The Totalization of Shadows, Part VII
I am going to try to pick up my train of thought on the theme of rationality, totality, and probability—what escapes rationality or totality—what escapes rationality in order to fall into even more awful Totalization (from the frying pan into the fire) or what hews to rationality only to lose all sense of contrast—lost in a brilliantly orthogonalized matrix (where I haphazardly mean to imply such an orthogonalized matrix is an image of Totalization.)
Thus, a terrible dilemma appears: abandonment of rationality leads to Totalization, but so does staying within it.
How did this dilemma come to be?
My brief and simple (because I am in fact simple) recap of the philosophical history:
1) Something arises or takes force as an organizing principle in western societies: it is called rationality. What exactly it is doesn’t need to be asked—one of the most remarkable aspects of this historical events is that it is seen as self-explanatory. This is all the more remarkable in that the event is philosophical (so, here’s a problem: why does an actively-questioning ethos shut itself off in the face of such an eminently questionable emergence?)
2) This organizing principle of rationality is powerful and effective in ways which will be broadly perceived as emancipating—and that they are emancipating will also be seen as self-explanatory.
3) This powerful, effective, organizing, and emancipating unleashed emerging force is glorious and wondrous—and yet even its most adamant adherents notice here and there a sacred flowerbed is being trampled over, and at this point very serious questions about what is happening do begin to be asked. For example, it begins to be asked whether we can have all this glorious power and freedom and yet keep our sacred flowerbeds protected from the thundering herds? In other words, can we channel and direct this power? Can we channel this emancipating power, and if so, to what extent does it remain emancipating? (Entirely? Or if not entirely, to some acceptable degree? Who decides what that degree is? If someone decides, do they decide rationally? How is such a thing decided rationally? If the decision cannot be rationalized but must be undertaken anyway (because the sacred flowerbeds must by necessity be protected—yes, “unquestionably” so,) does this involve a philosophical de-activation of philosophy? What in the heck is that?
Thus, a terrible dilemma appears: abandonment of rationality leads to Totalization, but so does staying within it.
How did this dilemma come to be?
My brief and simple (because I am in fact simple) recap of the philosophical history:
1) Something arises or takes force as an organizing principle in western societies: it is called rationality. What exactly it is doesn’t need to be asked—one of the most remarkable aspects of this historical events is that it is seen as self-explanatory. This is all the more remarkable in that the event is philosophical (so, here’s a problem: why does an actively-questioning ethos shut itself off in the face of such an eminently questionable emergence?)
2) This organizing principle of rationality is powerful and effective in ways which will be broadly perceived as emancipating—and that they are emancipating will also be seen as self-explanatory.
3) This powerful, effective, organizing, and emancipating unleashed emerging force is glorious and wondrous—and yet even its most adamant adherents notice here and there a sacred flowerbed is being trampled over, and at this point very serious questions about what is happening do begin to be asked. For example, it begins to be asked whether we can have all this glorious power and freedom and yet keep our sacred flowerbeds protected from the thundering herds? In other words, can we channel and direct this power? Can we channel this emancipating power, and if so, to what extent does it remain emancipating? (Entirely? Or if not entirely, to some acceptable degree? Who decides what that degree is? If someone decides, do they decide rationally? How is such a thing decided rationally? If the decision cannot be rationalized but must be undertaken anyway (because the sacred flowerbeds must by necessity be protected—yes, “unquestionably” so,) does this involve a philosophical de-activation of philosophy? What in the heck is that?
posted by Yusef Asabiyah at 1:51 PM
4 Comments:
Good to have you back, Yusef!
A couple of quick points in response to your post,
1: As you write, Something arises or takes force as an organizing principle in western societies: it is called rationality.
I think we have to re-arrange the chronological narrative of The Enlightenment and go back to the Shakespearean Francis Bacon (1561-1626) and his revolutionary idea that knowledge is power, and that when embodied in the form of new technical inventions and mechanical discoveries it is the force that drives history – this was Bacon’s key insight. In many respects this idea was his single greatest invention, and it is all the more remarkable for its having been conceived and promoted at a time when most English and European intellectuals were either reverencing the literary and philosophical achievements of the past or deploring the numerous signs of modern degradation and decline. In other words the very idea that history can be MADE.
2: Francis Bacon's belief in scientific innovation might not have been political (too risky for him!), but when Diderot and his French encyclopediasts with their first volume appearing in 1751 it had become decidedly so.
The "Encyclopedie" was both a repository of information and a polemical arsenal. It was an idea of the editors that if civilization should by entirely destroyed, mankind might turn to their volumes to learn to reconstruct it. No other collection of general information so large and so useful was then in existence.
3: This leads to the broader question of the hegemony of rationality that you raise - and the role of philosophy in this.
Isn't philosophical activity ALWAYS an exercise in totalization? When positing rationality as a paradigm that "arises or takes force as an organizing principle in western societies" aren't we doing just that: totalizing?
4: And what's so bad (or suspicious) about that?
5: And when you write, If someone decides, do they decide rationally? If the decision cannot be rationalized but must be undertaken anyway (because the sacred flowerbeds must by necessity be protected — yes, “unquestionably” so,) does this involve a philosophical de-activation of philosophy?
The answer can (but must not necessarily be) NO. Philosophy is at its best when it is de-activated. This is precisely where it must be: writing its own tombstone in the eternal return.
Orla
Glad you're back, Yusef. Hi, Orla. I like the narrative you're building, Orla, but on point 3, I don't see that philosophy is always an exercise in totalization. In some ways totalizations might represent an attempt to escape philosophy. I don't see an easy way out of this aporia of trying to be critical, an attitude which both relies on totalization to give it meaning, in one sense, perhaps, and at the same time sets itself against totalizations, which can't help but be a hindrance to critique. As to the second question of your third point, aren't we fleshing out what a rationalist paradigm means? How much can we let be said before we pull the rug out from under ourselves?
"Philosophy is at its best when it is de-activated. This is precisely where it must be: writing its own tombstone in the eternal return."
Not to turn away from your thought but to clarify my own: when I made my comment I was thinking of Foucault's notion of Enlightenment as a reactivation of a philosophical ethos...
...What's engaging to me in this is to find a non-metaphorical way of understanding and using reactivation in this instance, (and thus, also deactivation.)
Until we had a nonmetaphorical understanding of reactivation, it would be useless for us to argue whether philosophy was at its best in activation, reactivation, or deactivation because for one thing it might be what you called deactivation would be what I would be calling reactivation. I get that feeling anyway--"writing a tombstone in the eternal return" is active in my way of thinking though you attach it to de-activation.
--Yusef
Thank you Fido for your comment. I have on an off visited your blog and always found your writing inspiring, the latest on loneliness included :)
Your comments om my third point are relevant to my (shall we say) Totality in stating a that philosophy is always acts of totalization. You're right that critique per definition must always carve a space outside which leads us into the Wittgensteinean trap of using language on language. Maybe a way forward is through "total" particularism (broadly understood) in order to climb out of the hole.
And to Yusef:
I didn't catch the Foucaultean notion in your reference to The Enlikghtenment. We have discussed his "answer" to Kant's essay previously and I remember being somewhat perplexed by his rather messy arguments. Maybe I need to have a second look at
http://philosophy.eserver.org/foucault/what-is-enlightenment.html
I agree that it would be helpful to have a nonmetaphorical understanding of reactivation, etc, before we can proceed. When I wrote that philosophy should be "writing its own tombstone in the eternal return" I was of course referring to Deleuze's definition of Nietzsche's dictum = the continuous return of the need to (re)invent philosophy every time = always creating new concepts.
This is, of course, a tall order for mere mortals but maybe we have a concept like totalization (as you have thought about so long) that might spur us on and take us to surprising places.
Orla
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