Category: Philosophy

Joined at the Mind: Philosophy, Mysticism and Madness

 

Review-essay of Wouter Kusters, Philosophy of Madness: The Experience of Psychotic Thinking, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2022

Govert Schuller

In this article I will aim at giving an overview of Dutch philosopher Wouter Kusters’ phenomenal study, Philosophy of Madness, with some asides about what is phenomenologically important in it.

Kusters’ Philosophy of Madness: The Experience of Psychotic Thinking is a must read for all interested in philosophy, mysticism and madness, and the disturbing closeness, even overlap, of all three, indicated by the following thought-provoking short statements: Philosophy, madness and mysticism all have in common that their point of departure is in the suspension of the ‘natural attitude’ (Husserl), inauthentic average everydayness (Heidegger), or our collective, narrative identity (Ricoeur). They all step out of consensual, common-sense reality. Philosophy and mysticism are modes of controlled madness. Madness is uncontrolled philosophy and mysticism. Madness develops its own philosophy, which is not necessarily mad. Some insights might only be accessible in the mode of madness. Monist philosophies push you to mysticism, which can take a turn into madness when you make too many imaginary connections too fast. Madness could be cured with a better, less verbal and imaginary mode of mysticism. In (very) short, the book is a true cornucopia of well-developed crossings.

Philosophy of Madness

A more structured introduction to this study might be developed by contemplating the subtle nuances implied by its title. This would be a somewhat Heideggerian manner of unpacking a subject matter, especially by looking at the preposition ‘of’ as a so-called ‘double genitive’ indicating that the study is not only a philosophy about madness (of which there are many variants), but also, and maybe more importantly, delves into the practice of philosophy inherent in madness. The leading idea is that people who are considered mad are not lost in confusion and incomprehensible thoughts, but are in their own way grappling deeply with the meaning of life, their situation and their own sense of identity. This is not to say that Kusters is romanticizing or justifying madness, which some have done in the anti-psychiatry movement. His aim is more towards developing an empathetic understanding of the very complex, meaningful, lived experience of madness, which might provide a better basis for the treatment of people suffering from psychotic episodes, while it is also a philosophical reflection on his own life as Kusters had his own experiences of involuntarily venturing twice into that realm.

The structure of a ‘double genitive’, just to bring into play some more hermeneutic phenomenology, was also applied by Heidegger in the title of his 1923 semester, the “hermeneutics of facticity”, having the double meaning of 1) the non-theoretical interpretation of life as lived and 2) the idea that life as lived has the feature of already having-been-interpreted. In other words, the hermeneutics of facticity involves the interpretive exploration of the historical and contextual dimensions of human existence, which requires more than just abstract analysis or theoretical speculation; it necessitates a hermeneutic engagement with the realities of lived experience. At the same time the hermeneutics of facticity involves uncovering the meaning and significance of our factual existence, including our bodily sensations, emotions, relationships, projects, and encounters with the world, which all of them have already been interpreted by our ancestors, parents, teachers, etc., with the caveat that we have the freedom to re-interpret life’s facticities. This notion of an existential-phenomenological hermeneutics of life is neatly captured by the short expression of the “pan-hermeneutic” nature of human life by Heidegger expert Theodore Kisiel (2014).

About Madness

As far as a philosophy about madness is concerned, Kusters is not interested in the proceedings and findings of modern psychiatry with its diagnostic manuals and what Kusters sees as its dominant discourse of looking at madness as something that happens to the brain in terms of neuronal misfirings, hormonal imbalances or chemical interferences, all of which are incapable of addressing how the madman experiences his reality. Fortunately, there exists a long tradition of “phenomenological psychiatry” inspired by the founding fathers of phenomenology like Husserl, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, which tries to look from the inside-out at the experienced reality and world of the mad itself.

“This method attempts to understand the seemingly strange world of the mad, including their thoughts and experiences, without judging them in terms of disorders, abnormalities, and deficiencies. Using this approach, it has been observed that it is not only the language of madmen, their way of perceiving the world, and their emotional responses to it that change; a change also occurs in the very depths of their experiential world—in how they experience time, in how their thoughts and perceptions mutually influence each other, and in how closeness and distance relate to each other.”(7)

Descriptive phenomenologies of madness and curative existential psychotherapies have been developed by Merlau-Ponty, Michel Foucault, Thomas Szaz, Ronald Laing, Ludwig Binswanger, Meddard Boss, Viktor Frankl and quite some others, and Kusters can probably be placed in this category. Arguably he moved the investigation a couple of notches further by delving deeper into the experiences of madness themselves.

But, as much as Kusters appreciates phenomenology and uses many of its findings, this attitude is in his view not going far enough, because it stays on the edge and remains in an observational stance, gathering materials to make subtle differentiations and fitting them in the flexible framework of this school. Kusters proposes to go further and dive into madness “to taste its fluid substance, to feel its movements, whether swimming, diving, or drowning” and will do so with the help of what he calls “spiritual psychiatry” which is premised on the idea that madness and genius are closely related and that some or many mad people are actually highly sensitive and gifted crypto- or proto-philosophers who can help us broaden our experiential and philosophical horizons. But even this school (as well as psychoanalysis, which he puts into play) is “reluctant to break through the thin ice of madness”(8). Kusters wants to go deeper into a risky but also “wonderful” deconstruction in which the relationship between philosophy and madness is turned upside-down: “the madman comes to occupy the chair of the philosopher—and the philosopher ends up in the isolation cell”. In this movement in four phases, which are also the main parts of his book, Kusters is courageously on his own.

“In part I, the madman speaks mainly as a madman, as an object of observation, producing data analyzed by the philosopher. In part II he begins to stir; he dons the garments of the mystic, and his delusional writings are upgraded to the level of mysticism, if not philosophical aphorism. In part III, madness, mysticism, and philosophy join in a circle dance, precipitating a whirlwind in each of the four directions. In part IV, madness crystallizes; the madman rises to the surface from the mystical depths of part III; he solidifies into the more familiar forms of paranoia, paradox, and poetry and is now no longer discernible from the philosopher.”(9)

Therefore, besides the double genitive–setting up a dichotomy between a ‘sane’ philosophy about madness and a ‘deviant’ philosophy in madness–one can read the title also as covering the movement of philosophy into madness and its enriching return out of madness with the idea that we can “forge philosophy from madness”, which theme Kusters presents as underlying his book.

“What does the possibility and the existence of madness imply for commonly accepted ideas about humanity and the world? In what sense is philosophy changed or ‘stretched’ when we admit the ‘data’ of the madman’s experience? What is a philosophy of madness?”(11)

Here I like to interpolate–maybe retreating into my own safer philosophical attitude–that, from the stance of phenomenology, the movement and logic of the above questions and their answers as developed in the book, can be construed as an original instantiation of Husserl’s fundamental methodology, i.e. imaginative variation, by which one plays around with the particular structures and dynamics of a given experience by varying them to find its essential and contingent features and make ever more fine-grained differentiations.

What was maybe overlooked by Husserl, but put to good use by Heidegger and Marleau-Ponty, are the insights to be derived from variations of breakdown and dysfunction, like Heidegger’s broken hammer and the unfortunate cases Merleau-Ponty looked into to understand behavior at its most basic moments of constitution.

When a piece of equipment breaks or is missing, this can become the entry point to a reflection on the inter-connected and co-dependent nature of instruments in a specific setting, like a carpenter’s workshop or surgery room. What comes to light especially is the difference between the primordial, tacit, skilful relationship with equipment as ‘ready-to-hand’ when used, and its derivative, theoretical thingness as ‘present-to-hand’ when observed and inspected. Furthermore, the larger context of using equipment can also become more explicit, like the structures of the ‘in-order-to’ and ‘for-the-sake-of-which’ of the work, all together constituting a ‘referential totality’ of a ‘work-world’ of a skilled worker, and beyond it, referring to the world of its intended users and equipment producers, including nature as the source of raw materials (Heidegger, 1961:102-7).

In Kusters’ case this method is pushed into the domain of madness, or the breakdown of consensual normality, not merely taking the madman’s data as a meaningful variant of normal reality construction, but also by experiencing madness itself as best as possible (empathetically, vicariously or even first-hand in hypo- or full mode) in order to deepen our understanding of both normality and its mad deviations, resulting in fascinating and unsettling insights about the contingent and fragile constitution of the world and ourselves.

Beyond Psychiatry: A Phenomenological Approach

In part I, “Cogitating Your Head Off”, Kusters provides a great tableau of such mad experiences and their variations in the realm of the cognition and perception of reality; the experiences of what is ‘outer’ and what is ‘inner’; and the experiences of time and space. He analyzes what can happen to these reality-anchoring categories when they enter the “ocean of madness” and become transformed and fragmented and thereby disrupt regular philosophical discourse and even lays claim to philosophy itself.

A special spot in Part I is reserved for Husserl’s phenomenology of inner time-consciousness, one of the deepest reflections on the possibility conditions of conscious experience, and in Kusters’ writing a tool to understand both normal and psychotic experiences. How do we keep the coherence of consensus reality running in a semi-chaotic flow of events? And what happens when that breaks down and a psychotic manner of meaning-construction takes over? How can we best understand the Husserlian analysis of the interplay between memory, the just-passed (retention), the present, the just-to-come (protention) and expectations in the construction and change of reality? Furthermore, Kusters also reflects on the subject matter of time and its complexities, which itself can become so perplexing that thinking loses its footing and can go into a mad overdrive. This is where the philosopher can slip from controlled, experimental thinking, into hyperreflexive perplexity, possibly resulting in uncontrolled psychotic thinking.

As an illustration of what might happen when a mad experience of time takes over, Kusters provides a few sections narrating his own experiences as he lived them himself (Fragments III & IV). In Part I he shares eight of such fragments of personal experiences, which reminded me of the absurdist science fiction writings of the American author Kurt Vonnegut in the sense that the experience of flow still has the structure of a meaningful, coherent narrative, but then solipsistically personal and for an outsider seen as detached from normal reality. It is in these fragments and the quoted passages from other madmen of mad experiences that the reader can “taste its fluid substance” and “feel its movements” most closely. Again, much can be learned from things going wrong.

Into Mysticism & Madness

In Part II, “Via Mystica Psychotica”, Kusters goes deeper and leaves behind explanatory frameworks and intends to

“analyze what happens to the madman when he no longer has the security of the prosaic, and when fixed identities, images, words, and thoughts all melt, dissolve, and disappear. In this part, the emphasis is more on the mad process than on the mad condition. The kind of madness to be discussed here is what outsiders are more likely to call manic . . “(163)

And a new important mode of experience is inserted into the analysis and that is mysticism in order to help to further the analysis of philosophy and madness by finding parallels and communalities between madness and mysticism. The focus is on four subsets of phenomena where things can go wrong and each deserved a chapter: the perception and experience of truth (Detachment); the use of images and the imagination (Demagination); the problems of expression and language (Delanguization); and the transformation of the process of thinking (Dethinking). Some of the leading questions are about the difference between mad hallucinations and mystic visions and why some uncommon experiences lead to serenity and others to madness. The core of his musing seems to be the following train of thought, though he thinks it not entirely adequate.

“Perhaps the mad experience is a logical continuation of the mystical experience. The madman carries on with the journey, while the mystic drops out prematurely. For the very reason that he is connected to a tradition that has prepared him for his experience, the mystic will hold fast to certain assurances, identities, or traditional distinctions–such as the difference between good and evil–and that makes him incapable of penetrating the most extreme domains. The madman goes further and deeper, but he also pays a higher price: many do not return from this transmarginal zone–or so this line of reasoning goes.”(171)

Even though considered inadequate and maybe too romantic, this question seems to be one of the book’s core dilemmas in evaluating the respective value of a) controlled mysticism embedded in a tradition and b) manic mysticism which has broken through all conventionality and continues to explore “the realm of paradoxes, paranoia and prophetic madness”(171).

Mystical Delusions in Four Variations

After this analysis of the commonalities and differences between madness and mysticism, philosophy is again put to use in the analyses in Part III, “Light Mists”. Here Kusters differentiates more ethereal and abstract categories in “mystical madness”, which are “the One, being, infinity and nothingness”(280). Each again deserved its own chapter, which titles indicate we are dealing here with a set of fascinating and overlapping delusions which delineate the essence of mystic and manic experiences.

The chapter on the “uni-delusion” is framed by Plotinus and his mystical concept of the One, which is the apex of a hierarchical structure comprising everything, i.e. “all dimensions of life and the cosmos”, which will appeal to all people with a monist inclination. The problem, as Kusters sees it, is that aiming at experiencing the One leads to a mode of spiritual interiorization which leaves the body behind.

“The One is everywhere and nowhere; it’s a lovely idea for the mind, but for the body of the uni-deluded individual, it means nothing but fragmentation and alienation. If my mind is swallowed up in the One, my body is swallowed up in general scattered physicality.”(297)

Being: Immersion in sensory ecstasy, detached from others

The “esse-delusion” addressed in chapter 10, seems to aim at the opposite of the “uni-delusion” in that it is more exterior. Here Kusters, among a few, uses the drug-induced experiences of the British author Aldous Huxley to make his points that the “esse-delusion” is more experiential, aesthetic and focused on visual-sensory perceptions, which induce a sense of intense being, even “too much being”(320). In this analysis Kusters also addresses the mystical aspects of music, both in its capacity to induce mystic experiences, but also to soothe the minds of the mad. The problem here is that a new mode of “subjectification” emerges, one which leaves behind our fellow subjects by becoming too wrapped up in one’s solipsistic ecstasy and avoiding others.

As an aside, I would point out that Huxley’s work on mystical ecstasies set within a this-worldly, sensory here-and-now might have been deeply influenced by his friendship with the global sage Jiddu Krishnamurti, who arguably was promoting a form of quiet, non-cognitive, post-egoic nature mysticism and also had a deep appreciation of music. In this regard see Huxley’s foreword to Krishnamurti’s first book published by a major publisher (Huxley, 1953).

The third delusion, the infinity-delusion, I will treat separately in the next section as it is the start of a phenomenological contemplation on the role of the imagination in both sane sense-making and its mad variant.

Nothingness: Hyper-reflexivity leading to existential emptiness

The fourth delusion, the nothing-delusion in chapter 12, is the logical outcome of the process of the “de-xx-ing” on the via mystica psychotica, which destroys all mental content in the course of becoming “thoroughly detached, demagined, delanguized, and dethought”(389). Everything is questioned in a heightened state of reflexivity to the point where the normal relationship between being and nothingness is flipped. Where being used to be the norm and nothingness an aberration, in the experience of the psychotic the tables are turned and a hyperreflexive doubt undermines any and all tacit, common sense understanding of being and the resulting abysmal emptiness becomes the norm.

“Ordinary human reflexivity is stripped from the ground of existence and becomes a raging, nihilistic, inhuman hyperreflexivity in the vacuousness of Ø.”(396; with Ø standing for nothingness)

And a little further:

“… the mystical madman “slips away” from being by doubting everything, by calling everything into question, and by subjecting the most ordinary things to the scrutiny of a questioning and burning hyperreflexivity. This leads to perplexity that can be understood as the question mark with a capital letter, as the state of questioning in which there is no longer a questioned or a questioner, and as total nothingness: Ø. When being is swallowed up in questioning, the mystical madman disappears into nothingness. Hyperreflexivity is like the whirlpool that leads to an infinitesimal point of concentration in the endlessly vast, bottomless ocean of being.”(399)

For phenomenologists, Kusters’ analysis of the thoughts on nothingness by Sartre and Heidegger will be of interest. In the case of Sartre, the idea of the linkage of madness and the Husserlian concept of time is brought back. For Sartre human time is only possible if and when a break is inserted between the past and the future, a break by ‘nothingness’ in order to free man from its past and be open to its future, and this will be accompanied by anguish if we are conscious of it. And the presence of other people has a role in this constitution of freedom in anguish. Therefore, the structure of consciousness includes nothingness, being and others in an interdependent manner. In madness this structure also falls apart. In the Ø-delusion, nothingness swallows up being, others are left aside, and with them morality too, and the mood can waver between demonic and cheerful.

“Ø functions as the drain through which all possible life is carried away, sooner or later, in the sewer of nothingness.”(411)

Kusters calls Heidegger one of the “optimistic nothingness experts”(424), who recommends anxious encounters with nothingness, especially for philosophers, in pursuing the question of why there are beings rather than nothing. And it is fine if the grounds of one’s being disappear and you become speechless. This pursuit is harmless as long as you are not drawn into the realm of the imaginary with its illusions and hallucinations. It is all controlled and benign. But in mystical madness a more terrifying question is posed: “Is there anything at all? Isn’t there actually absolutely nothing?”(426) Here again might be the fine line between controlled philosophy and being in the runaway grip of madness.

The chapter ends with a discussion of the soteriological concepts of nothingness in the “nihil-centric”, spiritual philosophies in the east and their overlap with some aspects of the Ø-delusion. Kusters consulted the work of religion scholar Mircea Eliade on the “via mystica orientalis” of the yogi. Both yogi and madman turn their back to reality, including other humans and even their own body, and find it all illusory, and both become entangled in another, opposite world of detachment and emptiness, the yogi in samadhi or sacred nothingness, and the madman in the Ø-delusion. And again, their difference might lie in their measure of control, though the factor of cultural acceptability has to be taken into account. By western standards a yogi might get locked up and by eastern standards a madman might be venerated.

Rock Bottom

Part IV, “Crystral Fever”, dives into the end point of philosophy, mysticism and madness, that is complete disintegration in perplexity, solipsism, chronic psychosis, mania and paranoia. But here I will leave the summary and plunge into a contemplation on the role of the imagination in madness.

The Hidden Productivity of the Transcendental Imagination

Both mysticism and madness transgress all limits and touch thereby an ineffable infinite. Mathematical philosophy joins the two when it tries to think through what it means “to keep on counting” and asks where it ever might stop. In the chapter on the infinity-delusion Kusters starts with a discussion of the many infinities the German mathematical genius Georg Cantor could generate, including the ultimate infinity of infinities, the one he identified with God. Besides the obvious idea that infinities are mental concepts, Cantor thought infinities were somehow also to be found in reality. Many of his peers thought he had gone maybe too far into some form of pantheism. Kusters thinks that Cantor, who struggled with mental health issues, might have been the first to get trapped in an infinity-delusion.

Infinity in Reality

Kusters’ grappled with a similar ontological claim by Rudy Rucker, that “mathematical infinity can be found in reality”(335). How that could be interpreted, is the starting point for me to bring in a cluster of ideas with which I struggled when I wrote my MA dissertation on narrative identity and the role of the faculty of productive imagination.

I will first summarize Kuster’s processing of Rucker’s claims, then present my phenomenological ideas derived from Heidegger’s phenomenological interpretation of Kant regarding knowledge and action, after which I will present my own re-arrangement of these ideas and apply them to madness.

Rucker’s example of a ‘real’ infinity is the infinite length of the English coast encompassing a finite amount of land. The more you zoom into a stretch of coast, the more its irregularities add to the length of the coastline “until the measuring instrument breaks down and you slip into the realm of the molecular and the atomic”(339). The other, similar example is the phenomenon of fractals in which irregular lines or surfaces multiply seemingly without end into ever more detailed and longer lines when you zoom in.

But, Kusters questions this alleged experience of infinity and asks himself if this infinity is only taking place in your mind and whether you see only pixels “onto which you are projecting infinity?” Kuster then states that “Infinity is located somewhere between mind and matter, between thought and perception”, or maybe even beyond these faculties. Mathematicians therefore only “imagine” or “conceptualize” infinity “on the inside of his eyelids.”(340)

The Fregean and Kantian Distinctions

When contemplating these conundrums, I was thrown back to the dizzying complex of ideas in Heidegger’s phenomenological interpretation of Kant’s epistemology, but also the intuitively simpler Fregean differentiation between the sense (Sinn) and the reference (Bedeutung) of a word or expression. Both provide some possible clarification to Kusters’ questions, and by extension, to the issues he addresses in the overlap between madness and philosophy.(Frege, 1960)

In the framework of Frege the word ‘infinity’ can have a sense or meaning, but not necessarily a reference or experience. You can think the concept infinity and combine it with a lot of meaningful predicates, but its reference is always beyond one’s thought and perception. And maybe in Kantian terms, and like his concept of noumenon, one can think the concept infinity, but never experience it. Whatever you might experience is only phenomenal. And if you think you have the real thing, it is only an image seen with the mind’s eye.

The segue into Heidegger’s Kant is this little concept ‘image’ and the pivotal role it played in the A edition of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, which addresses the question how the understanding (concepts) and intuition (experiences) are linked in order to produce empirical knowledge. Kant’s question was how concepts, which by themselves are empty, could be applied to experiences, which by themselves are under-organized (except for spatial and temporal aspects), and, other way around, how experiences could be subsumed under concepts.

In the A edition Kant elaborated on the “transcendental faculty of the productive imagination” as the necessary mediator between concepts and perceptions. What this faculty does–going from concepts to perceptions—is to generate from the concept a series of rules inherent in the concept, from which a series of images can be generated, which might then connect with a series of perceptions. Or, again other way around, this faculty can derive from our semi-chaotic experience a set of images, which can be formalized into patterns, which can be connected to the rules inhering in a specific concept.

Fig. 1. Kantian mandala of the three major faculties

Kant provides the examples of a dog and a triangle to indicate the steps of how concepts can be made more sensible and intuitions more intelligible.

Heidegger’s Phenomenological Expansion

Kant dropped these insights in the B Edition and Heidegger later thought that was a mistake, because Kant’s work on the imagination in its role of producing knowledge had a profound congruence with the basic structure of phenomenological intentionality. What Heidegger brought into position was the tri-partite dynamics of the intentional structure of meaningful experiences, one of the breakthrough insights developed by Husserl (Heidegger, 1962b & 1997).

In a static, structural sense, phenomenological intentionality is always already of the form that consciousness is consciousness-of-X, and the dynamic aspect is that most experiences, if not all, start with a) emptily intending ‘X’, which pre-experiential, meaningful structure might then b) get fulfilled in an experience, after which c) the identity between the projection and its fulfilment is intended. So, we can emptily mean ‘dog’, then see a dog and then experience that the meaning and the seeing are congruent and the concept dog is applicable.

What Heidegger did, was to overlay the dynamic structure of intentionality onto the dynamics engaged in by Kant’s imagination, such that the imagination is the faculty which can emptily project structures (rules and images), which then can connect with intuitions, which, after their identity is established, is stable enough to affirm or connect with a concept. In this way there is a congruence between:

Kant     :        Imagination                  Intuition          Understanding

Husserl :      Empty intending         Fulfilment       Identity / conceptualization

This insight by Heidegger of lining up Kant’s faculties with Husserl’s intentionality was a tremendous help in deepening my understanding of all three big philosophers involved, including also Ricoeur, whose work on narrative identity and the complex synthesis of emplotment explicitly referred back to Kant’s faculty of the productive imagination as the enabling factor of our more or less fictitious sense of life-span identity.(Ricoeur, 1983: 68 & 1985: 3)

Surprisingly also Heidegger seemed to have dropped these ideas as he moved from phenomenology to a more poetic thinking, though one insightful Heidegger scholar made the case that Kant’s concept of the imagination and Husserl’s concept of empty intentionality did survive in Heidegger’s existential concept of Dasein’s projective possibilities as an integral part of our manner of being-in-the-world.(Richardson, 2004: 153f)

Imagination, Madness, and Creativity

This processing of Heidegger’s phenomenologized Kant also led to an epiphany, which also gave me great help in understanding the role of the projective imagination in the act of philosophizing itself and its intensification and possible derailment in madness.

My rearrangement of Heidegger’s Kant is premised on the idea that the imagination can not only provide a measure of freedom from reality-perception in purely mental endeavors like fiction, fantasies, hypothesis-formation, and running provisional scenarios in one’s ‘inner mind space’, but also provide a creative freedom in engaging in the perception-action cycle relatively free from ideations, like in dance, children’s play, mindless routines, sports and sexuality.

In the following figure the term ‘schema’ replaced ‘imagination’ and a third field of possible experiences and actions is indicated with Truth / Action, in which all three faculties work together

The re-arranged figure looks like this:

Fig. 2. Simple Three-ring Mandala

In the Truth and Action category one can place all experiences to which all three faculties contribute. Staying with Kant and the early Heidegger, the idea is that truth is a product of the harmonious cooperation of all three faculties. Truth is traditionally conceived as located in a proposition as its truth value, but in phenomenology the concept of truth increasingly shifted towards perception and, in the hands of Heidegger, became identified with the ‘opening’ enabled by the projective faculty of imagination. Following the German-American political philosopher Hannah Arendt, the arguably highest level of action (communal and political) would necessarily bring in the understanding because such action is mostly executed by speech and legislative acts in which conceptual entities like ideals, plans and promises are brought to verbal expression.(Arendt, 1958)

In all three fields of a) inner-mind fantasy, b) enacted play or c) complex truth / action scenarios, we can proceed conventionally and obey the explicit and tacit rules of one’s society; or proceed creatively in a post-conventional manner without getting in trouble; or engage in the mad variations of all three in either a) one’s mind with seemingly delusional ideations; or b) in public with seemingly incomprehensible play-acting; or c) with interventions in other people’s lives or the political arena based on seemingly inappropriate truth claims and proposals.

A Reframed Model of the Imagination

The main point here in connecting this phenomenological framework with madness is that maybe this framework might contribute to a better, or at least different, philosophical understanding of madness in its rootedness in the faculty of the imagination, but then with a deeper understanding of the imagination in its role as the transcendental, a priori enabler of any meaningful endeavor whatsoever, be it fantasy, play, intellectual action, or any of its runaway derangements.

A last thought on the conceptualization of mysticism. All three fields have their own mysticism and some might line up with Kusters’ fourfold differentiation of mystical delusions. In the fantasy field it is the emptying of the mind in Zazen, i.e. a sitting meditation disconnected from perceptual reality in which one tries to empty one’s inner mind space without necessarily deconstructing this space itself. It is a going inside, without necessarily challenging the constituted nature of this inside (aiming at nothingness). In the play field one could put the meditation of mindfulness while slowly moving one’s body and being aware of one’s surroundings (aiming at being). In the action / truth field one could find Heidegger’s mysticism of simple daily life experienced within a poetic opening of being-there. And maybe also Krishnamurti’s call for a post-egoic and non-conceptual way of life might fit in this category (aiming at oneness).

Conclusion

Kusters’ Philosophy of Madness challenges us to rethink madness as more than a pathology to be contained and treated. Instead, it presents madness as a complex and meaningful mode of existence with profound philosophical implications. By drawing parallels with philosophy and mysticism Kusters not only illuminates the fragility of normalcy but also the potential richness of what lies hidden in the psychotic thoughts of the madman.

The exploration of the transcendental faculty of imagination and its capacity to construct meaning, can add to the discussion, presenting a framework where the modes of experience in fantasy, play, and truth/action—and the manner in which all three have quotidian, mystical and mad variations—provide another categorization of human experiences in their complexity.

Ultimately, Philosophy of Madness is a call to embrace the unsettling questions posed by madness as illuminating contributions to understanding ourselves and the world. Kusters invites us to see madness not as a deviation but as a thought-provoking byway of the philosophical journey—a journey that, while risky and not to be recommended, holds the promise of profound insight and possible healing.

Wouter Kusters (PhD) studied linguistics and philosophy, and is an independent scholar and teacher in the Netherlands. He wrote two prize winning books on philosophy and madness in Dutch, and the last one – A Philosophy of Madness: The Experience of Psychotic Thinking – has been translated into English (2021) and Arabic (2023), while a Chinese translation is due to appear this year. His most recent book’s title is in English: Shock Effects: Philosophizing in the Age of Climate Change (2023). For more information, readers can visit his website at: https://kusterstekst.nl/.

Source

This review-essay of Philosophy of Madness was published in the Indian journal, Cetana: A Journal of Philosophy, 5/1 (Jan 2025): 38-58.

Cetana is published by the Centre for Phenomenological Studies.

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—–, —–. 2000. Man’s Search for Ultimate Meaning. New York: Basic Books.

Frege, Gottlob. 1960. “On Sense and Reference”. In: Translations from the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege, P. Geach and M. Black (eds and trans), Oxford: Blackwell, 56-78.

Geniusas, Saulius. 2015. “Between Phenomenology and Hermeneutics: Paul Ricoeur’s Philosophy of Imagination”. Human Studies, 38/2: 223-241.

—–, —–. 2018. “Productive Imagination and the Cassirer-Heidegger Disputation”. In: Geniusas, Saulius & Nikulin, Dmitri (Eds), 2018. Productive Imagination: Its History, Meaning and Significance, London: Rowman & Littlefield International, pp 135-156.

—–, —–. (Ed). 2018. Stretching the Limits of Productive Imagination: Studies in Kantianism, Phenomenology and Hermeneutics. London: Rowman & Littlefield International.

—–, —–. & Nikulin, Dmitri (Eds). 2018. Productive Imagination: Its History, Meaning and Significance. London: Rowman & Littlefield International.

Heidegger, Martin. 1962a. Being and Time. Macquerrie, John & Robinson, Edward (Transl). New York: Harper Collins.

—— . 1962b. Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics. Churchill, James (Transl). Bloomington, IN: Indiana U.P.

—— . 1985. History of the Concept of Time: Prolegomena. Kisiel, Theodore (Transl). Bloomington, IN: Indiana U.P.

—— . 1997 (1977). Phenomenological Interpretation of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Emad, Parvis & Maly, Kenneth (Transl.). Bloomington, IN: Indiana U.P.

Husserl, Edmund. 1964. The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness. Churchill, James S (Transl). Bloomington: Indiana U.P.

Huxley, Aldous. 1954. “Foreword”. In Krishnamurti, Jiddu, The First and Last Freedom, New York: Harper & Brothers.

Jaynes, Julian. 1976. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Johnson, Mark. 1987. The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Kant, Immanuel. 1978. Critique of Pure Reason. Kemp Smith, Norman (Transl). London: Macmillan.

—— . 1987. Critique of Judgment. Pluhar, Werner S (Transl). Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing.

Kisiel, Theodore. 2014. “The Paradigm Shifts of Hermeneutic Phenomenology: From Breakthrough to the Meaning-Giving Source”. Gatherings: The Heidegger Circle Annual, 4: 1-13.

Krishnamurti, Jiddu. 1954. The First and Last Freedom. New York: Harper & Brothers.

Kusters, Wouter. 2022. Philosophy of Madness: The Experience of Psychotic Thinking. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Laing, R.D. 1960. The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness. London: Penguin Books.

—–, —–. 1964. Sanity, Madness and the Family. Co-authored with Aaron Esterson. London: Penguin Books.

McVeigh, Brian. 2024. The Self-Healing Mind: Harnessing the Active Ingredients of Psychotherapy. New York: Oxford UP.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 1942. The Structure of Behavior. Translated by Alden L. Fisher. New York: Beacon Press.

—–, —–. 1945. Phenomenology of Perception. Translated by Donald A. Landes. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Richardson, William. 2004 (1963). Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought. Fourth Edition. New York: Fordham U.P.

Ricoeur, Paul. 1978. “The Metaphorical Process as Cognition, Imagination, and Feeling”. Critical Inquiry, 5/1: 143-159.

—–, —–. 1979. “The Function of Fiction in Shaping Reality”. Man and World, 12/2: 123– 141.

—–, —–. 1983-88. Time and Narrative. Vols. 1-3. Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press.

—–, —–. 1992. Oneself as Another. Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press.

Schuller, Govert. 2019. The Possibility Conditions of Narrative Identity. Dissertation; Masters in Research in European Philosophy; Dr. Adrian Davis, Research Supervisor; University of Wales, Trinity Saint David, Lampeter, Wales, UK.

Szasz, Thomas 1961. The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct. New York: Harper Perennial.

—–, —–. 1970. The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.

—–, —–. 1988. Schizophrenia: The Sacred Symbol of Psychiatry. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.

Gradiance: The Mother of all Reductions

 

Introduction.

When I read the following passage in a review of a book on the philosophy of music, my understanding of Carnot’s second law of thermodynamics and its philosophical implications kicked in and inspired me to compose an article combining a wide variety of ideas and experiences. This is overdue as I had promised a late friend of mine an explanation of what I meant with the phrase ‘the mother of all reductions’.

According to this [Schopenhauer’s] metaphysics, the world has two aspects: representations and Will, which is the non-rational, aimless force at the heart of human instincts and, indeed, all of existence. Representations are a kind of manifestation of Will. Poetry, painting, sculpture and dance imitate the world of representations. According to Schopenhauer, music is, in contrast, “a copy of the will itself.” The world of representations or phenomena are pale reflections of Platonic forms; the Will is the essence of reality.[10]

Arthur Schopenhauer

What if the aimless, non-rational Will, which Schopenhauer detected at the heart of existence, is nothing but what I would name ‘gradiance‘ (in French accent with a wink to Derrida’s ‘différance‘)? With this I mean the idea that everything exists and changes by the grace of gradient tensions between high and low pressures, high and low densities and high and low temperatures. These are arguably all variations of one phenomenon: uneven energy distribution, which create tensions to be overcome as energy always ‘aims’ at a perfectly evenly dispersed distribution.

Gradiance and Physics

This behavior can be experimentally observed in closed systems and explained with Carnot’s second law of thermodynamics. In physics the final energy state aimed at is called ‘thermodynamic equilibrium’, ‘maximum entropy’ or ‘heat death’. Pessimists might be dismayed by this end point, while optimists will point out that, before the universe will ever die of ‘heat death’, there will be an almost unlimited amount of creative, ordered ways in which this teleological process plays itself out. The Belgian physicist Ilya Prigogine named such emerging orderings dissipative structures [1].

The paradigmatic example of these dynamic structures can be found in the ‘Bénard Cell’ when a fluid in a container is exposed to an increased temperature difference between the bottom plane and the top plane and after a while spontaneously self-organizing, non-linear convection cells form to more efficiently mediate between the gradient temperatures [2].

Convection cells dissipating energy gradients

Gradiance and Evolution

Writer and ecological philosopher Dorion Sagan (son of the famous scientist Carl Sagan) and his co-author Eric Schneider proposed to extrapolate this formative principle of gradiance to any and all phenomena including biological and mental life [3].

Into the Cool: Energy Flow,
Thermodynamics, and Life

He would see our biological life as the thin layer of a very complex energy-mediation system between the cool earth and the hot sun and would see evolution as one of the most inventive tricks in the universe to optimize energy flows. Biological entities are therefore nothing but self-organized energy transformers looking first for high energy sources, then using those sources and lastly leaving lowered energy forms behind.

They are dissipative structures mediating between high and low concentrations of energy. Natural, instinctual desires guide this process at the temporal span of the specious now in which perceptions (‘affordances’ in J.J. Gibson’s terminology) of food, security and procreation are immediately perceived and pursued [11].

Language and mental life–especially narrative constructs which can efficiently hold together multiple dialectical aspects of life–help this process get along as a medium of information storage and exchange of ‘best practices’. This happens at the mediate span of extended temporality of remembered pasts and projected futures accompanied by a temporarily extended sense of narrative self covering one’s life-span [4].

Gradiance and Consciousness

This whole process is also accompanied by different levels of sentience of which our sense of self-conscious self-hood is one of its most intense, especially when fretting over possible courses of action in one’s mind-space while desires and fears have become intensified [5].

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Possibly the most intense experience humans could have is when it can silence its mind through meditation and then experience in this stillness the vastness and intense, whirling energy of the universe itself as was arguably the case with the maverick, global philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti and his experiences of ‘benediction’. He left us with some poetic descriptions of these experiences, written in a diary he kept for a year in 1961.

[I]t was a movement in complete freedom, a movement that had no direction and dimension; in that movement there was boundless energy whose very essence was stillness. . . . In this emptiness there was fury; the fury of a storm, the fury of exploding universe, the fury of creation which could never have any expression. It was the fury of all life, death and love. But yet it was empty, a vast, boundless emptiness which nothing could ever fill, transform or cover up [6].

Saanen, Switzerland

When I attended the 1980 Krishnamurti gathering in Saanen, Switzerland, I had just started reading this Notebook, which opened my own mind to similar experiences.

Gradiance and Phenomenology

When talking about consciousness I would also like to make the connection between gradiance and Husserl’s phenomenology, especially the concept of the three-staged process of intentionality [12]. Intentionality here means the feature of directedness of consciousness towards something beyond itself, usually something complex like a landscape, a melody, a text, a social situation, etc.

Husserl makes the case that before we see a rolled-up rope as such, understand a string of words as a text, or hear a string of sounds as a melody, we approach the rope, text or melody initially with an empty intention which projects a possible fulfillment which might come to fruition, or not. The rope might turn out to be a snake, the text turns from a gentle love story into a dystopian nightmare, and the melodic structure sought in the sounds might stay elusive.

A successful fulfillment of an empty intention is achieved when a certain degree of identity can be established. The snake is really a snake because it looks like one, moves like one and reacts like one if you poke it. The end of the story makes the contrary beginning retro-actively meaningful. And the melody, once captured, is clearly repeated throughout the composition and can be reproduced by humming or by a skilled musician.

My proposal is that the dynamic, intentional structure of consciousness can be framed as an instance of gradiance, because there is an initial, teleological tension to be overcome between the empty phase and its fulfillment in possible identity. To be short, intentional experiences of desire and fear are connections between one’s natural evolved instincts projected emptily (like in hunger, thirst and attraction) unto one’s surrounding looking for fulfilment. Experiences of music connect intentionality to higher modes of experience, which will be the focus of the rest of this essay.

Gradiance and Music

How does art, especially music, fit into this discourse? According to the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur fictional narratives are laboratories for alternative ways to see and experience social life [7]. Characters and plots indicate possible templates for one’s own life to better overcome or mediate between all the diverse inner tensions and outer demands to which one is exposed.

Phrasing it in that way connects narrativity of course with managing one’s own energy field of natural desires, social habits and deliberative practices, and the possible ways to improve on them which might lead to different experiences of resolution and satisfaction. Within such a framework the phenomenon of art can be conceived as a very efficient medium to help both individual and collective energy transformations by provocatively breaking up old patterns and establishing new ones.

Bringing in the movie critic Roger Ebert and the sociologist Norbert Elias, one could muse that art functions as an ’empathy machine’ [8], which fuels the jagged civilizational process of increased empathy coupled with increased self-control with sometimes serious set-backs including disintegrations [9].

Baroque Orchestra

How does music fit in, especially its ineffable and utopian aspects highlighted by philosophers of music? Is music a non-verbal dissipative structure, which, qua experience, can be placed between literary art and meditation, if meditation can be re-conceived not merely as a spiritual practice but as a form of art by itself? Let’s work that out a little, first with connecting music with literature, then with meditation.

As an art-form music is arguably higher than literature because of its more expansive, emotive and energetic ‘meaning’, a meaning which does not refer to anything concrete outside itself but still evokes by its ineffable, spatial-temporally structured experience the depths, tensions, and resolutions of life itself.

To connect music with meditation I would first refer to personal experiences of nature mysticism in which one looks at, or into, nature through freely configurated dynamic gestalts of spontaneously arising perceived patterns in, for example, groupings of rocks and trees and other ‘compositions’. Such meditative way of seeing and being is highly creative and depends on a certain acquired skill of creatively perceiving gestalts and letting go of the usual chatter going on in one’s inner mind-space. In short, it is a form of art.

Secondly I would refer to my experiences of meditation after intensely listening to music, which can open up the appreciation of music’s containment in its silent and empty, spacious background. This background silence becomes foreground when one switches into a silent meditative mode and the lingering of the music becomes the background which then qualifies the particular silence of the foreground.

All such experiences are quite ineffable, but can still be, after reflection, find some words to get expressed by.

What about the ‘utopian’ aspect of music? In the review one can read that the German philosopher Ernst Bloch sees in music the “dialectical confrontation between two contradictory halves: formalism and materiality, rationalization and singular exemplarity, speculative autonomy and embodied immanence” and that “utopia is something that cannot be simply presented, represented, or even indicated; it must be obscurely interpreted through the abstract and translucent tone of the fugato. Music’s ineffability is a perplexing impetus to utopian insight” [10].

Princess Listening to Music

Leaving aside whether the above categorial dichotomies, like form vs matter, can be framed as conceptual expressions of an underlying gradiance, I would venture that music, interpreted as a temporally extended dissipative structure, has an intrinsic teleology towards a temporary or ultimate energetic resolution.

And one could, at the collective level, project into such experience of benign resolution, the emotive insight of a state of societal affairs which is commensurate to the music: Equally peaceful and dynamic, or whatever societal preferences one would like to project. In this manner the societal-formative power of music can be understood and shaved of its Romantic and/or esoteric interpretations [14].

Though the above view of interpreting art, music and meditation through thermodynamics looks like a stark, deflationary reductionism, this does certainly not imply a desolate devaluation of such experiences themselves. On the contrary, I see the second law of thermodynamics as the ‘mother of all reductions’ with which one can dismantle all kinds of fancy religious and metaphysical frameworks which will then open a more Taoist or Zen Buddhist sense of embodied, post-cognitive, energetic modes of being sans theological or metaphysical superstructures. And in this manner the Mother of all Reductions can pave the way for the Mother of All Experiences: The mystical experience of gradiance itself as was arguably experienced and expressed by J. Krishnamurti [6].

Endnotes

[1]. Prigogine, Ilya & Stengers, Isabelle. 1984. Order out of Chaos: Man’s New Dialogue with Nature. New York: Bantam Books.

[2]. “Rayleigh–Bénard Convection“. Entry Wikipedia.

[3]. Schneider, Eric D.& Sagan, Dorion. 2005. Into the Cool: Energy Flow, Thermodynamics, and Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

[4]. Moore, Chris & Lemmon, Karen (Eds.). 2001. The Self in Time: Developmental Perspectives. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

[5]. Jaynes, Julian. 1976. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

[6]. Krishnamurti, Jiddu. 1976. Krishnamurti’s Notebook. New York: Harper & Row.

[7]. Ricoeur, Paul. 1983-88. Time and Narrative. 3 Volumes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

[8]. Ebert, Roger. 2005. “Ebert’s Walk of Fame Remarks”. Roger Ebert’s Journal, 24 June 2005. Retreived 30 May 2020.

[9]. Elias, Norbert. 1978 (1939). The Civilizing Process. Vol 1: The History of Manners. Vol 2: Power and Civility. Jephcott, Edmund (Transl.). New York: Pantheon Books.

[10]. Gallope, Michael. 2017. Deep Refrains: Music, Philosophy, and the Ineffable. Chicago : University of Chicago Press.

[11]. Gibson, J.J. 1986. The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

[12]. Sokolowski, Robert. 1974. Husserlian Meditations: How Words Present Things. Evanston, IL: Northwestern U.P.

[13]. Young, James O. 2018. Review of Michael Gallope, 2017, Deep Refrains: Music, Philosophy, and the Ineffable, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, 22 April 2018.

[14]. For two great examples of esoteric interpretations of music see:

Scott, Cyril. 1933. The Influence of Music on History and Morals. London: Rider & Co.

Tame, David. 1984. The Secret Power of Music. Rochester, VT: Destiny Books

Philosophy, Religion, Mysticism and Madness

 

Introduction

I am still in the middle of reading Wouter Kusters’ phenomenal Philosophy of Madness: The Experience of Psychotic Thinking. This book is a must read for all interested in philosophy, mysticism and madness, and those who are open to the disturbing closeness, even overlap, of all three, like Kusters’ ideas that: Philosophy is controlled madness; Madness develops its own philosophy, which is not necessarily mad; Monist philosophies push you to mysticism, which can take a turn into madness when you see too many connections; Madness could be cured with a better, less verbal and imaginary mode of mysticism. The book is a true cornucopia of well-developed crossings and relevant to all interested in the emerging practice of philosophical counseling.

I read a big chunk of the book in mid-January at a six hour transfer at Mumbai airport, tired and high on caffeine in a sea of strangers, with some staring at me with seemingly benign wonder. Usually I’d feel uncomfortable in such a setting, but the book has a very calming effect, because, I think, the writer has something very important to share; something he knows literally inside-out as he has lived through two psychotic episodes, and takes great care to formulate. He even shares chunks of his psychotic, stream of consciousness thinking, which are funny, absurdist, fascinating, meaningful narratives.

The Instability of Inner Time-consciousness

A special spot in the book is reserved for Husserl’s phenomenology of inner time-consciousness, one of the deepest reflections on the possibility conditions of conscious experience, and in Kusters’ writing a handy tool to understand both normal and psychotic experiences.

How do we keep consensus reality running in a semi-chaotic flow of events? And what happens when that breaks down and a psychotic manner of meaning-construction takes over? How can we best understand the interplay between memory, the just-passed (retention), the present, the just-to-come (protention) and expectations in the construction and change of reality? Kusters makes good use of the idea that much can be learned from things going wrong, like Heidegger’s broken hammer and the unfortunate cases Merleau-Ponty looked into to understand behavior at its most basic moments of constitution.

Descriptive phenomenologies of madness and curative existential psychotherapies have earlier been developed by Merlau-Ponty, Michel Foucault, Thomas Szaz, Ronald Laing, Ludwig Binswanger, Meddard Boss, Viktor Frankl and quite some others, and Kusters can probably be placed in this category. Arguably he moved the investigation a couple of notches further.

For another step into understanding the genesis of madness I would connect the issue with Kant’s faculty of the productive imagination, which does not result necessarily in sane, justified knowledge, and actually could explain the highly productive, but not necessarily intelligible imagination operative in madness.

This highly intriguing and explanatory faculty got muffled away in the B version of the Critique of Pure Reason, only to be saved by Heidegger but for a few years just after he wrote Being and Time and developed a phenomenological reading of Kant.

Recently the faculty of productive imagination made a come-back with the work of Saulius Geniusas. Paul Ricoeur connected it with narrativity, the very effective epistemic device involved in identity-formation, a theme mentioned by Kusters and to which I devoted my master thesis.

Jaynes’ Take on Madness

The subject matter also connects with an impromptu paper I delivered a week earlier at this yearly philosophy conference which was started in 1925 by Nobel laureate Tagore and philosopher and first president of India, Radhakrishnan. One of its themes was the restoration of the ecosystem. This year it was hosted by the Mahatma Gandhi University, Wardha, Maharashtra, where Gandhi had his ashram from 1936 till his assassination and where he proclaimed the ‘Quit India’ movement. We visited the enchanted place, which was silently inspiring.

I titled my presentation, for which I got ten minutes, “The Future of Consciousness: Is Krishnamurti its Prophet?” It incorporates the ideas of Julian Jaynes, who also has some profound insights about the connection between madness and religion.

For Jaynes a lot of religious practices and manners of madness are triggered by a regression in (or by) the brain to an earlier ‘architecture’ he named bicameral, which was prevalent in the Bronze Age. This architecture had us humans obey Auditory Command Hallucinations (ACH) either originating in ourselves or in our superiors like kings and priests. It was the gods talking to us like in Homer’s Iliad with little to no space for disobedience and deliberation.

According to Jaynes the ACHs originate in the right hemisphere of the brain and travel over the corpus callosum to the other side where its messages are received as if coming from outside. Ergo him naming it ‘bicameral’.

This ‘mentality’, ‘mind-set’, or ‘architecture’ increasingly disappeared with the onset of our modern sense of consciousness around 1,500 to 1,000 BCE, with its socially constructed, introspectable, inner mind space, in which metaphorical room we move around a fictive me in different scenarios in order to think through and feel out possible courses of action.

The speculation is that at the end of the Bronze Age many cultures clashed and the authorities led by ACHs didn’t come up with very viable strategies. People had to literally figure things out for themselves, which ‘selves’ had to be constructed from scratch in the process, something we experience also in our own development at around age 5 or 6. This egoic awareness comes with a lot of personal choices and uncertainty, and can be made more certain by applying science and rationality.

It also has a backward-looking inclination aimed at reviving the bicameral mind and its authority through religious practices like divination, ecstasies, oracles, enthusiasms, mediumship, channeling, etc. to trigger variants of command hallucinations, coming from gods, God, angels, masters or other imagined meta-empirical beings. It also derails in forward-looking hyper-individualism, scientism, technologization, ego-centered small-mindedness, neoliberalism, and the current state of global civilization on its way to economic and environmental doom.

Sustainable Future?

And what has this to do with Krishnamurti and the restoration of the ecosystem? Well, I am starting to make the claim that egoic consciousness, as it started just three thousand years ago, has gobbled up all civilizations and tribes (whether bicameral or pre-bicameral) into its egoic mentality and civilizational structure named ‘central civilization’, now in its global phase (Wilkinson, 1987).

This mentality and its social organization has an inbuilt vector towards disaster, which can only be challenged by a wholly different conscious architecture, of which Gautama might have been one of the earliest proponents and Krishnamurti one of the clearest later ones, with who knows how many in between. It might be this architecture which will have the required post-egoic structure and intelligent sensitivity to create a truly sustainable and just society. But that might need another 200+ years to break through to effective scale. Before that, I am sorry to say, brace yourselves.

Sources

Binswanger, Ludwig 1963. Being-in-the-World: Selected Papers of Ludwig Binswanger. Translated by Jacob Needleman. New York: Harper & Row.

—–, —–. 1993. Dream and Existence. Co-authored with Medard Boss, edited by Michel Foucault, and translated by Keith Hoeller. London: Humanities Press.

Boss, Medard 1963. Psychoanalysis and Daseinsanalysis. Translated by Ludwig Binswanger. New York: Harper & Row.

—–, —–. 1965. A Psychiatrist Discovers India. New York: Grune & Stratton.

—–, —–. 1979. Existential Foundations of Medicine and Psychology. Translated by Stephen Conway and Herbert Wehner. Lanham, MD: Jason Aronson.

Foucault, Michel 1965. Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. Translated by Richard Howard. New York: Vintage Books.

—–, —–. 1973. The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception. Translated by A.M. Sheridan. New York: Vintage Books.

—–, —–. 2006. Psychiatric Power: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1973–1974. Translated by Graham Burchell. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Frankl, Viktor E. 1946. Man’s Search for Meaning. Translated by Ilse Lasch. New York: Beacon Press.

—–, —–. 1955. The Doctor and the Soul: From Psychotherapy to Logotherapy. Translated by Richard and Clara Winston. New York: Vintage Books.

—–, —–. 2000. Man’s Search for Ultimate Meaning. New York: Basic Books.

Geniusas, Saulius. 2015. “Between Phenomenology and Hermeneutics: Paul Ricoeur’s Philosophy of Imagination.” Human Studies, 38/2: 223-241.

—–, —–. 2018. “ Productive Imagination and the Cassirer-Heidegger Disputation“. In Geniusas, Saulius & Nikulin, Dmitri (Eds.). 2018. Productive Imagination: Its History, Meaning and Significance. London: Rowman & Littlefield International. 135-156.

—–, —–. (Ed). 2018. Stretching the Limits of Productive Imagination: Studies in Kantianism, Phenomenology and Hermeneutics. London: Rowman & Littlefield International.

—–, —–. & Nikulin, Dmitri (Eds). 2018. Productive Imagination: Its History, Meaning and Significance. London: Rowman & Littlefield International.

Heidegger, Martin. 1962. Being and Time. Macquerrie, John & Robinson, Edward (Transl). New York: Harper Collins.

—–, —–. 1997 (1977). Phenomenological Interpretation of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Emad, Parvis & Maly, Kenneth (Transl). Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP.

—–, —–. 1962. Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics. Churchill, James (Transl). Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP.

Husserl, Edmund. 1964. The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness. Churchill, James S. (Transl). Bloomington: Indiana UP.

Jaynes, Julian. 1976. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Kant, Immanuel. 1978. Critique of Pure Reason. Kemp Smith, Norman (Transl). London: Macmillan.

Kusters, Wouter. 2020. Philosophy of Madness: The Experience of Psychotic Thinking. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Laing, R.D. 1960. The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness. London: Penguin Books.

—–, —–. 1964. Sanity, Madness and the Family. Co-authored with Aaron Esterson. London: Penguin Books.

—–, —–. 1970. Knots. New York: Random House.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 1942. The Structure of Behavior. Translated by Alden L. Fisher. New York: Beacon Press.

—–, —–. 1945. Phenomenology of Perception. Translated by Donald A. Landes. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Ricoeur, Paul. 1978. “The Metaphorical Process as Cognition, Imagination, and Feeling.” Critical Inquiry, 5/1: 143-159.

—–, —–. 1979. “The Function of Fiction in Shaping Reality”. Man and World, 12/2: 123– 141.

—–, —–. 1983-88. Time and Narrative. Volumes 1-3. Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press.

Schuller, Govert. 2019. The Possibility Conditions of Narrative Identity. Dissertation; Masters in Research in European Philosophy; Dr. Adrian Davis, Research Supervisor; University of Wales, UK.

—–, —–. 2022.  “The Future of Consciousness: Is Krishnamurti Its Prophet?”. Presentation at the Indian Philosophical Congress (IPC), Mahatma Gandhi Antarrashtriya Hindi Vishwavidyalaya, Wardha, Maharashtra, 30 Dec 2022.

—–, —–. 2024. “The Future of Central Civilization: Historical Cycles and the Path Forward”. Presentation at the 2024 American Monetary Institute Conference, 29 Sept 2024.

Szasz, Thomas 1961. The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct. New York: Harper Perennial.

—–, —–. 1970. The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.

—–, —–. 1988. Schizophrenia: The Sacred Symbol of Psychiatry. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.

Wilkinson, David. 1987. “Central Civilization”. Comparative Civilizations Review, 17/17: Article 4. Also in: Sanderson, Stephen K., 1995, Civilizations and World Systems: Studying World-historical Change, Lanham, MD: Rowman Altamira, pp. 46-74.

Modernity Between the Rise and Fall of the Cartesian Cogito

 

Introduction.

In this blog I will compress into a short story my proposed periodization of Modernity, bookended by the Renaissance and Post-modernity. My idiosyncratic idea is to place the start of modernity in 1620 and its end in 1926.

The Start of Modernity in 1620

The choice of 1620 has two reasons. First, it was the winter of that year that Descartes had his most sustained meditations on his own intellectual traditions and authorities, all of which he deemed contradictory and not well-founded. He had the time and opportunity to do so because he was part of a Catholic army besieging Prague in 1620 in the context of the 30-year war (1618-1648) fought between Catholic and Protestant powers. So, reason one for 1620 is the moment Descartes hits upon, or constitutes, the experience of ‘Cogito ergo sum’ and its substantive mind-matter dichotomy.

The Esotericist Renaissance

Reason two has to do with what specific event triggered that war and what mythic-intellectual movement there and then found its demise. And here I will have to digress on what came before Modernity to which it was a partial reaction, and that is the astonishing Renaissance, but then in its mythic and philosophical aspects and not its usual humanist and artistic ones.

For starters, two sets of manuscripts, which came to the west around the 1470s, had a profound influence on the intellectual start of the Renaissance: 1) many of the Platonic dialogues coming from the Islamic east by way of Constantinople and 2) the so-called Corpus Hermeticum (CH), a collection of manuscripts in Greek many people thought were written at least before 1,000 BCE by an ancient and wise magus by the name of Hermes Trismegistus or Thrice Great Hermes. Both the terms hermeticism and hermeneutics are derived from the name of this mythic character.

These manuscripts contained a lot of magical, Gnostic and other pagan, pre-Christian ideas. The translation of the CH into Latin by the humanist and Platonist Marsilio Ficino got right of way before Plato. The first volume, titled Pimander, was published in 1471. Apparently intellectuals then were more interested in magical, esoteric, occult ideas and practices than the more sober, transcendental thoughts of Plato.

Ideas like ‘As above, so below’ (i.e. a sympathetic parallel between the microcosm of man and the macrocosm of the universe), the harmony of the cosmos, alchemy (the transmutation of lead into gold and the soul into divinity), astrology, and hidden sources of wisdom in Egypt and the east, were part and parcel of this ‘stream’, now named by academia Western Esotericism. Throughout the 15th and 16th century these ideas were very influential, but later historians did not give them much attention and so that aspect of the Renaissance became more or less forgotten. But in the early 17th century there were even some German principalities where these ideas were not only common but were half openly promoted by its rulers. One had as its capital Heidelberg in the Palatinate, the other was Prague in Bohemia.

Side Story

Now, one more step back before going forward, there existed something like the position of Holy Roman Emperor, which position was not Roman but Catholic, usually not that holy, and without an empire. It was a tradition since 9th century Emperor Charlemagne (Charles the Great) to have someone in that position, which became increasingly devoid of real power and territory, but was still something the Catholics and Protestants respected. And the person for that position was democratically chosen by his peers, i.e. a small quorum of other kings, princes and aristocrats.

Till 1612 it was Rudolf II of Bohemia, a Catholic, who held the title and he was an avid ‘western esotericist’ with his town Prague a free-haven for alchemists to set up their smokey laboratories and astrologers to cast their predictions. Catholics and Protestants alike did not necessarily look favorably on such practices. When the Bohemian nobles came together to choose the next king of their realm they chose Prince Frederick V of the Palatinate, who was Protestant and had strong esotericist sympathies. He accepted and moved to Prague in November 1620. With this crown came also the right to vote for the next Holy Roman Emperor, who might this time be a Protestant as the Protestants had gained with Frederick a majority in that electoral college.

Long story short, the whole of Catholic Christendom was verbally opposed to that prospect, but to no avail, and Frederick was crowned King of Bohemia. The Catholics then marched on Prague and beat Frederick at the Battle of the White Mountain, an early win in the 30 year war in which almost the whole of Europe was involved, including Descartes on the side of the Catholics. Frederick lost both Bohemia and the Palatinate and fled to The Netherlands. With him went the last instance of the Occult Renaissance in political power.

Preliminary Summary

So, it was at the siege of the stronghold of the last and losing ‘western esotericist’ Prince Frederick that Descartes had his profound ideas, which were more or less instrumental in challenging all this esotericism as unscientific and merely mythic. And a few decades later a Frenchman, Causabon, proved that the Corpus Hermeticum was composed in the 3rd century CE, so there went its authority as something wise and ancient.

And I just read Hegel to the same effect:

The discovery of the laws of nature enabled men to contend against the monstrous superstitions of the time, as also against all notions of mighty alien powers which magic alone could conquer. (Philosophy of History, Dover edition, p. 440)

Under the clear and precise eye of rationalism and science the esoteric tradition went underground. Therefore Frederick’s loss in 1620 was the second reason to have Modernity start in that year and a good reason to mark it off as the end of the Renaissance. I always thought this to be quite neat, but never wrote it down.

One last speculation is the question wether Descartes and Frederick might have met in the Netherlands in the 1620s and what conversation they might have had. A subject of possible agreement could have been the role of the pineal gland.

The End of Modernity in 1926

The reason to place modernity’s end at 1926 has to do with the thorough critique published that year of Descartes’ philosophy in Heidegger’s Being and Time. Basically his critique was that the Cartesian notion of both subject and object as separate substances was premised on the mistaken idea to interpret, or project onto, subject and object the ontological category of substantiality in the sense that both have the reified nature of being something ‘thing-ly’ present-at-hand (Vorhanden). 

Being and Time itself can also be construed as the beginning of post-modernity given its impact on the major thinkers of that movement. Of course before Heidegger there were Darwin, Nietzsche and Freud deeply challenging Modernity’s concept of a rational and progressing humanity, but Darwin and Freud were very rational and scientific in their aims and Nietzsche was still in the 1920s a bit marginal. It is only after the collective traumatic shock of WWII that Post-modernism gains traction.

And Modernity did not go unchallenged in its 300 year reign. Romanticism, German Idealism and intellectual developments in the latter half of the 19th century posed serious challenges to it. And the tradition of Western Esotericism had many small comebacks in the persons of Emanuel Swedenborg, Jacob Boehme and Anton Mesmer, and in the movements of American spiritualism with its off-shot the so-called occult revival in the US and Europe after 1875.

Madame Blavatsky and her Theosophy had a clear and important role in this movement, reviving many esotericist ideas from the Renaissance, combining it with eastern ideas, and her own prolific fantasies and stage magic.

Though it is interesting to also look for remnants of esotericism in Descartes’ or Hegel’s ideas, one of the more surprising and underreported developments in the history of philosophy was how Kant had reacted to the voluminous writings of Swedenborg, a mining engineer and a seer creating vivid descriptions of the many mansions of heaven. Kant might have believed these writings initially, but reacted later strongly against them, influencing his epistemology regarding phenomena and noumena and implicitly declaring Swedenborgian claims beyond the pale of experienceability and conceptualization.

And Romanticism might also have had adherents dabbling in western esotericism. Hegel comes to mind, but I do not have access to sources to deepen that. What is clear is that Romanticism’s predilection for traditions and history, and resistance to cold rationality, would not put a principled opposition to appropriate Western Esotericist memes like bygone golden ages, hidden ancient wisdoms, eastern sages, and other enchanted narratives.

Conclusion

Taking all the above in, I propose the following demarcations between the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, Modernity and Post-Modernity:

I) 1471. End of the Middle Ages and start of the Renaissance with the publication of the Pimander.

II) 1620. End of the Renaissance and beginning of Modernity with the defeat of Frederick of the Palatinate in Bohemia where Descartes had its breakthrough meditations.

III) 1926. End of Modernity and beginning of Post-Modernity with Heidegger’s critique of Descartes in the publication of Being and Time.

Of course this periodization can be easily contested as it reflects personal preferences, it still has an internal logic I find compelling and fun to play around with.

The Cultural History of Inner Mind Space

Introduction.

Following are two sections from the dissertation: “The Possibility Conditions of Narrative Identity“.  Though I intended to include much more Jaynesian theory, I think these two sections will be most accessible for Jaynesians. The rest is also pretty compatible with Jaynes. What my dissertation did was to highlight the narrative component of consciousness and identity.

§ 30. Rorty and Trans-generational Narrative Identity Development

Somewhere between a) the long-term evolutionary story of language and narrative cognition, and b) the short-term life-span course of individual identity formation, lies c) the medium-term development of literature itself, including its impact on identity formation.

Anthropologist and Jaynes scholar Brian McVeigh makes a similar point on inserting a medium-term, cultural time-span with its own developmental arc.

Mainstream, conventional research psychology typically utilizes two types of time: (1) developmental, i.e., the trajectory of the human life span; and (2) evolutionary or the unimaginably long passage of many millennia. But I submit that certain research projects demand a third type of temporality measured in several centuries (or in some circumstances several millennia). This mid-range type is better suited for understanding sociocultural adaptation ( McVeigh, 2019: 5).

Here I will lay out the main idea and the contributions from two scholars in the way they highlighted larger or smaller chapters of this story. They are the American philosophers Amélie Oksenberg Rorty and Charles Taylor. The leading thought is that our identities have gone through changes in tandem with the changes in oral myths and written literature.

If our identities are thoroughly socially constructed by the formative power inherent in narrative cognition, then it stands to reason that any changes in the plots, characters, evaluative practices and emotional evocations throughout the ages will have a profound impact on the manner we take the world and ourselves to be and what action possibilities would be open.

Amélie Oksenberg Rorty wrestled with this issue in her paper “A Literary Postscript: Characters, Persons, Selves, Individuals” (1976). She perceives an enormous amount of identity variations throughout written history and acknowledges that identity theory is at an impasse, because theorists are very far from a consensus about the criteria by which persons can be identified. She wanted a history of the notion of identity and in her paper offered “a skeleton outline of some of the emotional and social spaces in which each of these move and have their being” (302).

In very short order the development of identity formations throughout western history went from Greek heroic characters, for whom lineage and deeds were paramount marks of identity; to figures who are “defined by their place in an unfolding drama” (307); to persons as dramatis personae who know they are playing roles and have donned a mask and are also a “unified center of choice and action” (309); to inward directed souls and minds slightly detached from the world; to selves with legal rights and societal obligations; and to individuals as “indivisible autonomous units” feeling the dialectic of individuality and community.

She sees connecting links between the different conceptions–the themes of agency and interiority are pervasive–but doesn’t see an “underlying substance” (320). If there is an abiding theme it would be that “humans are just the sort of organisms that interpret and modify their agency through their conceptions of themselves” (323). Her proposed research program to still make some sense of all variations would be to “investigate the biologically adaptive functions of the various cultural grafts: the obsession with unification and choice, salvation and simplicity, isolated integrity and achievement” (323).

In short–and in congruence with the concepts of narrative identity and its evolutionary roots so far presented–Rorty sees persons and individuals (the neutral terms she uses to envelop the entire class of variations) as entities inventing themselves through self-interpretation within a cultural evolutionary context.

In very short, identities are the product of adaptive self-interpretation, which went through a series of changes in at least the last 3,000 years, and its record can be found in literature.

§ 31. Charles Taylor and the History of Inwardness

The second contribution to this mid-range story of the cultural evolution of identity comes from Charles Taylor. In his landmark study Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (1989) he addresses the historical development of how identity was experienced covering more or less the same time-span as Rorty, i.e. early classical Greece to modernity.

Taylor, like Rorty, highlights the themes of interiority and agency and starts his story actually when the “inwardness” had not yet become a part of a person’s experience of himself and life. He observed that in Homer the locus of strength, inspiration, thought, and passions are fragmented throughout the body and were not yet to be ‘found’ in a unified mind located in the head. Taylor brings in the research by German philologist Bruno Snell, who wrote The Discovery of the Mind: The Greek Origins of European Thought.

Snell remarked on the absence in Homer of words that could happily be translated by our ‘mind’, or even by ‘soul’ in its standard post-Platonic meaning, that is, a term designating the unique locus where all our different thoughts and feelings occur (118).

Snell found in Greek literature that there was a gradual change form the Homeric sense of bodily dispersed passions and thoughts to the Platonic sense of a unitary inner mind.

Plato’s view, just because it privileges a condition of self-collected awareness and designates this as the state of maximum unity with oneself, requires some conception of the mind as a unitary space (119).

Against expectation the language of interiority was rarely used to make moral points (536, n7). That came later. With the Stoics interiority became the locus of the will, which could give or withhold assent by choice (137), and in the Neo-Platonism of Plotinus the language of inwardness became more pronounced (537, n4).

With Augustine inwardness becomes even more central and very complex as it became the place of the soul, the will, truth, God and moral development. Taylor observed that Augustine was “concerned not just with a turn away from what is outside, but with a search within” (537, n4) and quoted his famous line: “Noli foras ire, in teipsum redi; in interiore homine habitat veritas“, which translates as “Do not go outward; return within yourself. In the inward man dwells truth” (129). For Augustine the inner/outer category becomes central and subsumes the other opposites of “spirit/matter, higher/lower, eternal/temporal, immutable/changing” (128-9). And the unity and wholeness of the self is only to be found in God and not (yet) in itself, which idea culminates in Descartes, for whom interiority is the locus of all thought as thinking substance, res cogitans, as opposed to res extensa, the spatial world of matter and one’s body.

Taylor considers the addition of “moral sources”, which were previously located outside in the well-ordered cosmos as an “epoch-making” and a “radical twist” to Augustinian inwardness (143). Reason rules the passions and dominates a disenchanted world. Reason becomes ‘disengaged’. The good life comes from one’s dignity as a rational being (152). Descartes established a “new conception of inwardness, an inwardness of self-sufficiency, of autonomous powers of ordering by reason” (158) resulting in a move towards mechanism and treating experience as a vorhanden object.

Another big step happened with the empiricist John Locke, who arguably demolished and rebuild the mind as a “punctual self” emptied from innate ideas and teleological impulses, i.e. the Tabula rasa. Locke “reifies the mind” and uses “metaphors to do with constructing and assembling stuff” (166). Ideas are impressions from outside to be treated as inert objects or propositional entities (164-5). Its context was the rise of a disciplinary stance and practices with its “ideal of rational self-responsibility” (167). Enormously important for Locke’s concept of personal identity is the role of reflexivity by which the self appears to itself. “Its only constitutive property is self-awareness” (49).

The story continues with Hume, Kant, Schelling and Schopenhauer, who all contributed additions or made rejections to this ongoing concept of interiority. The arc more or less ends in the literary experiments of T.S. Elliot, Ezra Pound and Marcel Proust. Inwardness is now complemented by decentering (465). The unitary self is no more and the focus is on the “flow of experience” and on language and its structures (465). The context is the ongoing Romantic reaction against mechanism, capitalism and industrialism (460-65). Meanwhile philosophers like Dilthey and Heidegger combat the role of mechanistic-utilitarian categories and turn from an idealized nature to the pragmatic life-world and try to retrieve experience from conventional, instrumental modes (469).

The upshot of this extraction from Taylor is the idea that 1) not only the concept of identity went through many phases, but that all these thinkers both expressed and influenced how identity was experienced at a non-thematic, quotidian level, and 2) that these identity concepts highlighting interiority can be integrated into a narrative identity theory, which Taylor himself subscribed to but not fully fleshed out theoretically (48-9).

Sources

Jaynes, Julian. 1976. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

McVeigh, Brian J. 2019. “Jaynesian Psychology: Misunderstandings and Methodology”. Document at academia.edu.

Rorty, Amelie O. 1976. “A Literary Postscript: Characters, Persons, Selves, Individuals”. In: Rorty, Amelie O. (Ed.), The Identities of Persons. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. 301-323. Also in: Rorty, Amelie O. (Ed.). 1988. Mind in Action. Boston: Beacon Press, 1988.

Taylor, Charles. 1989. Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard U.P.

The Tacit Dimension Operative in Phenomenology

Abstract

This paper tries to assess the tacit dimension operative in the doing of phenomenology itself. The pre-phenomenological, pre-thematic naive skills of everyday abstraction and reflection comprise the tacit basis upon which phenomenology draws to do its work.

In the natural attitude we are always already using these skills in daily life, and in the phenomenological attitude we have refined these skills to different levels of proficiency, where abstraction is named eidetic variation, and reflection is then named phenomenological reduction.

In both the natural attitude and while doing phenomenology we can make reflection and abstraction into explicit subjects for reflection and abstraction, and while doing so we tacitly use the same sedimented skills as background.

If reflection and abstraction are the two basic skills of the rational mind, and if both skills can be executed with different levels of accomplishment and if these two skills can take each other as material, then a multitude of possible rational operations can be worked out. The paper explores the possible permutations of the combination of these elements.

CONTENTS

§ 1. The question about taciticy in phenomenological perspective

§ 2. The tacitly pre-supposed in science

§ 3. The tacitly pre-supposed in theology

§ 4. The tacitly pre-supposed in metaphysics

§ 5. The non-elective dimension of science and rationality

§ 6. The nonsensicallity of the question from an analytic viewpoint

§ 7. Phenomenology as a methodological innovation of reflection and abstraction

§ 8. An introductory phenomenological reflection on the tacit dimension illustrated with the pastime of watching movies

§ 9. What phenomenology is not.

§ 10. Phenomenology’s first and last subject: the tacit dimension.

§ 11. The tacit dimension operative in phenomenology.

§ 12. The phenomenology of skill acquisition and the acquisition of phenomenological skill

§ 13. Eidetic variation as refined abstraction.

§ 14. The phenomenological reduction as a refined reflexivity

§ 15. The temporo-logical architectonic of abstractive and reflexive refinement.

§ 16. The naïve assessment of phenomenology as the crucial entry level to phenomenology.

§ 17. Conclusion

§ 1. The question about taciticy in phenomenological perspective

What is and how works the latent dimension of human experience? With Heidegger’s admonishment in mind about the virtue of sticking to, and radicalizing a question in order to find an answer, I propose first to play around with the question a little in a self-referential way. Maybe I can tease out some insights by kicking around the question itself. If the question is about the latent dimension of human experience and its description, it might be appropriate to ask what this question itself assumes about us, students, in receiving and understanding that question. Who are we, or, who am I, that this question could make sense?

Before further radicalizing the question I have to reflectively investigate the setting of the question in my present situation. I am a student of phenomenology investigating the structure and logic of consciousness and the whole spectrum of human experience, without using the tools of science, metaphysics or theology. Instead I am supposed to use a non-scientific, non-revealed, non-speculative faculty of access. But access to what? Apparently not the phenomena to which science, theology and metaphysics think they have access to, i.e. those phenomena, which are already presupposed as unproblematic, like the universe for science, the whole or absolute for metaphysics, and the divine in theology. The questions these disciplines are engaged in are about proofs about the existents they deal with, not the way in which these existents are already presupposed to exist.

§ 2. The tacitly pre-supposed in science

For the scientist the existence of the universe, as the totality of all objects and processes (including those he has not yet discovered) is not problematic per se. Even if he inquires about its beginning and possible end—or even dares to speculate beyond these parameters and ask about the nature of time, space and causality before the supposed beginning and after the plausible end–he still will investigate these questions within the framework of the universe’s pre-given existence and will stick to the meanings of the categories as used within science itself, however these concepts by themselves might have evolved into mind-boggling constructs for most people.

§ 3. The tacitly pre-supposed in theology

In a similar way there is a field of pre-given ‘existents’ for the theologian, irrespective of his religion. For the Christian theologian it is not the existence of God, Christ or the Bible, which is problematic. It is obvious to him that God revealed Himself through history, the Bible and Christ. His questions are about the triune nature of God; the mixture of human and divine elements in Christ; the proper interpretation of the Bible; developing effective apologetics to convince prospective converts and strengthen the faith of the already converted. All these questions are dealt with within this faith’s framework of the existence of God, Christ and the Bible, which themselves are not im Frage. And if you do question their existence–a question, which has always been open to ask, because there have always been alternative non-Christian theologies–you risk going outside the faith and possibly de-convert yourself, a move you might not dare to make because the ultimate salvation of one’s soul is at stake. Maybe only a few, like some thinking mystics, might have penetrated to a deeper layer of questioning and thereby going beyond, but not necessarily outside, the exoteric doctrines of their faith.

In atheistic Buddhism it is Buddha’s enlightenment, and the possible attainment of enlightenment by oneself, which are the sine qua non of a Buddhist’s faith. But here the situation of the pre-givenness of a Buddhists’ basic faith is more fluid and, from a philosophical point of view, more interesting. Most Buddhists will live their religion as most people do. They have made a leap of faith, which can be re-enacted time and again, and thereby they have put certain questions beyond the pale, out of order. This pattern is of course strengthened by the fact that a whole community carries this sedimented act within its deeper collective consciousness and re-affirm it explicitly in ritual, and implicitly in the ethics guiding their daily life. But because there runs a deep anti-authoritarian and doubting stream within Buddhism the access to deeper questions is more open. It has even crystallized into certain schools, where the supreme virtue is the letting go of anything taken for granted, including, or even specifically, one’s own beliefs about the Buddha and enlightenment themselves, because those by themselves might be the most subtle of obstacles in the pursuit of enlightenment. (And beyond this are the philosophically interesting ideas of the letting go of letting go, the radical nothingness of emptiness, and the non-existence of enlightenment itself.)

§ 4. The tacitly pre-supposed in metaphysics

In metaphysics the situation is different again. It has the impetus of radical doubt and questioning in common with Buddhism, but it is not aiming at an altered state of consciousness. It aims at an integrated view of the world, integrating and bringing to resolution the problematics of knowledge, consciousness, freedom, origin, teleology, etc. in a cohesive whole. In history, as inherited by us, this endeavor resulted in different positions, like materialism, idealism, dualism, skepticism, etc., which we, as starting thinkers, find in our own Western intellectual world as possible world-views. But most of us will have already imbibed from our parents and teachers a pre-thematic sense of reality, which, if not challenged, stays operative throughout one’s life. This pre-thematic sense of reality might possibly stay tenaciously operative even during studying this discipline called philosophy. Philosophy here might be taken only as a receptacle of diverse arguments and systems. One can just pick and choose those ideas which seem to be most in harmony with one’s deeper pre-thematic sense of reality, instead of taking philosophy as the possibility and space to question and investigate one’s deepest assumptions about reality itself. ‘Man, know thyself’ was the Greek imperative, not ‘Man know philosophy.’

[Personal note: What about the operative assumptions in Theosophy? If Theosophy is taken as a synthesis of science, philosophy and theology, together with its stated objectives of open dialogue, comparative investigation and experimentation, there will be a lot of room to overcome its own articles of faith, which in spite of its professed anti-dogmatic, free-thinking, non-partisan persona, are quite prevalent. For example there are the Mahatmas as Theosophy’s collective God, the ever so interesting Helena Blavatsky as Their messenger and The Secret Doctrine as its Bible. Because of the strong intellectual, Buddhist and scientific elements within Theosophy the just enumerated sacred objects can be easily de-constructed. The Mahatmas are not unlike Zen masters, who can only point the way; Blavatsky was an advanced, but fallible, student; and The Secret Doctrine is no more than an interrelated set of hypotheses to be experimentally tested. But after more than 125 years Theosophy needs to be updated with an integration of the latest breakthroughs in science, philosophy and theology. It will not suffice to deepen the understanding, as Theosophy can bring, of trans-personal psychology, or quantum mechanics, or existentialism, or history, or, as is often done, to merely recognize similarities between Theosophy and these investigations and be self-congratulatory satisfied with the congruencies. The real work lies in a more active attempt at integration of the most developed positions within science, philosophy and theology. Personally I see a great potential in the integration of the very encompassing hypothesis of morphogenetic fields and morphic resonance as developed by Rupert Sheldrake (science), the epistemological and existential ideas coming out of the phenomenological movement (philosophy) and the spiritual philosophy of Krishnamurti (theology, if I may say so).]

§ 5. The non-elective dimension of science and rationality

In short, before doing phenomenology it is appropriate to see what the presuppositions are that we are asked to suspend, so they will not re-enter, in disguised form, at a later stage of the investigation. If one sees the elective nature of one’s metaphysics and religion, the basic assumptions underlying them might be the easiest to overcome. If one’s faith is deep-rooted, then the underlying assumptions might act as a deep invisible rudder, steering subsequent thoughts, not so much in a pre-determined fashion, but toward or within a certain field of possibilities and away and outside others. With science, given the scientific nature of our culture, it is a little more difficult. One can define oneself within the field of religion as an anti-theist, or anti-atheist, anti-pagan or anti-Muslim, etc.; and within the field of metaphysics as anti-materialist, or anti-idealist, or non-dualist, etc. and still stay respectable. All because of the elective, contingent nature of one’s own religion and metaphysics. But with science it seems to be different. It has such deep roots now that it seems to be too radical and dangerous to come out against science and its results. Who could even conceive of becoming anti-scientific, let alone anti-rational or even anti-logical? Who hasn’t benefited from science? Of course there are protests against certain technologies, or even technology in general, and protests against certain sciences, but probably not so much against science in general. In the majority of cases the protests will be expressed with rational arguments, even citing scientific investigations from the disciplines of medicine, psychology, sociology or ecology. Therefore moving outside of rationality might not be easy, even unconceivable, if the goal one sets is the investigation of a certain matter under question and not to move into mysticism or madness. The best we can do, according to phenomenology, is asking after the how, what, wherefrom and whereto of science, rationality and logic itself. This then should be done in such a way that the claims these disciplines exert upon our mind in daily life are not taken for granted in our investigative mode. Instead we are asked to closely observe and describe or interpret them in their operations from a point of view as neutral as possible.

§ 6. The nonsensicallity of the question from an analytic viewpoint

Now back to the question about the latent dimension of human experience. A first shot at the question would be to investigate if the question is a legitimate question in the first place. Maybe it is one of those pseudo-questions the analytic philosophers try to warn us about. They will understand the intention within the question of having something described. After all, they are so-called empiricists, i.e. relying on the faculty of observation and the method of experimentation (and also quackery and ‘without due regard for science and theory’ according to my Webster Dictionary!?) in order to get solid scientific results. They will also have their own ideas what human experience is: a barrage of atomistic sense data processed by the brain into actionable aggregates, which will produce a certain output. No problem there. But what about a latent dimension? We know about three spatial dimensions and maybe a fourth for time. Are there dimensions we haven’t seen yet, which are not manifested or visible? And what has that to do with human experience? If dimension stands for measurement and human experience can be measured as far as input and output is concerned, where is the hidden aspect of measurement? What is it about measurement we don’t know? The only thing hidden is what we don’t know yet, but eventually we will and we will find it either through science or logic. Therefore to ask for the description of something we don’t know is absurd. At face value the question breaks down into nonsense and the empiricist will sigh in exasperation and say ‘typically continental. Much ado about nothing!’ ‘Not so fast,’ would the ‘continental’ respond, there is a style of philosophy about no-thing which can fill a library. Webster might be right in assessing you as having no ‘due regard for science and theory’ in their most radical and philosophical sense.

§ 7. Phenomenology as a methodological innovation of reflection and abstraction

A methodological innovation has been made by the German mathematician-philosopher Edmund Husserl, which opened up a field of research unheard of in previous philosophical attempts to understand science, logic and especially consciousness in all the many ways it relates to the world and itself. The key of this method is a peculiar kind of refined reflection of consciousness upon its own operations by purging this reflection of some of the prejudices and suppositions, which were previously not acknowledged and which blocked the view of a realm that had been always there, but just not noticed. Because of the aha-Erlebnis character of the refinement procedure and the great resistance of daily consciousness to execute something it can hardly even imagine, this method by itself has stayed one of the more enigmatic parts of Husserl’s legacy, though for some it is strangely obvious, as obvious that a movie is a movie, even though from the first scene on you forget that fact and are focused on what the movie is about. With this example of the experience of movie watching many of the points phenomenologists brought to light can be illustrated, especially the latent dimension of human experience.

§ 8. An introductory phenomenological reflection on the tacit dimension illustrated with the pastime of watching movies

At this stage of the investigation I will not just report about phenomenology, but will try to convey what phenomenology itself is about and will develop it using the theme of movie watching. I will zoom in on this peculiar difference between on one side the experience of watching a movie and getting absorbed in the characters and the story, and on the other side watching the movie as a movie, and the many things implied in that, like for example the movie being the end product of an elaborate production process.

The way I live my life has parallels with how I watch a movie. The way one practices phenomenology has parallels with seeing the movie as a movie. I’m mostly absorbed in the execution of the routine tasks of life, going about my business either on my own or within the context of the tasks taken up with my fellow men and women, taking care of the necessities of life and pursuing my freely chosen interests. When watching a movie I live vicariously through the characters and am focused on their concerns and actions. Or I project myself as a neutral observer who just happens to be there and gets mysteriously swept along from one place and time to another, but still engaged in what the characters are engaged in. The better the movie is, the less I experience it as a movie, but as real, and can get as scared, perplexed, joyful or sad as the protagonists themselves.

But there is a limit of how good a movie can be before the awareness sets in again that it is a movie I am watching and this time a really, really good one. This would be one of the limit situations where one is triggered into a reflection and one becomes aware of the previously submerged dimension of the movie being a movie. Or maybe when the movie moves outside of my comfort zone, when it gets very boring or scary, I might wake up again to the fact that I am watching a movie and tell myself reassuringly so: It was not my life that got boring or scary, merely the movie had these qualities. In these limit situations I suspend or bracket the realistically lived content of the movie and create a distance between the movie and myself and see it from a different vantage-point. This perspective might only endure for a little moment, just enough to, let’s say, recollect myself, and before I know it I am back again living the movie in a naïve way, swept along into the exciting world of the characters and forget the ‘movie-ness’ of the movie.

On the other side it is also possible that, once triggered out of the naïve mode of movie watching, I stay within the new position sustained by a budding mode of curiosity and wonder and resist the natural tendency to get ‘back’ into the movie. Now I might start inquiring into the larger context or horizon of the movie as a movie. Now I can look at the actors as actors, the plot as plot, and all the other integral parts of the movie like the editing, the camerawork, the special effects, and so on. Now I can look at what all these aspects mean by themselves, or in relationship to each other, or in relationship to the whole of the movie itself as a temporal unity. Meanwhile I remain the possibility to slip back into the natural attitude. And with a little training can switch back and forth, like a gestalt switch, ever more easy. Because of this skill the natural attitude will be slightly transformed, because it will carry the growing background presence of the possibility to switch and it can more easily import the new sensitivities opened up in the theoretical realm. In the long run this might result also, but not necessarily so, in the actual loss of the capacity of going back into straightforwardly enjoying the movie, because the reflective attitude can become so strongly habituated that it just prevents the regaining of innocence from happening.

Here should be noted that what is now looked at from a different vantage point is still the same movie, there is nothing added to the phenomena appearing to consciousness. The only thing extra coming into play is my tacit knowledge of making a movie, though I might never have made one myself and might not even be able to run a camera. The only thing changed was the attitude in which the phenomena are looked at. This attitude can be called the theoretical or phenomenological attitude as contrasted with the pre-theoretical naïve natural attitude of watching absorbedly. This attitude has to be set off against another closely related possibility of investigation with which it might be easily confused. And that is a historical genetic reconstruction of the movie in the way it was actually made. The actual when, how, why and by whom of the movie are not in question in the phenomenological quest.

§ 9. What phenomenology is not

The phenomenological attitude also has to be contrasted with the attitude operative in scientific, metaphysical and theological investigations. None of their presuppositions and subject matters are in play here. The phenomena are investigated as far as they are phenomenal, as far as they appear as such to consciousness, not as effects of yet unknown scientific causes, or manifestations of noumenal metaphysical substances, or emanations of theological spiritual absolutes. None of these are even needed. In fact, these themselves can be seen from this newly acquired mode of access and be investigated anew. And to bring the argument to its logical conclusion, and going a little ahead in the laying out of the new mode and field of investigation, this mode itself can become a legitimate and possible, even necessary per demand of completion, subject of investigation, i.e. the phenomenological investigation of the investigative mode of phenomenology itself.

§ 10. Phenomenology’s first and last subject: the tacit dimension

Let’s backtrack here a little and see what structure, if any, can be gleaned from the previous paragraphs to make the case for the intelligibility and possibility of the phenomenological attitude more clear. Basically, and as compressed as possible, I made the following claim:

As we can watch a movie either in an absorbed way or in a reflective theoretical way, we can make a similar distinction between life lived in an absorbed naïve way, and see it from a specifically refined reflective theoretical way, i.e. the phenomenological vantage point.

Or, similarly stated, but more elaborate: As we can watch a movie either in an absorbed way or in a reflective theoretical way–free of all historical, scientific, metaphysical and theological presuppositions, though not without the tacit knowledge of what a movie is–we can make a similar distinction between life lived in an absorbed naïve way—be it our involvement with ourselves, our body, things in the world, our fellow men and women, the world, the universe; be it as a professional, a scientist, a philosopher; be it in watching movies, reading fine literature or creating art, etc.–and see and interpret the whole of life from a specifically refined reflective theoretical way, i.e. the phenomenological vantage point, and investigate its heretofore hidden outer and inner contexts and the way the phenomena are experienced. Again without any presuppositions, just zooming in on this tacit knowledge of what life is, or just letting this dimension come to the fore, and lay it out in explicit assertions.

Here it might be stated that it looks like that phenomenology opens up nothing less nor more than the implicit dimension itself. It is its first and last subject. Next to a phenomenology of logic or language or whatever else, there is not another separate phenomenology of the tacit dimension of human experience. All phenomenology is about the tacit dimension of experience, and it is always human, because that’s the only kind of experience we have reflexively access to. All phenomenological key terms like intentionality, intersubjectivity, evidence, horizon, temporality, passive synthesis etc. find their origin in the tacit dimension and are descriptors of structural aspects of this realm. Some of these terms, like lifeworld or Dasein even try to bring the whole of this realm to expression.

Maybe a useful distinction can be made between deep and surface structures of the tacit realm, where the taciticy of the surface realm is more obviously recognized as such, and the taciticy of the deeper structure is more hidden. In this distinction I would place on the side of surface taciticy the tacit dimension revealed in the concept of kinesthetics (the coordination of bodily action and perception in the context of our environment); the dimension of our pre-reflective tacit skill in dealing with people, including our spontaneous use of language and gestures in communication and our capacity to empathize; and the almost always pre-thematic obvious sense that we share a world with others. These philosophical themes can be laid out and made intelligible even for those who have had no introduction to phenomenology itself. Its tacitness lays on the surface and no great intellectual effort has to be made to bring its taciticy into the open. On the more hidden side I would place issues like Husserl’s concept of the lifeworld, which would for example lay out the embeddedness of science and philosophy within the lifeworld itself; the complex interconnected issue of intentionality, synthesis and evidence; and the complex structure of inner time-consciousness. Without these deeper tacit dimensions there would be no intelligible human experience whatsoever, including the so-called category mistakes, which can only happen if there are tacit categorial structures operative within consciousness in the first place. When trying to open up these deeper structures it might seem that one is engaged in speculative constructions.

§ 11. The tacit dimension operative in phenomenology

The deepest and most interesting aspect of the tacit dimension is the one operative within the doing of phenomenology itself. Here we enter the realm of the phenomenology of phenomenology, and if, as stated earlier, all phenomenology is by its very essence about the tacit dimension, then the phenomenology of phenomenology is about its own still hidden horizon of meaning and pre-thematic skill. In terms of skills, or accomplishments (Leistung) as Husserl characterizes all operations of consciousness, the following idea suggests itself. Some phenomenologists, like Dreyfus, have developed, or opened up, a phenomenology of skill acquisition and made careful distinctions in the stages of this process. The insights thus obtained about the tacit pre-reflective human capacity to acquire specific skills found its way in a very fruitful manner into the community of nursing educators and practitioners and educators in general. The obvious thought for a philosopher, who should always be on the lookout for self-referential possibilities, would be to apply these insights, as developed within phenomenology, to the procedures and skills operative in doing phenomenology itself. I am not sure if this has ever been tried, but the possibility presents itself as quite obvious. Its possible outcome might replace the existing introductory books to phenomenology with one that not only specifically describes the different stages a novice would traverse before he would become an expert, but would also include exercises for every of the identified stages.

§ 12. The phenomenology of skill acquisition and the acquisition of phenomenological skill

The question now to be addressed is how to put some more meat to this abstract possibility of exploring the pre-reflectively operative skill in doing phenomenology. Skill acquisition is based on a process of sedimentation of subtle insights, both explicitly experienced in Aha-Erlebnisse and in hardly noticed moments of just-getting-something-right, all in the context of trials and errors, of hands-on grappling with real life or artificial challenges. But a skill doesn’t develop ex nihilo, it is based on previously acquired skills, but now set to new tasks of ever more complex possibilities. The acquisition of mathematical skills comes to mind, where one first has to be able to count before making additions and subtractions, which by themselves become the basis for multiplication and division, on which can be build the rest of mathematics, provided that one combines it with the skill of abstraction and formalization. The very skill required in higher mathematics to abstract and formalize is a skill which is already operative, but then in a very basic form, within the mathematical entry skill of counting itself. In counting one has to abstract already from the diversity of things to be counted and experience the essential nature of counting as it is executed. Even on a deeper level the notion of object permanence is operative, which is a spontaneous skill of perceiving an entity enduring as itself throughout its diverse temporal manifestations. This subsequently forms the possibility condition of counting and, keeping as counted, the entities, which just have been constituted as time-transcending endurances. Keeping the counted as counted is also by itself an enduring time-transcending entity without which the next level would not be possible. Besides the time-transcending nature of the products constituted by skill, the skill itself is also enduring. This might, as many phenomenological observations, sound very obvious, but in a phenomenological frame of mind, which would discount any and all mechanistic explanatory devices, one can come to great wonder about the enduring nature of skill, especially within the context of the living now. How a specific skill transcends the ongoing sequence of moments in which it is operative, and how it can become operational again in a later moment after it has run its course, is not as obvious as one might think, though in our daily life we experience it on an ongoing basis and take it for granted.

§ 13. Eidetic variation as refined abstraction

Within phenomenology the skills of abstraction and formalization are operative in a peculiarly refined and skillful manner, called eidetic reduction, through which certain structures of human experience can come to the fore. Starting with a phenomenon as found reflexively within immanent consciousness, one can ‘abstract,’ or draw out, by imaginatively varying the phenomenon, a meaning, or structure, or essence, which seems to endure throughout the variation and can be construed as its time- and variation-transcending essence. As stated above, this skill is based on, and is a peculiar refinement of, the skill of abstraction as found in mathematics or formal reasoning. An interesting question here to pursue might be to inquire phenomenologically if any abstractive procedure whatsoever is already eidetic in itself. If this is found to be so, as I think Husserl tried to point out, then the more formally presented phenomenological technique of eidetic variation is nothing more than the essence of the abstractive procedure itself, only now brought out from its tacit dimension into the open, reflexive, thematic-explicative realm. Here it has to be noted that the procedure itself applied to bring out this insight was what the insight was about. I am not claiming here that I executed that procedure. It is more the case that I, as a novice, see its possibility, but lack the skill to bring it to completion, though seeing the possibility itself is already half the work. In short the eidetic reduction of the eidetic reduction would be one ‘moment’ of the phenomenology of phenomenology.

§ 14. The phenomenological reduction as a refined reflexivity

Besides the skill of abstraction and formalization another skill is operative in phenomenology and that is reflexivity. This is another skill that lies ready-at-hand within the horizon of human experience and is pre-thematically operative in many situations. Reflectivity is here the capacity of consciousness, within the spacious structure of the living now, to reflect upon itself and find the just-passed as its own possession and find therein structures and meanings, which can be brought out thematically, and were previously pre-thematic. For example, if I am asked what I am doing and why, I can reflect and answer with a descriptive statement, going from a certain concerned absorbed attitude about something to its wider context and meaning. As Sartre pointed out, even in memory I can reconstruct every remembered lived moment as having been my own and place it in a larger framework. In combination with abstraction and memory I can reflectively discover enduring characteristics about myself, like certain desires and fears, values, skills etc. Reflexivity can bring out this enduring sense of individuality that we take ourselves to be. Here one is reminded of a parallel with the experience of the object permanence of things. The permanence here is the sense of the time-transcending endurance of the individual self, though I leave it here open what the results might be from ultimate phenomenological investigations into the relation between consciousness and self, especially the issue of the egological or non-egological structure of consciousness.

As there is a pre-thematic sense of, and skill in, reflexivity in daily life, there is the phenomenological equivalent called the epoché or reduction, which can be construed as the revolutionized variant of reflexivity in the natural attitude. Natural reflexivity sets the condition for the widening of a horizon, like in the example of movie watching where reflexivity moves the naïve watcher into an explicit awareness of the movie as movie and on that basis can access a diversity of aspects of the movie, which were hidden within the natural attitude. One could say that the movie watcher bracketed the movie, froze it, so to speak, in the just-passed, and created a little distance by zooming itself out to bring into focus the horizon itself and therefore have certain aspects appear. In a similar manner the phenomenological reduction reflexively turns upon consciousness, but now with the conscious motivation to bracket the being of the world and the manner I experience it, thereby opening up the lived world as the horizon of all horizons, the meaning of all meaning, or the structure of all structures, the context of all contexts, and the ultimate possibility condition of any reflexive abstraction or abstractive reflection whatsoever. With this last characterization I am going ahead of myself again. Suffice it to say that reflexivity is besides abstraction another essential skill of phenomenology.

§ 15. the temporo-logical architectonic of abstractive and reflexive refinement

An architectonic of a phenomenology of phenomenology is now arising, and this will be stated to direct this investigation to a possible finale, not as a final conclusion or ultimate insight, but as a personal progress report. What is emerging is the idea that if reflexivity and abstraction in their phenomenological variant, i.e. phenomenological reduction and eidetic variation, are the two essential moments of phenomenology then phenomenology self-reflexively and abstractivley applied to itself would have to include these moments themselves.

As reduction/reflection is procedure-wise the sine qua non of any rational/phenomenological investigation and therefore precedes abstraction, the structure, to put it in a temporo-logical order, should start with a reflection upon abstraction, proceed with and abstract investigation of abstraction, then move into a reflection on reflection, and end with an abstract investigation of reflection. The whole procedure will be duplicated on two other levels: a phenomenology of abstraction and reflection in the natural attitude, and a phenomenology of abstraction and reflexivity in their refined phenomenological level of skill. Therefore the whole temporo-logical order will start with a reflection on abstraction in the natural attitude and will end with an eidetic investigation of the phenomenological reduction, which might be the most basic Wesenanschauung to be gotten from a Husserlian point of view, and actually is its start and finish, its origin and highest accomplishment.

So we start with:

A) the naïve assessment of abstraction and reflexivity of themselves in the natural attitude:

  1. a reflection on abstraction, i.e. the naïve reflexively executed hold on abstraction itself.

  2. an abstract investigation of abstraction, i.e. what is abstraction thought to be in the natural attitude,

  3. a reflection on reflection, i.e. the naïve reflexively executed hold on reflexivity itself.

  4. an abstract investigation of reflection, i.e. what is reflection thought to be in the natural attitude.

These four steps have to be duplicated in:

B) a straightforward phenomenology of abstraction and reflexivity:

  1. a phenomenological reduction of abstraction, i.e. the refined reflexively executed hold on abstraction itself.

  1. an eidetic investigation of abstraction, i.e. what is abstraction essentially in all its variations,

  1. a phenomenological reduction of reflexivity, i.e. the refined reflexively executed hold on reflexivity itself, and

  2. an eidetic investigation of reflexivity, i.e. what is reflexivity essentially in all its variations.

As a finale these four steps have to be duplicated in:

C) a phenomenology as turned upon itself:

  1. a phenomenological reduction of eidetic variation, i.e. the refined reflexively executed hold on eidetic variation itself.

  2. an eidetic investigation of eidetic variation, i.e. what is eidetic variation essentially in all its variations,

  3. a phenomenological reduction of phenomenological reduction, i.e. the refined reflexively executed hold on phenomenological reduction itself, and

  4. an eidetic investigation of the phenomenological reduction, i.e. what is the phenomenological reduction essentially in all its variations.

This architectonic is of course slightly annoying, because it is the overly elaborate systematic bringing out of a structural insight and its possibilities, which could be grasped in a flash, and could be stated in short as follows:

If reflection and abstraction are the two basic skills of the rational mind, and if both skills can be executed with different levels of accomplishment (above only the levels of naïve/natural and refined/phenomenological were used), and if these two skills can take each other as material, then a multitude of possible rational operations can be worked out, as was done above.

Whatever level of refinement we accomplish in abstraction or reflection, both as skill in action and in our understanding of these skills as subjects to be investigated, this skill will be always already non-thematically operative as the inescapable background when we do reflect upon and abstract from any subject whatsoever, even if the subject is reflection and abstraction themselves. As these skills are operative they can never be made into full presence for the phenomenological onlooker. It is this onlooker who applies the skill, and has to forget about the skill thematically to be able to successfully apply it upon a subject, which needs his full attention. Even at the highest level of reflection within phenomenology, when it takes itself as explicit subject matter, there always will be and stay a subtle difference between phenomenological skill as tacit background, phenomenological skill as consciously applied skill and phenomenological skill as subject of investigation. A complete self-transparency, where subject and object and background collapse into each other might not be possible.

§ 16. The naïve assessment of phenomenology as the crucial entry level to phenomenology.

Mathematically speaking I might have to end up with 16 variations instead of the 12 above, because the equation would be as follows: 2 (operations: abstraction and reflection) x 2 (subjects for ‘operation’: abstraction and reflection) x 2 (levels of skill in operation: naïve and refined) x 2 (levels of skill as subject: naïve and refined) = 16 permutations. I have 12 so far, therefore I am missing 4! This would be the set of four operations where the natural attitude reflects and abstracts upon the phenomenological attitude. This might be quite impossible, because, as Fink showed, the natural attitude doesn’t know anything about phenomenology, it only has a tacit understanding of abstraction and reflection and has no notion of the refined way phenomenology proceeds. Per Fink the human mind first needs the know-how of the phenomenological reduction before it can do phenomenology, but as the architectonic shows, the founding insight for this skill comes from the eidetic investigation of the phenomenological reduction, which is only to be had at the very end of the long and arduous quest of phenomenology for its self-clarification and foundation.

D) the naïve assessment of phenomenology in the natural attitude:

  1. a reflection on eidetic variation, i.e. the naïve reflexively executed hold on eidetic variation itself.

  2. an abstract investigation of eidetic variation, i.e. what is eidetic variation thought to be in the natural attitude,

  3. a reflection on phenomenological reduction, i.e. the naïve reflexively executed hold on phenomenological reduction itself.

  4. an abstract investigation of the phenomenological reduction, i.e. what is the phenomenological reduction thought to be in the natural attitude.

As impossible as this set might be, it is at the same time the crucial entry level for doing phenomenology in the first place, because one will, and has to, start with a naïve notion of phenomenology in order to proceed and find out what the phenomenological paradigm is really about. Therefore one starts with the tools of reflection and abstraction on the level of the natural attitude to investigate the phenomenological tools of phenomenological reduction and eidetic variation. What will come out of that will be the phenomenologically cleared notion of the natural attitude. Temporo-logically the D-set will have to be placed between A and B, because it is based on, and one step beyond the naïve assessment of the natural attitude, and is the introductory level towards a phenomenological assessment of the natural attitude. In this way the 16 permutations found their temporo-logical order. As we can learn from Kuhn, the right set of introductory problems can ignite the learning process, and as Husserl was confident, a gradual ‘zig-zag-wise’ change of one’s notions of abstraction and reflection will then come about. In terms of taciticy what happens in the process is that our tacit skill in reflecting and making abstractions will guide our effort to become self-aware of these two skills in ever more refined ways depending on the amount of levels of skill one wants to differentiate between.

§ 17. Conclusion

This paper tries to assess, at a lower level of phenomenological skill, the tacit dimension operative in the doing of phenomenology itself. The pre-phenomenological, pre-thematic naive skills of everyday abstraction and reflection comprise the tacit basis upon which phenomenology draws to do its work. In the natural attitude we are always already using these skills in daily life, and in the phenomenological attitude we have refined these skills to different levels of proficiency, where abstraction is named eidetic variation, and reflection is then named phenomenological reduction. In both the natural attitude and while doing phenomenology we can make reflection and abstraction into explicit subjects for reflection and abstraction, and while doing so we tacitly use the same sedimented skills as background. The highest possible level of phenomenological reflection would comprise the following structure: Having the sedimented phenomenological skill as tacit background, we use the phenomenological skill as consciously applied skill, and apply it to phenomenological skill itself as subject of investigation. It’s crowning achievement would be an eidetic investigation of the phenomenological reduction, i.e. what is the phenomenological reduction essentially in all its variations. Once this is figured out the opening up of the tacit dimension in all its varieties will be a piece of cake, for the sedimented tacit skills of eidetic variation and phenomenological reduction will be at their most effective. If anyone has achieved this is dubitable. The one who went farthest along these lines, Eugen Fink, did not finish the quest, and only indicated in his Sixth Cartesian Meditation the preliminary concept of a full-blown phenomenology of phenomenology, or, as he called it, the ‘idea of a transcendental theory of [phenomenological] method.’ I wonder why he stopped.

Source

This is a paper written for the class “20th Century Phenomenological Philosophies” (PHIL 428), conducted by Prof. Th. J. Kisiel in the spring of 2003 at Northern Illinois University. Edited in 2018.

The Possibility Conditions of Narrative Identity

Each of us constructs and lives a ‘narrative’ . . .
this narrative is us, our identities — Oliver Sacks.

This dissertation is the fruit of my research on the concept of narrative identity, i.e. the claim that our sense of self is structured like a story. While investigating this concept it became clear that narrativity functioned metaphorically, not in the sense of a literary figure of speech, but as a tacit, formative operation, which transfers the intelligibility inherent in the familiar domain of stories to the more elusive domain of personal identity, especially in regards to the intimate and often problematic significance of its life-span.

This research was undertaken under the auspices of the University of Wales: Trinity Saint David and was submitted in partial fulfillment for the award of a Degree of Masters by Research in European Philosophy in the School of Humanities and Performing Arts of the University of Wales.

My research supervisor was Dr. Adrian Davis.

The dissertation was submitted in January 2019 and was accepted in September 2019.

Text

Full text in pdf here.

Abstract

The focus of this dissertation is narrative identity theory, i.e. the proposition that our sense of self is structured like a story. The imputed advantage of narrative identity is that it enables great coherence and guidance to our complex lives composed of multiple and often conflicting inner impulses and social demands.

The manner in which this is accomplished is that narrativity functions metaphorically as a tacit, formative operation, which transfers the intelligibility inherent in the familiar domain of stories to the more elusive domain of personal identity. Narrativity is an epistemically efficient kind of discourse which can synthesize a multitude of elements into a unity called plot. A plot gives unity to the whole of a story and confers significance to its parts.

Both narrativity and metaphoricity are the more recognizable products of an underlying mechanism both share, i.e. productive imagination. This faculty pervasively and continually configures the whole field of our experience, accentuating the relevant structures of our physical, social or inner, affective-mental environment (context) and projects the path through this environment towards a physical destiny, social accomplishment or resolution (direction).

With the tools of classic Husserlian phenomenology and its radicalization in Heideggerian existential hermeneutics the main concepts of narrativity, metaphoricity and productive imagination can be further clarified and connected. This will enable a discussion about the question whether the ontological status of narrative identity can be construed such that either 1) personal identity merely has narrative cognition available as a pervasive, tacit tool to cope with life, or 2) whether our personal identity is nothing but the product of the productive imagination operating through narrativity.

Nietzsche’s Reluctant Acceptance of Liberal Democracy (and later Rejection)

Introduction.

The questions to be addressed in this essay are 1) whether we can extract from Nietzsche’s book Human, All Too Human, which was written in his more moderate science-oriented middle period, something of a political view; 2) whether this view can be construed, with some hedging here and there, as supporting modern liberal democracy; and 3) whether Nietzsche’s qualified endorsement, or maybe better formulated, reluctant acceptance of liberal democracy can be found in his other works.

This should be an interesting challenge because the book has many passages in which he deals with the relationship between, on one side man and on the other culture, society and the state. The initial focus will be on chapter eight, titled “A Look at the State”, in which we can find most of his thinking about the state, class, caste, socialism, nationalism, anarchism, democracy, war, religion, “Great politics” and many other themes connected to political thought. I will make here and there some excursions into the future, not into Nazi Germany, but into the post-WWII West in which liberal democracy has firmly established itself, and try to figure out how Nietzsche might have come down in different political issues.

Liberal Democracy: Cynically and Conditionally Accepted

The very first section (438) in this chapter is already rich with ideas which could support a liberal, democratic form of government, but not without some cynical denigrations about the mental capacity of the demos and warnings for the misfortunes it could heap upon itself. First, Nietzsche observes and accepts that something of an earthquake-like change has occurred in politics, highly probably referring to the rise of democracy and constitutional government, and that this change just has to be accepted. It would be futile not to accept it. If the goal of politics is now to make life bearable for the most amount of people through democratic politics with all its demagoguery, lies and manipulations, then, so be it. Nietzsche seems to look at this state of affairs like a force of nature to adapt to, not an arrangement he would necessarily recommend. Actually, he is quite cynical about it and sets some conditions to make it minimally acceptable for him and his fellow (or future) free spirits.

His quite humorous cynicism about democracy is based on a very denigrating view of the intellectual capacity of the population and is visible for example in his quote from Voltaire, who wrote that “Once the populace begins to reason, all is lost”. Nietzsche thinks that the narrow-minded masses can only contain “five or six concepts” in their heads–and they are even proud of that–and believes that they are quite deluded in thinking that they have the capacity to come up with the right policies to increase their own well-being. But, as long as they are deluded, Nietzsche avers, they will “gladly bear the fatal consequences of their narrowness” (438).

So, Nietzsche sees some dangers lurking in the democratic set-up and, because democracy can be a dangerous homogenizer of people, he makes a plea for the freedom 1) for some people to stand aside from politics; 2) for some people to be not too serious about the well-being of the many and even be ironic about it; and 3) for some people to emerge from the masses and try out some unconventional thinking and expressing themselves.

The above enumerated conditions for some spirits to have a little unconventional freedom to make themselves heard is not necessarily just for the sake of such free spirits or would-be free spirits. Earlier in the book, in his crucial passages about such free spirits and their role in society (224-237), Nietzsche made it quite clear in biologistic terms that such freedom is essential for a culture to further develop. Unbound spirits maim their society by experimenting with new and different expressions and society reacts by getting inoculated through assimilating the new into their bloodstream. “Wherever progress is to ensue, deviating natures are of the greatest importance” (224).

The Necessity of a Permeable Class Society

Another condition for society to develop and create a “higher culture” is the existence of a stratified population with an “idle caste” on top and a “working caste” at the bottom. Because the upper crust is capable of a more refined sensitivity and deeper suffering and has the wealth and leisure to do so, it can set the conditions for a higher culture to emerge and sustain. With its wealth it can afford the most beautiful women (apparently regardless of caste); the best teachers; avoid mind-numbing labor; and be clean and healthy (479).

And if there is some permeability between the two castes, when upper class individuals and whole families become so obtuse to become demoted to the lower class and, other way around, deserving individuals from the working class, for example beautiful women and good teachers, but especially free spirits, rise up and get accepted in the leisure class, then such an arrangement would be very good according to Nietzsche. It is not entirely clear though what he meant with his valuing expression, that, if this state is achieved, then beyond it “only the open sea of indefinite desires is still visible” (439).

What does he mean with, in his original German, “das offene Meer unbestimmter Wünsche”, and what does it indicate as far as importance is concerned? Is he saying that, if there is social mobility between the classes and newly, self-minted free spirits arise from the lower classes, then such spirits can, or even should forthwith enter the upper class, take advantage of its leisure, and start experimenting with unconventional ways of being, because only if such a flow of individuals is established then any and all of the higher and still undetermined desires can come to fruition in higher cultural expressions? And was this mobility more prevalent in the past, as Nietzsche finishes the section with “Thus the fading voice of the old era speaks to us; but where are the ears left to hear it?” (339). I dwell on this expression because it has such a positive visionary ring to it, which is not often found in Nietzsche’s non-fictional prose writings.

The Danger of Secularism and Egalitarianism

Another danger of democracy, and this one Nietzsche thought to be more of a long-term threat still in the future, is that it radically transforms the relationship between the government and the people, from a hierarchical structure, like one has with the teacher-pupil, master-slave or father-family relationship, to an egalitarian relation in which the government is seen as “an organ of the people”, or better said in Lincoln’s Gettysburg address, “government of the people, by the people, for the people“. Apparently Nietzsche will have none of that, but thinks there is still time, a century or so, for that unfortunate idea to become reality and therefore cautions to go slow in this regard (450).

If one looks at the 1970s (a little less than a hundred years after Nietzsche wrote the above warning) as the epitome of the West’s realization of the democratic spirit and economic equality, then one could see Nietzsche as somewhat prophetic. He might have abhorred it, but nevertheless foresaw it coming. He would have been gratified though that soon after, most of the policies leading to that moment in the West were turned around in the 1980s by the implementation of neoliberal policies developed by the Chicago School and the “1980s Project” within the Council of Foreign Relations (Shoup & Minter; Sklar).

And he might have been enamored by the rise of the hard, elitist, economic shock doctrine of so-called “disaster capitalism” (Klein). But he might not be enamored by the further extension of these privatization policies, because they are now gradually putting corporations in charge of many of the functions previously executed by the state, with some politicians and thinkers explicitly trying to diminish the state into a minimal entity which ultimately might lead to the “death of the state” (472; italics in original). Nietzsche again shows himself prophetic here. How far his warning for the corporate take-over of the state could be interpreted as anti-corporatism and therefore as proto-anti-fascist is an open question.

Democracy, Religion and Anarchism

Another disadvantage of the democratic state is that it forces religion from the public into the private sphere and therefore cannot be used anymore by the state as a force of societal cohesion and appeasement in times of trouble. And it will weaken the state itself because its “mysterium” is diminished and people will have less respect for it. This might then open the road, as observed before, for private contractors to come in and gradually take over the business of the state to the point of the “death of the state” (472; italics in original). As he summarizes it himself:

To recapitulate briefly, the interests of tutelary government and the interests of religion go together hand in hand, so that if the latter begins to die out, the foundation of the state will also be shaken. The belief in a divine order of political affairs, in a mysterium in the existence of the state, has a religious origin; if religion disappears, the state will inevitably lose its old veil of Isis and no longer awaken awe. The sovereignty of the people, seen closely, serves to scare off even the last trace of magic and superstition contained in these feelings; modern democracy is the historical form of the decline of the state (472; italics in original).

Even though Nietzsche seems to lament the possible decline of the state, he is not entirely dismissive of it. If and when it happens humanity’s clever and selfish resilience will be such that chaos will not come about and that “an invention more expedient than the state will triumph over the state”. But humanity is still far away from such anarchism. People are too afraid to contemplate it and the organizational forms to replace the state have not yet been developed, though some arrogant minds with a deficient notion of history, obviously referring to his anarchist contemporaries, might think they have the required ideas and try to implement them.

Meanwhile, the same selfishness and cleverness which might devise new forms of societal organization to replace the state in the distant future, will fortunately strengthen the state for the time being and ward off anarchist attempts at its destruction. Though Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen in her study on Nietzsche’s reception in America, American Nietzsche: A History of an Icon and His Ideas, makes it clear that American anarchists were very appreciative of Nietzsche, the feelings were not reciprocal.

Socialism: The Great Danger to Adept to

Whereas democracy is in Nietzsche’s assessment an inevitable development carrying some grave but maybe manageable risks, socialism is a far greater danger which can and should be managed at all cost. The manner in which Nietzsche perceives socialism is important because it carries explicit and implicit policy proposals both limiting and expanding the powers of his begrudgingly accepted constitutional, liberal democracy.

Though he concedes the truth of the socialist analysis that the current distribution of wealth and privileges is based on “countless injustices and atrocities”, he denies them the right to rectify it through redistribution (452). At a concrete political level this would imply that Nietzsche would have opposed many, if not most, taxation schemes, especially the progressive income tax, and would have opposed any social programs like a public pension system or universal health care. He would, by the same logic, also have opposed any wealth redistribution upwards. He would arguably have rejected the current policy of “private profits, public losses” and let bankruptcies naturally occur because some firms were obviously not fit, and let their failing, unfit CEOs and CFOs get demoted to the lower class.

The non-rectification of past injustices will also imply, for example here in the USA, that there will be no affirmative action to rectify the long-term effects of the countless atrocities of slavery, nor restitution to the Native American Indians for the holocaust perpetrated upon them. Actually, Nietzsche thinks that slaves “live more securely and happy” than the proletariat and that the sentiment driving the abolition of slavery is not the concern about human dignity, but some kind of vanity about equality (457). This perspective shows Nietzsche’s very elitist, paternalistic, though still somewhat compassionate, attitude.

Instead of redistribution, Nietzsche advocates a “gradual transformation of attitude”, such that the sense of justice will increase and violence decrease (452). What the practical consequences would be is not entirely clear, but Nietzsche might accept institutions like toothless reconciliation commissions and the like if he thinks it would contribute to his proposed change of attitude without the guilty parties having to pay indemnities. Otherwise the slogan rules that might made right. If there would be anything close to a socialist sense of justice and equality it would apply only among the members of the ruling elite themselves. Nietzsche does not take this idea serious though, because he thinks that it is promoted by noble, but not very insightful representatives of that class (451).

But, in case socialism becomes really a major force and comes out of hiding to engage the powers that be by social warfare (which in his perception had not yet happened), then, depending on a realistic assessment of its force, a compromise in the form of a treaty might be necessary. Only then socialism will gain rights–presumably anchored in legislation—and can workers demand justice in terms of the treaty (446). What concrete policies could be found in such a treaty? Maybe, given the plight of late nineteenth century workers and their demands, this might mean the 40-hour work week, fair pay, the right to unionize, free choice of employment, elimination of child labor, and, later, paid vacations, social security, socialized medicine, etc. So, even if Nietzsche might not like such policies, especially not those which need funding and the redistribution of wealth, he would by necessity accept compromise.

Communism: To be Avoided

Maybe he accepted some compromise with the demands of the oppressed, because one alternative, communist revolution, would be far worse. He is afraid that the “passionate idiocies and half-truths” of Rousseau, for example the superstitious belief in “a wondrous, innate, … but repressed goodness of human nature”, might inspire people to “the overthrow of all orders” with the expectation of establishing a new, just order ex nihilo. Nietzsche thinks that that cannot happen and that instead revolution will lead to disaster in which the wildest energies of humanity are resurrected and no real reconstruction is possible (463). Socialism could only establish and maintain itself by creating an absolute state with its citizens in complete subjugation and subjected to severe state terrorism (473). Nietzsche really is upset with Rousseau and thinks that because of him “the spirit of enlightenment and of progressive development has been scared off for a long time to come …” (463; italics in original).

Reactionary Repression: Not Good Either

It is admittedly quite speculative, but it is possible that Nietzsche is thinking above, not of the direct effects of the French Revolution—that event had come and gone–but of the long-term, anti-progressive, repressive policies associated with Austrian minister of foreign affairs and post-Napoleonic Concert of Europe architect, Klemens von Metternich, which were formulated in fearful reaction to the Rousseau inspired revolution, and were perceived by many as an obstacle to enlightened progress. One could argue that Nietzsche in his anti-revolutionary, pro-aristocratic zeal might have sided with a conservative like Metternich, but it might be more probable that he found Metternich too repressive and reactionary and realized that his own writings might have been censored and he himself spied upon. If that ever would have happened, the acidic venom of his pen would have been excruciatingly painful for the authorities (and maybe helpful for an earlier breakthrough if jailed). The criteria used to negatively evaluate a repressive conservatism a la Metternich might be the same which Nietzsche used to reluctantly accept democracy, and that is that there should be space for free spirits to engage in unconventional thinking, writing and publishing in order to keep society fit and help its development. His aversion of repression based on his belief in “the spirit of enlightenment and of progressive development ” indicates that he would accept maybe an enlightened despotism in which an aristocracy rules together with an established religion and in which there is also some freedom of expression.

In this context I am wondering where Nietzsche might have come down in the case of the 1973 coup d’état in Chile against the democratically elected socialist President Salvador Allende which led to the brutal military junta under General Augusto Pinochet. Would he have reluctantly accepted Allende’s policies as the understandable outcome of democracy (or maybe even as the rightful assertion of the Chilean state in the face of foreign interests)? Or would he have accepted the Pinochet regime with its reactionary, repressive policies as a rightful assertion of its upper class? It probably all hinges on his ‘highest value’, that is, the freedom of free spirits to do their thing, in which case I think he would have sided with Allende and hope for the best.

Gathering of the Positions

Can we combine the above political thoughts into a qualified endorsement of liberal democracy? Quite so, I think. It is the conclusion, and most people are familiar with this, that liberal democracy, with all its faults and drawbacks, is also in Nietzsche’s thinking the least bad form of government. Nietzsche does not state it as such, but in his via negativa politicus, if I may coin a Latinism, the only thing standing is liberal democracy, including some reluctant adaptations to workers’ rights; possible endorsement of neoliberal policies; and at least some form of cultural and social libertarianism; and all together perceived as an acceptable, temporary balance of different political-ideological wills to power. He rejects, going from left to right, anarchism (too young but promising); communism (too naive and destructive); socialism (too totalitarian and terrorist); enlightened despotism with an established religion (anachronistic, but still possible as runner-up); repressive conservatism (too repressive and stifling); Corporism (weakens the state); and Fascism (too nationalist and socialist, but not excluded).

After Human, all too Human

Does the above qualified, temporary acceptance of liberal democracy survive in his later works, for example in Beyond Good and Evil? In a previous entry I contemplated a possible change of mind by Nietzsche regarding the best possible set-up of a state for free spirits to flourish. I thought initially that Nietzsche in Human, all too Human was promoting the idea that free spirits were basically individualistic free agents in a stratified, but still liberal democratic society and that later, in Beyond Good and Evil (BGE), Nietzsche changed his mind towards a more collectivist, aristocratic form of political organization as the preferred possibility condition for free spirits to execute their cultural transformations. A crucial and disturbing passage expressing a harsher view of the lower classes and the prerogative of the upper class is in section 258 of BGE:

The essential characteristic of good and healthy aristocracy, however, is that it experiences itself not as a function (whether of the monarchy or the commonwealth) but as their meaning and highest justification–that it therefore accepts with a good conscience the sacrifice of untold human beings who, for its sake, must be reduced and lowered to incomplete human beings, to slaves, to instruments. Their fundamental faith simply has to be that society must not exist for society’s sake but only as the foundation and scaffolding on which a choice type of being is able to raise itself to its higher task and to a higher state of being …” (BGE, 258; italics in original).

Compared with the deeper investigations of Nietzsche’s political thinking in Human, All too Human, the essential difference seems to be that Nietzsche dished any acceptance of democracy, however reluctant that might have been, and takes back any possible compromise with the working class and their sense of human and workers’ rights. Democracy is merely the heir of Christianity (BGE, 202), inherently fractured (BGE, 208) and leads inevitably to tyranny (BGE, 242). He advises, and seems to prefer, for Europe “to acquire one will” and leave behind petty politics (BGE, 208). Therefore, if such ideas like democracy and human rights are tossed, then he can ‘overcome’ his previous reluctant acceptance of liberal democracy and go all out with a cruel, self-assertive, self-legislating, “value-creating” (BGE, 260; italics in original) upper class and reduce the rest of mankind to the status of Untermensch to be exploited, which is fine because exploitation “belongs to the essence of what lives, as a basic organic function; it is a consequence of the will to power, which is after all the will of life” (BGE, 259; italics in original). Here we can unfortunately see the foreshadows of a fascist ideology.

Sources

Klein, Naomi. 2007. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. New York: Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1989 (1966). Beyond Good & Evil; Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future. Trsl. Walter Kaufman. New York; Vintage Books.

Nietzsche, Friedrich W. 1984. Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits. Trans. Marion Faber, with Stephen Lehmann. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Ratner-Rosenhagen, Jennifer. 20112. American Nietzsche: A History of an Icon and His Ideas. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Schuller, Govert. “From Individualistic Free Spirits to a Collectivist Aristocracy?” Entry #11; November 14, 2013. Political Science 495, NIU, DeKalb, IL, Fall 2013.

Shoup, Laurence H. and Minter, William. 1977. Imperial Brain Trust: The Council on Foreign Relations and United States Foreign Policy. New York: Monthly Review Press.

Sklar, Holly (Editor). 1980. Trilateralism: The Trilateral Commission and Elite Planning for World Management. Boston: South End Press.

Origin

This term paper was written for the seminar “Nietzsche and Politics” (Political Science 495) conducted by Prof. Larry Arnhart at Northern Illinois University in the fall of 2013.

Dr. Arnhart responded to the posting of my paper on his blog and I responded there to him again. 

Foucault’s Concept Discipline: A Systematic Analysis

Introduction.

In this essay I will primarily focus on the pivotal Foucauldian concept of discipline as developed in his influential 1975 study Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (hereafter DP). The plan of the paper is to first connect the concept with its immediate neighboring terms, especially punishment and surveillance. Then I will address how Foucault sets the practice within a four-fold categorization of space, time, movement and tactics, to be followed by his thoughts on the practice of examination, which term will be framed as a manifestation of the Foucauldian concept of power/knowledge. After this I will set penal discipline in its historical context in which it was the punishment mode which won over the more rational mode of punishment which Enlightenment reformers proposed to replace the ever more politically dangerous monarchical mode of spectacular, cruel punishment. I will also shortly address the history and reason for the first penal institute in Europe and the origin of certain disciplinary practices. Lastly I will bring in a framework to understand discipline as a system of punishment in correlation with the then rising system of production of mercantilism and how this can also be understood at the micro-level of the body. As a finale, Foucault’s original leading question regarding the constitution of individuality and how that played out in disciplinary practices will be addressed.

Discipline and its Components

First, I like to position the concept of discipline within the field of other crucial terms in Foucault’s study, starting with a critical reflection on the inaccurate title of the English translation Discipline and Punish, which does not convey the same logic as the original French title Surveiller et Punir.1 As Stuart Elden points out, discipline and punishment are not two discrete terms. The first comprises the second, because discipline is made up of two mutually dependent elements, i.e. surveillance and punishment (Elden). A more accurate title might have been something along the lines of The Genesis and Praxis of the Modern Prison: Penal Discipline through Surveillance and Punishment.

Surveillance in the context of the penal system refers to a group of spatial arrangements and evaluational procedures by which the behavior of prisoners is observed, recorded, classified and ranked in order to constitute a body of knowledge about them. Prisoners are distributed and ‘fixed in space’ according to the nature of their crime and their behavior, and prison architecture enables maximum visibility by putting them in cells which are directly observable by guards. The maximum efficacy in such penal architecture is attained in Jeremy Bentham’s 1843 idea of the Panopticon, a circular prison with all cells facing an inside space with in the middle a tower from which guards can observe all prisoners without themselves being seen.

Punishment in this context does not refer to the sentence imposed upon the defendant by the judicial system, but it is rather a quite independent, extra-juridical “small penal mechanism” at the heart of the penal disciplinary system comprised of a proliferating amount of micro-penalties and rewards (DP: 177). Its aim is to normalize the inmates in conformity to certain rules and standards. Its method is, first by surveillance, to compare, differentiate, quantitatively measure and hierarchize the behavior of the inmates, with which knowledge the system then can coerce and incentivize them by corrections towards an established norm. One could say that the system differentiates individuals in order to create a homogenized population. Foucault captures this disciplinary mechanism of evaluation succinctly in the concept of Normalizing Judgment, in which the verb to normalize means coercive conditioning towards a norm and the noun judgment means a rebuking assessment of how far one is deviant from the norm.

Discipline and its Categories

Foucault has a few other differentiations and central concepts by which to understand not only penal discipline, but also the origin and spread of disciplinary practices circulating between other institutions like monasteries, military barracks, schools, hospitals, psychiatric wards, bureaucracies and workplaces. It looks to me that the large field Foucault tries to cover together with his methodology of staying close to primary sources forces him to apply different schemata and organizing concepts to bring order to the many historically changing practices and discourses he investigates. One way he gets a grip on what he perceives as “a whole set of techniques, a whole corpus of methods and knowledge, descriptions, plans and data” is a fourfold differentiation according to the categories of space, time, movement and their integration in the concept of composition of forces (DP:141). Each category has its own disciplinary techniques and also shapes an aspect of the identity of the person involved.

The spatial component of discipline was referred to already above and comprises elements like the enclosure of protected spaces, i.e. the cell; the partitioning of these spaces to seclude inmates from each other; and the creation of functional sites for different activities to enable efficiency of surveillance and production. Foucault names this aspect the cellular distribution of space which also constitutes a cellular individuality.

The temporal aspect of discipline is about the breaking down of time in serialized divisions to regulate the different enforced behaviors to which the inmates are subjected to. Washing, eating, work and exercise all have specific points of start and finish according to a time-table, which increases power over the inmates by “the possibility of a detailed control and a regular intervention” (DP:160).

Closely connected with disciplinary space and time are of course the movements and activities controlled within the rigid spatio-temporal grid of penal architectonics and temporal segmentation. Control over activities are enabled by the enforcement of a time-table to “establish rhythms, impose particular occupations, regulate the cycles of repetition” (DP:149); by the temporal elaboration of the act by which the development and stages of an activity are analyzed and controlled in terms of a succession of punctuated gestures; the correlation of the body and the gesture to ensure the correct use of the body and its time by “imposing the best relation between a gesture and the overall position of the body, which is its condition of efficiency and speed” (DP:152); by the analysis of the seemingly most elementary components of activity, i.e. the “breakdown of the total gesture into two parallel series: that of the parts of the body used … and that of the object manipulated” thereby constituting something like a “body-machine complex” (DP: 153); and lastly by the exhaustive use of the body to extract ever more productive moments by pushing its operations to optimum speed and efficiency.

All the above techniques of analysis and control can be combined in the concept of the composition of forces. When the behaviors of individual bodies are rationally combined and mutually integrated in a larger machine-like construct like a well-disciplined army or an efficient assembly line, the composite mechanism will be more productive than the sum of the composed parts ever could be. For this to happen the individual as a body-segment will be assigned its spatial niche and it will have to execute its “chronological series” of gestures in temporal and spatial co-ordination with other body-segments “in such a way that the maximum quantity of forces may be extracted from each and combined with the maximum result” (DP: 164-5). This co-ordination also “requires a precise system of command” with communicative signals to be directly obeyed by the ensembled body-segments which have been carefully conditioned to respond automatically. Furthermore, to ensure its best results, the command has to apply “the highest form of disciplinary practice”, tactics, which Foucault defines as “the art of constructing, with located bodies, coded activities and trained aptitudes, mechanisms in which the product of the various forces is increased by their calculated combination … “ (DP: 167). Granted that tactics has its origin and best example in military theory and practices, it also easily applies to the workplace, educational institutes, hospitals, politics and the prison.

Foucault’s tentative summation of the above is

… that discipline creates out of the bodies it controls four types of individuality, or rather an individuality that is endowed with four characteristics: it is cellular (by the play of spatial distribution), it is organic (by the coding of activities), it is genetic (by the accumulation of time), it is combinatory (by the composition of forces). And, in doing so, it operates four great techniques: it draws up tables; it prescribes movements; it imposes exercises; lastly, in order to obtain the combination of forces, it arranges ‘tactics’ (DP: 167).

Discipline and Examination as Manifestations of Co-original Power/Knowledge

At the level of epistemology the cardinal hypothesis Foucault develops is the mutual implication of knowledge and power, which in the case of the penal system manifests as the mutual constituting elements of a) the power of calibrated punishment based on knowledge and b) the detailed knowledge obtained through surveillance enabled by having power over the inmates. Discipline, as the overarching concept containing both surveillance and punishment, is therefore a more complex and dynamic concept in which its power and knowledge elements are not just sitting side by side with a contingent relationship of profitable give-and-take, but are inextricably entwined and depend on each other for their existence. Power and knowledge are co-original and have to be thought together in their constitutive circularity, and, as Foucault does, they can be combined in one concept: power/knowledge.2

According to Foucault one of the key techniques in which this co-original circularity can be recognized is the phenomenon of the examination. Though the familiar method of examination can be considered a “tiny operational schema”, Foucault questions whether this widespread and overlooked practice actually utilizes “within a single mechanism, power relations that make it possible to extract and constitute knowledge?” (DP: 185). To quote Foucault further:

The examination combines the techniques of an observing hierarchy and those of a normalizing judgement. It is a normalizing gaze, a surveillance that makes it possible to qualify, to classify and to punish. It establishes over individuals a visibility through which one differentiates them and judges them. . . . In it are combined the ceremony of power and the form of the experiment, the deployment of force and the establishment of truth. At the heart of the procedures of discipline, it manifests the subjection of those who are perceived as objects and the objectification of those who are subjected. The superimposition of the power relations and knowledge relations assumes in the examination all its visible brilliance (DP: 184-5; italics added).

I think the italicized phrases catch the phenomenon very closely and paraphrasing it one could say that, as a manner of establishing both a knowledge and power relationship, inmates are not only perceived as observable entities to be subjugated and subjugated entities to be observed, but, and more deeply so, subjugation is dependent on observation as is observation made possible by subjugation.

One could say that examinations are not neutral and examinators are not interest-free. They threaten and induce, if not actually punish and reward, based on the knowledge extracted through the exam to differentiate and rank the examinee. And the examinee feels this pressure coming from the observers and their normalizing judgment to conform to the established norm by coughing up the desired data or behavior as best as possible, mostly fearing disqualification and punishment and desiring recognition and rewards. In and through the examination, power and knowledge go hand in hand in order to create a docile and usable population.

There are three or four specific mechanisms at work in the exam by which the formation of knowledge and the exercise of power are linked. Traditionally, Foucault observes, power was ostentatiously visible on the side of those who exercised it—mostly monarchs–while those on whom it was exercised could stay in its shadows. This relationship became reversed during modernity. The exercising, now disciplinary power became fragmented, anonymous, bureaucratic and invisible while its subjects became necessarily visible through surveillance and examination in order to maintain the now disciplined, objectified individuals in subjection.

Second, examination created a whole system of documentation, a “whole apparatus of writing”, which enabled the two correlative possibilities of a) constituting “the individual as a describable, analyzable object” and also of b) creating a comparative, statistical system of measurement, description and distribution of collective characteristics. In this way one can develop categories, calculate averages and establish standards and norms and also create a unique, individualized subject with a possibly in-depth description of how the individual conforms or deviates from the norm in the welter of categories developed. Thirdly, and extending the second mechanism of documentation, examination creates out of each individual a case, i.e. an individual who is measured, described and judged in terms of knowledge, but also is subject to possible correction, training or exclusion in terms of disciplinary power. Fourth, examination is at the heart of the procedure by which the individual is paradoxically both a creation and object of knowledge and is also both the creation and object of power. If we label an individual as a delinquent we are not merely describing an already formed individual and his criminal act, but actually create by the power of classification a certain identity for that individual behind the criminal act, which then also becomes a hook into which power can insert itself to correct and dominate him.

It is the examination which, by combining hierarchical surveillance and normalizing judgement, assures the great disciplinary functions of distribution and classification, maximum extraction of forces and time, continuous genetic accumulation, optimum combination of aptitudes and, thereby, the fabrication of cellular, organic, genetic and combinatory individuality. With it are ritualized those disciplines that may be characterized in a word by saying that they are a modality of power for which individual difference is relevant (DP: 192).

For now let it stand as a formula that punishment and surveillance are co-originally related in the same manner as power and knowledge and that the practices of discipline and examination are to be understood with this co-originality in mind.3

The Genesis of Discipline

Within the centuries he focuses upon, Foucault differentiates between three modes of dealing with crimes which all have their own distinguishable practices and discourses and are respectively dealt with in the first three parts of his study under the headings Torture, Punishment and Discipline.

Torture refers to the monarchical, Ancien Régime mode of dealing with criminality through the cruel, ceremonial, public display of torture and executions on scaffolds by which the monarch displayed his vengeful, sovereign power over those who dared to break his laws. The criminal was treated as a vanquished enemy who had lost most if not all of his rights and had his body marked by torture or obliterated by execution. It was a kind of state terror to keep the masses in fear and subdued, though sometimes the tables were turned and the masses took the gathering as an opportunity to liberate the criminal for whom they might have felt sympathy or create a small-scale uprising against the authorities to express their frustrations. For several reasons this kind of public spectacle became outdated. Reformist thinkers thought the practices inhumane; the population lowered its tolerance of cruel spectacles; the nature of overall crimes shifted from acts of violence to skillful thievery; and the spectacle became too often a political liability for the authorities.

Punishment refers to the mode of dealing with criminality which was developed in opposition to the monarchical mode and was driven by 18th century macro–reformist Enlightenment ideologues and micro-reformist lawyers and magistrates in order to make punishments less cruel, more ‘humane’, more proportionate to the offense, more functional to prevent crime and more concerned with the reform of the offender, while also trying to make the juridical apparatus more rational and efficient. They criticized the cruelty and arbitrariness of the old system and its disorganized nature because of the proliferation of sold offices with each their own often overlapping and therefore conflicting authorities to arrest, sentence and punish. Reformists developed new theories of law and criminality, more rational justifications for new punishments and the abolition of old ones, and proposals to reform the judiciary. Numerous reform schemes were proposed and new penal codes formulated. Many of these made it through the legislative process throughout Europe with the net effect that by the mid-1900s the “gloomy festival of punishment” had mostly vanished (DP: 8). They took the philosophy of an-eye-for-an-eye serious and devised many ways to punish in proportion to the crime. If you murder you get executed; if you steal you get fined; if you take away someone’s freedom you will get imprisoned, etc. The criminal became a juridical subject with rights because imputed with a moral conscience, and would be sentenced by the social body comprised of his fellow citizens according to the law at a public trial in a court with the aim to restore him eventually to the “social pact” (DP: 129). It could be argued that the idealist spirit of the reformers is still with us and that it informs the folk conception of justice, even while and under the radar of public perception a different power relationship to the offender came into being, i.e. discipline.

Foucault dug up in the historical record that indeed something quite different developed, incrementally, unintentionally and outside of the official juridical system as a new manner of treatment of sentenced offenders. This was the mode of discipline as described above. Increasingly the prison had become the preferred manner of punishment for crimes and within the prison a whole new quite hidden administrative apparatus was set up, not so much to reform the juridical subject and make him fit again as a responsible partner of the social contract, but to condition and coerce the newly constituted individuality of the delinquent, i.e. the sick, deviant ‘criminal’ behind the crime whose whole life and psyche now becomes the object of possible knowledge and a “point of application for punitive mechanisms” (DP: 251). Correction is not pursued through an appeal to the offender’s conscience but through a relentless surveillance and punishment of the delinquent’s behavior to train and condition him into an obedient, manipulable entity. At trial there is still the notion of a juridical subject with a certain amount of privacy and who is only judged for the criminal act, but Foucault makes it clear that once an individual is delivered to the penal system that identity is exchanged for that of the subjugated and objectified delinquent, who has no privacy because he became an object of thorough investigation, permanent surveillance, ongoing evaluation, normalizing conditioning, coercive correction and punitive measures.4

One of the earliest models of a disciplinary prison Foucault finds is the Rasphuis in 16th century Amsterdam. This institute had the function of locking up young male idlers, beggars and other malefactors; use them as industrious workers, who even received wages; and turn them into good people by means of a “strict time-table, a system of prohibitions and obligations, continual supervision, exhortations, religious readings” and other hopefully transformative methods (DP: 121). This very first Dutch ‘punish-house’ came into being in 1596 because the Amsterdam city council was in a quandary what to do with a confessed thief of good parentage. Under the influence of two prominent citizens the idea came up, not to publicly flog the young man as was usual, but to try to rehabilitate him through forced labor and lodge him in a secure house with a strict code of conduct.

The historical origin of the many techniques comprising penal discipline are to be found in a few disparate places and institutions like the monastery, the workshop and the military. From the monastery with its ascetic disciplines came the architectonic practice of cellular enclosures within an inward-directed fortress; rigid time-tables for repetitive activities; continuous exercises aimed at transformation; and even something as simple as common meals in silence. Tucked away in a footnote Foucault observes that, in their turn, many of the monastic practices of Christian religious orders were adopted from the Roman army (DP: 315fn8). From the military came the structure of pyramidal supervision; the roll call to account for all inmates; the numbering of prisoners; regular inspections of cleanliness; and the division into groups and sub-groups with heads and second in command.

What should be noted here is that the three modes of punishment Foucault identified co-existed for a long while and were in tension, sometimes open conflict, with each other at different levels of intensity and at different points of contention. Especially in the 1750-1850 period there were many shifts, discontinuities and reversals of the many laws, regulations, habits, techniques and justifications comprising the juridic-penal system in western Europe. The standard Whiggish narrative is that Europe progressed from an arbitrary, cruel, might is right system to a rational, humane, enlightened law-based system, with the whole historical process driven by an impelling, rationalist teleology. Foucault makes it quite clear that, though the Enlightenment has many valuable ideas, many if not most elements of the Whig narrative are nevertheless fictitious. The discipline regime created many points of power where cruelty and arbitrariness resurfaced including modern forms of hidden torture and ‘accidental’ deaths. Such excesses are generally not perceived by the public and possibly willfully ignored by the judiciary. His analysis goes even so far that the logic and demands of the disciplinary penal system are actually overriding the ones of the juridical system. As a possible coup de grâce to our naivety regarding the rehabilitative function of the prison Foucault states on the last pages that,

… the prison is not the daughter of laws, codes or the judicial apparatus; that it is not subordinated to the court and the docile or clumsy instrument of the sentences that it hands out and of the results that it would like to achieve; that it is the court that is external and subordinate to the prison (DP: 307-8).

This bleak assessment makes only sense if an even larger historical context is taken into account than the three modes of punishment so far. The leading idea of this context is the correlation between systems of punishment and systems of production.

Correlations between Punishment and Production

At the end of the first chapter, “The Body of the Condemned”, Foucault gives praise to the 1939 criminological study Punishment and Social Structure by Marxist sociologists Georg Rusche and Otto Kirchheimer, who were connected to the Frankfurter Schule. Foucault refers to this study as a “great work”, which provided him with “a number of essential reference points” (DP: 24). What Foucault borrows from this study is the idea that the penal system is not merely there to reduce crime with a series of negative mechanisms to prevent, deter and exclude criminals and their behavior, nor that it is just the effect and appendage of the juridical system as its executive branch, but that it has primarily a positive, formative social function within the context of the political-economic structure. In short, modes of punishment are subordinated and made serviceable to the means of production. Concretely, in a slave economy punishment takes the form of enslavement to provide extra labor; in a mercantile economy there is forced labor and prison factories to get the idle to work and provide cheap labor; and an industrial economy needs corrected, docile, trainable, flexible bodies to be added to the pool of the free and ever changing market in labor.

Foucault develops this idea further by switching from this Marxist macro-level of analysis to the micro-level of the body and its “forces, their utility and their docility, their distribution and their submission” (DP: 25).5 So far the body has been seen through many scientific lenses, except a political-economic one; and political science and economics have been looking at a lot of power relations between institutions, classes, groups, etc., but never at its concrete impingement on the body. Foucault stepped into this lacunae and found a whole world of bodily power points and bodily techniques of domination diffused throughout the body politic. As Foucault stated it:

But the body is also directly involved in a political field; power relations have an immediate hold upon it; they invest it, mark it, train it, torture it, force it to carry out tasks, to perform ceremonies, to emit signs. This political investment of the body is bound up, in accordance with complex reciprocal relations, with its economic use; it is largely as a force of production that the body is invested with relations of power and domination; but, on the other hand, its constitution as labour power is possible only if it is caught up in a system of subjection … ; the body becomes a useful force only if it is both a productive body and a subjected body (DP: 25-6).

He named this micro-sociological analysis of the disciplined body “a micro-physics of power”, which is the field where the power of the macro-size social “apparatuses and institutions” meets the comparatively small body to shape and condition it to make it serviceable for the even larger, historically contingent political-economic forces which subordinate penal systems to their shifting demands (DP: 26). In short, the police-juridical-penal complex is an instrument of the prevailing economic system to create docile workers and extract maximum profits for a small upper level of owners and managers.

Towards the end of DP Foucault executes an analysis which shows a similar logic of class domination and class justice. Here he feels forced to assume again that penalties are not to punish and diminish illegalities in general and equitably, but are applied in such a manner that a differentiation is established between illegalities which lead to prosecution and incarceration and those which are tolerated and benefit its offenders without legal consequences. Concretely, and here in the USA, one can think of, on one side, police officers getting away with murder and big bankers getting away with massive fraud, while on the other side petty crimes by young black males can lead to cycles of incarceration, recidivism and the establishment of a semi-permanent under-class of delinquents, the depressing dynamics of which Foucault also analyses.

Discipline and its Context of Discovery

To round out and finish the many facets of Foucauldian discipline I should also address what seems to be Foucault’s initial and leading question, the one about the constitution of individuality. Throughout DP it is clear that with the exertion of power on the body, a correlative sense of identity is established. Within the modern disciplinary institutes persons become cases and are identified by the specifics of their case. And the more one is subjected to disciplinary measures, like the delinquent, mentally ill, the sick, the deviant, etc., the larger is one’s dossier and the more one is individualized. As discussed earlier, this dynamic flows forth from the intricate manner that knowledge about people is entwined with the possibility of having power over them. It is not just true that through better knowledge one attains more power, but also that knowledge can only be extracted through power. In order to dominate a body to make it docile and usable you have to give it an identity, a ‘soul’, by which you can control it, but this identity is dependent on having constructed a certain amount of knowledge about it. Constructed might be the right word, because the predicates applicable to the identity are not referring to essential, intrinsic aspects of that person, but are valuations in reference to certain norms, statistical comparisons and other contextual frameworks of measurement and valuation. Once one is measured within these statistical valuations one can start to coerce the body and its gestures towards the desired norm and measure its ‘progress’. This then founds Foucault’s striking inverted expression that “the soul is the prison of the body” (DP: 30). This expression is preceded by a philosophically most pregnant contemplation on the politico-ontological status of this soul.

This real, non-corporal soul is not a substance; it is the element in which are articulated the effects of a certain type of power and the reference of a certain type of knowledge, the machinery by which the power relations give rise to a possible corpus of knowledge, and knowledge extends and reinforces the effects of this power. On this reality-reference, various concepts have been constructed and domains of analysis carved out: psyche, subjectivity, personality, consciousness, etc.; on it have been built scientific techniques and discourses, and the moral claims of humanism. But let there be no misunderstanding: it is not that a real man, the object of knowledge, philosophical reflection or technical intervention, has been substituted for the soul, the illusion of the theologians. The man described for us, whom we are invited to free, is already in himself the effect of a subjection much more profound than himself. A ‘soul’ inhabits him and brings him to existence, which is itself a factor in the mastery that power exercises over the body. The soul is the effect and instrument of a political anatomy; the soul is the prison of the body (DP: 29-30).

Conclusion

Is it possible to gather all these aspects of discipline and combine them in a paragraph? Looking over the headings, they seem to fall into the two familiar categories of systematics and history, i.e. of structure and genesis.

Structure: Penal discipline consists of knowledge-producing surveillance and punitive coercions towards ‘normality’ of subjugated, objectified bodies. This tandem of surveillance and punishment can also be conceptualized as knowledge and power, even as the manifestation of the co-original phenomenon knowledge/power in which both terms constitute each other. Penal discipline can also be clarified by the categories of space (cellular distribution), time (punctuated segments), behavior (conditioning of the body-machine) and tactics (the combination of integrated bodies). Correlative with penal discipline comes the constitution of the delinquent individuality, not as a personality with intrinsic characteristics, but as a product of extrinsic valuations and measurements.

Genesis: The history of penal discipline (and discipline in other institutions) might be best understood by the logic of the demands of early capitalist, mercantile production processes which profited by the ongoing disciplining of idle bodies into docile, usable workers. The prison and its penal disciplines incrementally replaced the more spectacular, but wasteful and politically risky manner of punishment by tortures and executions. Reformers tried to humanize the whole juridical and penal system and succeeded to a certain extent, but also provided unintentionally the ideological cover for the now more hidden cruelties of penal discipline and the creation of an under-class of delinquents. Many of the techniques comprising discipline came from other institutions, especially the monastery and military, and circulated into and through other institutions like hospitals, psych wards, schools and especially the workforce, all optimizing their own efficiency by borrowing and adapting these techniques from each other.

Origin

This paper was written for the class Twentieth Century European Philosophy (CSPH7047) conducted by Dr. David Morgans in the Masters by Research in European Philosophy program at the University of Wales in the spring of 2015.

Sources quoted and consulted

Bouchard, Donald F. 1977. Introduction to Language, Counter-Memory, Practice. Michel Foucault. Donald F. Bouchard (Ed.). Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press.

Brass, Paul R. 2000. “Foucault Steals Political Science”. Annual Review of Political Science, 3:305-330.

Elden, Stuart. “Beyond Discipline and Punish: Is it time for a new translation of Foucault’s Surveiller et punir?” Progressive Geographies: Thinking about place and power (blog). 22 Jan 2014. Accessed 18 May 2014.

Foucault, Michel. 1995 (1975). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Transl. Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage.

Foucault, Michel. 1980. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977. Colin Gordon (Ed.). New York: Pantheon Books.

Foucault, Michel. 1982. “The Subject and Power”. Afterword in Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. Paul Rabinow & Hubert L. Dreyfus. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Pp. 208-226.

Foucault, Michel. 1984. The Foucault Reader. Paul Rabinow (Ed.). New York: Pantheon Books.

Mark, Philp. 1990. “Foucault”. In: The Return of Grand Theory in the Human Sciences. Quentin Skinner (Ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 65-82.

Melossi, Dario. 2003. “A New Edition of Punishment and Social Structure Thirty-Five Years Later: A Timely Event”. Social Justice, Vol. 30, No. 1 (91): 248-263.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1989 (1886). Beyond Good & Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future. Trsl. Walter Kaufman. New York: Vintage Books.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1989 (1887). On the Genealogy of Morality: A Polemic. New York: Vintage Books.

Rabinow, Paul & Dreyfus, Hubert L. 1982. Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Rouse, Joseph. 2005. “Power/Knowledge”. In: The Cambridge Companion to Foucault. Second Edition. Gary Gutting (Ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 95-122.

Sheridan, Alan. 1990 (1980). Michel Foucault: The Will to Truth. New York: Routledge.

Veyne, Paul. 1997. “Foucault Revolutionizes History”. In: Foucault and His Interlocutors. Arnold Davidson (Ed.). Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press. Pp. 146-182.

Endnotes

1. Because Alan Sheridan, the translator of the book, could not find a good equivalent term for the French verb Surveiller he went with Foucault’s suggestion of Discipline (Sheridan in Foucault, 1995: ix).

2. It is possible that Foucault derived the idea of mutual constitution from his readings of Heidegger, who in Being and Time developed some clarifying formulations of what he named equiprimordiality (gleichursprünglichkeit).

3. On many places Foucault proposes the idea that the establishment of disciplinary institutions might have been a factor in the rise of the social sciences. I did not get a good handle on how this might have played out in the penal context, but I am sure that his excavations in the history of other institutions produced more concrete examples.

4. There is an interesting parallel between Foucault and Nietzsche here. Foucault’s observation of the substitution of a) the delinquent and his psyche with its history and intentions for b) the juridical subject and his action, i.e. the crime, echos Nietzsche’s substitution of c) morally valuing the origin of an action in a purported self and its intentions for d) pre-morally valuing the consequences of an action. It looks as if this “reversal of perspective”, which Nietzsche placed in our pre-history, made its delayed and surreptitious entrance into the penal system (Nietzsche, 1989: §32).

5. According to Italian criminologist Dario Melossi in a review of Punishment and Social Structure there exists not merely a family resemblance between Foucault and Marx, but that even discipline, “the linchpin that ties the place of production with the place of punishment”, is a concept wholly derivative from Marx (Melossi: 253). Be that as it may, Foucault’ Nietzschean sense of history would prevent him from buying into the teleological arc of dialectical materialism.

The Mechanics of Epistemic Contextualism

§1.0. General introduction.

A few years ago I happened to participate in a class on DeRose’s recent monograph The Case for Contextualism: Knowledge, Skepticism, and Context (vol. 1). We picked the text apart and read also papers by Moore, Unger, Lewis, Kaplan, Perry, Schiffer and a few more. In his monograph DeRose was mainly concerned to prove that knowledge claims, especially knowledge attributions, are context sensitive. The reason why that is the case he left open to be explored in volume 2 of his study. When in this current class I started playing with the insights which I obtained in studying epistemic contextualism (EC) and applied them to the Gettier cases I thought I could give it a try myself to explore the deeper reasons why EC, as my professor formulated it–”offers the promise of explaining the force of the skeptical arguments, while at the same time preserving the utility of the notion of knowledge”.

Then it struck me as very fruitful to also bring into play some of the insights obtained from a philosophy of science class in which we read Carl Craver’s monograph Explaining the Brain: Mechanisms and the Mosaic Unity of Neuroscience. In this study the case is made that most of the successful advances in the biological sciences are due, explicitly or implicitly, to the use of explanations which include 1) a two-tier structure; 2) the notion of mechanism; 3) the idea that the elements of the mechanism in their interaction add up to an explanation; and 4) the concept of composition is central. The explanatory model is named ‘Inter-Level Mechanistic Explanation’ (ILME) and I think I can transpose this model to EC.

§1.1. Introduction

This paper is an attempt to contribute to the analysis of the standard definition of knowledge as ‘justified true belief’ (JTB) in its relationship to the standard ‘skeptical argument’ (SA) that humans do not know much for sure, if anything at all—including the existence of the world–because knowledge is hardly ever sufficiently justified as both our senses and reason are both fallible and deceivable to the point that we do not even know for certain if the world of our experience really exists independent of us.

The specific route taken in this paper is to combine two complex sets of ideas developed independently from each other. In their combination they constitute a model with which certain skeptical cases can be analyzed in the specific manner such cases are generated. The result is that such cases can be, if not solved, at least be contained to the extent that scientific and quotidian notions of knowledge are preserved.

The two ideas are 1) from epistemology the idea of ‘epistemic contextualism’ (EC), especially the work by Keith DeRose; and 2) from the philosophy of science ‘Inter-Level Mechanistic Explanation’ (ILME) as developed by Carl Craver and Carl Gillett, but then transposed to the ‘mechanics’ of meaning generation.

The linchpin of the operation will be to show that there is enough congruence between 1) the structure of meaning generation, especially as developed in EC, and 2) the structure of natural processes and their successful explanation which the ILME model claims to have developed, such that the insights of ILME can be transposed to EC and tested.

The model will then be tested on some of the more prominent examples of skeptical arguments like the ‘Brain in a Vat’ argument which posits the possibility that all of our experience is generated by a scientist who knows how to manipulate our brain to have worldly experiences while actually our brain is in a vat, and the first of the Gettier cases in which someone by accident has a justified true believe but paradoxically has to be denied to have real knowledge.

This operation, because of its experimental character, is of course fallible, but my hunch is that it could succeed if it is executed in a flexible manner with a sensitivity to the nature of meaning.

This paper will first explain EC , intending to bring out certain of its features which are relevant to show the above mentioned structural congruency with ILME. Once these features are highlighted I will explain the work of ILME and highlight the features which will be relevant to make it ‘fit’ EC and be of service to the operation.

§2.1. Epistemic Contextualism

A recent development in philosophy is the notion of ‘epistemic contextualism’, which claims to get some grip on skepticism by making the point that when someone engages in the Skeptical Argument she is actually setting the epistemic standard so high that no proposition whatsoever about the world can be said to be true for certain. The usual context in which these claims are made is academia, especially in philosophy classes. Other contexts like court rooms, journalistic reporting and quotidian situations have, as is EC’s contention, their own appropriate epistemic standards.

The important strategy applied by EC is to make context and its accompanying epistemic standard an essential part of evaluating the strength of one’s knowledge claims. DeRose, who is today the most prolific defender of EC, constructed an illustrative example in which one person could justifiably attribute to a third person that she knows the truth of a certain proposition, while another person could paradoxically, but still justifiably, attribute to the same third person and at the same time the opposite, i.e. that he or she does not know the truth of the proposition in question. DeRose’s solution to the paradox is to highlight the difference in context and its different accompanying epistemic standard.

§2.2. The Office Case

One of the paradigmatic examples with which DeRose makes his case for EC is the Office Case. Thelma, Louise, Lena and John all work at the same office. John is often absent from the office. The three women are friends and on their day off, just before going to dinner, they pick up their pay-check at the office where they have some indication that John is present. They see his hat hanging on the coat rack and someone else makes an audible reference to him as if he were present. After dinner the women go their own way with Thelma going to a local tavern, Lena going home and Louise stopped by the police. Thelma at the tavern settles a bet with another friend about John’s showing up at work that day. Thelma, having bet John would be at work, tells her friend to pay up because John was at work. Her friend also had the same bet with Lena and asks Thelma if Lena also knows that John was at work. Thelma answers that “Lena knows that John was at the office”. Meanwhile Louise is stopped by the police who are conducting an investigation of John’s whereabouts in connection with a crime. Asked whether she knows if John was in the office she had to answer in the negative—she only saw his hat and heard a remark about him– and when asked if Lena knows she felt obliged to answer that “Lena does not know that John was at the office”.

The paradox is obviously in the fact that Thelma and Louise make opposite knowledge attributions to Lena at approximately the same time, but somehow both seem justified to do so. DeRose’s contextualist solution is to highlight the difference in circumstances in which Thelma and Louise found themselves and the different epistemic standards comprising the truth-conditions for making statements in the different contexts. Conversations at the tavern are governed by a low epistemic standard by which Thelma’s claim can be considered true, while Louise’s situation calls for a quite high standard by which her opposite statement can also be considered true. In other words, though both Thelma and Louise have epistemic positions of equal strength in regards to their knowledge about John’s presence at the office, Thelma’s position is strong enough to pass the low standard at the tavern while Louise’s position is not strong enough to pass the high standard operative in the police station.

§2.3. The Sufficiently Articulated Contextual Formula

In my effort to understand DeRose’s conceptualization of EC I constructed the following formula to incorporate some of the more relevant contextual elements which he discussed, which I baptized as the Sufficiently Articulated Contextual Formula (SACF):

(1) In the role of X, individual S knows p relative to epistemic standard N, which is prevalent in social context C.

If one plugs into the formula Thelma and Louise’s different epistemic contexts one would get the following propositions, which might look contradictory, but, because of the idea of context-sensitive epistemic standards, really are not.

(1a) Thelma can state that Lena, were she to join Thelma at the tavern, would say, as a betting person, that she (Lena) knows–relative to standard LOW reigning at a low-stakes, friendly bet–that John was in the office that afternoon.

(1b) Louise can state that Lena, were she to join Louise in the station, would say, as a police interviewee, that she (Lena) doesn’t know–relative to standard HIGH reigning at a criminal investigation–that John was in the office that afternoon.

Because of its relevance later in this paper, the origin of some of the elements comprising the formula will receive a more elaborate discussion. The majority of the formula’s elements came from a diverse set of thinkers discussed by DeRose and Rysiew who grappled throughout the years with context-sensitive terms like demonstratives, indexicals, gradable adjectives and the issue of context-sensitive epistemic standards.

§2.4. Kaplan’s Machinery

The most important idea—of which the other ideas seem to be refinements—is Kaplan’s machinery by which mere utterances can become true or false propositions. Kaplan’s idea is to make a differentiation within the already established Fregean differentiation between the sense (Sinn) and the reference (Bedeutung) of a word or expression. The sense of an expression is its intelligible, mental structure which comes with the expression and the reference is the non-mental thing or state of affairs outside of itself it is referring to. Frege’s own exact formula is:

A proper name (word, sign, sign combination, expression) expresses its sense, stands for or designates its reference. By means of a sign we express its sense and designate its reference (Frege: 40; italics in original).

Kaplan makes the distinction within the Fregean concept of sense between the ordinary meaning of an utterance (its character) and its propositional aspect (the content). This distinction is helpful to deal with context-sensitive terms. For example, when one utters ‘he was there’, the expression only states the ordinary meaning, or character, that ‘some male was somewhere’. It has no clear sense, let alone reference yet. The utterance has to be paired with the context in which it was spoken to generate a testable proposition. To bring back Thelma and the Office Case, if she made that utterance in the tavern to her friend, her friend would have understood that Thelma actually expressed the proposition ‘John was at the office that afternoon’, which circumstance was relevant to the bet and could have been verified. Kaplan names this proposition generated by the pairing of the character of the expression with its context, the content of the utterance. The sequence of Kaplan’s machinery can be formalized as follows:

(2) Utterance + understanding → character; character + context → content;
content + circumstance → truth or falsity

Kaplan’s contribution is that he identifies a two-level structure in Frege’s concept of sense in which the character-meaning of an utterance has to be paired with the context of utterance to determine its underlying propositional content-meaning.

§2.5. Perry’s Unarticulated Constituents

Because utterances do not always express the full content of the underlying proposition it makes sense, as John Perry does, to further analyze the idea that the propositional content of an utterance often has “unarticulated constituents” (Perry: 138; italics in original). Perry’s example is his son telling him ‘It is raining’, which propositional content can be established per Kaplan by bringing in the context of the utterance, i.e. both are in Palo Alto, and therefore the proposition is ‘It is raining in Palo Alto’. In this example the place was the unarticulated constituent, which could only be derived from the context of utterance. Though this looks straightforward, Perry’s framework of analysis in the form of five initial assumptions makes the issue a bit more complex. Because of its importance for this paper, I will summarize this framework.

From the following set of assumptions Perry draws a principle, which later proves to be problematic: 1) statements express propositional content; 2) propositions have constituents; 3) statements have components; 4) a statement’s meaning is systematically tied to its components’ meanings; and 5) if the proposition expressed by the statement is true, then the statement is true. The principle derived from the above he called homomorphic representation and runs as follows:

Each constituent of the proposition expressed by a statement is designated by a component of the statement (Perry: 140).

This one-to-one relationship between constituents and components is absent when one compares the constituents in the proposition ‘It is raining in Palo Alto’ with the components in the utterance ‘It is raining’. Of this counterexample Perry states the obvious that “… the problem is that there is no component of the sentence that designates the unarticulated constituent …” (Perry: 141). The pressing question then becomes how we can determine these constituents for which there are no corresponding components. Perry’s proposed solution is that the unarticulated constituents are determined by the whole of the statement, which includes its context of use like background facts of time and place and the speaker’s intentions and beliefs.

In short, crucial components can be absent from statements though their presence is more or less clearly implied by the context of the statement. The absent components are the unarticulated constituents of the underlying proposition.

§2.7. Context-Sensitive Gradable Knowledge

The most important element of the formula is of course the idea that knowledge can be graded according to the context in which a knowledge claim is made. And it has to be noted that the formula is a compound proposition in which arguably a sufficient amount of determining contextual constituents are integrated, which mostly go silent. Just to repeat, the formula as it stands is:

(1) In the role of X, individual S knows p relative to epistemic standard N, which is prevalent in social context C.

But often this proposition is expressed by the statement:

(2) S knows p.

For the justification of the three constituents of the formula—situated role X, epistemic standard N and social context C—I present the following considerations. Though DeRose usually works with a binary epistemic standard of HIGH and LOW in his examples and more or less backs off in pursuing the idea that knowledge tracks the behavior of context-sensitive gradable adjectives very well, I think the comparison between the two is very fruitful. When two teachers discuss the height of their student John and conclude that ‘John is tall’, while the two basketball coaches at the same school conclude ‘John is not tall’, we have to solve this little paradox by bringing out the context-sensitive unarticulated constituent reigning gradable adjectives formalized as ‘for an X’. So, John is considered tall ‘for a student’, but is not tall ‘for a basketball player’.

Transposed to knowledge claims, and following David Annis’ example in this, one could say that in one context Jones, as a layperson, can be considered justified to know that ‘polio is caused by a virus’ (hereafter h), but that this statement is not justified to count as knowledge if Jones, as a medical student in an exam, would give this as an answer to the question ‘what causes polio?’. Jones knows h ‘for a layperson’, but does not know h ‘for a medical student’. As Annis states the point:

Thus relative to one issue-context a person may be justified in believing h but not justified relative to another context” (Annis in Rysiew: 5).

Therefore the social context and the different roles played in such contexts can be considered as the unarticulated constituents of knowledge claims in statements like ‘S knows h‘.

Though the three constituents of the formula seem to imply each other and all three could be considered as hanging and swaying together in their gradability, I thought it best to consider them as different constituents for clarity’s sake. The best defense for their differentiation is that in complex social situations the roles and standards of participants are very different. For example in a court case there is a whole roster of participants playing different roles, having different interests and applying different epistemic standards. One could say that most court cases are essentially a tug of war between the defense and the prosecutor regarding the epistemic standard by which the defendant might be considered innocent or guilty. The defense will try to set the standard high enough to plead not guilty while the prosecutor will try to lower the standard to get a guilty verdict.

Based on the above elaborated ideas that a) a difference has to be made between a statement and its underlying proposition; b) that not all constituents of propositions are expressed by components in the statement; c) that it is the context of the statement which will determine the content of the unarticulated constituents; d) that the context-sensitive constituents in knowledge claims are the situated role of the claimant—including its interests and beliefs–and the appropriate epistemic standard prevalent for that role and/or situation; one can construct a more elaborate epistemic contextual formula.

(3) ‘S knows p‘ is the simple statement which expresses the underlying compound proposition ‘In the role of X, individual S, with interests i1-in and beliefs b1-bn, knows p relative to epistemic standard N, which is prevalent in social context C at place p and at time t.

This formulation I will baptize the Fully Articulated Epistemic Contextual Formula.

§3.1. Inter-Level Mechanistic Explanation

The idea occurred to me to bring into play the idea of ‘compositional explanation’ hired from recent developments in the philosophy of the biological sciences in order to understand better the two-tier structure of simple utterances and their underlying complex proposition(s). The idea is that a natural entity is mostly composed of a certain set of components with their own properties, powers and processes which together in their specific, mechanistic interactions can satisfactorily explain the properties, powers and processes of the composed entity. Because the entity’s behavior is on one level and the behavior of its components on one level deeper one could say of this explanatory model that it is an Inter-Level Mechanistic Explanation (ILME). The formula best capturing this idea is as follows:

(4) A whole composed individual s* has the powers and properties G1-Gn , which can robustly be explained by the joint role-playing of its component entities s1-sn with their own qualitatively different powers and properties F1-Fn , enabled by the background conditions $1-$n (Derived from Gillett, 2013).

For example the explanation of why a diamond can scratch glass–which is a process on one level containing two entities and their interaction–can be brought about by bringing in the properties and powers of the underlying components at the lower level, which are the carbon atoms composing the diamond and the molecules composing the glass. The explanation is that the carbon atoms are stronger bonded than the glass molecules and that when the right pressure is exerted and the right movement executed, the stronger bonded carbon atoms break up and displace the weaker bonded glass molecules creating the scratch (Fig. 1). Note that on the higher level one can say that it is the harder diamond which causes the scratch in the softer glass. This might suffice as an intra-level explanation. When the process is explained by bringing in the lower-level entities and their properties, i.e. carbons and molecules and the way they are bonded, the explanation is inter-level.

Fig. 1. Inter-Level Mechanistic Explanation of a diamond
causing a scratch in glass. From Gillett (2007).

Note here some important structural features of this example. We are dealing with a) two levels: one, the diamond and the glass, the other, the carbon atoms comprising the diamond and the molecules comprising the glass; b) there is a mechanism involved by which we can explain the phenomenon scratch; c) all the elements in the account add up to an explanation; and d) the concept of composition is central to the explanation.

§3.2. Some Key Features of the Concept of Composition

Based on careful descriptive work, especially in the biological sciences, Gillett was able to tease out a set of about a dozen key features of successful inter-level mechanistic explanations (Gillett, 2013: 317-8). Though most of them could be put into play in EC, I will just highlight three of them.

  1. Qualitative distinct relata, which is the feature that the properties and powers of the entity are qualitatively different from the properties and powers of the components. One can easily observe that a diamond is hard and its carbons are strongly bonded, but not that the carbons are hard or the diamond is strongly bonded.

  2. Natural necessitation, which feature is that under certain conditions the bonded carbons necessitate the hardness of the diamond and its ability to scratch glass.

  3. Katanoesis, which is the feature of understanding why and how the carbons through its properties and powers ground the hardness of the diamond.

This topic of ILME is much richer and more complex than I can convey here and there might be overlooked aspects which might completely undermine the intention of this paper. Nevertheless I will proceed and present certain succinct formulations of ILME to serve my purpose, for example the following condensed formulation by Gillett of his concept of composition:

… composition involves teams of individuals bearing spatio-temporal, powerful and/or productive relations, where all the team members are spatially contained within the constituted individual, and such that the properties of the individuals in the team realize the properties of the constituted individual and the processes grounded by the individuals in the team implement the processes grounded by the constituted individual (Gillett, 2013: 318).

This brings the presentation of the two sets of ideas to an end. From here the work will be possibly easy because of the already suggested structural congruence between EC and ILME.

§4.1. Combining EC and ILME

It is my contention that both EC and ILME have certain features in common which make them, with some appropriate calibrations here and there, quite congruent, combinable and fruitful in their combination to tackle academic skepticism and some other vexing philosophical conundrums. Applied to the phenomenon of knowledge and meaning one could argue that the meaning and truth of an utterance can only be determined by the interaction between its relevant constituents, articulated or not, especially the context-sensitive ones like roles, social settings and epistemic standards.

The crux seems to lay in combining EC and ILME into a coherent formula or model. This could be done by calibrating the scientific composition formula (4) in terms of EC and replacing the idea of natural entities having causal ‘properties, powers and processes’ to linguistic entities having implied ‘sense, reference, character and content’.

(5) The simple statement ‘S knows p’ has the character-meaning M and property T v F, which can sufficiently be determined by the joint role-playing of its constituent propositional entities s1-sn with their own qualitatively different content-meanings F1-Fn and properties T v F, enabled by the background conditions $1-$n.

In other words, the full meaning and truth of a knowledge claim can only be assessed if and only if a sufficient amount of contextual and non-contextual, lower-level ‘unarticulated constituents’ are brought out of hiding and are seen, in their meaningful interaction, as composing the meaning and truth of the higher level linguistic entity.

§4.2. Testing the Combination

To test this idea on a deeper level I propose to assess how this formula fares with some of the identified key features of scientific composition enumerated above.

  1. Qualitative distinct relata, which is the feature that the meaning and truth of the entity are qualitatively different from the meanings and truths of the constituents. One can easily observe that the meaning of ‘Jones knows that polio is caused by a virus’ is different from the meanings of its constituents like ‘Jones is an educated layman’ or ‘Jones is with his friends at a bar’. Though it seems trivial, the point is that the relata are qualitatively different.

  2. Natural necessitation, which feature is that under certain conditions the meaning and truth of the constituents of a compound proposition necessitate the meaning and truth of a simple statement. If all constituent elements of the proposition a) ‘As an informed layman, Jones knows that polio is caused by a virus, and knows so relative to an above average epistemic standard, which is operative when he has drinks with his educated friends’ are understood and are true then this necessitates the meaning and truth of the simple statement that b) ‘Jones knows that polio is caused by a virus’.

  3. Katanoesis, which is the feature of understanding why and how the interaction of the meaning and truth of the constituent elements of the compound proposition ground the meaning and truth of the simple statement. The interaction of role, social context and prevalent epistemic standard is of course not causal, but is an inter-connection at the level of meaning at which they imply, hang and sway together along a wide spectrum of different social contexts from low epistemic taverns to mid epistemic editorial offices to high epistemic courts to ideally high epistemic philosophy classes. Instead of natural causality the operative term is social and linguistic appropriateness.

So far I think the formula is passing the test quite well. And even though the first feature looks trivial, the last two are from that.

§5.1. Generating and Solving Skeptical Arguments

Having formulated this multilevel mechanism of knowledge production I propose to further test it on a few prominent cases like the ‘Brain in a Vat’ argument (BIV) and the first of the Gettier problems.

Maybe the best manner to proceed with analyzing the BIV argument is by juxtaposing again two opposing statements, in this case the recurring skeptical issue whether I know or not if I have hands. The negation of the statement is the conclusion derived from what DeRose named the ‘Argument from Ignorance’ (AI) and the affirmation is supported by G.E. Moore by holding up his hands and asserting he has hands (DeRose 1999: 183 & Moore: 24). When plugging into the AI the hand issue together with the Brain in a Vat idea (BIV), the following argument can be constructed:

(6) I don’t know that I’m not a BIV.

If I don’t know that I’m not a BIV, then

I don’t know that I have hands.

Therefore, I don’t know that I have hands.

To fall back on formula (3) one can say that the seemingly absurd utterance ‘I don’t know that I have hands’, when made in a very specific context, accurately expresses the underlying compound proposition:

(7) As a student in a philosophy class, with the interest to discuss skepticism and the belief it will sharpen my philosophical skills, ‘I don’t know that I have hands’ because I do not know I’m not a Brain in a Vat relative to the very high epistemic standard reigning while discussing skepticism (which actually happened for a moment at DuSable 474 in the fall of 2012).

Though only for a moment and in the quite specific context of a philosophy class, the thought that ‘I don’t know I have hands’ was a true thought, because it expressed a specific underlying compound proposition, all of which constituents were (for a moment) true. And it was true only for a moment because applying the very high standard in an experientially lived manner–as opposed to merely entertain it in a verbal, hypothetical manner–is so counter-natural and counter-intuitive that a real effort has to be made to execute it and once it is executed one would quickly fall back into a more natural attitude reigned by more quotidian epistemic standards by which it is no problem whatsoever that one knows that one has hands. And this brings us to Moore.

In order to quickly demonstrate the existence of an external world Moore stated while holding up his hands: “Here is one hand … and here is another” (Moore: 24), which obviously expressed the idea that he knows he has hands. Moore’s statement is also true because it expresses the proposition,

(8) As a public lecturer and philosopher, Moore, with the interest to challenge skepticism, knows he has hands relative to a more common sense epistemic standard prevalent in the context of a public lecture.

Therefore, and again, we have two opposing statements, both of which are true because of the differing contexts in which different epistemic standards are set by the interests of its participants. In the BIV argument it is an experimental exercise in stretching one’s epistemic standard to almost impossible heights, while Moore firmly keeps the epistemic standard at a more quotidian level.

In short, the generation of skeptical cases is done by setting the epistemic standard to the point of undermining the justification of a targeted knowledge claim, while its solution depends on bringing this crucial context-sensitive epistemic constituent out of hiding and showing how it operates.

§5.2. The First Gettier Case

To deal with the vexing challenge Edmund Gettier created with his two scenarios undermining the standard idea that knowledge is justified true belief, I will initially follow a recently proposed solution by Lukasz Lozanski and then deepen it with my proposed model. Lozanski thinks that the first Gettier example is a case of ‘reference-muddling’. I will try to show how exactly the ‘reference-muddling’ is executed.

Gettier’s very unlikely hypothetical ‘Case I’ concerns two acquaintances, Jones and Smith, who both have applied for the same job. Smith has reasons to believe the following things about Jones: 1) Jones will get the job; 2) Jones has ten coins in his pocket; 3) based on 1) and 2) one can validly infer that ‘the man who gets the job has ten coins in his pocket’. But, by a quirk of fate, what actually happens is that 4) Smith gets the job and 5) Smith has also ten coins in his pocket, which facts do not change the truth of 3), i.e. that ‘the man who gets the job has ten coins in his pocket’! Smith, assuming to have a justified, true belief that 3) is the case based on 1) and 2), is indeed right, but for the wrong reasons for 3) is now correct because of 4) and 5). In other words, this seems to be a case in which we have true premises and a true conclusion, but the reasoning is somehow invalid. What happened here?

My proposal is to treat 3) as a statement which underlying proposition is being messed with by Gettier. The statement 3) is ‘the man who gets the job has ten coins in his pocket’, which initial underlying compound proposition is:

(9) Jones is the man who applied for a specific job and he is the man who gets the job and he has ten coins in his pocket.

What Gettier then does is a multi-step operation on the proposition. First he silences some of the crucial constituents of the proposition, which could be rendered visually by putting the silenced parts between brackets:

(10) (Jones is the man who applied for a specific job and he his) the man who gets the job has ten coins in his pocket.

The next step is that he just cuts out the silenced, but still implied, parts, which we can visually render by crossing the relevant parts out:

(11) (Jones is the man who applied for a specific job and he his) the man who gets the job has ten coins in his pocket.

Then, because by an improbable sequence of circumstances, Smith gets the job and he also happen to have ten coins in his pocket, which renders (11) true, though the underlying proposition now has become:

(12) Smith is the man who applied for a specific job and he his the man who gets the job and he has ten coins in his pocket.

The difference between (10) and (11) is that, even though both are the same utterance, the propositional meaning of (10) is still about Jones, though in an implicit manner, while (11) is about an unspecified ‘man’, which opens the way to apply it to Smith and generate (12), which miraculously happens to be the case even though Smith does not know it! In this way Gettier could construct the apparently knowledge-undermining scenario in which Smith has the seemingly justified true belief that ‘the man who gets the job has ten coins in his pocket’ but cannot be said to have real knowledge.

But, as Lozanski pointed out, and I will re-phrase in terms of Kaplan and Perry, it is not clear what exact proposition the statement (11) expresses. If it is (9) and the component ‘man’ stands for constituent Jones, then the statement is false, and if it is (12) and the component ‘man’ stands for constituent Smith, then Smith has no justification believing that, because he still believes (9). As Lozanski concludes:

The first possibility violates the truth requirement for justified true belief, while the second case violates the justification requirement. Gettier has tried to use semantic obscurity to trick the reader into believing that justified true belief is not enough for knowledge. However, it can be seen that in this case the ‘knowledge’ was either not justified or false, and thus never constituted knowledge in the first place (Lozanski; italics in original).

In other words, the ‘reference-muddling’ can be construed as a bait-and-switch strategy which was exposed by Lozanski and further clarified by an inter-level linguistic explanatory model as formulated in (5).

§6.1. Conclusion

The conclusion is that it is not only feasible to show that knowledge is context-sensitive and that academic skepticism is a special case depending on a specific context in which a very high epistemic standard rules the conversation, but also to show the underlying linguistic mechanism by which skeptical cases can be both generated and solved with the effect of safeguarding the notion of scientific and quotidian knowledge by respecting their appropriate levels of epistemic standards.

Origin

This paper was written for the class Philosophical Methods and Approaches (CSPH7048) conducted by Dr. Rebekah Humphreys in the Masters by Research in European Philosophy program at the University of Wales in the spring of 2015.

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