[lit-ideas] Re: The antihumanism of modern philosophy
- From: "Judith Evans" <judithevans1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2007 16:29:20 -0000
>Marxism, Existentialism, Pragmatism and Analytic Philosophy
>are so patently negative, I believe the onus should be on the
>denier to show that they are not
You would. But your saying so does not make it so.
It's perhaps just as well you see no need to argue a case given
that all you can offer is a quotation from the preface of a book
you haven't read and some quotations from a book about
some French philosophy of the Sixties.
Althusserian Marxism is indeed anti-humanist, FYI. I am no expert on
Bourdieu (Luc and Renault's main example, it seems) but
would point to doubts that he should be considered a Marxist.
----- Original Message -----
From: Lawrence Helm
To: Lit-Ideas
Sent: Thursday, November 15, 2007 10:30 PM
Subject: [lit-ideas] The antihumanism of modern philosophy
Marxism, Existentialism, Pragmatism and Analytic Philosophy are so patently
negative, I believe the onus should be on the denier to show that they are not
- to show they are somehow positive. However, there may be a way to do that.
Just because life is a bitch and then you die doesn't, someone might argue,
mean that is a negative thing to know, for it is more positive to face this
truth (if it be truth) honestly than to hide in some outdated positive
philosophy.
Luc Ferry and Alain Renault in their French Philosophy of the Sixties, an
Essay on Antihumanism use a different expression. They remind us of the
origin of humanism, a time when the ideal was the "Renaissance Man," a man who
could do and know anything. He had no limits. But look at modern man. What a
contrast he is. He is limited in almost every way. Autonomy has become an
illusion. If he is somehow involved in doing something positive, it won't be
him that is doing it but some force beyond his control. They don't list
philosophies as Bernstein has done. Instead they list the influential
philosophers. Their concern is with French philosophers, but behind them are
Germans:
Foucault following Nietzsche: [page 8] "Thus Foucault could write, 'If
interpretation can never be achieved, it is simply because there is nothing to
interpret . . . . since after all everything is already interpretation,' and
the allusion to the 'new infinite' in Gay Knowledge can then be clear:
'Interpretation has finally become transparent.' To repeat: there is only
signifying, and one can never attain the original position of a signified."
Page 71: ". . . the idea of dismantling the mechanism of power (asylums,
prisons, schools, etc.). These were, he explained, necessary simplifications,
but they nevertheless formed the 'doxa of the Left,' namely 'the refrain of the
antirepressive tune,' merely repeating that 'beneath power things themselves in
their primitive vividness should be discernible' ('under the pavement is the
beach,' if you wish): 'Behind the walls of the asylum, the spontaneity of
madness; throughout the penal system, the generous fever of delinquency; under
sexual taboo, the freshness of desire' - in short, a group of 'simple hurrahs
(long live madness, long live delinquency, long live sex),' sustained by the
belief that 'power is bad, ugly, poor, sterile, monotonous, dead' and that
'what power is exercised over is good, fine, rich."
Derrida following Heidegger: [page 22] ". . . from Heidegger to Derrida, the
gesture of radicalizing the critique of humanism is what constitutes French
philosophy of the sixties (in this case what we call French Heideggerianism).
It began with the relationship between humanism and the (modern) metaphysics of
subjectivity established by Heidegger and became a hyperbolic antihumanism
that, twenty years later, can be seen to have had some difficulty accommodating
itself to the newly rediscovered reference to human rights.
[page 24" Heidegger's formula, 'It is precisely no longer man taken solely as
such who matters,' ]
{page 216] "Heidegger poses the problem of truth and says, there can be no
truths in themselves, no eternal truths, but truths to the extent that they are
that, are relative to Dasein. Thus a finite being absolutely cannot posses
eternal truths.
Althusser & Bourdieu following Marx [page 23] ". . . after 1845 Marx broke
with every theory of history based on the essence of man: Criticizing even the
idea of a 'universal essence of man,' Marx questioned the traditional
problematic of humanism and founded a 'new problematic,' which no longer
defined the conditions in which 'each single individual' can become the 'real
subject' of an 'essence of man,' a problematic that from then on would study
how the true subject (Subject) of history unfolds, something he located in the
complex structuration where forces of production, relations of production,
superstructures, and ideologies meet, in the heart of a 'social formation.'
[page 161] Bourdieu wrote, "As long as we are unaware of the reality of the
principle of orchestration without a conductor to regularize, unify, and
systematize the practices in the absence of either spontaneous or imposed
organization of individual intentions, we are condemned to naïve
artificializing that recognizes no principle other than conscious concertation:
If, in practice, members of the same group, or same class in a differentiated
society, are always more in harmony than the agents know or want, it is
because, 'by following only their own rules, ' everyone 'nevertheless agrees,'
as Leibnitz has said, The habitus is this immanent law, the lex insita
inscribed within bodies by identical histories."
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