SCIENCE, SOCIETY, AND THE ENVIRONMENT:
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KENYON COLLEGE
TRELEAVEN HOUSE
SPRING 2024
COURSE DESCRIPTION
This mid-level course represents a critical introduction to the contemporary crisis of the Enlightenment and the Environment. It emphasizes the underlying values and ethical norms that ground modern natural science and its relationship to nature, history, and industrial society. By exploring the delicate fabric binding Science, Nature, and Society, the course outlines the connections between environmental problems and broader social problems. The main goal of the course is to explore the contemporary environmental crisis while asking the central question -- Is this a crisis of Science, Reason, Ecology, or Society? Can the environment be repaired by furthering scientific inquiry, expanding Enlightenment rationality, encouraging alternative and green technology, or by transforming the fundamental structures and ideals of modern industrial society?
The first part of the course will examine the underlying philosophical and sociological foundations of modern science and Enlightenment rationality. It will begin by analyzing the differences between the ancient Greek and medieval view of physics, causality, movement, and organic nature and the modern worldview of natural science in Galileo, Descartes, and Newton. We will then turn to study the debates within the philosophy of science (Burtt, Popper, Kuhn, Quine, Feyerabend, and Rorty) and the sociology of science (Scheler, Ellul, Marcuse, Habermas, and Leiss) about the nature of scientific inquiry and the social/political meaning of scientific discoveries. Does science investigate the essential reality of nature or is it more influenced by the broader social relations and practical activity of modern industrial life? Does science reflect objective reality, essential being, and universal truth or does science construct physical reality and invent truth? That is, is science a social construct reflecting the utilitarian needs and functional interests of society? After responding to these issues, the course then turns to examine the applied relationships between science and society, that is, issues of environmentalism and social justice. We will deal with the full range of the rationalization of modern society: the application of science and technological rationality (efficiency, productivity, and functionality) to economic (workplace), political (state), and social (cultural legitimation) institutions. We will examine the process of modernization and rationalization in science, labor, politics, the academy, nature, and ecology.
Finally, we will discuss the debates about the Enlightenment and capitalism within the environmental movement, deep ecology, social ecology, and radical ecology. Compare the principles, problems, and policies of these various theories and schools of critical ecology. Of particular importance is the return to the enchanted nature and physics of Aristotle and the moral economy and classical democracy of the Greek polis by the social ecologists for insights into the crisis of Western reason and Enlightenment science along with their vision of small-scale technology, local communities, and participatory democracy. From this perspective, environmental science and social ecology are sensitive to the broader social issues of the need for structural change of modern class society and political economy, the domination of nature and humanity. In order to develop a critical ecology, social justice must be balanced with ecological justice since the two forms of justice are impossible to achieve without each other. Without ecological justice, there will be no material and natural existence and viable human life and without social justice, there will be no democracy, freedom, and sustainable economy. Readings will be from T. Kuhn, E. A. Burtt, M. Berman, H. Braverman, C. Lasch, F. Capra, M. Horkheimer, H. Marcuse, and C. Merchant.
REQUIRED READINGS
T. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Harper Torchbooks paperback, 1963
M. Berman, The Reenchantment of the World
H. Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital
Aristotle, Physics and Metaphysics (selections)
E. A. Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science
M. Horkheimer, Eclipse of Reason
C. Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism
J. Habermas, Toward a Rational Society
B. McKibben, The End of Nature
F. Capra, The Turning Point: Science, Society, and the Rising Culture
On Reserve in Treleaven House and on Library ERES:
Max Weber, "Science as a Vocation," chapter 22 in Readings in
Introductory Sociology, edited by Dennis Wrong and Harry Gracey
COURSE REQUIREMENTS
There will be a mid-term and final paper due the last day of class. Questions will be given out prior to the mid-term exam from which two will be chosen the day of the exam. Class attendance is naturally required, as is participation in class discussions. The goal of the course is to encourage students to become involved in their own enlightenment. The final grade will be based on the mid-term, final paper, and class participation.
My office hours are Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 8:15 to 9:45 AM in Treleaven House, Room 202, 105 Brooklyn St. Appointments to see me at other times may be made during the day, or immediately before or after class. My email address is "McCarthy@Kenyon.edu."
OVERVIEW OF SCHEDULE AND REQUIRED READINGS
WEEKS LECTURE TOPICS
| 1. | Thomas Kuhn | The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) Critique of the Enlightenment, Objective Reality, Realism, and Positivism Kuhn's Theory of Science from Epistemology to Historical Materialism: Thomas Kuhn critically examines the failure of traditional epistemology or theories of knowledge to provide adequate foundations for the justification of natural science in empiricism and rationalism, inductive and deductive reason. From David Hume's skepticism and critique of empiricism (An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, chapters 7-12) and Karl Popper's rejection of empiricism (The Logic of Scientific Revolution, chapter 1) to Willard van Quine's critique of Popper, verification of empiricism, and falsification of rationalism (From a Logical Point of View, chapter 2), the validations of natural science collapse as Kuhn struggles to provide a firm foundation of science in the nature of scientific inquiry, creation of paradigms, and scientific consensus. The traditional theories that have justified science's claims to objectivity, truth, and reality fall beneath Kuhn's critical investigation into the nature of modern science. There is no objective truth, objective reality, or objective scientific method. Once the door is open to ask the question that moves us beyond Kuhn --If science does not give us access to truth and objective reality, but to some form of useful and applicable knowledge, then what are the historical and social influences and conditions that have given rise to this form of inquiry. This questions places science within a sociological and historical context that stresses science as a form of knowledge useful for the domination and control over nature (Naturwissenschaft). This places traditional epistemology within the framework of historical materialism. This leads us to the questions raised by Morris Berman. Kuhn's Theory of Objectivity, Perception, and Reflection: He undertakes a critical analysis of the Enlightenment and Western science using parallel arguments from the philosophy and history of science as he rejects the tradition views of the philosophy of knowledge and science. With a focus on the History of Science, he develops his theory of normal science, paradigms, social constructivism, and scientific consensus by examining astronomy (Copernicus and Kepler), physics (Galileo, Newton, and Einstein), chemistry (Priestly and Lavoisier), and physical motion (Aristotle and Galileo). He also directs his attention to neo-Kantian and post-analytic Philosophy of Science with their critique of naturalism, realism, and positivism. This latter analysis represents a creative synthesis of the theories of knowledge and science of empiricism (Francis Bacon, John Locke, and David Hume), German idealism (Immanuel Kant and Georg Hegel), critical rationalism (Karl Popper), post-analytic philosophy and pragmatism (Willard van Quine), gestalt psychology (N.R. Hanson), and linguistic anthropology (Benjamin Lee Whorf). Social Constructivism began with epistemology, phenomenology (sociology of knowledge or the social forms and conditions of human consciousness, experience, and knowledge), and theories of the mind and evolved into sociology, linguistics, anthropology, psychology, and philosophy of science with a theory of imagination (Hume), subjectivity, transcendental or universal/necessary consciousness, phenomenal experience, and representations (Kant), Absolute Spirit and historical/phenomenological consciousness (Hegel), class consciousness (Marx), historical consciousness (Weber), collective conscience and consciousness (Durkheim), construction of phenomenal reality in social representations (Schutz and Berger and Luckmann), language and culture (Whorf and Sapir), perception and mind (Hanson, Adorno, Popper, and Russell), social consensus (Quine), and paradigm, theory, and scientific community (Kuhn). Kuhn received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in physics from Harvard University in 1946 and 1949, respectively, but switched to philosophy and history while still at Harvard and later at the University of California, Berkeley. The course begins with an analysis of Hume's critique of empiricism and perception and his theory of skepticism in books 7 and 12 of his work, An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding and a general introduction to Kant's critique of pure reason and theory of perception and the understanding. After this brief summary, the class goes in two direction that are quite different, but related, to each other: (1) an analysis of the Popper-Quine debate and the Popper-Kuhn debate which only continues the discussion started by empiricist skepticism and German idealism -- perception and knowledge of the objective, empirical world is a construct of the imagination, subjectivity, or the scientific community. By using Popper and Quine, Kuhn rejects both induction and deduction, empiricism and rationalism as the foundation of the logic and method of natural science. He then continues these profound philosophical debates in epistemology and philosophy of science by turning more to the social sciences and humanities: Hanson's theory of perception and linguistic psychology, Sapir-Whorf analysis of the culture and language of the Hopi Indians, and Gestalt psychology. Kuhn uses these intellectual traditions to frame and build his argument about normal science and theoretical paradigms. In Popper's analysis of the logic of scientific discovery, he rejects empiricism and inductive logic as the foundation of science and argues that science is grounded in explanatory laws, theoretical hypothesis, and deductive reasoning. At this point, Kuhn turns to Quine who rejects Popper's critical rationalism. By relying upon the critical insights of both Popper and Quine, Kuhn is able to undermine the two major schools of thought that act as the foundation of modern science in empiricism and rationalism, inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning. It is at this point that he turns to the history of science to establish its epistemological legitimacy and to the social sciences to offer alternative clues as to the nature of language, perception, and science. Through the social sciences and humanities -- human mind, linguistic and syntactical structures, cultural perception, and psychological forms, Kuhn is able to argue that perception and objective reality are constructs of science. With Popper and Quine, he investigates the exact nature of these CONSTRUCTS in epistemology and philosophy of science. Brief Outline of major themes discussed in class on Kuhn's work during the first 3 weeks of the course: Week 1: General introduction and Philosophy of Perception and Mind: Hume and Kant; Week 2: Linguistic Psychology, Anthropology, and Philosophy of Language: Hanson and Whorf; and Week 3: Philosophy and Methodology of Natural Science: Popper's critique of Empiricism and Induction and Quine's critique of Popper's Critical Rationalism, Deduction, and Falsification Method, and Kuhn's critique and synthesis of both Popper (pp. 4, 7, 8, 15, 24, 28-29, 77-78, 122, 138, and 146-147) and Quine (pp. 78, 120-121, 126, and 146-147) as introductions to Kuhn's theory of normal science, theoretical paradigms, the incommensurability of scientific paradigms, and scientific consensus within the history of science. Traditional Theories of Objectivity in Perception, Experience, and Science: Perception of Substance and Objects: Bertrand Russell in Chapter 1 of his work The Problems of Philosophy (1912) and Theodor Adorno in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (1959 lectures), Lecture 8, raise the question to their students about the sense perception of a table and a lecture hall, respectively. They are both interested in the nature of perception and the kind of knowledge it produces. Russell's students are at first confused by the simplicity and obvious nature of the question and then respond by describing the rectangular shape, the right angles, the parallel lines, brown and shaded color, distinct hardness of the wood, and smell of the table. Russell then raises the obvious point that in the very act of perception there are no right angels, parallel lines, rectangles, pure brown color, or any other distinct physical characteristic that does not change with the angel or line of perception. At this point Russell asks the key question: How did you perceive the "table"? (Note: This is the very question that David Hume asked in section 12 of his famous work, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 1748.) Through the senses we see, hear, feel, and smell the physical characteristics, empirical perceptions, particular qualities, accidents, and appearances of the phenomenal world, but we do not perceive the substance, objects themselves, universals, or matter that underlie the various perceptions. Through the senses in perception, we see the appearances, lines, or accidents (///|\\\) of the object, but not the object (O) itself or the synthetic unity of the object or its perceptual accidents embedded in a universal or essence. Perception gives us access to the secondary qualities of impressions and sensations, but not to the object, its primary qualities of solidity, extension, motion, number and figure, or the idea of the object within which the perceptions reside. These primary qualities are part of the object (form or essence) itself and seen as existing independent of the observer. There is no direct sensation of the "table" or object/substance of the table itself (O) since all perception is theory-ladened.
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| 2. | Thomas Kuhn | The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) Social Construction of Objective Reality and Scientific Truths Thomas Kuhn/Willard Van Quine Debate: Critique of Popper and Rationalism: Quine's critique of Popper and rejection of Critical Rationalism: (1) relationship and agreement between Kuhn and Quine ("Two Dogmas of Empiricism," in From a Logical Point of View, pp. 42-46, 61, and 78-79) (2) issues of the underdetermination by experience (42 and 45) (3) myth of objectivity (44) (4) critique of falsification (5) creation of ad hoc theories and ad hoc adjustments to scientific experiments, unanticipated consequences, predictions, and anomalies (44) (6) distinction between core and periphery of theories (7) breakdown of distinction between analytic and synthetic statements (43) (8) relation between language and reality (9) critique of realism and thing-in-itself (79) For Kuhn's critique of Popper in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, see pages 24, 78, 126, 120-121, and 146-147. For his critique of Quine, see 78, 126, 146-147, and 120-121. Quine is very interesting because he argues in this essay that the Olympian gods of ancient Greece have the same epistemological standing (validity and truth claims) as the physical objects of the objective world of scientific discourse. They differ only "in degree and not in kind" ((44). There is no objective reality behind the gods of Greece or the objects of science that can empirically verify the ontological or epistemological status of either. Paradigms in religion or science produce there own reality. The myth of physical objects has more manageable utility than reality (ontology). The result is that theories or paradigms of science are underdetermined by experience and possess the same internal logical status as other myths thus making the Kantian distinction between synthetic statements about experience (The sun will rise tomorrow) and analytic statements about logic and mathematics (2+2=4) irrelevant because all synthetic statements can ultimately be made into analytic ones within a paradigm. Any scientific statement can be held to be true by ignoring empirical and theoretical anomalies thereby undermining the principles of verification and falsification. The analysis of the "myth of the given" or objectivity and the epistemological status of the Greek gods and concepts/objects of modern science naturally lead to a consideration of the relationship between Ontology and Utility (37, 80, and 206). Epistemologically the gods of ancient Greece and the concepts of modern science are both equal since neither can give us access to objectivity or reality (rejection of empiricism and rationalism). Quine refers to this issue as the "myth of physical objects" (44). However, modern science is far superior to ancient religion and metaphysics in technologically organizing, manipulating, and dominating the external world (William Leiss, The Domination of Nature). Questions: what is the "myth of physical objects"; why do the Olympic gods of Greeks have the same epistemological status as the physical objects of modern natural science; what are its implications-- no objective basis for distinguishing between the objects of physical science and religion or comparing two entirely different paradigms; why does modern science, however, have greater utility than the beings of ancient gods; why is natural science superior to Greek metaphysics in utility; and, finally, what does this Utility vs. Ontology truly mean? Why makes modern science so utilitarian -- control over nature? After Kuhn's critique of Induction (Popper: 26, 63, 77-78, 112, 138, and 146-147) and Deduction (Quine: 15, 28-29, 80, 120-121, and 126-127), his conclusion is that neither the gods of Olympia or the physical objects of natural science can be empirically Verified through induction or scientifically Falsified thru deduction. And since the paradigm creates and forms the object of experience, there is no third party or independent and validating object that we can appeal to that can arbitrate between conflicting paradigms to determine which one is correct. There are no independent objects outside of a paradigm -- no objective reality that is the basis for comparison, validation, or verification of the truth claims of any paradigm. The truth of any paradigm lies within itself and its utility. This is why Kuhn refers to science as an political ideology or religious conversion (138, 148, and 151-154). From Ontology and Truth to Utility and Manageability: With his myth of objectivity and his theory of synthetic/analytic statements, Quine concludes that science cannot be empirically justified or validated -- there is no empirical evidence or proof for any scientific paradigm or theory. The objects of both religion and science -- gods and nature -- are constructs and, thus, cannot be verified or falsified by perception or experience. Without any underlying base, essence, or objective reality, there is no right or wrong interpretation of the empirical evidence or facts; there is no correct interpretation of whether a drawing is that of a duck or rabbit, table or faces, or a right descending box or left ascending box. There is only the mythic construction or theoretical model whether metaphysical (Olympian gods) or empirical (scientific theory). According to tradition, the truth claims and scientific proofs of a theory can be validated by empirical confirmation or factual verification (Hume) or predictive falsification (Popper). Thus, with the critique of Empiricism (realism, correspondence, and factual verification) with (1) Hume's analysis of perception of the object and creative imagination; (2) Kant's distinction between phenomena and the thing-in-itself; (3) Russell's analysis of the students' descriptions of the classroom table; and (3) Popper's critique of inductive reasoning ("All swans are white") and the corresponding critique of Rationalism (Popper's theory of falsifiability) by Quine with his ideas of the myth of concrete objects, synthetic statements becoming analytic statements, underdetermination by experience, and the inability to falsify or disqualify a scientific theory, Positivism, in the form of Empiricism and Rationalism, is no longer capable of providing the philosophical foundations of the natural sciences. The conclusion one can draw from this is that the acceptance of any scientific theory or paradigm must be based on other non-epistemological and non-scientific criteria such as conventional or analytic manageability, technical usefulness, puzzle-solving ability (Duhem, Quine, and Kuhn), or instrumental domination, alienation, and formal control over nature as a Herrschaftswissen (Scheler, Weber, Heidegger, Marcuse, and Habermas -- see W. Leiss, The Domination of Nature). As we move from Hume, Kant, Russell, Popper, and Quine to Kuhn, the criteria of truth and objective reality change as philosophy transforms into sociology -- ontology transforms into issues of social consensus and technical utility (80, 126, and 206). Another implication of this epistemological transition from ontology to utility that is potentially very troubling is the danger of epistemological and moral nihilism resulting from the loss of a grounding of reason in being, reality, or God (metaphysics). Truth is displaced into capitalist utility with a corresponding loss of moral reason and a moral community. This is the beginning of the dangerous and hidden politics of science and paradigms. Benjamin Lee Whorf and Linguistic Anthropology: Language, Culture, and Cognition: Whorf was an expert on Southwestern and Central American Indian languages whose analysis of the language of Hopi Indians was influenced by his teacher Edward Sapir at Yale University and the earlier writings of Franz Boas; his view has come to be known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: the Hopi have a different metaphysics as they reject the traditional views of Western kinetic time and homogenous space -- they have no words or grammatical forms which refer to the tenses of past, present, or future, nor do not have a sense of continuous three-dimensional space or words like substance, reality, matter, cause, etc. Their views of time and space are more psychological, intuitive, and mystical, while their metaphysics is built around verbs, not nouns as in European language. In fact, Whorf contends that the Hopi language is in many ways "a more rational analysis of situations, than our vaunted English." (See Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf, edited by John B. Carroll.) The English language compared to the Hopi is "like a bludgeon compared to a rapier." It is not just that we see the world differently, but the objective reality of the world is different. Language and culture do not reflect an external reality but construct our relative perception and cognition of the world; there are multiple linguistic and social realities leading to the thesis of linguistic relativity. According to Whorf, language determines thought; this is his theory of linguistic determinism and relativity. Kuhn simply expands this critique of objectivism and realism to include scientific inquiry and knowledge. There is no objective reality to compare to objective truth; scientific theory cannot be judged by an external reality since the latter is, in fact, created by the former; all knowledge is relative. This is a form of neo-Kantian epistemology. The success of a paradigm rests upon other criteria than reflecting and copying reality -- it is the scientific consensus of the theory's success at solving puzzles and other non-scientific criteria (beauty, simplicity, mathematics, explanatory laws, predictions, etc.) that produce the "truth." (Note that the linguistic structure of the Hopi Indians is similar to the verbal idiom in Hanson's theory of language.) Norwood R. Hanson On Perception and Language: Gestalt Psychology, Grammatical Structures, and Objective Reality: Examine Hanson's philosophy and psychology as he examines a psychological theory of Forms (Gestalt) and the Forms influence on the act of perception in Patterns of Discovery (1958) and Perception and Discovery (1969). Also discuss his theory of language, speech, and linguistic patterns using an adjectival idiom (European), verbal idiom (Arabic and Russian), and adverbial idiom: "the sun is yellow" (Patterns of Discovery, 174), "the sun yellows" (176), and "the sun glows yellowly" (178-180), respectively. Adjectival Idiom Verbal Idiom Adverbial Idiom The sun is yellow The sun yellows The sun glows yellowly The grass is green The grass greens The grass glitters greenly Sugar is sweet Sugar sweetens Sugar tastes sweetly Bears are furry Bears fur Bears look furrily With a different linguistic paradigm, that is, with a different syntactical, grammatical, and semantic structure, there are different perceptions of "reality" -- a different objective reality in both perception and thought. Hanson attempted to develop a new theory of knowledge and perception in which he argued that observations are theory-laden by preconceptions and a "thematic framework." He integrated philosophy of science with the history of science as he rejected empiricism (Hume), logical positivism (Vienna Circle and early Wittgenstein), and the hypothetical-deductive thesis of critical rationalism (Popper). Discuss examples of the old lady/rabbit and the three-dimensional box as he shows that facts are unknowable in themselves but are mediated interpretations of sensations. Kuhn summarizes Hanson and the psychological literature of cognition when he writes, "a paradigm is prerequisite to perception itself" (112-113). Examine Hanson's gestalt theory as a recapitulation of Hume's theory of the imagination, Kant's theory of understanding, Schopenhauer's theory of representations, Nietzsche's theory of perspectivism and relativism, and Whorf's theory of language and culture among the Hopi Indians and the Uto-Aztecan languages. Show their influence on Kuhn's theory of paradigms and similarities of Kuhn to German idealism and the classical social theory of Marx, Weber, and Durkheim. The views of linguistic anthropology and gestalt psychology only reconfirm Hegel's old adage: The truth of Objectivity is Subjectivity. Creation of Objectivity: Science as Politics, Revolution, Relativity, and Incommensurability: During the first week and a half of this course we have established the intellectual and philosophical context and foundations of Kuhn's theory of knowledge and science in the theory of impressions and sensations of Hume (impressions and sensations), the theory of mind and subjectivity of Kant, the theory of perception of Hanson (Gestalt psychology), and the theory of language of Hanson (linguistic philosophy) and Sapir/Whorf (linguistic anthropology). Now we are in a position to undertake a detailed exegesis of Kuhn's work with his history and philosophy of science: induction of Hume (empiricism) and deduction of Popper (critical rationalism). We will now examine Kuhn's theory of normal science and paradigm, as well as his critique of Popper and Quine. The traditional view of a natural reality and objective world and the traditional view of perception, experience, and science has collapsed. It has been replaced by a radical view of science as having the following characteristics: a construct or puzzle-solving (35-42), technological interest (59-60), infinite number of worlds (39), unverifiability and unprovability of science (40-41), and science as religious conversion and metaphysical beliefs (151-153), political ideology (138 and 154), social practice and consensus (176-177), relative (120, 126-127, and 206), and incommensurable (148 and 169). These various concepts of Kuhn are relevant in describing modern science because there is no underlying objective reality (ontology) or neutral truth (epistemology) that can mediate or adjudicate between conflicting theories, ideas, or perceptions; something is true only within the relativistic, non-comparable (no common measure or objective standard), and inconsistent framework of a theoretical paradigm. Kuhn also rejects the idea that his theory is a form of relativism because this is an epistemological category of traditional ontology. Ontology has been replaced by utility, puzzle-solving, and domination. Like Hegel whose epistemology leads into his social theory, Kuhn's theory of science and his rejection of foundationalism (objectivism, realism, and naturalism of modern science) represent an introduction to a social theory of scientific consensus and puzzle-solving. According to later social theorists to be discussed in this course, since there is no longer an epistemological foundation to knowledge -- no firm foundation of science in an objective reality or an objectively valid form or method of knowledge -- the nature of modern science can only be understood within a broader historical context of the rise of modern industrial society; it is the structure of society as a whole that provides the "foundation" and "justification" of modern science as a Herrschaftswissen (science of domination). Kuhn also refuses to accept a correspondence theory of truth -- ideas reflect the real world; perception, ideas, reality, and science -- the various worlds of facts -- are all constructs that are incommensurate with each other and with a deeper empirical or foundational reality. There is no "thing-in-itself" or universal consciousness which can act as the ultimate arbiter of truth; there is no common ground, no basis upon which to justify one theory over another; and there is no reality (objective or subjective) to which ideas, theories, and methods can be compared. Kuhn and the Philosophy of Science Traditions: Kuhn's theory of the social construction of external reality or objectivity is built on the following intellectual traditions: Hume's theory of empiricism and foundationalism -- objectivism, realism, and verification -- and his critical skepticism about the justification of substance (objectivity), causality, and the idea of self; Popper's critique of empiricism and his theory of falsification; Quine's critique of empiricism ("myth of physical objects"), rationalism, and Popper's theory of falsification; Hanson's rejection of empiricism, his analysis of the formal structure of perception and gestalt psychology, and his theory of verbal (Indo-European languages), adverbial (Arabic and Russian languages), and adjectival forms of speech; Whorf's linguistic anthropology of the Hopi Indians and theory of gerunds; and Kuhn's rejection of foundationalism, traditional objectivity, and positivist science, that is, the whole foundation of Western Enlightenment and the natural sciences. The conclusion of this critique is that natural science cannot be explained or justified by traditional epistemology -- rather it becomes a sociological phenomenon. From Epistemology and Methodology to Critical Social Theory: This course begins with philosophy but moves into sociology by logical necessity of the nature of knowledge, truth, and science. There is no objective reality, no real substance, no autonomous ontology, and no thing-in-itself behind perception and science (120 and 126); there is no objective validity, no absolute truth, and no transcendent knowledge of the real since mental forms, culture, and language mediate and structure our perception, reflection, and scientific inquiry. There is no thing and no truth -- Nothing -- behind sensations and ideas. Nor are there autonomous and unfiltered facts that can be used as the basis for empirical comparison and verification (empiricism) or predictive and explanatory laws of justification (rationalism) within science since there are multiple and incommensurable theories (148) that can explain empirical evidence and data. Perceptions and paradigms construct reality -- the only reality we have; there is no objective reality or empirical fact behind perceptions and paradigms which could be used to provide the basis for objective comparisons and knowledge, verification and proof of competing claims to ultimate truth. Behind the paradigm is Nothing (thing-in-itself) -- subjectivity constitutes objectivity. Whether from the social sciences (anthropology and psychology) or the natural sciences (physics and chemistry), whether in the form (perception) or in the use (science) of knowledge, Kuhn rejects the idea of a non-relativistic truth or science. Science then is closer to a religious conversion (151-153), political ideology (138), or scientific community consensus (176-177). These ideas are quite radical and even Kuhn attempts to walk them back in his "Postscript" (205-206). Relativism and Radical Epistemology: The Social Construction of Truth, Reality, and Science: The central questions become: If there are no absolute truths of perception, knowledge, and science -- there is nothing behind or underneath our perception and thought; if there is nothing that can ultimately justify or guide our perception and thought; if there is no concrete ground or reality beyond us; and if there is no outside, neutral, or independent arbiter or judge of various truth claims, then exactly what is the nature of modern science, truth, and reality? Are they just false illusions, myths, and fictions (Quine)? Is true epistemological and methodological objectivity only a "science delusion"? According to Kuhn's critique of foundationalism -- Empiricism and Rationalism -- in Science there is No -- 1. Objective Reality or world of external, autonomous objects, things, and substances 2. Objective Fact or empirical evidence reflecting the real world, 3. Objective Truth or universal knowledge of the world, 4. Objective Method or true scientific procedure based on empirical evidence and testing, 5. Objective Validity or valid correspondence between ideas and reality, and, finally, no 6. Objective Observer or neutral and unbiased scientific investigator. Kuhn argues that Objectivity and Science do not reflect Reality, but are Constructs. If he is correct, then there is no epistemology or methodology that can definitively justify or validate any thought, reality, or correspondence between the two. In the perception and analysis of a substance or object (Hume), table (Russell), three-dimensional box (Hanson), wax (Descartes), false playing cards (Kuhn), the geocentric universe of Ptolemy or the heliocentric universe of Copernicus, discontinuous motion (Aristotle) or continuous curve (Galileo), and phlogiston (Becher) or oxygen (Priestly), there is never a way to get to the underlying reality to obtain objective truth. We only have only access to phenomena or representations -- knowledge and science are only interpretations of reality. If this is the case, then why are certain theories or paradigms accepted as true reflections of empirical reality at particular historical moments in time? There is no Objectivity of any kind; there is only a reality that is socially constructed. For Kuhn, truth and reality are constructions of a scientific consensus built around the scientific method of puzzle-solving; for Descartes, they are based on the principles of the "ghost in the machine" (thinking substance in the extended substance); for Burtt, they are a construct based on the metaphysical principles of beauty, harmony, and simplicity found in mathematics; for Popper, they are formed by the ability of science to explain and predict nature according to formal universal laws; for Merchant the metaphysics of science is founded on the death of nature; while, for Berman and Braverman, they represent a social construction of reality by the total social system of capitalism. The issue of justification of knowledge and science thus becomes a sociological and historical question. We have moved from a theory of reality (ontology), knowledge (epistemology) and science (methodology) to a theory that knowledge is constructed and that all we know are the constructions themselves -- we can never get beyond or behind the gestalt, paradigm, or theory in order to determine if the picture is a duck or a rabbit or nature is a living organism (Ancients) or mechanical and deterministic machine (Moderns). A social theory of science and critical ecology may be constructed on the basis of puzzle-solving (Kuhn), prediction and control over a lifeless, mechanical nature (Herrschaftswissen: Bacon, Descartes, Weber, Scheler, Husserl, Heidegger, and Marcuse), beauty, harmony, simplicity, and mathematical elegance (Burtt), or the causal interplay between Capitalism and the Enlightenment (Berman). This course evolves from issues of Ontology (objective reality), Epistemology (knowledge and truth), Methodology (philosophy and methods of science), History (history of modern science), and Sociology (social theory of knowledge and science) to a theory of Critical Ecology -- Shallow Ecology or Environmentalism of Al Gore, Deep Ecology of Arne Naess, Bill Devall, George Sessions, Warwick Fox, and Fritjof Capra, Social Ecology or Social Anarchism of Murray Bookchin, Marxist Ecology of Marx, John Bellamy Foster, and Tony Burns, and Feminist Ecology of Carolyn Merchant. The epistemological foundation of science has moved from ontology, being, and reality to utility, domination, and control over nature. Social Theory of Science: An Introduction to the Domination, Alienation, and Rationalization of Nature and Humanity: Kuhn's work may be viewed as a direct critique of the Enlightenment view of reason and science. The rest of the course will be an outline of a social theory that attempts to develop the implications of this process of Rationalization and explain the role of science in bureaucracy, production, society, medicine, economics, personality development, and ecology -- the domination of nature (Max Weber and E. A. Burtt), disenchantment of the world (Morris Berman), industrial production (Karl Marx and Harry Braverman), creation of the last man in the iron cage (Max Weber), the dialectic of the Enlightenment and Rise of Nazism (Max Horkheimer), social psychology and the culture of narcissism (Sigmund Freud and Christopher Lasch), creation of medicine and economics (Fritjof Capra), and the debate about the Environment and Ecology: Environmentalism, Deep or Spiritual Ecology, Social Ecology, and Critical Ecology. The course begins with an analysis of Kuhn's theory of knowledge and philosophy of science; it will then explore his critical theory of science and rejection of positivism (PERRRSONNNN). He rejects what some call the METAPHYSICS or IDEOLOGY OF SCIENCE or the underlying normative and unconscious assumptions and values of Western science from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. The various Forms of Positivism in Western thought include the following: (1) Empiricism of Francis Bacon, John Locke, George Berkeley, David Hume, and Ernst Mach; (2) Rationalism of Rene Descartes; (3) Social Science Positivism of Henri de Saint-Simon, Pierre-Simon Laplace, and Auguste Comte; (4) Analytic Philosophy of G. E. Moore, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Bertram Russell; (5) Logical Positivism of A. J. Ayer, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Carl Hempel, Rudolph Carnap, and Hans Reichenbach; and (6) Critical Rationalism of Karl Popper. Logical positivism which, broadly defined, includes numbers 4, 5, and 6, developed out of earlier positivism and analytic philosophy and was essentially a critical reaction to the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl, the existentialism and metaphysics of Heidegger, and the neo-Kantianism of Ernst Cassirer. It should be noted that these values will play an important role in our later discussion of the environmental crisis of nature. Positivism is the philosophical and ideological theory of knowledge and science that the only legitimate and authoritative form of knowledge is based on the epistemology and methods of the natural sciences, that is, based on verifiable experience, matters of fact, and mathematical logic. (As we shall see as this course develops, positivism as PERRRSONNNN is a social reflection and ideological defense of the underlying structures of capitalist political economy as RRAANNDDD: Rationalization (Weber), Repression (Freud), Alienation (Marx), Anomie (Durkheim), Nothingness (Schopenhauer), Nihilism (Nietzsche), Dehumanization (Marx), Disenchantment (Weber), and Dereglement (Durkheim) (Berman, 22, 17-18, 50, 45-46, and 55). Classical Social Theory represents a critique of capitalism, as well as a critique of its philosophy of science and underlying metaphysics of science.) The various epistemological and methodological principles of positivism -- the foundations of modern science listed below -- assume an underlying metaphysical reality that may be broken down into the following elements taken from a synthesis of Kolakowski's The Alienation of Reason and Habermas's Knowledge and Human Interests; see especially Kolakowski, facts are value-laden (136) and nominalism and phenomenalism (7), as well as Habermas (3-5, 67-69, 74, 76-77, 80, 90-91, and 313): 1. Predictivism or universally accepted theory of science based on observational problems, inferential logic & conjectural theories, hypothetical and testable deductions of rationalism, mathematical models, and explanatory & deterministic predictions. New theories are not induced but deduced from observational questions and hypothetical conjectures. (critical rationalism of Popper) 2. Empiricism or knowledge based on the accumulation of empirical facts. (epistemology of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume) 3. Realism or objective correspondence of concepts/theories and facts since objects are independent of perception and thought -- "epistemological realism". (correspondence or copy theory of truth of Locke, Berkeley, and Russell) (also has an ontological dimension that evolved from Platonic and Medieval Realism) 4. Reductionism or the reduction of an object to its elementary and mechanical parts and functional relationships (Cartesian Reductionism) 5. Rationalism or that truth is defined in terms of mathematical, mechanical, deterministic, and quantitative relationships and measures that predict outcomes and confirm hypothesis. 6. Scientism or the universality of the method of science: natural science as the only legitimate and universal form of knowledge and truth and all knowledge justified only through sense certainty. (philosophy of science of Comte, Mach, and Popper) 7. Objectivism or Physicalism or existence of an external, autonomous world of things, facts, or objective reality usually viewed as quantitative and mathematical objectivity. There is a real world that exists independently of our perceptions, theories, and constructions. (Comte, Mach, and Russell) ("ontological or philosophical realism" of Platonic philosophy and medieval scholasticism) 8. Naturalism or the universality of the metaphysics of science, reductionism, and the belief that the social world corresponds to the natural world in terms of objects, parts, causality, and laws and applies the objective method based on empirical evidence in science as the only legitimate procedure to establish universal and deterministic laws of nature based on hypothesis construction, experimentation, and empirical prediction (methodology) for arriving at technical explanations and instrumental knowledge of utility (instrumentalism). It also involves the search for universal laws in society. (George Santayana and John Dewey) 9. Neutralism or the foundation of the natural sciences in the objective, neutral, impartial, and unbiased investigation into and description of the external world of objects and facts -- it divides the world into scientific facts and metaphysical or speculative values. (Carnap, Hempel, Popper, and Reichenbach) 10. Nominalism (metaphysics) or general/universal terms have no meaning or existence -- there is no substance, matter, or essence (ontological realism), only Nothingness, Nihilism, and Disenchantment -- since experience and science are only names or the sum of concrete particular objects and empirical facts (phenomenalism). (Buridan, Ockham, Bacon, and Hume). Nominalism (moral philosophy) also represents a separation of science and ethics, facts and values, and realism and nominalism and leads to moral skepticism, relativism, nihilism, and the rejection of all objective moral values and natural law (Nietzsche). It is the "denial of the transcending elements of Reason" (Marcuse) What is real can only be defined by empiricism. (William of Oakham, Bacon, and Hume). Nominalism undermines nature, God, and universal moral principles as the basis for natural ecology, social theory, historical critique, and social praxis. In classical social theory, existentialism and nominalism are expressed as disenchantment and anomie. 11. Nomothetic Laws or the scientific laws of nature, history, and society which stress explanation, causality, and prediction as opposed to the ideographic method within sociology which stresses the understanding of the meaning and importance of particular, unique, and subjective historical phenomena. (Comte, Wilhelm Windelband, Herbert Spencer, and Popper). Positivism is a theory and philosophy of positive science based on 1. Metaphysical Principles and Assumptions of Naturalism and Objectivism 2. Epistemological Principles and Rules of Objectivism, Realism, Empiricism, and Rationalism and 3. Methodological Principles and Rules of Scientism, Reductionism, Predictivism, Neutralism, Nominalism, and Nomological Laws These are principles, rules, and assumptions ( or illusions, appearances, or ideologies) about the nature and study of the social world -- about what there is beyond subjectivity and consciousness; what we know about the external and objective world; and how we know it in terms of the objectivity and validity of our knowledge of the world. It assumes that the Metaphysics, Epistemology, and Methodology of the social sciences (sociology) are grounded in the same set of assumptions about knowledge and reality as that of the positive or natural sciences and that the two distinct worlds are constructed in the same way and follow the same or similar laws of causal, mechanical, and predictive occurrences. Sociology as the scientific study of social institutions, structures, and values is ultimately based on the metaphysical assumptions of naturalism and objectivism -- there is a real, external world beyond consciousness that can be examined using the metaphysics, epistemology, and methodology of the natural sciences. Kuhn's philosophy and history of science represents a philosophical rejection of the epistemological and methodological foundations of Enlightenment science -- PERRRSONNNN -- predictivism, empiricism, realism and reductionism, scientism, objectivism, naturalism, neutralism, nominalism, and nomothetic laws. That is, Kuhn rejects the traditional view of positivism since Hume which consists of a belief in objective reality (objectivism), the objective scientific method (naturalism), and objective knowledge as a mirror of objective reality (realism). His theory is thus a critique of both Enlightenment objectivity (Hume and Descartes) and subjectivity (Kant). Neither nature nor consciousness can provide the foundations for science; neither epistemology nor methodology can ground truth. One of the classic ironies of Western thought and the contradictions of its various theories of knowledge is that empiricism, rationalism, and idealism provided both the foundations and justification for scientific rationality, as well as provided for the very intellectual tools for its philosophical unraveling -- Descartes' rejection of secondary qualities and perception, Hume's skepticism at the empirical and logical justification of substance, causality, and self (Books 5 and 12), and Kant's theory of representations and appearances as the basis for true knowledge. According to Kuhn, it is society which ultimately performs this function in the form of a consensus within the scientific community. Later social theorists and historians of ideas will argue that science can only be explained by the structures of political economy and the cultural world values (Weltanschauung) of society in which it develops. Thus Epistemology and Methodology evolve into a Critical Social Theory. The role of a theorist is to ask, Why is this particular view or construct of reality accepted as valid at this historical moment? What are the underlying normative assumptions -- the metaphysics of science and the dogmatism of positivism -- guiding the modern view of science? For further reading on a postmodernist and relativistic theory of knowledge and critique of positivism, see Leszek Kolakowski, The Alienation of Reason: A History of Positivist Thought (1968); Juergen Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, Chapter 4, pp. 67-90 (1971); and Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979). Kuhn and the Kantians: Philosophy of Science and the Dilemma of Constructed Reality: Although Kuhn's work landed as an intellectual bombshell on American analytic philosophy when it was published in the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science in 1962, his ideas were not new to the European tradition which had gone through a similar critique of Enlightenment theories of knowledge with Hume's theory of empiricism and skepticism about the nature and origin of causality, substance, and the self, Kant's theory of the representation of phenomena, critique of empiricism and rationalism, and his theory of transcendental (universal and necessary) subjectivity, and Hegel's radicalization of "critique" and his rejection of foundationalism, epistemology, and objective truth and reality in creating his phenomenological analysis of the development of self-consciousness (culture and social institutions) in the alienated culture of modernity; history, phenomenology, ethical community (Sittlichkeit), and the dialectic replaced Kant's transcendental reconstruction of consciousness. With the development in critical idealism and materialism of a theory of constructed reality, sociology expands the idea with its critique of ideology and sociology of religion, knowledge, and science; epistemology is transformed into social theory. This field finds its conceptual completion in Berger and Luckmann's concept of the "social construction of reality." Reality is not present as a thing-in-itself nor can it be objectively and neutrally compared to perception, experience, or reflection. This is the epistemological dilemma of double affection: one cannot see both the sensation and the object of sensation at the same time. Rather, reality or objectivity is a construct of the mind, history, society, culture, or the superego and unconscious. This is the Constitution Theory of Truth as found in the imagination of Hume, the transcendental consciousness of Kant, the Objective and Absolute Spirit of Hegel, ideology and class consciousness of Marx, Protestant ethic and value relevance of Weber, the collective conscience and cultural representations of Durkheim, and the repressed and unconscious mind of Freud. What would nature, reality, and objectivity look like if we could get behind its social construction to reality itself; what is reality really like independent of the manner and form in which we experience and know it; and how can we compare ideas and theories to reality if reality is created and transformed by human consciousness and society? Is there a reality pure and independent of and irrespective of its construction by consciousness, concepts, theories, history, culture, and society? What does and could this mean? Is this even logically possible? What does knowledge, truth, and science mean in a constructed universe? This European tradition will be examined further in more advanced courses in social theory. We will now return to Kuhn's theory of science and its implications for a critical theory of ecology. Kuhn's theory of scientific revolutions represents in one small package a recapitulation and critique of Western analytic and synthetic Logic (Descartes), Epistemology (empiricism and rationalism), explanatory and predictive Method and Laws (Popper), and Utilitarian theory of Science (Bacon, Descartes, Weber, Scheler, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Critical Theorists). Positivism is the prevailing ideology in both the natural and social sciences at the end of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first centuries. In this course, we have stressed the post-analytic tradition in American philosophy and its critique of positivism in the natural sciences. [Special Sidenote: It should be noted that this criticism of positivistic science also once played a crucial role in European sociology.] Critique of Knowledge and the Rejection of Positivism: Historical Variations of Neo-Kantian Thought: The subjective or constitutive theory of truth and the discussion about the organizational principle or a priori synthetic unity of the mind form the foundation of the critical European intellectual tradition in British Skepticism (Hume), German Idealism (Immanuel Kant and Georg F. Hegel), German Existentialism (Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche) and Classical Social Theory (Karl Marx, Max Weber, and Emile Durkheim). The critical tradition continues to evolve in neo-Hegelian epistemology, neo-Kantianism (Wilhelm Windelband, Heinrich Rickert, and Ernst Troeltsch and also Paul Natorp, Hermann Cohen, and Ernst Cassirer), Phenomenology (Max Scheler, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Georg Simmel, Alfred Schutz, Peter Berger, and Thomas Luckmann), Existentialism (Martin Heidegger, Karl Jaspers, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Maurice Merleau Ponty), German School of Economics (Otto von Gierke, Karl Knies, and Gustav Radbruch), Historical Sociology (Karl Polanyi, E. P. Thompson, Eric Hobsbawm, Paul Tilly, and Emanuel Wallerstein), Hermeneutics (Friedrich Schleiermacher, Georg Simmel, Max Weber, Wilhelm Dilthey, and Hans-Georg Gadamer), Depth Hermeneutics/Neo-Freudianism (Karl Otto Apel, Alfred Lorenzer, Juergen Habermas, and Paul Ricoeur), Gestalt psychology (Norwood Hanson), Linguistic anthropology (Benjamin Lee Whorf and Edward Sapir), Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School (Georg Lukacs, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Eric Fromm, Herbert Marcuse, and Juergen Habermas), Ethnomethodology (Alfred Schutz and Harold Garfinkel), American Pragmatism (George Herbert Mead, John Dewey, and Richard Rorty), Post-Analytic Philosophy (Karl Popper, Willard van Quine, Wilfrid Sellars, Imre Lakatos, and Paul Feyerabend),and Critical Ecology (Feminism, Marxism, and Social Ecology). These various schools of thought broaden our understanding of the range and impact in America of Kuhn's theory of knowledge and science as a paradigmatic or theoretical construct. Kuhn is thus part of a more comprehensive philosophical critique of empiricism, nominalism, and positivism. Structure and Logic of the Course: Crisis of the Enlightenment and the Environment: Kuhn's critique of science and epistemology frames the direction of this course and provides for a more systematic, critical, and in-depth investigation into the relationships between nature and society, science and society. Thus, this course begins with an introductory analysis of philosophy of science with Hume, Russell, Popper, Quine, and Kuhn; moves into a sociology of science with Berman and Braverman; expands into a social theory of science with Nietzsche, Weber, Scheler, Horkheimer, Lasch, and Capra; and ends in a critical theory of ecology with Shallow, Deep, Social, Feminist, and Marxist ecological theories. In American sociology the a priori self-constitution of consciousness and experience (subjectivity) from Kant, Hegel, Marx, etc. has been replaced by a philosophy of science and the primacy of the method of the natural sciences (objectivity). Kuhn rejects the replacement of a constitution theory of truth (Kant) with a philosophy and metaphysics of science (Comte) -- PERSONNNN: Predictivism, Empiricism, Realism, Scientism, Objectivism, Naturalism, Neutralism, Nominalism, and Nomothetic Laws. His criticisms leads us to the following: (1) a return to Kant's a priori constitution of the mind and experience (epistemology); (2) Hegel's analysis of the self-conscious development and formation of the mind, experiences, and spirit of humanity (phenomenology): (3) a materialist political economy and sociology of science (Burtt, Berman, and Braverman): (4) a critical theory of science and society (Horkheimer, Lasch, and Habermas): and (5) a social theory of radical ecology (Capra, Merchant, and Bookchin). Kuhn's conclusion is that there is no objective science, no objective reality, and no objective method or truth, that is, there is no objective basis to argue that science (physics, chemistry, biology, etc.) deals with the external, physical reality as it truly is. Instead science examines only our constructed perceptions and interpretive ideas of that reality -- PARADIGMS -- which are the metaphysical and theoretical assumptions of the Cartesian/Newtonian worldview. This course is divided into three main parts -- (1) a theory of knowledge and philosophy of science; (2) a sociology of knowledge; and (3) a critical social theory. The first part of the course outlines the debates within philosophy about whether science reflects nature or objective reality -- Science as the Mirror of Nature; the second part examines science as more a reflection of society's political economy and social values -- Science as the Mirror of Society and Production; and the third part deals with a critique of both one and two and the development of social alternatives to the crisis of the Enlightenment (mirror of nature) and the Environment (mirror of production) in a critical theory of social ecology. The transition from epistemology to a critical social theory -- from Kant to Marx and the Frankfurt School -- requires a synthesis of philosophy, sociology, and political economy. Science as Social Construct and Foundation of Existentialism and Relativism: I. Nature, Science, and Epistemology: According to the fundamental principles of the critique of pure reason in Kantian epistemology, we cannot know the thing-in-itself, but only the phenomena and appearances created by our own subjectivity or consciousness. According to Kant, our knowledge of the external world through perception and experience is a product of consciousness as the transcendental subjectivity. Kuhn, Burtt, Berman, and Horkheimer move the argument to the next level: Nature is viewed as a Construct, and a social construct at that -- a construct of subjectivity (Kantian philosophy), the scientific community (post-analytic philosophy), consciousness (phenomenology), or the material foundations and structures of society (Marxism). This gives us the opening to begin discussion on the nature of the process of the construction of modern science within Western society -- the move from epistemology and philosophy of science to history and critical social theory. Science is a construction of Liberalism and Capitalism since it is these political and economic systems which are the primary factors in the construction of our view of science, nature, and the environment. It then becomes easier to see that the environmental crisis is not just a crisis of the use or abuse of science and technology, but it is also a crisis of the organization and structure of society itself; the environmental crisis requires more than a technological fix or adjustment, better and more rational planning, alternative use of natural resources, and more effective and efficient application of technology to nature -- it requires a transformation of consciousness and the whole social system. Baked into the values, concepts, logic, and theories of modern science -- its epistemology, methodologies, explanatory theories, and empirical and predictive laws -- are the unarticulated and unconscious values of the social system -- Metaphysics of Science -- that are created by a modern commercial and industrial capitalist system. This is an a priori worldview of a mechanistic, deterministic, and self-moving machine; this is a world that ends in the Death of Nature. Thus, this course examines the nature of science within modern society and the structures of political economy: SOCIAL SYSTEM = SCIENCE (Herrschaftswissen, industrial technology, and the Enlightenment) + SOCIETY (Liberalism and Capitalism) + NATURE (physical reality, Environment, and Ecological Crisis). In the course Social Justice, we examined the limits of charity and personal kindness as a foundation for the virtuous life. Following Aristotle's moral philosophy, it is not simply a question of practical reason (ethics and politics) of the moral imperatives and actions of right or wrong, but of the integration of Ethics and the Virtuous Life (Nicomachean Ethics 1, 5, and 6), Economics and the Moral/Household Economy (Politics 1), and Politics, Law, and the Best Constitutions (Politics 3 and 6) into a comprehensive and holistic examination of the structures of society. Just as with moral philosophy and ethics, science, too, must be viewed within the totality of social relationships. II. Positivism, Existentialism, and the Decline of Reason: The second major part of our analysis of science this semester lies in its relationship to existentialism, nominalism, and relativism and the potential dangers that this creates for social theory. Social theory is reduced to the knowledge of the last man, the iron cage, and the repression of reason and theory (Nietzsche, Weber, and Horkheimer, respectively). III. Nature, Science, and Social Theory: Finally, we shall consider whether both science and society need to be radically transformed before we can begin to solve the ecological crisis. This will be accomplished by approaching the question through a comparative analysis of Shallow or Reform Ecology, Deep Ecology, and Social Ecology (anarchism, Marxism, and eco-feminism). Last Lecture: Summary of Kuhn and his Integration of the Theories of Impressions, Perception, Mind, Spirit, and Language in the Notion of Paradigm: The last class on Kuhn begins with his critique of empiricism, objectivism, and realism (28 and 120). Since there is no objective reality and no knowledge of objective reality, the method of verification of scientific theories lies in puzzle-solving and utility (37, 80, and 206). The discourse has now moved from philosophy of science to the sociology of science. Although there is no absolute truth, there still remains the validity of PERSONNNN within the prevailing scientific paradigm: Predictivism, Empiricism, Realism, Scientism, Objectivism, Naturalism, Neutralism, Nominalism, and Nomothetic Laws. There is no absolute objectivity, reality, and truth (ontology and epistemology) but there is an objectivity, reality, and truth within the paradigm itself (sociology, consensus, and technological utility). Science is ontologically relative (205) but tentatively universal within utility thus making each paradigm independent and incommensurable (147-148): Aristotle can never be compared to Galileo, just as the Indo-European and adjectival-idiom languages cannot be compared to the Hopi Indians and verbal- idiom languages. Science does not evolve by getting closer to the truth (Popper) but by responding to the built-up accumulation of anomalies and inconsistencies in each paradigm resulting in a scientific revolution (152-153). Popper is correct that objectivity no longer rests in reality but in method and the consequent domination of nature (Herrschaftswissen). Summary of the Critique of Empiricism by Kuhn: Variations on Kantian Themes: 1. Epistemological Critique: 18th-19th Century Hume, Kant, and Hegel Subjectivity, as imagination, consciousness, or Spirit, creates Objectivity. The key question initially raised asks the following: Describe the sensations in perception of this classroom table (Russell), lecture hall (Adorno), and ballpoint pen (McCarthy). 2. Linguistic and Anthropological Critique: 20th Century Hanson and Whorf Language, Gestalt, and the Mind create Objectivity. Discuss the different perceptions of reality from the perspective of the different forms of language: an adjectival language, verbal language, and adverbial language; discuss the different psychological forms of perception influenced by the gestalt or form of perception as one can see a picture of a duck or rabbit and does this box go in or out; and, finally, describe the picture of the world presented by the distinctive linguistic structure and verbal idiom (process and action) of the Hopi Indians. 3. Post-Analytic Philosophy of Science Critique: 20th Century Popper, Quine, Sellars, Kuhn, Lakatos, and Feyerabend Theory, Paradigms, and the Scientific Community create Objectivity. Reason cannot justify or validate inductive and empirical statements but can only falsify them. The philosophy of science critique moves from empiricism, skepticism, and the imagination (Hume), empiricism and falsification (Popper), and the myth of objective reality and the idea that all synthetic statements can be made into analytic and logical statements (Quine) to the theory of paradigms as forms of religious conversion and ideological conviction within the scientific community (Kuhn). ************** Here are two other relevant neo-Kantian traditions. However, they were not utilized by Kuhn. 4. Existential Critique of Knowledge and Science: 18th-19th Century Kant, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche Transcendental Subjectivity creates Objectivity. But true objectivity is never reached (thing-in-itself) and all we truly know is subjective consciousness whose categories change over time (perspectivism). We never gain access to objective reality. Objectivity begins as a form of universal consciousness (Kant), but slowly disappears as a dream or illusion (Schopenhauer), and then as a form of decadence and idolatry (Nietzsche). 5. 19th- and 20th-Century Social Theory: Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Alfred Sch�tz, George Herbert Mead, and Berger and Luckmann Reality is not constructed by the imagination, mind, transcendental subject, or by the scientific community but is, instead, a social construct of modern industrial society. Beyond Kuhn's Philosophy of Science Toward a Critical Sociology: Social Construction of Reality and Science through the Metaphysics of Science and Political Economy: Kuhn's analysis of science as a scientific consensus and social construct opens up whole new avenues of questions regarding the origins, nature, and logic of modern science. What is normal science (24), a paradigm, puzzle-solving (35-42), scientific revolution, theoretical anomalies and incommensurability (97, 148, and 204-05), ideology (138), and interpretive community consensus (94); and what are the social foundations of objectivity and scientific knowledge? According to Kuhn, objectivity in science became an issue of interpretation, politics, ideology, religion, and perception. Within empiricism and positivism one can only examine the philosophy, logic, and methodology used by science. But since modern science has traditionally been viewed as the basis of all universal and absolute knowledge explaining the world according to the immutable laws of nature, these were internal questions outlining its manner of concept and theory formation. However, with Kuhn's critique of empiricism, realism, and nominalism, new questions can now be raised about the social and metaphysical origins of science and its conceptual and theoretical imperative towards the management and utility of nature (206). In the seventeenth century, the Why questions of teleology and final causes were replaced by the How questions of technical management and utility; now the technical philosophical questions of epistemology and methodology have been supplemented by the sociological questions of What, When, Where, and Why. If there is no objective reality and no corresponding objective science where and why did science develop in the way it did? What are its historical and sociological origins? What was the new social consensus in the seventeenth century that precipitated the scientific and later industrial revolutions -- the metaphysics of science? What happened in the seventeenth century to create a new Weltanschauung or world outlook that emphasized the dualism, death, and domination of nature? In what way has society help construct the logic, method, and theories of science? Once the universality and absolute nature of science is questioned, then a whole new series of issues arise. The remaining weeks of this course will unravel this interesting mystery as it asks questions about the following issues: metaphysics of science, Cartesian dualism, analytic and synthetic method, ghost-in-the machine, death of nature, and the view that the physical world is a lifeless machine that can be explained through mathematics and predictive science (Burtt and Berman) and whose ultimate purpose is the power and control over nature (Bacon, Weber, Scheler, and Heidegger). Next, questions are raised as to the origins of this metaphysical view of nature that makes science possible. To respond to these more sociological and historical questions, we move beyond the scientific community and the Metaphysics of Science to the importance of Social Structures. Berman and Braverman maintain that the concepts, theories, and logic of science reflect the logic, values, and institutions of capitalism. Science does not mirror nature (epistemology and philosophy of science), but is instead a reflection of industrial society (sociology and political economy) with its goal of the commodification of natural life, domination of nature, and the domination of human beings (Horkheimer). Science is the not the Mirror of Nature, but the Mirror of Production. It is paradigmatic Science that creates Nature, while at the same time science cannot be compared to nature. But if science and paradigms are social products, one could expand Kuhn to argue that it is Society that creates Science and, in turn, Nature. Finally, these questions will have an important impact on how we frame and examine the crisis of the environment at the end of the course and the debates among the environmentalists (Gore), deep ecologists (Capra and Naess), and social ecologists (Bookchin, Carter, and Merchant). At this point in the course, we now turn to the area of the "metaphysics of science" or the seventeenth-century consensus over the values about nature and utilitarian reason which made science possible. Borrowing from a rich intellectual tradition, Kuhn rejects empirical truth (Popper) and falsifying methods (Quine) as the basis for the philosophical justification of scientific theories. Rather, it is the social consensus within the scientific community about the paradigms, paradigm shifts, scientific revolutions, and puzzle-solving questions that become the central focus of attention. We have moved from epistemology and a philosophy of science to the history of science and social consensus as the foundation of science. Now, as we develop this argument further in this course, we will see that the concept of "society" expands beyond the scientific community to include history, political economy, and the structures of society. FROM EMPIRICISM + RATIONALISM ---- SOCIOLOGY FROM HUME + POPPER ---- QUINE AND KUHN Transition from Science to Society: The Apriori Politics and Hidden Values of Science: Underlying the scientific method, theory formation, empirical hypotheses construction, and experimental testing there lie substantive social and political values that are merely assumed to be truth or not even recognized as assumed that potentially and negatively affect the creation and application of science itself. Kuhn articulates one aspect of the social forces -- scientific community -- that comes into play in the creation of science and nature. That is, the natural sciences are, in reality, political sciences, that is, they are apriori political and technological. What other elements of society are central to our understanding of the formation of the Enlightenment and Western science? The following lectures outline these issues in three distinct parts: Part I examines the hidden assumptions within Enlightenment Epistemology, Methodology, and Metaphysics; Part II examines the various forms of political domination that evolve out of the natural sciences in its relationships to Nature, the Economy, Social Sciences, and Society; and Part III examines natural science and its relation to political ideology, existentialism, capitalism, and the ecological crisis. Thus the shadows of the Enlightenment refer to the metaphysics and ideology of the natural and social sciences, as well as their underlying normative imperative for the domination of nature and society. These shadows, which hide the metaphysical and ideological darkness of the Enlightenment, then become barriers to understanding and preventing ecological crises. The natural sciences are objective and true within the historical framework of a theory of knowledge and science that is accepted within the scientific community; epistemology and methodology provide the foundations and justifications of science itself. However, these very foundations are themselves open to social and historical critique. That is, underlying the evolution of modern science is a hidden or apriori dimension of politics that incorporates the metaphysics of science (nature: Burtt and Berman), its operational, formal, and instrumental concepts, logic, and rationality (methodology: Weber and Marcuse), and its apriori technological application to nature (epistemology: Marcuse) and to the economy (Capra and Schumacher). Although rarely discussed or even noticed, politics is built into the very sinews and heart of scientific inquiry; only after the politics are unconsciously embedded into science is it then viewed as objective and universally true. What does this all mean? SCIENCE AS APRIORI POLITICS: POLITICS OF EPISTEMOLOGY, METAPHYSICS, METHODOLOGY, TECHNOLOGY, FORMAL REASON, DISENCHANTMENT, AND IDEOLOGY: (1) Epistemology: Social Consensus and Agreement of Scientific Paradigms: social construction of knowledge and science based on scientific paradigm, agreement, and consensus (Kuhn, Quine, Popper, and Rorty) (2) Metaphysics: Theology and the Nature of the Machine: the drive to the mechanization and mathematization of nature based on the model of production and the economy (Descartes, Burtt, Berman, and Merchant); (3) Methodology: Formation of Operational and Formal Concepts: the domination and control over nature -- Herrschaftswissen. This involves the development of operational, instrumental, formal, and technologically applicable concepts to be applied to nature (Bacon, Weber, Scheler, Husserl, and Heidegger); (4) Technology: Application of Operational and Technological Concepts: reflects the actual application of operational and formal concepts to the technical control over labor and the workplace (Braverman); (5) Formal Reason and Positivism: Justification of Positivism in Economics and the Academy formal rationalization and justification of the technical application of science within the social sciences and academy (dialectic and eclipse of reason: Adorno and Horkheimer); (6) Effects of Scientific Rationalization: Alienation, Disenchantment, and Existentialism: the effects of the Enlightenment in society in the form of formal reason, disenchantment, existentialism, and the rise of fascism (Weber and Horkheimer); and (7) Historical Materialism: Connecting Science to Political Economy, Consciousness to Economics: the natural sciences are an historical and social product and superstructure of their time and thus a form of problems, ideas, hypotheses, and theories that reflect the underlying moral, ethical, and political imperatives of a capitalist political economy. Technical concepts, empirical research, and abstract, mathematical theory are expressions of the deep social and historical connections between science and political economy, consciousness and capitalism, culture and the social system, and ideas and the social reality (historical materialism: Marx, Lukacs, and Sohn-Rethel). The natural sciences must be integrated with the social sciences (and humanities), ecological justice with social justice, and the laws of nature and the laws of society before the natural environment and the ecological crisis can be truly understood and resolved. THE POLITICS OF SCIENCE IN ITS METAPHYSICS, EPISTEMOLOGY, METHODOLOGY, TECHNOLOGY, AND IDEOLOGY: NATURAL SCIENCES ARE APRIORI POLITICAL SCIENCES Part I. Hidden Political Assumptions of Natural Science and the Domination of Nature 1. Epistemology and Social Constructivism: critique of independent, objective reality, empirical facts, and objective truth (Post-Modern Philosophy of Thomas Kuhn and Richard Rorty) 2. Methodology of Natural Science: Ontology vs. Utility or Techne: scientific truth based on inductive and deductive reason to get access to being and reality vs. science defined in terms of usefulness, solving technical problems raised by paradigm, and puzzle solving (Post-Analytic Philosophy of Kuhn, Popper, Quine, Lakatos, and Feyerabend) 3. Metaphysics of Natural Science: Metatheory of Science: scientific methods expand to become more than a formal, logical approach to the study of nature but includes a whole artful panoply of metaphysics, including the dualism of reality, mind/body distinction, quantification of human experience, mechanization of world, machine and mathematics, laws, explanation, and prediction. Physical world described in terms of the dualism between the mind and body, sensations and understanding, and primary and secondary qualities (Empiricism and Rationalism of Bacon, Descartes, Hume, Berman, and E. A. Burtt). The epistemology, methodology, and the metaphysics of science construct the paradigm and "objective reality" of science 4. Domination of Nature: Herrschaftswissen as Politics: natural science as the science of mechanical and deterministic control over the environment. Berman argues that science is a form of "alienated consciousness"; science expresses the disenchantment, logic, trauma, and pathologies of capital production (Phenomenology of Scheler, Weber, Husserl, and Heidegger). Natural science is not the "mirror of nature" but the "mirror of production" -- technical and instrumental reason, utility, mechanism, and materialism Part II. Forms of Political Domination in Social Science: Domination of Humanity and Society 5. Domination of the Economy: Methodology and the Technical Application of Science in Production: science as apriori political and technical as it reproduces the social relations or social organization of production in the workplace in difference social systems (Marxist Social Theory and History of Marcuse, Braverman, Alfred Sohn-Rethel, Franz Borkenau, Alexandre Koyre, Friedrich Tomberg, E. P. Thompson, and William Leiss) 6. Epistemology and Metaphysics of Social Science: Politics of Positivism in Social Sciences: study of empirical surface phenomena, no depth explanation of the structures and logic of power and oppression in political economy (Marx), no depth hermeneutics (Freud). Social sciences do not reflect objective reality but a pre-defined social reality. 7. Domination of Society and Humanity: Eclipse of Reason: loss of critical social theory, ethics, and social justice in contemporary positivist methodology (Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School of Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse, and Habermas) Part III. Summary of Science as Politics and Ideology: 8. Science as a Political Ideology: summary of all of the above elements of scientific enquiry that are the basis for the argument that science is fundamentally normative and political as it is grounded in the deepest values of modern political economy and society -- Epistemology, Methodology, Metaphysics, Technology, and Politics (Marx, Horkheimer, Marcuse, and Habermas). The apriori political values of science are articulated in the following forms: (1) metaphysics of science; (2) metatheoretical imperatives to control and dominate nature; (3) reproduction of the social relations of production in the technical forces of production; (4) the politics of positivism to reproduce the given social values and phenomena in social science; and (5) positivism's inability to develop a critical social science. Because of these elements, science has become a form of political ideology. Science is not objective and neutral in the traditional sense, but burdened by deep underlying political values that influence its approach to and appropriation of nature, including its metaphysics (Burtt, 14, 17, 20, 24 and Berman 33), utility and domination of nature (Burtt, 24, 29, and 33 and Berman 39-40, 50-51, and 55), apriori technology and application to economic production (Braverman), and its pervasive influence by the social pathologies of classical social theory (Berman, 17-19 and 22-23)) 9. Science as a Symptom of Social Pathologies and Existentialism: science as symptom of alienation and disenchantment -- loss of meaning, creativity, and natural law (Scientia abscondita) purpose in the world (Existentialism of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Weber, Durkheim, Lasch, and Berman) Part IV. Nature and the Ecological Crisis: 10. Science, Capitalism, and the Environment: the final issue is about how these hidden political values affect the relationship between science and nature, science and society, and science and the ecological crisis (Deep Ecology of Arne Naess, Bill Devall, George Sessions, and Warwick Fox; Social Ecology of Murray Bookchin; Marxist Ecology of Marx, John Bellamy Foster, and Tony Burns; and Feminist Ecology of Carolyn Merchant). Overview of the Historicist School of the Philosophy of Science: The historicist school of the second half of the twentieth century includes the following authors: Thomas Kuhn, N.R. Hanson, Mary Hesse, Imre Lakatos, Paul Feyerabend, Stephen Toulmin, Dudley Shapere, Larry Laudan, Ernan McMullin, and Michael Ruse. They were critical of the neo-positivism of logical positivism and logical empiricism, verificationism, and scientific realism of the analytic philosophy of the first half of the twentieth century represented by Rudolf Carnap, Hans Reichenbach, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, G. E. Moore, Gottlob Frege, and Karl Popper. For more on the debate between analytic and post-analytic philosophy of science, see "Historicist Theories of Scientific Rationality," in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Kuhn has established the argument for a social epistemology; we must continue to investigate the history, structures, and cultural meaning of the word "social." The point now is to expand further these issues into the history of science, a sociology of knowledge, and critical social theory. Science and Capitalism: The Forms of Social Constructivism and the Transition from Epistemology to Sociology: Kuhn and Rorty have rejected to mirror metaphor as the basis for developing a philosophical theory of knowledge. They have replaced it with a form of social constructivism as we have seen above. The question now becomes: What is the theoretical basis for this shift in insight? Alfred Sohn-Rethel in his Intellectual and Manual Labor has written: "The question we ask is, what is the historical origin of our logical ability to construct mathematical hypotheses and the elements contributing to them? Neither Kant nor any other bourgeois thinker has pursued this enquiry consistency." According to Sohn-Rethel, Kant answers the question of the origins of the "synthetic unity of apperception" or the forms of consciousness in the intuition and the understanding as a form of idealist and transcendental spontaneity. This answer is really no answer. There have been a number of different attempts to answer this question: (1) Sohn-Rethel and the Forms of Abstraction of the Understanding and Exchange Value: Integrating Kant and Marx in his argument that the forms of intellectual abstraction of perception and knowledge are a product of the underlying materialism or forms of abstraction of commodity exchange (value, abstract labor, market exchange, surplus value, money, and profits -- all abstractions from the material use value of commodities). Individuals are isolated from the broader community; alienation, reciprocal isolation, and anomie are the foundation of Kant's synthetic unity since it is the foundation of the modern market and industrial economy. This represents the fusion of epistemology and historical materialism. Commodity exchange is the materialist side and foundation of the synthetic apriori judgments of consciousness (38-39). The exchange of money for empirical goods is accomplished in a temporal and spatial context of the market in which each commodity assumes a quantitative differentiation based on abstract labor and value and quantitatively expressed in terms of money. The basic categories of time, space, substance, and accidents are produced by a certain type of economy based on market exchange, and not by pure reason. The modern concept of nature created in the 17th-century is a product of an historically specific social system. Kant's concepts of the understanding have a social foundation (chapt. 6). (2) Marcuse and Epistemology and Technology: Science develops out of the technological a priori of its concepts to control and dominate nature and capitalist society. See chapter 6 in One-Dimensional Man. (3) F. Nietzsche, M. Weber, and M. Scheler: Metaphysics of Science: is a product of the imperative to dominate nature (Herrschaftswissen), the metaphysics of rationalization (determinism, mechanism, and causality), formalization of technical and subjective reason, and the rational institutionalization of society (bureaucracy) and science itself. (4) M. Horkheimer: Domination of Labor and Nature Science is a product of the domination of society and nature and ends in the eclipse of objective reason. (5) J. Habermas and the Apriori Interests of Science: Science is a product of the technical and formal interests of control over nature. See Toward a Rational Society and Knowledge and Human Interests. (6) C. Merchant and the Death of Nature: Science is grounded in the Cartesian dualism of mind and body, deterministic mechanism, and the death of nature. (6) K. Marx: In the Paris Manuscripts, Marx writes that in a socialist society there would be a different economic relationship with nature, not based on commodity production and exchange. This would create a different perception of nature and a different view of science. "It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines consciousness" (Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy). Whereas Sohn-Rethel examined the relationship between Kant's transcendental subjectivity and epistemological abstractionism and Marx's theory of value, exchange value, and quantitative abstractionism in production. Marx seemed to deal more with the relationship between science and metaphysics on one side and alienation, social relations of production, ideology and false consciousness and cultural values, and the structures of political economy on the other. Key Social Question: Does Science Change With the Creation of a New Society?: Sohn-Rethel then asks the key question lying behind all these criticisms: If science is grounded in history and society, "can we expect a major transformation of science if socialism were to supercede capitalism" (132)? Discuss. Critical Traditions on Issues of Nature, Science, Technology, and Politics: Evolution from Philosophy of Knowledge to Sociology of Science: The course began with Kant's theory of perception, experience, and knowledge that was grounded in human consciousness (transcendental subjectivity) -- knowledge is a construct of the human mind -- and moved to Kuhn's thesis that science is a product of social consensus within the scientific community based on utility and not ontology -- science is a social construct. The remainder of this course unpacks this idea that science is a social construct and not a reflection of reality (positivism). To articulate the implications of this revolutionary or Copernican idea, we will investigate the intellectual traditions that attempt to clarify and expand this connection between Science and Society: (1) Post-Analytic Philosophy: Quine and Popper (2) Phenomenology: Scheler, Weber, and Burtt (3) Existentialism: Husserl and Heidegger (4) Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School: Horkheimer (5) Social Psychology and Neo-Freudian Analysis: Lasch (6) Historical Materialism: Marx and Berman This integration of the traditions of Kant and Marx ends in the recognition that Western science and its underlying metaphysics of nature (quantification, mathematization, dualism, positivism, explanation, prediction, etc.) is a consequence of the underlying historical and social relations of production that produced a society based on the commodification of human experience, abstract and surplus labor, alienation, mechanization of production, and political apriori of science and technology for the domination and control over nature. That is, Western science is a product of capitalist production and society for the domination of nature and humanity (technology, production, and natural and social science). These ideas have profound implications for dealing with nature and our environment, developing a critical and rational response to the environmental crisis, and the formation of a critical theory of ecological justice and social justice. The last lecture on Kuhn is a summary of his critique of science: Nature and Implications of Paradigms -- There is no Objective Reality, no Objective Truth, and no Objective Method -- no access to Objectivity and Ontology, only Utility: (1) Paradigm creates objects (120-121) (2) Myth of physical objects (126) (3) no objective reality, no ontology (113, 120-121, 126, 129, and 206) (3) Synthetic and analytic statements and anomalies (Kuhn 26, 37, and 97 and Quine 43) (4) Critique of objective reality and objective truth -- ontological or epistemological objectivity cannot be compared to paradigm (5) paradigms are incommensurable (148) (6) Critique of Method: induction, verification, and empiricism (15, 28-29 and 126-127) (7) Critique of Method: deduction, rationalism, and falsification (37, 77-78, and 146-147) (8) Rejection of ontology in favor of utility (206) (9) Ontology vs. Utility (Kuhn 206 and Berman 40). Kuhn ends his work with an understanding that the ultimate foundation of scientific truths lie in the utility of puzzle solving and a consensus within the scientific community about the nature of a universal paradigm. Berman will broaden this understanding of science to include an analysis of social consciousness, knowledge, and science. He will argue that the foundations of science now lie in the very structures and institutions of modern industrial society as articulated by classical social theory: Science is a product of a profound existential crisis articulated by the classical tradition; it reflects the underlying logic of capitalism; and its assumptions or metaphysical principles reflect the logic of this social system. This approach broadens Kuhn's analysis and critique of science as it moves into the arena of a sociology of knowledge and science, the metaphysics of natural science, and critical European social theory. With the rise of the Enlightenment, what are the major factors influencing the development of modern science? Clarify the debate between the cultural idealists (Weber) and the historical materialists (Marx and R. H. Tawney). Berman will represent the latter group as he maintains that the transformation of Western consciousness, ideas, and science was a product of the transformation of the underlying structures of political economy and the capitalist market. Berman's conclusion is that it is a social consensus that represents the foundation of science, but a consensus not within the scientific community but within the whole social system itself. This moves the primary area of investigation from the history of science to the history of modern capitalism. |
| 3. | E. A. Burtt | The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science (1924), pp. 15-124 (Recommended: William Leiss, The Domination of Nature, Chapter 5: "Science and Domination," pp. 101-123) Metaphysical and Normative Assumptions that Ground Natural Science Enlightenment and Herrschaftswissen as Metaphysics: Compare the medieval (substance, form, potentiality, and teleology) and modern (time, space, matter, velocity, and causality) views of science and their metaphysical assumptions about the nature of objective reality (17-18, 20, 24, 29, and 33)); modern science as domination and control over nature (29) and as mechanical determinism, mathematics, measurements, and experiments (20); examine the universe of Ptolemy, Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo (85 and 89); metaphysics of Descartes; and quote and discuss Koyre (16), Heisenberg (196-197), Merchant (228-229), Matson (14), Brecht (73), and Descartes (45-46). The underlying philosophy, ontology, or theology of nature -- its distinctive physical characteristics of materialism, determinism, and mechanism -- that ground the laws and theories of science are referred to as the metaphysics of science. Moving beyond Burtt to Berman's work we see that science in the seventeenth century is no longer understood as seeking reality or the truth but, in fact, is ladened with hidden, apriori values and metaphysical assumptions about nature, knowledge, methods, utility (domination of nature), politics (ideology of domination), and philosophy (existential crisis). In this way, science, along with its methods, theories, and procedures of inquiry, frames and defines our perception (sensations) and understanding (ideas) of 'objective reality' by means of these apriori categories and metaphysical assumptions. The Metaphysics of Science contains the scientific paradigm, assumptions of science, and epistemology of science, while the actual Method of Science, its experiments and operations, may be characterized as everyday science; without the assumptions of metaphysical, science is impossible. The metaphysics of science will be explored in more detail in the works of C. Merchant, The Death of Nature, 228-229, Berman, 40, and Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy, 25. The metaphysics of science refers to the underlying hidden and unarticulated values of science, philosophy of science and nature, the world perspective (Weltanschauung), paradigm, or picture of nature. In Kuhn's usage of "paradigm," he incorporates the formal and operational procedures or experiments of puzzle solving, the methodology of science, and the epistemology of science. Only the experiments, methods, and procedures of formal and technical rationality are actually taught in the universities. The other elements are the underlying assumptions which make puzzle solving possible. The Metaphysics of Science is an unconscious philosophy of nature and political ideology that makes natural science possible: The Black Mirror and Metaphysics of Science: From Reality to Production, From Utility to Politics: (1) Ontology or the Nature of Being, Reality, and Nature: Mechanization of Nature, determinism, and matter, measurement, and motion in Bacon, Descartes, and Weber (Berman, 41, 45-46, and 50-51, Descartes, Meditations, 81-91)) (2) Epistemology of Knowledge, Truth, and Science: Scientific method and theory construction based on the Cartesian analytic and synthetic method and the dualism between mind and body, sensations and understanding, and primary and secondary qualities in Descartes (Berman, 31-36 and Descartes, Discourse on Method, 15) (3) Methodology of Science: Science as a deterministic, mechanistic, explanatory, and predictive science based on inductive and deductive reasoning (4) Science as Techne: Utility and Management of Science: Domination of Nature in Scheler, Weber, and Heidegger (Berman, 55, Descartes, Method, 45-46 and 49) (5) Science as Ideology: Domination of Humankind in Marx, Horkheimer, Marcuse, and Habermas; and (6) Existentialism: Loss of Meaning and Natural Law (Scientia abscondita) in Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Freud, and Lasch especially with the ideas of disenchantment and dereglement (Berman, 17-21). These values are the heart and soul of modern science; they make possible its logic, method, and theories as it reflects not reality but the values and institutions of modern capitalism. Without recognizing these underlying value systems inherent in the Enlightenment -- Metaphysics, Methodology, Utility, Ideology, and Existentialism -- there is a real danger that science becomes an apriori form of politics. That is, under the guise of neutrality, objectivity, and truth, science reflects the values of the existing social system (Merchant, The Death of Nature, 228-229, 231, and 234-235). And when science and technology are exported or given to other developing countries, even with the best humanitarian and ethical impulses, the hidden, apriori assumptions are also unwittingly and unconsciously offered as a modern Trojan horse introducing the recipient to the assumptions, values, and ideologies of the modern capitalist social system. This is the dark and relatively unexplored side of the Enlightenment and Western science and technology. Science must always be understood as part of the broader totality of the Social System and Lifeworld (A-G-I-L) and its corresponding social pathologies (RRAANNDDD). Science is infused with the values of these institutions, lifeworld, and culture, as well as projecting them into the world through its application in the workplace, academy, and nature. Marcuse, a student of Martin Heidegger, has summarized this position very succinctly when he wrote that science is apriori political. Science reproduces capitalism whenever and wherever it is applied since the epistemology, metaphysics, and method of science is a product of a particular historical and social system. Science reproduces the social relations and class structure of capitalism. |
| 4. | Morris Berman | The Reenchantment of the World, pp. 1-152 (Recommended: Aristotle, Physics, book 2 and Metaphysics, books Theta and Lambda) Science and the Logic of Capitalism: From Metaphysics to Sociology Science, Enlightenment, and Capitalism: Crisis of Meaning Due to Existentialism, Commodification, and Quantification: Following closely upon the reading of Kuhn, Berman will raise a series of questions about the nature of the society in which science developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: beginning with empiricism and rationalism and the belief that science studies and reflects reality and being (ontology) to the theory that science studies our representations, ideas, and consciousness of reality (epistemology and idealism), to the position that science is a collective social consensus within the scientific community about paradigms, theories, and puzzles (neo-Kantian pragmatism), to the conclusion that science is really a reflection of society (critical social theory and sociology of knowledge). After reading Kuhn we have learned that science has lost its privileged position and its classical claims to objective, universal truth. The question now facing us is, Why and How science evolves. What is the new criteria by which to evaluate scientific truths? Kuhn's thesis is that it is the social consensus within the scientific community and puzzle solving that provide the answers. Berman adds a new dimension that goes beyond Kuhn: Science and Enlightenment rationality should be understood as part of the broader totality of the modern social System and Lifeworld and the rise of commercial and industrial capitalism, that is, they should be understood within the intellectual framework of Classical Social Theory ((17-18). That is, science should be understood as a reflection not of objective reality and truth (ontology), but rather as a reflection of utility and the underlying logic of capitalism manifested in the social pathologies of alienation, anomie, disenchantment, and repression. Note: There was also a fundamental paradigm shift in ethics and political theory from ancient Greek philosophy, medieval Christian ethics, and the modern ethics of Richard Hooker and John Locke's original state of nature grounded in natural law principles of moral economy, love, friendship, and compassion to the individualism, materialism, and market morality of Hobbes and Locke (second state of nature). This shift marked a fundamental transformation of thought in the 17th century that anticipated the scientific revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries. Both paradigm shifts were "caused" and framed by the rise of commercial capitalism and industrial capitalism, respectively. Modern Enlightenment science is the result of an existential crisis articulated by classical social theory (alienation and disenchantment); natural science reflects the logic of capital (mechanical, meaningless, commodity production, utility, control, objects/things, etc.); and science is the consciousness of a capitalist social system (historical materialism). Berman is attempting to understand and connect the relationships among Nature, Science, Knowledge, Consciousness, and the deeper structures of Political Economy and the Social System. In the end, however, Berman reduces classical social theory to variations on the themes of existentialism. Another way of expressing this historical and social relationship is to connect the following: SCIENCE TO SOCIETY SCIENCE TO CAPITALISM ENLIGHTENMENT TO CLASSICAL SOCIAL THEORY POSITIVISM TO SOCIAL SYSTEM MIRROR OF NATURE TO MIRROR OF PRODUCTION PERSONNNN TO A-G-I-L AND RRAANNDDD FORMS OF SOCIAL THEORY: 1. Social Existentialism of Classical Social Theory: loss of meaning in alienation (Marx), rationalization and disenchantment (Weber), and anomie and dereglement (Durkheim) (Berman) 2. Structural Functionalism: Adaptation, Goal Attainment, Integration, and Latency -- AGIL (Parsons) 3. Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School: System and Lifeworld as RRAANNDD (Habermas) 4. Historical Materialism: dialectic between social relations of production and productive forces (Marx and Braverman) By connecting science to the social, natural, and existential ecology we begin to see the real Crisis of the Environment (15-18). That is, we begin by examining the metaphysical foundations and assumptions of Western consciousness, reason, and science and their relationships to broader social problems and the general crisis of meaning in Western society since the seventeenth century. Science and the Enlightenment are not independent entities with their autonomous epistemologies, methods, and theories expressing absolute and universal knowledge but are products of a certain type and structure of society. Metaphysics examines the transformation of human Consciousness and Mind, Knowledge and Science, and Nature and apriori Utility as it expresses the evolution of the modern understanding of reality, science, and reason. When looked at through this new paradigm, science is a product of capitalism and a mirror of production. As a result, any attempt to deal with the environmental crisis entails not only a transformation of our relationship to nature, but also our relationship to metaphysics and consciousness, science and reason, and the structures of political economy and the social system. Science can no longer be viewed as independent of the social system or as an autonomous and transcendent development of human knowledge or the human mind. Integrating Kant's Epistemology and Marx's Historical Materialism: Natural Science as a Capitalist Science: Alfred Sohn-Rethel in Intellectual and Manual Labor was one of the first to connect Kant's epistemology to Marx's historical materialism; Kant's theory of knowledge (categories of the understanding) with Marx's theory of value and commodity exchange (money); and Kant's theory of transcendental subjectivity and the forms of experience with Marx's theory of alienated labor, commodity exchange, wage labor, labor power, and the capitalist mode of production. Moving from the transcendental subjectivity or consciousness, we can see that the categories, theories, and methods of science are deeply embedded in the values, institutions, and structures of modern industrial society. Science is now integrated with Marx's theory of value and commodity exchange and Habermas' theory of the alienated structures of capitalism, that is, the social and structural pathologies of modern capitalism as articulated by the classical social theorists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (A-G-I-L as the following functional and integrative subsystems of society: (A) Adaptation of Economy to the Environment and (G) Goal Attainment of State in the total Social System and the (I) Integration and Institutions of Society through the legal and political institutions; and (L) Latency and Socialization of Cultural Patterns and social values through the fiduciary system of the family and church in the Lifeworld). It is Habermas who takes this structural and functionalist view of the total social system and retranslates it into the social pathologies of modern society articulated by the classical tradition. That is, Economic Adaptation is re-translated by Habermas into Alienation; Political Goal Attainment into Rationalization; Community Integration into Anomie; and Cultural Patterns and Latency into Unconscious Repression. To anticipate the direction of the course, we will examine the historical and social foundations of modern science, as well as the impact of science on the social totality: industry, academy, social psychology, culture, politics, and the environment. At the end, the question will be raised about a critical response to the environmental crisis. Since science has been created by the broader social institutions and transformations of modern industrial society, would that mean that an adequate response to the ecological crisis would require that humanity's relationship to Nature, Science, and Society would all have to change? From Epistemology and Metaphysics of Science to Social Theory and the Sociology of Knowledge: The fundamental and formal categories that describe Weber's theory of rationalization, disenchantment, and modern capitalism and also the same categories that describe Kant's transcendental categories of the understanding. Discuss this historical connection between the forms of abstraction of Political Economy and Epistemology. The formalism and abstractionism of intellectual Science is a reflection of the formalism and abstractionism of the commodity-exchange (theory of value, exchange-value, abstract labor, and surplus-value -- all these aspects separate from the material use-value of commodities) and the broader the structures of capitalism, just as it is "the social existence of humans which determines their consciousness" ("Preface" to Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.. This argument has been developed in more detail by Marx, Sohn-Rethel (Intellectual and Manual Labor, chapts. 5 and 6), and Marcuse (One-Dimensional Man, chapt. 6). The formal categories of the understanding and science are products of the abstraction from the actual and historical forms of capitalist production, exchange, and consumption. Sohn-Rethel stressed the importance of Marx's materialist theory and reality of exchange value abstraction and its effects on production and consumption as the true historical foundation of Kant's transcendental categories of the abstract mind. The manner in which we perceive, experience, and know the world is a product of the social system or it is the System which determines, defines, and conditions the Lifeworld. According to Sohn-Rethel, Kant's synthetic unity of apperception is based on the social synthesis and abstractionism of commodity exchange ("exchange abstraction"); he emphasizes the parallel forms of abstraction but does not show any direct causal relationship. The commodity exchange unites the production, market, and consumption into a coherent social system, and it is the abstraction of this system which produces a world of abstract unifying categories of time, space, substance, causality, etc. In chapter 20, he refers to natural science as "bourgeois science." Quite differently, Marcuse will stress the a priori political and technological imperatives of science, whereas Weber focused on the metaphysics (quantification and mathematization of formal reason and technical experience) of science compared to the values of rationalization and modern capitalism. 1. Rationalization (Weber) 2. Repression (Freud) 3. Alienation (Marx) 4. Anomie (Durkheim) 5. Nothingness (Schopenhauer) 6. Nihilism (Nietzsche) 7. Disenchantment (Weber) 8. Dehumanization (Marx) 9. Dereglement (Durkheim) Metaphysics and Sociology: Domination of Nature and the Domination of Humanity and Society: Berman writes "Scientific consciousness is alienated consciousness" (17); it is part of the general cultural disenchantment, anomic disintegration, and existential homelessness of modern industrial society. Science has to be seen as a cultural expression of alienation (Marx), rationalization (Weber), anomie (Durkheim), and the inner anxiety and neurosis of the modern human personality (Freud). Science is the theoretical expression of modern capitalism with its goal of management, utility, and control over a mechanical and deterministic nature. Natural science is not the cause but the symptom of Western industrial development and its corresponding social pathologies. The logic of capital permeates every aspect of modernity, including reason and scientific discourse. Science and Society are mutually interacting and reinforcing. Franz Borkenau was more explicit in his writings: He argued that science was able to become quantitative, experimental, mathematical, and utilitarian, that is, it was able to develop abstract and mechanical concepts and theories because of the prior creation of abstract, alienated labor and the mechanization of production in the workplace (Leiss, The Domination of Nature, pp. 90-97). Simmel saw the connection between numerical calculation in a money economy and the mathematization of nature (Berman, 55). Labor and nature were seen as forms of disenchantment, reification, and utility; thus science had an innate, a priori technological and political orientation toward the control and domination of nature (Scheler and Marcuse in The Domination of Nature, 101-123). The hidden politics of modern science lies in its a priori metaphysical, political, and technological nature. The technical and formal rationality (techne) or technical art or craft of making and doing in the fragmented workplace, bureaucratic state, and nihilistic culture has produced a particular form of knowledge that reflects the broader imperatives and priorities of modern capitalism. The result has been the loss of human control over labor, the public sphere, ethics and religion, and nature. Science has already been examined within a theory of knowledge and a critique of empiricism and rationalism (Bacon, Hume, and Kant), a theory of science (Popper, Quine, and Kuhn), and a theory of the metaphysics of science and nature (Burtt). Now it must be incorporated into a broader critical, materialist, and historical social theory (Berman and Classical Social Theory). To highlight this connection between the rise of scientific consciousness and social structures/political economy, briefly discuss the relationship between religious consciousness/Protestant Reformation and capitalism in Weber's and Tawney's thesis. Both science (Berman) and religion (Tawney) can be viewed as forms of "alienated consciousness." Berman's use of alienation derives from two sources -- Marxism and Existentialism. The movement in the philosophy of science from ontology to utility and domination results in a world without meaning other than control and exploitation of nature. For Berman this apriori imperative within the metaphysics and logic of science produces a loss of meaning and purpose in work (Marx), world and science (Weber and Nietzsche), culture and collective conscience (Durkheim and Schopenhauer), and self and identity (Freud). Also examine the growing existential dilemma and crisis of meaning in the connection between science and the Reformation (Deus absconditus, the hidden God, and the sinfulness of humanity). Enlightenment and the Domination of Cartesian Nature: Descartes in his Discourse on Method said that there was a correspondence between the pragmatic and technical knowledge of nature and the skills and logic of the workplace. Berman will connect the metaphysics of modern science to classical social theory: alienation, rationalization, anomie, and psychological repression. That is, the alienation of the workplace has now been displaced to the alienation of reason and science; the domination of the workplace to the domination of nature. Connect Burtt's thesis about the Enlightenment and Metaphysics to modern social problems, that is, to economic, social, and environmental crises; alienation and disenchantment of science (16-17) -- separation of fact and value (nominalism) and humanity and nature (metaphysical dualism); social problems as bureaucracy, mass administration, consumption, collapse of traditional values, cultural disintegration (anomie), colonization of the life world by the social system, existential loss of meaning and purpose in human life (17-18), homelessness and a "sickness of the soul," (17) and the psychopathology of everyday life (20); social pathologies of modernity (22-23) -- classical social theory; science expresses the logic of capitalism (22-23); and Berman integrates the thought of Marx, Weber, Durkheim, and Freud into the question of the relationship between science and metaphysics, Enlightenment and Society. Science is now viewed as an intimate part of the Enlightenment and Capitalism as the Domination of Nature results from the Domination of Humanity. Franz Borkenau on Science, Domination, and Nature: It is William Leiss in his seminal work The Domination of Nature who emphasized the connection between science and capitalism, abstract theory and abstract labor by quoting from Borkenau's work on the transition from feudalism to capitalism: "Borkenau's main point is that the practical and technical aspect of this development, namely, the emergence of abstract labor in the manufacturing process, had to accompany the theoretical system, that is, the formulation of the concept of abstract matter in mechanistic philosophy and science. The two are inseparable; the theoretical breakthrough could not have happened of itself, with no relation to other forms of social activity. In his view, 'only the application of capitalist method in the labor process makes possible the observation of nature according to quantitative methods.'" (Leiss, p. 91 quoting from Borkenau, Der Uebergang vom feudalen zum buergerlichen Weltbild, pp. 54 and 347. Also see Alfred Sohn-Rethel, Geistige und koerperliche Arbeit, p. 113.) |
| 5. | Morris Berman | The Reenchantment of the World,
pp. 1-152 (Recommended: Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time) Science, Metaphysics, and Capitalism Outline and Summary of Lectures: Once the realism, objectivity, and naturalism of modern science and positivism are called into question, there is a fundamental recognition that science does not reflect an external, objective reality, but rather, it reflects the social reality of the historical times. (1) Epistemology and Theory of Knowledge: Hume's theory of imagination and habit and Kant's theory of reason, mind, and subjectivity ((2) Philosophy of Science: Popper (falsification), Quine (science as mythic construction and underdetermined by experience), and Kuhn (theory of paradigm, theory, myth, and ideology) ((3) Sociology of Science and Metaphysics of Science: metaphysics and normative foundations of modern science (Burtt) ((4) History of Science: historical origins of modern science in the institutions and values of modern capitalism (Berman) (5) Social Theory of Science: Science Reflects Reality, Paradigm, and Capitalism: sociological foundations of science in the structures of modern society -- alienation (Marx), disenchantment (Weber), and anomie and derangement (Durkheim). Trace the movement of an understanding of modern science from Epistemology, philosophy, theory of knowledge and science to Sociology, social theory, and political economy. Outline the argument from philosophy to sociology that Science does not reflect objectivity or empirical Reality (Hume, Kant, Quine, and Popper) to the argument that Science reflects Myths or Paradigms (Quine and Kuhn) and the argument that Science reflects the structures, culture, and consciousness of Capitalism (Marx and Berman). (6) Application of Science to Modern industry: Braverman's analysis of science and the workplace. (7) Comparison of the Weltanschauung of Medieval Aristotelian world and Modern Science: Formation of Byzantino-Arabic Science: Compare the teleological and organic nature of medieval Christianity to the formal, technical reasoning of modern science -- ontology vs. utility. The Greek vision of nature as alive, potential, and dynamic and the ancient Hebrew concept of stewardship (domination of nature is mentioned in Genesis, chapter 1, but steardship is found in chapter 2) reveal alternative metaphysical principles underlying our relations with the physical environment. (Note for Future Research: There were early attempts in the East to develop a form of more modern science that integrated the ancient Aristotelian perspective with the goals of scientific inquiry that had been going on for a millennium before the 15th century. However, with the fall of Constantinople and the movement of Byzantine scholars with their knowledge of the Greek heritage into the West which added much to the earlier preservation of texts by Irish monks, there was a growth of Byzantino-Arabic science. The copying of manuscripts by Irish monks (in Ireland, but also in Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and France) goes back to at least 800 and the role of Alcuin, the chief theologian of Charlemagne. There is almost no recognition or examination of this form of science today in modern philosophy or the history of science. This would be an interesting area of investigation because of the attempt to integrate the ancient Greeks with more modern forms of scientific inquiry, especially since the ancient Aristotelian perspective was lost to the West. It would also help us understand the complexity of joining science with an alternative metaphysics of nature based on life, telos, and meaning, especially in the face of a rising ecological crisis. Where Aristotle and modern science were antithetical to each other in the West, this offers us an opportunity to see how the ancient and modern worlds could be integrated into a critical ecology. Ideas from conversations with Royal Rhodes, Kenyon College) Enlightenment and Positivism: The Reification and Commodification of Nature: Connect Berman's thesis about the Cartesian Method to Kuhn's theory of the construction of empirical reality. What is the relationship between Reality, Method, and Utility: the world as quantitative mechanics, machine, and function in the analytic-synthetic method (33, 40, 45-46). Compare the ancient and modern worldview of nature and science; modernity as dead, mechanical, deterministic, quantitative, atomistic, mathematical, and utilitarian (50-51 and 54-55); principles of positivism and utilitarianism (55); Cartesian metaphysics of reductionism, mechanism, and determinism (33); discuss Descartes theory of wax, utilitarianism, and primary and secondary qualities; ecological crisis related to broader social and existential crisis; and compare Ptolemaic and Copernican theory of retrograde motion of the planet Mars along with Kepler's three mathematical laws of planetary motion. Throughout these lectures mention will be made of the following authors on the Cartesian method, mathematization of nature, and the crisis of reason and science: E. Husserl, M. Heidegger, M. Scheler, M. Weber, A. Koyre, W. Heisenberg, A. Sohn-Rethel, F. Borkenau, E. P. Thompson, W. Leiss, and C. Merchant. Begin the discussion this week with an analysis of Berman's use of the term metaphysics of the modern era (16) and "science as a form of alienated consciousness (17). Examine the nature of metaphysics in Nature, Reason, Politics, Science, and God; these principles, postulates, and assumptions make objective reality possible. Berman creates his understanding of the Metaphysics of Nature by combining Cartesian rationalism (dualism) with Baconian utilitarianism (control over nature). Then tie metaphysics into the structures of society and classical social theory (17) in order to broaden our understanding of the nature of modern science and the Enlightenment: Science and Society. Berman views science through the Metaphysics of Science and the Cartesian paradigm on the one hand and though classical social theory on the other. By this means he connects science and the metaphysics of domination with the rise of capitalism and the domination of man. Science is the product of the rise of capitalism as it results in alienated consciousness, a disenchanted, meaningless, and mechanized world, individual derangement and madness, and cultural disintegration, anomie, and moral nominalism. Science does not reflect the mirror of reality but the mirror of production and the soulless society. Politics investigates the nature of power and domination in the state and economy as it compares an oligarchy to democracy and a moral economy to a market economy. But it also compares the potentialities of humanity to nature (subsistence, self-sufficiency, and reciprocity to utility, profits, and private property). Thus politics examines the relationships among the state, economy, and nature, thereby turning the metaphysics of science into the politics and ideology of science. The metaphysics of science examines the unarticulated political assumptions and values of Enlightenment science that, in turn, reflect the deeper values of modern political economy. Science is another form of politics and it expresses our deeper relationships to society and nature. The metaphysics of science is just another form of the politics of science, and, correspondingly, the natural sciences (physics, chemistry, biology, etc.) are just another form of political philosophy. When metaphysics is joined to social theory and a sociology of knowledge (historical and social origins of knowledge and science) it becomes a priori political (Marcuse). Berman begins his analysis of science by placing the history of science immediately within the framework of the existentialism of classical social theory: alienation and the meaninglessness of work (Marx from Kant and Winckelmann), the disenchantment and meaninglessness of science and the Enlightenment (Weber from Nietzsche), and anomie and the meaninglessness of collective consciousness and nihilistic culture (Durkheim from Schopenhauer). The rise of modern science and the Enlightenment are intimately bound together with the alienation of reason and the logic of capital. Berman places Kuhn's critique of science (paradigms, scientific revolutions, rejection of objective reality and truth, incommensurability of theories, and the reduction of ontology to utility) within the broader social context of the System and Lebenswelt of Parsons and Habermas, that is, within the framework of classical social theory of Marx, Weber, Durkheim, and Freud. Cartesian Method Creates Modern Objectivity and Science: Berman outlines Descartes' analytic/synthetic method (33) as he attempts to show how the Method creates the Objects of perception and experience -- epistemology creates ontology. Truth now is based not on reality but operational categories, instrumental measurements, formal calculation, and technical experimentation -- truth is based on the mathematization of nature and utility (Berman, 40 and 45 and Descartes, Discourse on Methods and Meditations, 15, 87, 88-89, and 45 and 41). Because Method creates Objects and Reality, the historical and theoretical context of the sciences with their theories of time, space, matter, motion, extension, shape, and causality are not scientifically or logically justifiable. That is, the world articulated by Descartes -- the dualistic and mechanical picture of natural reality or the metaphysics of science -- based on his geometric method, is so mathematically abstract and theoretically idealized that it cannot be empirically or rationally verified and thus leads to epistemological skepticism (Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy, pp. 9, 25, 196-197, and 200-201). It's truth lies in its utilitarian nature. However, once these metaphysical assumptions about the natural world are made, scientific logic and method can be used to provide hypotheses, theories, experiments, measurements, and empirical evidence to justify particular theories within the constructed paradigm. Provisional Empiricism and Rationalism can work within the scientific community once the metaphysical principles of a mechanical, deterministic, and mathematical world are accepted as real. The Method creates Reality and then is capable of validating itself through its utilitarian application -- the split between the res cogitans and the res extensa are made real through acceptance and utility. This Method and its accompanying creation of the physical characteristics of the natural world forms a physical and astronomical universe in which Galileo, Copernicus, and Kepler operate, develop their ideas and theories, and confirm them against the constructed Cartesian paradigm. Descartes' Method constructs the Reality -- the three simple natures of figure, extension, and motion, the primary and secondary qualities (theory of wax), and Euclidean geometry -- science then operationalizes it with its measurements, experiments, and predictions. From this perspective, realism, objectivism and naturalism apply to the natural sciences but within the mathematization and metaphysics of nature created by the human mind of Descartes. That is, from Kuhn's neo-Kantian perspective we cannot get behind this modern universe or constructed mathematical reality (thing-in-itself), that is, the Method, to compare it to an autonomous, external, and objective reality; all we have is the Cartesian paradigm and its scientific reality. Positivism then is a philosophical construct useful to explain the operationalized Method and relativistic Science, but not the real world. For a critical summary of Descartes' method, see C. Merchant, The Death of Nature, 228-229 and 234). Summary of the First-Half of Course: Integrating Kant and Marx in Epistemology, Metaphysics, Formal Reason, Technology, and Ideology: This course began with a restatement of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and his theory of transcendental subjectivity and consciousness by asking what are the universal and necessary conditions for the possibility of knowledge. We then moved into the area of the metaphysical foundations of knowledge and science (Descartes' method and metaphysics) and then proceeded to investigate its social foundations in the consensus within the scientific community (Kuhn) and its broader economic foundations in the values, institutions, and structures of modern capitalism (Marx, Borkenau, Bernal, Baudrillard, Sohn-Rethel, Balbus, Lukacs, Koyre, Leiss and Berman). Finally, the first half of the semester ended with a study of the operational and technological impact of modern science when applied as scientific management in the workplace (Braverman). The conclusion reached is that the philosophical and social context of science must be reexamined in order to place it in a more enlightened and emancipatory context than traditional Enlightenment science and its values of Cartesian dualism, domination of nature, formal reason, and social ideology. This part of the course attempted to translate modern science back into the questions articulated by Kant and Marx -- the role of consciousness (forms of intuition and the categories of the understanding) in the creation of science and the formation of consciousness and science within modern political economy. Science must be freed from the values and structures of capitalism by reflecting on Science and its social relationships as it moves from a Critique of Pure Reason to a Critique of Historical Reason to a Critique of Political Economy: (1) Epistemology: Nominalism, Utility, and Functionalism (Kuhn, 206 and Berman, 40) (2) Metaphysics of Natural Sciences: Values as Foundation of Science (50 and 27-40) (3) Sociology of Knowledge and Political Economy: Politics of Science: Science as alienated consciousness (4) Technology: Science as Apriori Technological, no separation between theory and practice (5) Existentialism: Loss of meaning due to science and the Enlightenment (scientism and nominalism, Weber) and loss of meaning due to individualism, Protestant Reformation, and market rationality (Durkheim) (6) Colonization of the Lifeworld: internalization of metaphysics and politics of science (C. Lasch, Culture of Narcissism) (7) Social Justice (Marx) (8) Critical Ecology: Integration of Ecological Justice and Social Justice (C. Merchant, Radical Ecology). |
| 6. | Harry Braverman | Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century Science and the Workplace: Surplus Value and the Creation of Scientific Management Science and Technology in the Politics and Profits of Production: Braverman focuses in the first two chapters on Marx's theory of production, alienation, the productive forces and social relations of production, and labor, labor power, and surplus value. These two chapters are used as an introduction to his third chapter on the early history of industrialization in the West. The main purpose here is to emphasize one central point: Unlike the neo-classical economist who view profits and property as deriving from the surplus acquired in the market and exchange, Marx viewed surplus and profit as a result of the alienation and exploitation of human labor in the workplace. Thus, in his early chapters he outlines his labor theory of value as an introduction to a critical understanding of the history of Western industrialization, factories, and capitalism. The transformation of the workplace brought about by the introduction of science and technology was the main avenues to the extraction of profits from human labor and the need to ideologically justify this exploitation through the rationality of science itself. Braverman is concerned in the early chapters with two main issues -- the nature of alienation and work and labor power and labor. Both of these issues are central for investigating the underlying normative and political assumptions that guide modern science and technology in the workplace. (1) Beginning with the alienation and organization of work, Braverman undertakes an analysis of the capitalist Mode of Production and its component parts of productive forces and the social relations of production. At first these issues seem highly selective and esoteric, even pedantic. However, he is looking into the nature of modern science and technology to see if they contain any apriori political dimensions. Do the productive forces -- science and technology-- presuppose and assume the values and structures of the capitalist economy and social or class organization of production -- Alienation from the Product, Process, Species-Being, and Community? (2) And what is the nature of Labor in a capitalist economy? Following Marx, Braverman distinguishes between labor power and labor. This is important because he should how labor power becomes a commodity and wages and how labor becomes the foundation for surplus and profits in capitalism. Science (theory) and technology (technical operation) also play a role in legitimating the alienation of labor as rational, formal, and neutral. Science and technology in the mode of production create the basis for profits and exploitation, as well as its political legitimation. Profits lie in production (Marxism) and not in the market, exchange, or consumption (neo-classical economics.) This course will integrate Berman's thesis about the metaphysics of nature and the Cartesian paradigm and Braverman's thesis about science, technology, and industrial production. By integrating both authors we see that science is apriori political in its underlying value system (metaphysics of nature) and its underlying social system or technical application in the workplace (Taylorism and scientific management). Science contains and projects the values of capitalism and the capitalist organization of production. In both cases, science reflects the cultural, political, and economic values of capital and the class organization of property and the workplace. That is, at the level of values and institutions, science reflects the logic and structure of capital -- the metaphysics of science and the domination of nature (Berman) and the alienated social and class organization of production and the domination of humanity (Braverman). And when science is applied in the workplace these values and institutions -- political ideology -- are also unconsciously reproduced. Thus we get Berman's theory of the politics of science at the level of methods and theory and the politics of science at the level of operation and application to industry. It will take later twentieth-century theorists such as Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Juergen Habermas, Franz Borkenau, Alfred Sohn-Rethel, Friedrich Tomberg, Kurt Huebner, Leo Kofler, Isaac Balbus, Peter Bulthaup, C. Fred Alford, Andrew Feenberg, Alvin Gouldner, Steven Vogel, Patrick Murray, Carolyn Merchant, and William Leiss to make the historical, sociological, and theoretical connections between science and the social system, rationalization and alienation, the domination of nature and the domination of humanity, abstract nature and abstract labor, the metaphysics of science (Cartesian metaphysics) and the social organization of production (factory), and Enlightenment science and industrial capitalism more explicit. Connect these critical social theorists to Berman, Braverman, Blumberg, and Jenkins to examine the technical and formal application of science to labor and the production process. Berman's thesis is that the domination of man and the social relations or organization of production articulated in classical social theory precede the productive forces of science, technology, and industry, and, thus, the domination of nature. The categories, methods, and theories of science are a product of the underlying logic of capital. Braverman expands this thesis as he argues that the metaphysics, technology, ideology, and politics of science imbedded in the inner core of science itself reproduces the key values of capitalism and the domination of humanity in its social relations of specialization, division of labor, and economic oppression and exploitation. The domination of humanity produces the domination of nature (Berman) which, in turn, reinforces the domination of humanity (Braverman). Braverman rejects the view that Marx is a scientific or technological determinist. His theory is more subtle than this one-dimensional view. Instead, he maintains that the relationship is dialectical and interactive: Science doesn't determine the organization of production in a mechanical way, but already contains within its own ideas, procedures, and operations the metaphysical, logical, technological, and political logic of capitalism itself. Science does not determine the social relations of production because science is already pre-defined and pre-determined by its own metaphysics and politics of science. The relationship between science and political economy, productive forces and the social relations of production, and technology and the workplace is not one of mechanical determinism, but dialectical materialism. As Berman says, science is a form of alienated, disenchanted, anomic, and repressed consciousness. The productive forces and social relations of production are dialectically interrelated because science is an historical and sociology phenomenon. Those who argue for a mechanical materialism and technological determinism and the primacy of the productive forces in the process of social change include F. Engels, M. Bookchin, J. Habermas, A. Schmidt, M. Horkheimer, and Cohen. Those who argue for the primacy of the social relations of production and the broader logic of capital include Marx, J. Foster, Tony Burns, Alvin Gouldner, Bertell Ollman, S. Avineri, E. Bloch, H. Marcuse, H. Braverman, Mishra, Gorz, and Balbus. Braverman's work represents an important addition to the thesis about the Metaphysics of Natural Science. Both Burtt and Berman have articulated the underlying and unarticulated presuppositions and assumptions of the metaphysics of science, while Kuhn and Berman have further articulated the nature of science as apriori technological and Braverman and Berman have continued the argument to include the idea that science is also apriori political. This can best be expressed by the argument that the Metaphysics of the Natural Sciences include the following expanded elements: A. The Metaphysics of the Natural Sciences: Productive Forces of Capitalist Production and the Domination of Nature (1) Metaphysics of Science: world is a dead machine characterized by quantity and shape in motion within time and space that can be systematically and mathematically examined, operationalized, experimented, calculated and predicted with the ultimate purpose the Domination of Nature (Burtt and Berman). (2) Metaphysics of Technology: science is no longer interested in ontology, objectivity, realism, and objective truth or reality, but only in efficiency and productivity of information, that is, interested in utility and technological applicability in the real world (Kuhn, 206-7 and Berman, 50). Truth has been reduced to pure utility and functionality as science is no longer the mirror of reality, but the mirror of production. B. The Politics of the Natural Sciences: Social Relations of Capitalist Production and the Domination of Labor (3) Politics of Science and Technology in Economics and Production: science is interested in utilitarian and technological innovation toward the efficient functioning of production and industry by making the social relations or social organization of production in the workplace more organized, controllable, and efficient with the ultimate purpose the Domination of Humanity (Braverman). The underlying assumptions of technical science applicable to industrial production in factory and agriculture include the belief that workers are universally lazy, stupid, uninspired, unimaginative, and avoid hard work all the time. This is Taylor's theory of "natural and systematic soldiering" (Braverman, 98-99) which is a science combining physiology and psychology that further requires the class separation of execution and conception, body and mind (108 and 116-121) and the monopolization of the labor process (100). (Also see Jenkins, Labor Power, 26, 35, 42, and 60 and Blumberg, Industrial Democracy, 17-18.) All these metaphysical assumptions about human labor are hidden behind an ideology of science, technology, and the Enlightenment (82, 86, and 170). The metaphysics or beliefs underlying natural science have now been adjusted to and integrated with the metaphysics underlying the social sciences of psychology and economics. This only furthers the social imperative for the domination of both nature and humanity, the environment and the economy. This then leads to the metaphysics of society. Braverman outlines the history of the technical transformation of the workplace from worker subcontracting and domestic labor to the centralization of labor in urban factories to the division of labor, separation of concept from execution, control over production and knowledge, and monopolization of this knowledge by control over production and the worker knowledge and technical skills through scientific management and human relations technology (116-119). In the factories workers are systematically deskilled through the division of labor articulated in the theories of Adam Smith (77) and Charles Babbage (81) resulting in the alienation of human labor (82). The three main apriori principles, assumptions, and goals of Taylorism and scientific management are to gain control over information and knowledge of the labor process, monopolization of this knowledge and stratification of the labor process, and application of this knowledge to further control over labor (112-121) -- the Domination of Labor. The Politics of Science is a natural and intimate extension of the Metaphysics of Science into the area of the domination of labor, production, and the economy for the purposes of expanding industrial surplus, exchange, and the accumulation of private property and wealth, that is, maintaining the class system and the continued alienation of human labor. The final results are the domination and exploitation, alienation, oppression, and dehumanization of human labor. The key point that Braverman briefly mentions but fails to stress is that the apriori foundations of modern science lie in both the metaphysics and politics of the natural sciences. The metaphysics and politics of science are intimately connected and cannot be separated so that science appears to be objective, neutral, and applicable under any social system. Rather the arguments found in Berman and Braverman point to the conclusion that the apriori dimension of science, as both metaphysics and politics, inseparably connects the two dimensions of the domination of nature and labor, the productive forces and the social relations of production. To apply the factory system, division of labor, specialization, centralization of factories, control over the labor process, and the application of science to production means that the productive forces and social relations of production are historically and technically intimately bound together. To offer the productive forces and production science and technology to developing countries also includes the politics of science and the organization and structure of the class system. One without the other is historically and socially impossible since both are apriori elements of capitalist production. To offer Enlightenment science to help developing countries is also unconsciously and ideologically offering the productive forces and the social relations of production. Both contain the apriori dimensions of science -- Metaphysics and Politics -- which cannot be separated. These essential components of modern science and technology are hidden from immediate review by the ideology of science itself (82, 86, and 170). (4) Science and the Metaphysics of Society: Science is a reflection of industrial production, the logic of capital, and the broader social pathologies of alienation, disenchantment, anomie, and personality repression (Berman). And along with these various dimensions and complexities of the hidden social values of science, there is the fundamental question of whether science itself is neutral and objective. That is, can science be used in a neutral manner in an alternative and democratic political economy and democracy? May science be used in both a authoritarian capitalist economy and in a democratic socialist economy? Or do these values make it impossible for science to function in the latter type of social system? Finally, the next question to be raised is: What form must science take to be compatible with democratic socialism and worker control? History of the Attempt to Gain Control over Production, Knowledge, and Labor: Braverman breaks down his analysis into three main areas: (1) No Control over Production in cottage industry, domestic labor, contract labor (61), the putting out system (63), and gang labor of the steel industry in the 1860s and 1870s. (2) Beginning of the Centralization over Production in the Industrial Cities through the enclosure movement (Polanyi), urbanization, and the factory system (65-66). (3) The third part is the Beginning of Control over Production in the Factories with the implementation of the division of labor of Adam Smith (50, 77- and 81-82), the application of Smith's business theory to actual production by Charles Babbage (81), the creation of Taylorism and scientific management at the Bethlehem Steel Company and the Midvale Steel Company (1880-1906 -- 26 year scientific experiment), and the creation of Human Relations Technology in the relay assembly test room of telephone equipment at the Hawthorne Works of the Western Electric Company by Elton Mayo in 1927 (Blumberg, 17-18, Jenkins 35). These applications of science and technology to industry produced the centralization of production (50, 65-66, 77, 81, 82, and 113), separation of concept from execution (116 and 117-118), monopolization of knowledge by management (119), and the control over knowledge and labor by management (119). All this is accomplished with the aid of modern science and technology which legitimates and rationalizes the process and, thereby, takes production out of the hands of the artisans and workers. By these means, democracy, freedom, and social justice are undermined by the ideology and authoritarian politics of science (86, 88, 90, 116-117, 140-141, 170, 205-206, and 232). Finally, I asked the students to describe the "pin" in my hand. Hume distinguished between the accidental qualities of the pin (sensation and perception) and the object itself (imagination and habit). After reading Berman and Braverman on metaphysics and alienation, we can see that the "pin" does have different physical traits, but it also reflects the underlying Cartesian metaphysics and alienation of capitalist social production. It was made in a factory under capitalist social conditions. The accidental qualities are seen, but the metaphysics and social organization are unseen, unconscious, and residual elements of capitalist production -- they are the Metaphysics and Ideology of Science. History of Scientific Management from the Division of Labor to Taylorism and Human Relations Technology: This class continues the analysis of Smith's division of labor and Babbage's application to the systematic costs of production and labor. We begin with an analysis of the Midvale Experiments at the Bethlehem Steel Company: increase production from 12.5 to 47 tons of steel per day and raise wages from $1.25 to $1.85 per day (103). Examination of Schmidt (108), the laborer, and a group of 10-15 other laborers using scientific management: time-motion studies, science of shoveling, screening of workers, systematic soldiering (98-99), motivation of workers through wage adjustments, standardization of work, adaptation of work rules, monopolization of knowledge through Taylorism (116-117), creation of an authoritarian work structure using the ideology of science, and adjusting to the new problems formed based on authority work structure and work motivation (summary, 120-121). See (Jenkins, Job Power, p. 26, 42, and 60; Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital, on ideology, p. 86, deskilling, 82, and ideology 170, and conclusion, 100.) Also examine the Elton May Experiments using human relations technology and a critique of Taylorism found in Blumberg, Industrial Democracy, pp. 17-18. The Metaphysics and Politics of Natural Science: Ideological Foundations of Modern Science, Reason, and Technology: Throughout this semester we have examined perception in the following terms: direct perception (Bacon and Locke), imagination (Hume), consciousness and subjectivity (Kant), self-consciousness and the state (Hegel), utility and management (Quine), paradigms and scientific consensus (Kuhn), and the metaphysics of science and the domination of nature (Burtt and Berman). Now we have moved away from epistemology and the philosophy of science to a sociology of knowledge (Berger and Luckmann), social theory and the domination of man (Weber and Scheler), and social theory where perception is mediated by classical social theory and RRAANNDDD (Berman) and the domination of man, the labor theory of value, and the mode of production (Braverman). Does science have an a priori metaphysical and political content -- the domination of nature and man -- that unconsciously shapes the nature of society in which it is applied irrespective of the values of its intended purpose and public policy? The book begins with a discussion in chapters 1 and 2 of Marx's theory of the mode of production (productive forces and social relations of production), labor power, and surplus value. The two main issues introduced by beginning with Marx's social theory are that (1) profits accrue in the production process and not in the market or circulation process and (2) history and society are created by changes in the social relations of production (domination of man) and not by changes in the productive forces (technological determinism). The implications of this for Braverman are that the domination of man precedes the domination of nature and science contains apriori imperatives infused in its categories, theories, and methods for both the domination of man and nature. Discuss the meaning of the domination of nature and the metaphysics of science and their relation to the domination of man in a capitalist society (12, 18, 20, and 22-23); which has priority. Stress pages 18 and 20 which emphasizes the priority of the domination of man followed by the domination of nature. Science thus contains apriori the imperatives of the domination of man applied to the domination of nature (12 and 22). The rest of the semester will examine the influence of metaphysics, science, and the logic of domination on work (Braverman), science (Weber), social sciences (Horkheimer), culture and psychology (Lasch), medicine (Capra), and the environment (Merchant). We will begin our analysis of Braverman's work by expanding our understanding of Metaphysics to include the domination of nature and humanity and by showing the relationship between the domination of nature through the productive forces of science and technology and the domination of humanity through the social relations and class organization of production. Braverman attempts to located this expanded view of domination by examining the capitalist mode of production and its creation of surplus value in the production process itself. Neo-classical economics views profits as a product of supply and demand and market exchange. Braverman begins his work with a critique of the idea of technological determinism of the productive forces by tracing the history of the origins of the modern factory and structures of production (20). His anti-deterministic approach highlights the evolution of the modern organization and social relations of production. The values and institutions of capitalism are part of the underlying metaphysics of Western science. Summary of the Metaphysics of Science as the Ideology of Political Domination: 1. Domination of Nature: Cartesian dualism, primary and secondary qualities, mind and body, machine, determinism, mathematics, explanations, prediction, death of nature, and utilitarian control (Berman) 2. Domination of Man: Science applied in the workplace displaces any alternative public ideology as it introduces the values and alienation of capitalism in a quest for productivity and efficiency -- division of labor, scientific management, Taylorism, Elton Mayo, human relations technology, etc. (Braverman) (12 and 22). 3. Dialectic Between Science and the Social Organization of Production: Braverman argues against technological determinism that major changes in the social organization of production precede changes in the domination of nature and productive forces (18 and 20). In the process of introducing Western science and technology into the industrial production and factories of the Soviet Union in the early stages of the Russian Revolution, Lenin transformed Soviet communism into Soviet capitalism as the metaphysics and ideology of Enlightenment science unintentionally reproduced the social relations and class system of capitalist production (18 and 20). The productive forces represent a modern example of the "Trojan Horse" (12) As Lenin attempted to revolutionized the social relations of production and dismantle the capitalist class structure built on alienation, exploitation, and the appropriation of surplus value, he was unaware of the dialectic between the productive forces and social relations of production. He unconsciously accepted that Western technology was epistemologically objective and politically neutral. And in the process he surreptitiously and unknowingly introduced into the Soviet economy a form of state capitalism. Braverman argues that Marx's theory is more complex and nuanced in his analysis of the relationship between the productive forces and the social relations of production (20-21). By wanting to create a communist production system based on workers' control and democratic associations, Lenin failed to realize that the productive forces -- Enlightenment science and technology -- contained the Epistemology (Kuhn), Methodology (Descartes), Metaphysics (Burtt), Political Economy (Berman), and Social Relations of Production (Braverman). That is, science and technology in the factory contained the total logic of capital. Thus, by introducing the division of labor, scientific management, and Taylorism, Lenin surreptitiously introduced the logic, values, and institutions of capitalism into the production process. This is the great irony of history -- communism created a barrier to capitalism but let the whole social system through the backdoor of the Enlightenment. According to Braverman, the economy remained capitalistic because of Lenin's failure to understand the nature of the productive forces and social relations of production. Enlightenment and Industrial Capitalism: The Metaphysics of Science and the Metaphysics of Technology: Compare and connect Burtt, Berman, and Braverman: continue the discussion of the Metaphysics of Science and the Domination of Nature to the Metaphysics of Technology and the Domination of Humanity by investigating the a priori assumptions and values of the nature of knowledge (Burtt, 29, 93, 96, and 123-124) and a priori assumptions and values of the nature of workplace technology and scientific management (Braverman, 20, 21, and 22-23) -- Western science and technology embody the values of the Enlightenment metaphysics of science and the class relations of capitalist production in the very forms of science and technology themselves; that is, Metaphysics contains epistemological, ontological, political, and economics assumptions in the concepts, theories, methods of science, the political metaphysics of technology, and the economic metaphysics of the values and structures of capitalism as they are found in the productive forces and social relations of production; Enlightenment science is not an autonomous phenomena but is itself the outgrowth of capitalism -- science is a priori political and capitalistic (Braverman and Herbert Marcuse); and the underlying normative assumptions of Western science contain both the metaphysics of nature and the politics of capitalism. The Enlightenment and modern science are the forms of consciousness of capitalist society, while modern technology and industrial management are its mode of social organization -- all hidden in its unconscious a priori assumptions about scientific knowledge and economic production. Braverman discusses the issues of the metaphysics of science (religion and cosmology) and technology (politics and ideology) by using Marx's theory of the mode of production -- productive forces of the Enlightenment and the social relations of industry. The a priori assumptions of capitalism -- mechanization, quantification, mathematization, and domination of workers -- or the social relations of production are deeply embedded in the very technology of modern industry itself -- the domination, alienation, and exploitation of humanity are contained in Western economic technology. See, Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, pp. 228-29, 231, and 243. Evolution of Production Methods and the Origins of Management: Discuss Braverman's analysis of the evolution of the workplace in capitalist society from early workshops (59) and guild production, subcontracting and the putting-out system (60-64), domestic production (63) to the division of labor of Adam Smith (79-78) and the advanced division of labor in industrial production of Charles Babbage (79-83). Then turn to the reformation of industrial production based on the principles of scientific management (Frederick Taylor) and human relations technology (Elton Mayo) (85-136). For a more detailed investigation into the remnants of craft production in the early stages of capitalist production, see Katherine Stone, "The Origins of Job Structures in the Steel Industry," in Labor Market Segmentation, ed. by E. Edwards, M. Reich, and D. Gordon. Science as Ideology, Domination, and the Exploitation of Labor Power: Braverman begins with an analysis of the distinctiveness of modern industrial society and its transformation of class, market economy, production, and the workplace with the creation of monopolies, mergers, welfare/warfare state, new working class, and a new type of mode of production, esp. the introduction of science, technology, and scientific management. He articulates Marx's theory of labor with its distinction between labor (surplus value) and labor power (commodity and exchange value) since this provides him with the basis for expressing issues of workplace alienation and exploitation. It is through the use of Taylorism and Human Relations Technology that the workplace is transformed in order to extract higher levels of surplus, profits, and managerial control. The metaphysical principles of the domination of nature (Kuhn, Burtt, and Berman) are extended into the domination of humanity through the division of labor, scientific management, restructuring the organization of production, rationalized bureaucracy, and the ideology of science (Marx and Braverman). Science is not neutral or objective since it reflects and imposes an a priori political and economic dimension which includes both elements of the capitalist mode of production -- the technical productive forces and the social mode of the organization of production. One aspect of the mode of production is intimately connected with and inseparable from the other; they both exist in a dialectical relationship with each other (21). To invite the productive forces into production is to also include the historically and socially corresponding social relations. And to export these technical innovations in production to foreign countries is to also export capitalism and neoliberalism. From Herrschaftswissen to Herrschaftsgesellschaft: Metaphysics of Productive Forces and Enlightenment Technology: Continuing the logic and argument of Kuhn, Burtt, and Berman, Braverman maintains that industrial science and productive technology are not neutral, but contain hidden a priori assumptions about class, power, and the social organization of capitalist production -- from a science of domination to a society of domination. Introduce the Enlightenment and one necessarily gets Capitalism. Braverman's analysis of the mode of capitalist production is just another way of reintroducing the metaphysics of science from an historical and sociological perspective. Braverman uses the example of the Soviet Union and its headlong rush to industrialization and mechanization of production in order to be competitive with the West. The problem is that by introducing Western industry, social engineering, production methods, and technology of Taylorism and scientific management the Soviets also introduced the social relations of capitalism through the back door of their society (12, 18, 20, and 22-23). By resisting capitalism at the front but giving it access at the rear, Lenin's form of communism, according to Braverman, never made a substantive break with capitalism. This interpretation of the Enlightenment -- its Metaphysics of Science and Technology and its Domination of Nature and Man -- is an epistemology and sociology of the Trojan Horse of Capitalism: the productive forces include their own a priori political, economic, and metaphysical assumptions in the form of the social relations of production of modern industrial society. Lenin wanted to build an alternative social system to capitalism, especially an alternative organization of production, but didn't appreciate the dialectical relationship between the productive forces (metaphysics of science and the domination of nature) and the social relations of production (domination of man). By accepting and introducing the technical forces of production (Scientific Management and Taylorism) into the production process, Lenin had also inadvertently and unintentionally introduced the social relations of capital into the Soviet system. Science is not neutral and objective but is a cultural product of capitalist society and when imported into another country it introduces the values and social forms of capitalism. Science is a product and agent of capitalism with its a priori metaphysics of science (Burtt and Berman), the domination of nature (Bacon, Weber, and Scheler), and the domination of man (Berman and Braverman) -- that is, the productive forces necessarily include the social relations of production. To introduce the former into society is to introduce the latter. Science as an Ideology (Habermas and Horkheimer) conceals its connection to the social relations of production -- conceals its connection to capitalism -- at the very moment it abets the implementation of capitalist production and culture. Monopoly Capitalism and the Restructuring of the Workplace: Examine twentieth-century capitalism in its forms of monopoly capital, modern labor, and industrial production; changes in production, distribution, exchange, and consumption; Marx's theory of alienation and surplus value updated to include restructuring of production based on principles of scientific management; new working class (4); Marx's view of science and technology (6), science as neutral or science as ideology, and historical transformation of the structures of workplace: division of labor, machinery, Taylorism and scientific management, corporate management, the workplace experiments at Midvale Steel Works (1878-1889) and later at Bethlehem Steel (1898-1901), human relations technology, Elton Mayo and the Hawthorne Experiments 1927-28, etc. -- concentration and centralization of production in hands of management; and mode of production (21): productive forces and social relations of production (18 and 21). Rise of Monopoly Capital: monopolies and economic concentration, administrative price and decline of the market, market distortions, rise of interventionist state -- military/welfare state, Keynesian economics, neo-colonialism, and integration of workers into social system through cooptation, adaptation, and scientific management. Transformation of the workplace into primary and secondary markets, blue and white collar workers, labor market fragmentation, and the deindustrialization of American. See Richard Edwards, Contested Terrain, Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison, Deindustrialization of America and The Great U-Turn, and David Gordon, Fat and Mean and Beyond the Wasteland and After the Wasteland (with Samuel Bowles and Thomas Weisskopf). Science, Social Relations of Production, and Labor Power: Marx's Theories of the Modes of Production and Labor Theory of Value: Braverman on Marx: To change creative labor into labor power, exchange value, and surplus value is to understand labor not as a thing but as an historical and social relationship that entails specialization and division of labor (50, 77, 81, and 82), mechanization and deskilling of labor, alienation, the centralization and control of knowledge and labor, separation of concept from execution, and the monopolization and control of knowledge by management through scientific management and social engineering (86, 98-100, 103, 108,and 170). This is the managerial rationalization of centralized and hierarchical power in the workplace through the control over Knowledge (120), Labor (50, 82, 77, and 81), and Production (81-82, 116-117, and 117-118). See, David Jenkins, Job Power: Blue and White Collar Democracy, 26 and 33-35 and Paul Blumberg, Industrial Democracy, 14-46. This is the power of Marx's theory of value which provides us insight into the structure and social organization of capitalist production, economic exploitation, and social alienation (52 and 56). To change labor into a commodity, price, or factor of production entails a radical transformation of society. In the end Marx's labor theory of value is a social, political, and ethical theory. His theory of labor and labor power helps Braverman understand the nature of the rationalization and alienation of work. With the reconstruction of work in monopoly capitalism, science itself becomes an ideology (86, 88, 90, 116-117, 140-41, 170, 205-06, 229, and 232) because it hides and justifies the hidden structures of power through industrial and psychological rationalization -- the Metaphysics of Work. Science becomes Ideology as it ultimately legitimates the existing social relations of production, class structure, control and domination over labor, specialization and division of labor, hierarchy of power, and system of the deskilling, mechanization, and distortion of labor. Examine the relationship between Ideology (politics) and Structure (Centralization of Production and Industry, Monopolization over Knowledge and Skills, and the Control over Workers and Labor Power) and how they reinforce each other. So far over the past six weeks we have moved from the Metaphysics of Nature, Science, and Technology to the Metaphysics of Work. The domination of humanity (alienation, disenchantment, and anomie) in the workplace precedes the domination of nature in science and technology (mechanization, quantification, mathematization, and calculation of time, space, and motion). And with the introduction of Western science and technology into the developing world, these social relations of production, metaphysics and politics of science, and social pathologies of classical social theory are unconsciously introduced under the guise of scientific neutrality, objectivity, and objective reality and truth (productive forces). Democracy, Labor, and Production: Finally, we will discuss alternative possibilities for the democratic reorganization of production found in Jenkins, Job Power, 73-133 and Labor Market Segmentation, ed. by R. Edwards, M. Reich, and D. Gordon, 27-84. Jenkins outlines the alternative forms of democratic production in Israel, Yugoslavia, France, and German, while Katherine Stone in the latter anthology outlines the democratic form of organization, contract system, sliding wage scale, unionization, and apprenticeship system in various steel companies throughout the United States between 1890 and 1920. Science as Politics: Science as Apriori Political and Ideological: Science is not neutral because embedded in its logic, operations, experimentations, theory, methodology, epistemology, and metaphysics there are fundamental values that reflect the underlying logic, structure, and values of modern capitalist society. Access to these political values lies in an in-depth and critical examination of science and its various component parts: (1) Methodology: problem and puzzle solving, hypothesis construction, prediction and causality of experiments, testing of universal laws with particular instances, observation of the results, and confirmation of the predicted results (2) Epistemology: analysis of Enlightenment rationalism with its principles of realism, nominalism, and objectivism (3) Utility, Puzzle Solving, and Apriori Technology: implies the apriori utility and technology of science -- there is no clear division between pure theory and practical application since the two components of science are indivisible. Utility may be characterized by the emphasis in modern science on experimentation, quantification, prediction, causality, and control. Nature is viewed as a technical puzzle to be solved by scientific experimentation, numerical calculations, and precise measurement which, in turn, presupposes a certain mechanistic view of nature and an underlying metaphysics and politics of science for the purpose of control over the observed experiment and technical over nature itself. (4) Social and Existential Foundations of Enlightenment Rationalism: science is a product of the disenchantment, rationalization, anomie, dereglement, alienation, dehumanization, and repression of knowledge (RRAANNDDD) and the existential loss of meaning, values, purpose, and spirit in society and nature -- the eclipse of reason and nature (Berman) (5) Metaphysics of Natural Science: time, space, and motion are reduced to quantifiable and mathematical relationships. Science encapsulates the values of Capitalism in its domination and control over nature as a formal, mechanical, dead, quantitative, and causally related machine that can be utilized for the domination and control over nature. Science in its application and utility introduces the consciousness, assumptions, and hidden values of capitalism onto nature and the environment -- despiritualization of nature. Science is the unconsciousness of capital and the alienation of reason (Burtt) (6) Science, Consciousness, and Nihilism: Politics, Psychology, and Existentialism: with the rise of Enlightenment rationalism there is an existential disenchantment and alienation of consciousness in a world without purpose, meaning, and ethics (Berman) (6) Science and Social Structure: Science as the Domination of Nature and Humanity: when used for the purpose of the domination of nature and the domination of humanity and society science reproduces both the underlying values and metaphysics of science along with its underlying social relations of production, class structure, the commodification of human relations, and the technical control over society and industrial production (Braverman). It reproduces both the loss of meaning (consciousness) and power (class structure). Science in its application and utility unconsciously introduces the class and power structure of capitalism into society under the umbrella of reason, productivity, and efficiency -- dehumanization of humankind. Science is the unconsciousness of class and power. (7) From the Metaphysics of Science to the Metaphysics of Technology: this aspect of the politics of science investigates the political assumptions underlying modern technology and its application to the workplace in an advanced industrial society. Implicit within the productive forces of modern science and technology is the class structure of the social relations of production of capitalism. That is, to apply the logic and organization of Western science and technology to the modern workplace to any form of industrial production is to reproduced not only the values of capitalism but its social and class relations at the point of production. This is the Trojan House metaphor whereby Lenin by introducing Western technology to enhance the productivity and efficiency of the growing industry in the Soviet Union introduced unintentionally and unrecognized by him the capitalist social relations of production. The industrial system of communism became a mirror of the industrial system of capitalism by using its science and technology thereby reproducing both its metaphysical, political, and class structure. Thus, we see that Western science and Enlightenment rationalism introduce through the backdoor the underlying and hidden values of Western society in the following forms of reason and metaphysics, the existentialism and nihilism of science, the utility and technology of industrial production, and the logic and structure of capitalism (social relations of production). The end result is the recognition that science does not mirror nature, objective reality, or the truth, but instead, mirrors the consciousness and institutions of the capitalist social system. |
| 7. | Harry Braverman | Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century Critique of the Enlightenment, Positivism, and Utilitarianism Enlightenment and Industrial Capitalism: Enlightenment and Positivism: Braverman's theory of the relationship between industrial technology and society expands our understanding of the nature of science and society. He undertakes a Marxist analysis of capitalist mode of production emphasizing the relationship between the Productive Forces (science and technology) and the Social Relations of Production (organization and class structure of the workplace). His innovation comes with his analysis of the productive forces as reproducing both the Metaphysics of Science (mechanization, determinism, domination, dualism, etc.) and the Apriori Social Relations of Production (domination of humanity: Division of Labor, Scientific Management, Taylorism, and Human Relations Technology). In both cases of the apriori metaphysics of science and politics of technology, science and technology reproduce the oppression and exploitative class system of industrial production. Science and technology are not objective, neutral, and value-free, but, on the contrary, recreate the hidden values of capital in the metaphysics of science (Berman) and the hidden social relations of capitalist production in technological application (Braverman). Both modern science and technology are reproductions of the logic and structure of capitalism. Braverman expands the thesis of the connection between science and capital to the actual application of science in technological innovation and expansion in industry. Compare the metaphysics of science and the metaphysics of technoloy (12 and 18); and a priori, normative assumptions, and ideological values of technology -- technology reproduces the social relations of production and the mode of production of capitalism. Examine the rise of the U.S. Steel industry 1890-1920 and compare 19th-century steel production based on labor control over production and 20th-century production based on corporate control and labor market segmentation (31 and 32). Rationalization of production: corporate control over knowledge, labor, and production: at first there was no control over production in the putting out system, beginning of centralization with factory system and urbanization, beginning of control over production thru the division of labor, scientific management, Taylorism, industrial psychology, and social relations technology (50, 65-66, 77, and 81-82). The principles of scientific management that evolved out of the famous Midvale Experiments at the Bethlehem Steel Company in Philadelphia over a twenty year period from 1880-1906 include: (1) the rationalization of knowledge and the de-skilling and dissolution of the labor process (61-64) (2) centralization of knowledge, separation of concept from execution, and monopolization of knowledge by management (116-118) (3) control over labor and production by means of the monopoly over knowledge (119 and 120-121). The social relations of production and the social totality -- RRAANNDDD -- created the Metaphysics of Nature (Cartesian worldview: Burtt and Berman), Epistemology (theory and critique of science: Popper, Kuhn, and Quine), and Methodology (scientific and mathematical method: Descartes, Galileo, and Newton) -- which, in turn, were used to ideologically justify and legitimate the Social Totality itself (Braverman). Then we examine the mode of production of productive forces (domination of nature) and the social relations of production (domination of man). Science as A priori Politics and Technology: Science as the Logic of Capitalism This course began with a critique of positivism by representatives of the constitution theory of knowledge in skepticism and idealism with the ideas of Hume, Kant, and Hegel -- Subjectivity creates Objectivity -- Consciousness creates the Objects of Perception and Experience and developed into the theory that Society, as the Social Totality and System/Lifeworld, creates Objectivity in the form of Consciousness, History, Nature, and Science. Objectivity is a construct of subjectivity and intersubjectivity: This course represents a movement from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century epistemology and methodology -- theories of knowledge and science -- to nineteenth- and twentieth-century social theory of the Objective Spirit (Hegel) and System/Lifeworld (Parsons and Habermas). Conclusion of Marx's Theory of Political Economy and Human Labor: Just about every major theme in Marx's writings focuses on the issue of production and work. This is true for his theory of history and consciousness, base and superstructure, historical materialism, mode of production, labor theory of value, theory of surplus value, alienation and exploitation of work, class and inequality, and human emancipation and freedom. Reading Braverman's work there is a recognition that modern science and reason must be understood as a Productive Force within the framework of Marx's broader theory of the mode of production, the nature of capitalist work, productive forces and social relations of production, cultural superstructure and economic base, technology and formal rationality, quantitative and mathematical reason, and the scientization and mechanization of human labor. This is then related to his theory of the Social Relations of Production which examines the social relations and organization of production within the capitalist economy with its class structure, apriori drive for domination and control over nature and work, class exploitation and dehumanization, and the economic imperative for surplus value and profits. Surplus value and profits arise out of the exploitation and abuse of human labor (alienation, class, and the distinction between labor and labor power or wages) in Production and not through Commerce, Trade, and Market Exchange. This is accomplish with the complicity of modern science and technology as rationalizing and justifying capitalist production and work rules. Braverman begins his analysis of twentieth century work with his Midvale experiments of the Bethlehem Steel Company by examining the nature of systematic soldiering and worker laziness and the role of scientific management in the need to increase industrial production and further exploit the class system of human labor and factory work. It was through scientific management that he was able to increase production, surplus value, and company profits. For this justification of modern science, factory technology and machinery, mathematics, and the quantification of human labor, he relies on the writings of Frederick Taylor, Charles Babbage, and Elton Mayo. Production and Work are the central focus of Marx's theory of historical materialism (Contribution to the Critique of Pure Reason), his theory base and superstructure, economics and consciousness (Berman), and his theory of science, technology, and the creation of surplus value and profits (Braverman). For Marx, Production and Work were the heart of his understanding of alienation and exploitation, culture and science, base and superstructure, social relations of production and productive forces, labor and labor power, surplus value and profits, and the existential loss of self and identity. History and Logic of Science: Science Represents the Historical Product and Logic of Capitalism: Finally, the course develops into an analysis of the a priori assumptions and values of modern science and the Western Enlightenment: Metaphysics (Cartesian dualism, ontology, and Existentialism), Methods> (geometry, naturalism, and positivism), and Politics (assumptions and values of Modernity, science as domination, formal rationality, and instrumental and technical reason). Thus, to apply science in non-Western developing countries or to apply science to the Environment and Ecology is to apply not only a particular form of technical and formal knowledge with its a priori and logical assumptions of the Domination of Nature -- PERSONNNN as Herrschaftswissen -- but also a particular historical form of society and production with its Domination of Man -- RRAANNDDD as Commercial and Industrial Capitalism. Both forms of domination are built into the a priori assumptions of modern science. To have the former is also to contain the latter. Science is a cultural form that historically evolves out of the structures and social relations of capitalist production, but at the same time continues to contain these alienating and exploitative social relations in its metaphysics, methods, concepts, logic, and politics. The big question remains: Is it necessary to change the environment of Science before we change our relationship to the environment of Nature? Do we change Science itself (Weber, Scheler, and Marcuse) or at least its underlying political and social assumptions (Habermas)? Finally, can Science be separated from its underlying assumptions of Metaphysics and Politics, that is, from PERSONNNN, RRAANNDDD, and the LOGIC OF PRODUCTION or must it be joined with an alternative set of assumptions about being, knowledge, production, and society? Science is the historical product and logical expression of the Logic of Capital: RRAANNDDD -- PERSONNNN -- RRAANNDDD SOCIAL TOTALITY -- SCIENCE -- IDEOLOGY Subjectivity creates Objectivity in Perception and Experience Society creates Objectivity in Consciousness, History, Nature, and Science Science and Structures of Political Economy Productive Forces and Social Relations of Production Science is not Neutral but A priori Political and Production Science is not the Mirror of Nature but the Mirror of Production Science, as PERSONNNN, is a culturally embedded form of RRAANNDDD Science reflects the values and institutions of modern Industrial Society Science contains a priori Metaphysical and Political Assumptions Science as the Domination of Nature also logically contains the a priori values of the Domination of Man To apply Science to the Environment is to apply the a priori values of PERSONNNN and RRAANNDDD SCIENCE, POSITIVISM and POLITICAL ECONOMY |
| 8. | Max Weber | "Science as a Vocation" in Introductory Readings in Sociology, edited by Dennis Wrong and Harry Gracey, chapter 22, pp. 187-192 Rationalization of the Iron Cage and the Silence of Reason in the Last Man Substantive and Formal Reason: Loss of Reason in the Enlightenment and Utilitarianism: Rationalization, disenchantment, and bureaucratic specialization (187); Decline of Western Reason: History of the evolution of Western science (Wissenschaft) from the substantive reason (Wertrationalitaet) of -- (1) Greek Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle (2) Renaissance Art of Leonardo da Vinci (3) Early Science of Galileo and Bacon and the (4) Reformation Science and Religion of Jan Swammerdam to the formal rationality (Zweckrationalitaet) and technical idols of the Nineteenth-Century Enlightenment: Utilitarianism Liberalism Materialism Scientific Positivism (188-189) Existentialism and Relativism of the Warring gods Theory of the Iron Cage and the Last Man of Nietzsche (189) Metaphysics of Positivism Scientific Domination Naturalism and the Prophetic Preachings of the Demagogue (190) and the Theory of the Warring gods of Tradition and Epistemological/Moral Relativism (191). Rationalization and the Twilight of Western Reason Disenchantment and the Loss of Substantive Reason Domination of Humanity and Nature in Science: The Last Man in the Iron Cage: These are the characteristics of "the fate of our times" -- to live in a meaningless universe with science as a form of technical reason (Zweckrationalitaet whose ultimate goal is the domination of nature and man -- Herrschaftswissen (187 and 190). Note: The Weberian distinction between substantive reason (Wertrationalitaet) and formal reason (Zweckrationalitaet) at the beginning of this essay is parallel to Kuhn's use of similar terminology when examining the nature of science and juxtaposing Ontology (substantive reason) to Utility (formal/technical reason and puzzle solving, 206). According to Weber, Enlightenment rationality is the subjective form of reason of the last man in the iron cage and the demagogue and prophet in the classroom preaching the Ideology of Positivism. This transition to the higher form of Enlightenment reason and objective science cannot be scientifically justified or proven "to be worth knowing" (190) and leaves humanity without purpose, meaning, and substantive reason or a knowledge of God, essence, being, truth, beauty, art, and moral and political reality. It represents the dialectic and decline of reason. Examine the relationship between Classical Social Theory and Existentialism by analyzing the relationship between Weber and Nietzsche: two page reading from the prologue of Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885), and discussion of the teachings of the Uebermensch (striving and overcoming individual) and the last man without reason, justice, compassion, morality, or imagination. The last man is a product of Modernity who lives without suffering, struggle, individuality, or a will-to-power in constant fear of loneliness and insecurity; the last man lives for momentary pleasure and utility in a dreamless present; the last man is incapable of imagination and creativity; and the last man is unable to imagine a dancing star or contemplate the meaning of human existence. That is, the last man doesn't understand either a dancing star or substantive reason. On the other hand, the striving individual is a product of the recognition of the death of God and idols, nihilism, and existentialism. Life has absolutely no meaning, substance, or teleology except that which is created by the individual will-to-power. For Weber, the last man was without Spirit (Substantive Reason, Objective Reason, Social Ethics, and Community -- Hegel) and Heart (Virtue, Practical Reason, Character, and Morality -- Kant), without justice, reason, morals, and virtue, while for Nietzsche this was the very prerequisite of the Uebermensch. What for Nietzsche were idols were, for Weber, the spirit and heart of humanity -- the ideals of Substantive Reason (Wertrationalitaet). Modern society and rationalization have produced a loss of substantive reason and an existential crisis reflected in the ideas of nominalism (no essence or universals) and nihilism (no universal moral values). Humanity can manipulate and control nature but has no reason or purpose to enhance human life or substantive reason (Wertrationalitaet). Weber has appropriated Nietzsche's existentialism in order to reclaim and re-enchant the world with the spirit and heart of substantive reason. (Rationalization gave birth to Existentialism, but Weber does not seem to be able to find a way out of this labyrinth. Horkheimer will attempt to use Freud and Marx as possible solutions.) Nietzsche used the existential crisis in order to recognize the twilight of the substantive idols and the need for a new type of individual; he also used it to transcend the oppression of the history of Western reason. Weber used it to reclaim the Ancients and the search for meaning in philosophy, politics, ethics, art, religion, etc. Note: Weber, in typical European fashion, borrows the idea of the "iron cage" from John Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress, Spirit and Heart from Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, and the "last man" from Nietzsche, Prologue to Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Horkheimer writes in the Eclipse of Reason: "The domination of nature involves the domination of man" (93) in its internal (social sciences, consciousness, culture, and consumerism) and external forms (economy, industry, and labor) Rationalization of Science and Beyond: Science and Positivism do not reflect nature and the objective world, but the institutions and values of the society that produced them; they do not mirror reality, but rather, mirror production. Positivism reflects the end of substantive and objective reason, the decline of social theory, and the crisis of the Enlightenment and Environment. The second half of this semester will begin with the examination of the rationalization and disenchantment of formal reason, natural science, and the iron cage (Weber) and expand to include the rationalization of social science, democracy, and death camps (Horkheimer), self, politics, and consumption (Lasch), academics, medicine, and economics (Capra), and the Enlightenment and environment (Merchant). The course will end with an outline of the various theories of the environment, including Shallow (environmentalism), Deep (spiritual), Social (political economy), and Radical (feminist) Ecology. |
| 9. | Max Horkheimer | Eclipse of Reason (1947) Phenomenology of Spirit in Hegel, Nietzsche, Weber, and Horkheimer: Evolution of the Phenomenology of Spirit to a Phenomenology of Decadence, Disenchantment, and Displacement Crisis of the Enlightenment From Nominalism and Empiricism to Positivism and Nihilism: Horkheimer will examine the impact of the method and theory of the natural sciences on the creation of the social sciences. Horkheimer integrates Hegel's phenomenology of Spirit with Weber's theory of Rationalization and Freud's theory of Repression in his study of the eclipse of reason and the rationalization of the social sciences and social theory. Horkheimer's theory of the loss of reason integrates the writings of German idealism, classical social theory, neo-Freudian analysis, and existentialism as he traces the dialectical evolution of the human consciousness and spirit and its alienation in modern liberalism, utilitarianism, romanticism, pietism, and individualism (Locke and Kant) and the loss of social ethics, community, and the ideals of the Greek polity. He will, in turn, connect this view of Hegelian alienation to Marx's theory of alienation and dehumanization, Nietzsche's theory of moral nihilism and existentialism, Weber's theory of rationalization and disenchantment, and Freud's theory of the unconscious, displacement, and repression. Horkheimer begins with Freud's theory of the unconscious and repression as he replaces the latter's theory of sexuality with Weber's theory of substantive and formal rationality. What are repressed are not sexual desires, ideas, and the memories of deviant behavior but concepts and theories of ethics, politics, philosophy, religion, aesthetics, etc. which do not conform to the methods and procedures of the natural sciences and formal reason. That is, what is repressed is not human sexuality in the form of the Oedipus complex, childhood masturbation, illicit love, or lesbianism; rather, what are repressed are the various historical and social forms of substantive reason. What are lost are the ideals of substantive reason by which the empirical reality of social institutions and cultural values are critically explored. This work examines the values lost in the transition from Objective Reason to Subjective Reason. The latter is a product of Positivism and Liberalism, that is, a product of the rise of capitalist production (21) and the spirit of positivism and its consequent "contempt of theory" and praise for the reified immediacy of empirical facts (21, 30, 39, 40, 61, 73, 82, and 83). Horkheimer argues in his Phenomenology of Western Reason that before the Holocaust there was an initial Holocaust of the Mind with the development of the social sciences unable to ask questions about social justice and moral principles. Horkheimer transforms Weber's Substantive Reason into Objective Reason (institutional, real, and universal) and Formal Reason into Subjective Reason (personal, existential, particular, and individual spirit, orconsciousness) in order to emphasize his connection to Hegel's theory of Objective Reason, Sittlichkeit, community, and social ethics. Subjective reason or individual mind derives from the rationalism and idealism of R. Descartes and Bishop Berkeley who argue that the material reality is perceived by the subjective or individual mind and is thus a result of individual experience, knowledge, and consciousness; Objective Reason, on the other hand, is a product of the Spirit of the social mind or collective consciousness articulated in its institutions, values and principles, political economy, and moral community (Aristotle and Hegel). The goal of Aristotle and Hegel was to integrate the subjective and objective mind in the ancient and modern state, respectively. Horkheimer's separation of Subjective and Objective Reason mirrors the distinctions in Aristotle between Ethics (moral virtue and happiness) and Politics (political and economic institutions) and in Hegel between the Subjective and Objective Spirit. By re-translating and redefining the terminology of the dialectic and eclipse of reason, Horkheimer is thus returning to both Hegel and Aristotle. He is attempting to recapture the relationship between the individual and society within the framework of Sittlichkeit. That is, substantive reason now has the immediate connotation of both subjectivity and objectivity, individual morality and social ethics, moral virtue and objective social institutions. Horkheimer is reclaiming Aristotle's distinction between Ethics and Politics -- between moral virtue and happiness and a moral economy and democratic polity which realizes, makes concrete, and makes objective these moral values. For both Aristotle and Hegel, self-consciousness, freedom, and the political ideal can only be realized in the integration of both subjective and objective reason -- moral consciousness and social institutions. Critical Theory and Neo-Marxism are reclaiming the values and tradition of Greek antiquity. Weber's critique of the Enlightenment stressed the meaninglessness of natural science in its role as a Herrschaftswissen or science of domination. Horkheimer's emphasis in his critique of reason is on epistemology (Chapter 1), politics and democracy (Chapter 1), methodology (Chapter 2), the social sciences (Chapter 2), and the revolt of nature and repressed unconscious memories of the authoritarian personality (Chapter 3). His goal is to show how reason in the form of mid-twentieth-century empiricism, sociological research, and democratic politics has a tendency to "liquidate itself." The creation of "facts" in sociological research using quantitative methods is the result of social alienation since "facts" are the reified or commodified expression of the instrumental and technical logic of capital and production which only reaffirms the status quo; it becomes a form of subjective reason and ideology. Theory disappears because there is no longer a sensitivity to ideas and concepts, no longer an interest in epistemology and methodology, no longer an awareness of the intellectual and philosophical traditions that inspired ideas and thought, and, finally, no longer an ability to think broadly and abstractly in terms of the social totality of history, political economy, and culture. The very passion for critical thought has been extinguished and replaced by a bland and unreflective history of ideas or crude summary of quantitative statistics without the spirit (Objective Spirit, ethics, and social justice), heart (Reason, morality, and virtue), and soul (history and empirical research) of THEORY. To rediscover theory is to rediscover the bond between the Ancients and Moderns, philosophy and sociology, ethics and social research. The bond has been severed by the rise of an inarticulate theory of science based on empiricism and positivism. Structure, History, Dialectic, and Forms of Human Consciousness, Life, and Concepts in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit: Evolution of the Spirit from Self-Consciousness, Reason, and Objective Spirit to Absolute Spirit: Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) is a critical analysis of the structures and forms of human experience and phenomena of the history and evolution of Western consciousness or mind (Geist) from ancient Greek and Roman philosophy and medieval Christianity to modern French politics and German idealism (Robert Solomon, In the Spirit of Hegel). The original title of Hegel's work was to be Science of the Experience of Consciousness as it traced the self-understanding and evolution of the human spirit or consciousness through its stages of Subjective Spirit (Consciousness, Self-Consciousness, and Reason in chapters 1-5), Objective Spirit (Philosophy of Right: Family, Civil Society, and the State in chapter 6), and Absolute Spirit (Art, Religion, and Philosophy in 7-8) toward freedom -- through the stages of a philosophy of (1) natural consciousness, the individual soul, ego, mind, or consciousness, (2) objective institutions of cultural philosophy, society, law, politics and political economy, and (3) the self-conscious reflection on the Objective Spirit in philosophy of art, religion, and absolute knowledge. Knowledge begins with our consciousness and experience of the world and nature around us, then moves to our self-understanding and consciousness of others in the community, and, finally, to a philosophical integration of the phenomenology in the various cultural forms of absolute knowledge. For the purposes of this lecture the most important forms or historical/logical stages of human consciousness are the Alienation of Culture and Community in Aristotle and Rousseau and the breakdown of social ethics and the communal consciousness in Kantian moral philosophy and the French Revolution in chapter 6, along with the temporary integration of subject and object, individual and community in art, religion, and philosophy in chapter 7. For Hegel, the phenomenology of spirit (Geist) represents the evolution and logic of phenomenal and historical consciousness in search of the good life and ethical community (Sittlichkeit) -- a yearning for the lost Greeks and the spark of truth remaining in modern consciousness that he found in Aristotle and the Greeks -- the search for social ethics -- but lost in the modern experience of modern liberalism, individualism, personal bourgeois morality or zoo, and the breakdown of social ethics; it is a history of the various forms of representation of consciousness: (1) the "Self-Consciousness" of the Early Hellenistic Greek and Roman epistemology and moral philosophy of Stoicism and Scepticism and the medieval Christianity of the Unhappy Consciousness or the soul of despair; (2) the "Practical Reason" of the Enlightenment in liberalism, utilitarianism, hedonism, romanticism, idealism, moral virtue, and the law; (3) the "Alienation of Culture and Spirit" through the loss of memory of the social ethics and political ideals of Aristotle and Rousseau in German moral philosophy and idealism, the French Revolution, and Robespierrean Terror; and (4) "Religion and the Absolute Spirit where he ends his major work with the alienated confusion and frustration of religion, art, and philosophy that has lost the sense of moral community and social ethics of the ancient tradition. Most secondary interpretations of Hegel's work view the Absolute Spirit as the epitome and culmination of human knowledge of the phenomenal world. However, this reading sees the quest for the absolute knowledge of the Absolute Spirit as a retreat from the existential failure of human experience and the collective ideals of the ancients and moderns -- Alienation of Culture -- who were not able to realize the potentialities of the past and retreated into the contemporary forms of an unhappy consciousness of the isolated, speculative, and alienated mind. This is an ironic moment in European thought in the early nineteenth century because Hegel, like Kant before him, had elements of existentialism incorporated into his German idealism. In this reading of Hegel, the Absolute Spirit reflects the alienation and despair of social ethics, moral community, and the polity ideals of Aristotle and Rousseau; the Absolute Spirit is a form of the alienation of human consciousness in modernity. Just as humanity is alienated from the ancient Greek ideals of integration and harmony of the individual and society with the development of the ancient Roman and medieval Christian worlds, so too is Kant and Robespierre alienated from those ideals in modern society. In both cases of ancient and modern alienation, the result is a retreat into theological religion and metaphysical philosophy in which subject and object, morality and society are separated from each other in a loss of ethics and community. It reminds one of parallel arguments in Voltaire's famous phrase at the end of Candide (1759) when he, too, experienced the melancholic and tragic despair and loss of hope in the Enlightenment project of science, love, technology, and reason at the end of his major work. It is at this point that he wrote the famous phrase: "We must cultivate our own garden" as he retreated back into his family and farm and away from politics and the public. The Absolute Spirit at the end of the Phenomenology also represents the existential despair over the Enlightenment and its failure to realize the values of social ethics and the good life of the community. This de-spiriting experience could itself only be transcended with Hegel's later writings on social ethics. and his rediscovery of the ancient polity, social ethics, the good life, and moral community in the modern state, including On Christianity: Early Theological Writings (1795-1800), System der Sittlichkeit (1802), Jenenser Realphilosophie ("Philosophy of Spirit" lecture, 1805-1806), The Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Basic Outline (1817), The Philosophy of Right (1821), and his lectures on social ethics from the 1820s. In these writings the Absolute Spirit is replaced by the State. Hegel traces the evolution of the self-reflection and political ideals from Greek philosophy to the loss of cultural, historical, and social self-consciousness in the Enlightenment, liberalism, French Revolution, and the emptiness and empiricism of Kant's moral philosophy. Since the harmonious and integrated whole of the individual and the moral community cannot be created after the master/slave consciousness and after Kant and Robespierre, there is a temporary integration, false consciousness, and alienation of the Spirit caused by religion and philosophy during both medieval Christianity and the Absolute Spirit of German Idealism. The modern critical theory of Horkheimer continues this thesis of alienation in a similar direction as it ends in liberalism and the arbitrary will-to-power of decadence, the iron cage of the last man of existential disenchantment, and the fascism and wired metal cage of the social unconscious, psychological repression, and cultural displacement. One can argue that the issues of decadence, disenchantment, and displacement can be seen as the result of the rise of positivism and its contemporary manifestations in British and American analytic philosophy -- the radicalization of Enlightenment science. We don't usually associate Hegel's phenomenological method and his history of Western consciousness with Nietzsche, Weber, and Horkheimer. However, on closer investigation the method of the phenomenology of spirit developed by Hegel in the early part of the nineteenth century is utilized by Nietzsche, Weber, and Horkheimer to trace the devolution of human consciousness as it evolves in modern society in response to both Enlightenment science and positivism, on the one hand, and political and economic liberalism, on the other. Hegel, Marx, and Horkheimer developed their social theories based on their critiques of modern society as the lingering echoes of the music, poetry, and art of the ancient Greeks and Aristotle's ideals of virtue, happiness, and social justice. Rewriting the Phenomenology of Spirit: The development of Western culture and reason does not lead to Objective and Absolute Spirit of self-consciousness and freedom but to the dialectic of Enlightenment and Reason. Reconstructing the Phenomenology of Spirit: Alienation (Hegel), Idolatry (Nietzsche), Rationalization (Weber), and the Eclipse of Reason (Horkheimer): Hegel, Nietzsche, Weber, and Horkheimer all wrote major writings on the phenomenology of spirit and the evolution of reason in Western thought. Marx could be included in this group with his theory of the alienation of reason and work, history and the phenomenology of the spirit and logic of capital, and the irrationality of capitalist production. The search for social ethics and a virtuous life ends, according to Hegel, in its destruction due to the Enlightenment, liberalism, utilitarianism, narrow individualism. Hegel articulates this evolution of human consciousness in history which is then used as the central framework for a number of later authors in philosophy and sociology as the basis for their critical social theory: (1) for Hegel, it ends in the alienation of the good life and Sittlichkeit which are replaced by the speculative philosophy of absolute knowledge (2) for Marx, it ends in the alienation of the self (species being), community, and nature (3) for Nietzsche, it ends in the depraved and despairing last man lost in moral nihilism without meaning, purpose, and creativity (4) for Weber, it ends in the depressing disenchantment of Enlightenment science and positivism, utilitarianism, materialism, and liberalism, and the formal and technical rationalization and bureaucracy of the iron cage (5) for Horkheimer, it ends in the despair and loneliness of existentialism, the moral nihilism and nominalism of modern science and positivism, the rise of political fascism in the United States without resistance, and the eclipse of reason. Science, Positivism, and Fascism: Horkheimer's Analysis of the History of the Western Crisis and Death of Reason: I. Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit (1807): Hegel outlines the movement of the mind or spirit -- Consciousness, Morality, Reason, and Ethics -- in the writings of Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, and Fichte to himself. The Phenomenology of Spirit examines the logic of phenomena of the Subjective (individual psychology, consciousness, experience, and reason), Objective (ethical life of the family, civil society, and the state), and Absolute Spirit (art, religion, and philosophy) -- the logical and historical development of constructed phenomena and cultural representations from immediate perception and experience of the world (Kant), social oppression of slavery and self-consciousness of others (Roman and medieval worldview), the rise of moral and political individualism (French and German Enlightenment), the extremes and violence of the French Revolution, and the alienation and distortion of modern reason, institutions, and social values away from the ancient Greek communal spirit with its focus on the community, state, and common good and general welfare of its citizens. The isolated monad of the Cogito to the state of nature arguments of the British and French Enlightenment set the stage for Hegel's dialectic and phenomenology of the Spirit. In his major work Hegel traces the evolution of the Western Spirit from perception, the unhappy consciousness, liberalism to alienation of the Spirit. That is, he outlines the development of the Western Mind from Consciousness (immediate perception and experience), Self-Consciousness (Greek master/slave relationship, Ancient Roman philosophy, and medieval Christianity), Reason (18th-19-century utilitarianism, liberalism, and Kantian philosophy), Spirit (18th century alienation of culture, loss of classical Greek Objective Spirit, French Revolution and Terror, and Kantian individualism and moral philosophy), and Absolute Spirit or knowledge of religion, art, and philosophy. Hegel traces the evolution of the Western mind and spirit from the consciousness of perception and the understanding, the escapist idealism of ancient and medieval philosophy and religion, modern conceptions of reason in liberalism, utilitarianism, and philosophy, the loss of community, social ethics, and the Objective Spirit in the modern times, the alienation of culture and society in Kantian individualism and morality and the French Revolution and Terror, and finally, the abstract and speculative rebuilding of the Spirit in self-conscious reason in religion, art, and philosophy. Reading the Phenomenology of Spirit in the context of his complete set of writings, we can see that the Absolute Spirit can be interpreted as a contemporary form of the medieval Unhappy Consciousness or modern Alienation. It is only with the System of Sittlichkeit and the Philosophy of Right that Hegel sees a blossoming of the state, community, and the Objective Spirit through the realization of self-consciousness (intersubjectivity and social creativity), reason (sovereignty and freedom) and social ethics in concrete social and political institutions. The Objective Spirit, which is only a form of alienation in the Phenomenology of Spirit, develops beyond the French and Kantian revolutions into an integration of self-consciousness and reason into the free polity. In this way social reason is made historical and real. Phenomenology of Spirit A. Consciousness: (Chapters 1-3) Sense Certainty Perception Understanding B. Self-Consciousness: (Chapter 4) Master-Slave: Ancient Greeks Slave Morality and Stoicism of Ancient Romans Moral Skepticism Christianity and Unhappy Consciousness: unhappy consciousness of the "soul of despair" (Christianity) C. Free Concrete Mind: (AA). Modern Reason of Individualism and Liberalism: (Chapter 5) Liberalism of Hedonism: pleasure and hedonism of Utilitarianism in Jeremy Bentham and James Mill, Law of the Heart and Romanticism: passions, sensibility, frenzy, heart, and search for inner goodness of Romanticism in Faust, Schiller, and Don Quixote Individual Virtue: virtue and asceticism of Pietism Modern Individualism: bourgeois zoo, social contract, natural rights, market exchange, and distorted individualism of Hobbes and Locke, and Reason: reason as the moral lawgiver of Kantian philosophy (Moralitaet). (BB). Spirit: Loss of the Ancient Greek Culture, Community, and Sittlichkeit: (Chapter 6) 1. Objective Spirit: Ethical Order Ethics: Aristotle & Rousseau 2. Culture & Alienation 3. Enlightenment 4. French Revolution French Terror 5. Kant & Morality Robespierre (CC). Religion: (Chapter 7) Religion Art (DD).Absolute Knowledge (Chapter 8) Philosophy The result of these developments, according to Hegel, is the Alienation of the Objective Spirit or the Alienation of Reason, the Enlightenment, Culture, Civil Society, and the ethical community (Sittlichkeit) (Chapter 6) -- the loss of social ethics, community bonds, common good, and the classical polity/state. The Enlightenment And Reason have produced a false morality and individuality (Moralitaet): It has produced the isolation and desolation of the modern individual by creating a world characterized by the following: a personal search for pleasure, inner goodness, retreat from the world by living a virtuous life, self-interest and market competition, personal rights and liberties in bourgeois civil society, and the solipsism of subjective moral law. The result is a loss of spirit, reason, and community. In the section on Alienation and the Objective Spirit, Hegel recognizes the loss of the spirit of the Ancients, Aristotelian ethics, and Rousseauean politics, community, and the General Will. He stresses (1) the transcendental emptiness, subjective abstractionism, and moral authoritarianism of Kant's practical reason, (2) the violence and destruction of the French Revolution, Robespierre, and the French Terror, and (3) the institutional, ethical, and political emptiness of the Absolute Spirit of religion, art, and philosophy. Society based on the ethical community (Sittlichkeit) and the common good of ancient Greece was replaced by the isolation and terror of liberal individualism (Locke and Kant) and the French Revolution. The Terror of modern society results from the physical violence of the French Revolution and from spiritual violence of the radicalization of utility, self-interest, private rights and market liberties, personal moral virtue and law, and the values of the Enlightenment -- from Robespierre and Kant. Hegel's immediate solution to the alienation, authoritarianism, and violence of modern self-consciousness and human development lies in the retreat to the modern form of moral idealism found in the Unhappy Consciousness of the Absolute Spirit and later in his writings reviving the Greek ethical spirit and community in the Philosophy of Right (1821). By this means, Hegel attempts to integrate the individualism and natural rights of the Moderns with the communalism and natural law of the Ancients. Finally, to clarify the philosophical representatives and theories of Hegel's notions of Reason (Chapter 5) and Objective Spirit (Chapter 6) in the Phenomenology of Spirit connect them to their more detailed and in-depth analyses in the History of Philosophy. Hegel traces the movement of the Spirit from the Verstand to the Vernunft, from the understanding to reason, from consciousness to self-consciousness, and from the abstract categories of experience and science to the self-reflective categories of intersubjective and social self-awareness and institutional freedom (Philosophy of Right). But it is still only a movement of the concept (Begriff) within reason and thus only a development within the boundaries of the human mind and not the concrete, social reality. From the Iron Cage of Weber to the Barbed Wire Concentration Camps of Horkheimer: Horkheimer switches the focus of attention in the movement from objective and subjective reason to the rationalization and disenchantment of the Academy, Politics, and the Public Sphere. With later developments in philosophy and social theory after Hegel, especially with the writings of Nietzsche, Weber, Horkheimer, and C. Wright Mill, the roles played by liberalism, the French Revolution and Terror, and the individualism of Kantian morality are replaced by the empiricism and positivism of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, the nominalism and loss of universals of Hume and Nietzsche (relativism and nihilism), and the liberalism (utilitarianism, democracy, and tolerance) of Bentham, James Mill, and John Stuart Mill, thereby making Objective or Substantive Reason impossible. Hegel contended that liberalism, individualism, and morality made social ethics, community, and the polity (Objective Spirit) impossible; the later theorists dropped the centrality of Kant's moral philosophy and replaced it with science (positivism, empiricism and nominalism). By replacing Kant with Hume, moral philosophy with science, Weber and Horkheimer both recognized that sociology had repressed and eclipsed morality and ethics (nominalism) and also alternative forms of social science, such as historical, hermeneutical, dialectical, critical, and neo-Kantian science. The result has been the neutralization of religion, philosophy, metaphysics, ethics, and politics; the end result is unfortunately the liquidation and genocide of reason and social justice. This means that there has been a loss of reason in sociology expressed in terms of a loss of ethics, secular natural law, morals, politics, justice, metatheory and critique of epistemology and methodology in sociology, political economy, analysis of structures and functions within the total social system, and history; finally, the crisis and liquidation of reason represents the death of social theory by Positivism, Empiricism, and Nominalism. It also refers to the rise of fascism and the decline of the substantive foundations of democracy. The last man in the iron cage has been replaced by the prophets, preachers, and demagogues of the new concentration camps in the academy. In the development of his theory of rationalization, disenchantment, and the alienation of nature leading to the iron cage, Weber was highly influenced by Kant, Scheler, and Nietzsche, German idealism, phenomenology, and existentialism ending in the moral relativism and disenchantment of the "warring gods" of modernity. Unfortunately, Weber never clarified the relationship among Enlightenment science, the domination of nature, and liberal utilitarianism, that is, among science, production, wealth, and happiness. On the other hand, Horkheimer will expand upon Weber's thesis by turning to Marx and Freud as he combines political theory and psychoanalysis when discussing the loss and repression of objective reason by science, liberal moderation and tolerance, and oppressive fascism. The next step is to further these analyses by connecting science, consciousness, and formal rationality to the structures and institutions of political economy and industrial capitalism, that is, by connecting Kant to Marx. Horkheimer was lecturing and writing at the end of World War II, but today, at the end of the second decade of the twentieth-first century, classical and contemporary social theory has almost disappeared as it has been replaced and repressed by positivism, empiricism, and critical rationalism. According to Hegel, the Enlightenment of German and french philosophy led to the French Revolution and Terror, while for Horkheimer, the Enlightenment of subjectivity, nominalism, and positivism lead to Fascism and the loss of democracy and social justice. II. Nietzsche's Twilight of the Idols (1888): Nietzsche continues this tradition but in its inverted form of the distorted universalism, decadence, and illusory dreams of Apollonian idols or the "Shadows of God" from Platonic Rationalism of Plato and Aristotle, Christian Theology of Augustine and Aquinas, Scientific Rationalism of Descartes and Galileo, Political Liberalism of Hobbes and Locke, and the Modern Morality of Kant. Twilight of the Idols and the "Shadows of God": 1. Platonic Rationalism: Plato & Aristotle 2. Christian Theology: Augustine & Aquinas 3. Scientific Rationalism: Descartes & Galileo 4. Political Liberalism: Hobbes & Locke 5. Modern Morality: Kant 6. Last Man, Iron Cage, and Decadence: John Bunyan III. Weber's "Science as a Vocation" (1919): Weber traces the development of reason from the substantive reason of Ancient Greek Philosophy of the 5th century (Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle), Renaissance Art of the 15th century (Leonardo da Vinci), Early European Science of the 17th century(Bacon and Galileo), and the Protestant Reformation and Biology of the 17th century (Jan Swammerdam) to the formal or technical reason of modern natural science, utilitarianism, positivism, and institutional bureaucracy of the last man in the iron cage without Spirit or Heart. Weber is caught in the disenchanted bureaucracy of technical and formal rationality and moral relativism without an apparent way out of the twentieth-century dilemma. He can only say that we must choose among the warring gods of norms and values but offers no concrete solution to the problem posed by existentialism other than waiting for a charismatic savior and return to some form of substantive reason. For Weber, Existentialism is the twentieth-century iron cage and there is no conceptual or theoretical way out of the cage. Horkheimer took Weber's theories of rationalization and disenchantment and connected them to issues of the decline of liberalism and rise of fascism. History of Substantive Reason (Wertrationalitaet): 1. Greek Philosophy: Being, truth, justice, and beauty 2. Renaissance (15th Century): art and experimentation 3. Early Science (17th Century): Bacon and Descartes 4. Reformation (17th Century): Jan Swammerdam ************** History of Formal Reason (Zweckrationalitaet, 19th Century): 1. Rationalization: technical or instrumental rationality 2. Enlightenment: Hume 3. Natural Science: Herrschaftswissen Max Scheler 4. Positivism: Hume 5. Utilitarianism: bureaucracy and happiness J. Bentham and J. Mill 6. Existentialism: Disenchantment, last man, and the iron cage Nietzsche and Tolstoi This is a world of Specialists Without Spirit (self-consciousness, substantive reason, justice, and social ethics) and Sensualists Without Heart (passion, virtue, and morality) -- a world without meaning, purpose, and ideals a world without ethics and morality, politics and virtue IV. Horkheimer's Eclipse of Reason (1947): Horkheimer continues this phenomenological and historical treatment of reason from Objective Reason of the ancient, medieval, and modern theorists searching for objective truth, being, essence, or nature to the decline and dissolution of reason in the Protestant Reformation, empiricism, social science, moral relativity, pragmatism, and liberalism until it reaches a crescendo in the eclipse and liquidation of people, reason, and ideas itself in the Holocaust. In his work Critique of Instrumental Reason (1967), Horkheimer using the idea of the "liquidation of reason" states that reason is liquidated along with individuals and social institutions. The truth of traditional Objective Reason (Hegel) -- its spirit and heart -- lies in an objective and essential reality, in purposeful meaning as being (metaphysics), nature (physics), humanity (telos), and society (ethics and politics). Whereas Weber passively accepts the existential implications of modern society and science, Horkheimer searches for a "revolt of nature" in order to break the bonds of Positivism, Existentialism, and Subjective Reason (Kant). The eclipse and liquidation of reason cannot be the final answer to questions about the meaning of personal and social life. Existentialism is a form of the liquidation of the mind and reason. The Crisis of Reason in the Natural Sciences, for Weber (last man, iron cage, formal rationality, and the domination of nature), is caused by Liberalism and Utilitarianism (happiness and utility) along with Science (Herrschaftswissen) and Positivism, whereas, for Horkheimer, the dialectic of the Enlightenment and the eclipse and liquidation of Objective Reason in the Social Sciences is caused by Sociology and Positivism (empiricism, neutralism, nominalism, and relativism, 6-9, 17-18, and 22-24), as well as by Liberalism and Democracy (individualism and tolerance, 19-20 and 26-30). Weber was influenced by Nietzsche and the growing rationalization of social institutions and the Natural Sciences, whereas Horkheimer was inspired by Marx, Weber, and Freud, especially the ideas of depoliticization, nominalism, and empiricism -- the inability of Social Science to ask the profound questions about "meaning and values," i.e., the loss of Marx, Weber, Durkheim, and Freud. Social science becomes a form of mimesis or the reflection of and adaptation to social reality on the one hand and the reduction of reason to subjective questions of the mind and consciousness (Kant) divorced from history, community, and political economy (Hegel). History of Objective Reason 1. Greek Philosophy: Plato & Aristotle, 10 2. Medieval Scholasticism and Natural Law 3. 16th-Century French Philosophy: Michel de Montaigne, Jean Bodin, and Guillaume de l'Hopital, 13 4. 16th-Century Reformation 5. 17th-Century English and French Enlightenment: Hobbes, Locke, Spinoza, Leibniz, Descartes, and Rationalism, 14 6. 17th-Century Natural Rights Theory: Hobbes and Locke 7. German Idealism: Kant ************** History of Subjective Reason: The Liquidation of Reason and the Dialectic of the Enlightenment 1. Protestant Reformation and Calvinism: Calvin and the theology of Deus Absconditus, 17 2. Positivism (Empiricism and Nominalism) and Relativism: George Berkeley 3. Empiricism: Hume and Berkeley, 18 4. Relativism and Nihilism: Nietzsche 5. Relativism & Decisionism: Weber 6. Liberalism and Ethical and Political Tolerance: 18-19 Charles Sanders Pierce and John Dewey 7. Positivism and Social Sciences: 8. Fascism and Nazism: Loss of Ethics, Morality, Critical Social Science, and Democracy, 20-21 Horkheimer's goal is not only to diagnose the Dialectic of Enlightenment but to find a way back to a critical social theory of modern industrial society by integrating Hegel, Nietzsche, Weber, Marx, and Freud. The epistemology, methodology, and logic of modern science is deeply embedded in the metaphysics of science and the Enlightenment (Burtt and Berman) and the logic of capital (Marx, Berman, and Horkheimer). Horkheimer synthesizes Hegel's critique of Reason in Chapter 5 of the Phenomenology of Spirit in the form of utilitarianism, natural rights theory, romanticism, and Kantian practical reason with Nietzsche's twilight of the Apollonian idols and false gods of Greek philosophy, medieval theology, scientific rationalism, political liberalism, and modern moral philosophy, Weber's theory of formal rationality of utilitarianism, liberalism, and positivism, and Freud's theory of the mind and unconscious repression. Weber sees the loss of Substantive Reason and the rise of liberalism, positivism, and existentialism as the shadows that cover and destroy the Enlightenment -- the bureaucratization of the mind (reason) and spirit (community). However, he is not specific as to what a return to Substantive Reason would entail other than the ability to ask questions about the meaning of life instead of the mastering of nature. But what direction society should take is a question about the different and competing warring gods within existentialism itself. Due to his residual existentialism and relativism, his ignoble resignation and overwhelming pessimism, Weber has nothing substantive to offer. According to him, the end of Enlightenment positivism and capitalist utilitarianism is the "last man; on the other hand, the end, according to Horkheimer, is the banality, passivity, and existential emptiness of the last man of the Holocaust. Horkheimer, unlike Weber, in not stunned by existentialism and nominalism, but actively calls for democratic socialism and a critical social theory as the answer to the loss of Objective Reason -- the need for an examination of History, Meaning, Critique, Political Economy, and Social Justice. All these ethical and political areas require the integration of Ethics and Science. With the success of positivistic sociology, one loses the ability to develop a critical theory of the deep structures and functions of American society. With PERSONNNN, there is no critical theory of the pathologies of modernity -- RRAANNDDD; with positivism, there is no critical analysis of the organizations and histories of political economy; and with PERSONNNN, there can be no philosophical or theoretical resistance to fascism and Nazism. Scientific objectivity, neutrality, and nominalism displace and repress ethics and social critique. This results in the "contempt of theory (83), the "disease of reason (176), and the internment or "liquidation of reason" (18) and social justice. The replacement of critical social theory by the values, methods, and theories of STEM result in the death of sociology as a critical and oppositional (Max Scheler) discipline. Weber's theory of formal reason becomes Horkheimer's theory of subjective reason (return to Hegel) and the former's theory of the iron cage is transformed into Freud's theory of the id and psychological repression (sexual desires are replaced by substantive reason) -- the result is the alienation of consciousness and reason (Marx). Positivism is incompatible with social theory because of the moral indifference and naturalism of reason in empiricism (30, 82, and 83) -- "It is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger" (Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Book III, Of Morals); positivism "hands science over" to the immediacy of experience and the contingent conformity of history (73); positivism "hands over" humanity, theory, and reason to the Nazis for liquidation or extermination of reason just as Judas surrendered Jesus, as a revolutionary and traitor, to the Sadducees, the Temple guard, and the Roman officials; and, finally. positivism "hands over" RRAANNDDD -- Classical and Contemporary Social Theory, Political Economy, and History -- to the officials of PERSONNNN as the former becomes impossible under the imprint of the latter. [Note: Horkheimer views Weber and Durkheim as positivists and thus representatives of Subjective Reason. G. McCarthy in his work Classical Horizons places Marx, Weber, Durkheim, and Freud in the tradition of classical antiquity and Objective Reason.] This work by Horkheimer is part of a broader positivism debate (Positivismusstreit) in the German academy among members of the Frankfurt School, especially between Popper and Habermas. Discuss the various historical and theoretical attempts at creating Objective Reason, including immanent critique, dialectic, structural contradictions in political economy, and social justice (Marx); Christianity and liberation theology (Segundo and Miranda); Christianity, natural law, and human rights (Maritain and Wallis); revolt of nature (Horkheimer); one-dimensional man and art (Marcuse); communicative action and social critique (Habermas), etc. How would you start thinking about this issue of grounding and validating the foundations of Objective Reason and social critique? Dialectic of the Enlightenment and Genocide of Theory and Reason: Positivism and Social Theory as Incompatible and Contradictory Ideas and Traditions: In summary, they conclude that the Alienation of Reason is a result of the Enlightenment -- its Philosophy, Science, and Politics: (1) Kantian moral individualism, French Revolution, and the Terror with its corresponding loss of the Objective Spirit and Modern State integrating natural law and natural rights, individuality and community (Hegel); (2) the cultural decadence and universal idols of the last man in the iron cage with the loss of individual creativity, self-determination, and the will-to-power (Nietzsche); (3) formal reason, technical science, modern bureaucracy, utilitarianism, and positivism with the loss of substantive and reflective reason (Weber); and (4) science, empiricism (positivism), politics (liberalism and democracy), and existential relativism with the cultural genocide of objective reason and social theory (Horkheimer). These developments point to the decline of Western reason and culture -- the loss of Truth and the rise of Relativism resulting in the loss of Meaning and Life itself since life is now without social ethics, objective spirit, universal values, moral virtue, ethical community, or social justice. The end result is an Existential crisis of Meaning, a Scientific crisis of Truth, and a Political crisis of Terror; in the end, the modern individual without natural law is in danger of being crushed by the terror of uncontrollable revolution, stultifying bureaucracy, or racial and cultural extermination. Examine Nietzsche's role in this discussion of the alienation of reason since he turns to Schopenhauer and a Dionysian wisdom of the relativity of all knowledge and idols; there is only one truth -- there is no meaning to reason, theology, science, politics or morality. "Truth" lies not in reified knowledge but rather in the endless struggle for knowledge and meaning by the striving individual or Uebermensch. But this pure relativism is exactly what Hegel, Weber, and Horkheimer reject because there is too much danger behind an unregulated and uncontrolled Existentialism. Lurking behind Existentialism and Positivism is potentially the Terror of the Jacobins or the Nazis. Alienation of Reason: Hegel saw that alienation meant the rise of Western liberalism, utilitarianism, romanticism, pietism, and individualism (Locke and Kant) and the loss of community and the Greek polity; Nietzsche saw it as the moral and intellectual decadence and idolatry of the last man in the twilight of Western reason unable to recapture Dionysian wisdom and self-determination; Weber viewed it as the bureaucratic and specialized individual using technical reason in the iron cage to produce "specialists without spirit" -- technicians without ethics and justice and "sensualists without heart" -- utilitarians without virtue and reason; and Horkheimer, synthesizing all these elements and traditions, theorized about the rise of fascism, the weakness of liberalism and Kantian morality, and the dangers of positivism, the social sciences, and the Western Enlightenment. Under the conditions of the Enlightenment, social critique became impossible and so, too, did resistance to European fascism. It was Western reason, liberalism, Kantian morality, and the Enlightenment which prepared and paved the philosophical path to German fascism by reducing Objective Reason of God, nature, and the ethical community (natural law) to the Subjective Reason of instrumental or formal knowledge, classification, inference, deduction, self-preservation, utility, technical means, tolerance, market self-interest, and moral and epistemological relativism. This is the reason of natural science, modern bureaucracy, formal technicians, and market liberalism -- there are no longer any objective, natural, or universal religious, ethical, or political values. With the loss of objective reason, there is no longer any basis to resist the rise of fascism. Odyssey of Reason and Phenomenology of Spirit: The Crisis of Liberalism: Horkheimer's theory of the eclipse of reason comes at the end of a long intellectual tradition of the history and phenomenology of Reason and Spirit: Aristotle recognized the dangers inherent in a market economy leading to self-interest and market values without virtue and politics (moral economy and democracy); Hegel traced the phenomenology of the mind to the isolation and individualism of Kantian morality and the French Terror without social ethics and the state (Subjective, Objective, and Absolute Spirit); Weber examined the rise of modern bureaucracy and utilitarianism without spirit and heart (justice and morality); and Horkheimer feared the rise of Fascism in American and the inability or unwillingness of the American academy to resist without ethics and critical sociology. Horkheimer borrows from Weber's theory of formal reason, rationalization, and disenchantment, the critique of positivism, empiricism, and nominalism, Nietzsche's theory of existentialism, moral relativism/nihilism, and the last man, and Marx's critique of liberalism and capitalism. He ends his work on the eclipse of reason with the recognition of the incompatibility and contradictions between democracy and liberalism, but in the context of the philosophical discussion about substantive and natural reason and its inability to resist technical rationality and the rise of fascism. Just as subjective and objective reason are incompatible forms of rationality, so too are liberalism (self-interest, utilitarianism, market economy, competition, individualism, etc.) and democracy (natural law, common good, general welfare, natural reason, etc.) incompatible forms of social systems. Horkheimer's argument would have been immensely stronger if he had only been able to introduce Marx's theory of social justice and political economy to provide the sociological, structural, and institutional foundations for his critique of Enlightenment rationality and economic Liberalism. This was a common problem with the Frankfurt School of critical social theory. Loss of Western Reason in Kantian Philosophy, Science, and Liberalism: Relativism in Morality, Science, and Politics: Horkheimer traces the historical development of modern reason and the Objective Spirit through Hegel and Weber beginning with Hegel's phenomenology of self-consciousness as it moves from the Ancient Greece of the master and slave, the freedom of self-consciousness of Stoicism and Skepticism, the Middle Ages of Christianity and the Unhappy Consciousness, and the Renaissance through the early Liberalism of hedonism, romanticism (law of the heart), the bourgeois zoo of caged animals, the virtuous ascetic, and the modern individualism of Hobbes and Locke to the cultural alienation of the Enlightenment of Kantian morality and the terror of the French Revolution of 1792-1795. Hegel's Phenomenology attempts to reconstruct the development and alienation of modern consciousness through the fragmentation and isolation of the modern self from culture and society, the rise of political, romantic, and practical individualism and moral relativism, the loss of the Objective Spirit, ethical community (Sittlichkeit) and public sphere, and universal values in modern society to the agonies and violence of the French Revolution only to achieve a temporary reintegration and theoretical harmony of consciousness at the level of the Absolute Spirit in art, religion, and philosophy. The Absolute Spirit represents a modern and secular form of the alienation of Spirit as "unhappy consciousness" or retreat from politics and the ethical community into the life of the pure transcendent mind. This Spirit is the self-conscious recognition of the universality and divinity of humanity but in its unrealized form -- no Objective Spirit. In Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, Consciousness ends in perception and experience as constructs of consciousness; Self-Consciousness ends as Unhappy Consciousness and freedom as a retreat to the mind of philosophy and religion; Reason ends as individualism, virtue, pleasure, and Kantian moralism; and Spirit ends as the alienation of culture in Kant and the French Revolution. Modernity evolves into the false consciousness, social meaningless, and moral abstractionism of Kantian philosophy that is incapable of reflecting upon or resisting the flow of history. The way out of the dilemma of modernity is to return to Aristotle, natural law, moral economy, and the ethical community for insight in creating a new constitutional and representative state. Weber's Formal Reason and Horkheimer's Subjective Reason: Weber, grounding his own ideas in Hegel's history of reason, traces the development of modern consciousness, reason, and science from substantive reason of the (1) Greek philosophy of Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato; (2) Renaissance art of Leonardo da Vinci; (3) early science of Bacon and Descartes; and (4) the Protestant religion and biology of Jan Swammerdam to the formal rationality of Utilitarianism and Positivism in the last man and iron cage of technical bureaucracy. (1) Ancient Greek philosophy of Socrates, Plato, and the Sophists (Protagoras) (2) Medieval Scholasticism and Theology of Augustine and Aquinas (3) 16th-Century French Philosophy of Montaigne, Bodin, and de l'Hopital (4) 17- and 18th-Century Enlightenment Rationalism of Hobbes, Locke, Spinoza, and Leibniz (5) Natural Rights Theory of Locke and Rousseau and (6) 18th- and 19th-Century German Idealism of Kant and Hegel. Horkheimer constructs his own phenomenology of mind and Objective Reason from ancient to modern philosophy. The philosophers of the British, French, and German Enlightenment represent the last vestiges of the Ancients and the twilight of Objective Reason as reason evolves dialectically into its own opposition. The Dialectic of the Enlightenment begins to unravel the primacy of Objective Reason with the following historical developments of Subjective Reason in the Reformation, Enlightenment, and Liberalism, that is, in Calvinism, Empiricism, Nominalism, Relativism, and Democracy. Horkheimer's critique of modernity is encapsulated in two sentences at the beginning of his work: "Reason has liquidated itself as an agency of ethical, moral, and religious insight (Objective Reason). Bishop Berkeley, legitimate son of nominalism, Protestant zealot, and positivist enlightener all in one, directed an attack against such general concepts, including the concept of general concept, two hundred years ago" (18). The foundations of modern relativism and fascism lie in the history of the FORMS OF NOMINALISM: (1) Protestantism: 16th- and 17-Century Protestant Reformation of Calvinism with its doctrines of Deus absconditus, meaninglessness of the world, predestination, and the Protestant work ethic (hidden or transcendent of God and rejection of universal and objective natural law and moral order) (2) Empiricism: 18th-Century Enlightenment epistemology of George Berkeley and David Hume (subjectivity, nominalism, skepticism, and positivism) (3) Positivism: Enlightenment theory of science, neutrality, and objective truth (4) Existentialism: Moral Subjectivity of Friedrich Nietzsche and Max Weber (perspectivism, nihilism, and relativism) (5) Pragmatism: American Pragmatism and Liberalism of Charles Peirce and John Dewey (6) Liberalism: Democracy: tolerance, moderation, pluralism, and relativism (7) Fascism: The rise of German Fascism and Nazism, totalitarianism, and political oppression (8) Eclipse of Reason and the Genocide of Theory: New iron cage of Subjective Reason, liberalism, and social science; liquidation of reason and sociology by the Enlightenment; and loss of critical reason, community, and social ideals, justice, critique, and political economy. Loss of Objective Spirit in Nominalism, Relativism, and Nihilism: Underlying Causes Lie in Protestantism, Empiricism, Positivism, Existentialism, and Liberalism: Horkheimer summarizes the loss of the Objective Spirit in neo-Calvinism, Humean empiricism, existentialism of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, the positivism and technical rationality of Enlightenment science, and democratic moderation and tolerance (political relativism) (17-31). The latest historical period presents us with the rise of Fascism and Nazism in the twentieth century and its connection to Enlightenment science and reason. Implicit in Horkheimer's analysis of the genocide of reason and theory is the relationship between science and existentialism. Before there is a liquidation of the body in the Holocaust, there is a liquidation of the mind and soul which Horkheimer sees as beginning with the Calvinist Reformation and Enlightenment Empiricism and Science and ending with the Positivism of the natural and social sciences and the nihilism of existentialism. For an examination of the relationships among Protestantism, Existentialism, and Nazism, see Richard Rubenstein, The Cunning of History: The Holocaust and the American Future (1975), pp. 27-31. The Alienation of Reason occurs because of the loss of universal moral and political values due to the Relativism in Morality (Calvinism, utilitarianism, Kantian philosophy, and existential nihilism), Science (positivism, nominalism, neutralism, and empiricism), and Politics (liberalism, pragmatism, tolerance, and democracy). Calvinism (16th-17th century), Empiricism (17th-18th century), and Democracy (18th-19th century) are the beginnings of the movement toward an isolated religious and liberal individualism, as well as an epistemological, moral, and political relativism found in contemporary existentialism: Here Horkheimer is integrating Weber's theory of the Protestant Ethic with the theory of knowledge of Locke and Hume and the political thought of J. S. Mill. Borrowing from Weber's theory of the Reformation, Horkheimer briefly outlines a thesis of the Protestant ethic and the spirit of Nazism (16-18). With Calvinism and Enlightenment science, God and Meaning have absconded and left the world barren, desolate, and unliveable without ethical, religious, and political values and ideals; with the evolution of modern Western religion, science, and politics from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, there is a devolution of Objective Reason. Horkheimer is quite aware of the historical irony that religion and science are the cause of this intellectual and spiritual ecological crisis (17-18). Nietzsche (nihilism) is the logical conclusion of Berkeley (nominalism) and Hume (empiricism, 17, 30, and 82-83) and Nietzsche is also the logical conclusion of science itself. Relativism is the disease of the Enlightenment since all values are relative or since there are no longer any absolute truths ("twilight of the idols" or "shadows of God") in God, nature (Being), human essence, reason, natural law, or science (50). Horkheimer also writes that "the disease of reason is that reason was born from man's urge to dominate nature" (176). Science is neutral with respect to the issues of objective reason (54-55, 73, 74, and 90)) and the calculation and prediction of events (40, 42-43, 44-45, 48,54, 59, and 86). Science deals with a certain type of subjective and technological knowledge whose goal is mechanical formalization, instrumental calculation, quantitative measurement, and explanatory prediction of experience and facts (58-91). Positivism has nothing but "contempt of theory" resulting in a non-reflective, non-objective, and non-idealist adaptation to reality (83-84). Science has alienated and dehumanized reason (Marx), delegitimated and disenchanted ethics and politics (Weber), and has repressed these ancient, medieval, and modern traditions so that we are incapable of remembering them anymore (Freud). With science's claim to be the only legitimate and valid form of knowledge, all the traditions of objective reason are extinguished as invalid and unjustifiable. The result is that all questions about meaning and purpose, morality and ethics, politics and democracy, good and evil, and existential meaning and social justice are no longer legitimate, since they can not be based on objective scientific enquiry. This represents the loss and repression of objective reason. Horkheimer's great fear is that there will be no one left in the academy and public sphere to resist fascism and Nazi oppression; no one will have the concepts, ideas, theories, and traditions of objective reason to resist oppression. The academy and political life will simply be avenues for the further extermination of critical social theory and social science that could challenge the transformations of the social system. Existentialism from Schopenhauer and Nietzsche to Camus and Sartre is a cultural and philosophical response to Enlightenment empiricism, nominalism, and relativism. Idols and decadence (Nietzsche), science and disenchantment (Weber), and existentialism and nominalism (Horkheimer) result in the twilight and eclipse of reason. The question remains: How do we get beyond nominalism and relativism to recall the ancient, medieval, and early modern Enlightenment ideals (20 and 23-24)? The answer is -- "the revolt of nature" -- Revolt of the Subject (92) -- as the psychological and sociological need to reconstructed memory of a phenomenology and history of spirit (94, 101, 112, 116, and 182). The "revolt of nature" (92-94) calls a return of the unconscious from repression -- return of repressed ideas, ideals, and critical social theory. It calls for a return of the past and future, consideration of the lost theories of the subject (Kant, Hegel, and Marx) (92), return of conceptual ideals to dialectically compare to empirical reality (96, 112, and 116), rejection of positivism and Enlightenment science, critique of science as ideology (21 and 25)and democracy as opinion formation, and a search for individual freedom and human dignity (135). Nazism and the Liquidation of Reason in Terror, Iron Cage, and Concentration Camps: Hegel, Weber, and Horkheimer are all skeptical of modern consciousness and rationality, which, according to Horkheimer, lead to the liquidation of reason, the iron cage of the concentration camps, and the last man of Nazism. Hegel criticizes Kantian practical reason and its radical individualism for destroying the foundations of the ethical community without moral direction or objective values embedded in social institutions -- it is this which ultimately led to the French Terror; Weber sees the last man as a product of the loss of universal moral values in a market economy and state bureaucracy; Horkheimer views the Protestant Reformation, empiricist theory of knowledge, modern democracy, pragmatism, and Enlightenment science as setting the foundations for the rise of Hitler and Nazism. According to 19th- and 20th-century European social theorists, the Alienation and Crisis of Western Reason ends in the terror of the guillotine and French Revolution, factory and capitalism, iron cage and bureaucracy, anomic madness and suicide, and the Holocaust and Nazism. Reconstructing history, we can see the cultural and philosophical origins of the alienation of reason in Hegel's theory of the bourgeois zoo and modern individualism and Marx's theory of the alienation of work, logic and structure of industrial production, and phenomenology of capitalist reason. About inner psychological side of the German experience of the loss of Objective Reason during the rise of Hitler and Nazism, Milton Mayer has written: Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don't want to act, or even talk, alone; you don't want to 'go out of your way to make trouble.' Why not? Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty. Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, 'everyone' is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You know, in France or Italy there would be slogans against the government painted on walls and fences; in Germany, outside the great cities, perhaps, there is not even this. In the university community, in your own community, you speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, 'It's not so bad' or 'You're seeing things' or 'You're an alarmist.' And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can't prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don't know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.... But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That's the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked-if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in '43 had come immediately after the 'German Firm' stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in '33. But of course this isn't the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D. And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying 'Jewish swine,' collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in-your nation, your people-is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way." Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-1945 , chapt. 13, p. 168. Birth of Nominalism in Medieval Theology, Protestant Reformation, British Empiricism, and German Existentialism: The eclipse of moral reason, critical social theory, and the Holocaust lies in the philosophical and theological disease of Western nominalism that runs from medieval theology to modern epistemology and science -- empiricism and positivism. The origins of Nominalism -- Moral Nothingness and Nihilism -- lie in the medieval writings of William of Oakham, Gabriel Biel, & the early Martin Luther, the theology of predestination and a transcendent God of John Calvin, the philosophy of knowledge and science of Bacon, Berkeley, & Hume, the existentialism of Schopenhauer & Nietzsche, and the social theory of Weber & Richard Rubenstein. Read the works of Heiko Oberman, Louis Bouye, Carl Olson, and Richard Weaver who argue that the theological positions of (1) the total depravity and nothingness of man, (2) Deus absconditus and the transcendence and hiddenness of God, (3) loss of free will, natural law, and moral action, and (4) the personal salvation by faith alone and not moral knowledge or action (sola fide) found in Luther and Calvin are a decadent product of the medieval nominalism of Oakham. Horkheimer stresses the nominalism found in the empiricism of Berkeley and Hume (18 and 78-80)), logical positivism of Sidney Hook, Ernst Nagel, and Rudolf Carnap (58-62), neo-Thomism scholasticism (62-70 and 88-91), American pragmatism of Charles Peirce, William James, and John Dewey (42-57, 74-78 and 87-88), and the classical social theory and positivism of Heinrich Rickert and Max Weber (81-86). Metaphysics of Social Science and the Alienation of Reason: The Crisis of Contemporary Sociology: Discuss Horkheimer's critique of empiricism, nominalism, relativism, fact-value distinction, positivism, and scientific reductionism in the social sciences, that is, PERSONNNN, and its implications for his thesis of subjective reason and the eclipse of reason -- Eclipse of Theory and Social Critique. Positivism and Theory are incompatible traditions, theories of knowledge, and philosophies of science; acceptance of one precludes the possibility of the other. Positivism quantifies, measures, and calculates what is (empiricism and nominalism), but is incapable of seeing what could be (human actuality and possibilities), what should be (ethics, politics, and social justice), and what is beneath the surface of the empirically given world of experience -- Culture (hermeneutics, depth hermeneutics, and ethnography), Consciousness & Constructivism (phenomenology and sociology of knowledge), Critique (immanent, dialectical, and substantive critique), History (neo-Kantianism and comparative historical analysis), and the Structures and Functions of political economy (historical materialism and critical theory). These approaches to the Lifeworld and System come with their own distinctive theories of knowledge, science, and methods. Heinrich Heine once wrote: "That was but a prelude; where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings" (tragic play Almansor, 1821). In that same vain, it can also be said: "Where they liquidate theory, they will eventually liquidate human beings." Discuss the issue of reintroducing into American sociology the methods of Geisteswissenschaften, Geschichtswissenschaften, Dialektische Kritik. and Soziale Gerechtigkeit. Also relevant in this discussion would be an analysis of the methods and methodologies used in (1) Existentialism of Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Albert Camus; (2) Hermeneutics of Martin Heidegger, Wilhelm Dilthey, Hans Gadamer, and Paul Ricoeur; (3) Phenomenology of Edmund Husserl, Max Scheler, Georg Simmel, Alfred Schuetz, and Eric Voegelin; (4) Neo-Kantian Social Theory of Friedrich Lange, Wilhelm Windelband, Heinrich Rickert, and Georg Simmel; and (5) Critical Theory of Theodor Adorno, Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, and Juergen Habermas. Horkheimer's work begins with the assumption, following Weber and Scheler, that the Enlightenment and Western science contain hidden normative and political assumptions in their underlying epistemology and methodology that turn natural science into a destructive ecological weapon (Weber's and Scheler's theory of science as domination -- Herrschaftswissen) and, in turn, transform social science into an oppressive political ideology (C. Wright Mill, The Sociological Imagination, Alvin Gouldner, The Coming Crisis of American Sociology, and Istvan Meszaros, The Power of Ideology). However, according to Horkheimer, when the same epistemological and methodological assumptions of the natural sciences are applied in the social sciences something even more shocking results -- the suppression of Objective Reason, the repression of justice and morality, the oppression and domination of humanity, and the mechanization of death of the mind and the body. Horkheimer's analysis of Subjective Reason places an emphasis on the importance of Enlightenment politics, religion, morality, and the metaphysics of the social sciences preparing the way for the rise of Nazism. As a work originally presented at Columbia University in the spring of 1944 and published in 1947 and written specifically for Americans, Horkheimer is suggesting that the citizens of the United States be aware of the dangers implicit in the Crisis and Dialectic of the Enlightenment within America. How prescient was Horkheimer and has American sociology reached this crisis today -- the eclipse of Objective Reason and Critical Theory. Summary of Argument: There have been a number of prominent social theorists who have been critical of the role of positivism (empiricism, naturalism, and nominalism) in the sociology: They have argued that the joining of positivism with social theory has resulted in the following: the alienation of reason and consciousness (Marx and Kolakowski), the decadence and perspectivism of reason (Nietzsche), the rationalization and disenchantment (nominalism) of formal reason (Weber), the liquidation and genocide of theory (Horkheimer), and the trivialization and propaganda of social theory (Mill). Silence of Reason in Science and Politics: Realism vs. Nominalism Reason remained silent in face of the Holocaust because its epistemological and methodological foundations could no longer raise questions about ethics, morality, and justice -- Objective Reason. With the historical and phenomenological development of Western rationality in the form of nominalism (Berkeley), empiricism (Hume), nihilism (Nietzsche), and positivism (Popper), traditional reason of ancient philosophy, theology, art, early science, French and English Enlightenment, and German Idealism had been replaced by a technical and formal rationality. In politics, reason instituted in democracy had become complacent, tolerant, and non-critical. The culture, sciences, and social institutions of Weimar Germany could not resist the onslaught of Hitler and Nazism. Nietzsche had destroyed the Western idols and gods (universals) of ancient philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, medieval Christianity of Augustine and Aquinas, early science of Descartes and Galileo, liberal political theory of Hobbes and Locke, and modern moral philosophy of Kant. This notion of the apriori political nature of positivism and abstracted empiricism in the social sciences has been taken up by C. Wright Mills in Chapters 3 and 4 of his work The Sociological Imagination (1959). As in the case of Hume's later chapters in his work mentioned above, they are rarely discussed. In these chapters Mills continues Horkheimer's thesis by examining the politics of positivism and abstracted empiricism. From the imagination and the mind to society and paradigms, objectivity is a construct of subjectivity or inter-subjectivity. Now Mills argues that the methods of sociology, based on the epistemology of abstracted empiricism, frame and construct the social reality in science in such a way as to lead to authoritarianism, propaganda, adaptation, and conformism. In positivist sociology observation, logic, theories, questions, and issues, that is, science itself, are formed by the acceptance of a particular methodological approach to the study of society that has real political implications -- science is apriori politics but hides itself behind the ideology of empiricism, neutrality, objectivity, and nominalism. This question of the political and ethical dimension of empiricism/positivism and the dangers of nominalism has been discussed by Weber, Horkheimer, Mills, Marcuse, Etienne Gilson, Kolakowski, Weaver. and Joshua Hochschild -- with the loss of the Objective Spirit and Sittlichkeit, disenchantment, the liquidation and alienation of objective reason, nominalism, and relativism. See Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences, 1-10. Critical Theory of Enlightenment, Disenchantment, and Nazism: Last Man in the Barbed Wire Cage: Without philosophical, theological, political, and moral universals to resist evil, the only alternative to the loss of Substantive Reason was silence -- the eclipse of theory and reason. This is expressed as the inability to talk about Rationalization, Repression, Alienation, Anomie, Nothingness, Nihilism, Disenchantment, and Dehumanization. Horkheimer wrote his work in English after his academic experience of exile in the United States. Was this meant as a warning to Americans -- the weakness of Enlightenment rationality in general, and American sociology in particular, is built into the logic of inquiry, concepts, epistemology, and methods of Anglo-American social science. According to Horkheimer, Positivism and Nihilism are intimately related to the Silence of Reason, the Rise of Nazism, and the Vernichtungs- und Konzentrationslager (with "Arbeit macht frei" prominently displayed on the ironwork front gates) since the substantive content and political ideals of democracy have been exhausted and depleted. Concepts, theories, and institutions have lost their collective memory and social ideals, and no longer function for the betterment of humanity. Whereas Weber was concerned with the loss of substantive reason with the rise of positivism, the Enlightenment (science of domination), and liberalism (utilitarianism) ending in the iron cage of the last man, Horkheimer broadened his critique of reason to included the Protestant Reformation, positivism (empiricism and nominalism), the loss of objective reason, values, and institutions, the emptying, shallowing, and disenchantment of democracy (tolerance, political relativism, moderation, and no objective reason of rights, law, and justice), and the rise of fascism and Nazism ending in the barbed wire fence of the concentration camp. The critical social theory of classical sociology (alienation, rationalization, anomie, and repression) and democratic socialism were lost to reflective analysis. The outline of this idea of Horkheimer's is already present in the seventeenth-century thought of Locke who develops natural rights to freedom, equality, and property without the political principles and ethical values of natural law, ethics, and justice -- natural rights without natural law. Note: Horkheimer was concerned about the rise of fascism in the United States at the end and immediately after World War II. We are presently seeing this also occurring in the United States at the beginning of the twenty-first century where ethics, justice, and democracy have slowly been depleted of their substantive values resulting in the rise of an unarticulate and unconscious anger (the 38-42 %) in the support for Donald Trump. Fascism is being facilitated by the loss of democracy, inchoate racism, anger, and hatred of the Other, the class system, growing poverty and economic inequality, restrictive civil and voting rights, mass media and news as spectacle, Protestant and Catholic evangelism (loss of social justice), political parties bound to money and power, fragmented and nominalist academy, declining political participation, etc. Perhaps, one of the great dialectical truths of modern Western society, as stated above, is that Without Natural Law, there are no Natural Rights Without the material and economic foundations of society for all (true egalitarianism), there is no individual freedom, equality, dignity, or democracy Without Socialism, there is no Liberalism (Marx's analysis of the political rights in the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen from On the Jewish Question. Socialism is just another name for the realization of the political rights in liberalism.) Lost Methods and Theories in Sociology: Natural Science, Positivism, and the Loss of Critical Theory and Methods: According to Horkheimer, the methodology of the natural sciences (positivism) has a "contempt for theory" (83) which ultimately leads to the emptying, shallowing, and disappearance of social theory -- the extermination of substantive reason and theory. Being able to measure and examine only the surface phenomena, social theory is unable to ask question about the deep structures of political economy, culture, history, and social psychology. Weber made the distinction between substantive and formal reason (see above) in order to make his important argument that with the advent of the Enlightenment and modern scientific reason, humanity was no longer capable of asking legitimate and rational questions about the nature of the ancient polity, beauty, universal truth, art, nature, or God. Horkheimer takes Weber's thesis and joins it with the rise of social science. Horkheimer seems to be rewriting Weber's analysis of rationalization and disenchantment (formal reason), but for the social sciences. Sociology as social theory has lost the methods that could examine questions about the understanding of history, the alienation and exploitation of the working class, the rationalization and disenchantment of society, the interpretive meaning of texts and events, the meaning of conscious and unconscious activity, ethical and dialectical (structural contradictions) of capitalism, forms of social consciousness in perception and understanding, social construction of reality, the existential meaning of life, etc. It is very interesting what ideas, concepts, theories, and methods are no longer discussed in the academic world. As we become more enlightened and rational, we no longer can legitimately dream of a "dancing star" (Nietzsche) or a free, democratic society; these are beyond science according to the principles of empiricism and nominalism. Positivism and Fascism, Metatheory and Nazism: The Dialectic of Enlightenment and the Need for a Critical Social Theory: Further, American sociology has a tendency of interpreting classical and contemporary social theory through the paradigm of positivism, thereby repressing their European classical and ancient origins (see Jonathan Turner, Classical Social Theory: A Positivist Perspective). Habermas has maintained that the difference between American and German sociology is that the former begins with methods (as an attempt to validate its scientific credentials) and develops theories framed by its empirical results, whereas the Germans begin with theory and search for the methods best suited to undertaking the required empirical studies. Like Horkheimer, he contends that American social theory is limited by American adoration of positivism. Positivist methods limit, censor, and repress social theory resulting in Horkheimer's claim that methods "exterminate" theory. And, as social theory disappears so, too, does the potential critical resistance to fascism. This is the major point in Horkheimer's reconstruction of Hegel's and Weber's phenomenological history of Western self-consciousness and thought. There is a final irony in the writings of Horkheimer and other members of the Frankfurt School. In seeing the relationship between positivism and fascism, they provided us with an enormously important intellectual insight into metatheory (epistemology, methodology, methods, and theories). However, by concentrating all their attention on metatheory and culture, they lost a central aspect of a critical social theory -- political economy and history. A number of issues have been raised by the following schools of thought that reject the positivistic standards of truth and formal reason and in the process raise alternative theories and methods in sociology : (1) Critical (immanent, ethical, historical, and dialectical) science (Marx) (2) Hermeneutical, comparative historical, political economic, and structural science (Rickert and Weber) (3) Critical hermeneutics (Dilthey, Rickert, and Gadamer) (4) Deep hermeneutics (Freud and Fromm) (5) Collective hermeneutics (Durkheim) (6) Phenomenology (Weber, Scheler, and Husserl) (7) Existentialism (Kant, Schopenhauer, Sartre, and Fromm) (8) Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School (Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse, and Habermas) (9) Neo-Kantian science (Kuhn, Lakatos, Feyerabend, Berger, and Luckmann) (10) Neo-Marxism (Baran, Sweezy, Gordon, O'Connor, Braverman, and Berman). For example, the epistemologies, methodologies, and methods of Classical Social Theory are not taught in sociology departments in American colleges and universities. They have been lost to history and have been replaced by various quantitative and qualitative forms of formal or subjective reason (science, liberalism, individual subject, existentialism, and relativism). No longer can "objective" or substantive questions about the ultimate meaning of objective institutions, social life and the values in morality, ethics, political economy, and the polity -- social justice -- be raised. Science has quantified, commercialized, and commodified human life to the extent that there are no longer concepts and theories that could question the meaning of life itself or provide objective guidelines for its transformation and humanization. Questions of freedom, equality, rights, democracy, etc. have become meaningless in the face of the methods of the natural sciences; classical social theory is also lost as its representatives have been turned into positivists and followers of David Hume, Auguste Comte, and Karl Popper. (Note: Milton Friedman in his work Capitalism and Freedom makes a strange, ironic, and unintentional parallel argument to Horkheimer resulting in an eclipse of reason, ethics, morality, and politics. Friedman argues that it is the individual in a rational, market economy that should make the fundamental moral and political decisions that affect our daily lives. The inappropriate interference of the federal government in the civil rights movement based on the ethical principles of social justice and a condemnation of discrimination and racism by the Fair Employment Practice Commissions (FEPC) was similar to the Nuremberg Laws in Germany (pp. 110-113); these issues could be defined and eventually resolved by the inner workings of a rational market economy and free choice, and not by the authoritarian imposition of the modern state. Horkheimer was correct: whether it is the displacement and disenchantment of science and formal rationality, on the one hand or capitalism and a market economy, on the other, the end result is the rise of fascism because there are no longer any ideas or traditions to defend us against the evils of Nazism.) Social Unconscious and Repression and the Revolt of Nature: Rethinking the Importance of Freud in Critical Social Theory: Horkheimer introduces the concept of "tolerance" on page 19. He sees the concept of tolerance, not in the sense that John Stuart Mill used the term -- respect for the dignity and opinions of others in a moderate and open democracy. Rather, he uses the term as a political manifestation of the term "Disenchantment." For him, the term "tolerance" represents a critique of modern liberal democracy. Tolerance of the opinions of others is more a reflection in politics of the loss of objective or substantive reason. You tolerate other's opinions because of a false neutrality and objectivity -- that it, since there is no truth but only formal and subjective reason, everything is relative. Thus tolerance refers to an existential relativism in which there is no truth and thus no basis to resist Fascism and Nazism. Thought Experiment: Do you think Hitler and Nazism were evil? On what basis do you make this claim? What religious, ethical, moral, or political values ground your ideas that Nazism was and is wrong? Discuss this with yourself and others. Ask them why it is wrong? What reasons do they offer. Think about it. Now return to Weber (disenchantment) and Horkheimer (existentialism). If objective reason has been displaced and repressed (Freud), according to Horkheimer, then what becomes of the historical, logical, and substantive basis for your ethical critique of Hitler? That's Horkheimer's main concern and thesis -- with the rise of Western Enlightenment: positivism, scientism (universalization of scientific method and theory as the only legitimate form of reason and truth), and nominalism (separation of fact and value), there is no longer any basis or legitimate grounding of reason beyond science. In fact, there is no reason beyond science. This is why he writes the chapter the Revolt of Nature based on a reevaluation of Freud's theory of instincts and the mind. The repression of human nature can only last for so long before the political instincts and desires for human dignity, freedom, and equality explode in the face of oppression and dehumanization. With the creation of a mass society under the facade of liberalism, democracy, and ideology but with the clear imprint of fascism, Horkheimer attempts to uncover a way out of this distinctive modern social pathology. With the dialectic of the Enlightenment, the domination of nature (93 and 176), and the repression of science, there is also a new form of the domination of man. Horkheimer introduces a neo-Freudian analysis to understand this new form of the social unconsciousness, repression, and the domination and liquidation of the subject (93). Freud's theory of the mind -- id, ego, and superego -- are now joined with Weber's theory of rationalization and Marx's theory of alienation. What are now repressed are not the Victorian sexual desires of the body but the social ideals of Objective Reason, Justice, and Democratic Socialism of the body politic (96). This involves the politicization of Freud. His theory of ego instincts, the reality principle, and self-adaptation are adjusted to fit the concrete political reality of narcissism, self-preservation, and fascism. The ideals of democracy, equality, freedom, and social justice are now repressed into the collective Unconscious and replaced by alternative social ideas of race, fatherland, leader, and traditions (113, 119, 120, 121, and 135-136). With the domination of nature and the domination of man by subjective and functional reason comes the "domination of the subject" who through his/her cynicism and skepticism develops a personality of submission, conformity, the suppression of nature and the drive to freedom and rebellion (94), and a tendency to identify with issues of race, fatherland, leader, tradition, etc. (113). All this occurs because of the loss of social ideals and objective reason. Freud's self-directed ego with its strong inner-core (Personlichkeit) resulting from sexual repression (Oedipus complex) by an overwhelming superego has been replaced by a weak superego (no objective reason or social ideals) and an authoritarian personality unable to resist the needs for the suppression of nature, social passivity, and political adaptation. Adapting Nietzsche idea that Christianity is a "metaphysics of the hangman," Horkheimer writes that "the superego becomes the hangman in society" (121). The superego of the father and family are replaced by the mimetic impulse of the surviving personality to adapt to the norms of the economy and state. Under these conditions of social repression of reason and society, Horkheimer believes that there will eventually be a "revolt of nature," which is a revolt of reason, that attempts to rediscover the lost ideals of Objective Reason (116). A new language of critical theory must be created which overcomes the "silence of tyranny" and incorporates the cry of the oppressed (161) into a new set of ideals for a new type of society (182). This is the beginning of the contemporary crisis of ecology characterized by a significant depletion of ideas well before the depletion of other natural resources and environmental stability. Subjective or formal reason lies in Locke's political theory in the second state of nature, that is, in the loss of natural law and ethics in the reduction of human liberties, rights, and freedom to market categories and private property -- the domination of human nature. This is only expanded by Scheler, Weber, and Horkheimer with the application of formal or subjective reason in science -- the domination of nature. It is Marcuse who integrates these traditions in his theory of the domination of nature (Bacon), society (Marx), and humanity (Freud). It is in this way that science is "apriori political" in terms of its underlying assumptions, hidden values, and normative approaches to nature and society: (1) Metaphysics of Natural Science: Metaphysics and Disenchantment of Natural Science (2) Structure and Economy: technical application of science in nature and social production (3) Metaphysics of Social Science: social science epistemology and methodology (positivism). In order to help implement the domination of nature and humanity, the traditions of substantive and objective reason must first be displaced and repressed and then replaced by the sublimated forms of alienation (consumerism and utilitarianism), rationalization (corporate bureaucracy and technical reason), anomie (loss of public consciousness and values and the rise of advertisements and false needs), and repression (loss of reason, public discourse, and politics). The next book in this course will examine neo-Freudian psychology, the narcissistic personality, and the internal mechanism of repression of objective reason and politics thereby creating a docile consciousness unwilling and unable to criticize the total social system and the structures of power and class domination. Summary of the Liquidation of Reason: From Epistemology and Science to Democracy and Politics: (1) Domination of Science and Positivism: loss of natural ideals (28, 82) (2) loss of objective reason, replaced by technical and subjective reason (23-24, 93) (3) Domination of Social Institutions: Democracy and the Academy: loss of public sphere and democracy, replaced by instrumental and market rationality (28-29) (4) loss of democracy, replaced by empirical opinion polls (30-31) (5) contempt for theory and loss of intellectual traditions in sociology (82-83) (6) Domination of Nature (97 ) (7) Conformism and Non-critical Personality conformity to the real (25, 82, and 96) (8) Loss of Objective Reason: emasculation and liquidation of reason, individuals, and institutions (18 and 93) (9) Domination of Inner Nature: Psychology of Oppression repression of reason (neo-Freudian analysis of reason and repression -- politicizing Freud, 93-97) (10) Human Passivity: ego emptied of all content, self-renunciation -- later to be referred to as the "culture of narcissism) (94, 97) (11) Domination of Ideas and Consciousness: Science, Positivism, and Pragmatism as Reflections of Industry, Factories, and Labor: these are the intellectual "counterparts of modern capitalism" and reflect the logic, reasoning, and organization of industrial factories, production, the conveyor belt, commercial culture (advertisement, consumption, commodities, and consumer identity), and the corporate organization of power (50, 82). (12) Beyond Domination and the Revival of Social Critique: revolt of nature (92-94): revision of theory and rediscovery of classical and critical social theory: historical materialism, historical and cultural hermeneutics, depth hermeneutics, and critical theory (122-123, 182-183, and 187). Sociology as Science and Ideology: Sociology as the Mirror of Production, Labor, and Capitalism: Positivists turn everything into phenomenal facts, mechanical things, and reified relationships of observation. Sociology reflects the phenomenal world of experience and facts; it reflects the "contempt of theory" and the loss of deep structures of political economy (Marx), history and social theory (Weber), psychology and the unconscious, repression, and displacement (Freud), and the collective conscience of objective reason (Durkheim). Horkheimer's main thesis is similar to that of Berman's: The latter makes the connection between science and ideology seeing the connection between scientific theories and categories reflecting the structures and social relations of capitalism, whereas Horkheimer views sociology as an ideology incapable of criticizing (objective reason) these economic relationships and commodity production (21, 28, 40, 45. 50, 59, 54, and 82). According to Horkheimer, science "hands over" (reference to Judas and the betrayal of Jesus to the Sanhedrin in the Garden of Gethsemane for 30 silver coins in the New Testament) to the hazards of historical development" (73) and the instrumental values of capitalism. Fusion of Capitalism, Communism, and Fascism: The Irony and Logic of Locke's Theory of Government: In an ironic and sad twist of fate the twentieth century may be viewed as the logical fulfillment of the rise of liberalism in the seventeenth century. According to Pope John Paul II's Laborem Exercens, capitalism and communism are the opposite sides of the same coin. Both social systems are grounded in a crude materialism and non-moral utilitarianism. They differ in that the former emphasizes material distribution of the social wealth based on market competition and economic profits, whereas the second places emphasis on state administration and egalitarian politics. Both are caught in the fundamental principles of liberalism from which neither can escape. In turn, liberalism and fascism are both grounded in the principles of Locke's second state of nature that has left objective reason, ethics, natural law, and human rights behind in the quest for property, position, and power. This is a further development of Horkheimer's thesis discussed above on the relationship between liberalism and fascism. In both cases, capitalism, communism, and fascism are products of the gutting and shallowing of the responsibilities humans have to the community, general welfare, moral economy, democracy, human dignity, and individual self-realization and self-determination. In Locke's analysis of the original and second state of nature in the seventeenth century lies the problems that later will evolve in the twentieth century. |
| 10. | Christopher Lasch | The Culture of Narcissism Reformulation of Freud's Theory of the Mind, Unconscious, and Displacement in the Repression of Substantive and Objective Reason: The Social Psychology of the Iron Cage and Eclipse of Reason From the Domination of Man and Nature to the Domination of Psychology, Consciousness, and Personality: Rationalization and Repression of Reason, Politics, and the Objective Spirit: From the Repression of Sex to the Repression of Reason and Politics: This section of the course will move from the external domination of nature and humanity to the internal domination of human nature and personality -- it traces the evolution from the domination of nature and the environment (Herrschaftswissen) in the writings of Weber, Scheler, and Berman to the domination of human beings in Marx, Berman, and Braverman and the domination of the inner psychology of humanity in Freud, Horkheimer, and Lasch. Lasch will further develop the implications of classical social theory by examining the psychological dimensions of Nietzsche's theory of existential decadence and idolatry, Marx's theory of alienation and historical materialism, Weber's theory of disenchantment and scientific rationalization, Durkheim's theory of anomie and loss of collective consciousness, and Freud's theory of the mind, unconscious repression, and symptom displacement. Lasch will retranslate Freud's theory of psychological repression, symptom formation, energy displacement, and the unconscious into more social and political categories. However, he does not examine why there is repression. One reason could be that there is an innate human desire for individual freedom, equality, and democracy that must be repressed -- this would be a development of Aristotle's and Marx's theory of needs. Or it could be that historical and political economic changes in contemporary capitalism -- monopoly capital, deindustrialization, shrinkage of the middle class, growing number of poor, increasing class divisions, urban decay and rising crime, increased drug usage, erosion of democracy and democratic ideals, rise in science, technology, and technological elite, repression of traditional liberal values, and loss of the ideals of community and common good -- have resulted in the repression of older political values belonging to a more competitive liberal capitalism that no longer exists. This would be a variant of historical materialism at the foundation of psychological repression and the creation of a narcissistic personality (301-302 and 310). Society attempts to create a personality or form of consciousness (political ideology through consumption, rationalization, and disenchantment) that is more compatible with the requirements of an advanced industrial society rather than a traditional market economy and liberal democracy. This analysis of disenchantment, repression, and displacement examines the formation of the contemporary sense of self. We have moved from the metaphysics (Burtt) and methodology of science (Weber and Horkheimer) and the domination of nature to the application of a mathematical and mechanized science of Taylorism and Human Relations Technology in workplace production (Braverman) to the creation of the narcissistic personality through the patterns of consumption, advertisements, sports, and leisure activities (Lasch). All this represents an introduction to the ecological crisis resulting from the domination of nature, the domination of humanity in the workplace, and the domination of the inner self or personality in social psychology. Lasch examines the impact of unconscious disenchantment and the loss of substantive/objective reason on the human personality (21-31), that is, he focuses on the evolution of existentialism from the loss of personal meaning to the loss of political and public meaning.. We will examine the social psychology and impact of the theory, method, and politics of the natural sciences -- Metaphysics and Ideology -- on personality development in a capitalist society. These are all distinct forms of the domination of nature. Lasch examines the impact of the Enlightenment, formal reason, and existential disenchantment on the development of the modern self. He begins his analysis of the contemporary personality or self by uncovering the social psychological effects of the loss of Substantive Reason and the domination of inner nature, that is, Lasch examines the psychology of disenchantment. There have been a number of structural transformation in the System and Lifeworld of Parsons's AGIL and Habermas's structural functionalism: polity, economy, culture and institutions, and psychology. With the rise of (1) Politics: the welfare state, (2) Economy: Keynesian fiscal and stabilization policy, monopoly capital and corporate welfarism, (3) Culture: science and subjective reason, and (4) Psychology: a new form of individualism and narcissism, there has arisen a new narcissistic personality based not on the Authoritarian Personality of Horkheimer or the hysterical personality and repressed ego of Freud, but on an anxiety, existentialism, and a loss of meaning, purpose, and identity in the world. The loss of a sense of self and meaning in life are not replaced by a cult of personality (Hitler), but by a cult of consumption, personal therapy, sports, and political spectacle. Lasch adds a new analysis to our reading list this semester by integrating Weber and Freud: Rationalization and Disenchantment of the Self. Lasch provides a neo-Freudian social psychology that helps us understand and expand Weber's theory of rationalization and Horkheimer's critique of subjective reason into the repression and displacement of reason and politics. This work represents a psychology of existentialism, nominalism, and consumerism; there are clear parallels between the Nothingness of the last man in the iron cage and meaninglessness and emptiness of the narcissistic personality. The loss of objective reason has specific effects on the relationship among the id, ego, and superego and produces a certain type of neurotic personality that has lost a deep personal identity or an inner core personality. What are repressed in contemporary society are not socially unacceptable sexual desires of the id, but unacceptable political, ethical, and social ideals of the superego -- objective reason -- thus resulting in an individual's loss of purpose, meaning, and goals in society -- a loss of the meaning of and desire for democracy, freedom, and social justice -- growing poverty of ideals and ideology. The result is a shallowing out of the individual and the eclipse of reason and liberalism. Possessive Individualism has been replaced by Narcissistic Individualism which is characterized by a weak superego, weak ego, and an id which mimetically adapts to consumer society and utilitarianism. [Note: Examine the difference between Lasch's theory of the weak narcissistic ego and Weber's theory of terror and the strong ego and Freud's theory of fear and anxiety of the father as the basis for a strong ego.] The political ideals of liberalism are retranslated from politics to economics. That is, notions of equality, freedom, liberties, rights, and justice become market categories based market consumerism and integration into the class system. Freedom of choice, individual tastes, character development, etc. are now defined as market opportunities and rationality. The political dimensions of these categories have been repressed, just as public sphere, reason, and democracy have been forgotten. Democracy is just another form of individual taste in the market. Psychology of the Iron Cage and the Liquidation of Reason: Lasch redefines the nature of psychological repression to account for the historical, sociological, and psychological changes in the twentieth century since the writings of Sigmund Freud. He, thus, replaces Freud's theory of sexual repression (sexual abuse by Herr K, love for Herr K, Frau K, and her father), the Oedipus Complex, symptom formation, and displacement by the repression of the private and public spheres. As the energy and ideas for public participation and democracy are repressed, they are, in turn, deflected, removed, misdirected, and hidden in the social unconscious (social amnesia). They reappear in the psychological form of personal therapy, consumerism, sports, mass media, television, etc. It is helpful here to integrate Lasch with Weber and Horkheimer as substantive reason and objective reason are repressed in modern society and replaced by the iron cage and eclipse of reason of mass media of computers and television. The result, as with Freud, are deep seated psychological problems that are unknown to the individual patient but that ruin their lives, hopes, values, and ideals. With the transformation of psychology into a natural science and drug dispensary, the sociological and historical dimension of the discipline have been lost and with them the freedom and identity of individuals in a liberal society. The goal of psychology is not to change the conditions that lead to psychological problems but to adjust the individual to fit into the society that is producing them. Personal therapy, psychology, sports, mass media, and consumerism are both the symptoms and the mechanisms of repression of human desires. They replace the role of the family, religion, social mores and laws, and education found in Freud's theory of the superego and are the contemporary forms of moral education, ethical and social indoctrination, and political ideology. Lasch adjusts Freud's theory of the unconscious mind and repression as the former, contemporary institutions become psychological symptoms replacing Dora's coughing, sore throat, headaches, anti-social behavior, fear of groups, etc. The symptoms have become more and more general and social. The iron cage of formal reason in Weber has been replaced by the gas chambers of subjective reason in Horkheimer; the crisis of Western reason in Weber has been replaced by the holocaust of the mind in Horkheimer; the last man without creativity and imagination in Weber has been replaced by the secret police and death camps of Nazism in Horkheimer. With the rise of the Enlightenment and its various forms of science, positivism, scientism, nominalism, liberalism, individualism, materialism, and utilitarianism, there has been an inability to form critical ideas, concepts, and theories in the academy outside the framework of the accepted methods and theories of natural science as applied in economics, psychology, political science, and sociology. The result has been an expansion of technical, functional, and mechanistic knowledge of the metaphysics and components of the modern social system. However, lost in this enlightenment has been the ability to develop creative and imaginative ideas of humanity's potentialities, hopes, dreams, and emancipatory ideals -- a loss of human needs, self-realization and self-determination, a true sense of a moral community, and real, participatory democracy. These are the positions of substantive and objective reason dismissed as unscientific and unnecessary in the liberal arts society of today which, in the end, leads to the crisis (Weber) and liquidation (Horkheimer) of human reason. The "liquidation of reason" is another way of stating that the holocaust of the mind precedes the holocaust of the body -- that is, the disenchantment and loss of reason results in the rise of Nazism and the death camps because no one can any longer resist fascism. The concepts, ideas, and traditions based on religion, morality, social ethics, and political ideals have been repressed and forgotten. People can no longer form concepts about why something is morally wrong. It is not that people are weak and afraid, rather they can no longer think or reason. Psychology of the Social Unconscious: Disenchantment (Weber) and Displacement (Freud) in Advanced Capitalism (Marx): Substantive or Objective Reason, Liberalism, and Possessive Individualism and the Historical and Psychological Loss of Meaning, Ideals, Purpose, and Hope: Lasch integrates Weber's theory of disenchantment and the loss of substantive reason with Freud's theory of repression and displacement of symptoms. Reason replaces sexuality, consumerism replaces physical hysteria, and the narcissistic personality replaces the strong ego in Lasch's theory of social repression. The result is a psychology of the repression and displacement of human reason. There is a decline in the superego, family, and objective reason (social principles and morals) and a corresponding loss of a strong, self-directed personality; there is also a corresponding inner emptiness and inability to feel. Political repression (depoliticization and a decline or eclipse of liberalism) has replaced sexual repression as the foundation of the modern personality. (Note: In the second decade of the twenty-first century there is a noticeable rise in political participation and the public recognition of misogyny, racism, etc. in society caused by the Me Too and Black Lives movements. If this filters down into a recognition of the actual class structure of American society things will change and politics will evolve.) Freud's strong ego and superego are replaced by the loss of the Subject and the loss of Objective Reason, respectively, in the formation of the narcissistic personality. There is also a "cultural bankruptcy" and loss of a sense of past and future, private and public, along with a detachment from the community, common good, and social responsibility. In the analysis of repression, sex has been replaced by politics. This produces a homeless, fragmented, and alienated individual in a constant state of despair, anxiety, and insecurity. What has been repressed into the unconscious is not the sexual past (Freud's story of Dora) with its illicit and socially unacceptable sexual desires (lesbianism, infantile masturbation, and Oedipus Complex), personal experiences (love for father, Herr K, and Frau K), and oppressive and hateful memories (physical and emotional abuse and sexual assault by the lake and in the office). Rather, the memories repressed are now those of the PAST and TRADITIONS -- liberal politics, ideas, history, time, language, and traditions, that is, memories of democracy, the public sphere, and a free society on one hand and the distinctive lost and forgotten (repressed) methods and theories of the classical period of Marx, Weber, Durkheim, and Freud on the other. What takes the place of liberalism is a form of "friendly fascism" (Bertram Gross) and private/public entertainment in the form of consumption, false needs, and advertisement, personal therapy and problems of adjustment, meaning, despair, and loss of self, public spectacles in politics, sports, and entertainment, and mass media, etc. These forms of repression, displacement, and symptoms are means by which the mind represses old and unacceptable ideas, traditions, experiences, and desires -- Objective and Substantive Reason -- and replaces them with alternative, defective, and deflective symbols and needs (ideology, false consciousness, and displaced symptoms) that censor and hide the process of repression itself as it simultaneously legitimates the social system out of which they evolve. Liberalism has been replaced by Existentialism, the neurotic personality by the narcissistic personality (77); and human needs by artificial and false needs. Psychology has been reconnected to Sociology, that is, to the social pathologies articulated by classical social theory of rationalization, alienation, anomie, and repression. Lasch examines the structural changes in liberalism in the 1970s and 1980s and their relationship to the changes in the American personality. With the decline in the traditional liberal institutions of the market economy and state, along with the political values of radical individualism, there is a corresponding change in the social psychology of American citizens (21-25, 29-30, 35, 37, 39-41, 42-43, 45, and 47). There is a decline in the role of the family and the traditional values of the superego (objective reason). These traditional values are now replaced in contemporary society by New Forms of Ideology and Domination and New Forms of Psychological Symptoms of Repression and Displacement of Politics: (1) the values of formal reason and positivism (132) (2) commodity production (69), advertisement, false needs, propaganda of commodities (73, 132, and 137-138), materialism and utilitarian values, and individual consumption (72-74, 132, and 137-138) (3) creation of false needs and commodities (137-138) to replace the disappearance of the superego (4) the socialization and scientization of re-production (154, 179, and 301-302): scientific child-rearing experts, extensive childcare system, and the industrialization of the family (170) (5) the centrality and isolation of personal therapy over radical social change (91-92) (6) the repression and social amnesia of political economy and its replacement by mental health and personal therapy (7) bureaucracy and the transformation of social pathologies into personal problems requiring therapeutic intervention (91-92) (8) the transformation of politics into a circus, spectacle, and public form of personal therapy (81and 151) (9) the creation of false news and political issues through the mass media (130). The narcissistic individual attempts to find meaning and purpose in life through a retreat into the following areas that, in turn, act as the new forms of Repression, Displacement, and Symptoms of the Loss of Reason and the Distortion of Language (21-23, 43, 47, and 132-133). This is the rationalization of the personality or self in a modern society without substantive reason and a strong superego. More recently with the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States a new feature of this process of public spectacle and circus have taken place. The pubic sphere has been replaced by public trolling in social media, twitter accounts, blogs, and internet forums; substantive and formal reason and public discourse have been replaced by trolling, inflammatory remarks, intimidation, and political provocation. Nationalism, populism, anti-Semitism, misogyny, racism, and anti-Muslim speech are used to define issues, excite hatred, antagonisms, and unconscious fears and resentments, and organize public resistance to various marginal groups in society. Symptoms of Repression and Displacement With the Repression of Reason and Politics: Interior Colonization and Ideology of the Mind: Human Needs and Sexual Desires: The ideological replacement and deflection of politics, memory, and disenchantment by illusions, false consciousness, and the forming a new liberalism -- a new personality and new ideology. Human needs and desires (Horkheimer's "revolt of nature," 94) are not for sexual wishes and gratification, but for community, morality, natural law, reason, politics, and democracy. With Horkheimer and Lasch, the sexual desires of Freud and the "fabricated pseudo-needs" of formal reason, modern consumption, and advertisement have been replaced by the human needs of objective reason and democracy (Lasch, 132 and 137 and Horkheimer, 92-102). [Note: The concept of human need and natural desires was used to express Aristotle's notion that humans as political animals have the need for moral and intellectual virtue -- the need for ethical and political wisdom, love, friendship, citizenship, democracy, and social justice. Marx integrated Aristotle's ethics and politics, virtue and justice into the extensive German philosophical traditions to develop his ideal of the species-being and humanity's need for human dignity, creativity, freedom, and equality (Kant, Hegel, Winckelmann, and Scheler), justice, and economic democracy.] In contemporary society they are transformed into the false needs of a consumer society and the narcissistic personality having ill-defined "character flaws" of anxiety, loneliness, isolation, and confusion with a loss of reason and strong personality. 1. Acclamation and Recognition by Others (33-35) 2. Individual Consumption and Utility (72-73, 132, and 137-138) 3. Personal Therapy (33, 35, 43, 47, 64-65, and 91-92) 4. Repressed Ideology and Distorted Language (91-92 and 96) 5. Science & Experts (301-302) 6. Mass Media and Celebrity 54-55 and 130) 7. Advertisements and False Consciousness, Needs, and Commodities 72-74, 90, and 137-138) 8. Prefabricated Political Spectacles and Propaganda (23, 69, 47, 81, and 151) 9. Sports and Competition (193 and 208-209) Rationalization of the Self through the Disenchantment and Displacement of Reason from Politics to the Economy, from Public Participation to Commodity Consumerism, from Production to Advertisement: Symptomatic and Emotional Compensation for Lost Values and Human Needs: Personal emotions, private needs, and nostalgia have replaced social values, ethical ideals, and political dreams of the good life and happiness (eudaimonia). Objective reason and Ideology have been replaced by psychology (replacing individual rights, liberty, and freedom), consumption (replacing freedom, workers' organizations, and production), and spectacles (replacing the public sphere and democracy). Those aspects of late nineteenth- century superego that have repressed the socially unacceptable forms of sexual behavior have now been replaced in the late twentieth century by the repressions of other human needs, such as politics, traditions, cultural values, and social ideals. These are the very human needs detrimental and dangerous to the new society based on monopoly capital and a strong centralized government whose repression facilitates the creation of a new Narcissistic Personality more compatible with the growth and legitimation of this system. Transformation of the mode of production in advanced capitalism facilitates the transformation of a new consciousness, personality, and political ideology. (For more on this see the debate between Weber and Tawney regarding the nature of the Protestant Ethic.) As sexual misconduct was no longer viewed as socially reprehensible and publicly disruptive, these other cultural forms and political ideals of disenchanted reason are being seen as no longer compatible with the needs of systems integration, social stability, and economic progress. It is the Lebenswelt itself that is disruptive to a new type of liberal individuality whose self-expression is manifested through market participation, consumption, and the displacement of critical reason. Thus, there is no longer any need for a critical social theory (structural and functional analysis, critique of society [RRAANNDDD], or vision of the future). Sociology as science becomes another feature of functional and subjective reason. With the loss of time in the past and future, with the loss of the private sphere, superego, and traditional strong ego identity, and with the loss of the public sphere and the values of liberalism and democracy, politics and ideals are replaced by the "propaganda of consumption" (136-138). Political ideals, citizen participation, and substantive reason are displaced by the distorted and false consciousness of mass media, celebrity status, political spectacles, and consumerism. The strong superego and ego of the nineteenth century have been replaced by a fragmented ego as the cultural values of the family, religion, education, etc. have been replaced by economic consumerism and political spectacles. The various traditional forms of economic and political oppression (substantive reason) have now been moved to the area of consumer choices and individual taste; the market is now defined as the arena of individualism, equality, freedom, and democracy. The result is that imagination, hope, and reason (132) are repressed by commodity consumption producing a shallow, banal, and meaningless personality lost in the culture of narcissism. The new personality is less a product of ideas and more a product of commodities. Without history and future hopes, without reason and social ideals, we are locked in an iron cage of the moment where consumption has replaced politics as the means of happiness, self-expression, and individual self-determination. The illusion and appearance of meaning are maintained by the ideology of political and economic consumption; consumerism has displaced liberalism. The guiding moral norms of the superego are now production, consumption, bureaucracy, and therapy, while the traditional values of Objective Reason are repressed into the contemporary social unconscious. This results in the rationalization, fragmentation, and homelessness of the personality; what began as a crisis of Objective Reason was displaced and manifested as a crisis of despair, anxiety, and meaninglessness of the self. Lasch's theory of psychological repression and displacement of symptoms also has much in common with Marx's theory of ideology and false consciousness -- both hide the deeper structures of reality -- psychological reality of narcissism and social reality of monopoly capitalism. Thus Lasch's work is a creative psychological synthesis of Freud's theory of the mind and repression, Marx's theory of human needs, ideology, and false consciousness, and Weber's theory of substantive reason and disenchantment. Freudian Psychoanalysis and Human Needs: If there is a fundamental theoretical weakness in this work, it is that Lasch does not clarify or update two main neo-Freudian issues: (1) He does not articulate or justify the nature of human needs as the need for politics, reason, logic, traditions, and the past as distinct from Freud's analysis of sexual desires and instincts; (2) he does not articulate or justify the nature or reasons behind the historical and social repression of these needs; and (3) he does not tie the repression of politics to the nature and priorities of the institutions of monopoly capitalism and a post-modern consumer society as opposed to the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century capitalism and market economy. Sexual repression was a central element in the Protestant Ethic along with its ethic of asceticism, hard work, and profession, while in contemporary society there are no real sexual restraints, no meaning, and thus, no strong superego. The loss of time, traditions, and politics represents a rewrite of Weber's theory of disenchantment united to a neo-Freudian theory of a weak and fragmented superego and ego. Disenchantment results in a psychology of existentialism and nothingness manifested in its public forms of ideology, repression, and displacement of energy as consumption, spectacles, and entertainment. Lasch characterizes the repressed human needs as the need for politics, ethical values, and substantive reason which gives Weber's theory of disenchantment and substantive reason (philosophy, art, early science, and religion) a more Aristotelian (political animal) and Marxian (species being) flavor. Methodologically, Lasch lines up with a Marxist materialism method, rather than a Weberian cultural idealism approach. That is, consciousness, culture, and personality -- the spirit of capitalism -- are formed on the basis of the underlying structures of political economy. Just as the Protestant Ethic was not the underlying "cause" of capitalism (Weber's position) but the result of major transformations in medieval political economy (Marx and Tawney), so too, is the narcissistic personality formed as a result of the transformation of capitalism from industrial and mechanical capitalism to consumer and finance monopoly capitalism (18-22). [For more on the issue of personality and cultural reproduction in consumption, advertisements, media, sports, etc., see Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization (1955), One-Dimensional Man (1964), and Counterrevolution and Revolt (1972). And for more on Marcuse's treatment of science, nature, and the environment, see also Negations (1968) and "Ecology and Revolution," Liberation (1972).] Neurotic, Authoritarian, and Narcissistic Personality: Theory of Critical Psychology in Freud, Horkheimer, and Lasch: Taking Freud's theory of the mind and unconscious repression -- id, ego, superego -- Lasch traces the transformation of the superego from the father and family (Oedipus complex) to the broader social institutions of the market, consumerism, and bureaucracy. The result is a fragmented and alienated narcissistic individual who has lost a sense of direction, purpose, ideals, and strong ego identity of the personality characterized by sexual repression in Freud's theory of psychoanalysis. Rationalization of personality, repression of objective/substantive reason, loss of the private and public sphere, fragmented and weakened ego and superego, disintegration of family and social institutions, loss of democracy and political participation, loss of social ideals (Substantive Reason and Objective Reason), and release of sexual and aggressive instincts (Eros and Thanatos). Strong ego development is replaced by a weak narcissistic personality who finds a sense of self in consumption, self-improvement, entertainment, and personal therapy; democracy is treated as a social spectacle, a culture of political consumption, and a bureaucracy of impression management and self-fulfillment. Politics is depoliticized since all social problems are now reduced to individual concerns requiring clinical therapy and personality change. The narcissistic self is a vacant and vacuous identity formed out of fear, anxiety, guilt, and a strong sense of inner emptiness, loneliness, and impotence. Political ideals of justice and freedom have been replaced by issues of consumer sovereignty and market freedom; the market and consumption have replaced politics as the ultimate arbiter of social values and personality development in this "culture of narcissism." Self-realization, individual well-being, and private happiness are measured by consumption, material goods, and the admiration of others producing a "banality of the social order" -- a veritable and virtual happy state of nature internalized in human consciousness. The "function of man" (Aristotle) is replaced by utilitarianism, liberalism, and existentialism. We live in a meaningless society without transcendent moral and political principles. Instead, the goals of higher aspiration and self-liberation in a post-scarcity society are market ideals of individual consumption and wealth acquisition. Personal emancipation, authenticity, and freedom become the ideology of consumption and psychological stasis. Democracy is reduced to the dialogue of private therapy. In the "culture of narcissism," all values have lost their traditional meanings and have been repressed into the political unconscious which makes them almost inaccessible to conscious reflection and the collective memory (public sphere). The narcissistic personality is simply the interior and psychological manifestation of an economy of chrematistics where freedom is defined as market choice, the pursuit of happiness as personal pleasure and existential/nihilistic self-actualization, community and the common good as artificial social media, virtual reality, and inner self-development, and social ethics, law and politics as a subjective morality of personal achievement. Narcissism is the logical and historical reflection of the principles and institutions of liberalism -- an inner isolation and emptiness caused by the displacement and repression of natural law, social justice, and Objective Reason/Spirit. What was sought by Kant, Hegel, Marx, Weber, and Horkheimer is lost, depoliticized, and repressed. These insights reflect the power of a neo-Freudian analysis of the social and psychological mechanisms of contemporary political repression. Consumer society replaces the expression of human needs -- substantive or objective reason, virtue, and democracy -- with consumption, pleasure, enjoyment, recognition, and status (132). Human needs are repressed into the social unconscious and replaced by artificial means which reinforce the consumer society and its ideology while intensifying the loneliness and emptiness of human life. Transforming Freud's Theory of the Mind: Political Repression and the Internal Colonization of the Mind: Political and corporate bureaucracies are institutions of manipulation, fragmentation, and competition for the purpose of providing self-esteem and public approval. As the superego disintegrates in modern society, it is replaced by economic concepts and values. Lasch has taken Freud's theory of the mind, unconscious, and repression, walked away from the latter's theory of human instincts and sexual repression, and replaced it will the repression of politics, social ideals, and democratic institutions, that is, replaced it with the repression of the Objective Spirit and Objective Reason. Lasch develops a theory of social amnesia and political unconscious as he examines the colonization of the lifeworld and consciousness in the form of the repression of objective values (memories of the past, public, private, and politics -- Substantive or Objective Reason); this is Lasch's integration of Freud, Weber, and Marx as he develops his own theory of the rationalization and domination of the mind. In this course, we have moved from the examination of science as a form of Herrschaftswissen in terms of the domination of nature (Bacon, Descartes, Weber, Scheler, Burtt, and Berman) and humanity (Berman, Braverman, and Horkheimer) to the domination of the self or personality as a strong, liberal personality (Freud), an authoritarian personality (Horkheimer), and a narcissistic personality (Lasch). This process represents the internal rationalization of the mind and the emptying of its substantive content and memories in order to passively submit to the logic of the market and consumption. The repression of Time, Reason, Politics, and Self is necessary to ensure a type of personality adaptable to monopoly capital and the welfare state or the contemporary forms and structures of rationalization and alienation. Social Psychology of the Domination of Man: Restructuring the Ego, Id, Superego, and Creation of New Personality: Examine Lasch's appropriation of Freud's theory of the mind and repression: id, ego, and superego. How have contemporary social institutions affected a transformation of the ego and superego, thereby producing a new form of narcissistic self? Show how this new self is formed within the institutional complex of individual consumption, manipulative advertisement, spectacle politics, fragmented bureaucracy, and the scienticization of reproduction (67-69, 132, 137-138, 151, and 302). These institutions are the new superego to which the individual, tormented by anxieties and insecurities and consumed by self-hatred, turns for support and reinforcement of self-identity. Bureaucratic others and self-preservation are used for self-affirmation at a time when the community loses its importance in life. In the process, sexuality and aggression are released, while history, politics, and objective reason are repressed in a new social unconscious, thus helping to form a new social identity of an insecure and banal personality. |
| 11. | Christopher Lasch | The Culture of Narcissism Social and Cultural Foundations of Narcissism: Enlightenment, Personality, and Industrial Capitalism: The Social Psychology of Disenchantment and the Internal Colonization of the Mind: This social psychological work is a reflection of a world without Substantive and Objective Reason that produces a personality which has lost its direction and purpose. The narcissistic personality is a product of the Enlightenment and Existentialism and the culture of modern science. Both Horkheimer (Chapter 3) and Lasch deal with the social psychological effects of the extermination of substantive human reason. Fragmentation of ego and superego, propaganda of commodities, advertisement, and school and media, and the loss of the public sphere, political participation, and liberal democracy and their replacement by spectacle and private therapy, bureaucracy and rationalization, consumerism and sport, and socialization and scienticization of reproduction. Politics and political participation have been replaced and repressed by the propaganda of commodities or the vote of the body and physical wants; advertisement is the constant call for consumption and spending. It is now the fullest expression of human free will and individual freedom. Freud's superego of the family, religion, education, law, etc. is replaced by a new superego and new forms of ideology of consumption, bureaucracy, advertisement, sports and media, and personal therapy; the strong ego formed through sexual desires (Eros), repression, aggression (Thanatos), anxiety, fear, and, finally, adjustments to the objective standards and values of society and the taming of aggression to authority is replaced by a weak and fragmented ego whose pleasure principle and desires are expressed by consumption and adjustment to the market economy and whose aggressive instincts are released and encouraged. In fact, both the ego and superego are now defined and legitimated by their violence and aggression; this results in Horkheimer's authoritarian personality and Lasch's narcissistic personality. Trace the historical and theoretical transition from Freud's theory of ego, id, and superego to Horkheimer and Lasch, as well as the political implications of their transformation of Freud's theory of the mind, unconscious, and repression. Neo-Freudian Analysis of the Narcissistic Personality: Lasch rewrites the Freudian theory of the mind for the late twentieth century. He utilizes Freud's theory of the id, ego, superego, as well as his theory of the unconscious mind, repression, displacement, symptom distortion, and the loss of memory, past, ideas, language, and private desires and instincts (21). Lasch drops Freud's theory of human sexuality and replaces it with a comprehensive social theory of politics and consumption where the individual represses not their socially unacceptable sexual desires and past experiences but represses the past, history, public sphere, and political issues (depoliticization, 21-25, 30, 42-43, and 47). It is not sexual language and experiences that are forgotten but public discourse and political traditions that are lost. According to Freud, repression displaces energy and symptoms, while for Lasch, the new distorted symptoms of repression are reflected in new patterns of consumption, personal therapy, political ideology, mass medial, and false needs and commodities. A result of these changes is a new modern personality who no longer has a clear sense of identity, purpose, and direction in life established by the internalization and acculturation of the values and norms of the superego. With new forms of education, the lessening of the influence of families, and the weakening of the superego, a new personality is formed without a clear sense of identity and direction -- the narcissistic personality as opposed to Freud's neurotic personality. Psychological repression still takes place to ensure the adjustment of the individual to the broader needs and stability of society. However, the modern individual is without an inner core or personality -- there is an inner anger (39-40), inability to feel (37), and an inner emptiness and boredom with a corresponding shallowness, banality, and cultural void; the individual is existentially lost, psychologically alienated, and neurotically fragmented. Lasch has developed a new theory of the self by integrating Freud with the classical social theory of Marx, Weber, and Durkheim. Lasch has replaced the neurotic personality with the narcissistic personality; replaced repression and displacement of sexuality (masturbation, homosexuality, and the Oedipus Complex) with the repression and displacement of identity, reason, and politics resulting in an existential crisis of meaning. The new existential symptoms of this personality are now projected onto consumption and political and athletic spectacles. With a weakening of the superego, there is no longer a strong inner core or personality resulting in a fragmented, anxious, and despairing self. Summary of the Culture of Narcissism, weak ego, and the repression of ideas and reason (132-133), along with their displacement and replacement by Consumption (132 and 137-138), Personal Therapy (91-92), Ideology (91-92 and 96), Mass Media and Advertisement (130), False Needs and Commodities (137-138), Political Spectacle (151), Science (301-302), and Sports (208-209). Repression of Objective Reason and its Rediscovery in Classical and Critical Social Theory: Both Horkheimer and Lasch replace Freud's theory of sexuality, rationalization, and hysteria with classical social theory, that is, with a theory of mass society, bureaucracy, existentialism, and political repression in the mid- to late-twentieth century. With weak egos and superegos, the modern personality is forced to adjust to strong authority figures or to consumer advertisements, political spectacles, and personal therapy for self-preservation and validation. From different perspectives and different historical moments, Weber (1919), Horkheimer (1947), and Lasch (1979) -- at the end of World War I, World War II, and the Vietnam War -- are all watching different stages of the dismantling of democracy in the West; with the rationalization, liquidation, and colonization of reason, Western societies are left without the ability to justify universal ethical and political values, democratic institutions, or the basic moral principles of human dignity and decency, and, thus, are unable to resist the rise of totalitarianism, even in its benign form of consumerism and friendly fascism (Bertram Gross). See also Stuart Ewen, Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture, pp. 91-93 and 108-109 and R. Jacoby, Social Amnesia. Ideology has been replaced by a dehumanized culture without ideals or hopes, a personality that has lost its center, its past, and future, and is unable to critically and morally reflect (narcissism), and a politics based on fear, hatred, and racial/class/social divisions. Democracy has been stripped unconsciously of its institutional and ethical integrity with gerrymandering, increased difficulties for elderly and minority registration, ID cards, and election opportunities, ballot stealing, partisan power grabs and state constitution manipulation (Wisconsin), legalization of the use of unlimited corporate and union funds for "independent expenditures" in the Citizens United Supreme Court decision (2010: Note: the case kept in place the federal ban on direct contributions from corporations or unions to candidate campaigns or political parties), civil rights and voting rights suppression, market and class bias in elections, corporations defined as persons and having equal rights as individuals to independent expenditures, growing displacement of political discourse by outright propaganda, dismantling of the Civil Rights Law of the 1960s and the Federal Election Commission, increasing dark money and wealthy donors in elections, the unraveling of campaign finance laws and restrictions on money in elections (Citizens United), and treating corporations and political PACs as having the same legal status in promoting candidates for political office as each American citizen. All these changes slowly dismantle the substance and structures of democracy to the point that the meaning of terms and institutions have been eclipsed. At what point in our analysis, and after having read Horkheimer's Eclipse of Reason, does the concept of democracy lose all substantive and objective meaning? Sociological Methods Repress Social Theory: The Hidden Ideology of Sociological Research Designs: Another subtle form of political oppression lies in the American academy and its positivistic methods of scientific research in Sociology. Applying positivist science to classical and contemporary research methods undermines the expansive, holistic, and critical strengths of European social thought. By reducing the Research Design Pathways and Research Methods to quantitative and qualitative methods through the process of selecting a topic, literature review, formulating a research question, and understanding the general social process or particular research methods, contemporary twenty-first sociology reduces social theory to the priorities, issues, and particular questions made possible and designed by positivism. All other questions simply fail to be articulated or legitimated. All traditional questions raised by classical and contemporary sociology and formulated by their particular Methods are lost and repressed. They becomes expressions of antiquated historical origins, outdated and non-scientific social theories, literature review afterthoughts, or forgotten and repressed forms of social amnesia. Sociological Research can be summarized as the process of asking Question, Literature Review or Research of Existing Sources, Formulation of an Hypothesis, Design of Study, and the Formulation of Conclusions. The critical questions of the social totality, structural foundations, and social unconscious are lost to the academic memory and with them the questions as to the possibilities of changing society. This adds another dimension to neo-Freudian analysis; it is not sex that is repressed in contemporary society since unconscious sexual manipulation in advertisements, videos, mass media, etc. aid in increasing consumption and economic expansion, but rather, sociological theory and methods that could help articulate the nature of repression and the possibilities for social change. This is the contemporary version of disenchantment and the eclipse of reason. Following neo-Kantian sociology (Weber's theory of interpretive sociology), there is the recognition that the objects (objectivity) of historical and empirical inquiry are created by the methods themselves; reality is always an interpretation and construct. However, expanding this argument into positivism, Methods repress Theory and all the questions, issues, epistemologies, methodologies, and philosophies of science connected to theory -- it represses Theory and Social Justice. Questions, approaches, and detailed and in-depth social criticisms simply cannot be articulated; they are repressed into the social unconscious. There is never any conflict about their approaches, nor any recognition of the contribution of classical and contemporary European theory -- they are just lost in the ideological abyss of American positivism. Or if they are somehow discussed and made public, these theories are simply retranslated and reconfigured into different forms of positivism thus making Marx, Weber, and Durkheim into positivist social theorists. Decline of Democracy in Institutions and Consciousness: How much inequality, poverty, class rule, voting suppression, racism, decline in quality public and private education, etc. must occur before democracy itself disappears? Discuss changes in American society: declining middle class, declining union workers, factory work exported overseas or replaced by technology, stagnant wages, poverty at about 40 million people, hunger at 41 million, dismantling of the welfare and healthcare state, etc. Democracy is no longer an issue of majority rule but money rule. Both the personality and democracy have been stripped of all substantive values except anger, hatred, and tribalism. Liberalism is generally viewed as protecting the natural and human rights of individual citizens when, in reality, it has always been a protection of property rights and class privilege. Behind the facade of representative and constitutional governments, liberalism has always hidden its innate imperative for the protection, not of human right, but of class, inequality, and totalitarianism. The stage is now set for the rise of totalitarianism and an unlimited oligarchy. The divisions between a moral economy and market economy, between a constitutional democracy and unfettered oligarchy, noticed by John Locke in his original and second state of nature in his Second Treatise of Government, have now become very recognizable in the present age. On these issues, see Hannah Arendt, The Rise of Totalitarianism and Theodor W. Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel Levinson, and Nevitt Sanford, The Authoritarian Personality. When ideology and false consciousness are no longer able to maintain the inner contradictions of both capitalism and the state, it has been historically necessary to drop the illusions of democracy and move toward more direct forms of totalitarianism. This is the thesis of Horkheimer's Eclipse of Reason. As we have already seen, he also contends that it is the role of the social sciences and humanities to promote this slide toward fascism in America. In recent months in 2018, there has been a rash of recent articles and books on the decline of democracy and Western civilization, as well as the rise of authoritarian societies. What is the relationship between totalitarianism and democracy. Are they truly opposite political and social systems? Or is the latter used to mask the underlying principles and structures of the former? Discuss the meaning of democracy in America; define the term in both its theoretical and practical applications. Does the concept have any true meaning when considered in the context of political economy? Does the fragmentation of academic disciplines within the American universities aid in the furtherance of this confusion over its true meaning? |
| 12. | Fritjof Capra | The Turning Point: Science, Society, and the Rising Culture Chapters 2, 5, 7, and 8 Enlightenment Science and 19th-Century Medicine from a Buddhist Perspective: Buddhist Critique of Western Rationality: Summary of the Ideology, Metaphysics, and Repression of the Cartesian/Newtonian Worldview: Capra begins his analysis of Western society with a summary of its main cultural values: (1) unquestioned belief in the scientific method; (2) view that the universe is a mechanical and dualistic system; (3) society is a competitive struggle for human existence; (4) individuals define themselves independently from social and ethical obligations; (5) belief in unlimited economic and technological development where all social and personal problems cans be resolved through economic expansion. It is these very values that become incorporated into Western theory and methods of natural and social science -- medicine and economics. This is the explanation for the "Way" in which Capra's The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism (1975) becomes transformed in The Turning Point into the Spirit of Capitalism (Weber) or the DOW of Physics (Capra) by using the methodology of historical materialism (Marx) which traces the relationships between consciousness and science, on the one hand and the deeper structures of political economy, on the other. Now we enter a new dimension of the process of rationalization of man, The Rationalization of the Academy: medicine and economics. This work explores the transfer of the scientific method and the corresponding Cartesian/Newtonian metaphysics of science to areas of medicine, psychology, economics, and Third World development with Capra and ecology with Merchant. Capra begins where Burtt and Berman end their analysis. He begins with both the underlying metaphysics of science and the politics of science (capitalism) to articulate the issues underlying the technological application of science in a variety of fields including the natural sciences, social sciences, and medicine. Capra outlines the various meta-categories of science -- metaphysics of science (57), the analytic-deductive method (59 and 128), dualism of mind and body (59-60 and 126), individualism and egoism (134, 139, and 162-163), primary and secondary qualities of the body as a quantitative, deterministic, and mathematical machine (55 and 123-124), and the domination and control over nature (56 and 61) -- as they are applied to the body, society, and nature. Capra examines these areas -- PERSONNN -- from outside the Western perspective by turning to a Buddhist critique of the Enlightenment. He is quite aware of Quine's thesis about the myth of the given physical objects and his belief that Western science, including its underlying foundations in metaphysics and method, has the epistemological status and ontological validity similar to the Homeric gods of ancient Greece. (See, Willard Van Quine, "Two Dogmas of Empiricism," in From a Logical Point of View, p. 44 and .) The concepts, ideas, and theories of science, grounded in the metaphysics and method of the natural sciences, are myths, paradigms, ideologies, and social constructs used to dominate and technically control nature. They have formal, functional, and technological utility, but have no independent or objective reality of their own (Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, pp. 126, 148, and 206. For Berman and Capra the true reality of modern science lies in the sociological and historical foundations of Western capitalism -- RRAANNDDD. In his analysis of the Enlightenment and Western science, Capra expands the insights of Weber's theory of rationalization and disenchantment, Horkheimer's theory of the eclipse and extermination of theory and reason, and Lasch's theory of the distorted personality, social unconscious, and political repression. Examine Descartes' theory of science in terms of the mind/body dualism, res cogitans and res extensa. analytic method, mathematics, quantification of experience, world as machine, utilitarianism, and the domination of nature. Newtonian advances in the mechanical laws of the universe in the areas of motion, gravity, and differential calculus only furthered the acceptance of the Cartesian paradigm. Upon further analysis of the Cartesian-Newtonian metaphysics, examine the relationships between science and politics, science and ideology. Science is an expression of the consciousness of capitalist alienation (Berman) and the political ideology of capitalism (Capra); it is the logic of industrial production reproduced in human consciousness and the scientific method. Analyze the Cartesian metaphysics of science (Burtt) and the logic of capitalism (Berman) in relation to the rise of 19th-century medicine (55-56, 59-60, 123-124, 128, and 153). Compare medicine as crisis intervention technology to medicine as health care and healing (compare to utility vs. ontology in Kuhn); show the Cartesian elements in medical science -- germ theory, microbiology, particular problems and diagnosis, individual therapy, medical specialization, and overuse of drugs. Under Enlightenment reason, science and even medicine become forms of political ideology (repression and displacement) because it can only raise questions about the "how" or physical symptoms (utility) of disease but not the why (ontology) of its underlying social and economic causes (134-135, 137-139 and 150). The latter are repressed into a social unconscious or ideology of positivism. (On this issue of science as ideology, see also Paul Farmer, Pathologies of Power.) What is lost? -- broader sociological questions about the relationship between health care and culture, psychology, political economy, and the environment. Medicine as Science becomes a political Ideology that rationalizes (Weber), liquidates (Horkheimer), and immunizes (Capra) reason from critical reflection and social change. It never gets below the surface of phenomena -- even cellular- and micro-organisms (bacteria); it never gets to the underlying environmental and structural foundations of disease in political economy. The Metaphysical, Epistemological, and Methodological origins and foundations of the Enlightenment and Western Science (PERSONNN) lie in the deep and hidden values and structures of modern capitalism as articulated by the German and French classical social theorists (RRAANNDDD). And, in turn, these metaphysical, epistemological, and methodological principles perform the role of the ideological justification and validation of both science and capitalism as the most rational forms of knowledge and social system, respectively. Capra's main thesis is that social problems and pathologies cannot be critically examined, understood, or eliminated due to the natural and social sciences using the methodology of positivism and neo-positivism. Being limited to a very narrow definition of science, the social sciences cannot gain access to the total picture of society using the different dialectical, historical, critical, and depth and archaeological methods of social analysis. What is lost is history, political economy, classical and contemporary social theory, etc. that investigates the interconnection of ethics, structures, political economy, social system, and history from a critical perspective that challenges the assumptions and institutions of modern capitalism. Summary and Overview of Capra's Main Thesis: The Metaphysics and Method of Natural Science and Social Science: 1. RRAANNDDD (social structures of capitalism) creates PERSONNN (metaphysics and method of natural and social science): Historical Materialism 2. PERSONNN (science) justifies as an ideology RRAANNDDD (history and structures of capitalism): Ideology and False Consciousness 3. PERSONNN (metaphysics and method) of the social sciences (sociology and economics) makes it impossible to construct a Critical Social Theory and criticize RRAANNDDD. Metaphysics and Methods of PERSONNN define the very categories and concepts of Contemprorary Social Theory making it difficult, if not imporssible, to develop a critical, structural, historical, dialectical, and political economic theory: Eclipse of Reason 4. The American academy of colleges and universities cannot develop objective and substantive ideas (eclispe of reason) nor the history and structures of modern political economy and the total social system. 5. Social Sciencea are thus unable to understand or change the social pathologies, values, and institutions of modern industrial, capitalist society 6. PERSONNN, with its Metaphysics and Method of positivism, contadicts the methods and theories of Classical Social Theory. PERSONNN undermines and distorts the possbility of developing Critical and Holistic Theory: Twilight of Reason and Social Theory 7. Medicine and Economics (chapters 5 and 7) are forms of Capitalist Science that keep individuals from reflecting on certain issues: environment, work, consumption, food and agriculture, ecology, and poverty, inequality, and class: Capitalist Science 8. PERSONNN, as philosophical metaphysics and scientific method, is incapable of developing a Theory of Social Justice which integrates philosophy and sociology, history and political economy, ethics and politics, virtue and justice, and morals and social structures of the Ancients (Hebrews (Old Testament), Hellenes (Classical Greece), Hellenists (New Testament), and Medievalists (Scholastics) and Moderns (19th and 20th century Continental Social Theory): Loss of Archaeological Hermeneutics. The Metaphysics and Politics of Medicine: Medical science follows closely the metaphysical elements of the Newtonian-Cartesian paradigm: analytic method (123-124), problem solving, microbiology and germ theory, emphasis on individual/liberalism, dualism of mind and body, scientific reductionism and naturalism (126), health as a mechanism and body as a machine, and loss of the public and political dimension of disease (134, 137, 139 and 140). Scientific Reductionism refers to the unconscious and metaphysical reduction of all phenomena, issues, and questions within the social and natural sciences to the Cartesian, analytic (parts and functions), mechanistic, and deterministic paradigm. The further implications of these metaphysical assumptions of science -- physics or medicine -- is that medicine becomes a political ideology by deflecting attention from the underlying social causes to physical symptoms: It de-politicizes the underlying social causes of disease and turns it into a biological, microbiological, and personal issue (138 and 141) Medicine fails to distinguish between the underlying social causes of disease and its physical symptoms (150), the relationship between capitalism and medicine (153). and the underlying social problems (162-163). In the end, a major part of the solution to medical and mental problems lies in social justice. Liberalism, Capitalism, and the Enlightenment Inoculated from Critique by Science: Medical Science as Ideology (Marx), Disenchantment of Society (Weber), and Repression of the Politics of Science (Freud): There are three key issues in Capra's work: (1) summary of the Cartesian paradigm and the influence of the rationalization and metaphysics of science on medicine and economics -- compare the Cartesian/Newtonian metaphysics of science (60) with the metaphysics of medicine (140); (2) the broader influence of macro-social institutions and cultural values -- Liberalism, Capitalism, and the Enlightenment -- on Western rationality and the formation of medical science as a political ideology (134, 137, 138-141, 150, 153, and 162-163) which represses critical social theory; and (3) the impact of science on our physical bodies (medicine), the body politic (economics), and nature itself (ecology). Finally, both medicine (Capra) and environmentalism or shallow ecology (Merchant) are examined as expressions of Enlightenment science and political ideology because in health care issues and the environment there are no considerations of the structural economic problems; the social problems of poverty, inequality, property, class, economic crises, welfare state, etc. that cause medical and economic crises are repressed into a social unconscious that are lost to reflective critique. When applying germ theory, microbiology, and medical science to the symptoms of disease issues such as food quality, lifestyles, work environment, pollution, class differences, etc. -- the social causes of disease -- are repressed or de-politicized (134). Medical science focuses on intervention, not prevention, technical solutions, not the underlying social problems, and symptoms, not social causes. Capra outlines the Cartesian dualism and analytic method in the biomedical model as it develops in molecular and cellular biology in Rudolph Virchow, the germ theory of disease in Louis Pasteur, and the medical technology of antibiotics, vaccines, and surgical technology. Furthermore, with Enlightenment medicine and ecology, problems are associated with personal behavior or abuse and misuse of science and technology, but not with the underlying economic, political, and cultural problems. The real problems of our organic (living nature) and inorganic (raw materials and productive forces) bodies have been displaced and repressed by science leading to further developments in the rationalization of formal and subjective reason (Weber and Horkheimer). Discuss the nature of social problems (162-163), the social causes of disease (150), the relationship between capitalism and medicine (153) [Brown, Rockefeller Medicine Men (122 and 128) and Berliner and Salmon, "The Holistic Alternative to Scientific Medicine," (137)], and the depoliticization and ideology of medicine as a science (138 and 141). For more on these topics, see the 1990 film Mindwalk directed by Capra's brother Bernt Amadeus Capra. Medicine as Critical Immunization, Social Amnesia, and Political Ideology: Medicine as a Capitalist Science: This leads to questions about the political unconscious and social amnesia of medicine: do the science and technology of medicine deflect, minimize, and repress the social and political dimension of disease; do they depoliticizes health care? Are diseases less the result of biology than sociology? Does the social structure and economic system of capitalism play an important role in the structural causes of medical and psychological illness? Capra asks if medicine immunizes the social system from critical reflection, that is, he asks if medicine is a political ideology designed to repress certain types of questions that would be critical of the logic and structure of capitalism. All that really needs to change is individual behavior and not social structures. Metaphysics, Ideology, and Theology of Economics: Economics divides its science into issues of Production, Exchange, Distribution, and Consumption. Compare the Metaphysics of Science (60), Medicine (140), and Economics (191, 195-196, 198, and 200) -- quantification and mathematization of experience; utility replaces truth and happiness; technical reason replaces objective reason; consumption and property become the definition of happiness; centrality of prediction, production, efficiency, and corporate profits; control over work and the organization of production; and reason, happiness, market, production, and class/inequality defined in terms of economic rather than ethical/political categories (231-232). Metaphysics and Ideology of Economics: (1) the normative assumptions underlying economics (190-191 and 200) (2) metaphysical principles and political values (193) buried within the economic view of human nature (191) (3) the technical rationality of economics (218-220 and 229) (4) technical reason and market efficiency (repression of objective reason, 218-219 and 229) (5) metaphysics of undifferentiated growth (218-220) (6) utilitarian view of happiness (191) (7) failure to distinguish between needs and wants (8) acceptance of the social system and avoidance of critical analysis (191 and 224) (9) analytic method and loss of social ecology and the social whole (225) (10) the confusion between profits and total social costs (225), between the private and social costs of production (191) (11) solution to all social problems by technological innovation, market rationality (218-219), and market growth (223-225, 227, and 229) (12) there is a corresponding loss of analysis of history, structures, political economy, ethics, and social justice (192, 194, 224, 227, and 231) (13) repression of all values not embedded in its own metaphysics of market rationality (200), hard work, individual rights, private property, personal freedom, equality, self-interest, and utilitarian happiness (14) there is no real consideration of issues of externalities (225), inequality (191, 224, and 225), and ecological crises (225) (15) no consideration of social ethics, substantive reason, or social justice -- these become forms of externality. Reason is repressed along with any critical insights it may have regarding the organization of society, economy, polity, or culture. It becomes impossible and illegitimate to formulate critical ideas that are not grounded in scientific reason -- empiricism, nominalism, and objectivism. According to Capra, economics contains substantive and formal elements in its defense of materialism, individualism, irrational economic growth, market rationality, etc. along with its suppression of substantive reason. It is these unarticulated and unconscious metaphysical (non-scientific) assumptions, principles, and values that define and delineate the natural sciences, medicine, and economics which ultimately call into question their claims for scientific validity and legitimation. What these sciences ultimately legitimate in the end are the crises and contradictions of the ecology, health care, and economy. These are just further articulations of the themes developed in Weber's theory of rationalization and disenchantment and Horkheimer's theory of the eclipse and liquidation of theory and reason. The last two weeks of this course will investigate how the crisis of the Enlightenment and technical Reason turns into a crisis of the natural Environment. These metaphysical and normative principles turn economics into a science that emphasizes production, exchange, distribution, and consumption with a focus on productivity and efficiency that represses the true costs of capitalist production. For these reasons, economics turns into a pure ideology who only goal is to justify a particular type of socio-economic system. Economics is a political ideology which displaces reason from objective reason to subjective and functional rationality; it displaces reason so certain types of critical questions could not be raised. This is similar to the use of ideological and repressive vocabulary to describe immoral activities, ethical abandonment, and politically despicable acts, such as extreme rendition displaces torture, Mother bomb displaces death and destruction, Poseidon missiles on submarines replace world calamity, military incursion replaces military invasion and war, Southern strategy replaces public racism, gerrymandering and citizens united replace the destruction of civil and voting rights, and lazy people and welfare queens replace public needs and direct racism against African-Americans. Through this displacement of reason and words, horrendous acts become reasonable and acceptable, and through this means social systems based on RRAANNDDD become rational, productive, efficient, and liberal. Capitalism becomes functionally rational at profit, property, and class maintenance but irrational at maintaining justice, rights, equality, and freedom. Compare the Metaphysics or Ideology of economics -- the underlying and unarticulated values and assumptions of economics (198, 200 and 229-230) -- to the Repressed and De-Politicized Elements in Economics (193, 218-225, 228, 231): Displacement and Eclipse of Reason: The True Costs of Production or Political and Economic Externalities: 1. Militarism and imperialism 2. Destruction of nature and ecological crises (225) 3. Class and inequality 4. Lost human potentiality in terms of freedom and self-determination (224) 5. unemployment 6. Loss of history and time, ethics and justice (227) 7. Advertisement, false needs, and waste (228) 8. Loss of efficiency and productivity (229) 9. Unlimited growth, technological determinism, and further destruction of nature (218 and 223) 10. Loss of medieval Christian values (194) and 11. Loss of ethics, social justice, and substantive reason (190). ************************************************************************************************* ************************************************************************************** ******************************************************************************* Transition to the Crisis of the Environment: Debate among Shallow (Al Gore) Deep (Capra), Social (Bookchin), and Critical (Merchant) Ecology: Over the next two weeks we will examine a variety of schools of thought dealing with the ecological crisis. Beginning with Shallow Ecology or Environmentalism and then moving on to Deep, Social, and Critical Ecology, we will see that we must also investigate three crucial questions as we develop our critical view of nature and the environment which are excluded in the traditional views of environmentalism and environmental studies. These three questions follow closely the structure of this course as they examine the following Issues: The Normative and Ideological Foundations of the Natural and Social Sciences: Eclipse of Objective and Political Reason: (1) Epistemology and Social Theory of Knowledge: Social Foundations of Natural Science and Nature as a Social Construct: truth or utility of the natural sciences and their relationship to society -- social consensus (Kuhn), capitalism (Berman), and industrial production (Braverman). The principle of Social Constructivism: knowledge of objective reality and the natural environment (Objectivity) is constituted and framed by Subjectivity from consciousness (mind) and self-consciousness (Objective Spirit) to society and capitalism (Phenomenology of Weber and Scheler and Sociology of Knowledge and Science). Reality is a social construct of capitalism that expresses itself in the form of the domination of nature (Descartes, Weber, and Scheler), domination of humanity (Berman), production (Braverman), personality (Freud and Lasch), economics (Capra), ideology (Capra and Merchant), and ecology (Marx, Bookchin, and Merchant). Knowledge has become functional and instrumental thereby producing a new form of Ideology -- no longer an ideology of substantive reason and tied to political discourse, but an ideology of subjective reason or one-dimensional reason which does not permit ethical, political, or moral critique of the social system. Science is not the "mirror of nature" but the "mirror of production" and the capitalist social system (2) Metaphysics of Natural Science and the Domination of Nature: Normative and Ontological Foundations of Nature as a Dead Machine: the underlying philosophical, normative, and ontological foundations of science and the structure of being as a form of mechanical materialism resting in the Cartesian-Newtonian paradigm -- nature as a machine, dead body, determinism, dualism, predictivism, Herrschaftswissen, etc. (Burtt, Weber, Scheler, Capra, and Merchant). (3) Metaphysics of Economics and Politics and the Domination of Humanity and Society: Political Foundations of Science and Nature and the Repression of Substantive Reason: Loss of objective reason and critical social theory as the metaphysics of science is applied to the various forms of the Domination of Humanity: domination of reason (Weber), domination of industrial and human technology, economic production (Braverman), domination of society, consciousness, and ideas (Horkheimer), domination of personality and political legitimation (Lasch), and the domination of medicine and economics (Capra). (4) Metaphysics and Ideology of Social Science: Politics and the Disenchantment of Science: the social costs of the natural and social sciences's focus on immediate environmental problems while losing or repressing the social foundations of political economy and the accompanying social, economic, and political problems. The ideological and political foundations of science repress from critical view the deeper causes of the ecological crisis resting in the capitalist system itself as RRAANNDDD. In the process, the ideology of abstracted empiricism distorts and disenchants critical social theory as it produces the iron cage of the last man (Nietzsche and Weber), the functional rationality of liquidated reason (Horkheimer), scientific propaganda without depth or critique (C. Wright Mill), the narcissistic individual without direction or purpose in life (Lasch), and the ecological crisis (Merchant). With the recognition and enlightenment of ideology, repression, and disenchantment, there is a human need for developing the ethics and institutions of ecological justice. Marxist ecology combines his early writings on the social relations of production with his later emphases on a theory of abstract and surplus value. The goal is to uncover the internal structural contradictions within capital and political economy, as well as the contradictions between capitalism and the environment. (5) Summary: Social Constructivism, Epistemology, Metaphysics, Economy, and the Ecological Crisis In order to finally deal with the full dimensions and complexities of humanity's relation to the nature, industrial production, and the ecological crises, we must first examine the epistemological, metaphysical, economic, political, and ideological foundations of natural science, social science, and environmental science. That is, we must appreciate the full implications of the idea of the social construction of reality -- science as a product of modernity, science as a product of capitalism. All these questions rest on the initial issue of the notion that objective reality, perception, understanding, and science are socially constructed (critical empiricism, German idealism, and historical materialism) and that nature reflects the deeper social relations of industrial and capitalist production (Berman). The underlying metaphysics of both the natural and social sciences is focused on the domination of nature and humanity. The natural and social sciences are heavily valued-ladened with epistemological (social foundations knowledge), metaphysical (Cartesian-Newtonian paradigm), political (domination of nature, functional rationality, and disenchantment), structural and economic (domination of society, industrial and human technology, and economic production) and social (ideological justification of capitalism and the loss of critical or objective reason) values, perspectives, and forms of consciousness. If science were the "mirror of nature" (copy theory of knowledge) and thus a true reflection of objective reality, then these issues of constructivism of science, interpretation of natural reality, domination of nature and society, and the metaphysics and ideology of science would not be open to critical discussion. Science would reflect reality and nature. That would be the end of analysis and discussion except for methodological considerations of the depths of philosophy of science and methodology. There would be no real critique of science itself, just a philosophical inquiry into its methods and theories in the manner of Anglo-American philosophy. (6) Nature and the Ecological Crises: Shallow Ecology, Deep Ecology, and Social Ecology: After having considered the above questions about the relationships between science and society. it is now time to turn to nature and the ecological crises articulated by environmentalism or Shallow Ecology (Al Gore), Deep Ecology (Arne Naess, Bill Devall, George Sessions, Warwick Fox, and Fritjof Capra), and Social Ecology (Social Anarchism of Murray Bookchin, Marxist Ecology of Marx, John Bellamy Foster, and Tony Burns, and Feminist Ecology of Carolyn Merchant). ******************************************************************************** *************************************************************************************** ************************************************************************************************** |
| 13. | Carolyn Merchant | Radical Ecology: The Search for a Livable World (Recommended: Herbert Marcuse, "Industrialization and Capitalism in Max Weber," in Negations: Essays in Critical Theory, pp. 201-226 and "Ecology and the Critique of Modern Society," Capitalism Nature Socialism, vol. 3, no. 3, 1992, pp. 29-38) "An Inconvenient Truth": The Environmental Problems and Policies of Shallow Ecology Summarize Al Gore's analysis of the environmental crisis of global warming in the video "An Inconvenient Truth." I. Environmental Problems: global warming, increasing CO2 in atmosphere, retreating glaciers, radical rise of world temperatures, heat waves and hottest years on record, rising ocean temperatures, rising seas, destruction of coastal farmland, storms, hurricanes (Katrina and Puerto Rico), wildfires (California), major world flooding and droughts (Lake Chad in Africa), melting ice caps in Alaska and the Artic Circle (next 50 years the Artic Ice Cap will melt completely), warming seas, changing sea patterns and current loops affecting global weather patterns, rise in infectious diseases (West Nile virus and Avian flew) and vermin (animal and insect pests), loss of forests and top soil, rising seas and oceans, increase loss in species and species diversity, loss of biological diversity and ecological balance, coral reefs dying, Pacific islands flooding, overpopulation, economic unsustainability, depletion of natural resources. Gore suggests a number of ecological solutions to Global Warming -- discuss. II. Environmental Solutions and Policy Recommendations: reduction in carbon emissions, carbon capping and market solutions, use of wind and solar energy, recycling, lower house temperatures, house insulation, hybrid cars and higher gas mileage, increase public transportation, use renewable and green energy, write and call local politicians and Congress, run for Congress, plant trees, call and write local newspapers, reduce dependence on foreign oil, change lifestyles, use new light bulbs and energy- saving home devices, and pray. III. Weaknesses of Shallow Ecology: Discuss the weakness of the problems and policy from the perspective of deep and social ecology in Merchant's work. Gore's environmental policy reflects on the weather patterns and consumer patterns to deal with the issues but does not consider the full range of economic cause: Production, Exchange (market), Distribution (class), and Consumption. There is no analysis of these broader issues of political economy in shallow ecology. Discuss the broader ecological issues, including the Metaphysics of Science, Consumption Patters and the narcissistic personality (Lasch, 132 and 137-138), human needs vs. material wants, advertisement and false consciousness, eclipse of reason (132), class and inequality, and the unlimited growth and economic and technological expansion of industrial and financial capitalism. Shallow Ecology is incapable of criticizing science or capitalism and fails to see that the Metaphysics of Science and technological and social developments in Capitalism have had a profound effect on humanity's relationship to Nature. Thus, the criticisms of Kuhn, Berman, Braverman, Weber, Horkheimer, and Lasch are all relevant here as they begin to unravel the hidden ideology and idolatry of Metaphysics and Structures. Discuss the weaknesses of Shallow Ecology in terms of the issues mentioned above: Epistemology, Metaphysics, and Politics, that is, nature and science as a utilitarian reflection of the needs of capitalism for efficiency and production (Herrschaftswissen), as a dead machine capable of manipulation and control, and as a political ideology shielding and repressing the capitalist origins and deteriorization of nature resulting from science and environmentalism. In Shallow Ecology there is no analysis of the nature and structures of the Economy -- production, market (advertisement), distribution (consumption), or class (private property). Nor is there any sophisticated understanding of the range of issues in social justice. Enlightenment, Environment, and Capitalism: Reason, Science, and Nature in Deep Ecology, Social Ecology, and Radical Ecology Environmental Crises of METAPHYSICS (Nature) and STRUCTURES (Society): Deep Ecology replaces the old metaphysics of nature (mechanism and domination) with a new teleological and organic metaphysics, while Critical Ecology replaces the political call for the domination of nature and humanity with a new social ethic and theory of social justice. Just as Weber and Horkheimer examined the transformation of modern subjective and instrumental Reason, Capra and Merchant detail a similar transformation of Nature from an organic to a mechanistic view. Environmental science must consider the impact on nature of the underlying Metaphysics of the Enlightenment (Kuhn, Burtt, Berman, Weber, Leiss, Capra, and Merchant) and the Structures of Political Economy (Braverman. Horkheimer, Capra, Merchant, Marcuse, and Bookchin). The former includes the Cartesian elements of naturalism, reductionism, mechanism, and determinism, the hidden assumptions of positivism (PERSONNNN), and the a priori political values of science as a Herrschaftswissenschaft (domination, control, and prediction), while the latter includes the logic of liberalism and capitalism. Examine causes of the global ecological crisis in global warming, industrial pollution, ecological imbalance, heat waves and expanding fires, coastal and river flooding, melting glaciers in Antarctic, Arctic Circle, and Greenland, rising seas, increasing storm intensity and soil erosion, economic unsustainability and compromised infrastructure, depletion of natural resources, loss of species, forests, and topsoil, etc. (For an overview of the environmental problems, see Merchant, 17-23. Merchant also argues that the mechanistic worldview of Descartes and Newton is the legitimating ideology of industrial capitalism, 61.) For more information on these issues of Climate Change and Global Warming from the United Nations and the United States, see "The Kyoto Protocol" to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) adopted in 1997 and activated in 2005, the Fifth Assessment Report (AR) of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of 2014, the Third U.S. National Climate Assessment Report (NCA) of the National Climate Assessment and Development Advisory Committee (NCADAC) of 2014, and "The State of the Climate, National Overview," National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of 2014, and two recent scientific reports on glacial melting in the West Antarctic ice sheet in Science and Geophysical Research Letter (GRL) in May 2014: United Nations Reports: (1) "The Kyoto Protocol" to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), adopted on December 11, 1997 in Kyoto, Japan and went into force on February 16, 2005, at: http://unfccc.int/kyoto_protocol/items/2830.php http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoto_Protocol "Global Warming and Climate Change," International New York Times, June 2015 at: http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/globalwarming/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier (2) The Fifth Assessment Report, "Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change," of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, March 30, 2014 (Five Assessment Reports from 1990-2014) at: http://www.ipcc.ch/ and http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_data_reports.shtml#1 http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/04/13/3426117/climate-panel-avoiding-catastrophe-cheap/ (National Security Impact of Climate Change) http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/06/05/2103261/the-social-cost-of-carbon-is-almost-double-what-the-government-previously-thought/ (Social Cost of Carbon Emissions) Also see the United Nations Sustainable Development Plan: Agenda 21 at: http://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/index.php?page=view&nr=23&type=400 Technical Support Document: Technical Update of the Social Cost of Carbon for Regulatory Impact Analysis, Executive Order No. 12866, Office of Management and Budget, November 26, 2013 at: https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2013/11/26/2013-28242/technical-support-document-technical-update-of-the-social-cost-of-carbon-for-regulatory-impact (3) United Nation's World Meteorological Organization (WMO), "Annual Greenhouse Gas Bulletin" on Global Warming and Increased Atmospheric CO2 levels, September 9, 2014 at: http://www.nationofchange.org/un-scientists-see-largest-co2-increase-30-years-we-are-running-out-time-1410361126 (4) Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, "The Post-2015 Development Agenda and the Millennium Development Goals" examines the depletion of fishing reserves in the global oceans, July 2015 at: http://www.fao.org/post-2015-mdg/14-themes/fisheries-aquaculture-oceans-seas/en/ (5) United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Paris, France, 195 nations agreement on climate change, global warming, and social policy, December 2015 at: http://unfccc.int/meetings/paris_nov_2015/session/9126.php http://unfccc.int/2860.php and Coral Davenport, Justin Gillis, Sewell Chan, and Melissa Eddy, "Inside The Paris Climate Deal," New York Times, December 12, 2015 at: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/12/12/world/paris-climate-change-deal-explainer.html? 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris and the Paris Agreement, at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_United_Nations_Climate_Change_Conference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Agreement (6) The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), "Status of the Global Climate Report" (2016) at: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/mar/21/global-warming-taking-place-at-an-alarming-rate-un-climate-body-warns NOAA, National Centers for Environmental Information, "Global Cimate Report," (June 2015), at: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/news/june-2015-global-climate-report (7) United Nations Environmental Program, home page, articles 2015-2016 (8) NOAA, Global Summary Information -- June 2016, "June 2016 Marks 14th Consecutive Months of Record Heat for the Globe" at: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/summary-info/global/201606 (8) IPCC, "Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate," Sept. 20-23, 2019 at: https://www.ipcc.ch/srocc/home/ United States Federal Government Reports: (3) The Third Assessment Report, "Climate Change Impacts in the United States," May 6, 2014, U.S. National Climate Assessment Report, U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) of the National Climate Assessment and Development Advisory Committee (NCADAC), established by the Department of Commerce in December 2000 (Earlier Assessment Reports in 2000 and 2009) at: http://www.globalchange.gov/ http://nca2014.globalchange.gov/ http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2014/20140506_climateassessment.html http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2014/05/politics/document-climate-change/ http://www.globalchange.gov/what-we-do/assessment/previous-assessments http://www.globalchange.gov/ncadac and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Climate_Assessment http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/bd4379a92ceceeac8525735900400c27/5bb6d20668b9a18485257ceb00490c98!OpenDocument (4) "State of the Climate, National Overview," National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), 2014, monthly statements at: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/ http://journalistsresource.org/studies/environment/climate-change/state-of-the-climate-in-america-2013-related-research#sthash.rU0eskcg.dpuf and http://www.noaa.gov/ http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/09/science/earth/2012-was-hottest-year-ever-in-us.html (5)"Climate Changes: Evidence and Causes," National Academy of Sciences: An Overview from the Royal Society and the US National Academy of Sciences, February 27, 2014 at: http://dels.nas.edu/resources/static-assets/exec-office-other/climate-change-full.pdf and https://nas-sites.org/americasclimatechoices/events/a-discussion-on-climate-change-evidence-and-causes/ (6) National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), "Science Publishes New NOAA Analysis: Data Show No Recent Slowdown in Global Warming," June 4, 2015 at: http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2015/noaa-analysis-journal-science-no-slowdown-in-global-warming-in-recent-years.html Thomas R. Karl1,, Anthony Arguez1, Boyin Huang1, Jay H. Lawrimore1, James R. McMahon, Matthew J. Menne1, Thomas C. Peterson1, Russell S. Vose1, Huai-Min Zhang1, Science Magazine, "Climate Change: Possible Artifacts Of Data Biases in the Recent Global Surface Warming Hiatus," June 4, 2015 at: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2015/06/05/science.aaa5632.full Joe Romm, "NOAA Study Confirms Global Warming Speed-Up Is Imminent," Climate Progress, June 5, 2015 at: http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/06/05/3666286/global-warming-speed-up/ "Long-Awaited �Jump� In Global Warming Now Appears �Imminent,'" Climate Progress, April 2, 2015 at: http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/04/02/3640842/global-warming-jump-imminent/ and "Rate Of Climate Change To Soar By 2020s, With Arctic Warming 1�F Per Decade," March 10, 2015 at: http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/03/10/3631632/climate-change-rate/ Natasha Geiling, "Santorum: I�m More Qualified Than Pope Francis To Talk About Climate Change Because I�m A Politician," Climate Progress, June 7, 2015 at: http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/04/15/3647548/vatican-announces-major-summit-climate-change/ United States Global Change Research Program, Fourth Climate National Asessment (NCA4), "Climate Science Special Report," (vol. 1), November 2017: https://science2017.globalchange.gov/ (Summary of Report: https://science2017.globalchange.gov/chapter/executive-summary/) U.S. Scientific Research Journals and News Reports: (5) Science, "Marine Ice Sheet Collapse Potentially Under Way for the Thwaites Glacier Basin, West Antarctica," by Ian Joughin, Benjamin E. Smith, Brooke Medley, vol. 344, May 16, 2014 at: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/344/6185/735.abstract http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/16/opinion/krugman-points-of-no-return.html http://www.nationofchange.org/species-are-going-extinct-1000-times-faster-because-humans-1401635928 (6) Geophysical Research Letters (GRL), "Widespread, Rapid Grounding Line Retreat of Pine Island, Thwaites, Smith and Kohler Glaciers, West Antarctica from 1992 to 2011, " by E. Rignot, J. Mouginot, M. Morlighem, H. Seroussi, and B. Scheuchl1, NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of California, Irvine, American Geophysical Union Journal, May 12, 2014 at: http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/05/13/3437033/coastal-cities-abandoned/ http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2014GL060140/abstract http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/05/krauthammer-george-will-attack-climate-science.html http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/13/science/earth/collapse-of-parts-of-west-antarctica-ice-sheet-has-begun-scientists-say.html (7) �Paying the Price,� The Nation, May 12, 2014 at: http://www.thenation.com/article/179459/want-stop-climate-change-take-fossil-fuel-industry-court (8) "Cutting Back on Carbon," Paul Krugman, New York Times, May 29, 2014 at: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/30/opinion/krugman-cutting-back-on-carbon.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/18/opinion/krugman-salvation-gets-cheap.html http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/28/cheap-climate-protection/ http://www.nationofchange.org/7-reasons-america-should-succeed-climate-change-1402239795 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/06/upshot/best-of-both-worlds-northeast-cut-emissions-and-enjoyed-growth.html?module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3As%2C[%22RI%3A9%22%2C%22RI%3A18%22] http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-013-0986-y#page-1 http://www.nationofchange.org/carbon-majors-and-climate-justice-1402414203 http://www.nationofchange.org/developing-world-pollution-kills-more-disease-1402758933 http://louisproyect.org/2012/10/ http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/19/opinion/paul-krugman-could-fighting-global-warming-be-cheap-and-free.html Amy Goodman, "A Climate Week to Change Everything," at: http://www.nationofchange.org/climate-week-change-everything-1411133264 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/14/opinion/paul-krugman-china-coal-climate.html?_r=0 (9) New Climate Economy Project, "Better Growth Better Climate," September 2014 at: http://newclimateeconomy.report/ International Monetary Fund's Global Economy Forum,"Carbon Pricing: Good for You, Good for the Planet," working paper, September 17, 2014 by iMFdirect at: http://blog-imfdirect.imf.org/2014/09/17/carbon-pricing-good-for-you-good-for-the-planet/ NASA Global Climate Change, "Consensus: 97% of Climate Scientists Agree," Summary of Government Agencies, 2014 at: http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/ (10) American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), 2014 at http://whatweknow.aaas.org/get-the-facts/ "Nine Things Scientists Did This Year to Ensure a Better Climate Future," in Nation of Change, December 2014, at: http://www.nationofchange.org/2014/12/16/nine-things-scientists-year-ensure-better-climate-future/ (11) Gerardo Ceballos1, Paul R. Ehrlich, Anthony D. Barnosky, Andr�s Garc�a, Robert M. Pringle, and Todd M. Palmer, "Accelerated Modern Human�Induced Species Losses: Entering the Sixth Mass Extinction," Science Advances, vol 1, no. 5 (June 5, 2015) at: http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/5/e1400253 (12) John Sutter, "Your Making this Island Disappear," CNN News Report and Social Commentary, July 3, 2015 at: http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2015/06/opinions/sutter-two-degrees-marshall-islands/ (13) Global Climate Change, NASA, " 97% of Climate Scientists Agree," July 8, 2015 at: http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/ Union of Concerned Scientists, "As Congress Considers Chemical Safety, Chemical Industry Spends Millions to Distort the Debate," July 15, 2015, at: http://www.ucsusa.org/news/press_release/ACC-drives-chemical-policy-0513#.Vafo9_lVhBc Gerardo Ceballos1, Paul R. Ehrlich, Anthony D. Barnosky, Andr�s Garc�a, Robert M. Pringle and Todd M. Palmer, "Accelerated Modern Human�induced Species Losses: Entering the Sixth Mass Extinction," Science Advances, vol. 1, no. 5 (June 5, 2015) at: http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/5/e1400253 http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/all_publications/living_planet_report/ (14) World Wide Fund for Nature, "The Living Planet Report 2014" at: http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/all_publications/living_planet_report/ Christopher McGlade1 & Paul Ekins, "The Geographical Distribution of Fossil Fuels Unused When Limiting Global Warming to 2 Degrees Celsius," Nature, vol. 517, January 8, 2015, pp. 187ff. at: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v517/n7533/pdf/nature14016.pdf (15) Global Climate Change, NASA, "Consensus: 97% of Climate Scientists Agree," July 8, 2015 at: http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/ National Geographic, "Prediction of Rising Sea Levels...," at: http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/15/20059/2015/acpd-15-20059-2015.html James Hansen, et. al., "Ice melt, Sea Level Rise And Superstorms: Evidence From Paleoclimate Data, Climate Modeling, and Modern Observations that 2�C global Warming Is Highly Dangerous," Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, Jul 23, 2015 at: http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/15/20059/2015/acpd-15-20059-2015.html http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/07/150721-james-hansen-sea-level-rise-climate-change-global-warming-science/ and also CNN's Fareed Zakaria's interview with James Hansen about possible 10 feet sea level rise by end of century at: http://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/2015/07/26/dr-james-hansen-gives-his-idea-to-curb-climate-change-on-fareed-zakaria-gps/ Arthur Waskow, "Rabbis Against Climate Change," National, June 6, 2015 at: http://forward.com/opinion/national/309548/rabbis-against-climate-change/ International Islamic Climate Change Symposium, "Islamic Declaration on Global Climate Change," August 17-18, 2015 at: http://islamicclimatedeclaration.org/islamic-declaration-on-global-climate-change/ World Bank, "Rapid, Climate-Informed Development Needed to Keep Climate Change from Pushing More than 100 Million People into Poverty by 2030," November 8, 2015 at: http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2015/11/08/rapid-climate-informed-development-needed-to-keep-climate-change-from-pushing-more-than-100-million-people-into-poverty-by-2030 The 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, Paris, November 30-December 11.2015. Justin Gilles, "Seas are Rising at Fastest Rate in 28 Centuries," New York Times, February 22, 2016 at: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/23/science/sea-level-rise-global-warming-climate-change.html?_r=0 Tim, Hume, CNN Report, "Sea levels rose faster in 20th century than in previous 2,700 years, says study," February 23, 2016 at: http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/23/world/climate-change-sea-levels-study/index.html Oct 08, 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, 2018: "New UN Climate Report Dims Hope For Averting Catastrophic Global Warming," https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ipcc-report_n_5bba177be4b0876eda9ef1d7 Huffington Post, November 5, 2019, "Scientists Call a Climate Emergency, Marn of 'Untold Human Suffereing": https://www.huffpost.com/entry/scientists-declare-climate-emergency_n_5dc0a206e4b0bedb2d513df8 "World Scientists� Warning of a Climate Emergency" by William J Ripple, Christopher Wolf, Thomas M Newsome, Phoebe Barnard, William R Moomaw, Nov. 5, 2019 https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/advance-article/doi/10.1093/biosci/biz088/5610806 Science and Ideology: Conservative Response of the Heartland Institute and U.S. Chamber of Commerce: Conservative responses of the Heartland Institute, a Chicago based libertarian think-tank and climate change denier located at: http://heartland.org/issues/environment U.S. Chamber of Commerce Report on the dangers of Carbon Regulation and damage to U.S. economy, May 28, 2014 at: https://www.uschamber.com/press-release/energy-institute-report-finds-potential-new-epa-carbon-regulations-will-damage-us http://www.thenation.com/blog/180086/gop-freaking-out-over-epas-carbon-rules-why-arent-power-companies Also see S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery, Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2007). http://www.nationofchange.org/florida-congressman-if-humans-cause-climate-change-then-why-did-dinosaurs-go-extinct-1402408908 Of special interest is the relationship between science and ideology in these environmental issues. http://www.thenation.com/blog/180637/rupert-murdochs-egregiously-ignorant-claims-about-climate-change http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/jun/06/how-case-austerity-has-crumbled/ Marc Morano, Climate Depot, "Climate Depot: Redefining Global Warming Reporting" at: http://www.climatedepot.com/about/ and also "NASA�s James Hansen gets dissed by global warming establishment! Warmists Say Sea Level Rise study based on �flimsy evidence� & �rife with speculation�" at: http://www.climatedepot.com/ See also the conservative movie "Climate Hustle," produced by Climate Depot's Marc Morano for CFACT on December 7, 2015. Critical Theory of Ecology and the Ideology of Science: In order to respond to these crises, it is necessary to consider not only technological repairs to nature but a total system transformation of the deep STRUCTURES (domination of man) and METAPHYSICS (domination of nature) of Western science and society. This would involve not only changing personal attitudes and behavior, as well as implementing alternative technologies, but transforming a society based on narcissism and self-interest fed by the market, competition, and advertisement (false needs). Discuss need to turn to an economy that is more egalitarian and self-sufficient that would call into question the class system, gender and racial inequality, poverty, and the authoritarian structure of the workplace. Restructure the workplace based on division of labor, narrow specialization, and scientific management, and move toward an economy of Production, Exchange, Distribution, and Consumption that is based on Social Justice and Economic Democracy. Science is A priori Political -- Science as Ideology: The Alienation of Nature and Science in Metaphysics and Structure: It is assumed by most natural scientists, and most academicians for that matter, that science is neutral, objective, and value free. However, there are other theoretical traditions which argue that science is, in fact, highly laden with epistemological, ethical, and political values that affect the ecological crisis in ways that, for the most part, have not been considered within the American academy. The Enlightenment and Science are not distinctive theoretical products of human evolution or the result of spontaneous creativity at moments of genius. As mentioned above, reality is a social construct, but so, too, is science. Science is not a mirror of reality, truth, or nature, but a mirror of production; the Enlightenment reflects the underlying assumptions of history and predatory capitalism. According to Friedrich Tomberg, science is a buergerliche Wissenschaft. Jean Baudrillard has argued in The Mirror of Production that both labor and nature in capitalist society have been reduced to exchange value or commodities (things). The Enlightenment is a distinctive product of the socio-economic system of industrial capitalism (historical materialism) and also a product of the disenchantment, quantification, and mathematization of human experience and thought (metaphysics of science). It is Herbert Marcuse in One Dimensional Man who examines the a priori political elements in technological rationality -- the social control found in the domination of nature and the domination of man: "Technological rationality has become political rationality" (xvi), "the science of nature develops under the technological a priori which projects nature as potential instrumentality, stuff of control and organization" (153); and " the technological a priori is a political a priori inasmuch as the transformation of nature involves that of man, and inasmuch as the 'man-made creations' issue from and reenter a society ensemble" (154). Technological rationality is political in two distinct ways: it has expanded outward into other social institutions (nature, production, consumption, culture, politics, personality development, etc.) and inward into the essence of natural science itself. Science is not neutral or apolitical, but approaches nature through the horizons of technical domination and control in a similar fashion to the way in which labor is controlled in the workplace. Science is a priori political since its concepts, logic, and methods are preformed under the influence of the domination of nature and the domination of man. It is a form of Herrschaftswissen (Weber and Scheler). In this way, science is like other forms of culture -- art, literature, music, philosophy, law, state, etc. -- in that it is a product of the society from which it springs. Nature has been socially and historically pre-formed and pre-structured under the imperatives of reification and alienated labor -- the domination of man leads to the domination of nature. (This position is taken by Isaac Balbus, Marxism and Domination, p. 144.) This is just another way of stating that there is a dialectical relationship between the scientific and technical forces of production and the social relations of production (Marx). (Note: there is a very similar argument within the philosophy of the social sciences, that is, the social sciences, too, contain underlying a priori political imperatives that protect the social totality and social system from critical reflection since they do not question the deep structures of political economy. Social science is inherently conservative and ideological whose ultimate goal is the suppression of social critique through the loss of questions about structure, function, history, and practical science (ethics) (C. W. Mill, The Sociological Imagination, 68, 80-82, 86, 90, and 96 and Marcuse, One Dimensional Man, 144-169). This argument is being applied now to the philosophy of natural science and technology.) Deconstruct the meaning of the concept of "a priori" and then show how Marcuse is combining the thought of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason with Marx's preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (mode of production: productive forces and social relations of production). Unresolved Question on Science, Technology, and Historical Materialism: Marx has two unresolved views of science and technology: In "Private Property and Communism"" (1844) Marx introduces the notion of the alienation of nature, perception and science (Schmied-Kowarzik). In a revolutionary society, the very essence of science will change to reflect the social changes in socialism. That is, science will evolved from a form of alienated labor to that of emancipated labor, perception, and theory. But by the time of the Communist Manifesto (1848) science becomes an historically and socially autonomous form of knowledge, independent of social reality and independent of his theory of historical materialism and sociology of knowledge. Relieved of the contradictions of capitalist production, Enlightenment science and technology will help produced a post-scarcity and democratic society. These differences in Marx's own understanding of science reflect the later discussions between Marcuse and Habermas over the characteristics and possibilities of science and technology in capitalism and socialism. To this very day it is an extremely difficult problem to resolve: Does socialism revolutionize our way of thinking about nature and science or does socialism only transform the class structure and social relations of production, which, in turn, affect the nature of work and the distribution of scientific largesse? Will the metaphysics and methodology of domination be transformed (Marcuse) or merely democratically controlled (Habermas)? And what would science look like under both scenarios? Unholy Alliance of the Enlightenment and Capitalism: Unconscious Politics and Repression of Western Reason and Science: Science is the rationalized and instrumental form of political control projecting the social and class relations of the organization of production and the workplace of capitalism back onto nature itself. Nature becomes theoretical capital. Science and technology are both a priori political forms of ideology because they incorporate the structures of political economy into their very logic, methods, and theories. Just as Kant in his critique of pure reason and theory of representations (Vorstellungen) had investigated the a priori forms of intuition of time and space (appearances of perception) and the a priori categories of the understanding of substance and causality (experience of reflection), Marcuse undertakes a radical alternation in the former's constitution theory of knowledge and truth. He transforms Epistemology from Metaphysics into Politics -- just as he transformed Freud's Epistemology from Sexuality to Politics. Our world is filtered not through the categories of the subjectivity or consciousness (or the categories of self-consciousness and the Objective Spirit of Hegel), but the categories of politics. He turns these forms of the understanding into sociological and historical categories. It is through them that we perceive and understand nature. Our world of perception and science is preformed by the social system and the class organization of production. The way we see and reflect the world in consciousness is not a product of transcendental subjectivity or pure reason, but, rather, a product of the historical categories of power, class, and domination. The domination of nature (productive forces) and humanity (social relations of production) is dialectical; natural science is ultimately a reflection of the institutions and values of modern capitalism since nature consists of deterministic, materialistic, mechanical, reified, and extended things to be manipulated and controlled for their utility (Descartes, Discourse on Method, 15, 41, and 45). Enlightenment science becomes the social and political form of nature, just as epistemology becomes a form of ethics (Marcuse, 125); knowledge is always a social form reflecting the imperatives and ideas of modern industrial society in theoretical concepts and ideas. Positivism in nature and society results in the alienation of reason, the suppression of critical thought, and the domination of both nature and society. These questions about the Politics of Metaphysics and Structure are derived from the following critical traditions of Phenomenology, Existentialism, Marxism, Critical Theory, and Neo-Kantian Philosophy of Science which frame the discourse about science and nature and open up new possibilities for our understanding of social and natural ecology: 1. Early Natural Science: Descartes, Bacon, Galileo, and Newton 2. Phenomenology and Existentialism: Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Scheler, Husserl, Heidegger, Berger & Luckmann, and Ellul 3. Critical Social Theory: Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, Kolakowski, and Habermas 4. Philosophy of Science: Quine, Kuhn, Popper, Lakatos, Feyerabend, Burtt, and Rorty 5. Sociology of Science: Marx, Weber, Scheler, Braverman, Berman, and Leiss 6. Critical Social Ecology: Lappe, Naess, McKibben, Merchant, Bookchin, Marx, Foster, and O'Connor. 7. Buddhist Economics: Capra, Schumacher, and Persig |
| 14. | Murray Bookchin | "Social Ecology versus Deep Ecology: A Challenge for the Ecology Movement" (1987) (http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bookchin/socecovdeepeco.html) (Recommended: James O'Connor, "Capitalism, Nature, Socialism: A Theoretical Introduction," Capitalism, Nature, Socialism, vol. 1 (Fall 1988), pp. 11-38 The Enlightenment can never fix The Environment: Nature -- Political Economy -- Social Justice: Audre Lorde once wrote that the master's tools can never dismantle the master's house." We can now say that the Enlightenment can never repair the Environment; Western science cannot fix the damage to nature created by the ecological crisis since science and positivism are part of this broader historical and social process -- this is the dialectic between the productive forces (science and technology) and the social relations and organization of production; they necessarily entail one another. To use the former implies the application of the latter. The former doesn't offer the tools necessary to structurally criticize or dismantle the ecological crisis. The alienation of humanity, nature, and science has produced a situation where there needs to be a new Enlightenment of Reason; new approaches and theories of the environment and science will be necessary in the future since the logic of capital and concepts of industrial production (domination of man and nature) are embedded in the metaphysics of modern technical science (Berman, Braverman, Horkheimer, and Lasch). At present, the logic of science is a reflection of the logic of the mode of production ("mirror of production"), capital, and private property. The Enlightenment, Liberalism, and Capitalism -- Reason, Politics, and the Economy -- are all historically and structurally interrelated. Radical or Social Ecology is a broad term that consists of the Green Movement (Petra Kelly and Rudolf Bahro), Anarchism (Bookchin), Marxism (Karl Marx, John Bellamy Foster, and Tony Burns), Feminist Ecology (Merchant), etc. Radical Ecologists called for both a new non-materialist and non-mechanical metaphysics of science along with a reconstruction of capitalist production, consumption, exchange, distribution, and political economy. It should be noted that there is a difference between Environmental Justice and Ecological Justice. The former is concerned with issues of pollution, population growth, resource depletion, and health with a stress on our immediate environment and the allocation, access, and distribution of healthy food, public transportation, air and water pollution, and safe homes. Social Ecology and Ecological Justice move between the environment and distributive justice to include a broader understanding of the natural environment and social justice. The term "ecological justice" was coined by Nicholas Low and Brendan Gleeson, "Justice, Society and Nature: An Exploration of Political Ecology," 1998. (1) For the Deep Ecologist (Naess and Capra) the problem is rooted in our understanding of the metaphysics and spirituality of science (critique of Cartesian science and dualism), a broader understanding of ecology to include nature and the community, a critique of the ideology of unlimited growth, industrialization, and the domination of nature, use of alternate non-polluting technology, and a call for local democracy, autonomy, and decentralization. In Shallow Ecology there is no analysis of Production, Market, Distribution, or Consumption (media and advertisement) nor is there an analysis of Social Justice. (2) Social Ecology (coined by Bookchin) attempted to move beyond Deep Ecology with a more developed and complex theory of social justice grounded in anarchism, political economy, classical Athenian polity, and a critique of Marxism. (3) Critical Ecological delved even deeper into the structures of power, political economy, and the nature of monopoly capital and the natural environment to include German Green Movement, Marxism, democratic socialism, feminism, racial and gender equality movement, and economic democracy. (For an overview of Marx's theory of ecology, see McCarthy, Marx and Social Justice, chapter 5. A central thesis in this work is that Marx's theory of ecological justice is framed within a more comprehensive theory of social justice that includes a neo-Aristotelian theory of civil and legal, workplace, economic, distributive, political justice, and ecological justice. Thus Marx's theory parallels Aristotle's theory of social justice based on ethics and virtue, physics and metaphysics, a critique of chrematistics and political economy, and rectificatory, particular, and universal justice.) Quest for Ecological Justice: Compare Shallow Ecology, Deep Ecology, and Social Ecology -- Environmentalism, Metaphysics, and Structures of Political Economy: Examine the principles, problems, and policy of the environmental movement as expressed in Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth. Gore examines the problems of global warming, loss of biological and species diversity, loss of agricultural land, depletion of natural resources, rise in carbon dioxide and methane gas concentrations in the atmosphere, melting of the ice caps and glaziers in Antarctica, the Artic, and Greenland, rising sea levels (20 feet), future flooding of coastlines, warming of the oceans, increase in storms, hurricanes, and tornados, rising average temperatures in the last 15 years, shift in seasonal appearances and species adaptability, increase in new diseases, and flooding of coastal areas around the world. More recently there have been reports of widespread species extinctions, decline of biodiversity, mass human migration, industrial farming, economic growth, historic decline of the natural world, species extinction, and the inability of nature to reproduce itself according to the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES, May 2019). Gore's solutions to the environmental crisis reinforce both Liberalism and Enlightenment Science: They require both scientific and technological adjustments, as well as appropriate adjustments in individual attitudes and behavior: use of electrically efficient products, cut down on coal production, apply alternative energies of air and wind, use renewable energy sources, apply carbon caps to the coal industry, use electric and gas automobiles and public transportation, get below the 1970 emissions, and sign the Kyoto Protocol. He contends that we already possess the technology, industry, and science to accomplish these goals without endangering economic development and industrial expansion: he does not call into questions the values or institutions of industrial or global capitalism. He accepts as valid the Cartesian-Newtonian form of economic science articulated by Capra. He does not call for a radical readjustment of our ideas in any of the following areas: questioning formal and utilitarian reason (Weber and Horkheimer), our narcissistic and egoistic personality in a competitive market economy (Lasch), the metaphysics of science and existentialism of humanity (Burtt, Berman, and Capra), the radical individualism, egoism, and materialism of capitalism (Berman), authoritarian structure of work and politics (Bookchin), the class structure and inequality of a non-democratic society (Marx and J. S. Mill), nor does he call for a reorganization of the workplace (Braverman). Gore does consider alternate technologies but not alternate social systems based on the principles of communalism, egalitarianism, decentralized economic and political democracy, and economic self-sufficiency (see also Capra, 213-233). For the Social Ecologists there is a fundamental need to restructure the economy and create a true democracy affecting production, exchange, distribution, and consumption. After discussing these problems and corresponding policy solutions, talk about the different approaches offered by Deep and Social Ecology -- critique of the underlying metaphysics of science of Deep Ecology and the need for a reflective and critical social theory for Social Ecology. The Green movement offers pollution controls, carbon capture sequestration, population limits, alternative technologies, adjustment of consumption, and resource conservation for the purpose of maintaining affluence and health. However, its policies are embedded in the traditional Cartesian framework of the dualism of mind/body and humanity/nature, materialism, utilitarianism, liberalism, production, and an anthropocentric ethics. Deep or Cultural Ecology develops an alternative Metaphysics: critique of Cartesian metaphysics, consciousness, spirituality, and new ontology, metaphysics (ontological holism), and epistemology of science. Finally, Social or Structural Ecology (Structuralism and Social Justice) presents a critique of the abstract moralizing of Environmentalism by turning to issues of political economy, economic democracy, and social structures. Shallow or Reform Ecology is compatible with capitalism and traditional science as it emphasizes more responsible consumption and environmental ethics; Deep Ecology is incompatible with the metaphysics of a Cartesian mechanistic worldview and stresses an integrated, holistic, and spiritual relationship with nature as it replaces ethics with ontology; and Social Ecology is incompatible with monopoly capitalism and corporate democracy as it develops a critique of the deep structures of political economy as it grounds economic growth in human needs and ecological sustainability. In the critique of Deep Ecology, refer to Kuhn (37, 94, and 176-177) and Merchant (112 and 152), and Alan Carter (340 and 341-342) and Bookchin (158) in Environmental Ethics. Deep Ecology and the Critique of the Cartesian Worldview: Deep Ecology begins with Arne Naess' conference paper entitled "The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement" in 1972 which articulates the Seven Principles of Deep Ecology (92-93): (1) Metaphysics: Ontological Holism, total-field integration, rejection of Man-in-the-Environment, and replacement of Cartesian metaphysics with alternative metaphysical principles of nature based on Existentialism (Heidegger) and/or Buddhism (2) Psychology: biospherical and ecological egalitarianism, unity of life, and critique of mechanistic materialism (3) Anthropology: respect for nature, diversity, economic sustainability, symbiosis, and critique of one-dimensional economic progress (4) Knowledge and Ethics: anti-class posture, critique of class, inequality, exploitation within an anthropocentric ethic, and the domination of nature (5) Technology: alternative technology and rejection of pollution and resource depletion (6) Domination of Nature: call for ecological complexity, not complication, respect for nature, and rejection of domination (7) Politics: local autonomy, self-sufficiency, democracy and political decentralization. Bill Devall will expand these principles to include biospheric diversity, organismic democracy, community, ecocentric ethics, and nature as household. Deep Ecology continues to evolve with the ideas of George Sessions, Michael Tobias, and Fritjof Capra. The first three principles of Deep Ecology represent a rejection of the a priori normative assumptions of Descartes' theory of nature and physical reality which is incorporated into Shallow Ecology: reductionism, mechanistic determinism, and materialism. Discuss the idea that the Cartesian worldview ultimately leads to the "death of nature" (Merchant) and also to the death of humanity (Horkheimer). Summarize the metaphysical principles of the Cartesian worldview (48, 50, 54, and 61) and its applicability to environmental issues for the shallow ecologists; clarify the relationship between Metaphysics and Environmental Policy of Al Gore in "An Inconvenient Truth." What are the criticisms of Shallow Ecology by the Deep Ecologists; what are the new metaphysical principles of Deep Ecology? How have these new principles affected ecological science and the natural sciences -- how has physics, chemistry, medicine, and biology responded to these metaphysical changes? What are the debates within the natural sciences? Criticism of Deep Ecology and the Rise of Social Ecology: The major criticisms of deep ecology are its failure to see relationship between Metaphysics (domination of nature) and Structures (domination of man) and its failure to see the relationship between commodification of nature and the reification of women (androcentrism). According to Merchant, Social Ecology includes Progressive Ecology (Frances Lappe and J. Baird Collicott), Marxist Ecology (Marx, Engels, and John Bellamy Foster), Anarchist Ecology (Murray Bookchin), and Socialist Ecology (James O'Connor). Merchant wants to begin an alternative model of ecology based on integrating principles of Deep and Social Ecology into Radical Ecology (Green Politics, Ecofeminism, and Anti-Globalization and Sustainability). Following Kuhn's theory of social constructivism and paradigms, Merchant argues that the social constitution and mediation of knowledge should be grounded in the values of democracy and justice. As a way of summarizing and integrating the course readings, discuss the centrality of Kuhn's theory of normal science, paradigm shifts, and rejection of objective reality and objective truth (social constructivism) as the basis for both Deep and Social Ecology. For further readings in Socialist Ecology, see James O'Connor, Nature's Causes and Joel Kovel's The Enemy of Nature and for readings in Critical Ecology, see Stephen Vogel's Against Nature and Robert Brulle's Agency, Democracy and Nature: The U.S. Environmental Movement from a Critical Theory Perspective. Critical Theory of the Enlightenment and Environment: The course began with Kuhn's analysis of the Scientific Revolution and concluded with the idea that science did not reflect objective truth or empirical reality, but rather a social consensus within the scientific community. Kuhn began one path of the discovery of the relationship between Science and Society. However, he never asked two central questions: What is the substance or content of this revolution in consensus -- the Metaphysics of Science -- and why did this community consensus come about -- Herrschaftswissen? The goal of this course was to answer these two questions by inquiring into the metaphysics of science (Burtt and Berman), the domination of nature (Nietzsche, Scheler, Weber, Berman, and Capra), the domination of man (Marx, Braverman, Horkheimer, and Lasch), and the domination of both nature and man (debate among Shallow Ecology, Deep Ecology, and Social Ecology). Integrate into a Critical Theory of Ecology the following areas; Metaphysics of the Enlightenment and Science (Kuhn, Burt, Berman, and Capra), Structures of Capitalism (Marx, Berman, and Braverman), and Rationalization of Modernity (Weber, Horkheimer, Lasch, and Merchant). Integrating this material into a Critical Theory results in a Radical Ecology that rejects Monopoly Capital (corporate welfare, monopolies, globalization, economic crises, authoritarian workplace, and artificial consumption), Administrative State (large oligarchic state, corporate subsides, depoliticization, imperialism, and neocolonialism), Narcissistic Personality (materialism, self-interest, competition, and aggression), and Enlightenment Culture and Cartesian Metaphysics (ghost in the machine, dualism, naturalism, mechanical positivism, ecological crises, and the domination of nature). By rejecting the domination of nature (Herrschaftswissen of Scheler, Weber, and Heidegger), domination of man (scientific management and capitalism), domination of women (anti-feminism and androcentrism), and the domination of the environment (ecological crisis), the ultimate goal is to form a new society by building a new relationship between humanity and nature based on the principles of Communitarianism (Aristotle and Pericles), Democratic Ecology, and Social Justice. Critical theory has its origins in the analysis of nature -- human nature, political wisdom, natural law, rule of right reason, liberal democracy, phenomenology of reason and spirit, and the revolt of nature, that is, in the Western tradition of community, moral economy, democracy, and social justice. Now the basis for critique lies in Nature (ecological crisis) and democracy (socialism and justice) with possessive individualism and liberal democracy having reach the end of their social and historical relevancy. Shallow Ecology began to sensitize us to the dangers inherent in the environmental crisis, climate change, pollution, and resource depletion; Deep Ecology encouraged us to think critically about the negative intellectual and spiritual issues found in Cartesian science -- the metaphysics of dualisms of mind/body and individual/society, individualism or atomism, mechanistic materialism, human apartheid, domination of nature, Darwinian competition, and the ideology of industrial growth; and Social Ecology enlightened us to think about the structures of political economy, the domination of nature, class, race, and gender under capitalism, and the principles and institutions of social justice and participatory democracy. Both the depletion of natural and spiritual resources, the depletion of nature and ideas means that the sustainability of both the ecology and liberalism is impossible. In the end, a critical theory of ecology must reintegrate the natural and social sciences, as well as the humanities and social sciences since ecological justice necessarily entails social justice. To forge a different relationship between humanity and nature, there first must evolve a different relationship between individuals and citizens, that is, there must be a political and economic grounding for a true democracy. Summary of the Evolution of Ecological Theory from Shallow to Critical Theory: (1) Critique of the Environmental Consequences of Capitalism: Shallow Ecology Shallow Ecologists (Gore) -- Pollution and Alternative Energy -- argue that the environmental problems are mainly issues of air pollution, CO2 emissions, population growth, deteriorating environmental and species life, global warming and rising seas, melting glaziers, stronger and more frequent storms, loss of biological diversity and species life, etc. The public policy solutions to these problems include a move toward electrical efficiency, alternative fuels, hybrid automobiles, higher milage cars, renewable and green energy, new technology, public transportation, carbon capturing and sequestration, signing the Kyoto Agreement, product recycling, and reducing dependence on foreign oil. The emphasis of Shallow Ecology -- Critique of the Consequences of Capitalism -- is on reducing consumption and population growth, and responding to the effects and consequences of pollution, population growth, and economic expansion. They accept the Cartesian-Newtonian metaphysics of science based on principles of utilitarianism, nature as a mechanism, and materialism, the political imperative of the domination of nature, and the dualism between the mind and body, humanity and nature, as well as the ideology of economic growth and the Industrial Revolution. They assume the validity of modern science, technology, the social organization of production, and the class system without question as the main mechanisms to solve the environmental problems; they do not question the Metaphysics or Structures of Society. (2) Critique of the Metaphysics of Science and Politics of Technology: Deep Ecology The Deep Ecologists (Merchant, 92-98 and Capra, 53-74, 188-233, and 234-262) -- Critique of the Metaphysics and Technology of Science -- are critical of the Shallow Ecologists mainly in the area of science, metaphysics, anthropology, and the domination of nature; the former seek alternative non-exploitative and non-dominating technology to respond to the crisis. (3) Social Ecology and Social Anarchism: The Social Ecologists (Bookchin), on the other hand, argue that the Deep Ecologists mainly seek a spiritual and metaphysical revolution with little to no real substantive economic, social, and technological changes (Bookchin, "Social Ecology vs. Deep Ecology," 4, 9, and 11 and "What is Social Ecology," 10, Alan Carter, "Deep Ecology or Social Ecology," 340-341 and 342, and Merchant, Radical Ecology, 152). (4) Critique of the Structures of Political Economy and Capitalism: Social Theory and Political Economy of Modern Society: Radical Ecology: Finally, the Radical or Critical Ecologists -- Critique of the Structures of Capitalism: Monopoly Capitalism, Production, Consumption, Class Distribution, and Market Exchange -- who include the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory (Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse, and Habermas), neo-Marxists (J. B. Foster and T. Burns), and eco-Feminists (Merchant) call for even deeper understanding of the nature of science, the structures of political economy and capitalism (Classical and Contemporary Social Theory), and a broader view of social justice beyond simple distribution of the products of nature and social wealth. The Radical Ecologist look to a more profound critique of capitalism, a more comprehensive theory of social justice (McCarthy, Marx and Social Justice), and a more up-to-date analysis of contemporary social problems of racism, sexism, homophobia, poverty, class, inequality, health care, education, work, living wage, etc. Ecological Justice can only be achieved in a society based on democracy, socialism, and social justice. A truly radical and critical ecology will integrate the various positive elements of these different schools of thought to include a comprehensive description of the environmental crisis, the metaphysics and politics of both the natural and social sciences, transformation of science and technology both of which are apriori political, analysis of the range of social problems in contemporary society (System und Lebenswelt), critique of the structures of political economy and capitalism, and the articulation of a comprehensive theory of social justice that integrates the Ancients and the Moderns. Critical Ecology and Social Justice, in order to adequately deal with the environmental crisis, must integrate the following areas: (1) Nature and the Metaphysics and Politics of Natural Science: metaphysics of science and politics of science in its underlying metaphysics, method, and theory with the belief that nature is a lifeless machine, mechanical tool, dualism, prediction, and laws (Descartes, Burtt, Capra, and Merchant). (2) Domination and Disenchantment of Nature: teleology of nature lies in its control and domination by humanity for purposes of utility, happiness, property, and power. Science and technology are apriori political since they articulate humanity's relationship to nature and, in turn, validate the application of the metaphysics and methods of the natural sciences in the process of technical and formal operation (Weber, Scheler, and Adorno & Horkheimer). (3) Historical Materialism: Science and Society: consciousness, culture, and science are productions of modern industrial society and reflect the underlying values and social/class relationships of the social system (Marx, Berman, Braverman, Adorno, Horkheimer, Sohn Rethel, and Borkenau). (4) Domination of Society: Political Economy and the Structures of Capitalism: Technology and the Workplace: domination of modern science and technology in the workplace through production technology, Taylorism, scientific management, and human relations technology. Also examine the Structures of Production, Consumption, Distribution, and Exchange along with an analysis of the welfare/warfare state. (Braverman, Berman, Horkheimer, and Merchant). (5) Domination of Inner Personality: social psychology and rise of narcissism, consumerism, loss of public sphere and democracy, loss of social critique of classical social theory, and loss of superego and strong ego (Freud, Lasch, and Berman). (6) Domination of Humanity and the Metaphysics and Politics of the Social Sciences: Science as the Validation of Social Oppression and the Eclipse of Reason: examination of the metatheory of social science, including issues of methodology, methods, epistemology, concept formation, and theories of social science and how they are utilized to avoid critical analysis of modern society, its underlying structures of political economy, and its process of personality formation (social psychology). This is focused in the famous Positivismusstreit or Positivist Dispute in German Sociology (Popper, Adorno, Dahrendorf, Albert, Habermas, and Pilot). (7) Social Justice: Classical Horizons of Ancient Greece and Modern Society: Aristotle's theory of rectificatory, particular, and universal justice, critique of chrematistics, political economy, theory of natural rights, political rights, human rights, human needs, moral excellence, and political/economic democracy). Only when these fields are integrated into a comprehensive understanding of the total social system (RRAANNDDD) will we be able to more adequately deal with the environmental crisis and our complex relationships to nature and society. Social Justice grounds itself in the ancient traditions: Ancient Hebrew tradition of the Sabbath and Jubilee which calls forth remission of debt and slavery along with the redistribution of property and wealth in order to maintain a moral community and devotion to God; Classical Greek tradition of ethics and politics, virtuous life and political economy, and morality and democracy in Aristotle; and the Modern German tradition of moral philosophy, natural law, political rights, human dignity and creativity, and the modern state in Kant, Hegel, and Marx. Ecological Justice must be integrated with Social Justice (Aristotle, Marx, Gore, Capra, Bookchin, and Merchant ). (8) Social Problems in Contemporary America: Beyond Classical Social Theory: expand the neo-Aristotelian theory of Marx to include racism, sexism, homophobia, and systematic repression, poverty, inequality, and class resulting in the loss of equality, freedom, and democracy Nature, Ecology, and Natural Law in Catholic Social Theory: For readings in Catholic social thought which reconnect natural law and the environment, see the following: Primary Sources for Understanding Nature: Psalm 19 Dream of the Rood Francis of Assisi Thomas Aquinas John Scotus Eriugena Hildegard of Bingen Teilhard de Chardin Thomas Berry Wendell Berry Pope Francis, Laudato Si' Secondary Studies: Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being (1936), William Leiss, The Domination of Nature (1972), A. R. Peacocke, Creation and the World of Science (1979), Wendell Berry, The Gift of Good Land (1981), Keith Thomas, Man and the Natural World: A History of the Modern Sensibility (1983), Thomas Berry, The Dream of the Earth (1988), James A. Nash, Loving Nature: Ecological Integrity and Christian Response (1991), D. T. Hessel, ed., After Nature's Revolt: Eco-Justice and Theology (1992), William C. French, "Beast-Machines and the Technocratic Reduction of Life: A Creation-Centered Perspective," in Good News for Animals?, eds. J. B. McDaniel et al. (1993), James Gustafson, A Sense of the Divine: The Natural Environment from a Theocentric Perspective (1994) Max Oelschlaeger, Caring for Creation: An Ecumenical Approach to the Environmental Crisis (1994), Michael Barnes, ed., An Ecology of the Spirit: Religious Reflection and Environmental Consciousness (1994), Seyyd Hossein Nasr, Religion and the Order of Nature (1996), Drew Christiansen, S. J., and William Grazer, eds., Catholic Theology and the Environment (1996), M. A. Ryan and T .D. Whitmore, eds, The Challenge of Global Stewardship: Roman Catholic Responses (1997), Dieter Hessel et al., eds, Christianity and Ecology (2000), Anne Primavesi, Sacred Gaia (2000), William C. French, Natural Law and Ecological Responsibility: Drawing on the Thomistic Tradition, 5 University of St. Thomas Law Journal 12 (2008), and John Lawrence Hill, After the Natural Law (2016). Summary of the Crisis of Reason: The Enlightenment and Western science have come under close scrutiny and attack from Existentialism (Nietzsche and Weber), Buddhism (Capra, Schumacher, and Pirsig), Anarchism (Murray Bookchin), Greeks (Aristotle), Critical Theory (Max Horkheimer), Marxism (Braverman), and Ecofeminism (Carolyn Merchant). Return to the Ancients: Critical Theory of Ecology and Nineteenth-Century Classical Social Theory: Examine the central importance of both Pericles' Funeral Oration in Thucydides' The Peloponnesian War and Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, and The Athenian Constitution. These works are the beginning of a true Critical Theory which examines both the Environment and Society, that is, a Critical Theory of Ecology and the beginning of Classical Social Theory of Marx, Weber, and Durkheim. In both cases, there is an integration of the Ancients and the Moderns. Detail Aristotle's theory of virtue (arete), happiness (eudaimonia), wisdom (phronesis), and political action (praxis), as well as his theory of the ideal state -- democratic polity. The foundations of critical social and environmental theory lie in the walkways, bema, and public space of the Pnyx. Summary of the Course on Science and Society: Capitalism and the Enlightenment: The main theme of this course taken from history, social theory, and the sociology of knowledge is that Consciousness, Science, and Nature are products of the social construction of reality; the Enlightenment and Ecology are social constructs defined by the parameters of historically changing social institutions and cultural values. That is, modern science, technology, and the ecological crisis are products of modern industrial society -- liberalism and capitalism, Locke and Smith -- and thus subject to critical evaluation and social change. With the development of eighteenth-century philosophy Perception, Experience, and Knowledge were viewed by Hume (radical skepticism), Kant (transcendental subjectivity), and Hegel (objective spirit, institutions, and culture) as constructions of experience, the understanding, and self-consciousness, while in nineteenth-century social theory epistemological constructionism evolved into the construction of political economy (species being), history (interpretative action), and society (sociology of knowledge) in the writings of Marx, Weber, and Durkheim, respectively. The course begins with the epistemology and theory of knowledge of Hume and Kant and the philosophy of science of Kuhn and Rorty, proceeds to the sociology of science and ideology (science as an historical and social product) of Burtt, Berman, Braverman, and Horkheimer and ends with the debate among ecological theory of Capra, Bookchin, and Merchant The internal logic and structure of this courses in constituted in the following manner: 1. Epistemology and Philosophy of Science: Course begins with an examination of post-analytic and pragmatic theories of knowledge and philosophy of science and then proceeds to ask a number of other important questions about the nature of modern science, technology, and industry. 2. Science as Truth or Technology: What is the nature of science and the kind of knowledge which it actually produces? Does science seek answers to the questions of essence and being or does it respond to specific technical and utilitarian questions raised by the community of scientists? 3. Kuhn's Theory of Science: Kuhn concludes that science is political, ideological, and religious as he contends that the logic, method, and theory of science is a social construct or consensus within the scientific community. 4. Sociology of Science: If science is a social construction, what is the broader nature of the society that produces such a theory and metaphysics of nature? What is the relationship between science and society, the Enlightenment and capitalism? Examine the history of the theory of science as a utilitarian and pragmatic Herrschaftswissen (science of domination) from Scheler, Weber, Husserl, Heidegger, Marcuse, and Habermas. 5. A priori Politics, Metaphysics, Technology, and Formal Methodology and Reason of Science: Once it is established from the theories of knowledge and science that science is a social construction, what are the scientific and social causes of the environmental crisis? Is the central issue the use and misuse of modern science and technology or does the critical question go beyond that to the underlying and unconscious values and metaphysics of science itself? That is, is science objective and neutral or does it incorporate into its very logic and theories what Marcuse calls a priori technological and political values. 6. Schools of Critical Ecology: Examine the debates among the opposing schools of ecological thought, including Shallow Ecology, Deep Ecology, Social Ecology, Marxist Ecology, Feminist Ecology, etc. Does science contain the solutions to the environmental crisis or is science itself part of the problem? 7. Transforming Science or Society: Reflect on the central issue of public policy and social change. A critical response to the environmental crisis entails an examination of both science and the structures of society. Does the solution to the problem lie in fixing the abuses of science in modern technology in the form of passive solar heating, alternatives to fossil fuels, automobile fuel standards, improving public transportation, etc. or does the solution lie in transforming the very institutions and deep structures of modern industrial society? 8. Dialectic Between Idealism and Materialism, Science and the Organization of Production: Does the solution also lie in the rejection of the Shallow Ecology's metaphysics of science (Bacon and Descartes), the Deep Ecology's spiritualizing of science (Heidegger and Buddhism), or the Marxian understanding of the dialectical relationship between science (productive forces) and society (social relations of production). The debate between Deep Ecology and Social Ecology appears to parallel the dialectic between the productive forces and the organization of production. That is, because Enlightenment science, with its mechanical determinism and crude materialism and its formal and technical rationality, is embedded in and a product of a capitalist industrial society, does this mean that to achieve a true social ecology there must also be a transformation of both the class political economy and the nature and metaphysics of science itself, that is, transformation of both industrial capitalism and Cartesian science (141 and 149)? 9. Alienation and Disenchantment of Nature: The Turn to 19th-Century Romantic Poetry and Romantische Naturphilosophie: Marx's theory of Nature is grounded in a number of different intellectual traditions, including German Idealism, 19th-Century Romantic Poetry, and the philosophy of nature of Naturphilosophie. Examine Marx's theory of the alienation of nature and Weber's theory of the rationalization and disenchantment of nature and their return to 19th-century Romantic poetry of Schiller, Heine, and Pater for inspiration. The early Marx used art and aesthetics to transcend the impact of the Enlightenment and the mechanical metaphysics of science and to re-enchant nature through a return to the ancient Greek view of the world. Marx, in particular, will utilize their worldview as the basis for an alternative theory of nature and ecology as he integrated aesthetics (Schiller) and praxis (Hegel) in social reconstruction, whereas Weber, on the other hand, integrated aesthetics (Schiller) and despair (Nietzsche) in his will to an existential vocation in science and politics. Trace the impact of the romantic theory of aesthetics and existentialism (art, beauty, play, and creativity) and the romantic philosophy of nature, which begins with Goethe, Herder, Spinoza, and Leibnitz, but flourishes under Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, on Marx's theory of the alienation of nature. In the tradition of Naturphilosophie, nature was viewed as a self-forming whole, organic, purposeful, and unified. Self-consciousness did not impose order and purpose from the outside upon an independent nature, as with Kant, but simply became aware of nature's own laws and possibilities. It was viewed as a critical reaction to the materialism, mechanism, and atomism of Naturwissenschaft. From German Idealism, Marx drew his insights on creativity, freedom, self-consciousness, human dignity, and the constitution theory of perception and experience in the transcendental subject (Kant) and history, ethics, and politics in the Objective Spirit (Hegel). And from the moral philosophy of practical reason, social ethics, and political theory, he developed a theory of social justice. From Romantic Poetry with its underlying existentialism and its alienation and despair of modernity, he developed a respect for aesthetic play, the laws of beauty, human creativity, and freedom. Finally, from Naturphilosophie and its return to Aristotle's natural philosophy he critique the ideals of Naturwissenschaft. 10. Towards a Theory of Critical Ecology and Social Justice: Nature and the Twilight of Reason: There must be a revolutionary transformation of our understanding of theory (idealism) and practice (materialism) regarding Metaphysics (organic, holistic, and integrated ontology), Physics (nature, ecological ethic, sustainability, and social ecology), Ethics (species-being, virtue, nobility, and self-determination & self-realization), and Politics (moral economy, community, discursive and deliberative rationality, and economic and political democracy). Political economy, history, and philosophy have been re-integrated back into a critical social theory and critical ecology. This involves the re-creation of a new natural science and productive forces with an alternative metaphysics and a new moral economy and democratic social organization of production, that is, it involves a broader, more comprehensive, and more inclusive theory of Social and Ecological Justice. For more on this issue of the critique of technological determinism and scientific neutrality and optimism, see K. Marx, G. Lukacs, H. Marcuse, I. Balbus, H. Braverman, B. Ollman, S. Avineri, A. Gorz, G. A. Cohen, R. Mishra, and S. Marglin, along with the historical writings of M. Weber, H. Pirenne, P. Mantoux, E. Hobsbawm, K. Polanyi, G. Arrighi, and J. Abu-Lughod. Scholars like J. Habermas and A. Schmidt see science and the productive forces as non-dialectical, instrumental (techne), optimistic, and historically autonomous reflecting the inner laws of nature (thing in itself). According to the former group, science is a set of categories, theories, and methods that arise historically out of a specific social system that has commodified, reified, and alienated social relations resulting in the quantification of human experience and nature. Science is a construct of the social relations of production; the Enlightenment, science, and the productive forces that mediate and transform our relationship to nature are products of the rise of Western capitalism. For socialism and a balanced ecology to come about, the totality of society must be transformed, including the capitalist organization of production, class structure, instrumentalist state, and the oppressive and dominating nature of science and technology. That is, the underlying Western metaphysics and teleology of nature within modern science must be abandoned. This perspective represents a blending of the Kantian view of subjectivity and objectivity and the Marxian theory of the historical primacy and dialectic of the social relations of production.) It should be noted that this argument of the relationship between the productive forces (Enlightenment science) and the social relations of production (capitalism) is similar to the discussion of the relationship between religion and the Protestant ethic (early Weber) and capitalism (Tawney). Finally, Ecological Justice without Social Justice is meaningless and empty since US capitalism tries to solve its social and economic problems through dismantling its welfare system, cutting the taxes of the wealthy, encouraging unlimited economic growth and industrial expansion, and creating internal social, racial, and tribal divisions to deflect attention from its fundamental class divisions. Until the environmentalists and ecologists deal with the accumulation of capital and private property, the rise of monopoly capital and the welfare/warfare state, the utilitarian culture, the narcissistic and authoritarian personality, and the metaphysics and politics of natural science, the human relationship with nature will always remain an area of serious crisis. The ecological crises are just another reflection of the internal logic and structural contradictions (Widersprueche) of capitalist production. 11. Critique of the Domination of Man and Nature: There has been an extensive debate among Marxist scholars over the Nature of Science itself: In order to transform society to a democratic and free moral economy does science transcend the historical context of the social relations of production -- can science and technology be used as the basis of this revolutionary transformation (Instrumental Marxism or dialectical materialism of Marx, Alfred Schmidt, Juergen Habermas, William Leiss, Charles Taylor, Jeremy Shapiro, Anthony Wilden, and Isaac Balbus). Is science independent of society and thus applicable under capitalism or socialism, or is it, as a Herrschaftswissen, a product of the class system, alienated labor, and the social organization of production of capitalist society (Structural Marxism or historical materialism of Marx, Andre Gorz, Herbert Marcuse, Ernst Bloch, Ben Agger, and William Ophuls-- see also Jacques Ellul, Max Weber, and Max Scheler)? This latter group argues that Enlightenment science and technology are products of capitalism and cannot be used to create an alternative relationship with nature and the environment. Another way of putting these questions is to ask if science can be viewed as an emancipatory factor as we move toward an ecologically friendly and critical ecology or does science itself have to change? Must there be an alternative science and technology in a society that is free from the Cartesian metaphysics of science and the oppression of alienated labor? The Instrumentalists view of Marx's theory of science and nature places the historical primacy on increased technology and the domination of nature as the key to understanding social change, whereas the Structuralist view of Marx emphasizes the transformation of production, class, and the domination of man and work. Capitalism, Science, and Nature have evolved together since the sixteenth century. In order to produce a healthy environment in the future, the economy and science will have to be radically transformed. For more on these issues, see Balbus, Marxism and Domination, pp. 126-166 and 234-302 and Alvin Gouldner, The Two Marxisms. Forms of Critical Ecology entail the following: (1) Analysis of Nature and the Non-living Environment: the abiotic or non-living conditions of the natural environment, including water. soil, atoms, molecules, climate, and habitat that affect organisms in the ecosystem. (2) Analysis of Nature and the Living Ecology: the biotic conditions which are the living components or organisms of an ecosystem, such as plants, trees, animals, and humans. New ethical and organic metaphysics of science. (3) Critique of Political Economy and Social Problems: the social conditions of the environment with an analysis of the functioning of the social system/political economy, lifeworld, and AGIL (Parsons) and the social pathologies of RRAANNDDD (Habermas). (4) Critical Ecology: placing critical ecology within a deep set of philosophical and theoretical traditions (Kant, Hegel, Marx, Weber, and Horkheimer), as well as integrating Metaphysics and Ethics with Political Economy and Social Theory (Berman, Parsons, Habermas, Capra, Naess, Bookchin, and Merchant). (5) Metaphysics of Natural Science: critique of the Cartesian/Newtonian paradigm and metaphysics of science: dualism, mechanism, machine, determinism, quantification, analytic-synthetic method, domination of nature, etc. (Burtt, Berman, Capra, and Merchant). Marcuse in his work One-Dimensional Man argues that science and technology are apriori political. That is, science and technology contain political and economic assumptions and values of capitalism hidden within its theory of knowledge, science, and the scientific and positivistic method. Science unconsciously reproduces the quantification and alienation of nature from the quantification and commodification of abstract labor and the social relations of production of industrial capitalism. As Tawney and perhaps the later Weber in Economy and Society write, the Protestant Ethic is a product of capitalism not its underlying cause. Weber's title should read The Spirit of Capitalism and the Protestant Ethic indicating the primacy of the political economy over consciousness and ideas. So too with science which should be viewed as a conceptual and theoretical product of the new economic and social system. This is the foundation of Historical Materialism (Marx, Berman, Braverman, Adorno, Horkheimer, Sohn Rethel, and Borkenau). (6) Metaphysics of Social Sciences: critique of empiricism (C. Wright Mills and critique of critical rationalism by the Frankfurt School, Adorno and Horkheimer). (6) Domination and Disenchantment of Nature: critique of the domination of nature (Scheler, Weber, Berman, Capra, and Merchant). (7) Domination and Disenchantment of Humanity: critique of the domination of humanity, political economy, and society in the social sciences (Horkheimer and the Positivismusstreit of the Frankfurt School). Loss of classical and contemporary social theory and methods. (8) Social Justice and Critical Ecology: comprehensive and critical theory of social justice (Aristotle and Marx) integrated to a comprehensive radical ecology. Solving the problems of the environment necessarily entail the restructuring of Political Economy and the rethinking and reorganization of the Structures and Logic of Production, Exchange, Distribution, and Consumption in Monopoly Capitalism. They key components in Ecological Justice are Environmental Crisis, Metaphysics of Science, Political Economy, and Social Justice. With the process of the disenchantment and loss of substantive and objective reason, especially classical and contemporary social theory, with the rise of positivism in the natural and social sciences, the metaphysics of science and the domination of nature, the apriori political application of science and technology in the workplace, and the loss of social justice and critical ecology in environmentalism and shallow ecology, there is a serious repression and displacement of these traditions into the liberal arts and academic social unconscious where they are buried beneath the fragmentation of disciplines and area studies. Final Discussion Issue Based on an Historical and Social Hypothetical: If John Locke completed his Second Treatise of Government with the original state of nature argument and never developed the second state of nature thesis; if Locke retained the natural law as the foundation of natural rights; and if some form of religious or secular "socialism" evolved immediately out of medieval feudalism, how would the metaphysics and method of science have developed? This completes the connection between Kant's epistemology and Marx's historical materialism. If an alternative, but non-capitalist, society evolved in the 16th- and 17-centuries, how would that have affected the development of Western science and technical reason, their underlying value system, and their metaphysical view of nature as mechanism, determinism, dualism, and the domination of nature? If science is a reflection of the structures and social relations of production, what kind of science would develop in a different social setting? What form would science take in an entirely different social system today not ground in commodity production and commodity exchange? We have already seen above that Capra criticized Western metaphysics, physics, methodology, and technology from the perspective of the Tao of physics of Buddhism. However, this was more of a spiritual and idealist revival than a true transformation of the social conditions that made Western science possible. The goal is to transform both Western epistemology and political economy to prepare the way for ecological justice and ecological harmony of all organic life by integrating Kant and Marx. Marcuse and Sohn-Rethel argued that metaphysics and science would both have to change along with a transformation in the principles and structures of modern society. The key components of a New Science of Nature will contain the following: (1) a new Metaphysics in which Nature and Humanity are part of a more organic, caring, integrated, and symbiotic stewardship and (2) a new Critical Ecology in which Metaphysics, Science, and Social Justice form its active component parts. Summary of the Course: Both Empiricism (Locke and Hume) and Rationalism (Descartes) argued that science could know the objective reality and truth of nature. They just disagreed about the appropriate method of research. However, they both agreed that science reflected or mirrored objective reality. With the reading of Kuhn and his critique of empiricism (Hume) and rationalism (Popper), science could not reflect natural reality (ontology, objectivism, and realism) but was a social construct and consensus within the scientific community (utilitarianism and Herrschaftswissen that was useful in dominating nature. Reading further in this course (Berman, Braverman, and Social Ecologists), it became clear that science did not reflect natural reality, but rather, science reflected the values, ideals, consciousness, and metaphysics of the underlying and deeper economic structures of political economy. Science was a reflection of capitalist industry, technical means of production, and the class structure of production. The goal now is to reconstruct the ethics and politics of objective reason in the form of Social Justice that would include racial, gender, economic, political, and environmental justice. Summary of Course: From Kantian Epistemology to Marxian Ecology: Epistemology ------------------ Social Structures -------------------- Ecology Kant ---------------------------- Historical Materialism -------------- Ecological Crisis Neo-Kantianism --------------- Sociology of Knowledge ---------- Ecological Justice Social Epistemology ---------- Metaphysics ------------------------- Shallow Ecology Abstract Categories ----------- Methodology ------------------------ Deep Ecology Consciousness ----------------- Philosophy of Science -------------- Social Ecology Experience --------------------- Mechanics & ------------------------- Rights of Nature Knowledge --------------------- Technology -------------------------- Critical Ecology Science of Nature -------------- Political Ecology ------------------- Marxist Ecology |