The Good Old Cliche concerning Theory and Action

A cliche, but a cliche worth repeating many times. There is a prejudice that theory and action are two separate things, and that theory cannot influence action in any concrete or substantial way. Or, the put it in another way, there is a division between "theoretical" and "practical" knowledge, and only the latter supplies what is relevant to action, while the former can only make detached, abstract speculations which have nothing to do with how one actually acts. The strongest argument for this claim ultimately boils down to this truism: at the end of the day, we need to put bread on our table.

However, the above is a false dichotomy. Speculation without action will not put bread on the table. This is true. But then the reverse is also true, namely, that action without speculation will not put bread on the table. There is always a minimum of speculation involved in any act of putting bread on the table. The speculation can take the form of trust ("I trust that if I go to the bakery, the baker will not refuse me bread") or of force ("I can make others give to me what is my due, namely, the means to survive") or of something else. Even if the actor is a farmer/baker/blacksmith/lumberjack, and thus is capable of single-handedly producing everything necessary for making bread, there still is speculation, and a huge speculation at that: namely, that he will not have to rely on others in the future. This is a huge speculation because it assumes that everything which he has at present will work as it is for an indefinite duration of time. There will be no bad harvest, no unexpected malfunctioning of machines, no shortage of wood, or, more radically, no nuclear accidents, earthquakes, hurricanes, or other disasters which will bring everything to ruins in a sweep. In order to ensure that bread will be on the table tomorrow, therefore, the actor must let speculation influence his actions. In this way, his actions are no longer that of simply acquiring the immediate means of subsistence. Already, the action takes the form of an investment.

On the level of subsistence, there are several key questions at present. Will currency depreciate? Will the price of goods fluctuate in such a way that will render my savings irrelevant? Will a natural or human disaster occur in the near future? Will I have a job that will allow me to live without any physical or psychical injury?

Assuming that all of these issues are given adequate treatment, the big question still remains, namely, am I to be satisfied with the security of mere subsistence? I work, I make money, I eat, drink, sleep - I subsist. The answer is an obvious No. The interesting thing about humans is that mere subsistence requires something more than subsistence. This "more" is first of all culture. Or, to put it more concretely, there needs to be a reason behind subsistence. This is nothing mysterious: it is the way one thinks all the time. For example, upon making the decision between working as a waiter, a banker, a civil servant, or a politician, the question immediately arises: why this rather than that? This question is nonsense from the point of view of mere subsistence, since all jobs equally provide what is needed for subsistence alone. But then, what is this "more" which I here called culture or reason?

With this question we are already deep in speculation and at the entrance gates of philosophy. For the question is immediately also about the reality, function, and power of freedom, for to reason is to be free, although at this point one has no idea what it means to "be free." Caprice is the lowest form of freedom precisely because the capricious actor does not give reasons for his or her acting. There are then reasons which appeal to nature ("I had sex because there is a natural drive in animals to mate") and to psychology ("I felt a desire to have sex") and then to culture or society ("In our overtly sexual society, having sex is almost a status-symbol; thus I had sex in order to belong to a certain class of people in my society") and finally to art and religion ("I fulfill the commandment of God and the meaning of the union of marriage by performing this act as the highest expression of authentic love.") All of these reasons express half-truths; truths, in so far as they can be reasons at all for the action in question; half, because there are higher and more concrete reasons which can accommodate the previous one. The highest reason, however, is paradoxically also the lowest, namely, that there is "something beyond all this that made me do this." This is because, while the action might be accounted for by all of these reasons, it is also part of the action that these reasons are given - in this example, the action won't appear as sex in the first place unless it was represented to me and others in such a way that it appears to be sex, that there can be reasons given to it, etc. But the act of giving reason is itself in need of explanation. And the attempts to explain will always also leave something out - thus proving that there are certain dimensions in this "act of giving reason" which cannot be given reason. But this line of thought is very hasty, unconvincing, and thus in some sense false. For at this point, there seems to be no distinction between this final "I did this ultimately for nothing" and caprice. Both are "groundless," both are reasons which appeal to nothing - literally. And yet, there is a big difference. To grasp this difference is the business of philosophy.

In the path of this critical train of thought, philosophy will illuminate so many particular issues, that this path will prove to be simultaneously the most general and the most particular, or the most abstract and the most concrete. To take an example: Marx. It is an idea of Marx's that money turns to capital when the production of exchange value uses the production of use value as a means to its own realization. From the point of use value alone, therefore, money only appears as a means of exchange, in which the end is to satisfy my own needs. Therefore, capital never appears from the point of view of, say, the consumer or the hard-working laborer. Capital appears for the merchant and for those who use money to make more money, or for those who take the use of a product as a means to satisfying the expansion of the quantity of money. Capital is founded and perpetuated upon this perspectival difference, which is not "merely" a matter of "points of view," but rather a real division that actually structures the way people live in our society. Just this insight is enough to organize a whole range of contemporary phenomena - from the "bait-and-switch" system of unemployment and job-hunting, all the way up to the seemingly never-ending thirst for expansion confessed and even boasted by many CEOs - and bring them into relation. This will further show that unemployment, the so-called "working-poor," and the just mentioned thirst for expansion, are not individual "psychological" problems, as if the unemployed are lazy and the CEOs are greedy. These will rather be seen as necessary symptoms of the overall system of economy and politics, what Marx calls "capitalism," in short, the interplay between those whose primary concern is use-value and others whose primary concern is exchange-value.

Now, assuming that through philosophical education and well-informed action, I secure a relatively good life for my self, and also open up a certain space for good change to happen to others and to the larger political and economic system - say, by writing books and stimulating others to think, and to reassure superior thinkers that there is one more person trying to follow in their wake. There still is the obligation to others in the future, primarily my family. With this a whole new dimension opens up. The question of the meaning of love and the question of the meaning of education. On the assumption that things will turn out to be even worse than what I can possibly imagine at present, and thus thinking in the most pessimistic way possible, I am still also under obligation to secure the subsistence and freedom of my family members. How is such a decision possible? Of course, complete security is impossible. Just as the highest reason for any action includes the lowest ("ultimately, I did this for nothing") here too any decision will have to involve an element of nothingness, an element of absolute uncertainty. But there is still a world of difference between acting upon just such an uncertainty and acting after full consideration of all dimensions and still on the basis of uncertainty. In the former case, the result of the action will almost surely lead to regret - "why didn't I think of this before acting so hastily?" The latter will lead to acceptance - "there was no way that I could have foreseen this."

幻術

「芸術」と打とうとして誤って「幻術」と打ってしまった。その後で、コリングウッドの『芸術の原理』の中の「Magic」の節を訳す適語は、「魔法」ではなく「幻術」なのではないか、と思った。覚書まで。

A Very Short Note on Das Kapital I

Money

Money is the commodity in which use-value and exchange-value converge. As such, it cannot be an object which has a particular use value, such as walnuts or okuras or wine. Modern society has found the most logically consistent form of money: virtual money. It is literally nothing, and, as nothing, universally and necessarily lacks use-value. Or rather, its sole use-value is its function as the means of exchange.

Value of Labour-Power

Labour-power is defined by Marx as the sum total of all the psychical and physical abilities required to perform a given work. The value of labour-power differs according to the two perspectives. From the point of view of exchange value, labour-power is exchanged for the total cost of the production and maintenance of these psychical and physical abilities, i.e. this type of labourer. From the point of view of use value, the same quantity of labour-power has its value in the sum-total of the commodities which it produces.

Surplus-Value

Surplus-value is realized in exchange, more specifically in the triad Money-Commodity-Money (M-C-M). Money, say $100, is spent to buy a commodity. The same commodity is then sold for the price of $110. If the exchange consists merely in the exchange of things or consumable objects, there still would be surplus-value due to accidental causes such as bad harvest, draught, rise or fall in temperature, etc. However, there is no necessary rise in price. The distinction, not made so clearly by Marx, seems crucial.

Capital

It is only when the creation of surplus-value becomes necessary that money becomes capital. In order to effect this step forward, the buyer must find a commodity that can be bought at price P and then sold for price P+D where D is a positive increment. This commodity, it turns out, is labour-power. The market price of labour-power is determined according to the cost of the production and maintenance of it. Now there is no rule that prevents the possessor of this commodity, the buyer or capitalist, from making use of this labour-power in such a way that the commodities produced by means of this labour-power embody more value than said cost. With this difference, money becomes capital, and the ordinary buyer and seller becomes a capitalist.

Two Rules for the Modern Sciences

Following the tradition of modernist philosophers, there seem to be two rules for any modern science to succeed.

(1) The method of that science must be sought in its subject-matter.

(2) Every determination must be deduced from a previous state in which that determination is not yet explicitly realized as such.

These are criteria by which good sciences proceed, and which lesser sciences, or sciences still in a state of confusion, ought to obey. The grossest confusion may be found in what used be called "behavioral psychology" and the traces it left in contemporary psychology and sociology. The idea prevalent here is that human behavior can be subjected to "experiments," and "hypotheses" can be "tested" against these experiments, just like the case in physics. Now, in so far as the human being is considered as a body with many physiological and biological properties, the inquiry is harmless. However, when this method is extended to the study of the human mind, as well as the relation between what the person thinks and what the person does, then things begin to go awry.

There is a famous experiment in sociology, which may be called the Elevator Experiment. Five people populate an elevator, all hired by the experimenter. A hidden camera is placed behind the ceiling. An ordinary citizen enters the elevator. While the elevator is moving, all of the five hired people turn leftward, 90 degrees. The poor man, who feels uncomfortable that he is the only one standing straight facing the direction of the elevator door, also shifts around and eventually turns leftward, 90 degrees. The experiment is repeated for other people who enter the elevator, and the same results obtain: every newcomer turns leftward in response to the behavior of the five hired people.

Now what the experiment aims to establish is the fact that some of our behaviors are socially determined. However, beyond this point the more precise consequences are less clear. Consider, for example, the fact that the experiment was set within an elevator, where indeed people have nothing better to do than to stay put in a relatively stupified state. In this environment, the most trivial change in the behavior of others would have stimulated the newcomer much more than, say, in a different situation such as a meeting room or in the mountains, where many things are on each person's mind, including ideas on what one ought to do next. While in each of these situations it is undoubtedly true that certain behaviors - often very trivial ones - are due to habits nurtured in society, often times the real issues that matter to the person in the non-trivial situation are not wholly determined by the behavior of others. 

For instance, in the case of the meeting room, questions such as "how one ought to conduct oneself in a discussion?" "what ideas one ought to express?" "in what sort of context is it appropriate to express such ideas?" and so on immediately affect the thinkers involved. When the underlying purpose of the thinker is to "blend in" to the gathering and to follow what is normal, then the answers to these questions will most likely be determined through social norms and habits, as well as how others speak and behave on that particular occasion. But if the thinker has a degree of independence, and wishes to base his ideas and conduct on more than mere convention, then the way in which he chooses to present himself to others will be determined by something other than the observable behaviors of others in the same room. In this latter case, no amount of experimenting can give us insight into why this person has decided to express these ideas in just these manners. The sufficient answer must come from a method suited to the process of thinking which was that thinker's.

Now the sociologist who believes that all behaviors of any sort can be explained by appeal to social norms, might say that what appears to be the original thoughts belonging to the thinker's spontaneous reflections are really conditioned through and through by what others have deemed "normal" and "acceptable" under similar circumstances. The thinker, then, is merely re-combining the elements of these previously acquired norms.

The above line of thought rests upon two fallacies, which are both violations of rules (1) and (2) respectively. The first fallacy comes from the fact that the sociologist takes a phenomenon that is not social to be a social phenomenon. The reflection of the thinker is not a reflection guided by the purpose of conformity and social harmony. It rather rests upon very different principles, and moreover the thinker is more or less aware that this is the case. By distorting the subject-matter so that it will conform to his sociological method, the sociologist in essence fails to take into account this self-reflective aspect of what the thinker is doing. The second fallacy is that the sociologist presupposes what in fact only arouse afterwards. What I mean is that the norms to which the thinker allegedly conforms do not exist prior to the thoughts and conduct on the part of the thinker. If the thinker is successful in his conduct, he will most likely establish a new norm, to which future thinkers will aspire. While it may be just to explain the behaviors of these subsequent followers by appealing to the norm established by the first thinker, the same cannot be the method by which to explain how the thinker himself came to think and act in this particular way.

This kind of distortion and illegitimate presupposing is more commonplace in the dubious sciences than is desirable. This is one more good reason for studying logic from a properly philosophical point of view, that is, in abstraction from its application to particular branches of thought.

Love as a Category of Representation

Love is a key to comprehending what freedom is. As with all philosophical concepts, love also has its own scale of forms - to follow R. G. Collingwood's method. At its lowest, love is a mere momentary emotion, almost indistinguishable from like. However, whereas like is conditioned by a relative presupposition - i.e. a particular, contingent, and selfish interest - love rests upon a universal and absolute presupposition. This latter states that in loving someone, the lover affirms everything about the beloved, unconditionally and without exception, down to the most trivial and minutest detail.

The expression "I love you" is absurd and ticklish, not because love is a sublime emotion which the average existing human being cannot realistically handle, but because in declaring love in this form, I turn love into something which I more or less intentionally do, like a decision. However, love is not merely a decision. Deciding to love someone does not mean that in so deciding I come to love that person for the first time. Rather, such a decision is only a reaffirmation, a confirmation I give after reflecting upon the fact that I already am in love with the other person. Love, therefore, is a category of representation and action rather than a particular object or act.

Of course, it is contingent that I love at all, and it is even more so that I love this particular person. This is the reason why I called love a "presupposition." Love can eventually go away. In recognizing this contingency, a human being can further make the decision to love love, that is, to absolutely presuppose the absolute presupposition, or, what comes to the same thing, affirm everything about affirming the entire existence of the beloved. This decision based on reflection is a free act. It is also a terrible decision. In making such a decision, love begins to burn and char the body and mind of the lover. The lover must learn to accept absolutely everything about the beloved. No moral, natural, political, aesthetic, or religious argument can excuse the lover from neglecting the implications of this standpoint. The lover must affirm the unnatural, the immoral, the politically impotent, the aesthetically unpleasant, or the profane.

It is also through this absolute passivity, this absolute renunciation and acceptance, that the lover liberates himself from the immediacy of representation. Prior to loving someone, the lover more or less thinks that some things in the world just is how it is, regardless of how he chooses to represent it. After the process of love, at the point which the lover assumes the full weight of his decision to love someone, the world essentially is how the lover chooses it to be. True, the lover did not, and could not, decide to let the world be in a particular way ex nihilo. But then it is also the case that, in a certain sense, the world is indeed the way it is ex nihilo. The lover knows that if he chooses to reject and criticize the faults of the beloved, and the faults of the world, then this decision will directly determine the way in which the thing appears to him. It is this consciousness of his own power of representation that is also the seed of a peculiar kind of freedom. I say seed because this freedom cannot blossom within the narrow confines of the flowerpot that is love. It must travel by wind to foreign lands, compete with other trees and bushes, take root, germinate, and grow. The resulting stand of trees is a state. But everything starts from the traumatic experience of becoming self-conscious while being in love.

知的生活の土台としての哲学

芸術や職人芸から政治まで、人間の精神生活を一通り網羅した哲学書を書くとしたら――哲学書とはそもそもこうあるべきものである上に、実際もそういうものだったのだけど――どのような構成になって、どのような題名になるだろうか。

『知的生活』(Intellectual Life)という題名はどうだろうか。本当は、『知的生活の土台としての哲学』の方が正確なのだけれど、そもそも「知的生活」という考えがあまり国民の日常に浸透していないように思える。まだあまりよくわからない「知的生活」という言葉があるだけで、十分変な本となるはずなので、そこにさらに「土台」だの「哲学」だの見慣れない言葉を加えられては、読むほうとしては遠慮がちになってしまうかもしれない。それは避けたい。

本の構成としては、幾つかの部や章に体系的にわけていく。言葉遣いは易しくするし、実際の議論には豊富な例も織り交ぜて読みやすく考えを表現する。他方で、論理はしっかりおさえる。哲学的な議論も躊躇なく行う。耳当たりの良い言葉で済ませず、ある考えを表現するために必要な言葉をしっかり使う。「それっぽい」ことを書くのではなくて、ある程度重みや実感の伴うことを書く。

『知的生活』

第一部　論理

第一章　基礎的な概念について

第二章　ものごとを縛る概念について

第三章　ものごとを自由にする概念について

第二部　自然

第一章　数学と物理学

第二章　化学などの質的な自然科学

第三章　有機体と生物学

第三部　人間

第一章　芸術と職人芸

第二章　宗教

第三章　政治と経済

いずれにしても、こういう内容の本を読んで批判してくれるような人は少数派なんだろうと思えてならない。

In and Out of the University

In his Diary of a Bad Year, Coetzee makes mention of a philosophy seminar in Australia which was organized entirely by non-academic civilians. However, this seminar was in no way, for that reason, second-rate. Rather, in Coetzee's eyes at least, this seminar had its unique merits, the chief ones of which is those which stem from the fact that this was founded on sincere, free motivations.

Nowadays, the seminar in a university setting is taken for granted, to such an extent that many students wouldn't, I imagine, feel at all that they are voluntarily being part of a movement. The institution of the university has become such a normal, well-established environment, that a seminar rather appears to the average student as something which already exists somewhere out there, waiting to be "filled in" before class one. No wonder then that many such seminars end up being not as lively as it could have been.

Perhaps this shift in the meaning of seminars is reflected in other parts of the university. University is turning into a tool for boosting one's career, to repeat a cliche. In any case, it is a cliche worth repeating, since it makes it clear that, for the pure learner, it is not necessary to get a Ph.D. And yet. Many people still believe that a Ph.D. is an absolute requirement if one is to become a successful academic.

The main justification for this belief is that only a person with a Ph.D. can get the chance to teach, do research, and get published in journals. However, in the contemporary world, this is no longer the case. By using the world wide web, it is possible to organize a local seminar on just about anything. People can in this way teach each other. They can also conduct research on their own thanks to Open Source Journals and Creative Commons Licenses. And, they can publish their works in electronic book form without any cost, and can also write on other avenues.

Traditionally, professors were respected and revered just because... they were professors. The old joke goes that everyone knows that a professor has done something important but no one can tell exactly what it is. The 19th and 20th century Russian novel repeatedly satirizes the "academician" who is respected for no substantial reason.

Now, if free access to journals were granted to the ordinary person, this would have a huge impact on how professors conduct and present their research. I do not mean that they should cater to the needs of the average layperson - such a turn of events would be unfortunate, since it would compromise the quality and rigor of their ideas. Rather, professors would have to be conscious that someone out there is actually going to read his or her work. In other words, they would no longer be able to treat their duty of research merely as part of their "career." If the long list of publications happened to be comprised of articles and books which, upon inspection, appear to be of almost no value (in one sense or another,) then it is clear that that fact would severely damage the professor's reputation. This scenario would have been very unlikely in an environment where ordinary people were barred access to academic publications, and thus were unable to see for themselves just what the professors were up to. Hence the mysterious aura of the "respectable" professor and the corresponding joke.

But if more and more scholarly material become available to the ordinary citizen, then two things would happen. First, the academic ability of individuals will be assessed not according to what kind of credentials they have on their CVs, but rather on the quality and reception of their works, both in research and in teaching. Second, getting a Ph.D. merely for the sake of career-building will become an obsolete option. The whole Ph.D. system, especially where the subject-matter demands a broad comprehension of a variety of topics rather than a rigid and narrow focus on one point, will have to be reconsidered. If a Ph.D. were to continue to be a sign that one is a professional in one's field, then a dissertation would have to satisfy certain qualitative requirements including that of being intelligible, meaningful, and not excessively narrow or short-sighted.

Academic institutions are valuable sanctuaries for theory and thought. They should not turn into mere tools for career-building. Philosophy, in particular, shouldn't be taught for the sake of "transferable skills." It ought to be an end in itself. If academia ceases to insist on this point, then Coetzee's civilian seminar will become necessary, for where else would philosophy be able to enjoy unconditional attention and respect as it is in itself?

Additionally, if academia is to become a retreat for higher level students, it ought to make the necessary changes that will give breathing space to those students. At present, there are too many time-consuming duties, which have very little to do with learning academic content, seem to weigh heavily on the student's shoulders. Attending conferences in order to "make connections," doing TA work in order to "pay the bills," and taking courses and writing papers which will "get the approval of the professors," are all extraneous activities. It might be the case that a non-student outside the university has a better chance of learning his or her own topic of interest. I am currently assuming the latter position by working a job that will pay my bills and then devoting the rest of my time to academic activities without worrying about external matters.

Again, this does not mean that people ought to start doing research outside the university. Rather, this means that the current higher education system needs to be improved quite fundamentally, so that students are actually given the space to focus freely on their primary vocation, namely, to learn. At present, such a free focus seems easier to achieve outside the university. This is a problematic situation.