-system treatment of human experience, in which an expanded view of consciousness plays the pivotal role. We provide a society-down-to-individual model of human cognitive experience, mediated by ­consciousness; as alternative to the brain-centered, inside-out model of ­cognitive action as determining the treatment of the images as taken by ­consciousness from the world. Recalling the distinction raised by D&C (2011) between the intransitive versus transitive treatment of consciousness; while they focus on consciousness in its task solving or transitive sense, our interest is with the consciousness as state of intransitive presence, linked to being in a world as social-construction. Beginning with the world of action as we do, receding to the level of brain activity as originating force, is unthinkable. Instead, conscious presence as ongoing functioning is a performative not unlike that of the ever-beating heart. It is intrinsic to humanized life with no additional rational explanation needed by the mind to assure its ongoing functioning. From that point of view, what brain attends to by its cognitive workings is secondary to consciousness as continuous expression and perception for experience in the social world. As a

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Figure 5  Social World → Préobjective Field → Aesthetic Consciousness → Mental Cognition

general-systems perspective, this justifies the chain of influences from exterior world through consciousness to the interior of human being, rather than the other way around. As pointed out in our opening Chapter, this claim fits with the work of a number of classic contributors to the development of sociology including Marx, Durkheim, Comte and Bergson. It also accords with the recent call by Burawoy (2005a; 2005b) for sociology to reawaken its roots for the study of society as social complex unto itself. Our treatment of individual social experience accords with that call. While not validating our position, it shifts the burden of critic to those who argue otherwise. Merleau-Ponty refers to this as concern with social-man. As we have elaborated his model, even if carried and expressed as atomistic individually, our treatment of aesthetic-consciousness supposes this to identify the least bit of social organization.

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Intuition and Public Choice

While neuroimaging study of brain has become a vast field aimed at determining how its operation is associated with cognitive tasks related to action, ­perception and thought, the direction of influence between brain and worldlyaction remains unspecified. Although this may change, with current laboratory protocols, it is not possible to stimulate consciousness intention at the level of brain at time one, then observe predictable forms of worldly response at time two. Rather the interaction is assed correlatively, leaving open the possibility of a third level of human capacity that explains both the historical development of brain action and the socially oriented action of humans in the real world. We take that ambiguity as reason to believe that some primal form of conscious presence is at work; call it perceptual or historical consciousness as Merleau-Ponty described it; or aesthetic-consciousness as we label it. We represented this possibility in Figure  2; consistent with the way he saw evidence for it in linguistic studies. When one would like to study language following the rigorous methods [of empirical science], one must first of all abandon the pré-scientific or animists conceptions that represent each language like an organism or like an entity of the reason for which evolution could only make manifest little by little the invariable essence. One is thus led to treat language like a thing and to discover the interlaced laws that can explain the facts of language. But language like behavior hides out from scientific treatment. M-P 1996a/1966:95

The debate is not just about language but about the nature of the drive force behind the events that establish this capacity and the others allowing human engagement in the social world. Returning to the figures developed by Durkheim about social facts, what explains the possibility for pure symbolic, normative material to exude the qualities of externality and constraint which channel the behavior of groups of human beings? Circumscribing communities of meaning, normative limits on or motivations for particular patterns of behavior really do establish moral boundaries of the social world. Why does that occur? This is not to deny the importance of socio-anthropological variations in the content of social structures. Woody Allen – the American, really is b­ othered by the fact that everyone in England drives on the wrong side of the street. Surely there are external, technical explanations for socially patterned behavior. But

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what of subtler symbolic forces of expression such as the home-court advantage for athletic teams; it is difficult to deny the reality of this sort of social force, yet equally difficult to link it to positive law or rules of mind. Why do Westerners in India, for example, sense a baffling difference in the drive force of events, leading most to conclude that they do not understand what is going on? The same tends to occur for first time Indians in Europe; yet why so? What is the apparently universal disposition that explains the responsiveness to normative forces, including the response of one’s ignorance about their content under ambiguous circumstances? It is apparent that humans operate due to the use of a radar-of-meaning, which can be jammed or undergo a filtering brown-out little different to what can occur for air traffic on a stormy night. However, given the lack of a brain-centered control tower, how is this possible at the human level? If normative behavior is materially real, then the intersubjective quality of the dispositions needed to respond to its force ought to leave traces in laboratory findings that remain unexplainable by the standards of the rational cannon. Indeed, as summarized in the list below, there is a great deal of bi research that raises issues related to epiphenomenal or intuitional dynamics, the rational implausibility of which evaporates when treated as indicators of the power of the non-intellectualist precocity of consciousness. The following notices associated with specific brain related studies of consciousness demonstrate this phenomenon: • Focusing on “evidence-based and intuition-based self-knowledge” u ­ sing “functional magnetic resonance imaging in an fMRI study” (Liberman 2004); • Proposing a “neruoanatonatomical basis” of “intuition and insight” (McCrea 2013); • Revealing “intuitive foreknowledge” concerning non-local events suggesting a “theory of intuition” (Bradley 2007); • Identifying a “cognitive substrate of social intuition” using “neuroimaging, neurophysiological, and neuroanatomical data” (Liberman 2000); • Evaluating “intuitive foreknowledge”, using “measures of heart rate variability (hrv)” (Rezaei et al. 2014); • Suggesting “intellectual, emotional and spiritual intelligence” based on “electrophysiological evidence” (La Pira & Gillin 2006); • Assessing “motivated reason”, involving “judgements” related to “political issues”, in a “functional neuroimaging” study using fMRI technique (Western et al. 2006).

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Surely there are variations in the technical and laboratory work involved in these studies, as well as differences in the theoretical acumen of the research teams. None the less, studies of this sort provide evidence of concern about laboratory events that are unexplainable in the frame of the accepted cannon of intellectual-rational epistemology. It seems unquestionably certain that there are forms of activity by consciousness which are decidedly extra-rational in form. These studies generate evidence of a broad spectrum of human experience that is difficult to account for without accepting our postulate of aestheticconsciousness (or its equivalent) as the silent partner in the laboratory. Yet published announcements of detection of what appears to be intuition, or a cognitive substrate of motivated reason, spiritual intelligence, insight and selfknowledge, etc. tend to generate a storm of critique, particularly if they are by neuroscientists attempting to specify a cerebral footprint that is responsible for it. Rather than reject the data as unfounded, is it not possible that this indicates an epistemological lacuna related to rational empiricism that is too serious to ignore? An ironic example of controversy arose when a group of researchers used bi techniques to study brain activity among subjects where the experimental manipulation consisted of campaign pictures of political candidates for 2008 us presidential election. Included were still images, video clips with verbal content and label slides linked with Republican, Democratic and Independent candidates. At the time, because of its current-event appeal, it was decided to publish a cursory report of the study as an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times (11nov2007), entitled, “This is Your Brain on Politics”.4 The authors reported, that “while in the scanner”: Voters sensed both peril and promise in party brands. When [shown] the words Democrat, Republican and Independent, they exhibited high levels of activity in the part of the brain called the amygdala, indicating anxiety. The two areas in the brain associated with anxiety and disgust— the amygdala and the insula—were especially active when men viewed Republican.

4 The brain-politics article was contributed by Marco Iacoboni, Joshua Freedman and ­Jonas Kaplan of the University of California, Los Angeles, Semel Institute for Neuroscience; ­Kathleen Hall Jamieson of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania; and Tom Freedman, Bill Knapp and Kathryn Fitzgerald of fkf Applied Research.

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Beyond the issue of political branding, there was a gender related response, the content of which is also fascinating: Emotions about Hillary Clinton are mixed. … When viewing images of her, … voters exhibited significant activity in the anterior cingulate ­cortex, an emotional center of the brain that is aroused when a person feels c­ ompelled to act in two different ways but must choose one. It looked  as  if  they were battling unacknowledged impulses to like Mrs. Clinton. Taking the form of a letter to the Times, the backlash generated by this last ­referenced study from other members of the bi research community was rapid. Signed by eighteen neuroscientists from major American and European universities the rebuttal was none the less ambiguous. At first reading it ­castigates  as outrageous this brain study of politics; yet that was tempered, since due to the unspoken vast power of their science it is not desirable to ­suggest that any ­aspect of human experience is beyond the reach of their ­empirical tools. At  one point they rebuked the use “… of a brain imaging study to draw  ­conclusions about the current state of the American electorate”; ­being particularly incensed with the claim “that it is possible to directly read the minds of potential voters by looking at their brain activity while they view presidential candidates.” However, their terminal judgement was more measured: As cognitive neuroscientists, we are very excited about the potential use of brain imaging techniques to better understand the psychology of political decisions. But we are distressed by the publication of research in the press that has not undergone peer review, and that uses flawed reasoning to draw unfounded conclusions about topics as important as the presidential election (Aron, Badre. Brett, et al. 2007). This politics-via-brain study continued to cause waves and a year later justified another brief article, this time in Scientific American (21april2008) by Michael Shermer: “Metaphors, Modules and Brain-Scan Pseudoscience”. The central issue for him was evident from the title of the article: “The Brain Is Not Modular: What fMRI Really Tells Us.” Shermer expressed the common but not universal view that it is impossible to generate a brain-map indicating which part of the cortex is responsible for what form of worldly action. His recommendation, in line with the work of Dehaene and Changeux, is that, “instead of mental

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module metaphors, let us use neural networks” when coding bi cortex scan research data. Why not allow for the possibility that what we call aesthetic-judgement is the basis of political evaluation as discussed in the above case? Is not political sensitivity but a special instance of a general disposition to assess meaning of social engagements, bearing on the honesty and forthrightness of others, including their possibilities and projects? If it is possible to judge when one’s parent is authentic versus misrepresenting the truth, why would that capacity not be extended to other important figures of one’s life world—such as political candidates?5 Curiously, judgement of this sort that concerns us is associated with what for a rationalist is ambiguity; because dissonance is a feature of the true expression of commitment to possibilities that are évolutive rather than fixed in advance. The most ubiquitous form of such judgement in everyday life is related to love; which is an open assessment of an authentic resonance at the level of relational meaning that by its nature defies rational specification. When it comes to love, one hears that, there is no explaining taste. Is it not the same in politics, or how to dance? Whether speaking of money or love—or whom to vote for, the basis of evaluation is always incomplete. Certainty is impossible, yet commitment to ambiguous possibilities is the essential step in confronting and then going beyond the indeterminate quality of an open future as alternative to going mad.6 5 The claim that the search light of consciousness exudes a moral vector of humanist value as drive force of good judgement has been raised in the us since its early days by the likes of Ralph Waldo Emerson who discussed it reference to intuitional issues related to what he considered “Self-Reliance and “The Over-Soul” (Emerson, 1990/1841); as did John Dewey (1975/ 1909) in his discussion of Moral Principles in Education. Although yet to be taken up seriously as a question of public policy, both of them argued that not only is the moral vector a real possibility at the level of consciousness for everyone but that the institutional apparatus of society is a strong influence on the direction that it takes and the content it supports. 6 Aesthetic-consciousness is presented as a dialectic expression and appreciation that allows individual resonance with the structures of meaning that constitute the social world. Words such as balance, integrity and fit, or in the political world, ethics, are associated with it. Due to human plasticity, like every other human disposition, this capacity can be overridden, distorted, mislead in its realization; explaining among other things why the political confrontations of communities can be the source of intense personal responses. In the public sector, this capacity is very easily affected by persistently propagated ideology, even if the end is dehumanizing in effect. Beginning two centuries ago and reaching a high-point by the end of the 20th century, the skill at manipulating public images has become the business of communication specialists, who work for political figures in pursuit of selective mix of clarity and confusion, of fear and confidence; in response to which it is a sign of sanity based on the

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Social Cognition

We close this assessment of bi research and the nature of consciousness with a brief examination of findings that bear on the issue of social cognition. This concerns what goes on in the brain as individuals confront the social world of meaning, as a series of events involving self and others; in which it is necessary to enter physically or verbally for interactive relations in keeping with the ubiquitous systems and structures that frame social life. Study of this genre of phenomenon in a bi laboratory is necessarily approached on the oblique, since as we have attempted to demonstrate, to the extent that there is important human terrain that is driven by préobjective disposition for meaning, its evidence will necessarily be opaque in reductionist experiments. None the less, as exemplified in the study we will discuss next, if one begins with bi research of the usual form and then removes the variance accounted for in keeping with usual empirical protocols, the unexplained residue—in dark-matter fashion, consists of logical-meaningful material, the ­appreciation of which requires leaving the domain of reductionist science. That other domain, we contend, is accessible for humans thanks to the exercise of préobjective consciousness, or at least its equivalent; which is why the following study comforts our postulate. As published in the journal, Consciousness and Cognition, Schilbach et al. (2013) report on an exercise aimed at determining what the brain is up to when at rest. Using a secondary analysis design, they took twelve studies previously conducted in the same German bi laboratory, using equivalent fMRI protocols. The usual point of such research is to use bi scans to assess brain activity when certain tasks-types are performed by research subjects. However as routine procedure, the initial step in the protocol is to generate scan-data of the brain at rest. This serves as the baseline for comparison of the condition of the brain under load, later when the experimental task is being performed. Schilbach et al. posed an obvious but until then only vaguely appreciated question: is anything significant going on during the warm-up period? In fact, the brain is never at rest; were it to be, the individual would be dead. Assessing the scan-data from those twelve studies, in reference to other work reported in the literature, they felt confident in speculating on what the consciousness

well-oiled use of the capacities of aesthetic consciousness that the clairvoyant confront a disturbing agitation, not unlike what occurs to children in schizophrenic families. Persistence of public order at any level is the ultimate testimonial to the power of this predisposition, without which human social existence would surely have degraded long ago into barbary.

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of their subjects was doing, when the brain was not engaged in concrete problem solving. Considerable work has established the minimum threshold of brain activity needed to sustain bio-organic life, such as of individuals in a comatose state. As with the resting pulse of trained athletes, that level of minimum brain activity is very low. However, when subjects are brought into a research laboratory, even if their pulse rate remains at resting level, their brain activity tends to be not only elevated, but more so than when they are confronted with specific cognitive tasks. In spite of physical immobility something is going on consciously, in association with which the brain is churning away. Is there more to this than only pretest anxiety? The question of content thus arose. Is the resting state of consciousness random, in the sense of radically subject related, perhaps linked to worry about the procedure; or is it patterned in some fashion that renders it capable of socioanthropological interpretation across subjects and circumstances? A ­ ssuming normal conditions of physical and mental health, is there a common pattern of brain activity, signaling that a particular form of latent problem is a primary generator of mental activity while at rest for most everyone? From careful study of the brain-scan profiles available from those twelve studies, compared to what has been learned more generally from other research in the field, the Schilbach team evaluated the benchmark data as indicating that while nominally at rest, the research subjects were spontaneously generating hypothetical solutions for problems related to “social cognition”; associated in a generic fashion with the challenges of being engaged humanly in the world. In other writings, we label this as ambient reflection, often occurring during sleep, generating possible scenarios related (more or less effectively and realistically) to what was, is or might be in the social world. For some individuals this is so intense that it takes the form of obsession, largely blocking task oriented concentration. Whether one wishes to approach this using Freudian figures is immaterial. More important is the paradoxical observation by Schilbach team that the brain is more active at rest than when working; probably because task conduct or focused problem solving only involves selected elements of brain potential, allowing the rest of the cortex to cool down. Which may be why reading a formula mystery book is relaxing for the brain, while deeper sleep allows ambient reflection to surge forth, often with unnerving effects because of full scale brain engagement. Referring to it as the “default” mode of consciousness, and discussed in terms common to research of this type, Schilbach et al. propose that social cognition involves a mix of self-reflection and social reasoning; that the ­normal

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­condition of consciousness is to be actively considering the “social dimensions” of “self-consciousness”. This might take the form of reconsidering what one did or said or how one appeared in some particular past situation, or with the equivalent attention to potential future events. Everyday examples of this are endless: such as the ambient consideration of how one was composed when encountering the boss yesterday, or speculating on how best to be composed should an encounter with a subordinate occur tomorrow. The process is open and virtually boundless, harboring the potential for pathological capture of an individual’s state of being. Its importance for us is that this work helps clarify how self-concept is an evolving form of self-perpetuating intention, aimed at social action; and reciprocally that social contextual forces are continually participating in the constitution of self as logical-meaningful state of worldly being as consciousness. Although they do not use the language, this bi research seems to underwrite the sociological view of self as a social construction. The notion of self is then understood as an ongoing event of humanized being, shaped by the dialectic interaction of self as subjective condition of awareness and social world as s­ etting for relational action. However conceived, Schilbach et al. stress the practical utility of the generation of socially related scenarios that apparently goes on with consciousness while the brain is at rest: … integrated internal representations of the outside world and of their organism can be regarded as the central function of human self-­ consciousness offering important advantages for survival such as planning, decision-making and behavioral control in response to external demands. schilbach et al. 2013: 458

The implications drawn from their research reinforce our claim about the force of aesthetic-consciousness: … human cognition is necessarily situated, embedded in a given context. The outside world with its environmental affordances provides such a context which we align ourselves to. Representing this basic relation between oneself and the world has been suggested to provide a minimal sense of self…. With regard to higher-order cognition, however, we would like to emphasize that the notion of situatedness draws attention to the important social dimension of self-consciousness with self being co-­constituted by the other. schilbach et al. 2013: 459

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As they described it, social cognition is admittedly complex, “involving self— other-distinction and self—other-exchange”. Along the way they define ­“social-action” as “self-other exchange”; or the “intersubjectivity” allowing ­“exchange of information between persons for the purpose of communication.” (Schilbach et al. 2013: 459) Our treatment of intersubjectivity is more general: as both the disposition allowing for social exchange relations and as identifying the generic quality of such relations. None the less, they contend that their secondary analysis justified the rather bold observation that socially oriented scenario-generating appears to be the “default mode” of cerebral activity “at rest”. The ability to both model and/or simulate the external world must be described as a particularly advantageous feature of human cognition as it allows us to resort to sources of self-generated information which help to produce highly adaptive responses to external demands. We suggest that these capacities are particularly useful when navigating the everchanging social world. From there comes a crucial observation: that, …given the above described evidence we suggest that human beings might have a predisposition for social cognition entertaining thoughts about oneself and others to which they return at rest. schilbach et al. 2013: 460

We thus find this bi research team acknowledging evidence of a social ­“predisposition”, about which they can speculate, without explanation for its source; but which is localized in what they consider consciousness. Furthermore, they treat this disposition as if causally independent of, but correlatively related with brain activity. It apparently leads research subjects to take others into account and engage in the social world; as frame for specific cognitive tasks of a more instrumental or objective nature. While this research team offers no suggestion for how to explain it, we argue that the source of this predisposition is the préobjective field discussed by Merleau-Ponty. Independent of the potential hyperbole associated with all summary statements, the following claim by Schilbach et al. suggests that not only is social cognition as they elaborate it a “core” trigger for cerebral activity, but its value is inestimable for survival and well-being: Rather than passively waiting to be activated by sensory input, it is proposed that the ds [Default System] of the human brain is continuously

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busy generating predictions about the present and the relevant future by deriving analogies from sensory information that link input with representations in memory. Such models can, therefore, help to integrate selfreferential information, facilitate perception and cognition and provide a social context or narrative in which events become personally meaningful. … Analyses of freely forming conversations, in fact, demonstrate that human beings have a tendency to entertain social thoughts, i.e., thoughts about oneself or other people, and that they spend a considerable amount time during waking life to engage in these activities. schilbach et al. 2013: 463

Small group specialist should thus take comfort that bi research confirms the material existence of their unit of analysis; the group really does appear to be more than only an epiphenomenon generated by the research community. Not wishing to overwork the point, the conclusion for this article is striking: We propose, first, that the overlap of the neural signatures of resting states and of social cognition implies that human beings have a predisposition for engaging in social cognition as the pervasive and default mode of cognizing to which they return when not faced with a given task, and, second, that this predisposition to understand the world first and foremost as a social environment is implemented in humans in the robust pattern of intrinsic brain activity which has come to be known as the ds [Default State]. schilbach et al. 2013: 464



The Elusive Seat of Consciousness

At various points in his writings, Merleau-Ponty (1990/1951b; 1996a/1966) refers to the important capacity of perceptual or historical-consciousness—which we formalize and model as aesthetic-consciousness, to generated imaginary variations on the real. This allows anticipatory readiness to engage in the meaning content of future events or to reactivate those from the past, in order to better confront the objective facts of social action when the future becomes now. In their review of the bi research, this capacity is referred to by Schilbach et al. as social prospection: …in the absence of external information, the representational capacities of the self provide continuity of experiences over time. … suggesting that the abilities of prospection (e.g., envisioning the future), remembering

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the past and conceiving the current viewpoint of others rely on a common set of processes by which one’s own past experiences are used to imagine perspectives beyond those that results from the immediate environment. schilbach et al. 2013: 459

If we use their language, the problem remains of locating the seat of the “representational capacities of the self” that provide the foundation for the “prospection”, as anticipatory readiness to find and establish meaning in ongoing human relations. The lack of evidence of its anchorage in brain opens the possibility of human consciousness as its operative lieu. Still there remains the elusive problem of the position of this enigmatic predisposition for anticipatory sociability. While existence of this capacity appears plausible both theoretically and empirically, what of its function? Is social-consciousness a disposition anterior to cognitive functioning of brain as we have postulated it—and as implicitly supported by the research by the Schilbach team; or are D&C right, that from beginning to end, brain drives all human processes, including those associated with the social world? Considering the output from the brain modeling studies of D&C compared to those related to social experience studies of the Schilbach team, rather than suggesting a potential inexactitude of one or both, the differences in findings might be related to differences in objectives. D&C start within and focus on brain and its structure and the relation of that to cognitive activity. Schilbach et al. start and focus on worldly experience of research subjects and the brain activity that accompanies it The first offers an informative general system model of brain (the gnw), according to which cerebral activity cycles and shifts among neuronal sectors in complex ways, depending on the nature of the cognitive-activating instrumental tasks facing individuals The second line of work considers individuals with a brain at rest; who are not facing any such instrumental task, and observe constant circulation of activity at the level of brain which they label as overlapping signatures; interpreted as indicating socio-psychic activity of a spontaneous nature as the subjects mentally confront what appear to be abstract and imaginative socialinteraction possibilities. We believe that both teams are correct; but that understanding why and how is facilitated by accepting our postulate of the reality of préobjective, ­historical or aesthetic-consciousness as the predisposition for the types of objective social action that Schilbach et al. believe was indicated from their secondary research. To simplify the argument, it might help to differentiate task-consciousness from existential-consciousness. Both brain-centered studies and the

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c­ognitive-action centered studies of the type referenced above describe scan-data ­indicating a link that is probably causal, between brain action and how task-consciousness is handled by humans in the social world. H ­ owever, the same clarity about causal dynamics does not pertain for existential-­ consciousness. From the brain-centered side of the problem (by D&C), ­existential ­consciousness is recognized, but its interpretation depends on social-philosophizing. From the social-action side (Schilbach et al.), existential consciousness is recognized and discussed as essential for appreciating what they label the default-mode of brain activity; but they are unable to offer an explanation for its source. Thus either rational research must leave the laboratory and migrate to the social-philosophical wing of the universe (as did D&C), or else the fact of existential consciousness remains without explanation (as with Schilbach et al.) Informative as it is, it seems that bi research leaves plenty of epistemological space for our postulate about aesthetic-consciousness as real-time ­expression of intention to meaning. While we possess no property right about the use of social-philosophical arguments to justify our critical project, the practice of philosophical-drift on the part of natural scientists as a ploy to escape being snared by empirical minutia, is often a source of critique. In a recent book, Robert G. Schulman (2013), recognized pioneer in the field is clear in his judgement about: Brain Imaging: What it Can (and Cannot) Tell Us About Consciousness. He acknowledges that development of fMRI, mrs ­(Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy) and other newer bi techniques have ­“extended and reinvigorated hopes of understanding the role that brain ­activity plays in human life.” However, “neuroscientists… have consciously or unconsciously been incorporating philosophical views into the planning and interpretations of these experiments.” He disapproves, reaffirming the importance of the positivist cannon, even if the result is to leave aspects of the ­problem unaddressed. The way he puts it is that, …behavior is a property only of the person; the person, not the brain, remembers, intends, or decides. The brain’s role is to help the person perform these actions just as the muscle helps him to lift heavy objects and the liver maintains chemical homeostasis. Thus his observation that, Neuroimaging experiments that relate brain activities to observables, including human behavior, are herein valued above those that conduct futile searches for the neuronal basis of mental processes. schulman 2013

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If Schulman is correct, this helps buttress our claim that the study of consciousness of the expansive reach we intend by labeling it aesthetic-consciousness eludes laboratory precision not because of its inexistence, but due to the limits of the reductionist, rational-empirical method.

Summarizing Our bi Studies

Based on considerable empirical analysis, the gnw Model developed by D&C, seems credible and useful as a guide to understanding the structure and ­function of brain as general system. Differentiating conscious access from consciousness as continuous presence, or the transitive from intransitive treatment of the term, they remain perplexed about a clear explanation for the causal processes linking brain and consciousness, falling back on socialphilosophy to finish the job. This is in keeping with Kant, that consciousness as symbolic potential is real enough, but its metaphysical nature excludes it from the reach of empirical methods. Rather than leaving the issue aside, we take it up in an effort to resolve it, by offering a different conceptualization of the nature of consciousness. Examining the bi research field more generally, we identified a number of studies that focus specifically on the relation of brain activity and the symbolic dimensions of human experience including perception and judgement. While we take it as given that brain is active when individuals participate symbolically in the social world and that surely some cortical areas are more involved than others; the results of these studies remain correlative rather than causal, providing no basis to discount our postulate about the nature and role of aesthetic-consciousness for human existence. Finally, from a brief look at bi studies related to social cognition, we discussed evidence that when at rest, without challenge from any specific ­cognitive task, brain activity attains a high level of ambient activity, involving areas of the cortex that are related to confronting and solving social ­problems. Based on the existing stock of findings from other studies, profile data of brain ­activity at rest is evaluated, suggesting that the default activity of human awareness (whether conceived as conscious or unconscious in Freudian terms) is i­ maginary cogitation about social life, past and potential; with development of hypothetical scenarios for action and communication, which might eventually be called on when challenges of real social action arise. We believe the site of that apperceptive agency is consciousness as we describe it. Still, the findings from this field of research are informative but not conclusive. There is no easy resolution for the methodological difficulty of

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d­ifferentiating coincident versus causal relations from correlative data. ­However, in this case, that difficulty is related to a second one which is theoretical and concerns the concept of consciousness itself. What is the reach of this concept? Is consciousness equivalent with understanding, in the sense that consciousness of a bull is equivalent to understanding its meaning as potential danger; of is consciousness of the bull in reference to consciousness of self as an event of presence, a préobjective prelude for considering the possibility of danger given the objective qualities of the event? Although we believe the second explanation is more compelling, pending further research this argument remains open. This is also consistent with our treatment of consciousness as proactive, shaping movement through the practical world.

Political Aesthetics: Consciousness and Society

It must not be thought that our key postulate depends on validation by the reductionist laboratory sciences, but that is out of fit with the critical social sciences. Far from it. However, its treatment from the latter point of view depends on an expanded sociological vision, beyond consideration of social ordering in the pedestrian normative sense, opening into an enlarged perspective that is at once historical and thus anthropological in the time transcending, time binding sense. From beginning to end, development of our proposal depends on the treatment of social action as a historical-materialist event. Admittedly, designating aesthetic-consciousness as motor force for meaning transforms our argument into support for a functionalist view of society as the totality of all webs of meaning for a population: postulating a strain in f­ avor of symbolic fitness of new or recurrent forms of social relations with the totality of those already in practice. The functionalist postulate is frequently c­ ontested because of what may appear to be the unjustified conservative ­quality of its expression. However, the problematic of human life points to conservation before expression, structure before freedom, security before opportunity. ­After all, existence is the contentious unrolling of the fundamental dialectic as {life vs death}; with an intersubjective strain favoring the former. Because of that, the question is not about freedom of conscience but consciousness as freedom, with the paradoxical result that in material terms, freedom like consciousness defies objective localization: We may say in this case that it [freedom] is everywhere, but equally nowhere. In the name of freedom, we reject the idea of acquisition, since freedom has become a primordial acquisition and, as it were, our state

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of nature. Since we do not have to provide it, it is the gift granted to us of having no gift, it is the nature of consciousness which consists in having no nature, and in no case can it find external expression or a place in our life. M-P 1962/1945: 437

Still we must ask: might a disposition toward harmonies (as dynamic balance among social relations of production) explaining the universality of communities and societies, imply an aesthetic quality only in the sense associated with high culture and fine arts? More than metaphorically, is there justification for considering the state of society and each individual life within one as works of art? Is human consciousness as we propose it solidly lodged in social relations of production as Marx would have insisted? If not, existence is mechanical and society as well. If so, then how can we avoid accepting that in the end, the realization of the intention for meaning in an intersubjective social world implies carrying conflicts of position through to political resolution? This further implies that informally surely and formally often, as counter to the violence of alienation, the connection between aesthetic-consciousness at the individual level and political-aesthetics at the socio-political level need be entwined as we picture them. If our claim is valid of the universality of a préobjective realm as basis for the expression of human existence via aesthetic consciousness, the evidence must be omnipresent. Exploring that issue could easily lead into comparative assessments of the socio-cultural dynamics in a France versus a usa or a ­Germany compared to an India. We implore readers to trust that were this to be done, ample support for our postulate could be assembled. Merleau-Ponty (1990/1951b) labored to generalize his project by drawing on the anthropological work of not only his friend and professional c­ olleague, Claude Levy-Strauss, but of another French anthropologist, Lucien LévyBrühl (1935; 1922), whose study of primitive societies was very influential. ­Merleau-Ponty was particularly taken by how as attested to in their correspondence, reading a gift copy of Lévy-Brühl’s famous book given to Husserl ­personally by its author, constituted an important influence for the historicalturn that appears to have occurred in Husserl’s thinking in the mid-1930s.7 Merleau-Ponty dealt with this in a 1952 seminar at the College of France in Paris on “The Human Sciences and Phenomenology”. In an almost incidental fashion he summarized the issue this way: 7 Merleau-Ponty read the letter in the Husserl archives before wwii; but it was only published in 1988.

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Now as concerns historical research itself, one must wait to see the way Husserl treated this at the end of his career, an idea very different for what it was at the beginning, when he attributed to historical facts, to ethnographic facts a value, a signification, a power of instruction that he did not recognize at the debut. M-P 2000: P119 8

Since the European intellectual world was small at the time, not only was Durkheim influenced by Lévy-Brühl, but Durkheim’s nephew, Marcel Mauss (1967/1925), also contributed to the understanding of socio-historical forces by development of Cultural Anthropology as a field of study in France and ­Europe, and by composition of his particularly influential text, The Gift.9 Merleau-Ponty’s critical strategy when dealing with cross-discipline analysis of cultural issues of the type raised by Mauss can be shown by a point he raised in reference to the work of Lévy-Brühl. From his studies of cultural change, Lévy-Brühl had drawn an interpretation about cultural evolution, referred to as the discontinust postulate. Later elaborated by another Frenchman, Gaston Bachelard (2013/1934) in his best known volume, Le Nouvel Esprit Scientifique, the discontinuist claim rests on the position that modern societies and thus the people who populate them are fundamentally different from primitive cases. If so, then the assumption of gradual cultural evolution from primitive to modern is false; attesting to some source of radical rupture to explain more recent cultural developments by comparison with those evident, for instance, in Stone-Age societies. Implicitly contrasted with the so-called logical rationality of Western ­Modernity, Lévy-Brühl judged that the primitive peoples he studied were guided by what he labeled a “prélogical mentality”. Merleau-Ponty took umbrage with evaluating primitive life as being marked by a logic of reason that was radically different from how social practices were organized in the 20th ­century West. If in fact primitive people organized collective life based on a totally different préobjective logic, there would be no way for Modern Westerners to call on their own epistemological devices to generate the imaginary variations on the real necessary to make sense of how those people lived. (M-P 1996a/1966). For instance, in order to translate a foreign language, we must assume that it rests on semantic principles of intention toward meaning related to socially constituted living issues similar to those that characterizes life in our own society. 8 9

Merleau-Ponty’s notes taken in the Husserlien Archives differ somewhat from the official published version of the letter. It is may be that editorial nuances altered its sense. On that process see: Sato, Yuichi (2014).

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While the objective details will vary, rendering every translation partial at best, mutual recognition depends on homopholy in underlying design. Préobjective intention is not illogical, even if it allows for vast variation in objective social arrangements. With Durkheim, the foundational issue of consciousness was more complex, touching a critique of both the notion of collective consciousness and of social fact. While Merleau-Ponty also stressed the importance of consciousness, he conceptualized it differently. Rather than an archive that anchored a community in its history—as was implied by Durkheim, Merleau-Ponty ­considered consciousness as open and dynamic, or lived. Durkheim treated the social [practices] as a reality external to the ­individual and made it responsible for explaining everything that is ­presented to the individual as it ought to be. But the social can only render this service if it is not itself like a thing, if it invests the individual, if it solicits and threatens her at the same time, if each consciousness at the same time finds itself and loses itself in the relation with other ­consciousness, finally if the social is not collective consciousness, but intersubjectivity, the living rapport and tension among individuals. M-P 1996a/1966: 98

While surely a social construction—captured by referring to it as intersubjective, and for that reason necessarily influenced by its past, consciousness is not determined by history. It is in movement, propelling existence in advance of its present, in tension with collateral aspects of its current position. In other words, historical or perceptual consciousness—reincarnated by us as aestheticconsciousness, is an event before it is an entity. This brings us to the endlessly useful but elusive notion of social-fact. As with Husserl, Durkheim worked under the immediate influence of positivism and evolutionism. Using examples of conflict or coordination as social facts, each can be treated in the sense of a noun or as a gerund; as a thing or as a process. Durkheim stressed the thing aspect of the social fact rather than the process aspect, and for good reason—if one believes as he did at the beginning of his career, that the better approach to human understanding is to mimic the natural sciences. Which returns us a final time to consider the nature and limitations of positivism and evolutionism at the center of our critique. Positivism (read August Comte) is an epistemology according to which truth is established by identifying the elemental determinants of complex phenomenon, including living and human ones; on the assumption that the causal law explaining the whole can be expressed (at least in principle) as function

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of fixed relations among those primary elements. However, study of the condition of man requires taking into account the whole being in real-time, in relation to its context, which is an evolving community more or less grand. This cannot be achieved with methods of procedure dependent on empirical reductionist strategies that exclude both cultural and temporal variation from the laboratory. Evolutionism (read Darwin) is an ontology according to which key elements of living beings in stochastic confrontation with key environmental processes, determine movement and modification in forms and structures. When applied to wildcats or goldfish, that approach is useful since the assumption seems valid that the jungle or sea is an external source of opportunity and constraint that is largely indifferent to the actions of a whelp of felines or school of minnows. For human circumstances the situation is different. Social constructions such as communities are highly interactive because of the action of the human sub-populations within them; and as has now become clear, even the global macro environment is susceptible to reshaping by collective effects of the human condition. The linear evolutionary model of the conventional cannon of science is inadequate for explaining the evident alterations in human constructions and personal social identities through time. Taken jointly, a positivist plus evolutionary perspective generates an internally consistent onto-epistemology; explaining (a) the power of the conventional cannon of science based on them; (b) the trap it forms for the human sciences should this model be adopted out of fear of rejection or otherwise; and (c) why a critique of Comte leads directly to a limiting view about the Darwin as well. Merleau-Ponty explored these issues extensively. Demonstrating remarkable audacity, he played the view of Durkheim off against that of Husserl, treating their positions as related dialectically. Using the work of one to supply a fix for the limitations of the other, he ended up proposing a form of interlaced consciousness that is dynamic in turn. The result was an intersubjectivity as source of meaning as social fact, but not in the sense of thingness as formulated by Durkheim. By that, his philosophy was deepened historically and his sociology broadened collaterally: demonstrating the historical-materialist thrust of his investigation, with the diachronic-synchronic interplay defining his socio-anthropological treatment of humanized being in a social world. We again call on the reader to trust that without delving more into the details of his project, to do so would further confirm the anchorage of ­Merleau-Ponty’s work in the critical social sciences thanks to fundamental studies in ­sociology, history and anthropology; supplying support for the position that the dynamic flow of socio-historical action, in all societies, since recorded time, furnishes

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evidence of the pressure for expression of a préobjective intention of meaning without which the objective detail of institutional processes—no matter how varied the form, remains unexplainable. As he noted very early in his career, We must therefore rediscover, after the natural world, the social world, not as an object or sum of objects, but as a permanent field or dimension of existence. M-P 1962/1945: 362

Closing As the material basis of social practices, accepting existence of this préobjective field of signification as foundation for meaning and existential u ­ nderstanding proves decidedly practical. With it Merleau-Ponty could extract from the work of Husserl references to the theme or system of harmony by which meaning is diffused as social experience, exemplified by the otherwise magical power of good literature or music to generate a resonance in the reader or listener; expressing préobjectively the common ground entwining author and audience, self and others, much like “speech and its echo” (M-P 1992b/1952: 21). Exemplified by good art, all humanized events that endure do so on their own in so far as they speak for themselves thanks to the préobjective field of significance in which a theme or style is incarnated in the work. As expressed and perceived by the interplay of aesthetic-consciousness of those engaged in it, Merleau-Ponty put it this way: A painter like Cézanne, an artist, a philosopher, must not only create and express an idea, but more than that awaken the experiences that will root it in other consciousnesses. If the work is a success, it has the strange power to teach what it is to others. In following the indications of a painting or book, in establishing the parallels, in bouncing from one side to the other, guided by the confused clarity of style, the reader or spectator finishes by recovering that which was intended to be communicated. The painter can only construct an image. It is necessary to wait until that image becomes animated for others. Whereupon the work of art joins those separate lives, it does not exist only in one of them [painter or philosopher] like a dream or persistent delirium, or in space just like a colored canvas, it inhabits indivisibly in multiple esprit, presumably in all possible esprit, as a permanent acquisition. M-P 1996a/1966: 25–26

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Recognition of the significance of the préobjective field also allowed MerleauPonty to unravel the long contested Hegelian argument concerning the synthesis as possible resolution for a dialectic tension at the level of society. First, to be clear; the Hegelian dialectic implies a synchronic time frame; there is a tension in the present, between contradictory energies, that resolve themselves in the present by arriving at an overarching synthesis. Is it so? One might think of a democratic election to choose among two candidates; the solution selects a winner, but this instantly installs the other as leader of the party of opposition, and effectively, nothing changes. Like a rocking chair, social action driven by a Hegelian Dialectic goes nowhere. For Merleau-Ponty, the dialectic of existence captured in consciousness is the active element in the strain toward becoming. It is forward movement, energized by oppositions in the present and oriented by their pasts. These are manifestations of the interlinked structures of social relations, motorized as intention toward meaning, that draws everyone into one or another social camp. Since they are lived or self-propagating, the dialectic that binds them in struggle is not intended to be resolved nor should it be. As exemplified classically by the struggle between genders, neither seeks dissolution of the ­other, since in spite of the tension over proportions, existence of each depends ­existence of both. There is no ultimate synthesis either individually or collectively of the sort Hegel imagined, but only a shifting in directions, perhaps radically, as the play of forces and strategies vary through time. More in keeping with Marx, ­Merleau-Ponty viewed the dialectic as process rather than outcome, as disposition for adaptation, change, reorientation; as ceaseless energy for change or intention to what he referred to as permanent revolution (M-P, 1955: pp. 281ff), as perpetual program of social life under freedom. As evidenced dramatically by social movements, the result is a general préobjective sprit of affirmative potential as constitutive principle for objective improvement in social relations of production; put in evidence by language: …that general spirit, which everyone constitutes by their common life, that intention already deposed in the given system of language, préconscious, because the speaking subject is married to it before taking it into account and elevating it to the conscious level, and which however only subsists on the condition to be maintained or supported by the speaking subjects and lives by their willingness of exchange, it is very much, on the linguistic terrain, the equivalent of the form of psychologists, as foreign to the objective existence of a natural process as from the mental existence of an idea. M-P 1996a/1966: 108

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With uncommonly bold eclecticism traversing philosophy, sociology, anthropology and history, Merleau-Ponty generated an unusually dynamic historicalmaterialist theory of society. Assuming he was right about social action, because of its community basis, individuality is realized as an intersubjective construction; with details varying by local history. This is the basis of the préobjective disposition to meaning that informs every humanized consciousness. Society in turn is a constantly moving context of social relations and thus itself a social construction with an intersubjective identity. With intersubjectivity as conceptual referent for both community and individuality, each is analytically distinct but dialectically related. The site of consciousness in action is neither interior to the individual nor exterior as community, but in the dialectic nether-zone between them. For lack of existing language to discuss this, Merleau-Ponty invented his own terminology. His referents for this objectively inexistence zone from which ­emanates the préobjective energy field for consciousness, included inter-monde, interworld and chiasm—which in definitive form simply referred to the gap. In the writing he was doing at the end of his short life, he spoke of this as an intertwining, for humans and their social world. (Baldwin, 2004). That last work bears mention, even if the scattered notes assembled for its posthumous publication raise more questions than they answer. At first ­Merleau-Ponty boldly labeled this text-to-be a “Theory of Truth”. This indicated the bold nature of his ultimate epistemological ambition, embedded in a phenomenological ontology. As mentioned above, in its pages he focused on the notion of intertwining, in an effort to expose the joint faces of human experience, that of bodily-being and worldly-being. The short-hand treatment of that pair of referents were captured by the bipolar figure Visible—Invisible (M-P 1979/1964). For lack of other inspiration, that is how this final posthumous text was titled for publication. From the limited notes that fill those posthumously edited pages, we see a summary of his phenomenological postulate: humanized truth is found in the gap or inter-world, among the people, places and things of which communities are inter-subjectively constituted. That being so, then existential truth is collective rather than private property; it is the frame for objective details of events, but itself beyond local which is to say, objective knowledge. Truth is inherent to the disposition of being in the world, which for that reason is driven by the quest for meaning; thus certifying it as a préobjective disposition of consciousness; itself being a constantly mutating social construction that leads or sets the context for concrete empirical knowledge of objective experience. We have attempted to validate that postulate by the research of which this book is the report. To finalize his project, we judged it necessary to suppose a

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renovated model of conscious-presence, as the expression of four crucial faculties. With our model we unhesitantly integrate the traditionally recognized rational, {intellectual—conceptual} faculties. But based on our critique of rationality, we felt obliged to stipulate human freedom as independent from an otherwise mechanical determination of its objective condition, by advancing a vastly expanded treatment of consciousness as motor-force for human social action. To accomplish this, we proposed (see Figure 1) a second pair of apperceptive, {perceptive—expressive} faculties as equivalent contributors to the active principle of consciousness presence. In composite, the interplay resulting from the iterative deployment of these four faculties allows judgement by consciousness to materialize in the form of objective choice, which is at least potentially creative. While offering a plausible resolution for the critique of rationality that dates from the Early German Romantics and concretizing Merleau-Ponty’s perspective by anchoring his phenomenology in the personal-institutional expression of human social experience, we were left with an unanticipated challenge. What of the Brain and its cognitive action on which the rational sciences depend when modeling plausible answers for the human mystery of conscious action? As unintended consequent of our determination to examine all pertinent facts, this query took us into Brain-Imagery research on consciousness. There we identified what appear to be serious lacunae in the ability of the rationalist model to explain processes related to social-cognition because of the inability of the tools of rational inquiry to assess the presence of the purely symbolic parameters associated with human presence in a social, normative world. From that evaluation we felt comforted in the basic assertion that aesthetic consciousness as we conceive it establishes the predisposition to meaning necessary for the continuous deployment of the intersubjective field of action within which social relations are possible; serving then as the symbolic frame for the normative consistency of objective social experience. In other words, without the force of expression and perception of aesthetic consciousness as we propose it, meaning laden social relations could not be founded, human populations would be relegated to models of collective action little different from that of a pack of wolves—or perhaps of sheep; and society as system of shared meanings, allowing it to function in the production of the means of survival in a progressive rather than mechanically predetermined fashion, based on creative exploits of free human participants, would be impossible. Reduced to a formula—which is always dangerous, at the individual level, we effectively postulate that the work of aesthetic consciousness, energized as- and by- the intersubjective field of meaning as theorized by Merleau-Ponty,

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is the determining predisposition and thus necessary condition for rationalcognitive activity as registered and deployed by the work of Brain. Pushed to the limit, this suggests that human evolution is determined by the interplay of the intersubjective field of communities of consciousnesses and the lived world as organized humanly, which is to say socially constituted. As concerns the motor force of human historical development, with his emphasis on socio-cultural processes as the social relations that produce and reproduce social existence, Marx was apparently right about the foundational vitality of what he identified as species-being (Paolucci 2005; Wattenberg 1982, Marx 1974 / 1844). Consistent with the postulate explored in this research, that nature of human being is materialized historically and mobilized by a préobjective disposition for meaning that drives all humans as if by necessity toward community, with nature and others through time. Frustration of that energy yields both structural and individual alienation. Based on the critique that underwrites this study, it appears that those alienating consequences are now dramatically evident in the West, threatening the governability of nations, the stability of the institutional relations within them and the possibility of beneficial exchange among those nations and their institutions, and with the larger social and natural world. If we are right, overcoming that stasis would require reanimating the aesthetic energy native to every individual. This might only begin when the distortions imposed by excessive enthusiasm for technical activity aimed at productivity as the measure of rational progress, are rebalanced by new attention in the symbolic sphere, as renewed collective commitment to human affairs, aimed at compatibility, sensibility and care.

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Index absolute form 116, 118, 119 Adorno 7, 77 aesthetic consciousness x, 10, 12, 138, 139, 148, 149, 219, 225, 229, 235, 236–37, 242, 243, 283 faculties of 234 world 93, 94 a-historical world 196 alienation xi, 4, 5, 24, 28, 47, 50, 139, 145, 224, 229, 236, 257, 258, 276 ambient reflection 89, 97, 98, 123, 268 apperception 232 arcades project 77, 78 Aristotle 17, 24, 100, 177, 178, 233, 260 art 34, 35, 46, 64–65, 75–76, 96, 97, 98–109, 111, 113, 117–22, 128, 130–32, 135, 185 great 107, 125, 128, 129 high 17, 99, 103, 104, 105, 114, 119, 127, 144 works 80, 98, 106, 107, 116, 129 arte 99, 100, 105, 111, 115, 116 artists 19, 34, 44, 46, 59, 63, 66, 80, 86, 119, 125, 130, 144, 174, 185 attitude, natural 195, 207, 208–9 Badiou 187, 257, 258 beauty 8, 14, 37, 40, 72, 85, 122, 130–31, 166, 185, 241 being-in-the-world 21, 194, 200 belief xii, xiii, xiv, 27, 36, 40, 41, 66, 72, 133 Benjamin xv, xvi, 9, 33, 67–78, 87, 91–98, 109–15, 117, 118, 133–35, 143, 239 Benjamin’s thesis 67, 70, 71, 76 work 78, 135 Berlin, Isaiah 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 40–50, 53–55, 57–62, 65–67, 102, 133, 143, 139 body 71, 72, 75, 124, 172, 182–83, 192, 194, 196, 211, 212, 213, 214, 235, 246 objective 182, 183 body of truth 254, 255 brain 158, 243–46, 248–256, 258–60, 262–268, 272

activity 24, 243, 244, 245, 248, 249, 252, 260, 265, 267, 268, 270, 272, 273, 274 autonomy of 259 function of 239, 244, 245, 250, 253, 274 Brain-Imagery research on consciousness 243–271 capitalism 27, 29, 90, 138, 158, 214 cerebral activity 251, 252, 270 Changeux 244, 245, 259, 265 cognition, social xv, 267, 268, 270, 271, 274 community 16, 17, 18, 23–24, 27, 84, 147, 156, 163, 198, 223, 237, 248, 279, 282 historical 168, 204 intersubjective 163, 221 concept 67, 72, 87, 89–93, 101–107, 109, 111, 118, 119, 162, 275 conceptualization 75, 180, 274 conscious experience 244, 246 consciousness 71, 88, 89, 97–100, 145–49, 159, 161–62, 182, 210, 231, 235–37, 243–51, 253–61, 268–71, 274–83 absolute 209, 210, 211, 217 aesthetic- 149, 278 collective 27, 278 common 101, 163 constituted 10, 258 critical 4, 97, 98, 100, 106, 107, 118, 121, 125, 126, 129 embedded worldly 161 human self- 269 objective 255 open 8, 67, 184 perceptive 226, 227, 228 perceptual 157, 158, 159, 165, 208, 278 perceptual-historical 71, 214, 230 phenomenological 148, 166, 217 préobjective disposition of 22, 282 primary 191, 245 reflection by 135, 234 transcendental 199, 229, 231 unity of 162, 166 world-defining 255 constitutive analysis 216, 217

296

Index

creation 46, 47, 62, 63, 72, 80, 96, 98, 112, 121, 129, 134, 138, 139, 222 creative work 23, 70, 72, 98, 102, 118, 122, 184 creativity 4, 44–45, 59, 61, 138, 139, 144, 145–48, 173, 174, 175, 234, 235, 240, 241 crisis xi, xii, 4, 8, 143, 145, 146, 147, 149 critic 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 103, 104, 105, 108, 112, 114, 115, 118, 127, 132 cultural xii, 151 critical thinking 4, 5 critique xii, 70, 75, 78, 99, 105, 106, 108, 109, 113, 115, 116, 131, 132, 239 immanent 104, 105, 107 ironic 113, 114, 127 transcendental 106

European Community 56, 58 events 16, 20, 39, 146, 147, 159, 165, 168, 181, 207, 210, 221, 222, 236, 257 historical 177, 196 worldly 245 evolutionism 47, 278, 279 existential ambiguity 177, 229, 230 conception 172, 173, 174, 175, 177 consciousness 273 experience 10, 11, 16, 123, 137, 138, 189, 193, 197, 200, 212, 222, 231, 235, 271–72 historical 196 worldly 10, 87, 89, 152, 259, 260, 272

Darwin 38, 156, 158, 257, 279, 283 Dehaene 244, 251, 252, 259, 265 D&C 244, 245, 246, 247, 248–55, 259, 260, 272, 273, 274 democracy 4, 52, 53, 171, 214 Descartes 88, 109, 110, 152, 153, 160, 177, 178, 208, 240, 241, 244, 245, 246, 259 dialectic 14, 15, 16, 17, 31, 74, 129, 139, 148, 150, 169, 170, 175–80, 183, 184, 222, 281 doctrines 45, 46, 51, 87, 131, 159 Dreher 17, 18 Durkheim xvi, 149, 193, 194, 195, 223, 261, 262, 277, 278, 279

faculties 11–12, 69, 71, 76, 87, 99, 189, 219, 221, 232, 233, 235, 236, 243, 283 fate 189, 191, 199 Fichte 56, 57, 58, 87, 88, 89 field, intersubjective 283 Foucault xiv, 49, 68, 92, 101, 102 France 6, 12, 13, 36, 41, 42, 43, 44, 51, 61, 143–44, 194, 226, 276, 277 freedom 6, 15, 34, 51, 58, 83, 84, 164, 177, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 275 enlightenment 6 individual 55, 56 French Revolution 39, 50, 58, 60, 61, 62, 136, 144, 179 Friedrich Schlegel 57, 85, 86, 110, 129

Early German Romantic Movement xvi, 118, 134 Romantics 9, 11, 18, 19, 43, 67, 68, 94, 96, 98, 103, 104, 135, 136, 143 Romantics and concretizing MerleauPonty’s perspective 283 Early Romantics 45, 47, 58, 62, 65, 68, 97, 110, 144, 239, 241 economics 27, 81, 136, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 175 empiricism 157, 159, 250, 251 Enlightenment xii, 38, 41, 48, 49, 81, 103, 144–45 environment 47, 188, 215, 244, 246, 248 esthetic world 214, 220 Europe 30, 32, 35, 36, 38, 41, 42, 56, 61, 73, 76, 79, 144, 145, 256

general systems 6, 244, 245, 246, 251, 274 genres 118, 119, 267 German Romantic Movement 65, 100 Romanticism 43, 44, 45, 57, 58, 59, 60, 62, 66, 74, 87, 89, 93, 107, 116 Romantics 58, 59, 62, 63, 64, 72, 74, 75, 95, 97, 100, 102, 117, 125, 126 Germans 41, 42, 43, 44, 46, 47, 58, 59, 67, 69, 70, 103, 163, 195 Gibbon 41–42, 61 Goethe 43, 45, 50, 51, 58, 60, 61, 62, 71, 103, 110, 128, 151 good judgement xii, 4, 32, 146, 164, 208 group 36, 45, 46, 47, 57, 66, 134, 179, 216, 224, 237, 238, 262, 264, 271

Index Habermas 101, 102 harmony 54, 55, 137, 138, 139, 144, 145, 162, 166, 167, 185, 186, 225, 226, 241 intentional 235, 236 Hegel 53, 56, 74, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 87, 88, 133, 134, 178–80, 256, 257 Hegelian 56, 84, 87, 178, 180 Dialectic 14, 281 Herder 45, 46, 47, 48 historical consciousness 155, 163, 176, 177, 180, 183, 200, 202, 204, 208, 210, 230, 231, 260, 262 object 135, 193 world 88, 196 history 74, 81, 82, 90, 91, 129, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 196, 198 materialist 170, 171 History and Class Consciousness 28 Horkheimer 7, 52, 69, 76, 77, 78 human action x, 17, 23, 27, 47, 63, 70, 121, 148, 157, 180, 243, 244, 249 condition 22, 24, 29, 31, 101, 104, 163, 175, 178, 180, 183, 236, 240, 242, 247 consciousness 20, 22, 23, 24, 36, 86, 88, 145, 147, 149, 220, 233, 234, 235, 237 experience x, xi, 18, 19, 21, 178, 179, 214, 216, 244, 245, 253, 254, 264, 265 nature xiii, 28, 55, 149 relationships 171, 174, 175 humanity xi, 8, 26, 53, 85, 104, 122, 138, 144, 145, 242 humanized world 137, 139, 178 Husserl 18, 148, 152, 155, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 205, 206, 209, 210, 218, 222 ignorance xiv, 40, 90–91, 263 illusion 112–15 images x, xi, 58, 59, 85, 89, 92, 96, 97, 120, 123, 253, 264, 265, 280 imagination 7, 42, 127, 162, 166 imaginative consciousness 226, 227, 228 immanent 106, 108, 109 individual consciousness 93, 242 information 17, 224, 247, 252, 253, 270 inspiration 50, 54, 57, 58, 61, 85, 87, 153, 158, 193, 282 Institute 69, 76, 77, 78, 213

297 institutions 6, 66, 71, 138, 156, 165, 169, 171, 174, 175, 180, 183, 186, 212, 214 intention 10, 11, 14, 15, 17, 92, 93, 156, 165, 167, 189, 221, 223, 225, 281 objective 110, 219 intentionality 161, 162, 165, 166, 167, 211, 217, 220, 232, 241, 248 intersubjective world 160 intersubjectivity 18, 187, 191, 193, 212, 222, 270, 278, 279, 282 intransitive 72, 247, 260 intuition 60, 84, 85, 118, 120, 128, 262, 264 ironisation 111, 112, 114, 117 irony 108, 109, 110, 111–12, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 125, 126, 127, 135 James 57, 250, 251, 253, 254, 255 judgement 4, 10, 17, 26, 67, 75, 99, 105, 107, 131, 135, 164, 233, 235, 266 aesthetic 162, 166 Kant 7, 8, 45, 48–56, 74, 75, 76, 87, 88, 106, 107, 144, 153, 161, 162 Kantian 49, 51, 52, 53, 54, 75, 91, 105, 119, 232 transcendental consciousness 232 worldview 49 treatment of consciousness 231 kitsch 111, 115, 116 knowing 15, 16, 19, 62, 67, 74, 90, 93, 94, 95, 96, 133, 134, 144, 146 knowledge 39, 41, 62, 63, 64, 90, 92, 93, 94, 95, 97, 146, 162, 189, 192 labor xi, 13, 27, 138, 166, 214, 220 language 10, 78, 79, 92, 100, 121, 168, 169, 195, 196, 197, 198, 237, 262, 281 pure 70, 72 Lévy-Brühl 276, 277 liberation 31, 32, 54, 139, 144, 150, 152, 154 literature 12, 13, 39, 40, 71, 73, 74, 81, 82, 85, 86, 93, 152, 153, 186 love 37, 224, 236, 266 Lukács xvi, 13, 78, 100, 110 Machiavelli 7, 52, 84 man-in-the-world 230, 260 Marx 12, 13, 14, 15, 29, 30, 31, 87, 168, 169, 174, 176, 178, 179, 180

298 Marx Critique xi, 28, 29 material world 56, 178, 222 materialism, historical 155, 168, 169, 171, 175 meaning 138, 147, 154, 156, 163, 193–97, 214, 221, 222, 224, 237, 240, 241, 242, 248 préobjective disposition to 165, 282 relational 161, 228, 266 shifts 154, 242 sociological 193, 194 medium 94, 95, 96, 98, 99, 104, 109, 132, 158, 188 Merleau-Ponty x, 9, 19, 22, 28, 29, 30, 31, 67, 72, 137, 151, 153, 159–67, 175–80, 199, 201, 205, 209–12, 222, 223–32, 276, 240, 279 Merleau-Ponty’s Apperceptive Project 20 attention 23, 155, 173 dialectic 178, 183 Phenomenology 19, 156, 198, 210 préobjective disposition 26 project xv, 20, 218 Sociology 192, 193, 195, 197, 199, 201, 203 method critical 104, 109, 131, 206 historical-materialist 34, 74, 91, 92, 150, 168 mind x, 87–89, 147, 166, 198, 207, 210, 213, 234, 235, 236, 239, 243, 259, 260–61 model of consciousness 232, 237 Modernity 4, 7–8, 52, 136, 144 movement 6, 7, 35, 36, 37, 45, 46, 48, 57, 58, 61, 129, 178, 198, 211 music 3, 9, 93, 157, 158, 176, 186, 280 mysticism 48, 90, 91, 92, 119 natural sciences 207, 239, 278 natural world xi, 93, 137, 139, 163, 188, 280 naturalist 217 nature 26, 27, 28, 38–40, 44, 45, 161, 162, 166, 191, 203, 207, 217, 235, 276 necessity 4, 12, 24, 47, 49, 55, 57, 59, 65, 100, 138, 146, 224, 225, 228 network 175, 191 neuronal architectures 244, 246, 249 neuronal workspace, global 244, 252 neuroscientists 264, 265, 273 Nietzsche 3, 8, 9, 38, 59, 63, 79, 81, 86, 110, 144, 152, 188, 257

Index Novalis 60, 81, 85, 86, 87, 89, 96, 101, 102, 103, 119, 123, 129 novel 23, 58, 86, 97, 101, 106, 112, 119, 124, 126, 127, 128, 130, 152, 185 objectified world 237 objective consciousness experience 210 content 162, 181, 228 events 10, 184, 200, 201 nature 177, 270 world 154, 157, 181 objectivity 27, 64, 176, 246 objects 14, 64, 74, 92, 93, 94, 95, 132, 157, 161, 162, 163, 166, 221, 280 organization, societal 225, 228 paradox 48, 104, 105, 106, 113, 127, 129, 176, 181 Paris 23, 30, 31, 42, 43, 76, 77, 78, 80, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155 parties, political 30, 31, 32, 186 perception 19, 20, 21, 67, 68, 95–96, 150, 156–57, 159, 161, 163, 164–67, 183, 187, 189 phenomenological method 161, 169, 194, 201, 202, 207, 217, 241 phenomenology 9, 18, 150, 151, 152, 154–57, 161, 163, 164–65, 167, 187, 197, 199, 220, 222, 223 philology 69, 70, 79 philosopher 22, 90, 143, 195, 196, 197, 198, 200, 202, 205, 217, 224, 240, 244, 280 philosophy 74, 80, 81, 82, 83, 86, 90, 128, 175, 192, 193, 198, 201–3, 207, 217 verbalized 254, 255 philosophy and sociology 148, 167, 184, 192, 197, 201, 202, 203, 220, 240 physical systems 17, 18 Plato 17, 104, 120, 177, 178 poetry 79, 81, 96, 97, 100, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 128, 129 transcendental 121, 123, 124, 125 political aesthetics 12–13, 15, 54, 102, 115, 145, 179, 184, 185, 241, 275 political regimes 49, 51, 52, 224 politics 13, 14, 50, 51, 83, 101, 102, 136, 146, 163, 164, 169, 264, 265, 266 positivism 18, 278

Index postulate x, xiii, xiv, xv, 10–11, 24, 88, 89, 149, 164, 165, 224, 225, 226, 227 predisposition x, xv, 20, 28, 147, 210, 219, 225, 228, 242, 267, 270, 271, 272, 283 préobjective 23, 25, 155, 156, 184, 185, 190, 200, 201, 219, 220–22, 228, 229, 230, 237 consciousness xv, 267 disposition x, 29, 156, 165, 166, 167, 220, 228, 236, 267, 282 domain 221 field x, 10, 15, 21, 22, 23, 187, 230, 241, 242, 260, 261, 270, 280, 281 intention 191, 227, 278, 280 pre-objective world 166 préobjectivity 10, 21, 24, 155, 160, 164, 188, 220 presentation 70, 92, 94, 105, 116, 117, 119, 121, 127, 132, 149, 201, 249 principles 14, 33, 34, 46, 47, 53, 54, 107, 108, 109, 130, 138, 139, 225, 251 regulative 28, 88, 137, 138, 219 prison 3, 16, 113 problematics 90–93 production 13, 14, 16, 27, 28, 110, 137, 138, 170, 171, 172, 173, 276, 281, 283 productive relations 137, 138, 258 progress xii, 6, 7, 8, 30, 41, 122, 136 project 76, 77, 78, 108, 109, 126, 147, 148, 168, 169, 176, 177, 184, 185, 187 projection 182, 183, 186, 212 prose 75, 128, 129, 130, 132, 222 rationalist 12, 38, 40, 47, 48, 62, 67, 81, 85, 109, 133, 137, 155, 250, 266 rationality xi, xii, xiii, 1, 7, 15, 19, 24, 27, 33, 159, 161, 239, 240, 283 scientific xii, 146 reflection 82–83, 86, 87, 88, 89, 93, 94, 97, 105, 106, 119, 124, 197, 198, 206–7 medium of 94, 95, 96, 98, 100, 118 mental 15, 87, 88 reflective consciousness 97, 106, 130 reification 147, 195, 229 relativism, historical 200, 201, 202 research, BI 244, 246, 263, 267, 269, 271, 273 research Merleau-Ponty 199, 235 subjects 267, 268, 270, 272

299 revolution 29, 30, 31, 32, 36, 37, 38, 51, 52, 138, 139, 172, 173, 179, 180 risk 72, 156, 183, 217, 231, 232, 245, 255 Romantic ambition 67, 68, 102 conception 102, 119, 120 consciousness 134 critique 34, 36, 76, 97, 107, 111, 115, 119, 128, 134, 137 irony 115 method 70, 101, 104, 110, 133, 134 Movement 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 41, 44, 45, 47, 50, 61, 102, 134, 136 early 85, 136 philosophy 129, 130 Poetry 121, 126, 128 project 68, 83, 85, 104, 105, 110, 130, 132 theory 100, 104, 125, 130 Romanticism 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 48, 60, 65, 66, 67, 68, 74, 81, 133 Romanticize 113, 114 Romantics 40, 61, 63, 64, 67, 80, 81, 82, 87, 96, 109, 119, 128, 130, 133–36 revolutionary 65, 134 Sartre 30, 31, 32, 73, 150, 151, 152, 153–55, 158, 185, 188, 216, 226, 227–28, 231 Schilbach 267, 268, 269–73 team 268, 272 Schiller xiv, 37, 43, 48, 50–55, 61, 75, 99 works of 37, 51 Schlegel 48, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 87, 110, 111, 112, 119, 120, 124, 125, 128 science xiii, xiv, xv, 40, 43–44, 86, 87, 106, 107, 119, 120, 161, 192, 224, 279 scientists, natural 144, 273 self 53, 55, 56, 63, 64, 86, 87, 89, 152, 186, 234, 236, 237, 267, 269–72 –consciousness 86, 166, 249, 269 –objective 249 –judgement 97, 98 –responsibility 6, 51, 145, 164, 172, 174, 183, 190 sentence 36, 45, 60, 63, 64, 84, 119, 122, 131, 132, 182, 196, 208, 213, 220 shadow 205, 206, 217, 224, 240, 249 situation 166, 168, 174, 175, 185, 188, 189, 202, 203, 208, 213, 221, 222, 227, 228 historical 202

300 social action 24–25, 27, 28, 148, 221, 224, 235, 237, 240, 246, 248, 269, 271, 281, 282 encounters 226–27 relations xiv, 16, 137, 138, 147, 148, 184, 185, 226, 227, 228, 275, 276, 281, 283 sciences 16, 17, 19, 21, 23, 25, 27, 29, 31, 34, 86, 93, 194, 202, 205 critical xv, 9, 11, 25, 34, 83, 169, 220, 275 historical 42, 86 systems 17, 147, 258 world x, xi, 15, 16, 163, 164, 179, 221, 240, 241, 258, 259, 260–62, 266, 267 society xiv, 6, 7, 13, 14, 26, 27, 53, 145, 156, 178, 179, 186, 224–26, 276 science of 26, 256 systems of 14, 186 sociological imagination 25, 193 sociologist 195, 202, 203 sociology 26, 27, 148, 192, 193, 194, 197, 198, 201, 202, 203, 220, 256, 261, 279 Socrates 3, 5, 8, 9, 39, 62 soul 27, 100, 183, 214, 216, 217 species-being x, xi, 28, 137–38, 284 style 41, 49, 67, 68, 70, 73, 74, 83, 87, 110, 111, 157, 188, 280 subjects x, 13, 14, 64, 95, 160, 161, 162, 166, 174, 176, 196, 199, 249, 268 human 173, 180, 181, 215 speaking 281 support 11, 13, 16, 24, 30, 31, 248, 250, 253, 256, 258, 259, 260, 275, 276 symbols 59, 64, 125, 191 synchronicity 168, 203–4

Index system 13, 14, 89, 91, 92, 94, 145, 165, 166, 185, 186, 223, 247, 248, 258 task-consciousness 272–73 temporality 179, 180, 181, 183, 190 Temps Modernes 31, 152, 153, 154 totality 17, 20, 90, 91, 92, 103, 105, 106, 185, 186, 187, 215, 236, 237, 275 transcendental 63, 106, 116, 198–99, 230, 231, 232, 237 translation 22, 69, 70, 72, 79, 103, 237, 278 truth xi, xii, 22, 25–26, 48, 62–64, 84, 135, 136, 144, 161, 164, 193, 212, 251 objective 22, 160 unconsciousness 60, 165 unity 12, 20, 37, 53, 55, 84, 85, 119, 120, 157, 162, 166, 174–75, 179, 182 universality 84, 94, 166, 225, 229, 276 Voltaire xiv, 41, 44, 50, 51, 55, 114 West 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 12, 35, 37, 52, 56, 137, 139, 143, 144, 225 Western humanized world 137, 139 Rationality 3, 33, 34, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 149 societies 12, 15, 137 work xii, xv, 46, 58, 70, 73, 75–82, 97, 99–122, 125–32, 135, 151, 184, 205, 280 workings 89, 98, 243 world xiv, 55–57, 82, 94, 95, 137, 160, 161, 162, 190, 208, 212, 213, 217, 260 events 154 wars 58, 145, 148, 152–3, 172, 180, 256