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Books: One-dimensional man: chapter eight

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circle of the mutilated universe of ordinary discourse, it is at best entirely
inconsequential. And, at worst, it is an escape into the non-controversial, the
unreal, into that which is only academically controversial.
### Universal Ghosts
Contemporary analytic philosophy is out to exorcize such “myths” or
metaphysical “ghosts” as Mind, Consciousness, Will, Soul, Self, by dissolving
the intent of these concepts into statements on particular identifiable
operations, performances, powers, dispositions, propensities, skills, etc. The
result shows, in a strange way, the impotence of the destruction—the ghost
continues to haunt. While every interpretation or translation may describe
adequately a particular mental process, an act of imagining what I mean when I
say “I,” or what the priest means when he says that Mary is a “good girl,” not
a single one of these reformulations, nor their sum-total, seems to capture or
even circumscribe the full meaning of such terms as Mind, Will, Self, Good.
These universals continue to persist in common as well as “poetic” usage, and
either usage distinguishes them from the various modes of behavior or
disposition that, according to the analytic philosopher, fulfill their meaning.
[...]
However, this dissolution itself must be questioned—not only on behalf of the
philosopher, but on behalf of the ordinary people in whose life and discourse
such dissolution takes place. It is not their own doing and their own saying;
it happens to them and it violates them as they are compelled, by the
“circumstances,” to identify their mind with the mental processes, their self
with the roles and functions which they have to perform in their society.
If philosophy does not comprehend these processes of translation and
identification as societal processes—i.e., as a mutilation of the mind (and the
body) inflicted upon the individuals by their society—philosophy struggles only
with the ghost of the substance which it wishes to de-mystify. The mystifying
character adheres, not to the concepts of “mind,” “self,” “consciousness,” etc.
but rather to their behavioral translation. The translation is deceptive
precisely because it translates the concept faithfully into modes of actual
behavior, propensities, and dispositions and, in so doing, it takes the
mutilated and organized appearances (themselves real enough!) for the reality.
[...]
Moreover, the normal restriction of experience produces a pervasive tension,
even conflict, between “the mind” and the mental processes, between
“consciousness” and conscious acts. If I speak of the mind of a person, I do
not merely refer to his mental processes as they are revealed in his
expression, speech, behavior, etc., nor merely of his dispositions or faculties
as experienced or inferred from experience. I also mean that which he does not
express, for which he shows no disposition, but which is present nevertheless,
and which determines, to a considerable extent, his behavior, his
understanding, the formation and range of his concepts.
Thus “negatively present” are the specific “environmental” forces which
precondition his mind for the spontaneous repulsion of certain data,
conditions, relations. They are present as repelled material. Their absence is
a reality—a positive factor that explains his actual mental processes, the
meaning of his words and behavior. Meaning for whom? Not only for the
professional philosopher, whose task it is to rectify the wrong that pervades
the universe of ordinary discourse, but also for those who suffer this wrong
although they may not be aware of it—for Joe Doe and Richard Roe. Contemporary
linguistic analysis shirks this task by interpreting concepts in terms of an
impoverished and preconditioned mind. What is at stake is the unabridged and
unexpurgated intent of certain key concepts, their function in the unrepressed
understanding of reality—in non-conformist, critical thought.
Are the remarks just submitted on the reality content of such universals as
“mind” and “consciousness” applicable to other concepts, such as the abstract
yet substantive universals, Beauty, Justice, Happiness, with their contraries?
It seems that the persistence of these untranslatable universals as nodal
points of thought reflects the unhappy consciousness of a divided world in
which “that which is” falls short of, and even denies, “that which can be.” The
irreducible difference between the universal and its particulars seems to be
rooted in the primary experience of the inconquerable difference between
potentiality and actuality—between two dimensions of the one experienced world.
The universal comprehends in one idea the possibilities which are realized, and
at the same time arrested, in reality.
[...]
This description is of precisely that metaphysical character which positivistic
analysis wishes to eliminate by translation, but the translation eliminates
that which was to be defined.
[...]
The protest against the vague, obscure, metaphysical character of such
universals, the insistence on familiar concreteness and protective security of
common and scientific sense still reveal something of that primordial anxiety
which guided the recorded origins of philosophic thought in its evolution from
religion to mythology, and from mythology to logic; defense and security still
are large items in the intellectual as well as national budget. The unpurged
experience seems to be more familiar with the abstract and universal than is
the analytic philosophy; it seems to be embedded in a metaphysical world.
Universals are primary elements of experience—universals not as philosophic
concepts but as the very qualities of the world with which one is daily
confronted.
[...]
The substantive character of “qualities” points to the experiential origin of
substantive universals, to the manner in which concepts originate in immediate
experience.
[...]
But precisely the relation of the word to a substantive universal (concept)
makes it impossible, according to Humboldt, to imagine the origin of language
as starting from the signification of objects by words and then proceeding to
their combination (Zusammenfügung): In reality, speech is not put together from
preceding words, but quite the reverse: words emerge from the whole of speech
(aus dem Ganzen der Rede).7
The “whole” that here comes to view must be cleared from all misunderstanding
in terms of an independent entity, of a “Gestalt,” and the like. The concept
somehow expresses the difference and tension between potentiality and
actuality—identity in this difference. It appears in the relation between the
qualities (white, hard; but also beautiful, free, just) and the corresponding
concepts (whiteness, hardness, beauty, freedom, justice). The abstract
character of the latter seems to designate the more concrete qualities as
part-realizations, aspects, manifestations of a more universal and more
“excellent” quality, which is experienced in the concrete.8 And by virtue of
this relation, the concrete quality seems to represent a negation as well as
realization of the universal.
[...]
These formulations do not alter the relation between the abstract concept and
its concrete realizations: the universal concept denotes that which the
particular entity is, and is not. The translation can eliminate the hidden
negation by reformulating the meaning in a non-contradictory proposition, but
the untranslated statement suggests a real want. There is more in the abstract
noun (beauty, freedom) than in the qualities (“beautiful,” “free”) attributed
to the particular person, thing or condition. The substantive universal intends
qualities which surpass all particular experience, but persist in the mind, not
as a figment of imagination nor as more logical possibilities but as the
“stuff” of which our world consists.
[...]
Now there is a large class of concepts—we dare say, the philosophically
relevant concepts—where the quantitative relation between the universal and the
particular assumes a qualitative aspect, where the abstract universal seems to
designate potentialities in a concrete, historical sense. However “man,”
“nature,” “justice,” “beauty” or “freedom” may be defined, they synthetize
experiential contents into ideas which transcend their particular realizations
as something that is to be surpassed, overcome. Thus the concept of beauty
comprehends all the beauty not yet realized; the concept of freedom all the
liberty not yet attained.
Or, to take another example, the philosophic concept “man” aims at the fully
developed human faculties which are his distinguishing faculties, and which
appear as possibilities of the conditions in which men actually live.
[...]
Such universals thus appear as conceptual instruments for understanding the
particular conditions of things in the light of their potentialities. They are
historical and supra-historical; they conceptualize the stuff of which the
experienced world consists, and they conceptualize it with a view of its
possibilities, in the light of their actual limitation, suppression, and
denial. Neither the experience nor the judgment is private. The philosophic
concepts are formed and developed in the consciousness of a general condition
in a historical continuum; they are elaborated from an individual position
within a specific society. The stuff of thought is historical stuff—no matter
how abstract, general, or pure it may become in philosophic or scientific
theory. The abstract-universal and at the same time historical character of
these “eternal objects” of thought is recognized and clearly stated in
Whitehead’s Science and the Modern World:10
“Eternal objects are … in their nature, abstract. By ‘abstract’ I mean that
what an eternal object is in itself—that is to say, its essence—is
comprehensible without reference to some one particular experience. To be
abstract is to transcend the particular occasion of actual happening. But to
transcend an actual occasion does not mean being disconnected from it. On the
contrary, I hold that each eternal object has its own proper connection with
each such occasion, which I term its mode of ingression into that occasion.”
“Thus the metaphysical status of an eternal object is that of a possibility for
an actuality. Every actual occasion is defined as to its character by how these
possibilities are actualized for that occasion.”
Elements of experience, projection and anticipation of real possibilities
enter into the conceptual syntheses—in respectable form as hypotheses, in
disreputable form as “metaphysics.” In various degrees, they are unrealistic
because they transgress beyond the established universe of behavior, and they
may even be undesirable in the interest of neatness and exactness. Certainly,
in philosophic analysis,
“Little real advance … is to be hoped for in expanding our universe to
include so-called possible entities,”11
but it all depends on how Ockham’s Razor is applied, that is to say, which
possibilities are to be cut off. The possibility of an entirely different
societal organization of life has nothing in common with the “possibility” of a
man with a green hat appearing in all doorways tomorrow, but treating them with
the same logic may serve the defamation of undesirable possibilities.
Criticizing the introduction of possible entities, Quine writes that such an
“overpopulated universe is in many ways unlovely. It offends the aesthetic
sense of us who have a taste for desert landscapes, but this is not the worst
of it. [Such a] slum of possibles is a breeding ground for disorderly
elements.”12
Contemporary philosophy has rarely attained a more authentic formulation of the
conflict between its intent and its function. The linguistic syndrome of
“loveliness,” “aesthetic sense,” and “desert landscape” evokes the liberating
air of Nietzsche’s thought, cutting into Law and Order, while the “breeding
ground for disorderly elements” belongs to the language spoken by the
authorities of Investigation and Information. What appears unlovely and
disorderly from the logical point of view, may well comprise the lovely
elements of a different order, and may thus be an essential part of the
material from which philosophic concepts are built. Neither the most refined
aesthetic sense nor the most exact philosophic concept is immune against
history. Disorderly elements enter into the purest objects of thought. They too
are detached from a societal ground, and the contents from which they abstract
guide the abstraction.
### Historicism
Thus the spectre of “historicism” is raised. If thought proceeds from
historical conditions which continue to operate in the abstraction, is there
any objective basis on which distinction can be made between the various
possibilities projected by thought—distinction between different and
conflicting ways of conceptual transcendence? Moreover, the question cannot be
discussed with reference to different philosophic projects only.13 To the
degree to which the philosophical project is ideological, it is part of a
historical project—that is, it pertains to a specific stage and level of the
societal development, and the critical philosophic concepts refer (no matter
how indirectly!) to alternative possibilities of this development.
The quest for criteria for judging between different philosophic projects thus
leads to the quest for criteria for judging between different historical
projects and alternatives, between different actual and possible ways of
understanding and changing man and nature. I shall submit only a few
propositions which suggest that the internal historical character of the
philosophic concepts, far from precluding objective validity, defines the
ground for their objective validity.
[...]
The objects of thought and perception as they appear to the individuals prior
to all “subjective” interpretation have in common certain primary qualities,
pertaining to these two layers of reality: (1) to the physical (natural)
structure of matter, and (2) to the form which matter has acquired in the
collective historical practice that has made it (matter) into objects for a
subject. The two layers or aspects of objectivity (physical and historical) are
interrelated in such a way that they cannot be insulated from each other; the
historical aspect can never be eliminated so radically that only the “absolute”
physical layer remains.
[...]
I shall now propose some criteria for the truth value of different historical
projects.
[...]
(1) The transcendent project must be in accordance with the real possibilities
open at the attained level of the material and intellectual culture.
(2) The transcendent project, in order to falsify the established totality,
must demonstrate its own higher rationality in the threefold sense that
(a) it offers the prospect of preserving and improving the productive
achievements of civilization;
(b) it defines the established totality in its very structure, basic
tendencies, and relations;
(c) its realization offers a greater chance for the pacification of existence,
within the framework of institutions which offer a greater chance for the free
development of human needs and faculties.
### Determinate choice
If the historical continuum itself provides the objective ground for
determining the truth of different historical projects, does it also determine
their sequence and their limits? Historical truth is comparative; the
rationality of the possible depends on that of the actual, the truth of the
transcending project on that of the project in realization. Aristotelian
science was falsified on the basis of its achievements; if capitalism were
falsified by communism, it would be by virtue of its own achievements.
Continuity is preserved through rupture: quantitative development becomes
qualitative change if it attains the very structure of an established system;
the established rationality becomes irrational when, in the course of its
internal development, the potentialities of the system have outgrown its
institutions. Such internal refutation pertains to the historical character of
reality, and the same character confers upon the concepts which comprehend this
reality their critical intent. They recognize and anticipate the irrational in
the established reality—they project the historical negation.
Is this negation a “determinate” one—that is, is the internal succession of a
historical project, once it has become a totality, necessarily pre-determined
by the structure of this totality? If so, then the term “project” would be
deceptive. That which is historical possibility would sooner or later be real;
and the definition of liberty as comprehended necessity would have a repressive
connotation which it does not have. All this may not matter much. What does
matter is that such historical determination would (in spite of all subtle
ethics and psychology) absolve the crimes against humanity which civilization
continues to commit and thus facilitate this continuation.
I suggest the phrase “determinate choice” in order to emphasize the ingression
of liberty into historical necessity; the phrase does no more than condense the
proposition that men make their own history but make it under given conditions.
Determined are (1) the specific contradictions which develop within a
historical system as manifestations of the conflict between the potential and
the actual; (2) the material and intellectual resources available to the
respective system; (3) the extent of theoretical and practical freedom
compatible with the system. These conditions leave open alternative
possibilities of developing and utilizing the available resources, alternative
possibilities of “making a living,” of organizing man’s struggle with nature.
[...]
the truth of a historical project is not validated ex post through success,
that is to say, by the fact that it is accepted and realized by the society.
Galilean science was true while it was still condemned; Marxian theory was
already true at the time of the Communist Manifesto; fascism remains false even
if it is in ascent on an international scale (“true” and “false” always in the
sense of historical rationality as defined above). In the contemporary period,
all historical projects tend to be polarized on the two conflicting
totalities—capitalism and communism, and the outcome seems to depend on two
antagonistic series of factors: (1) the greater force of destruction; (2) the
greater productivity without destruction. In other words, the higher historical
truth would pertain to the system which offers the greater chance of
pacification.
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