Transcript Lecture 1* POL302 - Prof Kaminski`s readings Prof Kaminski`s

Lecture 1– POL302
Contemporary Political Thought
Discourse
• ‘Discourse’ is for me more than just language in use:
It is language use, whether speech or writing, seen as
a type of social practice.”
» Fairclough 1992
• “Discourse constitutes the social…Discourse is
shaped by relations of power, and invested with
ideologies.”
» Fairclough 1992
Ferdinand de Saussere (1857-1913)
Signifier vs. Signified
• Signifier
– The signifier is the pointing finger, the word, the sound-image.
– A word is simply a jumble of letters. The pointing finger is not the star.
It is in the interpretation of the signifier that meaning is created.
• Signified
– The signified is the concept, the meaning, the thing indicated by the
signifier. It need not be a 'real object' but is some referent to which the
signifier refers.
– The thing signified is created in the perceiver and is internal to them.
Whilst we share concepts, we do so via signifiers.
• the signifier is more stable, the signified varies between people and
contexts.
• The signified does stabilize with habit, as the signifier cues thoughts
and images.
• The signifier is more stable, the signified varies
between people and contexts.
• The signified does stabilize with habit, as the
signifier cues thoughts and images.
• Saussure's ideas are contrary to Plato's notion
of ideas being eternally stable.
• Plato saw ideas as the root concept that was
implemented in individual instances. A
signifier without signified has no meaning,
and the signified changes with person and
context.
– For Saussure, even the root concept is malleable.
• The relationship between the signifier and the
signified is arbitrary (Saussure called this
'unmotivated'). A real object need not actually
exist 'out there'.
– Whilst the letters 'c-a-t' spell cat, they do not embody
'catness'. The French 'chat' is not identical to the
English 'cat' in the signified that it creates (to the
French, 'chat' has differences of meaning). In French,
'mouton' means both 'mutton' and a living 'sheep',
whilst the English does not differentiate.
Ernest Laclau 1935-2014
Ernesto Laclau– ‘On a Discursive
Approach’
• On the broader notion of discourse, the late renowned
Argentine political theorist/philosopher, Ernesto
Laclau, commented that,
– “The basic hypothesis of a discursive approach is that the
very possibility of perception, thought and action depends
on the structuration of a certain meaningful field which
pre-exists any factual immediacy.” (Laclau, 2007: 541)
• Laclau goes on to argue that the main contributions of
discourse theory within the realm of politics generally
have been related to conceptualizations of power and
hegemony.
In the words of Laclau
• Discourse for us is a kind of link between social
elements where each of the elements,
considered in isolation, is not necessarily linked
to the other.
– “For us [Laclau and Chantal Mouffe], as you know,
there is no ‘natural’ or ‘necessary’ relationship
between elements that precedes the act of linking
itself. Therefore, linking them involves some kind of
intervention. This intervention is exactly what we call
hegemony. So discourse theory and hegemony are
names for two sides of the same perspective.” (Laclau,
interviewed in Hansen, 2014: 256-257)
Laclau vs. Foucault
• Laclau’s appropriation of the notion of discourse differed from
Foucault’s.
• According to Laclau, “For him [Foucault] all distinctions were
ontic, and his different analyses sought to differentiate ever
more areas of ontic differences. (Laclau, interviewed in
Hansen, 2014: 261) Laclau goes on to argue, “For us discourse
has an ontological dimension which is not at all present in
Foucault’s analysis. To him, discourse is simply a regional area
of the social. In addition, Foucault never had a conception of
the ontic/ontological distinction which is crucial for us.”
(Laclau, interviewed in Hansen, 2014: 261)
– Foucault’s understanding of discourse was more directly
connected to ‘the social’ and structures of politics. It
differed from Laclau’s more universal effort to explain
discourse as an ontological phenomenon.
Michel Foucault 1926-1984
enoncés
• Foucault who defined ‘a discourse’ as, “[…] an
entity of sequences of signs in that they are
enouncements (enoncés).” (Foucault, 1969:
141)
– An enoncé is often translated as a statement or
proclamation. Enoncés allow one to assign
meaning to a word or set of words.
Discursive Formations
• For Foucault, a discursive formation was defined by
repeating sequences, patterns, or regularities that
ultimately produce a specific discourse.
• Foucault utilized the concept of discursive formations
in his own analyses surrounding theoretical
frameworks about political institutions, economic
institutions, and even the way natural history was
analyzed. (Foucault, 1970)
Meanings and Power
• He argued that all meanings attached to words,
ideas, or concepts (or discourses) were inextricably
linked to power relations.
• “Whether it is our concepts of madness, illness, crime,
‘normal’ sexual behavior, the individual, or political agency,
for Foucault, the meanings that humans attach to these
aspects of reality, in other words, interpretations, are
indissociable from power.” (Krishna, 2009: 63)
Freedom Fighters vs. Terrorists
• The classic contemporary example illustrating
this point is that of labeling an individual or
group as ‘freedom fighters’ or ‘terrorists.’
While each term may refer to the same entity,
they carry with them radically different
emotional attachments and political
ramifications.
BioPower
• Biopower can be understood as the main goal
of the modern nation state.
• It is the efforts of the modern nation state to
regulate and control their subjects through ‘an
explosion of numerous and diverse
techniques.’
– Prisons, mental institutions, schools, places of
employment, mass media propaganda,
national/religious symbols
• These are all employed by the state not to
‘liberate’ rather they are used to control and
reaffirm the prevailing norms and discursive
framework/values of the state.
Regulating Bodies
• This refers to the practices of public health,
regulation of heredity, and risk regulation
among many other regulatory mechanisms
often linked directly with literal physical
health.
– Think about it– The rich getting better health care,
while the poor die--- laws of inheritance meant to
sustain power via the luck of the biological
‘lottery’
Foucault and Biopolitics
• Biopolitics abducts holistic individuals in a
series of diminishing returns where “human
existence is recast as a project, endowed with
an identity, subjected to authority, and
granted a teleological destination.”
• Biopolitics is subtle; it is designed to foster
willful obedience in members by designating
and structuring how people ought to act and
indoctrinating them to perpetuate the system.
The Impossibility of a Closed Totality
• Laclau claimed that due to of the impossibility of a
closed totality, all of humanity is in a constant struggle
with each other for power.
• One of the most important of these power struggles
perhaps lies in being able to define and ultimately
control a specific discourse or set of
competing/alternative discourses.
– “As we have seen, the impossibility of a closed totality
unties the connection between signifier and signified. In
that sense there is a proliferation of ‘floating signifiers’ in
society, and political competition can be seen as attempts
by rival political forces to partially fix those signifiers to
particular signifying configurations.” (Laclau, 2007: 545)
• Power exists amongst multiple actors both
within and outside a discourse that can never
fully be quantified or readily reduced back to
one specific source.
• Power is anywhere and everywhere, so to
speak.
– It is in constant flux, contingent upon multiple
factors—some obvious and some completely
undetected, hidden, and/or even ignored.
Big D and Little d
• Discourse (non-count) (Laclau’s interest) vs.
‘Discourses’ (Foucault’s interest)
• Saying, Doing, Thinking, Behaving, Believing,
Valuing, Interacting combinations that show who
we are
• The ‘Discourse of medicine’
• The ‘Discourse of romance’
Some Elements Constitutive of a
Discourse
Discourse is…
• How language reflects reality
• How language creates reality
• How language shapes our identities and
interactions
• How language is used as to tool to control
people
Carl Schmitt
The enemy is not merely any
competitor.
Carl Schmitt
• 1888-1985
• Major German intellectual before and
after WWII
• Joined Nazi party in 1933
• Attacked in Das Schwartze Korps, but
was protected by Göring
• Captured by US in 1945, relaeased in
1946
• Rejected all attempts at denazification
• Articulated tension between liberalism
and democracy
• Defended Reich’s anti-Semitic policies
• Argued for the importance of
undivided authority
• Defended politics as a separate sphere
of human action
• Schmitt’s thought & Nazism
• Contacting and expanding the horizons of
political thought after the War
• “The concept of the state presupposes the
concept of the political.” (19)
– The state is a political entity, but what is the
political? What is the relationship between the
political and the state?
– The political, not politics
• It is widely acknowledged, if only tacitly, that
the political is a distinct sphere of human
activity
– Distinct from other spheres (religious, cultural,
economic, legal, scientific, etc.) (23)
• Spheres of human thought and activity have
their “own criteria which express themselves
in a characteristic way.”
– Moral: Good/evil
– Economic: Profitable/unprofitable
– Aesthetic: Beautiful/ugly (26)
• When you speak in these terms, you are
talking about the relevant sphere of human
activity
• “The specific political distinction to which
political actions and motives can be reduced is
that between friend and enemy.” (26)
– A criterion, not an exhaustive description of all
political content
Friend-Enemy Distinction
• “The enemy is not merely any competitor or
just any partner of a conflict in general. He is
also not the private adversary whom one
hates. An enemy exists only when, at least
potentially, one fighting collectivity of people
confronts a similar collectivity. The enemy is
solely the public enemy...” (28)
• The friend/enemy distinction does not
necessarily depend on those of other spheres of
life.
• Thus, the enemy need not be evil, ugly, irrational, etc.
• Nonetheless, since this distinction is the
“strongest and most intense” of any distinction, it
often draws upon others for its support. (27)
– Thus, the enemy is often perceived as ugly, evil,
barbaric, etc. whether or not this is in fact the case.
• Thus, “the political enemy need not be
morally evil or aesthetically ugly; he need not
appear as an economic competitor, and it may
even be advantageous to engage with him in
business transactions.” (27)
– Politics is an issue of neither morality nor rational
self-interest.
• The enemy is “the other, the stranger; and it is
sufficient for his nature that he is, in a
specially intense way, something different and
alien, so that in extreme cases conflicts with
him are possible. These can neither be
decided by a previously determined general
norm nor by the judgment of a disinterested
and therefore neutral third party.” (27)
– The distinction is particular
• “Only the actual participants can correctly
recognize, understand, and judge the concrete
situation and settle the extreme case of
conflict. Each participant [collectivity] is in a
position to judge whether the adversary
intends to negate his opponent’s way of life
and therefore must be repulsed or fought in
order to preserve one’s own form of
existence.” (27; emphasis mine)
• “The distinction of friend and enemy denotes
the utmost degree of intensity of a union or
separation.” (26)
• “For to the enemy concept belongs the ever
present possibility of combat.... [Combat]
does not mean competition, nor does it mean
pure intellectual controversy nor symbolic
wrestlings...” (33)
– This is not a metaphor
• Lecture 2
• Continuing with Carl Schmitt
• http://profkaminskisreadings.yolasite.com
• “The friend, enemy, and combat concepts
receive their real meaning precisely because
they refer to the real possibility of physical
killing. War follows from enmity. War is the
existential negation of the enemy. It is the
most extreme consequence of enmity. It does
not have to be common, normal, something
ideal, or desirable. But it must nonetheless
remain a real possibility for as long as the
concept of the enemy remains valid.” (33)
• “Only in real combat is revealed the most
extreme consequence of the political grouping
of friend an enemy. From this most extreme
possibility human life derives its specifically
political tension.”
– Politics is the friend/enemy distinction, and the
resultant possibility of war.
• “A world in which the possibility of war is utterly
eliminated, a completely pacified globe, would be
a world without the distinction of friend and
enemy and hence a world without politics. It is
conceivable that such a world might contain
many very interesting antitheses and contrasts,
competitions and intrigues of every kind, but
there would not be a meaningful antithesis
whereby men could be required to sacrifice life,
authorized to shed blood, and kill other human
beings.” (35)
• “There exists no rational purpose, no norm no
matter how true, no program no matter how
exemplary, no social ideal no matter how
beautiful, no legitimacy nor legality which
could justify men in killing each other for this
reason. If such physical destruction of human
life is not motivated by an existential threat to
one’s own way of life, then it cannot be
justified.” (49)
• Any difference, economic, religious,
philosophical, etc., can become the focus of
enmity, but at that moment it leaves its original
sphere and enters the political:
– “The real friend-enemy grouping is existentially so
strong and decisive that the nonpolitical antithesis at
precisely the moment at which it become political,
pushes aside” its original criteria and motives, and
subordinates them to “the conditions and conclusions
of the political situation at hand.” (38)
• “The grouping is always political which orients
itself toward this most extreme possibility.
This grouping is therefore always the decisive
human grouping, the political entity. If such
an entity exists at all, it is always the decisive
entity, and it is sovereign in the sense that the
decision about the critical situation, even if it
is the exception, must always necessarily
reside there.” (38)
• To the state as an essentially political entity
belongs the jus belli, i.e., the real possibility in
a concrete situation upon the enemy and the
ability to fight him with the power emanating
from the entity.” (45)
•WEEK 4
First Point of Business:
The Enlightenment– an
Introduction
What is it?
How does it relate to the readings
for this week?
The Rise of Enlightenment: The Political
History
• Middle Ages: Feudal System and the Tyranny
of the Church
• Renaissance: Increased Freedom
Important Events Facilitating in the
Enlightenment
• 1688 The Glorious Revolution: Parliament (apparently
both the Wigs and Tories) decide to get rid of James II and
invite William of Orange to invade England
• 1689 William (a Hanover) cooperates with Parliament and
the Declaration of Rights establishes English constitutional
government
Rise of Enlightenment: Intellectual
History
• 1517 Reformation begins in Germany with Luther’s 95 theses
challenging the practice of indulgences
• 1524 Erasmus writes De Libero Arbitrio (On Free Will)
– Erasmus?? Sounds familiar???
• Throughout the 16th century Humanism spreads over Europe
along with interest in scientific inquiry; availability of books
increases literacy
• 1543 Copernicus writes On the Revolution of Celestial Bodies
Some Major Early Enlightenment
Works
• 1580 Montaigne writes his first Essays
• 1611 Authorized (King James) version of the Bible
• 1620 Francis Bacon writes Novum Organum--this
important work aimed to break science away from the
grip of Aristotelian causality and syllogistic logic while at
the same time warning against untested hypothesis
• 1630’s Galileo is tried and condemned for his writing
Some More Major Early
Enlightenment Works
• 1641 Descartes writes Meditations--this is
really the birth of the human subject that
will be theorized throughout the 18th
century and through today
• 1651 Hobbes writes Leviathan
• 1690 Locke writes Concerning Human
Understanding
Isaiah Berlin’s Three Principles of
Enlightenment
(1) all genuine questions can be answered, that
is, if a question cannot be answered it is not a
question. There is no hiding behind God or
religion or tradition or mystery. We may be
too weak or stupid too get the answer, but
there is an answer or there is something
wrong with the question.
• In the words of Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno,
“The program of the Enlightenment was the
disenchantment of the world; the dissolution of myths
and the substitution of knowledge for fancy.” (Horkheimer
and Adorno, 2002: 3)
•
Scientific Method– Rise of Empiricism
• 2) All answers are knowable and the methods by
which they are known can be discovered and
taught to others.
Law of non-contradiction
• (3) All answers must be compatible with one another-that is that all knowledge is subject to the law of
non-contradiction and answers MUST present
logical truths. We are on our way to the Utopian world
of the Enlightenment (22).
– What Enlightenment did to these principles that makes them
particular to Enlightenment and not simply the Western
tradition, is it rejected the old ways of knowing--i.e.
revelation, dogma, tradition, individual self-inspection--and
grounded all knowledge in the "correct use of reason,
deductively as in the mathematical sciences, inductively as in
the sciences of nature" (22). Enlightenment triumphantly
extended reason to the fields of politics, ethics, and
aesthetics.
Peter Gay—The Rise of Modern Paganism and
The Science of Freedom
• "The men of the Enlightenment united on a
vastly ambitions program, a program of
secularism, humanity, cosmopolitanism, and
freedom, above all, freedom in its many
forms--freedom from arbitrary power,
freedom of speech, freedom of trade,
freedom to realize one's talents, freedom of
aesthetic response, freedom, in a word, of
moral man to make his won way in the world"
(3).
• "The philosophic family was drawn together by the
demand of political strategy, by the hostility of church
and state, and by the struggle to enhance the prestige and
increase the income of literary men.
• But the cohesion among the philosophes went deeper than
this: behind their tactical alliances and personal fellowship
there stood a common experience from which they
constructed a coherent philosophy.
– This experience--which marked each of the philosophes with
greater or lesser intensity, but which marked they all--was the
dialectical interplay of their appeal to antiquity, their tension
with Christianity, and their pursuit of modernity" (8).
The Dialectic of Enlightenment
“With the spread of the bourgeois commodity
economy the dark horizon of myth is illuminated
by the sun of calculating reason, beneath whose
icy rays the seeds of the new barbarism are
germinating”
Basic Argument of the Philosophical
Fragments
• “That the hygienic factory and everything
pertaining to it, Volkswagen and the sports palace,
are obtusely liquidating metaphysics does not
matter in itself, but that these things are
themselves becoming metaphysics, an ideological
curtain, within the social whole, behind which real
doom is gathering does matter. . . . our analysis is
directed at the claim objectively contained in [the
culture industry’s] products to be aesthetic
formations and thus representations of truth”
(xviii). Los Angeles 1944
Key Terms:
• The primary dialectic in the Dialectic of Enlightenment-- the
binary Myth/Power
• Reification--the conversion of things into objects--more often
than not objects that have exchange-value
• Identical--the condition of human beings under the reigning
paradigm of science and the logic of non-contradiction. The
ontology of humanity in the identical is reducible to a factor of
one
• Non-identical--the possibility of seeing one’s artifactuality as
such and choosing to turn away from the logic of noncontradiction. It is to see oneself in radically different and
open, what Adorno will later call an autonomous agent
The Basic Argument in Three Parts
• Part One: Man, through Enlightenment, became the
master of the universe but had to pay the price of
estrangement from the objects (nature) that he now
lorded over
• Part Two: The myth of Enlightenment logic, the knowledge
that gave birth to the subject as a powerful orderer, also
estranged man from himself
• Part Three: Once the Enlightenment is shown to be a
dialectic of Myth/Power that smashes all diversity vis-à-vis
non-contradiction and the principle of identity, its terrific
grip can be combated (maybe)
Part One: The Dialectic Man/Nature
• The methodology of Enlightenment
– “It [Enlightenment] wanted to dispel myths, to
overthrow fantasy with knowledge” (1). However,
“the ‘happy match’ between human understanding and
the nature of things that [Bacon] envisaged is a
patriarchal one: the mind, conquering superstition, is to
rule over disenchanted nature. Knowledge, which is
power, knows no limits, either in its enslavement of
creation or in its deference to worldly masters. . .
.Technology is the essence of this knowledge” (2).
To Make things Simple
• Pre-Enlightenment–
– Spiritual > Technological/rational
• Post-Enlightenment– Technological/’rational’ > Spiritual
– The problem is the need to find a balance…
• So, Enlightenment sought to control nature by learning the
mechanisms that had scared people into superstition and
myth
– “What human beings seek to learn from nature is how to use it to
dominate wholly both it and human beings” (2). The power half of
the dialectic
• The problem with this theory/invention of history,
according to Adorno and Horkheimer, is that it was just
that, an invention of Enlightenment in order to control and
justify--a myth invented to cover a myth.
– This is why Adorno and Horkheimer argue that what
Enlightenment really saw in Myth was itself--the power to control.
This is the Mythic half.
The Birth of the Subject
• In order to control nature Enlightenment needed a a methodology
and a controller
– “Formal logic was the high school of unification” because “it offered
Enlightenment thinkers a schema for making the world calculable” and ultimately
reducible to one (4).
• But…
– The drive to quantify and reduce to the law of non-contradiction meant that, “From
now on, being is split between logos—which, with the advance of philosophy,
contracts to a monad, a mere reference point—and the mass of things and creatures
in the external world. The single distinction between man’s own existence and
reality swallows up all others” (5). This is the mythic dialectic of Enlightenment—
and it came with a high price.
• The substitution of the subject for God had a price
– “The awakening of the subject is bought with the recognition of power as the
principle of all relationships” (5).
• There can be no other if the whole of
possible identity is absorbed in the
overarching concept of the subject.
–Why is this a problem?
I am Everything!
• Ironically it is at the birth of the subject—perhaps the apogee of
Enlightenment disenchantment—that the Enlightenment reveals itself to be
mythological.
– The all-encompassing subject replaces the
omnipotent god of religion and the transcendental
Absolute of conceptual philosophy; thus
Enlightenment’s power to rid the world of
backwardness of belief ironically reproduces a
metaphysics of belief in the form of a universal
subject that orders and commands the world of
nature.
Part Two:The Process of Identification and
Estrangement from Self
• Once Enlightenment had created the subject and the
object under the sway of logic, it was only a short
step to the total estrangement of the self from itself-the machinery of logic simply continues to crush
opposition to non-contradiction
– “Enlightenment finally devoured not only symbols but also
their successors, universal concepts, and left nothing of
metaphysics behind except the abstract fear of the
collective from which it has sprung” (17).
• In the conceptual place of metaphysics Enlightenment
resorts to mathematics.
– “Enlightenment regresses to the mythology it has never been able
to escape. For mythology had reflected in its forms the essence of
the existing order—cyclical motion, fate, domination of the world
as truth—and had renounced hope” (20).
• But Enlightenment doesn’t stop there
– “Thought is reified as an autonomous, automatic process, aping the
machine it has itself produced, so that it can finally be replaced by
the machine” (19).
– “Reason serves as the universal tool for the fabrication of all other
tools, rigidly purpose-directed and as calamitous as the precisely
calculated operations of material production, the results of which
for human beings escape all calculation” (23).
• In short, Enlightenment’s scientific epistemology (an invention
of man) becomes the new God and man becomes subject to his
own creation. As such, he is alienated from himself, that is, the
thought processes that define him under the regime of
Enlightenment
– “Not only is domination paid for with the estrangement of human
beings from the dominated objects, but the relationships of
human beings, including the relationship of individuals to
themselves, have themselves been bewitched by the
objectification of mind. . . . Animism had endowed things with
souls; industrialism makes souls into things. . . . Individuals define
themselves now only as things, statistical elements, successes or
failures. Their criterion is self-preservation, successful or
unsuccessful adaptation to the objectivity of their function and
the schemata assigned to it” (21-22).
Part Three: The Return of the Non-identical
• What might be a way out the the dialectic of Enlightenment?
• In order to maintain the myth of Enlightenment,
Enlightenment must continually resort to the “horror of myth”
in order to preserve order (24).
–
That is, “Mimetic, mythical, and metaphysical forms of behavior were
successively regarded as stages of world history which had been left
behind, and the idea of reverting to them held the terror that the self
would be changed back into the mere nature from which it had
extricated itself with unspeakable exertions and which for that reason
filled it with unspeakable dread” (24).
• “Humanity” according to Adorno and
Horkheimer, “had to inflict terrible injuries on
itself before the self—the identical, purposedirected, masculine character of human beings—
was created” (26).
• So the return to the non-identical, a return to the
natural state of man, may be possible. It begins
with a return to aesthetics. However, in this case
aesthetics is not as a mode of judgment per se, but
rather a refusal to pass judgment on the mimetic.
From the Bow-and-Arrow to the Atom
Bomb
• This quote really summarizes the Dialectic of
Enlightenment understanding of historical
development
• Fascism is a uniquely Enlightenment
phenomenon.
• Why?
• The Nation-State is an Enlightenment Idea
• Nationalism based on ‘an Imagined
Community’ is a development of this idea
• The substitution of religion for a ‘secular state
based on ‘reason’, which itself entails an
irrational attachment to an artificial
secular/nationalist identity
• Without the Enlightenment– the State could
never have become God
Why do you think the Caliphate was
incompatible with modernity?
– Because Modernity is characterized by a secular
worship of the state and the subject/‘the individual’
through the processes of ‘science and reason’
– The Caliphate was based on discourse steeped in the
belief in God, in which you are not a ‘distinct and
unique subject’ rather you are a part of a larger divine
plan– Within the Islamic or general religious
discourse, your job is to Submit to Allah; Within the
Post-Enlightenment discourse, your job is to submit to
science and reason– which negates all foundational
morality, which is then replaced by an artificial state
based religion– a civil religion.
So now it makes sense…
In order for Turkey to enter into the ‘modern world’
and in order to join ‘the big boys in Europe’ in the early
1920’s, it had to abolish this institution that was simply
incompatible with the Post-Enlightenment ‘Modern’
World.
In an effort to complete this vision… knowing that
people would still seek Islam and religion in modern
Turkey, the state, out of necessity, had to enforce ‘strict
secularism’ and what better way to do this than by
changing the alphabet from Arabic to Latin?
Only by separating Turks from Islam and the
language of the Qur’an could the secular state fully
triumph.
In Conclusion
• What is the way to break out of the situation
the world is in today?
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical
Reproduction
Walter Benjamin (1936)
Preface: PRODUCTION
Benjamin was concerned with the impact on art of the mass
technologies of reproduction (photography, film):
– implications on the theory of art
– implications on the existing politics of art (Fascist, socialist)
– the revolutionary demands on the politics of art
– “Aura” of an object, its uniqueness is threatened
– the manipulations of art in the hands of Fascists (current tendencies)
– the nature of the art of proletariat and art as weapon in class struggle
I. REPRODUCIBILITY
Reproducibility varies with different historical periods:
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
Founding and stamping (uniqueness not threatened; limited uses)
Engraving, etching (images, maps, music)
Woodcut graphic art (mechanical reproduction of text & images)
Printing as mechanical reproduction of writing
Lithography
Photography
Film
ever increasing ease of pictorial reproduction enacted a qualitative
shift around 1900 technical reproduction reached standard that not
only permitted reproduction but cause the most profound change in
impact upon the public
II. AUTHENTICITY
• concern that changes are bringing about the disappearance of
the authenticity, uniqueness, the ‘aura’ of the object
• “aura” = customary historical role played by works of art, their
‘ritual function’ in the legitimation of traditional social formations
(handout)
• with reproduction the historical testimony is affected, so is the
authority of the object
• with reproduction the authenticity is interfered with (natural
objects aren’t vulnerable) (but what about “frankenfoods”?)
raises questions about the purpose of art
III. PERCEPTION (MASSIFICATION)
How human sense perception is organized depends on the
historical circumstances and the decay of the aura can be
explained by social causes:
•
significance of the masses in contemporary life and the desire of the masses to bring things
‘closer’ spatially and humanly and therefore overcoming the uniqueness of every reality by
accepting its reproduction (the railway mania, tourist snapshots)
•
perception whose sense of the universal equality of things increased to such a degree that it
extracts it even from a unique object by means of reproduction is perception
•
field of perception mirrors the field of organization of social life (cf. the increasing
importance of statistics)
IV. TRADITION
Tradition is an interpretive framework for an auratic object but tradition is alive and
changeable:
Example: Aura of an ancient statue of Venus in classical Greece and in medieval Europe,
Renaissance distinct historical interpretations of the object: ritual vs. art
History of the Aura:
• “authentic” work of art has its basis in ritual, its original use value
• Medieval interpretations also based in ritualistic interpretation
• Secular cult of beauty developed during the Renaissance and the three following
centuries (ritualistic basis in its decline but art remains auratic)
• 19th century: l’art pour l’art = theology of art (negative theology in the idea of “pure” art
denied social function of art or categorizing it by subject matter)
• 19th century: reproduced work of art designed for reproducibility; authenticity ceases to
be applicable to artistic production and the total function of art is reversed (instead of
being based on ritual it begins to be based on practice-politics
• 20th century:massification
V. CULT VALUE VS. EXHIBITION VALUE
Two polar types to value of the works of art and the ability to reproduce objects through
different methods of technical reproduction:
Cult value decreases
work of art created as an instrument of magic
artistic production begins with ceremonial objects destined to serve in a cult
their existence mattered, not their being on view (Altamira cave paintings)
with the ability to reproduce objects, they would have to be hidden in order to maintain
their cult value
absolute emphasis on the cult value with limited reproducibility in prehistoric times
Exhibition value increases
fitness for exhibition function increases with the different methods of technical
reproduction
portraits, frescoes, prints; film, photography most serviceable exemplifications of
massification, displacement of cult value, art assumes entirely new functions in circulation
VI. EXHIBITION VALUE TO CULT OF REMEMBRANCE
Exhibition value in photography displaces cult value:
vestiges of cult value in early photography (cult of remembrance of loved ones, absent or
dead)
Atget (1900) Parisian cityscapes
picture magazines (captions are introduced as directives to looking at pictures)
explicit in film where the meaning of each single picture appears to be prescribed by the
sequence of the preceding ones
VI. EXHIBITION VALUE TO CULT OF REMEMBRANCE
VI. EXHIBITION VALUE TO CULT OF REMEMBRANCE
VII. NATURAL / ARTISTIC (CONTRADICTIONS OF FILM AND
ART)
19th century disputes about artistic value of painting vs. photography: Is photography art?
mechanical reproduction separated art from its basis in cult
invention of photography transformed art forever
early 20th century disputes on the nature of film
film = a step further in the process of representation close to reality
“What art has been granted a dream more poetical and more real at the same time!”
(Séverin-Mars, in Benjamin, p.227)
access to the sacred, supernatural or sterile copying of the exterior world obstructed
the beginnings of film, but it has “Ability to express by natural means and with
persuasiveness all that is fairylike, marvelous, supernatural.” (Werfel; in B., p. 228)
:: film is auratic, but its exhibition value is stronger than art
VIII. (MEDIATED) PERFORMANCE
Artistic performance of stage actor
personal appearance presented to a public
actor connects with audience, responds and adjusts
audience has direct access to performance
Artistic performance of screen actor
actor’s performance is mediated through positional views of a camera, constantly
changing
audience takes position of critic without experiencing personal contact with the actor
identification with actor is identification with the camera
position of camera = position of audience => testing (of work) approach :: not adapted to
cult values
IX. THE DECAY OF THE AURA
(ART BOUND BY TECHNOLOGY)
Artistic performance of screen actor
actor acts for mechanical contrivance
actor operates with his whole living person yet forgoing its aura (aura is tied to presence there can be no replica of it)
art is subject to and founded in mechanical reproduction (greatest effects in acting obtained
by as little acting as possible)
actor as stage prop; actor’s work split in series of mountable episodes; staged event on the
set evolves on the screen as a rapid and unified scene; jumps, montages; artificiality)
art has left the realm of the “beautiful semblance” which had been taken to be the only
sphere
where art could thrive
X. THE AUTHOR, THE PUBLIC, & THE MARKETPLACE
Resulting in loss of aura of the person:
feeling of strangeness before one’s own image in the mirror
reflected image becomes separable, transportable from a person -- before the public /
consumers / the market / beyond the reach of individual
shrivelling of aura with an artificial build-up of the “personality” outside the studio (the cult
of the movie star fostered by film industry) does not preserve the unique aura of the
person but the “spell of personality” (“the phony spell of a commodity)
But ease of replication has other advantages:
today’s films also promote revolutionary criticism of social conditions, even of the distribution
of property
possibility of participation - to be reproduced (example of newsreel that gives everyone
opportunity to be an extra; participation in a work of art))
in literary marketplace, readers gain access to authorship; distinction bw author and public
XI. REPRESENTATION OF REALITY
(ART / FILM)
Mechanical equipment and reproducibility have changed the nature of reality and has created
new ways of accessing it (deeper, more analytically)
Equipment-free aspect of reality becomes difficult to reproduce the height of artifice (“orchid
in the land of technology”)
~ magician vs. surgeon
magician maintains natural distance bw patient and himself vs. surgeon penetrating into the
patient’s body
~ painter vs. cameraman
tremendous difference in the pictures they obtain: representation of reality vs. permeation of
reality with mechanical equipment
for contemporary man, the representation of reality by the film is incomparably more
significant than that of the painter because it offers a new aspect of reality shaped by
equipment
XII. PROGRESSIVE REACTION
(SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF ART)
Mechanical reproduction of art changes the reaction of the masses toward art:
“Progressive” (=positive) reaction toward a Chaplin movie (by the masses)
“Reactionary” (=incomprehension) attitude toward a Picasso painting (by the masses)
Popular culture works with hegemonic forces because it is shaped by mass audience
response in a feedback loop (lack of appreciation of the truly innovative and
purposeful art)
Mass audience and collective simultaneous experience enabled by film, not possible
even in publicly displayed paintings in galleries and salons
Masses could not organize themselves and control themselves in their reception -- film
enables that
XIII. INCREASING OF OPTICAL / ACOUSTICAL PERCEPTION //
DEEPENING OF APPERCEPTION
Film enriched our field of perception (~Freudian theory of psychoanalysis)
through the testing capacity of equipment increased involvement:
Analyzable things increased through the spectrum of optical and acoustical perception but
also
distancing from reality (abstraction of perception)
Close-ups, hidden details, rapid movement of camera extends comprehension, unexpected
field
of action (travelling)
camera introduces us to unconscious optics as does psychoanalysis to unconscious impulses
XIV. THE SHOCK EFFECT (DADA / FILM)
Dadaists attempted to emphasize the uselessness for contemplative immersion -destroyed on purpose the aura of their creations (moral shock effect)
Film initiates perception that is involuntary (physical shock effect)
Painting vs. moving images (contemplation vs. perception which is unconscious,
incidental, unreflective but also provides insight into expanded space with close-ups,
extended motion with slow motion bursting the prison-world of perception and
launching us on “adventurous travelling”)
“I can no longer think what I want to think. My thoughts have been replaced by moving
images.” (Duhamel 1930; in Benjamin, p. 238)
XV. RECEPTION IN THE STATE OF DISTRACTION:
ARCHITECTURE, THE EPIC
Distraction of spectacle (consumed by masses in a state of unreflection) vs. Concentration of
art (absorption and identification) but What about architecture?
First manifestations of the new mode of perception was spectacle which requires no
concentration and presupposes no intelligence (commonplace explanation: the masses
seek distraction whereas art seeks concentration from the spectator :: moral evaluation of
film)
Architecture as prototypical art has traditionally been consumed by a collectivity in a state of
distraction; lasting form (unlike historical forms of art such as panel painting); reception of
architecture involves tactile and optical side (by habit and noticing the object in incidental
fashion)
Film enables apperception (critical analysis, solving of tasks) if individuals choose to see it in
the state of awareness. Art will tackle such tasks if it is able to mobilize the masses. Today, it
does so in the film. Film is the true exercise of art today (in 1930s).
Epilogue: THE POLITICS AESTHETIC / THE MORALITY OF ART
Proletarianization in modernity parallels increasing formation of masses (F / C response):
Fascism (uses to render politics aesthetic )
• organizes the newly created proletarian masses without affecting the property structure
• fascism gives the masses not their right but chance to express themselves
• increasing introduction of aesthetics into political life (the Führer cult, apparatus in the
service of production of ritual values)
• war engages movement of masses & technical resources while respecting traditional
property system
• Fascist apotheosis of war is the ultimate rendering of politics aesthetic & artistic
gratification of a sense perception changed by technology (Futurists celebrate war: see
excerpt, p. 241) :: l’art pour l’art (self-alienation of art through which it can elevate its own
destruction as aesthetic pleasure of the first order)
Communism (politicizes art)
• art has no purpose in totalitarian regimes except to organize rituals of public life
John Rawls—1921-2002
Rawls– Background
John Rawls was a distinguished Professor at
Harvard
Many argue John Rawls brought back to life the
dying field of political philosophy.
Major Works:
• A Theory of Justice (Harvard UP, 1971)
• Political Liberalism (1990)
• Justice as Fairness Restated (2002 posthumous)
BACKGROUND: the “Circumstances of
Justice”
• people are mortal, finite, of varying abilities and
have different “theories of the good”
• cooperation can pay: we are not in a zero-sum
game
• Everyone knows that everyone is rational (+ the
above info)
• people are “non-tuistic” -- they don’t “take an
interest in one another’s interests” [this needs
some explaining]
– so far, this is Hobbes and Hume…
Rawls goal in a theory of justice
• Rawls aims to develop a theory of justice that
will be superior to utilitarianism and that will
supplant what he calls "intuitionism" (the No
Theory theory).
Rawls’ METHODOLOGICAL IDEA:
“Reflective Equilibrium”
- Rawls says that we work from our “considered judgments” on various moral
matters.
- Some unspecified set of those is said to be such that we would not be willing
to give them up.
- He also says, however, that they can be modified given a good theory.
The idea is that we go back and forth between previously held judgments and
theory
- We aim at the best mix of the two - hence, “reflective equilibrium”, the
position from which we don’t move in either direction.
Going back to the Past to get to the
Future
• Rawls proposes to develop a theory of justice
by revising the social contract tradition of
theorizing about justice associated with the
17th and 18th century writers John Locke,
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Immanuel Kant.
– Locke sees legitimate political authority as
deriving from the free and voluntary consent of
the governed, from a contract or agreement
between governor and governed person.
Taking things to a new level
• Rawls says he will take the social contract idea
to a higher level of abstraction.
• According to Rawls:
– justice is what free and equal persons would agree
to as basic terms of social cooperation in
conditions that are fair for this purpose.
‘Justice as Fairness’
• This idea he calls "justice as fairness.“
• The conditions that Rawls takes to be most
appropriate for the choice of principles of
justice constitute what he calls the "original
position.“
– We will discuss the Original Position later…
According to Rawls, a moral theory is a
set of principles
• (1) stipulates what information we need in
order to decide what to do
• (2) determines what should be done in any
circumstances, provided we have the
information regarding those circumstances
that the principles themselves specify to be
relevant.
• In other words, no further evaluation is
required; the principles embody the
evaluation needed to identify morally right
policies.
• With a theory, given a specification of the
relevant facts and a statement of the
principles, one can derive as conclusion what
should be done.
• But if one's morality includes more than one
value, how can one avoid the need to weigh
these plural values against each other
intuitively on a case by case basis?
• This is what Rawls calls the "priority problem."
– To solve it we need to build in a weighting or
priority ranking of the different values we accept
as relevant into the formulation of our principles.
Rawls favors what he calls "lexical priority rankings
‘lexical priority rankings’ or lexical
priority
– If one value has lexical priority over another, the
first one trumps the second.
• we should do everything we can to achieve the topranked value to the greatest degree possible and
devote resources to achieving the lower-ranked value
only when doing so does not lessen even in the
slightest degree the extent to which we achieve the
top-ranked value.
Example: Studying for exams:
• If MY CLASS is the most IMPORTANT class to
pass, whereas Prof. Plenta’s class is not as
important, if you lexically prioritize you
studying, you will devote ALL of you time to
my class before you even consider studying for
Prof. Peters.
– Lexical Priority order
• 1) Prof. Kaminski’s Contemporary Political Thought
Class
• 2. Prof. Plenta’s Foundations of IR.
• This does NOT mean you do not study for Prof.
Plenta’s class! It means after you have fully
MASTERED what is necessary for my class, you
then move on to the next step in the chain.
Is this Reasonable???
• This is a good question? Perhaps you are
actually OVER-VALUING my class? Maybe its
not actually more important than Prof. Peter’s
class? In this case, you could be making a big
mistake… think about it…
Scenario 1-- Kaminski class > Plenta class
• You study for 9 hours my class… For Plenta’s
you study 1
• FINAL GRADES
– Contemporary Pol Thought – B+
– Foundations of IR – F
– RESULT: You did fine in my class, but No
graduation because you need 6 more credits
This means another semester of this…
…and
Since you failed Foundations of IR:
another semester of this!
Scenario 2-- Kaminski class = Plenta class
• You study for 5 hours my class… For Peter’s
you study 5 hours
• FINAL GRADES
– Contemporary Pol. Thought – C– Foundations of IR – C– RESULT: You did not that good in both classes, but
you Graduate (finally!)
So what… you did poorly in both
classes, but you do get this:
…HOWEVER
Since you did poorly in both classes,
you don’t get this
…and now….
So in the end, for graduate school you
get this:
Moral of the Story
• Your future no matter what is IUS!
OK, ok, not quite… so what’s the real
moral of the story?
• Oftentimes what one lexically prioritizes is
based on something ‘greater’ than just the
items at hand. Getting an A in my class would
be NICE, however, its NOT WORTH IT in the
end if you do not graduate because you
sacrificed another class for mine.
• One must be careful will working within such
an all of nothing framework in the real world…
The “Well-Ordered Society”
• Rawls construes the task to be choosing
principles for a "well-ordered society," a
society that is;
• (a) effectively regulated by a public conception
of justice.
• (b) whose members understand and give
allegiance to this public conception.
• (c) it is common knowledge among all
members of society that a and b hold.
Why this idealization?
• Rawls thinks we need to get clear about firstbest theory before we can be in a position to
think through problems that arise when
institutions are not just and some persons are
not disposed to comply with requirements of
justice.
– i.e.—build the foundation of the house before
building the windows and doors of the house.
1. THE ORIGINAL POSITION:
Rawls says he is taking the idea of the social
contract to a “higher level of abstraction” Principles of Justice are not self-evident, but
conceived as a general social agreement made
in an “Original Position”:
The Agreement is Hypothetical, not actual
and takes place “Behind a Veil of Ignorance”
Terms of Negotiation: the “social primary
goods” ...
Veil of Ignorance
• 1)No one knows his own situation or personal
characteristics
• 2)Everyone knows the Circumstances of
Justice
• 3) But we are to reach an “agreement” that is
permanently binding to all
Primary Goods Defined
these are :
what anybody wants, no matter what else he wants
(they are the general means for promoting one’s life)
- Specific conceptions of the good are not allowed
- Utility not allowed ...
These are primary socially distributable goods - not just any goods
There are also “Natural goods”: Health; Intelligence; Imagination - but These are not
directly under social control, though “influenced by the basic structure”]
Rawls’ List of “Primary Goods”:
Liberties -- Powers -- Opportunities -- Income -- Wealth -- Self-respect
Assumption: Each wants to maximize his personal index of Primary Goods
note: how would you measure this? -- a big problem!
Rawls
....
130
. The General Argument:
Nobody knows who he is, so the safe working assumption is Equality
Equality is the “benchmark of justice”
But inequalities are acceptable if they are of benefit to everyone...
Derived:
(1) The General Conception of Justice:
“All social primary goods are to be distributed equally unless an unequal
distribution of any or all of these goods is to the advantage of the least
favored” [Tj 303]
[later it becomes: “to the maximum advantage of the least favored”
It has been called the “favor the bottom” principle.]
Rawls
....
131
(2) Specific Conception: The Two Principles of Justice
FIRST PRINCIPLE: Each Person is to have an Equal Right to the most extensive
total system of equal basic liberties compaptible with a similar system for all
SECOND PRINCIPLE: Social and Economic Inequalities are to be arranged so
that they are - (a) to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged
[the “maximin (or “difference”) principle”]
(b) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair
equality of opportunity
NOTE: The principles are “LEXICALLY ORDERED”:
P1 first
P2a second
P2b third
28 March, 2016
Priority Rules:
First rule: Liberty can be restricted only
for the sake of liberty.
1 - A less extensive liberty must
strengthen the total system of liberty
shared by all
2 - A less than equal liberty must be
acceptable to those with the lesser
liberty
• Second rule: The second principle is lexically
prior to the principle of efficiency and to that
of maximizing the sum of advantages; fair
opportunity is prior to the maximin principle
– 1 - An inequality of opportunity must enhance the
opportunity of those with the lesser opportunity
– 2 - An excessive rate of saving must on balance
mitigate the burden of those bearing this hardship
• We then get to the “constitutional” level by
slowly “lifting the veil of ignorance”
– Rawls envisages that we would have broadly
democratic institutions. In his second book, these
are assumed ...
The Big question
-Rawls’ first principle looks like the familiar
liberty principle of classical liberalism
-(maybe: but Rawls does not accept a
general right to liberty. He instead insists on
a List [the liberties to be itemized]
-- not clear why this should be so
But the second principle does not
- In fact, On the face of it, there is a huge
conflict between the two principles:
- IF we have full economic liberty, then we cannot
be taxed to support the Difference Principle.
- IF we don’t, then how do we justify any rectifiable
inequality?
- Rawls says that it might be justified by considerations
of incentive
-
Question: how can incentive justify
what would otherwise be unjust?
- If Equality is the “benchmark of justice”, then I
don’t excuse myself from its requirements by
just insisting on more as the price for my hard
work!
- something’s wrong!
- In my view, it’s the presumption of distributive
equality as a right.
Why the second principle?
Rawls famously argues that we cannot be said to
“deserve” our natural assets this is, of course, true.
-(for example, our genetic assets: prior to them, we
didn’t exist! But once we are born, we have them it’s too late to un-do them!)
The question is, so what?
From the fact that we do not deserve our
assets, it does not follow that we do not
deserve the things we can get by using those
assets - which is what Rawls is claiming.
Remember in the original position, nobody
knows their own situation… we are just
‘generic beings.’
• As we saw, Rawls aims to defend principles for a
just society; but he does so against the
background of another, important, intellectual
tradition, namely utilitarianism.
• There are many different interpretations of
utilitarianism, but roughly speaking, according to
utilitarianism, individuals ought to act in such a
way as to maximise their individual welfare, and
society ought to maximise social utility
– social utility is understood as the aggregation of
individual welfare.
• Now, according to Rawls (as per section 5 of A
Theory of Justice), utilitarianism dictates that,
in some cases, the interests of some can be
violated for the sake of greater advantages for
others, and more specifically, some people will
be denied freedom for the sake of social
utility.
– Lets see an example
Escaped Serial Killer Example
• Suppose, for example, that a serial killer is on
the loose. People are getting extremely
worried, are scared of leaving their homes,
become distrustful of their neighbours, and so
on. It would be in the interest of society as a
whole to think that the killer has been caught.
• Knowing this, the police decide to capture an
innocent person and to announce that they
have caught the killer, for the sake of
reassuring everybody: the freedom of that
particular person, who is innocent, is
sacrificed for the sake of social utility.
According to Rawls, however, this is
not what a just society should be like.
• For a just society is one which protects and
promotes individual rights, even at the
expense of social utility
– For Rawls, no innocent person should be thrown
into jail for the sake of alleviating the fear of the
population.
Prioritization of the individual
• Rawls’ theory of justice rests on the view that
each individual is self-interested, has projects
to pursue and goals to implement, and cannot
be asked to sacrifice themselves for the sake
of the greatest number (p.24).
In contrasting his position with utilitarianism,
Rawls says the following (pp.27–28):
• In contrasting his position with utilitarianism,
Rawls says the following
• “utilitarians have an understanding of the good, that is, of
what it is good to achieve, and that is the maximisation of
individual and collective welfare. The right action – that is,
the action which we must perform - is the action which
promotes the good: so for utilitarians, what is right is
defined in relation to what is good, and what is right is
instrumental to the good.”
– In other words, once we have defined the good –
maximizing individual and collective welfare – we
know what the right thing to do is.
By contrast, in Rawls’ theory, the right
is prior to the good.
• That is, we each understand that we have
different conceptions of what is good.
– some of us might want to maximise our welfare,
others might not.
• The right action – the action which we must
do – is that which lets people pursue their
conception of the good, provided that they act
in similar ways towards others.
• A just social system provides a framework of
rights and opportunities within which
individuals can pursue their conception of the
good life.
• The question is how to define and articulate
those principles of justice (those principles
which distribute rights, as it were, amongst
individuals).
Some Problems with the Original
Position Assumptions
• 1. Individuals in the original position are
described as individuals who want to avoid
taking risks. Rawls’ reasoning goes like this:
– if individuals do not know whether, for example,
they are Catholic or atheists, they will choose to
respect freedom of religion. This is because if they
decide, for example, that only Catholicism should
be protected, they would risk being oppressed if
they turn out to be atheists. As they do not like
taking risks, they will go for freedom of religion.
• But it is arbitrary to describe individuals in
such a way. They could decide to gamble.
After all, some individuals do gamble, on a
regular basis, or at least take risks on a regular
basis. So there is no reason to suppose that
individuals in the original position would not
take risks.
Other issues with the original position
• Individuals are said to be members of a scheme of
social cooperation (for that is how society is described
by Rawls, as we saw above). The central idea here is
that of reciprocity: if I contribute and if you benefit,
and have agreed to receive those benefits, then you
should contribute too (p.96).
• However, there are two difficulties with this: first, in so
far as individuals to whom the principles of justice
apply are contributors; non-contributors are excluded
from the scope of justice (severely mentally ill people,
severally physically disabled people, etc.)
Second, the idea of reciprocity
supposes that we all benefit from the
arrangements.
• But do we?
• Suppose I get out of the original position: I realise
that I am a religious fundamentalist: what do I
gain from living in a tolerant society? Suppose
that I am a very talented person, or someone
from a very rich background, and that I would
gain more if I lived under a regime where natural
and social advantages command greater material
gains than what I would get in Rawls’ society: why
should I abide by the principles?
• More dramatically still: why should I stay in that
society? Why should we not – we the advantaged
people – expel those who drag us down, indeed,
why should we not secede?
• If self-interest and the expectation of gain is what
drives people to respect the terms of
cooperation, then, in so far as Rawls’ principles of
justice do not yield the highest benefits for some
people, they have no reason to accept them once
they know what their situation is like.
• Rawls might say, at this stage, that we have to
abide by those principles, because they are just;
and we know that they are just because we chose
them under the veil of ignorance. But that would
miss the point of the objection: for the objection
says, precisely, that
– if self-interest is what guides us behind the veil of
ignorance, then it should also be able to guide us once
the veil is lifted. And once the veil is lifted, if our selfinterest dictates against the principles, then we are
allowed not to obey them.
Finally…
• Is this even a feasible thought experiment?
There simply is no situation in the world
where people are completely detached from
their own interests in the way required of the
original position.
• Our unique identities make us human!
• Conceptualizing a theory of justice that takes
ignores this fact is like coming up with a
theory about how space aliens or unicorns eat
food– its pretty pointless to even talk about
what kind of food space aliens eat until we
actually first can determine if they even exist.
Constitutive Identity Factors
• Certain things are, in fact, constitutive or our
identity… i.e. I would not be ME if if was not X
– Rawls seems to think these identity factors are
arbitrary and are subject to change.
– Think about it– if you are a medrassa student in
Afghanistan, and your until existence is centered
around Islam– that is to say, EVERYTHING YOU
KNOW AND DO is Islam how can one assume
you would even be the same being without this
identity precondition?
30.3.2016
• For Rawls, the Good is subjective
– what makes something fundamentally good for
you is that you desire it, and equally rational
people have different basic desires.
It may seem that Rawls has painted
himself into a corner…
• If we can't agree on what is good, how can we
agree on principles of justice that regulate the
distribution of fruits of social cooperation-the
goods generated by social cooperation?
– Rawls proposes is that even though we disagree
about what is ultimately good, we may agree that
there are certain general purpose means that will
be useful to carrying out a wide variety of
different plans of life.
Example: Consider the standpoint of a
young adult
• She has some conception of her good, what she
thinks worthy of pursuit in life, but she knows her
values and aims might well shift as she goes
through life.
– Seeing this, and wanting to give herself a reasonable
chance of satisfying her life aims, whatever these
might turn out to be, she has reason to want certain
general purpose goods-things that any rational person
will want, whatever else she wants.
• These are the primary goods.
• Some of these primary goods are social
primary goods; they are distributable by social
arrangements.
• Primary goods provide a basis for
interpersonal comparisons that is suitable for
the theory of justice.
The Primary Goods– Defined
• Elsewhere in Rawls's writings he provides this
specification of the primary social goods.
• The list includes:
– a. basic rights and liberties, also given by a list
– b. freedom of movement and free choice of occupation
against a background of diverse opportunities
– c. powers and prerogatives of office and positions of
responsibility in the political and economic institutions of
the basic structure
– d. income and wealth
– e. the social bases of self-respect.
P.G’s. as the basis for interpersonal
comparison
• Primary social goods are to be the basis of
interpersonal comparisons for a theory of
justice. People’s condition is measured by
their primary social goods holdings.
– To carry out such a measurement, as Rawls notes,
we would need an index—a norm that specifies
how to weight different primary goods against
each other so that for any holdings of various
primary goods you have, in each case we can tell
what your overall primary goods score is.
•Congruence
4.4.2016
Defining Congruence
• Congruence (symbol: ≅) is the state achieved
by coming together, the state of agreement.
• The Latin congruō meaning “I meet together, I
agree”.
• As an abstract term, congruence means
similarity between objects.
– Congruence, as opposed to approximation, is a
relation which implies a species of equivalence
Congruence
• As we have seen, the veil of ignorance
disconnects the argument from the OP from
any given individual’s full conception of the
good.
– The final question addressed by TJ attempts to
reconnect justice to each individual’s good, not in
general, but within the well-ordered society of
Justice as Fairness.
• A stable society is one that generates
attitudes, such as are encapsulated in an
effective sense of justice, that support the just
institutions of that society.
– If, in the well-ordered society, having those
attitudes is also a good for the persons who have
them, then there is a “match between justice and
goodness” that Rawls calls “congruence.” TJ at
350.
• In order to address this question of
congruence, TJ develops an account of the
good for individuals.
– Chapter VII of TJ, in fact, develops a quite general
theory of goodness—called “goodness as
rationality”—and then applies it to the special
case of the good of an individual over a complete
life.
• Rawls starts from the suggestion that;
– “A is a good X if and only if A has the properties
(to a higher degree than the average or standard
X) which it is rational to want in an X, given what
X’s are used for, or expected to do, and the like
(whichever rider is appropriate).”
• To work out this suggestion for the case of the
good for persons, Rawls influentially
developed and deployed the notion of a “life
plan.”
– A rational plan of life for an individual, he argued,
is answerable to certain principles of “deliberative
rationality.”
• These Rawls sets out in a low-key way that masks the
power and originality of his formulations. TJ at 359-72.
• Rawls’s argument for congruence—that
having an effective sense of justice built
around the principles of Justice as Fairness will
be a good for each individual—is a complex
and philosophically deep one.
• It appeals to at least four types of intermediate
good, each of which may be presumed to be of
value to just about everyone:
– (i) the development and exercise of complex talents
(which Rawls’s “Aristotelian Principle” presumes to be
a good for human beings), TJ at 374,
– (ii) autonomy
– (iii) community
– (iv) the unity of the self.
• Rawls’s argument for congruence is spread out
across many sections of TJ. Some of its main threads
are pulled together by Samuel Freeman in his
contribution to The Cambridge Companion to Rawls.
Freeman (2003).
• With regard to autonomy, to supplement the positive
argument flowing from the Kantian interpretation of the
OP, Rawls argues that the type of objectivity claimed for
the principles of Justice as Fairness is not at odds with
the idea of the autonomous establishment of principles.
•
TJ at sec. 78. He further argues that Justice as Fairness supports
the kind of tightly-knit community he calls “a social union of
social unions,” marked by the shared purpose or “common aim
of cooperating together to realize their own and another’s
nature in ways allowed by the principles of justice.”
– Gemeinschaften
• He notes the advantages of a conception of the unity
of the self that hangs, instead, on the regulative
status of principles of justice. TJ at secs. 83-85.
• The cumulative effect of these appeals to the development
of talent, autonomy, community, and the unity of the self
is to support the claim of Justice as Fairness to
congruence.
• In a well-ordered society corresponding to Justice as
Fairness, Rawls concludes, an effective sense of justice is a
good for the individual who has it.
– In TJ, this congruence between justice and goodness is the main
basis for concluding that individual citizens will wholeheartedly
accept the principles of justice as fairness.
Area of Contention: Understanding the
Distinction between the Public and the Private
in the thought of Rawls
The 4 Different Categories of
Relationships for Rawls
• For Rawls, there are actually four different
categories of relationships: the political,
associational, familial, and personal.
• Each has its own potential for genuine choice,
and distinctively interacts with the reasonable
and the rational.
Allowing for Dissent in the Well
Ordered Society
• Rawls allows for a broad spectrum of
comprehensive doctrines in the well-ordered
society.
– For example, Rawls is willing to admit into the
well-ordered society “various religious sects
[which] oppose the culture of the modern world
and wish to lead their common life apart from its
unwanted influences” (p. 199, PL).
The Freedom of Association– What about cults
and fundamentalist religious sects?
• What about fundamentalist religious sects, or
even religious value systems that are at odds
with Rawls theory??
– For Rawls, these groups should be tolerated in the
well-ordered society, so long as their members
abide by the political conception of justice and are
willing to defend their public claims on grounds
acceptable to those who do not affirm their
comprehensive doctrine.
• Clearly this is absurd.
• Basically you can have whatever ‘crazy’ views
as you would like, SO LONG AS you can defend
them according to Rawls understanding of
Justice and keep them in the private sphere
(i.e. inside your Church, Temple, or Mosque).
– This also makes it apparent that you have no right
to any political power to realize your vision of ‘the
good’ either.
Example: The Islamic Society
• In an Islamic society, the reis-ulema,
and/or council of religious clerics, are
always comprised of by MUSLIMS–
• Basically if you are not a Muslim,
regardless of the level of knowledge you
have, you are not allowed to be a
religious jurist or reis-ulema.
This is a direct violation of Rawls’ ‘equality of
opportunity principle.’
• However, can one really envision allowing
atheists who happen to posses a reasonable
amount of knowledge on Islam and fiqh to
be a religious jurist?
– Even if you can, within Islam’s rules on
who can be a religious jurist or Imam,
one MUST profess Shahadah and a deep
belief in Islam
• What if your religious value systems conception of justice
stands at odds with Rawls’ principles of justice?
• What if you believe in a foundationalist religious discourse that
categorically forbids certain groups from holding certain offices,
or discriminates between believers and disbelievers?
• Let’s look briefly at the case of Islam
• The jizyah as one example… Is this not an act of discrimination
at some level? Only certain people have to pay it based solely
on their beliefs.
Ali Allawi on where justice derives
from in Islam
• ‘A root principle in the world view of Islam is
that no individual or social group, if it seeks
harmony and justice, can assume the absolute
power to determine its own ethical standards
of conduct.’
Allawi continues…
• ‘An ethical system of dynamic stability and
justice must derive its coordinates from
outside itself.’
– ‘Life must derive from the ‘life-giver’ (al-Hayy);
power, from the ‘power-giver’ (al-Qadir); and
knowledge from the ‘knowledge-giver’ (al-‘Alim).
Only then can individuals and groups be guided
and constrained by the only permanently
legitimate form of authority.’ (Allawi, 2009: 13)
The Universalizing tendency in
Liberalism in General
• Furthermore, Rawls requires that these sects
allow that children are educated so that they
understand the public principles of justice, and
their education “should prepare them to be fully
cooperative members of society and enable them
to be self-supporting” (p. 199, PL).
– Basically, even if you object to Rawls’ conception of
justice, in his society, you would still have to send you
kids to a school that indoctrinates them in the
dominant state ideology, which in this case is his
version of liberalism.
Allawi on the Universalizing nature of
liberalism
• According to Ali Allawi “In many ways, the
prized tolerance of these [Western] societies
has an obverse side in the form of an
intolerance or disregard for other civilizations,
which may not subscribe to the ‘universal’
nature of western values.” (Allawi, 2009: 172)
Look at France– Total hypocrisy.
– Promotes ‘freedom of expression’ then bans the
niqab as a violation of ‘French Values’
– Look at Charlie Hebdo– Journalists allowed to
mock Islam in the name of ‘free expression’ but
are punished and criticized as being anti-Semetic
when mocking Israel and Judaism which both have
been embraced in the post WWII liberal social and
political discourse.