Before we pick up from where we left off, let’s briefly run through a couple of critical remarks on Sartre’s trajectory and the outline of his theory and method. He holds that we need not adapt philosophy to the course of the world—it adapts itself—if so, does this not run counter to his dialectical sensibility in the seeming contradiction between concrete materiality and reflection? Ie. is there not missing from this adaptation what can be called “the converse movement” of concrete materiality adapting to philosophy (this seems to gain further impetus by Sartre’s “relocation” of knowing to the real world)? Or will he grant the locus of the operation to a “given world of facts”? Perhaps it is in the already totalised knowledge, the unity-become-passive, that we see “the world” or “the horizon” to which philosophy subsequently adapts (if so what about the given world of facts?), but then in contradistinction we must see this world in its relation to an active, totalizing effort of philosophy itself, so that the world as totalised knowledge is mediated by something not yet totalised, but essentially totalizing. In both instances we end up paradoxically with the problem of where and whence the content of the world cometh—never mind the movement itself. We seem to be far from a synthesis of concrete materiality and reflection (although we must grant that Sartre’s real investigation has not yet begun, and being dialectical in nature it only appears when “working the matter out”).
In other words,
all the work is still ahead of us; the method, its constitution etc. Situating
historical events by way of some already established material conditions for
their existence, is deemed by Sartre, a priori. It is precisely these
conditions in their whole conceptual movement and truth that we wish to
investigate. Then there is the business of subsuming other philosophical
movements in the total development of which Marxism, we understand, is the
avant-garde. Here Sartre directs an attack on those Marxists, for whom the
dialectic from Brentano to Husserl to Heidegger is brushed off as mere
“epiphenomenon”: this criticism applies equally today in my opinion where
people of that ilk have simply not read the texts of the respective authors.
Moreover this schematizing of particular instances to a predetermined universal
is carried over into real history; we see for example in the analyses of Guerin
a perverse vulgarization of differences between the “intellectual petite
bourgeoisie” and age-honed shipowners and merchants (in this domain there
exists an interesting dialectic between the “aroused” and the “imparted”
reminiscent of Max Stirner—Sartre must
have read The Ego and His Own). We are thus warned not to treat “signification”
as “intention”; we must be careful in grasping all the evidence of a
totalisation if our objective is to capture the real (effectively noise and
randomness is introduced into history). An example of this important difference
is manifest in the actor performing for example Hamlet: when he crosses the
scene he is immersed in the play but also in earning a living—these modes of
being even inform and interpenetrate each other. His acting out of Hamlet
mediates his knowledge of himself as actor just as the lines and scenes of the
play are permeated by his reality (the intricacies of this relationship is
precisely what is denied in the current aporicity of Marxist theory); the
parable thus reintroduces the imaginary into the real as a point of reference
for its interpretation of itself. Further, this makes clear how intention and
signification can overlap establishing the possibility of bad faith (the
use-mention distinction seems implicit as well). Marxism distorts this complex
synthetic unity by introducing 2 concepts at the same time; that of teleology
and that of unconscious knowledge. In combination they transform human reason
into surface effects in a mechanistic system while simultaneously eschewing necessity
to unforeseen results of human action (there is an important place for
randomness, but it must be thought in conjunction with human knowing’s
placement in the world). What is not apprehended in this “scintillation of
ideas” is the dialectical interplay—the contradiction—that exists concretely in
the particular situation we wish to investigate. This sort of formalization
then amounts to suppression rather than an integration of real phenomena, thus
it is a false totalisation. Under this schema it is impossible to see how
superstructure has any influence on substructure; how the imaginary holds a
place in reality and vice versa.
What we are
dealing with is ultimately the intricate interplay of universal, particular and
individual (we shall compare Sartre’s examination to Hegel’s in the Science of
Logic later). Sartre is adamant that the ‘idea’ must be found in reality—though
not as a ‘thing’—and never a priori; it has “historical depth” and “actual
presence” as an “objective culture”. So we grasp everything a posteriori, even
matters of relation to class and environment: we could say that for Sartre
every “a priori” is materially mediated in some way.
A very important aspect of this displacement is the
consequence it is has for the concrete individual, the particular life: for
Engels and Marx the particular is born of chance, always subsumed under a
somehow predetermined abstract universal movement—Fx. If Napoleon had not
risen, someone else would have instead (cf. my remarks earlier on the
scintillation of ideas). But this is really an arbitrary limitation of
dialectical movement (one which has huge consequences for human freedom and
choice) amounting to idealism. We must extend our investigation to how the
universal is lived by the particular and the discipline enabling the study of
this process today is psychoanalysis. This also amounts to a refusal of the dogmatism
of presenting man only in his present determinations (compare Hegel: Who thinks
abstractly?)—that is, analytically—and seeking instead to discover his whole history
from childhood till now: ie. the moments of internalized externality.
A further
example of “disguised idealism” is seen in a lot of modern sociology, where
“the real movement of history” is hypostasized and posited positivistically as
an already given totality: here the object is “ontologically autonomous”
(autonomous meaning un-dialectical). Likewise the methodology is autonomous,
describing only functions of the already given and ultimately, combining these
2 autonomies in a “reciprocal autonomy”, the experimenter and the experimental
group are completely disengaged.
It is easy to see that the kind of
investigation Sartre promises us in the Critique is of a completely different
nature than “un-situated”; “pre-given”; “objective”; “autonomous” etc.
investigations, reality is much more dramatic. It is a lazy thinking that which
does not work dialectically, a thinking that is satisfied with and complete in
a severe reduction of reality. I think this suffices for an introduction to
Sartre’s project and I will instead move on to the real text ending with this quote:
“We have
just shown that dialectical materialism is reduced to its own skeleton if it
does not integrate into itself certain Western disciplines; but this is only a
negative demonstration. Our examples have revealed at the heart of this philosophy
a lack of any concrete anthropology. But, without a movement, without a real
effort at totalisation, the givens of sociology and of psychoanalysis will
sleep side by side and will not be integrated into “knowledge.” The default of
Marxism has led us to attempt this integration ourselves, with the means at our
disposal; that is, by definite operations and according to principles which
give to our ideology its unique character, principles which we are now going to
set forth.”
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