Existentialism and Marxism

[Monty Cantsin]

Post-structuralism, the philosophical rationale of contemporary “post-modernist discourse”, presents itself as a radically new view of the world. However, in many ways it is simply a reincarnation of existentialism, which conceives of nature and society as dominated by accident and chance and stresses the meaningless of human existence.

The Origins Of Existentialism

Existentialism was born as a bourgeois philosophical response to the crisis that World War I and its aftermath dealt to the superficially optimistic world-view and belief in progressive development of capitalist society inherent in middle-class liberalism. Its most prominent figure was Martin Heidegger.

A philosopher of irrationalism, Heidegger maintained that the chief impediment to human self-development was reason and science, which, he claimed, led to a view of humans only as objects of impersonal investigation and practical manipulation. According to Heidegger, human existence could not be understood through rational-scientific thinking or through social practice, but only by an inward-turning orientation to one’s self, particularly in the contemplation of death.

Heidegger was strongly influenced by the 19th century irrationalist philosophers Soren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzche, and was the disciple of the German idealist philosopher Edmund Husserl.

Kierkegaard previewed many of the themes of 20th century existentialism, though in an explicitly religious context. In opposition to Hegelian determinism, Kierkegaard interpreted human existence in terms of chance and possibility. He believed that growing awareness of truth led to despair owing to the contrast between the brevity of individual human life compared to the “infinity of God”. Nietzche developed an anti-rationalist, atheistic humanism based on an extreme individualism that distrusted all group action.

Husserl founded the philosophy of phenomenology, which he claimed superseded both materialism and idealism by rejecting all “presuppositions”. He sought to eliminate any theory of knowledge and called for suspending belief about any previously known fact in the study of a particular phenomenon. The internal logic of a phenomenon was to be reconstructed from the appearances of it available to the observer. Thus far the method appeared to parallel empiricism, but Husserl then asserted that the aim of such investigation was to intuitively grasp the real essence of the phenomenon under observation. During the period of study, no consideration was to be given to the reality or non-reality of the object under examination. Thus, dreams, fantasies, and illusions were to be examined with a seriousness equal to that given to objectively indisputable existences. By 1907 Husserl had become an avowed subjective idealist, asserting that objects had no existence outside of human consciousness.

In 1928 Husserl was stripped of his university post in Freiburg, Germany, because of his Jewish origins. He spent the last years of his life as a pariah in Nazi Germany, although he was not arrested.

Martin Heidegger accepted the chair of philosophy at the University of Freiburg after his mentor was forced to relinquish it by the growing Nazi movement. Heidegger was himself a political reactionary. He supported Hitler, which led to his disgrace at the end of World War II, and his retirement in 1951 after a life of rural seclusion.

Heidegger’s existentialist ideas, however, deeply influenced the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, who was to become the best known populariser of the ideas of existentialism.

Sartrean Existentialism

In his early theoretical writings, culminating in Being and Nothingness (1943) Sartre summed up existentialism’s deeply pessimistic view of life in the phrases “life is hell” and “hell is other people”. By 1947, however, Sartre had begun to evolve away from the gloom and despair this view implied. He now argued that while the world was “hell” it was human beings who created the world. This implied a move away from passive self-contemplation toward an active striving for freedom, in which human action could overcome both “hells”. However, this shift was still confined to a subjectivist and individualistic framework—a demand for absolute personal freedom.

From the late 1950s on, Sartre tried to marry his existentialist philosophy with the revolutionary doctrine of Marxism. In his 1960 philosophical treatise The Critique of Dialectical Reason , for example, Sartre declared that existentialism was a subordinate branch of Marxism which aspired to “renew” and “enrich” it.

But this “enriching” involved discarding the materialist, sociohistorical outlook of Marxism in favour of a subjectivist, individualistic approach to philosophy, sociology, morality and politics.

The whole of Sartre’s philosophy revolved around the absolute primacy of the individual subject over everything objective, whether natural or social. The truth and value of human existence are to be sought exclusively within the existence of the isolated individual. “If we refuse to see the original dialectical movement in the individual and in his enterprise of producing his life, of objectifying himself, then we shall have to give up dialectic or else make of it the immanent law of history”, Sartre wrote in the lengthy preface to his Critique.[1] That is, Sartre located dialectical development exclusively within human practice. Moreover, he considered that the dialectical development of society proceeds from the actions of the isolated individual, rather from the objective realities, laws and necessities of social life.

Marxism takes a diametrically opposite point of view: The thoughts and actions of the individual are determined by the dialectical development of society. The isolated individual—so central to existentialism’s world view—is an abstraction. As Marx himself observed in his “Theses on Feuerbach” (1845): “The human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of the social relations.”[2] That is, the individual, with his or her own particular personality, is the product of society. Everything distinctive about humans, from tool-making, speech and abstract thinking, to the latest products of art and technology, is the result of millions of years of social practice. Human social practice in turn is an historical outgrowth of the dialectical development of nature; the organic developing out of the inorganic; the human from the animal.

Nature, humanity, social life and labour are inseparably interconnected. What separated humanity from the rest of animal life was the practice of labour—the regular, collective production of means of subsistence through the use and fashioning of tools. Through labour prehuman primates began to transform their natural environment to serve their needs, and in the process they transformed themselves and their descendants into a qualitatively new species.

Fundamental changes in the organisation of the labour process are the basis for the dialectical development of society. Subjective components of this development—individual psychology, for example —are integral and subordinate elements of this objective historical process. Thus society is more than the sum of its individuals because it is a product of collective activity. It is only in and through society that we develop as individuals.

Existentialism, on the other hand, pictures the individual as essentially divorced from other people, confronted by an inert, irrational and hostile social environment. It champions the spontaneity of the individual against any established institution or organised movement. It is equally hostile to the social institutions of bourgeois society and to the working class’s collective struggle against them. Rather than being a guide to revolutionary action, it is a philosophy that justifies the individualistic non-conformism of middle-class intellectuals.

Althusserian Structuralism

In a series of essays written in the mid-1960s, French philosophy professor Louis Althusser attacked the views of the “Marxist” existentialists. However, Althusser did not defend orthodox Marxism against the later existentialists’ subjective dialectics and individualistic humanism. Rather, he substituted an interpretation of Marxism that was heavily influenced by the antidialectical structuralist school of bourgeois sociology.

Whereas the “Marxist” existentialists were fixated with individual human subjects to the exclusion of social structures, Althusser produced, as Perry Anderson has noted, “a version of Marxism in which subjects were abolished altogether, save as the illusory effects of ideological structures”.[3] In contrast to the former, who sought to “Hegelianise” Marxism by purging it of its materialist outlook, Althusser sought to “de-Hegelianise” Marxism, i.e., to purge it of dialectics.

“For Hegel’s ‘pure’ principle of consciousness”, Althusser argued, orthodox Marxists, “have substituted another simple principle , its opposite: material life, the economy...”[4] In opposition to Marx’s materialist approach to social life—his recognition that the “mode of production of material life conditions the social, political, and intellectual life process in general”[5]—Althusser substituted an eclectic approach in which each aspect of a given social formation was regarded as a separate structure undetermined by any other. Instead of Marx’s dialectical method of analysing the interconnections between social phenomena, and uncovering the underlying laws of development (contradictions) governing the origin and evolution of a given social formation, Althusser adopted the structuralist approach of analysing social phenomena in a purely synchronic and static manner.

While travelling a somewhat different road, Althusser thus arrived at the same destination as the “Marxist” existentialists he sought to combat: adoption of the liberal-pragmatist view that there are no determining laws of historical development; that there is only historical particularity produced by the accidental conjuncture of multiple and separate events.

While remaining a member of the French Communist Party, Althusser displayed strong sympathies for Maoism. The latter’s hostility to “bourgeois” humanism, its rejection of the determinative role of the productive forces in the historical process, its idealist and voluntarist conception of the class struggle, in which subjective factors (ideology and culture) take precedence over objective factors (class relations) were all highly attractive to Althusser. As a result, Althusser’s structuralist interpretation of Marxism gained wide popularity among the radicalised middle-class intellectuals who were also attracted to the pseudo-revolutionary rhetoric of the Mao regime during the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” (1966-76), which also coincided with an upsurge of student and worker struggles in the West.

However, in the wake of the increasingly right-wing evolution of Mao’s foreign policy from the early 1970s on (as his regime moved to take up Washington’s offer of a “detente” with China) and the Chinese Stalinist bureaucracy’s repudiation of the policies of the Cultural Revolution after Mao’s death in 1976 (and its exposure of the brutality and hypocrisy of these policies), Althusser’s “Marxist” structuralism waned in popularity among the former student radicals of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Existentialism And Post-Structuralism

In the 1980s, the generation of middle-class youth who had radicalised in the 1960s and early 1970s had begun to enter middle age, and increasingly occupied comfortable middle-class careers in academia, in the public service and in lower managerial positions in the private sector. Their former hopes of a socialist revolution in the West had vanished. Indeed, they had ceased to even believe in the desirability of such a revolution, accepting the liberal argument that its inevitable outcome could only be a stagnant, totalitarian society, as exemplified by sclerotic Brezhnev regime in the Soviet Union. The rising prosperity of Western middle-class professionals during the 1980s—a result of the debt-driven consumption-oriented “boom” of the Reagan-Thatcher era—combined with a sense of impending global catastrophes (nuclear war, ecological collapse), plus the rejection of socialism by many of its most articulate members, to create the climate for a resurgence of many of the intellectual themes of Heideggerian existentialism, under the name of “post-structuralism”.

The influence that Heidegger has exerted on the leading poststructuralists is openly acknowledged by them. Jacques Derrida, for example, explicitly situates his work as a continuation of Heidegger’s thought. Michel Foucault stated not long before his death: “Heidegger has always been for me the essential philosopher.”[6]

In the light of this, George’ Novack’s Marxist critique of existentialism continues to have relevance today.

Endnotes
[1] Sartre, The Problem of Method (Methuen; London, 1964), p. 161.

[2] Marx et al, Marxism, Socialism and Religion (Resistance Books: Chippendale, 2001), p. 22.

[3] Anderson, In The Tracks of Historical Materialism (Verso Books: London, 1983), p. 14.

[4] Althusser, For Marx (Pantheon; New York, 1969), p. 108.

[5] Marx, “Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy”, Selected Works, Vol. 1 (Progress Publishers: Moscow, 1969), p. 503.

[6] Quoted in Callinicos, Against Postmodernism (Polity Press: London, 1989), p. 72.


source- http://www.marxists.org/archive/novack/wor...istory/ch17.htm

Comments?

[redstar2000]

I can't vouch for the accuracy of this article...but I was really impressed by its clarity.

I have (some would say "suffer from") a decided predisposition in favor of clear, logical, straightforward writing on all questions.

Good post! :D

:redstar2000:

The Redstar2000 Papers (http://www.redstar2000papers.fightcapitalism.net)
A site about communist ideas

[Trissy]

Well I'm the first to admit that I don't know too much about Structuralism, so I'll limit my comments as best I can to what was written about Existentialism and Marxism, or at least until I can go home and read the article in my own time.


However, in many ways it is simply a reincarnation of existentialism, which conceives of nature and society as dominated by accident and chance and stresses the meaningless of human existence
Well firstly I don't think Existentialists view nature and society as being dominated by 'accident and chance'. Existentialists tend to believe that the individual is free to choose and so they are not determined like material objects are determined by the laws of motion. This is not the same as saying that nature and society are dominated by chance and accident. Sure, there are many influences acting upon us but the message at the end of the day is that humans have a direct effect on how society is through the choices they take.

Secondly I don't think that Existentialism stresses the meaningless of life. It stresses that there is no OBJECTIVE reason behind life but this is different to stating that there is no meaning to life. Our lives gain their meaning through the choices we make and the actions we take, or as Sartre famously put it 'our existence proceeds our essence'.


Existentialism was born as a bourgeois philosophical response to the crisis that World War I and its aftermath dealt to the superficially optimistic world-view and belief in progressive development of capitalist society inherent in middle-class liberalism
I don't quite know what to say here except that the writer produces no evidence to back up what he is saying, and instead states this as if it is fact. I don't understand why writers throw this accusation of being bourgeois at Existentialism. I don't think Existentialism has anything to do with the bourgeois and especially when we consider how science and religion are tools of Capitalism. I have yet to hear a good argument for why Existentialism is a bourgeios philosophy. I cannot see how Existentialism can be used by the bourgeios in the class war. I can see conflict in some areas between Marxism and Existentialism but this doesn't make Existentialism bourgeious. In fact I see Existentialism being far closer to the struggle of the working class then to that of the ruling class. If needs be I'll back up this view because I remember hearing this same argument from Hazard (although he never did seem to want to reply to my objections).


Nietzche developed an anti-rationalist, atheistic humanism based on an extreme individualism that distrusted all group action
Nietzsche didn't believe that there was any genuine group action, rather group action was merely an expression of different Wills to Power. He is not the first philosopher to deny altruism because Hobbes' Psychological Egoism (on which he based his political philosophy) states something similar.


In his early theoretical writings, culminating in Being and Nothingness (1943) Sartre summed up existentialism’s deeply pessimistic view of life in the phrases “life is hell” and “hell is other people”. By 1947, however, Sartre had begun to evolve away from the gloom and despair this view implied. He now argued that while the world was “hell” it was human beings who created the world. This implied a move away from passive self-contemplation toward an active striving for freedom, in which human action could overcome both “hells”. However, this shift was still confined to a subjectivist and individualistic framework—a demand for absolute personal freedom
I don't think Sartre's Existentialism changed that much at all. I know people see it as being pessimistic but on the contrary I see it as a very optimistic philosophy. I think people often see it as pessimistic purely because it unravels all the excuses they have used to shield themselves from the sorry state of their lives. It tackles bad faith, and perhaps that is why Existentialism has found many enemies.

I don't think Sartre's views changed much because if you look at perhaps his two most famous philosophical works ('Being and Nothingness' and 'Existentialism and Humanism') we see that 'Existentialism and Humanism' is saying just the same thing as 'Being and Nothingness' but in far less technical language. In 'E & H' Sartre set out to defend Existentialism from its critics and to explain Existentialism to the masses. He did this because he realised that the language he used in 'B & N' makes the book very unaccessable and hard to understand. I don't even understand most of what is written in 'B & N' because it is a very complicated and dense book. Sartre's Existentialism never was a philosophy of Quietism as some would have us believe.


But this “enriching” involved discarding the materialist, sociohistorical outlook of Marxism in favour of a subjectivist, individualistic approach to philosophy, sociology, morality and politics
I don't personally see anything wrong with removing the strict Materialism that governs Marxism. Marx was not infallible and I think we need to reaccess Dialectical Materialism especially in the light of Stalinism and the Economical Determinsim that was used to excuse it. I don't see why the writer of this article sees this as a necessarily negative thing.


The truth and value of human existence are to be sought exclusively within the existence of the isolated individual
I could not disagree more. Sartre's Existentialism requires the existence of others in order for us to be truly self-conscious.


Moreover, he considered that the dialectical development of society proceeds from the actions of the isolated individual, rather from the objective realities, laws and necessities of social life
From the actions of the isolated individuals. Sartre's Existentialism sets out to combat bad faith and so it makes sense that it cannot allow people to hide behind any form of Determinism. If someone commits a murder then it is because they choose to do so...it is not because society/history/conditions/psychology caused them to do it.


Marxism takes a diametrically opposite point of view: The thoughts and actions of the individual are determined by the dialectical development of society
Indeed it does...but does that mean we must blindly accept it? If this it the case then we don't need to act out against capitalism because it will happen one day anyway (i.e. the revolution is a necessity so we don't need to fight for it...it will just happen). This is something I don't personally agree with, and hopefully this is the subject I will write my dissertation on (fingers crossed that I make it that far).


It is only in and through society that we develop as individuals
The use of the word 'only' in this sentance makes it a contentious issue.


Existentialism, on the other hand, pictures the individual as essentially divorced from other people...
The choices I take are but that is not to imply that I cannot empathise or feel anything for my fellow human being. I'm not an automaton.


...confronted by an inert, irrational and hostile social environment
Exactly who has claimed our social environments are inert? I know Kierkegaard criticised Hegel for many things but I cannot recall anyone who has said that society is inert.


It champions the spontaneity of the individual against any established institution or organised movement
It states that you choices are your own which is not quite the same thing.


It is equally hostile to the social institutions of bourgeois society and to the working class’s collective struggle against them
Erm...some examples of Existentialism being hostile to the struggle of the working class would be nice.


Rather than being a guide to revolutionary action, it is a philosophy that justifies the individualistic non-conformism of middle-class intellectuals
Nice try. It states that we need to act as a collection of individuals who all freely choose to revolt against Capitalism rather then as a bunch of people with no freedom who are merely being compelled by society and there econcomic situation. It states we have freedom which Economic Determinism denies we have.

Overall I agree with Redstar that this article was very clear but I don't think it was a good article. I don't agree with much that was said and I could write all day about the issues raised (which I think I may have done lots of times already)...

Sorry for the length of this post...it's just an issue very close to my heart.

[Trissy]

Sorry to have to bump this issue back to the top of the philosophical topics but as a regular poster here I wonder whether Monty Cantsin had any responce to the points that I raised. I hate to think that the issues I raise are of interest to nobody, although the popularity of this thread probably proves that I am only talking to myself...

[Monty Cantsin]

" Well firstly I don't think Existentialists view nature and society as being dominated by 'accident and chance'. Existentialists tend to believe that the individual is free to choose and so they are not determined like material objects are determined by the laws of motion. This is not the same as saying that nature and society are dominated by chance and accident. Sure, there are many influences acting upon us but the message at the end of the day is that humans have a direct effect on how society is through the choices they take.

Secondly I don't think that Existentialism stresses the meaningless of life. It stresses that there is no OBJECTIVE reason behind life but this is different to stating that there is no meaning to life. Our lives gain their meaning through the choices we make and the actions we take, or as Sartre famously put it 'our existence proceeds our essence'. "

I would say Existentialists would say that society’s directions determined by chance. The rationality for this, society is the structure of individuals organised together in some relationship. If we as individuals have a free agency to choose our own path then as a part of the structure of society we choice what society’s is for others, as far as we are an element of society as a whole.

And for you’re second point I agree with you from the standpoint of the later works of Sartre. See I’ve only read the latter works of Sartre and a few of Camus.

" I don't quite know what to say here except that the writer produces no evidence to back up what he is saying, and instead states this as if it is fact. I don't understand why writers throw this accusation of being bourgeois at Existentialism. I don't think Existentialism has anything to do with the bourgeois and especially when we consider how science and religion are tools of Capitalism. I have yet to hear a good argument for why Existentialism is a bourgeios philosophy. I cannot see how Existentialism can be used by the bourgeios in the class war. I can see conflict in some areas between Marxism and Existentialism but this doesn't make Existentialism bourgeious. In fact I see Existentialism being far closer to the struggle of the working class then to that of the ruling class. If needs be I'll back up this view because I remember hearing this same argument from Hazard (although he never did seem to want to reply to my objections)."

Well according to existentialism what Heidegger did in joining Hitler was ok as long as it was an authentic choice, not done in bad faith. So existentialism can be bourgeois depending on the individual that lives by it. It’s almost Class apathetic or at best promotes social responsibility but that value judgment is totality subjective.


"Nietzsche didn't believe that there was any genuine group action, rather group action was merely an expression of different Wills to Power. He is not the first philosopher to deny altruism because Hobbes' Psychological Egoism (on which he based his political philosophy) states something similar."

Nietzsche’s existentialism is bourgeois if you take it in its totality. Ideas that culture to be true has to be elitists and that education of the masses is a bad thing so forth.

" I don't personally see anything wrong with removing the strict Materialism that governs Marxism. Marx was not infallible and I think we need to reaccess Dialectical Materialism especially in the light of Stalinism and the Economical Determinsim that was used to excuse it. I don't see why the writer of this article sees this as a necessarily negative thing."

Personally I think the second international took Marxism in a totality wrong direction removing it from the ideas of Marx. Lenin during his latter year realised how wrong he was but never admitted it openly and we only know it from his philosophical notebooks on Hegel. I wouldn’t dismiss Lenin in totality because he did have the ability to break with orthodoxy. The Bolsheviks seizing of power shows a definite break with orthodoxy not just in theory but in praxis.

" I could not disagree more. Sartre's Existentialism requires the existence of others in order for us to be truly self-conscious."

I was reading Camus the other day in the rebel and he asserts the same idea. Could you elucidate this concept more?

" From the actions of the isolated individuals. Sartre's Existentialism sets out to combat bad faith and so it makes sense that it cannot allow people to hide behind any form of Determinism. If someone commits a murder then it is because they choose to do so...it is not because society/history/conditions/psychology caused them to do it."

I half agree with you half don’t. I agree with you’re comment on Sartre. But determinism exists if we accept Sartre’s notion of how we form a part of society then so do other individuals thus creating the objective reality of society of the situation. While the situation is objective and exist independent of our perception, it is perception the subjective factor which we is at the base of our choices. So though we have the last say on how we react to the situation the situation determines the choices we can make.

While it is creditable to doubt ones reality because of the subjective factor of perception, it is really a scholastic question we prove our truths in practice. If you’re action failed in its objective then you misjudged the situation.

But from a legal or ultimate responsibility our actions come down to ourselves if we are fully self-conscious individuals. Children cognitive faculties develop on two factors the genetic and the social situation. So Ultimate responsibility can not always fall on them.

" Indeed it does...but does that mean we must blindly accept it? If this it the case then we don't need to act out against capitalism because it will happen one day anyway (i.e. the revolution is a necessity so we don't need to fight for it...it will just happen). This is something I don't personally agree with, and hopefully this is the subject I will write my dissertation on (fingers crossed that I make it that far)."

No I don’t agree it does Doug Lorimer is an orthodox Leninists. Though Lenin sowed the seeds for you to have doubts about what he was writing lorimer hasn’t taken up on them. If you went back and read Marx’s you’d find many quotes about how man is a Historical agent and collectively choices the direction of society.

" The use of the word 'only' in this sentance makes it a contentious issue. "

Agreed. I’d say individuals can only develop to their full potential through development through society. “If I have seen further then other man it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants”… language is learned off people around you so forth.


sorry i took so long to reply...i posted the topic then didnt look at it for agers.

and sorry if i didnt adress every statment you made i felt a few overlapted thus covered.

edit: the quote system wasnt working for me.

[Trissy]

I would say Existentialists would say that society’s directions determined by chance. The rationality for this, society is the structure of individuals organised together in some relationship. If we as individuals have a free agency to choose our own path then as a part of the structure of society we choice what society’s is for others, as far as we are an element of society as a whole.
Perhaps Heideggar's Existentialism may lean towards this line of thinking but I don't think it can be linked to the Existentialism of Sartre at all. Sartre was a strong Libertarian and did not accept any form of Determinism and this includes Social Determinism. At best all that can be said in Sartre's philosophy is that society influences our actions because at the end of the day Consciousness is still immaterial for Sartre and so it is outside the material world which is governed by physical laws and causation.


Well according to existentialism what Heidegger did in joining Hitler was ok as long as it was an authentic choice, not done in bad faith. So existentialism can be bourgeois depending on the individual that lives by it. It’s almost Class apathetic or at best promotes social responsibility but that value judgment is totality subjective.
I agree with you here. What frustrated me about the article was that I sensed it used the term 'bourgeois philosophy' in the sense that it meant a philosophy created by and for the bourgeois. As you point out there needs to be a distinction between bourgeois philosophy meaning a philosophy created and embraced primarily by the bourgeois, and bourgeois philosophy meaning a philosophy which just happens to be able to be embraced by the bourgeois. I agree that Existentialism can be the latter but deny it is the former which seemed to me to be what the article was implying.

As I stated originally I see nothing in Existentialism that makes it especially useful to the bourgeois. If anything I think it is far more useful for Socialism then it is for Capitalism.


Nietzsche’s existentialism is bourgeois if you take it in its totality. Ideas that culture to be true has to be elitists and that education of the masses is a bad thing so forth.
Nietzsche is not generally considered to be an Existentialist philosopher although his work is considered to have preceded the movement (along with that of Kierkegaard who is more often then not considered an Existentialist). Also his work is only bourgeois if you take his talk of nobility to specifically mean the aristocracy. My own view is that Nietzsche admirred the individuals and their strengths more then anybody who was simply fortunate enough to have been born into wealth. He was arguabley more of a meritocrat then a supporter of the bourgeois.

As for his views on the eductation of the masses being bad I think this can only apply to his early works (i.e. those before 'Human, All too Human'). He mainly thought this because in his opinion education of the masses prevented society from focusing all our efforts on developing people who showed genius qualities. This was prior to his painful split from his idol Wagner. Nietzsche realised that Wagner had recieved no special education and was in fact quite ignorant on some matters, and so his (i.e.Nietzsche's) theory on education was severly flawed. Without doing some quick research through my book collection I would not be able to say how this view changed in his later works but I would not be surprised if his views in this area changed over time...



I could not disagree more. Sartre's Existentialism requires the existence of others in order for us to be truly self-conscious

I was reading Camus the other day in the rebel and he asserts the same idea. Could you elucidate this concept more?
I will certainly attempt to although you may have to forgive me if I make some mistakes because of the difficulty of the terminology Sartre uses.

Sartre agrees with Brentano that Consciousness is intentional, or in other words it is always directed at something. Consciousness is always conscious of something. Since Consciousness for Sartre is immaterial Consciousness can never be directly conscious of itself and so we cannot be self-conscious by ourselves. Since Consciousness transcends itself there can be two possible meanings of self-consciousness.
1) Consciousness of our material body (i.e. I am self-conscious if I feel obese)
2) Consciousness of someone who is conscious of ourself (which accounts for feelings such as shame or guilt)

Sartre gave a very good example to help us understand the latter meaning >>>
A man is convinced that his wife is having an affair. One day he is at home when he hears the front door open and the sound of his wife and a stranger. On hearing the stranger's voice the man's mind starts racing and he hides in the closet. He hears them enter the lounge and close the door, and so he comes out of the closet. He cannot hear anything now, and so he creeps closer to the door. He still cannot hear anything, and so he crouches down and gets as close to the keyhole as he can. At this moment he hears some footsteps in the coridoor behind him and he becomes aware that someone is looking at him. Only at this moment does the man feel guilty and ashamed, and it is at this moment that the man becomes self-conscious.

If we lived isolated lives then it would not be possible for us to be fully self-conscious. This also amounts to an argument against Solipsism.


I half agree with you half don’t. I agree with you’re comment on Sartre. But determinism exists if we accept Sartre’s notion of how we form a part of society then so do other individuals thus creating the objective reality of society of the situation. While the situation is objective and exist independent of our perception, it is perception the subjective factor which we is at the base of our choices. So though we have the last say on how we react to the situation the situation determines the choices we can make.
Well I still believe that Sartre's Existentialism cannot allow any other role for society except that of an influence on our choices. This is because although society is an objective reality there is still a gap that prevents a causal chain from existing (and hence Determinism). The material world is determined for Sartre and so there are causal chains of a sort, but since consciousness is immaterial it is not effected by these causal chains in the material world. It is a bit like sound being able to travel on Earth but not in a vacuum.


While it is creditable to doubt ones reality because of the subjective factor of perception, it is really a scholastic question we prove our truths in practice. If you’re action failed in its objective then you misjudged the situation.

I'm a pedantic bastard at times and I have yet to discover any method of 'proving' something obectively outside of the abstract reality of Mathmatics. Hence I feel suspicious whenever anybody tries to tell me how the objective world is whether they be my University Chemistry lecturer or a Marxist scholar...


If you went back and read Marx’s you’d find many quotes about how man is a Historical agent and collectively choices the direction of society.
Due to my flat denial of the posibility of Soft Determinism, it means I am left with either seeing Marx as a (Hard) Determinist or a Libertarian. Faced with these two posibilites I find it hard to see him as anything except a Determinist at the end of the day (even if his Determinism is different to most other types).


sorry i took so long to reply...i posted the topic then didnt look at it for agers.

and sorry if i didnt adress every statment you made i felt a few overlapted thus covered.
No problem. I often get sidetracked myself, and since I try to be consistant in my philosophical beliefs I accept that it is very likely that my comments overlapped in places.

[Monty Cantsin]

"Perhaps Heideggar's Existentialism may lean towards this line of thinking but I don't think it can be linked to the Existentialism of Sartre at all. Sartre was a strong Libertarian and did not accept any form of Determinism and this includes Social Determinism. At best all that can be said in Sartre's philosophy is that society influences our actions because at the end of the day Consciousness is still immaterial for Sartre and so it is outside the material world which is governed by physical laws and causation."

Sartre makes the very sensible observation when he comments on how Men do not make their own existence. Their existence is determined from acts beyond anything they have influence over. So here we have a social relationship between a man and a woman that determines collectively the existence of a different agent.

George Lichtheim noted, “Sartre’s humans don’t cooperate, they are thrown together or, as he put it, ‘serialised.’ . . . Thus human nature is shown by a state of affairs which bears a marked resemblance to a concentration camp.”

“If we lived isolated lives then it would not be possible for us to be fully self-conscious.”

So full development of individuals comes through a social context?

“Well I still believe that Sartre's Existentialism cannot allow any other role for society except that of an influence on our choices.”

And a situation under which a individual can fully develop?

“although society is an objective reality there is still a gap that prevents a causal chain from existing (and hence Determinism). The material world is determined for Sartre and so there are causal chains of a sort, but since consciousness is immaterial it is not effected by these causal chains in the material world.”

Physicists have identified parts in the brain which control morality in a way. If the specific part of the brain has undergone any trauma that would leave it non-functional you can identify that something is “wrong” but you would undertake the action anyway. The reason why same people are so violence is because of chemical imbalance. Consciousness is not immaterial the cognitive processes have been linked to specific section of the brain.

With all else functioning correctly the causation chains hit the individual from action of agencies alienated from their own being and agency. What makes the difference is what the individual chooses but its not a free choice because the material condition force the individual in certain directions. So it’s soft determinism because we have consciousness and choice thus it’s more like probability then an unbroken chain.

“I'm a pedantic bastard at times and I have yet to discover any method of 'proving' something obectively outside of the abstract reality of Mathmatics. Hence I feel suspicious whenever anybody tries to tell me how the objective world is whether they be my University Chemistry lecturer or a Marxist scholar...”

Well I would call that scholastic scepticism.

[chebol]

Redstar wrote:
"but I was really impressed by its clarity."

Ha ha. It's not everyday that Doug's writing is commented on for its 'clarity'! I'll pass on the compliment!

As to the accuracy of the points in the article itself, I'll not comment right now (need to sleep), but I will when I get time (and arguing existentialism is often about as useful as pushing water uphill, and as time-consuming ;-p).
I will, however, venture to say that the 'criticisms' of some of the article evince just those same failings of existentialism that Doug is criticising.

Oh, and there's some misunderstanding of 'determinism', mostly in regards to social being vs social (and individual) consciousness, but I'll all leave that for another day.

[Monty Cantsin]

Bump!!!

Trissy....

[WritingToHaveNoFace]

Existentialism And Post-Structuralism

In the 1980s, the generation of middle-class youth who had radicalised in the 1960s and early 1970s had begun to enter middle age, and increasingly occupied comfortable middle-class careers in academia, in the public service and in lower managerial positions in the private sector. Their former hopes of a socialist revolution in the West had vanished. Indeed, they had ceased to even believe in the desirability of such a revolution, accepting the liberal argument that its inevitable outcome could only be a stagnant, totalitarian society, as exemplified by sclerotic Brezhnev regime in the Soviet Union. The rising prosperity of Western middle-class professionals during the 1980s—a result of the debt-driven consumption-oriented “boom” of the Reagan-Thatcher era—combined with a sense of impending global catastrophes (nuclear war, ecological collapse), plus the rejection of socialism by many of its most articulate members, to create the climate for a resurgence of many of the intellectual themes of Heideggerian existentialism, under the name of “post-structuralism”.

The influence that Heidegger has exerted on the leading poststructuralists is openly acknowledged by them. Jacques Derrida, for example, explicitly situates his work as a continuation of Heidegger’s thought. Michel Foucault stated not long before his death: “Heidegger has always been for me the essential philosopher.”[6]

Michel Foucault was not a phenomenologist, nor was he an existentialist, Heidegger was. Michel Foucault should not be grouped with Derrida. Foucault was an ardent social activist who was beaten and imprisoned many times. His rejection of Marxism stemmed from two extremely complicated issues:

1.)In the 50s he was a member of the PCP in France, which was nothing more than an extension of Stalinist nationalism. Its political line was anti-global working class and pro-Russia. It repetedly betrayed the French working class (As many other CPs associated with moscow) and dogmatically echoed every utterance coming from Russia. He left the party for these two reasons.

2.)His studies were influenced by Marx and the Marxist conception of "Bourgeois conciousness", however, his historical method situated Marxism as a system of thought that was only relevant to 19th century discourse.

He nevertheless fought along side Maoists, Stalinists, Trotskyists, Anarchists, and Sartrean existentialists (including Sartre himself) against "institutions that appear[ed] neutral" such as confinement in prisons, sexual liberation, racial liberation.

His political thought can be, in a somewhat incomplete form, shown in his debate with Chomsky.

[Trissy]

Sorry for taking ages to reply but I needed to concentrate on my thoughts on the topics of my philosophy Uni exams and then it was my birthday plus I'm quite lazy. It's no excuse, just an explanation of sorts...


Sartre makes the very sensible observation when he comments on how Men do not make their own existence. Their existence is determined from acts beyond anything they have influence over. So here we have a social relationship between a man and a woman that determines collectively the existence of a different agent.

But I still think Sartre would disagree with the use of the word 'determines' here because it confuses people between Determinism as a branch of metaphysics (which he certainly disagreed with) and 'determines' as in influences the choices we make.

True it is impossible for a man to control his whole life because so many other peoples' choices effect his own. History, economics, and society all influence the choices he will make for example the partner he settles down with, the education he receives and the job he gains. What remains clear though is that he freely chooses to become who he is. His choices are free and not even society or history can FORCE him to become something. Even the slave faces free choices because he chooses freely between obeying and rebeling. I can see no way of reading 'Existentialism & Humanism' without arriving at this understanding of Sartre's Existentialism. Peoples' actions are not predetermined by previous actions...

"If, however, it is true that existence is prior to essence, man is responsible for what he is. Thus, the first effect of existentialism is that it puts every man in possession of himself as he is, and places the entire responsibility for his existence squarely upon his own shoulders"

This passage would make no sense if Sartre believed in determinism because moral responsibility would not lie in the individual but in the prior events that caused them to act in the way they did.


So full development of individuals comes through a social context?
Not necessarily because it depends on what you mean by 'social context'. All that is needed for the individual to be fully self-conscious of one's emotions and inner states is that there exists (or the individual at least thinks there exists) another individual who is aware of them. A person would still be self-conscious in a Hobbesian State of Nature where all forms of social interaction are severely limited.


Physicists have identified parts in the brain which control morality in a way. If the specific part of the brain has undergone any trauma that would leave it non-functional you can identify that something is “wrong” but you would undertake the action anyway. The reason why same people are so violence is because of chemical imbalance. Consciousness is not immaterial the cognitive processes have been linked to specific section of the brain.

With all else functioning correctly the causation chains hit the individual from action of agencies alienated from their own being and agency. What makes the difference is what the individual chooses but it’s not a free choice because the material conditions force the individual in certain directions. So it’s soft determinism because we have consciousness and choice thus it’s more like probability then an unbroken chain.
Well the issue is still a very contentious one. It could still be argued that although there are observable signals in our brains when we are exposed to certain stimuli, that the mind is immaterial. Dualists do not deny that there is some relationship between the brain and the mind, they just state that there is more to the mind then can be found in the material structure and processes of the brain. If the Materialist view of the mind is correct then theoretically you can recreate conscious experiences perfectly in a mind without there being any stimuli that corresponds to that experience, and this I find hard to believe. In the future could someone create something like the Matrix?

As for Soft Determinism then I have always been very dubious about whether it is a coherent philosophical position. I can see no way that moral responsibility can be reconciled with determinism. Our judicial systems rest on the notion of moral responsibility residing primarily in the individual and so our concept of justice would have to be seriously changed if we accept determinism. We're either responsible and free or determined and not free in my mind. To talk of having being responsible but not free appears very problematic to me.

[Monty Cantsin]

To WritingToHaveNoFace ( you got that from The Archæology of Knowledge by Foucault) [another side note is that sade you’ve got a picture of?]

“Michel Foucault was not a phenomenologist, nor was he an existentialist, Heidegger was. Michel Foucault should not be grouped with Derrida.”

And no one is saying Foucault is…I feel that post-modernism borrows a lot from existentialism which Foucault admits indirectly. Lorimer is not saying Derrida and Foucault are from the same school of thought just influenced by Heidegger.

“1.)In the 50s he was a member of the PCP in France, which was nothing more than an extension of Stalinist nationalism. Its political line was anti-global working class and pro-Russia. It repetedly betrayed the French working class (As many other CPs associated with moscow) and dogmatically echoed every utterance coming from Russia. He left the party for these two reasons.”

Fair enough so he rejected Stalinism…so do I, it’s not an attack on Marxism per sa.

“His studies were influenced by Marx and the Marxist conception of "Bourgeois conciousness", however, his historical method situated Marxism as a system of thought that was only relevant to 19th century discourse.”

This critique could be justified if you tried to take Marx’s historical analysis and carried it into a different epoch. Modern Marxists (don’t do this though…they take the soul of Marxism its methods and apply it to the current everyday.

Though when I mention Modern Marxist I don’t include “Marxist” who betray authentic Marxism by not realising a theory is limited to the set of circumstances in which is was born, Eg: Bob Avakian… a Maoist in an advanced imperialist nation.

“His political thought can be, in a somewhat incomplete form, shown in his debate with Chomsky.”

I downloaded that but the subtitles are Dutch…which sucks because I can’t read it.

To Trissy

“But I still think Sartre would disagree with the use of the word 'determines' here because it confuses people between Determinism as a branch of metaphysics (which he certainly disagreed with) and 'determines' as in influences the choices we make.”

So you disagreeing on the grounds of semantics… but really the example I cited was one were the conciseness of the subject was not brought into play thus no causation break. So it was more then an influence directing choice or trying to influence choice as you might rather it be put, but a determination in the absolute determinist sense. Not “inter-subjective” or objective forces that determines the situation which the individual acts on and has the ability to choose a direction.

“True it is impossible for a man to control his whole life because so many other peoples' choices effect his own. History, economics, and society all influence the choices he will make for example the partner he settles down with, the education he receives and the job he gains. What remains clear though is that he freely chooses to become who he is. His choices are free and not even society or history can FORCE him to become something. Even the slave faces free choices because he chooses freely between obeying and rebeling. I can see no way of reading 'Existentialism & Humanism' without arriving at this understanding of Sartre's Existentialism. Peoples' actions are not predetermined by previous actions...”

“Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.” Marx

Man faced with his reality choices his path, revolutionary, reactionary, authentic or in bad faith. The situation, the objective forces can be conducive to the aims of the man or they counter and challenge him at every step. It ends up being a balance of probability how the individuals interprets and acts upon the situation. (That sounds so quotable…copy righted)

To say that choice is free it would have to be without coercion and even thought is influenced by forces outside of our control. During childhood we develop in our social context which is the arena in which we learn our basic moral/values, skills and behaviours. A more precise example of this is imprinting, the process by which behavioural aspects of parents are “Imprinted” on the child. Humans though are rational agent though imperfect, (Kant was right when he stated that God was the only perfect rational agent. Though I have my reservations about god/s in my mind they are the only agents that could possibly be perfectly rational) we still have autonomy of choice (no one can force us) and can choose when we become conscious of undesirable traits to render them a thing of the past.

Child or not though In our “zone of proximal development” (ZPD) the level of our individual functioning is supplemented and enhanced by our interaction with more advanced individuals in their “zone”. Thus our level of consciousness and understanding can be determined not only by our own biological construct and effort but also by individuals who purposes we cannot control.

So choices are not free because not only can situations conspirer against our proposes and aims but can also affect our thought limiting it within an artificial construct one which could remain sub-conscious for some time. The moment when someone becomes conscious of this though, they can act above and beyond it relegating it to the past.


note to Trissy i'm not advoiding you're other points it's just late and i'll reply to them latter.

PS. to the mods i still can't quote....every time i try and us it the thing wants to quote the whole page.

[Trissy]

So you're disagreeing on the grounds of semantics… but really the example I cited was one were the conciseness of the subject was not brought into play thus no causation break
But it is more than disagreeing on the grounds of semantics. Marxism is founded on Materialism and Determinism whereas Sartre did not argue for this. He (wrongfully in my opinion) argued that Existentialism was a subset of Marxism. Sartre was a Dualist who believed in freedom of the will. I believe that in their current forms Marxism and Existentialism are irreconcilable.


So it was more then an influence directing choice or trying to influence choice as you might rather it be put, but a determination in the absolute determinist sense. Not “inter-subjective” or objective forces that determines the situation which the individual acts on and has the ability to choose a direction
Maybe for a Marxist. I still believe that Sartre's phenomenological ontology is a provides a good reason to believe that although there is a relationship between mind and brain, they are not the same and that if consciousness is immaterial as Sartre believes then freewill can be maintained.


“Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.” Marx
Mmm...this is just Marx stating what appears intuitively obvious. We do not make the world because it exists before we do and it will exist after we do. No one man can create a world (in the objective sense). The last point just assumes materialism and determinism...it's very far from arguing for them. I could state Sartre's argument for the mind being immaterial but I think I've done this many times before on here so it may be boring for some people.


Man faced with his reality choices his path, revolutionary, reactionary, authentic or in bad faith
Yes but the above Marx quote seems to me to strongly imply that freewill and choice are mere illusions. I've mentioned this once in a topic in theory about the necessity of revolution and I think it poses a key flaw in Marxist philosophy because if it is true then we have no need to fight for a revolution since it will occur only when it is ready and never before (and so regardless of 'choices' taken).


The situation, the objective forces can be conducive to the aims of the man or they counter and challenge him at every step. It ends up being a balance of probability how the individuals interprets and acts upon the situation. (That sounds so quotable…copy righted)
But surely this transcends probability? We only use the terms probability because the human race does not have the technology and knowledge to be able to predict things with 100% certainty. When a coin is tossed we say that there is probability of 0.5 that it will land heads and a probability of 0.5 that is will land tails when in fact this is a generalisation based on the fact we cannot take into account all the factors of one specific toss of a coin (such as speed, spin, gravitational forces, air resistance, humidity, etc). Strict materialism and determinism cannot deal with probability because by their very definition they transcend it, and hence choice is an illusion.


To say that choice is free it would have to be without coercion and even thought is influenced by forces outside of our control. During childhood we develop in our social context which is the arena in which we learn our basic moral/values, skills and behaviors. A more precise example of this is imprinting, the process by which behavioral aspects of parents are “Imprinted” on the child. Humans though are rational agent though imperfect, we still have autonomy of choice (no one can force us) and can choose when we become conscious of undesirable traits to render them a thing of the past
But how can we? If only the material world exists, and previous material forces determine all current actions and future actions then it is impossible to say we have choice except as an illusion brought about by our ignorance of all the numerous material forces that determine our actions.


Kant was right when he stated that God was the only perfect rational agent. Though I have my reservations about god/s in my mind they are the only agents that could possibly be perfectly rational
Sorry for taking this out of the original passage but I though it deserved a separate response from the original passage in order to avoid confusion. I haven't read much Kant but I am aware of his work. I agree with Kant but only grudgingly on the grounds that people have defined this into truth. It still says nothing as to whether such a God exists to correlate with the idea God.


Child or not though In our “zone of proximal development” (ZPD) the level of our individual functioning is supplemented and enhanced by our interaction with more advanced individuals in their “zone”. Thus our level of consciousness and understanding can be determined not only by our own biological construct and effort but also by individuals who purposes we cannot control.

So choices are not free because not only can situations conspirer against our proposes and aims but can also affect our thought limiting it within an artificial construct one which could remain sub-conscious for some time. The moment when someone becomes conscious of this though, they can act above and beyond it relegating it to the past.
But only if we have dissolved Being-for-itself into Being-in-itself as Materialists try to do. If we maintain that these two type of being are different, and hence that consciousness is immaterial then we have no need to accept any determinism in immaterial substances. As a Sartrean Existentialist I feel able to acknowledge the role of thousands of things as influences upon us at the same time as asserting that human beings always make free choices for which they are solely responsible. It poses problems with my leftist views true but I see it as something I must address at a later point like Sartre himself tried to do. In fact I'm thinking of making it the subject of my post-graduate studies if I manage to get that far with Philosophy


note to Trissy i'm not advoiding you're other points it's just late and i'll reply to them latter.
No problem. Feel free to respond in your own time because I'm well aware that I'm not the promptest person to post replies at the moment.

[Pedro Alonso Lopez]

Altough Trissy answered some good stuff on the whole Sartre affair, some problems arise with the phenomenology there, in that their are rash over-simplifications in there.


Heidegger was strongly influenced by the 19th century irrationalist philosophers Soren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzche, and was the disciple of the German idealist philosopher Edmund Husserl.

Grossly, grossly wrong to call Husserl an idealist, he didn't even maintain a belief in a subject/object dichotomy but hey its handy to call him an idealist.



Husserl founded the philosophy of phenomenology, which he claimed superseded both materialism and idealism by rejecting all “presuppositions”.

Was he not just called an idealist a moment ago, hail the consistency of polemics. Anyway he beliefs any truly scientific philosophy will be presuppitionless because in order to examine the things as they appear to conciousness you need to disregard all the baggage brought with empiricism and naturalism etc. You will need to get into epoche here and everything, this article is utterly simplisitic here.


He sought to eliminate any theory of knowledge and called for suspending belief about any previously known fact in the study of a particular phenomenon.

The point is to be free to examine the phenomena as they appear to us at the precise moment they appear to us so that we can build up certainty from the very moment it appears to us, not just to dismiss anything for the sake of it.



The internal logic of a phenomenon was to be reconstructed from the appearances of it available to the observer. Thus far the method appeared to parallel empiricism, but Husserl then asserted that the aim of such investigation was to intuitively grasp the real essence of the phenomenon under observation.

Grand.


During the period of study, no consideration was to be given to the reality or non-reality of the object under examination. Thus, dreams, fantasies, and illusions were to be examined with a seriousness equal to that given to objectively indisputable existences.

Are we to suppose that illusions and fantasies do not exist in consciousness?



By 1907 Husserl had become an avowed subjective idealist, asserting that objects had no existence outside of human consciousness.

Complete and utter lie! This article is bullshit on Husserl.

[WritingToHaveNoFace]

To WritingToHaveNoFace ( you got that from The Archæology of Knowledge by Foucault) [another side note is that sade you’ve got a picture of?]


1.)Yes
2.)Yes


And no one is saying Foucault is…I feel that post-modernism borrows a lot from existentialism which Foucault admits indirectly. Lorimer is not saying Derrida and Foucault are from the same school of thought just influenced by Heidegger.

Ok, but the article situates Foucault among "post-structural" and "existential" thinkers which I think does not encapsulate his texts. He claimed he wrote in the tradition of modernity (to critique modernity with the tools of modernity.)


Fair enough so he rejected Stalinism…so do I, it’s not an attack on Marxism per sa.

The article indicated that his thought was an outcome of a disillusionment with socialist revolution. I didn't say that his rift with the PCF (spelling error in previous post) represented an attack on Marxism.


This critique could be justified if you tried to take Marx’s historical analysis and carried it into a different epoch. Modern Marxists (don’t do this though…they take the soul of Marxism its methods and apply it to the current everyday.

That is what he attacked as I understand him.


I downloaded that but the subtitles are Dutch…which sucks because I can’t read it.

Where did you get it from? I have been looking for it for ages.

[Aurorus Ruber]

I consider myself an existentialist and don't really believe in logic a great deal. It's useful for some things, afterall, you can't simply shout "It's just wrong" in a discussion on capitalism. I draw some influences from Marxism, but I am really an anarchist.

[Dysfunctional_Literate]

I'm an existentialist first and an anarchist second. I think Marxism and anarchy inparticular are friendlier to existentialism so that is why I support the revolutionary left. America is strange in the respect that we are can be rugged indiviualist self-absorbed types and at the same time be totally caught up in how people view us and want to belong to a group. Kierkgaard was awesome. He would write under a different penname so he could critize and attack his real views. If Ayn Rand and her type were all objectivists existentialists would be the polar opposite since they are subjectivists. Taxi Driver is an interesting movie that is steeped in this type of stuff.

[chebol]

Pedro Alonso Lopez wrote:
"Complete and utter lie! This article is bullshit on Husserl."

Would you care to (try to) expand?

[Monty Cantsin]

His left, therefore you'd have to read up on Husserl to find out if Lorimer was off the mark.