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SUMRIO Analytic philosophy................................................................................................................3 Continental philosophy.........................................................................................................12 Critical theory........................................................................................................................16 Deconstruction......................................................................................................................21 Existentialism........................................................................................................................37 Logical atomism....................................................................................................................53 Logical positivism.................................................................................................................54 Marxism................................................................................................................................67 Neopragmatism.....................................................................................................................95 New Confucianism................................................................................................................97 Ordinary language philosophy..............................................................................................99 Phenomenology...................................................................................................................102 Hermeneutics.......................................................................................................................112 Postanalytic philosophy......................................................................................................122 Postcolonialism...................................................................................................................123 Postmodern philosophy.......................................................................................................128 Post-structuralism................................................................................................................133 Structuralism.......................................................................................................................140

Analytic philosophy
Analytic philosophy is a generic term for a style of philosophy that came to dominate English-speaking countries in the 20th century. In the United States, for example, the overwhelming majority of university philosophy departments self-identify as "analytic" departments.[1] (This situation is mirrored in the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia.) Given its scope, it is difficult to identify non-trivial philosophical claims that would be common to all analytic philosophy. The term "analytic philosophy" may mark merely a family resemblance across disparate philosophical views, or historical lines of influence. Insofar as broad generalizations can be made, analytic philosophy is characterised by its emphasis on clarity and argument, typically achieved via modern formal logic and analysis of language, and a respect for the natural sciences.[2] The historical roots of analytic philosophy can be summarily characterised thus: First, the positivist view that there are no specifically philosophical truths and that the object of philosophy is the logical clarification of thoughts. This contrasts with the traditional foundationalism, deriving from Aristotle, that views philosophy as a special sort of science, the highest one, which investigates the fundamental reasons and principles of everything.[3] As a result, analytic philosophers have usually considered their inquiries as continuous with, or subordinate to, those of the natural sciences.[4] Second, the view that the logical clarification of thoughts can only be achieved by analysis of the logical form of philosophical propositions. The logical form of a proposition is a way of representing it (often using the formal grammar and symbolism of a logical system) to display its similarity with all other propositions of the same type. Analytic philosophers disagree widely about the correct logical form of ordinary language.[5] Third, a rejection of sweeping philosophical systems in favour of close attention to detail. [6] Among some (but by no means all) analytic philosophers, this rejection of "grand theory" has taken the form of a defence of common sense and ordinary language against the pretensions of metaphysicians.[7]

History
In the early 20th century, the English philosophers Bertrand Russell and G. E. Moore used close conceptual analysis in a concerted critique of the then-dominant forms of Idealism.[8] Their approach was reinforced by the movement of continental philosophers into Englishspeaking countries in the first half of the century. [9] Analytic philosophy subsequently took various paths, including a rejection of formal analysis in favour of a close examination of natural language,[10] inquiry into the logical underpinnings of languages [11] and renewed interest in the ethical implications of analytic method.[12]

The prominence of logic

Bertrand Russell Gottlob Frege and Edmund Husserl were key figures in early twentieth century philosophy of mathematics. Husserl's Philosophy of Arithmetic, inspired by the teachings of Karl Weierstrass, attempted to show that the concept of the cardinal number, derived from psychical acts of grouping objects and counting them, was the foundation of arithmetic.[13] Husserl's approach was strongly condemned as psychologism in a review by Frege, who was committed to the view that mathematics and logic have their own validity, independent of the judgments or mental states of individual mathematicians and logicians. Frege's own work, the Begriffsschrift, developed the concepts of a specific form of modern logic by making use of the notions of the sense and reference. Frege further developed his philosophy of logic and mathematics in The Foundations of Arithmetic and The Basic Laws of Arithmetic where he provides an alternative to psychologistic accounts of the concept of number. Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead attempted to show that mathematics is reducible to fundamental logical principles. Their Principia Mathematica (1910-1913) encouraged many philosophers to take a renewed interest in the development of symbolic logic. This contributed in turn to the evolution of logical positivism, which used formal logical tools to underpin an empiricist account of our knowledge of the world. [14] Philosophers such as Rudolf Carnap and Hans Reichenbach, along with other members of the Vienna Circle, held that the truths of logic and mathematics were tautologies, and that tautologies, together with verifiable empirical claims, constituted the entire universe of meaningful judgments; anything else was, strictly speaking nonsense (including, for example, the claims of ethics, aesthetics and theology). Karl Popper's insistence upon the role of falsification in the philosophy of science was a reaction to the logical positivists.[15]

Formalism and natural languages


Part of analytic approach is the clarification of philosophical problems by examining the language used to express them. Two major threads weave through this tradition: formalism and natural language. The former seeks to understand language, and hence philosophical problems, by making use of formal logic. That is, in one way or another it seeks to formalize the way in which philosophical statements are made. This perspective has been taken up in a number of

formulations, including Symbolic logic, which assumes the primary importance of sense and reference in the construction of meaning, as well as Kurt Gdel's Incompleteness Theorem, Bertrand Russell's theory of definite descriptions, Karl Popper's theory of falsificationism and Alfred Tarski's Semantic Theory of Truth. A second thread seeks to understand philosophical ideas by a close and careful examination of the natural language used to express them usually with some emphasis on the importance of common sense in dealing with difficult concepts. These two threads intertwine, sometimes implacably opposed to each other, sometimes virtually identical. Famously, Wittgenstein started out in the formalism camp, but ended up in the natural language camp.

Formalism
Logical atomism
Analytic philosophy has its origins in Gottlob Freges development of predicate logic. This permitted a much wider range of sentences to be parsed into logical form. Bertrand Russell adopted it as his primary philosophical tool; a tool he thought could expose the underlying structure of philosophical problems. For example, the English word is can be parsed in three distinct ways:

in 'the cat is asleep: the is of predication says that 'x is P': P(x) in 'there is a cat: the is of existence says that there is an x: (x) in 'three is half of six': the is of identity says that x is the same as y: x=y

Russell sought to resolve various philosophical issues by applying such clear and clean distinctions, most famously in the case of the Present King of France.

The Tractatus
As a young Austrian soldier, Ludwig Wittgenstein expanded and developed Russell's logical atomism into a comprehensive system in a brief book, the Tractatus LogicoPhilosophicus. The argument therein suggests that the world is the existence of certain states of affairs and these states of affairs can be expressed in the language of first-order predicate logic. So a picture of the world can be built up by expressing atomic facts in atomic propositions, and linking them using logical operators. One of the central movements within analytic philosophy is linked closely to the following statement from the Tractatus: 5.6 The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.

This attitude is one of the reasons for the close relationship between philosophy of language and analytic philosophy. Language, on this view is the principalor perhaps the onlytool of the philosopher. For Wittgenstein, and many other analytic philosophers, philosophy consists in clarifying how language can be used. The hope is that when language is used clearly, philosophical problems are found to dissolve. This view has come to be known as quietism. Wittgenstein thought he had set out the 'final solution' to all philosophical problems, and so went off to become a school teacher. However, he later revisited the inadequacy of logical atomism, and further expanded the philosophy of language by what became his posthumous book Philosophical Investigations.

Natural language semantics


Davidson. Oxford in 1970s. Strawson, Dummett, McDowell, Evans.

Natural language
Reaction against idealism
G. E. Moore, Common Sense philosophy. This philosophy is a rejection of British PostHegel Idealism.

Ordinary language philosophy


Main article: Ordinary language philosophy Oxford School. Associated with such philosophers as Austin, Ryle, Searle, and, as well, the later teachings of Wittgenstein. Rather than viewing philosophical problems with respect to logic, ordinary language philosophy sets forth the notion of consideration with respect to the ordinary usage of the linguistic terms germane to such problems. While schools such as logical positivism focus on logical terms, supposed to be universal and separate from contingent factors (such as culture, language, historical conditions), ordinary language philosophy emphasizes the use of language by ordinary people. It may be argued, then, that ordinary language philosophy is of a more sociological grounding, as it essentially focuses on the use of language within social contexts. Ordinary language philosophy was often used to disperse philosophical problems, by exposing them as results of fundamental misunderstandings regarding the ordinary usage of the pertinent linguistic terms. Indeed, this is apparent in Ryle (who attempted to dispose of "Descartes' myth"), as well as Wittgenstein, among others.

Logical positivism and logical empiricism


Vienna Circle, Carnap, Verificationism. Analytic-synthetic distinction. Rejection of Metaphysics, Ethics, Aesthetics. "Emotivism." Immigration of logicians and scientists from Europe in the 1930s. Philosophy of science. Quine, who attempted to dispose of the supposed Two Dogmas of Empiricism, and especially the analytic-synthetic distinction. Behaviorism. See the separate article on Logical Positivism for further information.

Philosophy of mind and cognitive science


Paul and Patricia Churchland, Dennett. See philosophy of mind or cognitive science for further information.

Ethics in analytic philosophy


As a side-effect of the focus on logic and language in the early years of analytic philosophy, the tradition initially had little to say on the subject of ethics. The attitude was widespread among early analytics that these subjects were unsystematic, and merely expressed personal attitudes about which philosophy could have little or nothing to say. Wittgenstein, in the Tractatus, remarks that values cannot be a part of the world, and if they are anything at all they must be beyond or outside the world somehow, and that hence language, which describes the world, can say nothing about them. One interpretation of these remarks found expression in the doctrine of the logical positivists that statements about value--including all ethical and aesthetic judgments--are, like metaphysical claims, literally meaningless and therefore non-cognitive; that is, not able to be either true or false. Social and political philosophy, aesthetics, and various more specialized subjects like philosophy of history thus moved to the fringes of English-language philosophy for some time. By the 1950s debates had begun to arise over whether--and if so, how--ethical statements really were non-cognitive. Stevenson argued for expressivism, R. M. Hare advocated a view called universal prescriptivism. Phillipa Foot contributed several essays attacking all these positions, and the collapse of logical positivism as a cohesive research programme led to a renewed interest in ethics.

Analytic philosophy of religion


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As with the study of ethics, early analytic philosophy avoided the study of philosophy of religion, dismissing the subject as part of metaphysics and meaningless. The collapse of logical positivism renewed interest in philosophy of religion, prompting philosophers such as William Alston, John Mackie, Alvin Plantinga, Robert Merrihew Adams, and Anthony Flew to, not only introduce new problems, but to re-open classical ones, such as the nature of miracles and the arguments for and against the existence of God.[16] Plantinga, Mackie and Flew debated the logical validity of the free will defense as a way to solve the problem of evil.[17] Alston, grappling with the consequences of analytic philosophy of language, worked on the nature of religious language. Adams worked on the relationship of faith and morality.[18] Analytic philosophy of religion has also been preoccupied with Ludwig Wittgenstein and his interpretation of Sren Kierkegaard's philosophy of religion[19]. Using first-hand remarks (which would later be published in Philosophical Investigations, Culture and Value, and other works), philosophers such as Peter Winch and Norman Malcolm developed a fideist interpretation of Wittgenstein[20]. Responding to this interpretation, Kai Nielsen and D.Z. Phillips became two of the most prominent philosophers on Wittgenstein's philosophy of religion.[21]

Political philosophy
Current analytic political philosophy owes much to John Rawls, who, in a series of papers from the 1950s onward (most notably "Two Concepts of Rules" and "Justice as Fairness") and his 1971 book A Theory of Justice, produced a sophisticated and closely argued defence of a liberal welfare state. This was followed in short order by Rawls's colleague Robert Nozick's book Anarchy, State, and Utopia, a defence of free-market libertarianism.

Analytical Marxism
Another interesting development in the area of political philosophy has been the emergence of a school known as Analytical Marxism. Members of this school seek to apply the techniques of analytic philosophy, along with tools of modern social science such as rational choice theory to the elucidation of the theories of Karl Marx and his successors. The best known member of this school, is Oxford University philosopher G.A. Cohen, whose 1978 work, Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence is generally taken as representing the genesis of this school. In that book, Cohen attempted to apply the tools of logical and linguistic analysis to the elucidation and defense of Marx's materialist conception of history. Other prominent Analytical Marxists include the economist John Roemer, the social scientist Jon Elster, and the sociologist Erik Olin Wright. All these people have attempted to build upon Cohen's work by bringing to bear modern social science methods, such as rational choice theory, to supplement Cohen's use of analytic philosophical techniques in the interpretation of Marxian theory. Cohen himself would later engage directly with Rawlsian political philosophy in attempt to advance a socialist theory of justice that stands in contrast to both traditional Marxism and

the theories advanced by Rawls and Nozick. In particular, he points to Marx's principle of from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.

Communitarianism
Communitarians such as Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, Michael Walzer and Michael Sandel advance a critique of Liberalism that uses analytic techniques to isolate the key assumptions of Liberal individualists, such as Rawls, and then challenges these assumptions. In particular, Communitarians challenge the Liberal assumption that the individual can be viewed as fully autonomous from the community in which he lives and is brought up. Instead, they push for a conception of the individual that emphasizes the role that the community plays in shaping his or her values, thought processes and opinions.

See also
Category:Analytic philosophers

Further reading

The London Philosophy Study Guide offers many suggestions on what to read, depending on the student's familiarity with the subject: Frege, Russell, and Wittgenstein

External links

Analytic Philosophy; Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Conceptions of Analysis in Analytic Philosophy ; Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy European Society for Analytic Philosophy

References

Aristotle, Metaphysics Geach, P., Mental Acts, London 1957 Kenny, A.J.P., Wittgenstein, London 1973. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, article Analytic Philosophy. Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

Footnotes
1. ^ See, e.g., [1].

2. ^ H. Glock, "Was Wittgenstein an Analytic Philosopher?", Metaphilosophy, 35:4 (2004), pp. 419-444. 3. ^ See Aristotle Metaphysics (Book II 993a), Kenny (1973) p. 230. 4. ^ This is an attitude that goes back to Locke, who described his work as that of an "underlabourer" to the achievements of natural scientists such as Newton. In the twentieth century, the most influential advocate of the continuity of philosophy with science was Quine: see, e.g., his papers "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" and "Epistemology Naturalized". 5. ^ Wittgenstein, op. cit., 4.111 6. ^ See, e.g., "Philosophical Analysis" (catalogued under "Analysis, Philosophical") in Encyclopedia of Philosophy , Vol. 1 (Macmillan, 1967), esp. sections on "Bertrand Russell" at p. 97ff, "G.E. Moore" at p. 100ff, and "Logical Positivism" at p. 102ff. 7. ^ See, e.g., the works of G.E. Moore and J.L. Austin. 8. ^ See for example Moore's A Defence of Common Sense and Russell's critique of the Doctrine of internal relations 9. ^ Prominent amongst these were Ludwig Wittgenstein and Rudolf Carnap. Karl Popper might also be included, since despite his rejection of the label his method bears many of the hallmarks of the analytic tradition. 10. ^ The later Wittgenstein was accompanied on this path by many contemporaries, including J. L. Austin 11. ^ Quinn and Donald Davidson 12. ^ Many deserve mention here, including the influence of R. M. Hare and Philippa Foot 13. ^ Willard, Dallas. "Husserl on a Logic that Failed". Philosophical Review 89 (1): 52-53. 14. ^ Carnap, R. (1928). The Logical Structure of the World. ?. 15. ^ Popper, Karl R. (2002). The Logic of Scientific Discovery. Routledge. ISBN 0415-27844-9 16. ^ Peterson, Michael et al. (2003). Reason and Religious Belief 17. ^ Mackie, John L. (1982). The Miracle of Theism: Arguments For and Against the Existence of God 18. ^ Adams, Robert M. (1987). The Virtue of Faith And Other Essays in Philosophical Theology 19. ^ Creegan, Charles. (1989). Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard: Religion, Individuality and Philosophical Method 20. ^ Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Entry on Fideism 21. ^ Nielsen, Kai and D.Z. Phillips. (2005). Wittgensteinian Fideism?

Philosophy
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Continental philosophy
Continental philosophy is a term that originated among English-speaking philosophers to describe various philosophical traditions strongly influenced by certain 19th and 20th century philosophers from mainland Europe.[1] The term is typically used in contrast with analytic philosophy. The traditions comprising continental philosophy include German idealism, phenomenology, existentialism and its antecedents, hermeneutics, structuralism, post-structuralism, French feminism, and the critical theory of the Frankfurt School and some other branches of western Marxism.[2] It is difficult to identify non-trivial claims that would be common to all the preceding philosophical movements. The term "continental philosophy", like "analytic philosophy", lacks clear definition and may mark merely a family resemblance across disparate philosophical views. Some scholars have suggested the term may be more pejorative than descriptive, functioning as a label for types of western philosophy rejected or disliked by analytic philosophers.[3] Nonetheless, some scholars have ventured to identify common themes that typically characterize continental philosophy.[4] First, continental philosophers generally reject scientism, the view that the natural sciences are the best or most accurate way of understanding all phenomena. Continental philosophers often argue that science depends upon a "pre-theoretical substrate of experience", a form of the Kantian conditions of possible experience, and that scientific methods are inadequate to understand such conditions of intelligibility.[5] Second, continental philosophy usually considers these conditions of possible experience as variable: determined at least partly by factors such as context, space and time, language, culture, or history. Thus continental philosophy tends toward historicism. Where analytic philosophy tends to treat philosophy in terms of discrete problems, capable of being analyzed apart from their historical origins (much as scientists consider the history of science inessential to scientific inquiry), continental philosophy typically suggests that "philosophical argument cannot be divorced from the textual and contextual conditions of its historical emergence".[6] Third, continental philosophy typically holds that conscious human agency can change these conditions of possible experience: "if human experience is a contingent creation, then it can be recreated in other ways".[7] Thus continental philosophers tend to take a strong interest in the unity of theory and practice, and tend to see their philosophical inquiries as closely related to personal, moral, or political transformation. This tendency is very clear in the Marxist tradition ("philosophers have only analyzed the world: the point, however, is to change it"), but is also central in existentialism and post-structuralism. A final characteristic trait of continental philosophy is an emphasis on metaphilosophy. In the wake of the development and success of the natural sciences, continental philosophers have often sought to redefine the method and nature of philosophy. In some cases (such as German idealism or phenomenology), this takes the form of the traditional view that philosophy is the first, foundational, a priori science. In other cases (such as hermeneutics, critical theory, or structuralism), it is held that philosophy investigates a domain of knowledge that is irreducibly cultural or practical. Yet other continental philosophers (such 12

as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, the later Heidegger, or Derrida) harbor grave doubts about the coherence of any traditional conceptions of philosophy. Ultimately, the foregoing distinctive traits derive from a broadly Kantian thesis that the nature of knowledge and experience is bound by conditions that are not directly accessible to empirical inquiry.

History
The term "continental philosophy" was first widely used to describe university courses in the 1970s, emerging as a collective name for the philosophies then widespread in France and Germany, such as phenomenology, existentialism, structuralism, and poststructuralism.[8] It thus came to be adopted by English-speaking philosophers influenced by such schools. However, there is considerable evidence that the distinction existed well before the 1970s. Some scholars trace the distinction to the late 19th century, when Brentano, Husserl, and Reinach proposed a new philosophical method of phenomenology, a development roughly contemporaneous with work by Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell inaugurating a new philosophical method based on the analysis of language via modern logic (thus the term "analytic philosophy").[9] Other scholars,[10] however, date the break a century earlier, in the reception of the work of Immanuel Kant, the most recent philosopher considered canonical in both traditions. This dating of the splitto the start of the 19th centuryis supported by the dismissive attitude adopted by Russell and Moore toward post-Kantian idealist philosophers such as Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel,[11] and John Stuart Mill's 1840 essay on Coleridge, where Mill contrasts the Kantian-influenced thought of "Continental philosophy" and "Continental philosophers" with the English empiricism of Bentham and the 18th century generally.[12]

20th century
As the institutional roots of "continental philosophy" in many cases directly descend from those of phenomenology,[13] Edmund Husserl has always been a canonical figure in continental philosophy. Nonetheless, Husserl is also a respected subject of study in the analytic tradition.[14] Husserl's notion of a noema (a non-psychological content of thought), his correspondence with Gottlob Frege, and his investigations into the nature of logic continue to generate interest among analytic philosophers. A particularly polemical illustration of some differences between "analytic" and "continental" styles of philosophy can be found in Rudolf Carnap's "Elimination of Metaphysics through Logical Analysis of Language", which argues that Heidegger's lecture "What Is Metaphysics?" violates logical syntax to create nonsensical pseudo-statements. [15] With the rise of Hitler, many of Germany's philosophers, especially those of Jewish descent or leftist political sympathies (such as many in the Vienna Circle and the Frankfurt School), fled to England, America or the USSR. Those philosophers who remainedif they remained in academia at allhad to reconcile themselves to Nazi control of the

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universities. Others, such as Heidegger, among the most prominent German philosophers to stay in Germany, enthusiastically embraced Nazism when it came to power. Both before and after World War II there was a growth of interest in German philosophy in France. The role of the French Communist Party in liberating France meant that it became, for a brief period, the largest political movement in the country. The attendant interest in communism translated into an interest in Marx and Hegel, who were both now studied extensively for the first time in the conservative French university system. Additionally, there was a major trend towards the ideas of the phenomenologist Edmund Husserl, and toward his former assistant Martin Heidegger. Most important in this popularization of phenomenology was the author and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, who called his philosophy existentialism. (See Twentieth-Century French Philosophy)

Continental philosophy in English-speaking countries


From the early 20th century until the 1960's, continental philosophers were rarely discussed in British and American universities. The few mentions of continental philosophy were generally dismissive and hostile. However, due to student demand, philosophy departments began offering courses in continental philosophy in the late 1960's and 1970's. During this time, there also arose increased communication between the "analytic" and "continental" disciplines, although these meetings were generally antagonistic in nature. Nonetheless, it seemed for a time that the distinction between analytic and continental philosophy would eventually collapse. However, after the death of Sartre and rise of post-modernism in the 1980's, analytic philosophers became more overtly opposed to the methods and conclusions of continental philosophers. Derrida, in particular, was the target of much criticism and ridicule. At the present time, while American and British universities continue to offer a small number of courses devoted to continental philosophers, the divide between analytic and continental philosophy is perhaps wider than it was prior to the 1960's. The vast majority of academic periodicals in philosophy today only accept papers "written in a broadly analytic style". And the differentiating terms, "continental" and "analytic", appear with increasing frequency in book titles. Meanwhile, university departments in literature, the fine arts, film, sociology, and psychology have increasingly incorporated the ideas and jargon of continental philosophers into their curricula.

References
1. ^ Simon Critchley and William Schroder (eds.), A Companion to Continental Philosophy (Blackwell Publishing, 1998), p. 4. 2. ^ The above list includes only those movements common to both lists compiled by Simon Critchley, Continental Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 13 and Simon Glendinning, The Idea of Continental Philosophy (Edinburgh University Press, 2006), pp. 58-65. 3. ^ Glendinning, op. cit., p. 12.

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4. ^ The following list of four traits is adapted from Michael Rosen, "Continental Philosophy from Hegel", in A.C. Grayling (ed.), Philosophy 2: Further through the Subject, p. 665. 5. ^ Simon Critchley, Continental Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction, p. 115. 6. ^ Ibid., p. 57 7. ^ Ibid., p. 64. 8. ^ Critchley, Continental Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction, p. 38. 9. ^ See, e.g., Michael Dummett, The Origins of Analytical Philosophy (Harvard University Press, 1994), or C. Prado, A House Divided: Comparing Analytic and Continental Philosophy (Prometheus/Humanity Books, 2003). 10. ^ Critchley 2001, op. cit. 11. ^ E.g., Russell's comments in My Philosophical Development (Allen & Unwin, 1959), p. 62: "Hegelians had all kinds of arguments to prove this or that was not 'real'. Number, space, time, matter, were all professedly convicted of being self-contradictory. Nothing was real, so we were assured, except the Absolute, which could think only of itself since there was nothing else for it to think of and which thought eternally the sort of things that idealist philosophers thought in their books." 12. ^ Mill, On Bentham and Coleridge (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1950), pp. 104, 133, and 155. 13. ^ E.g., the largest academic organization devoted to furthering the study of continental philosophy is the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy. 14. ^ Kenny, Anthony (ed). The Oxford Illustrated History of Western Philosophy . ISBN 0-19285440-2

15. ^ Gregory, Wanda T. Heidegger, Carnap and Quine at the Crossroads of Language , and
Abraham D. Stone. Heidegger and Carnap on the Overcoming of Metaphysics

Further reading

Simon Critchley, Continental Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction . Oxford University Press (2001) ISBN 0-19-285359-7 Andrew Cutrofello, Continental Philosophy: A Contemporary Introduction. Routledge (2005)

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Critical theory
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In the humanities and social sciences, critical theory has two quite different meanings with different origins and histories, one originating in social theory and the other in literary criticism. Though until recently these two meanings had little to do with each other, since the 1970s there has been some overlap between these disciplines. This has led to "critical theory" becoming an umbrella term for an array of theories in English speaking academia. This article focuses primarily on the differences and similarities between the two senses of the term critical theory.

Critical theory (social theory)


The first meaning of the term critical theory was that defined by Max Horkheimer of the Frankfurt School of social science in his 1937 essay Traditional and Critical Theory: Critical theory is social theory oriented toward critiquing and changing society as a whole, in contrast to traditional theory oriented only to understanding or explaining it. Horkheimer wanted to distinguish critical theory as a radical, emancipatory form of Marxian theory, critiquing both the model of science put forward by logical positivism and what he and his colleagues saw as the covert positivism and authoritarianism of orthodox Marxism and communism. Core concepts are: (1) That critical social theory should be directed at the totality of society in its historical specificity (i.e. how it came to be configured at a specific point in time), and (2) That Critical Theory should improve understanding of society by integrating all the major social sciences, including economics, sociology, history, political science, anthropology, and psychology. Although this conception of critical theory originated with the Frankfurt School, it also prevails among other recent social scientists, such as Pierre Bourdieu, Louis Althusser and arguably Michel Foucault and Bryan Reynolds, as well as certain feminist theorists and social scientists. This version of "critical" theory derives from Kant's (18th-Century) and Marx's (19th Century) use of the term "critique", as in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and Marx's concept that his work Das Kapital (Capital) forms a "critique of political economy". For Kant's transcendental idealism, "critique" means examining and establishing the limits of the validity of a faculty, type, or body of knowledge, especially through accounting for the limitations imposed by the fundamental, irreducible concepts in use in that knowledge system. Early on, Kant's notion associated critique with the disestablishment of false, unprovable, or dogmatic philosophical, social, and political beliefs, because Kant's critique of reason involved the critique of dogmatic theological and metaphysical ideas and was intertwined with the enhancement of ethical autonomy and the Enlightenment critique of superstition and irrational authority. Marx explicitly developed this notion into the critique of ideology and linked it with the practice of social revolution, as in the famous 11th of his "Theses on Feuerbach," "Philosophers have only interpreted the world in certain ways; the point is to change it". [1] 16

This meaning of "critical theory" originated entirely within the social sciences, and there are works of critical social theory and critical social science which show no awareness of the literary/humanities version of critical theory.

Critical theory (literary criticism)


The second meaning of critical theory is that of theory used in literary criticism ("critical theory") and in the analysis and understanding of literature. This is discussed in greater detail under literary theory. This form of critical theory is not necessarily oriented toward radical social change or even toward the analysis of society, but instead specializes on the analysis of texts and text-like phenomena. It originated among literary scholars and in the discipline of literature in the 1960s and 1970s, and has really only come into broad use since the 1980s, especially as theory used in literary studies became increasingly influenced by European philosophy and social theory and thereby became more "theoretical". This version of "critical" theory derives from the notion of literary criticism as establishing and enhancing the proper aesthetic understanding and evaluation of literature, as articulated, for example, in Joseph Addison's notion of a critic as one who helps understand and interpret literary works: "A true critic ought to dwell rather upon excellencies than imperfections, to discover the concealed beauties of a writer, and communicate to the world such things as are worth their observation." [2] This notion of criticism ultimately goes back to Aristotle's Poetics as a theory of literature. This meaning of "critical theory" originated entirely within the humanities. However, there are works of literary critical theory that show no awareness of the sociological version of critical theory.

Relationship between the two versions


These two meanings of critical theory derive from two different intellectual traditions associated with the meaning of criticism and critique, both of which derive ultimately from the Greek word kritikos meaning judgment or discernment and in their present forms go back to the 18th century. While they can be considered completely independent intellectual pursuits, increasingly scholars are interested in the areas of critique where the two overlap. To use an epistemological distinction introduced by Jrgen Habermas in 1968 in his Erkenntnis und Interesse (Knowledge and Human Interests), critical theory in literary studies is ultimately a form of hermeneutics, i.e. knowledge via interpretation to understand the meaning of human texts and symbolic expressions, while critical social theory is, in contrast, a form of self-reflective knowledge involving both understanding and theoretical explanation to reduce entrapment in systems of domination or dependence, obeying the emancipatory interest in expanding the scope of autonomy and reducing the scope of domination. From this perspective, much literary critical theory, since it is focused on interpretation and explanation rather than on social transformation, would be regarded as

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positivistic or traditional rather than critical theory in the Kantian or Marxian sense. Critical theory in literature and the humanities in general does not necessarily involve a normative dimension, whereas critical social theory does, either through criticizing society from some general theory of values, norms, or oughts, or through criticizing it in terms of its own espoused values.

Overlap between the two versions of critical theory


Nevertheless, a certain amount of overlap has come about, initiated both from the critical social theory and the literary-critical theory sides. It was distinctive of the Frankfurt School's version of critical theory from the beginning, especially in the work of Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse, and Leo Lowenthal, because of their focus on the role of false consciousness and ideology in the perpetuation of capitalism, to analyze works of culture, including literature, music, art, both "high culture" and "popular culture" or "mass culture." Thus it was to some extent a theory of literature and a method of literary criticism (as in Walter Benjamin's interpretation of Baudelaire and Kafka, Leo Lowenthal's interpretations of Shakespeare, Ibsen, etc., Adorno's interpretations of Kafka, Valery, Balzac, Beckett, etc.) and (see below) in the 1960s started to influence the literary sort of critical theory.

Within social theory


In the late 1960s Jrgen Habermas of the Frankfurt School, redefined critical theory in a way that freed it from a direct tie to Marxism or the prior work of the Frankfurt School. In Habermas's epistemology, critical knowledge was conceptualized as knowledge that enabled human beings to emancipate themselves from forms of domination through selfreflection and took psychoanalysis as the paradigm of critical knowledge. This expanded considerably the scope of what counted as critical theory within the social sciences, which would include such approaches as world systems theory, feminist theory, postcolonial theory, critical race theory, performance studies, transversal poetics, queer theory, social ecology, the theory of communicative action (Jrgen Habermas), structuration theory, and neo-Marxian theory.

Within literary theory


From the literary side, starting in the 1960s literary scholars, reacting especially against the New Criticism of the previous decades, which tried to analyze literary texts purely internally, began to incorporate into their analyses and interpretations of literary works initially semiotic, linguistic, and interpretive theory, then structuralism, Lacanian psychoanalysis, post-structuralism, and deconstruction as well as Continental philosophy, especially phenomenology and hermeneutics, and critical social theory and various other forms of neo-Marxian theory. Thus literary criticism became highly theoretical and some of those practicing it began referring to the theoretical dimension of their work as "critical theory", i.e. philosophically inspired theory of literary criticism. And thus incidentally

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critical theory in the sociological sense also became, especially among literary scholars of left-wing sympathies, one of a number of influences upon and streams within critical theory in the literary sense. Furthermore, along with the expansion of the mass media and mass/popular culture in the 1960s and 1970s and the blending of social and cultural criticism and literary criticism, the methods of both kinds of critical theory sometimes intertwined in the analysis of phenomena of popular culture, as in the emerging field of cultural studies, in which concepts deriving from Marxian theory, post-structuralism, semiology, psychoanalysis and feminist theory would be found in the same interpretive work. Both strands were often present in the various modalities of postmodern theory.

Language and construction


The two points at which there is the greatest overlap or mutual impingement of the two versions of critical theory are in their interrelated foci on language, symbolism, and communication and in their focus on construction.

Language and communication


From the 1960s and 1970s onward, language, symbolism, text, and meaning became foundational to theory in the humanities and social sciences, through the short-term and long-term influences of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Ferdinand de Saussure, George Herbert Mead, Noam Chomsky, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida and other thinkers in the traditions of linguistic and analytic philosophy, structural linguistics, symbolic interactionism, hermeneutics, semiology, linguistically oriented psychoanalysis (Jacques Lacan, Alfred Lorenzer), and deconstruction. When, in the 1970s and 1980s, Jrgen Habermas also redefined critical social theory as a theory of communication, i.e. communicative competence and communicative rationality on the one hand, distorted communication on the other, the two versions of critical theory began to overlap or intertwine to a much greater degree than before.

Construction
Both versions of critical theory have focused on the processes of synthesis, production, or construction by which the phenomena and objects of human communication, culture, and political consciousness come about. Whether it is through the transformational rules by which the deep structure of language becomes its surface structure (Chomsky), the universal pragmatic principles through which mutual understanding is generated (Habermas), the semiotic rules by which objects of daily usage or of fashion obtain their meanings (Barthes), the psychological processes by which the phenomena of everyday consciousness are generated (psychoanalytic thinkers), the episteme that underlies our cognitive formations (Foucault), and so on, there is a common interest in the processes (often of a linguistic or symbolic kind) that give rise to observable phenomena. Here there

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is significant mutual influence among aspects of the different versions of critical theory. Ultimately this emphasis on production and construction goes back to the revolution wrought by Kant in philosophy, namely his focus in the Critique of Pure Reason on synthesis according to rules as the fundamental activity of the mind that creates the order of our experience.

See also
Lists

List of basic critical theory topics List of major critical theorists List of works in critical theory

Related subjects

American Studies in Britain Comparative Literature Continental philosophy Critique of technology Cultural studies Culture theory Critical management studies Literary theory 20

Political philosophy Social criticism Cultural Marxism Hermeneutics Critical Ethnography

References

An accessible primer for the literary aspect of critical theory is Jonathan Culler's Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction ISBN 0-19-285383-X A survey of and introduction to the current state of critical social theory is Craig Calhoun's Critical Social Theory: Culture, History, and the Challenge of Difference (Blackwell, 1995) ISBN 1-55786-288-5

External links

"Critical Theory", Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy "Death is Not the End" N+1 magazine's short history of academic critical theory.

Deconstruction
Deconstruction is a term in contemporary philosophy, literary criticism, and the social sciences, denoting a process by which the texts and languages of Western philosophy (in particular) appear to shift and complicate in meaning when read in light of the assumptions and absences they reveal within themselves. Jacques Derrida coined the term in the 1960s, and proved more forthcoming with negative, rather than a pined-for positive, analyses of the school. Subjects relevant to deconstruction include the philosophy of meaning in Western thought, and the ways that meaning is constructed by Western writers, texts, and readers and understood by readers. Though Derrida himself denied deconstruction was a method or school of philosophy, or indeed anything outside of reading the text itself, the term has been used by others to describe Derrida's particular methods of textual criticism, which involved discovering, recognizing, and understanding the underlyingand unspoken and implicitassumptions, ideas, and frameworks that form the basis for thought and belief, for example, in complicating the ordinary division made between nature and culture. Derrida's deconstruction was drawn mainly from the work of Heidegger and his notion of destruktion but also from Levinas and his ideas upon the Other.

The difficulty with defining deconstruction


The problems of definition
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The term deconstruction in the context of Western philosophy is highly resistant to formal definition. Martin Heidegger was perhaps the first to use the term (in contrast to Nietzschean demolition). Heidegger's central concern was to deconstruct the tradition of Western philosophy. The English term is an element in a series of translations (from Husserl's Abbau and Heidegger's Destruktion to Jacques Derrida's dconstruction), and it has been explored by others, including Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Paul de Man, Jonathan Culler, Barbara Johnson, J. Hillis Miller, Jean-Franois Lyotard, and Geoffrey Bennington. These authors have resisted calls to define the word succinctly. When asked what deconstruction is, Derrida once stated, "I have no simple and formalizable response to this question. All my essays are attempts to have it out with this formidable question" (Derrida, 1985, p. 4). In other words, the writer most closely associated with the term was himself unable to define it. There is a great deal of confusion as to what kind of thing deconstruction is whether it is a school of thought (it is certainly not so in the singular), a method of reading (it has often been reduced to this by various attempts to define it formally), or, as some call it, a "textual event" (a characterization implied by the Derrida quotation just given) and determining what authority to accord to a particular attempt at delimiting it. Many pages have been devoted to attempts to define deconstruction or to demonstrate why attempts at delimitation are misconceived. Most of these attempts (including those signed by critics who are considered deconstructionist) are difficult to read and resistant to summary. In contrast, there also exist many secondary texts which have attempted to explain deconstruction in a straightforward manner. However, these works (with titles such as Deconstruction for Beginners[1] and Deconstructions: A User's Guide[2]) have been criticized by some scholars for being too detached from the original texts and contradictory to the concept of deconstruction.[citation needed] Surveying the deconstructive texts and the secondary literature, one is confronted with a bafflingly heterogeneous range of arguments. These include claims that deconstruction can sort out the Western tradition in its entirety, by highlighting and discrediting unjustified privileges accorded to white males and other hegemonists. On the other hand, some critics claim that deconstruction is a dangerous form of nihilism that wishes the utter destruction of Western scientific and ethical values. As a rule, deconstruction is ridiculed by members of the political right of just about any stripe. Its reception on the left is far more varied, ranging from hostility to co-option:

While there is no doubting that principal figures associated with deconstruction in France have been "leftist" in their political positions, Heidegger's place in deconstruction complicates matters considerably, as do the politics of Paul de Man in early adulthood. Heidegger assumed the rectorship of the University of Freiburg from 1933-1934 as a member of the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazi Party), while de Man worked, during the German occupation of Belgium, as a writer for a collaborationist newspaper, Le Soir. From a racial-religious perspective, deconstruction has no clear sectarian identity. For example, Derrida's views on religion are anything but sectarian. As a Jew raised 22

in a walled Jewish community in colonial Algeria, Derrida rejected what he regarded as the countersignature of anti-Semitism by Algerian Jewish institutions of the 1940s. He is almost certainly an atheist in terms of dogmatic theology, and has written about religion in terms of what was shared among the Abrahamic faiths. Due to the open nature of Derrida's engagement with religion, deconstruction-andreligion attracts attention from scholars across disciplines. Those writing sympathetically about deconstruction tend to use an "idiosyncratic" (sometimes in fact imitative) style with numerous neologisms, a bent toward playfulness and irony, and a massive amount of allusion across many corners of the Western canon. Critics assert that when one takes the time to deconstruct writings about deconstruction one discovers it was not worth the effort. Deconstructionism is ultimately and literally a meaningless philosophy. It is devoid of meaning and is, in fact, a direct attack on any possibility of meaning, because if the reader alone creates meaning there can be no truth; one persons meaning is equal to anothers so there is no possibility of reasoned discourse leading to actionable conclusions. Deconstruction leads nowhere and means nothing.

What deconstruction is not


It is easier to explain what deconstruction is not than what it is. According to Derrida, deconstruction is not an analysis, nor a critique, a method, an act, or an operation (Derrida, 1985, p. 3). Further, deconstruction is not, properly speaking, a synonym for "destruction". Rather, according to Barbara Johnson (1981), it is a specific kind of analytical "reading":

Deconstruction is in fact much closer to the original meaning of the word 'analysis' itself, which etymologically means "to undo" a virtual synonym for "to de-construct." ... If anything is destroyed in a deconstructive reading, it is not the text, but the claim to unequivocal domination of one mode of signifying over another. A deconstructive reading is a reading which analyzes the specificity of a text's critical difference from itself.

Some detractors claim deconstruction amounts to little more than nihilism or relativism. Its proponents deny this; It is not the abandonment of all meaning, but attempts to demonstrate that Western thought has not satisfied its quest for a "transcendental signifier" that will give meaning to all other signs. According to Derrida, "Deconstruction is not an enclosure in nothingness, but an openness to the other" (Derrida, 1984, p. 124), and an attempt "to discover the non-place or non-lieu which would be that 'other' of philosophy" (ibid. p. 112).

Approaching a definition of deconstruction


Part of the difficulty in defining deconstruction arises from the fact that deconstruction cannot escape itself; the term is best interpreted as a conceptual verb rather than as a noun. The word itself is subject to the linguistical limitations and effects which it purports in its 23

own definition. Followers of Derrida do not view deconstruction as a concept standing outside of text, which can act upon all text without itself being affected. The act of definition, in this view, is an attempt to "finish" or "complete" deconstruction, yet deconstruction is never viewed as complete, but a continuous process;'a living philosophy' being adjusted within itself. Nevertheless, writers have provided a number of rough definitions. One of the most popular definitions of deconstruction is by Paul de Man, who explained, "It's possible, within text, to frame a question or undo assertions made in the text, by means of elements which are in the text, which frequently would be precisely structures that play off the rhetorical against grammatical elements." (de Man, in Moynihan 1986, at 156.) Thus, viewed in this way, "the term 'deconstruction' refers in the first instance to the way in which the 'accidental' features of a text can be seen as betraying, subverting, its purportedly 'essential' message" (Rorty 1995). (The word accidental is usually interpreted here in the sense of incidental.) A more whimsical definition is by John D. Caputo, who defines deconstruction thus: "Whenever deconstruction finds a nutshell -- a secure axiom or a pithy maxim -- the very idea is to crack it open and disturb this tranquility. Indeed, that is a good rule of thumb in deconstruction. That is what deconstruction is all about, its very meaning and mission, if it has any. One might even say that cracking nutshells is what deconstruction is. In a nutshell. ...Have we not run up against a paradox and an aporia [something impassable]?...the paralysis and impossibility of an aporia is just what impels deconstruction, what rouses it out of bed in the morning..." (Caputo 1997, p.32) Many definitions portray deconstruction as a method, project, or school of thought. For example, the philosopher David B. Allison (an early translator of Derrida) stated:

[Deconstruction] signifies a project of critical thought whose task is to locate and 'take apart' those concepts which serve as the axioms or rules for a period of thought, those concepts which command the unfolding of an entire epoch of metaphysics. 'Deconstruction' is somewhat less negative than the Heideggerian or Nietzschean terms 'destruction' or 'reversal'; it suggests that certain foundational concepts of metaphysics will never be entirely eliminated...There is no simple 'overcoming' of metaphysics or the language of metaphysics.

(Introduction by Allison, in Derrida, 1973, p. xxxii, n. 1.) Similarly, in the context of religious studies Paul Ricoeur (1983) defined deconstruction as a way of uncovering the questions behind the answers of a text or tradition (Klein 1995).

Logocentrism and the critique of binary oppositions


Deconstruction's central concern is a radical critique of the Enlightenment project and of metaphysics, including in particular the founding texts by such philosophers as Plato, Rousseau, and Husserl, but also other sorts of texts, including literature. Deconstruction 24

identifies in the Western philosophical tradition a "logocentrism" or "metaphysics of presence" (sometimes known as phallogocentrism) which holds that speech-thought (the logos) is a privileged, ideal, and self-present entity, through which all discourse and meaning are derived. This logocentrism is the primary target of deconstruction. One typical form of deconstructive reading is the critique of binary oppositions, or the criticism of dichotomous thought. A central deconstructive argument holds that, in all the classic dualities of Western thought, one term is privileged or "central" over the other. The privileged, central term is the one most associated with the phallus and the logos. Examples include:

speech over writing presence over absence identity over difference fullness over emptiness meaning over meaninglessness mastery over submission life over death

Derrida argues in Of Grammatology (translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and published in English in 1976) that, in each such case, the first term is classically conceived as original, authentic, and superior, while the second is thought of as secondary, derivative, or even "parasitic." These binary oppositions, or "violent hierarchies", and others of their form, he argues, must be deconstructed. This deconstruction is effected in two ways (La Double Sance). He argues that these oppositions cannot be simply transcended; given the thousands of years of philosophical history behind them, it would be disingenuous to attempt to move directly to a domain of thought beyond these distinctions. So deconstruction attempts to compensate for these historical power imbalances, undertaking the difficult project of thinking through the philosophical implications of questioning and presenting complications to show the contingency of such divisions. The second "science" involves the emergence or eruption of a new conception. One can begin to conceive a conceptual terrain away from these oppositions: the next project of deconstruction would be to develop concepts which fall under neither one term of these oppositions nor the other. Much of the philosophical work of deconstruction has been devoted to developing such ideas and their implications, of which diffrance may be the prototype (as it denotes neither simple identity nor simple difference). Derrida spoke in an interview (first published in French in 1967) about such "concepts," which he called merely "marks" in order to distinguish them from proper philosophical concepts:

...[I]t has been necessary to analyze, to set to work, within the text of the history of philosophy, as well as within the so-called literary text,..., certain marks, shall we say,... that by analogy (I underline) I have called undecidables, that is,

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unities of simulacrum, "false" verbal properties (nominal or semantic) that can no longer be included within philosophical (binary) opposition, resisting and disorganizing it, without ever constituting a third term, without ever leaving room for a solution in the form of speculative dialectics. (Positions, trans. Alan Bass, pp. 42-43) As can be seen in this discussion of its terms' undecidable, unresolvable complexity, deconstruction requires a high level of comfort with suspended, deferred decision; a deconstructive thinker must be willing to work with terms whose precise meaning has not been, and perhaps cannot be, established. (This is often given as a major reason for the difficult writing style of deconstructive texts.) Critics of deconstruction find this unacceptable as philosophy; many feel that, by working in this manner with unspecified terms, deconstruction ignores the primary task of philosophy, which they say is the creation and elucidation of concepts. This deep criticism is a result of a fundamental difference of opinion about the nature of philosophy, and is unlikely to be resolved simply.

Text and deconstruction


According to deconstructive readers, one of the phallogocentrisms of modernism is the distinction between speech (logos) and writing, with writing historically being thought of as derivative to logos. As part of subverting the presumed dominance of logos over text, Derrida argued that the idea of a speech-writing dichotomy contains within it the idea of a very expansive view of textuality that subsumes both speech and writing. According to Jacques Derrida, "There is nothing outside of the text" (Derrida, 1976, at 158). That is, text is thought of not merely as linear writing derived from speech, but any form of depiction, marking, or storage, including the marking of the human brain by the process of cognition or by the senses. In a sense, deconstruction is simply a way to read text (as broadly defined); any deconstruction has a text as its object and subject. This accounts for deconstruction's broad cross-disciplinary scope. Deconstruction has been applied to literature, art, architecture, science, mathematics, philosophy, and psychology, and any other disciplines that can be thought of as involving the act of marking. In deconstruction, text can be thought of as "dead", in the sense that once the markings are made, the markings remain in suspended animation and do not change in themselves. Thus, what an author says about his text doesn't revive it, and is just another text commenting on the original, along with the commentary of others. In this view, when an author says, "You have understood my work perfectly," this utterance constitutes an addition to the textual system, along with what the reader said was understood in and about the original text, and not a resuscitation of the original dead text. The reader has an opinion, the author has an 26

opinion. Communication is possible not because the text has a transcendental signification, but because the brain tissue of the author contains similar "markings" as the brain tissue of the reader. These brain markings, however, are unstable and fragmentary.

Undeconstructibility
See also: deconstruction-and-religion Deconstruction exists in the interval between constructions and undeconstructibility. The primary exemplar of this relationship is the relationship between the law, deconstruction, and justice. Derrida summarizes the relationship by saying that justice is the undeconstructible condition that makes deconstruction possible.[3] However, the justice referred to by Derrida is indeterminate and not a transcendent ideal. To quote Derrida, it is "a justice in itself, if such a thing exists, outside or beyond law".[4] The law is made up of necessary human constructions while justice is the undeconstructible call to make laws. The law belongs to the realm of the present, possible, and calculable while justice belongs to the realm of the absent, impossible, and incalculable. Deconstruction bridges the gap between the law and justice as the experience of applying the law in a just manner. Justice demands that a singular occurrence be responded to with a new, uniquely tailored application of the law. Thus, a deconstructive reading of the law is a leap from calculability towards incalculability. In deconstruction, justice takes on the structure of a promise that absence and impossibility can be made present and possible. Insofar as deconstruction is motivated by such a promise, it escapes the traditional presence/absence binary because a promise is neither present nor absent. Therefore, a deconstructive reading will never definitively achieve justice. Justice is always deferred. Derrida works out his idea of justice in Specters of Marx and in his essay "Force of Law" in Acts of Religion; he works out his idea of hospitality in Of Hospitality; Similarly for democracy see Rogues: Two Essays on Reason; friendship see The Politics of Friendship; the other see The Gift of Death; the future see Given Time: I. Counterfeit Money.

The terminology of deconstruction


Deconstruction makes use of a number of terms, many of which are coined or repurposed, that illustrate or follow the process of deconstruction. Among these words are diffrance, trace, criture, supplement, hymen, pharmakon, slippage, marge, entame, parergon, text, and same.

Diffrance
Against the metaphysics of presence, deconstruction brings a (non)concept called diffrance. This French neologism is, on the deconstructive argument, properly neither a

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word nor a concept; it names the non-coincidence of meaning both synchronically (one French homonym means "differing") and diachronically (another French homonym means "deferring"). Because the resonance and conflict between these two French meanings is difficult to convey tersely in English, the word diffrance is usually left untranslated.

Trace
The idea of diffrance also brings with it the idea of trace. A trace is what a sign differs/defers from. It is the absent part of the sign's presence. In other words, through the act of diffrance, a sign leaves behind a trace, which is whatever is left over after everything present has been accounted for. According to Derrida, "the trace itself does not exist" (Derrida, 1976, p. 167) because it is self-effacing. That is, "[i]n presenting itself, it becomes effaced" (Ibid., p. 125). Because all signifiers viewed as present in Western thought will necessarily contain traces of other (absent) signifiers, the signifier can be neither wholly present nor wholly absent.

criture
In deconstruction, the word criture (usually translated as writing in English) is appropriated to refer not just to systems of graphic communication, but to all systems inhabited by diffrance. A related term, called archi-criture, refers to the positive side of writing, or writing as an ultimate principle, rather than as a derivative of logos (speech). In other words, whereas the Western logos encompasses writing, it is equally valid to view archi-criture as encompassing the logos, and therefore speech can be thought of as a form of writing: writing on air waves, or on the memory of the listener or recording device, but there is no fundamental dominance at work. This, as described above, is an element of Derrida's criticisms against phallogocentrism in general.

Supplement, originary lack, and invagination


The word supplement is taken from the philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau, who defined it as "an inessential extra added to something complete in itself." According to Derrida, Western thinking is characterized by the "logic of supplementation," which is actually two apparently contradictory ideas. From one perspective, a supplement serves to enhance the presence of something which is already complete and self-sufficient. Thus, writing is the supplement of speech, Eve was the supplement of Adam, and masturbation is the supplement of "natural sex." But simultaneously, according to Derrida, the Western idea of the supplement has within it the idea that a thing that has a supplement cannot be truly "complete in itself." If it were complete without the supplement, it shouldn't need, or long-for, the supplement. The fact that a thing can be added-to to make it even more "present" or "whole" means that there is a hole (which Derrida called an originary lack) and the supplement can fill that hole. The metaphorical opening of this "hole" Derrida called "invagination." From this perspective, the supplement does not enhance something's presence, but rather underscores its absence. 28

Thus, what really happens during supplementation is that something appears from one perspective to be whole, complete, and self-sufficient, with the supplement acting as an external appendage. However, from another perspective, the supplement also fills a hole within the interior of the original "something." Thus, the supplement represents an indeterminacy between externality and interiority.

Hymen
The word hymen comes from the Greek word for skin, membrane or the vaginal hymen. In deconstruction it is used to refer to the interplay between, the normally considered mutually exclusive terms of, inside and outside. The hymen is the membrane of intersection where it becomes impossible to distinguish whether the membrane is on the inside or the outside. And in the absence of the complete hymen, the distinction between inside and outside disappears. Thus, in a way, the hymen defies formal logic and is neither outside nor inside, and after penetration, is both inside and outside. Showing the problematics of a simple word like hymen questions what "is inside" and "is outside" mean, they cannot here be considered in the usual logic of mutual exclusion (sometimes called law of excluded middle). Thus we get a contrast to formal logic, and especially the ancient and revered principle of non-contradiction, which from Aristotle says "one cannot say of something that it is and that it is not in the same respect and at the same time." Yet, the hymen is inside and is not inside in the same respect and at the same time (ie, using a formal logic translation of "inside" to "not outside"). Much in history of science and philosophy depended on the sanctity of this law of noncontradiction, for example see, Logical Positivism, Analytic Philosophy.

Pharmakon
The word pharmakon refers to the play between cure and poison. It derives from the ancient Greek word, used by Plato in Phaedrus and Phaedo, which had an undecidable meaning and could be translated to mean anything ranging from a drug, recipe, spell, medicine, or poison.

An illustration: Derrida's reading of Lvi-Strauss


A more concrete example, drawn from one of Derrida's most famous works, may help to clarify the typical manner in which deconstruction works. Structuralist analysis generally relies on the search for underlying binary oppositions as an explanatory device. The structuralist anthropology of Claude Lvi-Strauss argued that such oppositions are found in all cultures, not only in Western culture, and thus that the device of binary opposition was fundamental to meaning.

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Deconstruction challenges the explanatory value of these oppositions but does not seek to abolish them. There are three moments to deconstruction, which may be mixed and simultaneous: 1. The revelation of an asymmetry in the binary opposition, suggesting an implied hierarchy. 2. The failure of the hierarchy: the two terms are found to fail in a certain case. 3. The third moment is the displacement of the terms of the opposition, often in the emergence of a neologism or new meaning. Take, for example, the nature/culture opposition. This binary opposition was prevalent in many discussions during the 20th century. However, consider something like incest. Incest is a taboo, a "cultural rule," that is found by anthropologists, universally. Being universal it is then also indistinguishable from what is called "natural." Incest disrupts the simplicity of this nature/culture division and shows that the opposition relies for its meaning upon something else. The emergence then of a neologism to highlight this "weakness" in the nature/culture division can be considered. In his book Of Grammatology, Derrida offers one example of deconstruction applied to a theory of Lvi-Strauss. Following many other Western thinkers, Lvi-Strauss distinguished between "savage" societies lacking writing and "civilized" societies that have writing. This distinction implies that human beings developed verbal communication (speech) before some human cultures developed writing, and that speech is thus conceptually as well as chronologically prior to writing (thus speech would be more authentic, closer to truth and meaning, and more immediate than writing). Although the development of writing is generally considered to be an advance, after an encounter with the Nambikwara Indians of Brazil, Lvi-Strauss suggested that societies without writing were also lacking violence and domination (in other words, savages are truly noble savages). He further argued that the primary function of writing is to facilitate slavery (or social inequality, exploitation, and domination in general). This claim has been rejected by most later historians and anthropologists as strictly incorrect. There is abundant historical evidence that many hunter-gatherer societies and later non-literate tribes had significant amounts of violence and warfare in their cultures, though it must be added that Derrida never denied that such societies were significantly violent. For that matter, hierarchical and highly unequal societies have flourished in the absence of writing. Derrida's interpretation begins with taking Lvi-Strauss's discussion of writing at its word: what is important in writing for Lvi-Strauss is not the use of markings on a piece of paper to communicate information, but rather their use in domination and violence. Derrida further observes that, based on Lvi-Strauss's own ethnography, the Nambikwara really do use language for domination and violence. Derrida thus concludes that writing, in fact, is prior to speech. That is, he reverses the opposition between speech and writing.

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Derrida was not making fun of Lvi-Strauss, nor did he mean to supersede, replace, or proclaim himself superior to Lvi-Strauss (a common theme of deconstruction is the desire to be critical without assuming a posture of superiority). He was using his deconstruction of Lvi-Strauss to question a common belief in Western culture, dating back at least to Plato: that speech is prior to, more authentic than, and closer to "true meaning" than writing.

Criticisms of deconstruction
Critics of deconstruction take issue with what they characterize as empty obscurantism and lack of seriousness in deconstructive writings. In addition, critics often equate deconstruction with nihilism or relativism and criticize deconstruction accordingly.

Anti-essentialist criticism
Neo-pragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty has criticized Derrida's assertion that deconstruction is not a method, but something that is "already, all the time" [citation needed] occurring in texts. Anti-essentialists allege that Derrida's position is close to positing certain protocols, gestures, and structures which is intrinsic to all texts, and thus close to positing an "essential" privileged reading of a text. Rorty specifically criticizes deconstruction's tendency to "treat every text as 'about' the same old philosophical oppositions, space and time, sensible and intelligible, subject and object, being and becoming..." [5] According to Rorty, in making the tacit assumption that the traditional structures and metaphors in philosophy are always and already present within all cultural discourse, philosophy is reelevated to a position at the center of culture, a notion which pragmatism seeks to eschew at all costs. This, Rorty says, is a "self-deceptive attempt to magnify the importance of an academic specialty."[6] In addition (and this is less a criticism of Derrida himself than of his followers in literary criticism), Rorty regards the de Manian attempts to privilege literary language over others, and to repeatedly prove the impossibility of reading[7] as another form of metaphysics, "another inversion of a traditional philosophical position..that nevertheless remains within the great range of alternatives specified by 'the discourse of philosophy." [8] In general, anti-essentialists may still accept the validity of deconstructive readings but view them as the result of subjective interaction with a text. Then each reading is one of many possible readings, rather than an excavation of something "within" the text. "The truth" of any single reading is not privileged in that case but open to critical analysis.

History of deconstruction
This section stub requires expansion.

During the period between the late 1960s and the early 1980s many thinkers influenced by deconstruction, including Derrida, Paul de Man, Geoffrey Hartman, and J. Hillis Miller, worked at Yale University. This group came to be known as the Yale school and was especially influential in literary criticism, as de Man, Miller, and Hartman were all primarily literary critics. Several of these theorists were subsequently affiliated with the

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University of California Irvine. (At a faculty meeting of the Department of English, Professor Martin Price, the chairman, while observing the surfeit of deconstructionists flooding the University with more hires in sight, asked his colleagues, "I can understand hiring a few deconstructionists here and there. But do we really need to corner the market?")

Precursors
Deconstruction has significant ties with much of Western philosophy; even considering only Derrida's work, there are existing deconstructive texts about the works of at least many dozens of important philosophers. However, deconstruction emerged from a clearly delineated philosophical context:

Derrida's earliest work, including the texts that introduced the term "deconstruction," dealt with the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl: Derrida's first publication was a book-length Introduction to Husserl's The Origin of Geometry, and Speech and Phenomena, an early work, dealt largely with phenomenology. A student and prior interpreter of Husserl's, Martin Heidegger, was one of the most significant influences on Derrida's thought: Derrida's Of Spirit deals directly with Heidegger, but Heidegger's influence on deconstruction is much broader than that one volume. The psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud is an important reference for much of deconstruction: The Post Card, important essays in Writing and Difference, Archive Fever, and many other deconstructive works deal primarily with Freud. The work of Friedrich Nietzsche is alleged to be a forerunner of deconstruction in form and substance, as Derrida writes in Spurs: Nietzsche's Styles. In Of Grammatology, Derrida makes clear that the work of Andr Leroi-Gourhan is important to the formulation of deconstruction and grammatology. Not only does Derrida refer the thought of gramm to Leroi-Gourhan's use of the concepts of "exteriorization" and "program," but he also makes use of Leroi-Gourhan's understanding of life and of human life to formulate his own concept of writing. Leroi-Gourhan, according to Derrida, makes it possible to think the history of life as the history of the gramm, and in this context Derrida states that lifein the sense of the great evolving movement of the inscription of difference in which the history of life consistsis "what I have called diffrance."[9] The structuralism of Ferdinand de Saussure, and other forms of post-structuralism that evolved contemporaneously with deconstruction (such as the work of Maurice Blanchot, Michel Foucault, Louis Althusser, Jacques Lacan, etc.), were the immediate intellectual climate for the formation of deconstruction. In many cases, these authors were close friends, colleagues, or correspondents of Derrida's.

Deconstruction as literary trope


Deconstruction has been directly used and / or parodied in a large number of literary texts. Native American novelist Gerald Vizenor claims an extensive debt to deconstructionist 32

ideas in attacking essentialist notions of race. Writer Percival Everett goes further in satire, actually incorporating fictional conversations between a number of leading deconstructionists within his fictions. Comic author David Lodges work contains a number of figures whose belief in the deconstructionist project is undermined by contact with nonacademic figures (cf Nice Work). The difficult and verbose nature of many deconstructionist writings makes them a popular figure of fun in both Campus novels and anti-intellectual fiction.

Deconstruction in popular media and culture


In popular media, deconstruction has been seized upon by conservative writers as a central example of what is wrong with modern academia. Editorials and columns come out with some frequency pointing to deconstruction as a sign of how self-evidently absurd English departments have become, and of how traditional values are no longer being taught to students. Conservatives frequently treat deconstruction as being equivalent to Marxism. These criticisms became particularly prevalent when it was discovered that Paul de Man had written pro-Nazi articles during World War II, due to what was seen as the inadequate and offensive response of many deconstructionist thinkers, especially Derrida, to this revelation. Popular criticism of deconstruction also intensified following the Sokal affair, which many people took as an indicator of the quality of deconstructionism as a whole, despite Sokal's insistence that his hoax proved nothing of the sort. Deconstruction is also used by many popular sources as a synonym for revisionism - for instance, the CBS mini-series, The Reagans was presented as a "deconstruction" of the Reagan administration. In popular parlance, 'to deconstruct' is often used with the sense of dismantling the opinions, legitimacy, or value of other groups or individuals; by 'deconstructing' your opponent, you lay bare their inferiority or their subconscious or ill motives. This sense of the term, however, was neither suggested nor endorsed by Derrida. The term is also popularly used as generally synonymous with analysis of any kind, though particularly the analysis of culture; this usage doesn't necessarily imply hostility towards the subject of analysis. Finally, the term is used in pop-culture criticism to refer to a story (novel, film, etc.) which presents a well-known concept or plot in a way which intentionally reverses or subverts the common elements of the original, with the intention of laying bare the underlying assumptions in it. This can be done either as a criticism or parody of the original, or as an attempt to re-vitalize it by eliminating what the author sees as unnecessary accretions (the later is sometime referred to as a reconstruction rather than deconstruction). For example, the animated film Shrek can be considered a deconstruction of popular fairy tales, while the graphic novel Watchmen is often described as a deconstruction of the super-heroic genre. The term is also used in this manner to describe much older parodies such as Don Quixote and Gulliver's Travels, which deconstruct the concepts of knightly honor and the genre of 33

travelogues, respectively. This use of the term, which is only tangentially connected to Derrida's original, seems to be taking hold among various fandoms in recent years.

See also

Continental philosophy cultural movement Deconstructivism: an architectural movement inspired by deconstruction deconstruction-and-religion feminism feminist theory indeterminacy (philosophy) intentional fallacy list of deconstructionists literary criticism

literary theory phenomenology post-modernism post-structuralism psychoanalysis queer theory recursionism structuralism

External links

"Deconstruction: Some Assumptions" by John Lye A Bibliography of Literary Theory, Criticism, and Philology by Jos ngel Garca Landa (Deconstruction subject not found) Ten ways of thinking about deconstruction by Willy Maley Archive of the international conference "Deconstructing Mimesis - Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe" about the work of Lacoue-Labarthe and his mimetic version of deconstruction, held at the Sorbonne in January 2006 How To Deconstruct Almost Anything - My Postmodern Adventure by Chip Morningstar; a cynical introduction to 'deconstruction' from the perspective of a software engineer. Jacques Derrida : The Perchance of a Coming of the Otherwoman. The Deconstruction of Phallogocentrism from Duel to Duo by Carole Dely, english translation by Wilson Baldridge, at Sens Public A satirical look at deconstruction from The Onion. Ellen Lupton on deconstruction in Graphic Design Deconstruction of fashion; La moda en la posmodernidad by Adolfo Vasquez Rocca PhD

References

Culler, Jonathan. On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism . ISBN 978-0-8014-1322-3.

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Derrida, Jacques, "Letter to A Japanese Friend," Derrida and Diffrance, ed. David Wood and Robert Bernasconi, Warwick: Parousia, 1985, p. 1. Derrida, Jacques, Of Grammatology. Trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. ISBN 978-0-8018-5830-7 Derrida, Jacques, Positions. Trans. Alan Bass. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1981. ISBN 978-0-226-14331-6 Derrida, Jacques. Speech and Phenomena and Other Essays on Husserl's Theory of Signs. Trans. David B. Allison. Evanston: Northwestern UP, 1973. ISBN 978-08101-0590-4. Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory: An Introduction. ISBN 978-0-8166-1251-2 Ellis, John M. Against Deconstruction Princeton: Princeton UP, 1989. ISBN 978-0691-06754-4. Johnson, Barbara. The Critical Difference. 1981. Klein, Anne Carolyn. Meeting the Great Bliss Queen: Buddhists, Feminists, and the Art of the Self. Boston: Beacon, 1995. ISBN 978-0-8070-7306-3. John W McGinley, " 'The Written' as the Vocation of Conceiving Jewishly". ISBN 978-0-595-40488-9. Moynihan, Robert, Recent Imagining: Interviews with Harold Bloom, Geoffrey Hartman, Paul DeMan, J. Hillis Miller . Shoe String, 1986. ISBN 978-0-208-021205. Rorty, Richard, "From Formalism to Poststructuralism". The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, vol. 8. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995. Stiegler, Bernard, Technics and Time, 1: The Fault of Epimetheus. Trans. Richard Beardsworth & George Collins. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998. ISBN 0804730415 Stiegler, Bernard, "Derrida and Technology: Fidelity at the Limits of Deconstruction and the Prosthesis of Faith," in Tom Cohen (ed.), Jacques Derrida and the Humanities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. ISBN 0521625653

Notes
1. ^ Powell, James and Lee, Joe, Deconstruction for Beginners (Writers & Readers Publishing, 2005) 2. ^ Royle, Nicholas, Deconstructions: A User's Guide (Palgrave Macmillan, 2000) 3. ^ Derrida, Jacques Acts of Religion, p. 243. 4. ^ Derrida, Jacques "Force of Law" in Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice , 1992, ed. Cornell, et al. 5. ^ Rorty, Richard, "Deconstruction and Circumvention" Essays on Heidegger and Others (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 104. 6. ^ "Deconstruction and Circumvention", Essays on Heidegger and Others, p. 87. 7. ^ See De Man, Paul, Blindness and Insight, 2nd ed. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983) 8. ^ Rorty, Richard, "Two Meaning of Logocentrism" Essays on Heidegger and Others (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 117.

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9. ^ Derrida, Jacques, Of Grammatology (Baltimore & London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), pp. 845, and cf. subsection above, "Bernard Stiegler on deconstruction."

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Existentialism

Cover of Sartre's book Nausea Existentialism is a philosophical movement that claims that individual human beings have full responsibility for creating the meanings of their own lives. It is a reaction against more traditional philosophies, such as rationalism and empiricism, which sought to discover an ultimate order in metaphysical principles or in the structure of the observed world. The movement had its origins in the 19th century thought of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche and was prevalent in Continental philosophy. In the 1940s and 1950s, French philosophers such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Albert Camus wrote scholarly and fictional works that helped to popularize themes associated with existentialism: "dread, boredom, alienation, the absurd, freedom, commitment, [and] nothingness". [1]

Major concepts in existentialism


Existentialism differentiates itself from the modern Western rationalist tradition of philosophers such as Descartes in rejecting the idea that the most certain and primary 37

reality is rational consciousness. Descartes believed humans could doubt all existence, but could not will away or doubt the thinking consciousness, whose reality is therefore more certain than any other reality. Existentialism decisively rejects this argument, asserting instead that as conscious beings, humans would always find themselves already in a world, a prior context and a history that is given to consciousness, and that humans cannot think away that world. It is inherent and indubitably linked to consciousness. In other words, the ultimate and unquestionable reality is not thinking consciousness but, according to Heidegger, "being in the world". This is a radicalization of the notion of intentionality that comes from Brentano and Husserl, which asserts that, even in its barest form, consciousness is always conscious of something.

Existence precedes essence


A central proposition of existentialism is that existence precedes essence; that is, that a human being's existence precedes and is more fundamental than any meaning which may be ascribed to human life: humans define their own reality. One is not bound to the generalities and a priori definitions of what "being human" connotes. This is an inversion of a more traditional view, which was widely accepted from the ancient Greeks to Hegel, that the central project of philosophy was to answer the question "What is a human being?" (i.e., "What is the human essence") and to derive from that answer one's conclusions about how human beings should behave. In Repetition, Kierkegaard's literary character Young Man laments: How did I get into the world? Why was I not asked about it and why was I not informed of the rules and regulations but just thrust into the ranks as if I had been bought by a peddling shanghaier of human beings? How did I get involved in this big enterprise called actuality? Why should I be involved? Isn't it a matter of choice? And if I am compelled to be involved, where is the managerI have something to say about this. Is there no manager? To whom shall I make my complaint? [2] Heidegger coined the term "thrownness" (also used by Sartre) to describe this idea that human beings are "thrown" into existence without having chosen it. Existentialists consider being thrown into existence as prior to, and the horizon or context of, any other thoughts or ideas that humans have or definitions of themselves that they create. Sartre, in "Essays in Existentialism," pg 36, further highlights this consciousness of being thrown into existence in the following fashion. "If man, as the existentialist conceives him, is indefinable, it is because at first he is nothing. Only afterward will he be something, and he himself will have made what he will be". Kierkegaard also focused on the deep anxiety of human existence the feeling that there is no purpose, indeed nothing, at its core. Finding a way to counter this nothingness, by embracing existence, is the fundamental theme of existentialism, and the explanation for the philosophy's name. While someone who claims to believe in reality might be called a 38

"realist," or someone who believes in a deity a "theist," someone who believes fundamentally only in existence, and seeks to find meaning in his or her life solely by embracing existence, is an existentialist.

Reason as a defense against anxiety


Emphasizing action, freedom, and decision as fundamental, existentialists oppose themselves to rationalism and positivism. That is, they argue against definitions of human beings as primarily rational. Rather, existentialists look at where people find meaning. Existentialism asserts that people actually make decisions based on what has meaning to them rather than what is rational. The rejection of reason as the source of meaning is a common theme of existentialist thought, as is the focus on the feelings of anxiety and dread that we feel in the face of our own radical freedom and our awareness of death. Kierkegaard saw rationality as a mechanism humans use to counter their existential anxiety, their fear of being in the world. "If I can believe that I am rational and everyone else is rational then I have nothing to fear and no reason to feel anxious about being free." Sartre saw rationality as a form of "bad faith," an attempt by the self to impose structure on a world of phenomena "the other" that is fundamentally irrational and random. According to Sartre, rationality and other forms of "bad faith" hinder us from finding meaning in freedom. To try to suppress our feelings of anxiety and dread, we confine ourselves within everyday experience, Sartre asserts, thereby relinquishing our freedom and acquiescing to being possessed in one form or another by "the look" of "the other". In a similar vein, Camus believed that society and religion falsely teach humans that "the other" has order and structure.[3] For Camus, when an individual "consciousness," longing for order, collides with "the other's" lack of order, a third element is born: "the absurd."

The absurd
It then follows that existentialism tends to view human beings as subjects in an indifferent, objective, often ambiguous, and "absurd" universe, in which meaning is not provided by the natural order, but rather can be created, however provisionally and unstably, by human beings' actions and interpretations. During the literary modernist movement in the 1900s, authors began describing dystopian societies and surreal and absurd situations in a parallel universe, a trend that paralleled the existentialist movement. In Franz Kafka's novella The Metamorphosis, a man awakes to the realization that he has turned into a cockroach. This story, which is certainly "absurd" and surreal, is one of many modernist literary works that influenced and were influenced by existentialist philosophy.

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Although there are certain common tendencies amongst existentialist thinkers, there are major differences and disagreements among them, and not all of them even accept the validity of the term "existentialism." In German, the phrase Existenzphilosophie (philosophy of existence) is also used.

Existentialist perspectives on God


There is a split among existentialists between those who, like Kierkegaard, conceive the fundamental existentialist question as man's relationship to God, and those who accept Nietzsche's proclamation of the "death of God." Nonetheless, theological existentialism as advocated by philosophers and theologians like Paul Tillich, Gabriel Marcel, and Martin Buber shares many of the same tenets and themes that are central to atheistic existentialism. Belief in God is a personal choice made on the basis of a passion, of faith, an observation, or experience. Just as atheistic existentialists can freely choose not to believe, theistic existentialists can freely choose to believe in God and could, despite one's doubt, have faith that God exists and that God is good. A third type of existentialism is agnostic existentialism. The agnostic existentialist makes no claim to know, or not know, if there is a "greater picture" in play; rather, he simply recognizes that the greatest truth is that which he chooses to act upon. The agnostic existentialist feels that to know the "greater picture," whether there is one or not, is impossible for human mindsor, if it is possible, that at least they have not found it yet. Like Christian existentialists, the agnostic believes existence is subjective. However one feels about the issue, through the agnostic existentialist's perspective, the act of finding knowledge of the existence of God often has little value because he feels it to be impossible, and/or believes it to be useless. As mentioned above, opinions of philosophers associated with existentialism vary, sometimes greatly, over what "existentialism" is, and even if there is such a thing as "existentialism". One version, Sartrean existentialism, is elaborated below.

Sartrean existentialism
Some of the tenets associated with the existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre include: Existence precedes essence This is a reversal of the Aristotlean premise that essence precedes existence, where man exists to fulfill some purpose. Sartrean existentialism argues that man has no predefined purpose or meaning; rather, humans define themselves in terms of who they become as their individual lives are played out in response to the challenges posed by existence in the world. Values are subjective Sartre accepts the premise that something in the "Facticity" (i.e., the properties of an object or person as traditionally conceived and experienced) of an individual is valuable because the individual consciousness chooses to value it. Sartre denies that there are any objective standards on which to base values. However, this should not 40

be confused with post-modernism. Sartre clearly believed that systems of consciousness followed clear and solid rules. Bad faith Sartre believed that people lie to themselves and, underneath these lies, people negate their own being through patterns. The preceperi is similar to what today is called insight. It is necessary to get rid of bad faith. The Gaze Sartre believed that beings possess the power to look at themselves and at another or an object, which is to use one's mind to look at the person in static. This concept of "looking" and the power to look, is referred to as The Gaze. This destroys an object's subjectivity. The thing becomes an "in itself" or an object. Sartre stated that this form of consciousness was used quite often in inter-personal relationships. People place meaning onto what other people think of them rather than what they think of themselves. This process of radically re-aligning this meaning from The Gaze onto one's own being is what leads to periods of existential angst. Being for others Sartre believed that people who cannot embrace their freedom seek to be "looked at," that is, to be made an object of another's subjectivity. This creates a clash of freedoms whereby person A's being (or sense of identity) is controlled by what person B's thoughts about him are. Responsibility for choices The individual consciousness is responsible for all the choices it makes, regardless of the consequences. Condemned to be free because man's actions and choices are his and his alone, he is condemned to be responsible for his free choices. There are several terms Sartre uses in his works. Being in-itself is an object that is not free and cannot change its essence. Being for-itself is free; it does not need to be what it is and can change into what it is not. Consciousness is usually considered being for-itself. Sartre distinguishes between positional and non-positional consciousness. Non-positional consciousness is being merely conscious of one's surroundings. Positional consciousness puts consciousness into relation of one's surroundings. This entails an explicit awareness of being conscious of one's surroundings. Sartre argues identity is constructed by this explicit awareness of consciousness.

Historical background

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The Sren Kierkegaard Statue in Copenhagen. Existential themes have been hinted at throughout history. Examples include Socrates and his life, Gautama Buddha's teachings, the Bible in the Book of Ecclesiastes and the Book of Job, Saint Augustine in his Confessions, Saint Thomas Aquinas' writings, Mulla Sadra's writings, and Descartes' Meditations. Individualist politics, such as those advanced by John Locke, advocated individual autonomy and self-determination rather than the state ruling over the individual. This kind of political philosophy, although not existential in nature, provided a welcoming climate for existentialism. In 1670, Blaise Pascal's unfinished notes were published under the title of Penses (i.e., "Thoughts"). In the work, he described many fundamental themes of existentialism. Pascal argued that without a God, life would be meaningless and miserable. People would only be able to create obstacles and overcome them in an attempt to escape boredom. These tokenvictories would ultimately become meaningless, since people would eventually die. This was good enough reason not to choose to become an atheist, according to Pascal. Existentialism, in its currently recognizable 20th century form, was inspired by Sren Kierkegaard, Fyodor Dostoevsky and the German philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche, Edmund Husserl, and Martin Heidegger. It became popular in the mid-20th century through the works of the French writer-philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, whose versions of it were set out in a popular form in Sartre's 1946 Existentialism is a Humanism and Beauvoir's The Ethics of Ambiguity. Gabriel Marcel pursued theological versions of existentialism, most notably Christian existentialism. Other theological existentialists include Paul Tillich, Rudolf Bultmann, Miguel de Unamuno, Thomas Hora and Martin Buber. Moreover, one-time Marxist Nikolai Berdyaev, developed a philosophy of Christian existentialism in his native Russia, and later in France, in the decades preceding World War II.

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Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Arthur Schopenhauer are also important influences on the development of existentialism (although not precursors), because the philosophies of Sren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche were written in response or opposition to Hegel and Schopenhauer, respectively.

Kierkegaard and Nietzsche


The first philosophers considered fundamental to the existentialist movement are Sren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche, though neither used the term "existentialism". Like Pascal, they were interested in people's concealment of the meaninglessness of life and the use of diversion to escape from boredom. However, what Pascal did not write about was that people can create and change their fundamental values and beliefs. Kierkegaard and Nietzsche wrote that human nature and human identity vary depending on what values and beliefs humans hold.[4][5] Objective truths (for example mathematical truths) are important, but detached or observational modes of thought can never truly comprehend human experience. Great individuals invent their own values and create the very terms under which they excel. Kierkegaard's knight of faith and Nietzsche's bermensch are examples of those who define the nature of their own existence. In contrast, Pascal did not reason that human nature and identity are constituted by the free decisions and choices of people. Kierkegaard's and Nietzsche's works were published too early to be considered a part of the 20th century existentialist movement. They were philosophers whose works and influences are not limited to existentialism. They have been appropriated and seen as precursors to many other intellectual movements, including postmodernism, nihilism, and various strands of psychology. Thus, it is unknown whether they would have supported the existentialism of the 20th century or accepted tenets of Jean-Paul Sartre's version of it. Nevertheless, their works are precursors to many later developments in existentialist thought.

Heidegger and the German existentialists


One of the first German existentialists was Karl Jaspers. Jaspers recognized the importance of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche and attempted to build an "Existenz" philosophy around the two. Heidegger, who was influenced by Jaspers and the phenomenologist Edmund Husserl, wrote his most influential work Being and Time which postulates Dasein (pronounced dahzIne), literally being therea being that is constituted by its temporality, illuminates and interprets the meaning of being in time. Dasein is sometimes considered the human subject, but Heidegger denies the Cartesian dualism of subject-object/mind-body. Although existentialists view Heidegger to be an important philosopher in the movement, he vehemently denied being an existentialist in the Sartrean sense, and responded to Sartre in A Letter about Humanism, denying his philosophy was existentialism.

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Sartre, Camus and the French existentialists


Jean-Paul Sartre is perhaps the most well-known existentialist and is one of the few to have accepted being called an "existentialist". Sartre developed his version of existentialist philosophy under the influence of Husserl and Heidegger. Being and Nothingness is perhaps his most important work about existentialism. Sartre was also talented in his ability to espouse his ideas in different media, including philosophical essays, lectures, novels, plays, and the theater. No Exit and Nausea are two of his celebrated works. In the 1960s, he attempted to reconcile existentialism and Marxism in his work Critique of Dialectical Reason. Albert Camus was a friend of Sartre, until their falling-out, and wrote several works with existential themes including The Rebel, The Stranger, The Myth of Sisyphus and Summer in Algiers. He, like many others, rejected the existentialist label, and considered his works to be absurd. In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus uses the analogy of the Greek myth to demonstrate the futility of existence. In the myth, Sisyphus is condemned to roll a rock up a hill for eternity, but when he reaches the summit, the rock will roll back to the bottom again. Camus believes that this existence is pointless, but he feels Sisyphus ultimately finds meaning and purpose in his task, simply by continually applying himself to it, which he views as the noble quality of man. Critic Martin Esslin in his book Theatre of the Absurd pointed out how many contemporary playwrights such as Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, Jean Genet, and Arthur Adamov wove the existential belief that man is an absurd creature loose in a universe empty of real meaning into their plays. Esslin noted that many of these playwrights demonstrated the philosophies better than Sartre and Camus did in their own plays. Though most of the playwrights subsequently labelled "Absurdist" (based on this book) denied affiliations with existentialism and were often staunchly anti-philosphical (for example Ionesco often claimed he identified more with 'Pataphysics or with Surrealism than with existentialism) the playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd are often linked to existentialism based on Esslin's observation. [6] Simone de Beauvoir, who was a longtime companion to Sartre, wrote about feminist and existential ethics in her works, including The Second Sex and Ethics of Ambiguity. Franz Fanon a French-born critic of colonialism has been considered an important existentialist. [7] Maurice Merleau-Ponty, an often overlooked existentialist, was a companion of Sartre. His understanding of Husserl's phenomenology was far greater than that of his fellow existentialists. His work, Humanism and Terror, greatly influenced Sartre. Michel Foucault would also be considered an existentialist through his use of history to reveal the constant alterations of created meaning, thus proving its failure to produce a cohesive form of reality.

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Dostoevsky, Kafka, and the literary existentialists


Many writers who are not usually considered philosophers have also had a major influence on existentialism. Among them, Czech author Franz Kafka and Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky are most prominent. Franz Kafka created often surreal and alienated characters who struggle with hopelessness and absurdity, notably in his most famous novella, The Metamorphosis, or in his master novel, The Trial. The Russian Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground details the story of a man who is unable to fit into society and unhappy with the identities he creates for himself. Many of Dostoyevsky's novels, such as Crime and Punishment, have covered issues pertinent to existential philosophy while simultaneously refuting the validity of the claims of existentialism. Throughout Crime and Punishment we see the protagonist, Raskolnikov, and his character develop away from existential ideas and beliefs in favor of more traditionally Christian ones, which Dostoevsky had come to advocate at this time. In the 20th century, existentialism experienced a resurgence in popular art forms. In fiction, Hermann Hesse's 1928 novel Steppenwolf, based on an idea in Kierkegaard's Either/Or (1843), sold well in the West. Jack Kerouac and the Beat poets adopted existentialist themes. In addition, "arthouse" films began quoting and alluding to existentialist thought and thinkers. Existentialist novelists were generally seen as a mid-1950s phenomenon that continued until the mid- to late 1970s. Most of the major writers were either French or from French African colonies. Small circles of other Europeans were seen as literary existential precursors by the existentialists themselves, however, literary history increasingly has questioned the accuracy of this idealism for earlier models. There is overlap between the expatriate American beat generation writers who found Paris their spiritual home, and writers of road novels. This also extends to the delayed action of the French permanent enamorment with the United States' hard boiled fiction genre, which, as Truffaut and others in the Cahiers du Cinma indicated, influenced novels and plays. To some extent as well, the surrealist movement of Andre Breton and others, which questioned the established reality, made possible the isolation of non-academic novels protagonised by amoral anti-heroes.

Existentialism since 1970


Although postmodernist thought became the focus of many intellectuals in the 1970s and thereafter, much postmodern writing considers themes similar to existentialism. Since 1970, much cultural activity in art, cinema, and literature contains postmodern and existential elements, which, ironically, would support the postmodern thesis of "borderlessness between concepts". One should not, however, confuse postmodernism with existentialism.

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Books such as Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (1968), (now republished as Blade Runner) by Philip K. Dick, Toilet the Novel by Michael Szymczyk and Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk both distort the line between reality and appearance while simultaneously espousing strong existential themes. Ideas from such thinkers as Foucault, Kafka, Nietzsche, Herbert Marcuse, Gilles Deleuze and Eduard von Hartmann permeate the works of writers such as Chuck Palahniuk, Michael Szymczyk and Charles Bukowski, and one often finds in such works a delicate balance between distastefulness and beauty.

Neo-Existentialism and Post-Postmodernism


Some argue, however, that this class of writing belongs to a genre of literature called PostPostmodernism, similar to a Russian movement in the 1990s called "Excrement Literature". Contemporary American writers, such as Chuck Palahniuk and the underground writer Szymczyk have been described as belonging to this movement in literature.(Postmodern Theory. Steven Best & Douglas Kellner. Guilford Press. 1991) In their works, there are often elements of distortion from the "traditional" mode of narrative, which often try to grab and shock the reader and return him or her to their present. This function that comes through the form of their writing has been described as a "Metaphysics of Presence", in which, it is hoped, the intentionality of consciousness will be diverted from its inauthentic state of "care" (Heidegger's expression for the content, which consciousness fills itself with, often concerned with the trivialities of everyday life or "everydayness") towards such existential realizations of death, the here-and-now, freedom and all of its corresponding angst. It is in that relation, that such thinkers as Heidegger would argue, that one finds one's authenticity. Thus, the element of literature that permeates such books as Fight Club and Toilet: The Novel is often described as existential in nature. On the other hand, such works also show a Post-modern concern, especially Fight Club, in which the main character Tyler Durden appears as a representation of the philosophy of the Post-Modern classic Anti-Oedipus, and its idealization of the schizo-subject, who resists the capitalistic order of the day, devours and spits out the social codes, and "...breaks through the walls of reterritorialization into the realm of flows, intensities, and becoming, thereby threatening the whole capitalistic system in which personal disintegration occurs, allowing revolutionary action to be possible...". (Postmodern Theory. Steven Best & Douglas Kellner. Guilford Press. 1991) In Toilet: The Novel, the entire narrative becomes schizoid in nature, each part separated from its whole, with even the protagonists trembling with despair from their own separation, their own lack of connection to the whole, and which ends in, what Deleuze calls for in Anti-Oedipus, "a breakthrough without a total breakdown, in which the schizoid subject is distinguished from the dysfunctional schizophrenic and a certain harmony is achieved between the ugly and the beautiful, and something new is seen on the horizon." Thus, this Post Postmodernist literature can often be called a synthesis between the movements of Existentialism and Post-Modernism, or as a new genre of literature, film and art, that is of an existential nature and is an evolved form of Existentialism. NeoExistentialism, some would say, is intrinsically different from the post post-modern via its 46

existential emphasis. (Postmodern Theory. Steven Best & Douglas Kellner. Guilford Press. 1991)

Existential Cinema
In cinema, postmodern editing techniques, showing the displacement, discontinuity, and temporal perspective of post-modernism, can go hand-in-hand with a purely existential story, thus synthesizing technique and function to give meaning. Moreover, this has created the neologism "Neo-Existentialism"combining post-modernism's epistemology with the reflective ontological belief of existentialism. Existential cinema deals with themes of:

Retaining authenticity in an apathetic, mechanical worldsomething postmodernism would staunchly reject, as authenticity is related to a non-existent "reality" The consciousness of death, for example Heidegger's "being towards death", exemplified in Ingmar Bergman's film The Seventh Seal (1957) The feelings of alienation and loneliness consequent to being unique in a world of indifferent others, or, in Kierkegaard phrase, "the crowd" or Nietzsche's "the herd"; as personified by the character of Oh Dae-su in the 2003 Korean film Oldboy The concept Alltgliche selbstsein ("Everyday-ness," or ennui), which Heidegger explicated in his book Sein und Zeit (1927) (English translation: Being and Time)

The 1952 classic High Noon, starring Gary Cooper as a sheriff abandoned by the townspeople as he faces alone a vengeful killer, has often been described as an "existential Western". In the 1950's the work of the Italian directors Federico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni, as well as that of Roberto Rossellini, one of the founders of the Neorealist movement, "broke" with the established Neorealist tradition of objectivity by exploring themes of subjectivity, identity, and alienation linked to Existentialism. A major existential movement in cinema was launched by the advent of French New Wave cinema in the 1960's. Landmark films during this period were Breathless, directed by JeanLuc Godard and written by Francois Truffaut. Truffaut released his masterpiece, The 400 Blows, in the same year. Both Godard and Truffaut would go on to become flagbearers of existentialist cinema and produce notable films like Alphaville, Bande a part, Stolen Kisses and Bed and Board. The acclaimed 1976 film Taxi Driver, starring Robert De Niro, is perhaps one of the most widely known existential films. The film was heavily influenced by Dosteovsky's Notes from Underground and even quotes Dosteovsky in the line: "I'm God's lonely man." The 2004 film The Machinist is also influenced by Dosteovsky's work, especially The Double: A Petersburg Poem, The Idiot, and The Brothers Karamazov. In one scene in the film, star Christian Bale is seen reading a copy of The Idiot. Another film released in the same year, I Huckabees revolves around two existential detectives, who aim to help people solve their personal existential crises. 47

The introduction sequence of the 1957 film Love in the Afternoon contains the witty remark "even existentialists make love in Paris." The 1972 film Deliverance, as well as the 1970 book of the same name, have also been credited as existentialist, as has Fight Club (1999), eXistenZ (1999) and The Matrix (1999). The 2003 film Lost in Translation (film), directed by Sofia Coppola, contains existential themes. Waking Life, a 2001 animated film written and directed by Richard Linklater, examines various philosophical viewpoints, existentialism being among them.

Criticisms of existentialism
Herbert Marcuse criticized existentialism, especially in Sartre's Being and Nothingness, for projecting certain features of living in a modern, oppressive society, such as anxiety and meaninglessness, onto the nature of existence itself: "In so far as Existentialism is a philosophical doctrine, it remains an idealistic doctrine: it hypothesizes specific historical conditions of human existence into ontological and metaphysical characteristics. Existentialism thus becomes part of the very ideology which it attacks, and its radicalism is illusory" [8]. Sartre had already responded to some points of the Marxist criticisms of Existentialism in his popular lecture Existentialism is a humanism, held in 1946. Theodor Adorno, in his Jargon of Authenticity, criticized Heidegger's philosophy, with special attention to his use of language, as a mystifying ideology of advanced industrial society and its power structure.[citation needed] Heidegger criticized Sartre's Existentialism, in his Letter on Humanism: Existentialism says [that] existence precedes essence. In this statement he [Sartre] is taking existentia and essentia according to their metaphysical meaning, which from Platos time on has said that essentia precedes existentia. Sartre reverses this statement. But the reversal of a metaphysical statement remains a metaphysical statement. With it he stays with metaphysics in oblivion of the truth of Being. Roger Scruton claimed, in his book From Descartes to Wittgenstein, that both Heidegger's concept of inauthenticity and Sartre's concept of bad faith were inconsistent; both deny any universal moral creed, yet speak of these concepts as if everyone is bound to abide by them. In chapter 18, he writes,"In what sense Sartre is able to 'recommend' the authenticity which consists in the purely self-made morality is unclear. He does recommend it, but, by his own argument, his recommendation can have no objective force." Familiar with this sort of argument, Sartre claimed that bad and good faith do not represent moral ideas, rather, they are ways of being. Logical positivists, such as Carnap and Ayer, claim that existentialists frequently become confused over the verb "to be" in their analyses of "being". [9] The verb is prefixed to a 48

predicate and to use the word without any predicate is meaningless. Another source of confusion in the existentialist metaphysical literature is that they try to understand the meaning of the word "nothing" (the negation of existence) by assuming that it must refer to something. Borrowing Kant's argument against the ontological argument for the existence of God, the logical positivists argue that existence is not a property.

Adaptation outside philosophy


Existentialism in psychotherapy
Many of the theories of Sigmund Freud, whom Sartre refuted systematically, were influenced by Nietzsche. Some have supposed that Thanatos and Eros were closely related to Dionysian and Apollonian aspects of Nietzsche philosophy. One of the major offshoots of Existentialism as a philosophy is Existential Psychology. Sometimes termed the Third Force Psychology, this branch of psychology was initiated by Viktor Frankl (who had studied with Freud and Jung when young).[citation needed] Then early in his career he was sent to a Nazi concentration camp where he survived from 1941 through 1945. In the camps he mentally re-wrote his first book whose manuscript had been confiscated at the time of his arrest. He called his theory Logotherapy and the book was Man's Search for Meaning. Speaking at a seminar in Anaheim, California in the early 1990s, Frankl stated that in the camps he would, at times, pretend to himself that he was actually in the future, remembering his experiences and noting how he was able to survive them. His years of suffering took him to the conclusion that even in the worst imaginable of circumstances, life can be assigned a worthwhile meaning. This conclusion was the heart of Frankl's psychological orientation. Logotherapy asserts that all human beings have a will to find meaning, and that serious behavioral problems develop when they cannot find it. The therapy helps patients handle the responsibility of choices and the pain of unavoidable suffering by helping them decide to give life meaning. An early contributor to Existential Psychology was Rollo May, who was influenced by Kierkegaard. One of the most prolific writers on techniques and theory of Existential Psychology in the USA is Irvin D. Yalom. The person who has contributed most to the development of a European version of Existential Psychotherapy is the British based Emmy van Deurzen. With complete freedom to decide, and through being responsible for the outcome of said decisions, comes anxiety or angst about the choices made. Anxiety's importance in existentialism makes it a popular topic in psychotherapy. Therapists often use existential philosophy to explain the patient's anxiety. Psychotherapists using an existential approach believe that a patient can harness his anxiety and use it constructively. Instead of suppressing anxiety, patients are advised to use it as grounds for change. By embracing anxiety as inevitable, a person can use it to achieve his or her full potential in life.

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Humanistic psychology also had major impetus from existential psychology and shares many of the fundamental tenets.

Terror management theory


Terror management theory is a developing area of study within the academic study of psychology. It looks at what researchers claim to be the implicit emotional reactions of people that occur when they are confronted with the psychological terror of knowing they will eventually die.

List of Existentialists and Existentialism-Inspired Thinkers/Writers/Artists


Arthur Adamov Jean Anouilh Simone de Beauvoir Samuel Beckett Ingmar Bergman Martin Buber Albert Camus Louis Ferdinand Celine Jean Giradoux Sasha Grey Martin Heidegger Eugenio Ionescu Karl Jaspers Soren Kierkegaard Maurice Merleau-Ponty Henri de Montherlant Friedrich Nietzsche Jose Ortega y Gassett Rudolph Otto Jean-Paul Sartre Max Scheler Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo Jean Wahl J. D. Salinger Joss Whedon

Notable examples of existentialism in popular culture


This article has been tagged since June 2007. The Seventh Seal Fight Club, a novel by Chuck Palahniuk, Donnie Darko

later made into a film.[10]

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See also

Existential despair List of major thinkers and authors associated with Existentialism

References
1. ^ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existentialism/ 2. ^ Kierkegaard, Sren. Repetition in Kierkegaard's Writings, vol. 6, Princeton University Press, 1983 3. ^ Camus, Albert. "An Absurd Reasoning" 4. ^ Luper, Steven. "Existing". Mayfield Publishing, 2000, p.45 5. ^ Ibid, p. 11 6. ^ Kernan, Alvin B. The Modern American Theater: A Collection of Critical Essays . Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1967. 7. ^ Macey, David. Franz Fanon: a Biography "Resurrecting the Lost Voice of Franz Fanon". New York City: Picador, USA. p. 129-130. 8. ^ Marcuse, Herbert. "Sartre's Existentialism". Printed in Studies in Critical Philosophy. Translated by Joris De Bres. London: NLB, 1972. p. 161 9. ^ Carnap, Rudolf, Uberwindung der Metaphysik durch logische Analyse der Spache [Overcoming Metaphysics by the Logical Analasis of Speech], Erkenntnis (1932), p. 219-241. Carnap's critique of Heidegger's "What is Metaphysics". 10. ^ Kavadlo, Jesse (2005). "The Fiction of Self-destruction: Chuck Palahniuk, Closet Moralist" (PDF). Stirrings Still, the International Journal of Existential Literature . Retrieved on 2007-05-10.

Further reading

Appignanesi, Richard; and Oscar Zarate (2001). Introducing Existentialism. Cambridge, UK: Icon. ISBN 1-84046-266-3. Cooper, David E. (1999). Existentialism: A Reconstruction, 2nd ed., Oxford, UK: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-21322-8. Luper, Steven (ed.) (2000). Existing: An Introduction to Existential Thought. Mountain View, Calif.: Mayfield. ISBN 0-7674-0587-0. Marino, Gordon (ed.) (2004). Basic Writings of Existentialism. New York: Modern Library. ISBN 0-375-75989-1. Pirsig, Robert M. (1974). Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values. New York: Morrow. ISBN 0-688-00230-7. Solomon, Robert C. (ed.) (2005). Existentialism, 2nd ed., New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-517463-1. Appignanesi, Richard (2006). Introducing Existentialism, 3nd ed., Thriplow, Cambridge: Icon Books (UK), Totem Books (USA). ISBN 1-84046-717-7.

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External links

Friesian interpretation of Existentialism Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Existentialism "Existentialism is a Humanism", a lecture given by Jean-Paul Sartre An Introduction to Existential Counselling The Existential Primer Stirrings Still: The International Journal of Existential Literature HPSY.RU Existential & humanistic psychology: History of existentiallyhumanistic psychology's development in formerly Soviet nations www.theister.com: The Ister is a film inspired by the work of Martin Heidegger, featuring extensive interviews with the philosophers Bernard Stiegler, Jean-Luc Nancy, and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, and the filmmaker Hans-Jrgen Syberberg. Existential Psychotherapy The Logic of Existential Meaning by Mathew Toll International Society for Existential Therapy On The Law of Insignificance

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Logical atomism
Logical Atomism is a philosophical belief that originated in the early 20th century with the development of analytic philosophy. Its principal exponents were the British philosopher Bertrand Russell, the early work of his Austrian-born colleague Ludwig Wittgenstein, and his German counterpart Rudolf Carnap. The world consists of ultimate logical "facts" (or "atoms") that cannot be broken down any further. Having propounded this stance in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, in his Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein rejected them. This stance leads to the belief that the number of facts in the world is an integer. The name for this kind of theory was coined in 1918 by Russell in response to what he called "logical holism"; i.e. the belief that the world operates in such a way that no part can be known without the whole being known first. This belief is commonly called monism, and in particular, Russell (and G.E. Moore) reacted to absolute idealism dominant then in Britain.

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Logical positivism
Logical positivism grew from the discussions of Moritz Schlick's Vienna Circle and Hans Reichenbach's Berlin Circle in the 1920s and 1930s. The movement is known for its espousal of verificationism, its admiration for science and technical rigor, and its commitment to the analytic-synthetic distinction. The logical positivists agreed that there are no synthetic a priori propositions, though they disagreed with earlier positivists, such as Ernst Mach, who held that the a priori had no place in science.

Origins
The chief influences on the early logical positivists were the positivist Ernst Mach and logician Gottlob Frege. Mach's influence is most apparent in the logical positivists' persistent concern with metaphysics, the unity of science, and the interpretation of the theoretical terms of science, as well as the doctrines of reductionism and phenomenalism, later abandoned by many positivists. Wittgenstein's Tractatus was a text of great importance for the positivists. The use of the tools of modern logic for linguistic reform, the conception of philosophy as a "critique of language," and the possibility of drawing a theoretically principled distinction between intelligible and nonsensical discourse were all appealing to the logical positivists. Many positivists adopted a correspondence theory of truth similar to that of the Tractatus, although some, like Otto Neurath, preferred a form of coherentism. Wittgenstein's influence is further evident in certain formulations of the verification principle. Compare, for example, Proposition 4.024 of the Tractatus, where Wittgenstein asserts that we understand a proposition when we know what happens if it is true, with Schlick's assertion that "To state the circumstances under which a proposition is true is the same as stating its meaning".[1] The tractarian doctrine that the truths of logic are tautologies was widely held among the logical positivists. Wittgenstein also influenced the logical positivists' interpretation of probability. It should be noted that not all logical positivists' reactions to the Tractatus were positive; according to Neurath, it was full of metaphysics.[2] Contemporary developments in logic and the foundations of mathematics, especially Russell and Whitehead's monumental Principia Mathematica, impressed the more mathematically minded logical positivists such as Hans Hahn and Rudolf Carnap. "Language-planning" and syntactical techniques derived from these developments were used to defend logicism in the philosophy of mathematics and various reductionist theses. Russell's theory of types was employed to explosive effect in Carnap's early antimetaphysical polemics.[3] Immanuel Kant was something of a punching bag in many of the logical positivists' early debates, but his influence shows through. His doctrine of synthetic a priori truths was the view to overthrow, and his notion of the thing in itself commanded its fair share of 54

attention. More positively, Kantian views about the nature of physical objects pervade the "protocol sentence" debate[4], and the positivists all shared somewhat Kantian views about the relationship between philosophy and science.[5]

Basic tenets
Although the logical positivists held a wide range of beliefs on many matters, they were all interested in science and skeptical of theology and metaphysics. Early on, most logical positivists believed that all knowledge is based on logical inference from simple "protocol sentences" grounded in observable facts. Many logical positivists supported forms of materialism, philosophical naturalism, and empiricism. Perhaps the view for which the logical positivists are best known is the verifiability criterion of meaning, or verificationism. In one of its earlier and stronger formulations, this is the doctrine that a proposition is "cognitively meaningful" only if there is a finite procedure for conclusively determining whether it is true or false. [6] An intended consequence of this view, for most logical positivists, is that metaphysical, theological, and ethical statements fall short of this criterion, and so are not cognitively meaningful. [7] They distinguished cognitive from other varieties of meaningfulness (e.g. emotive, expressive, figurative), and most authors concede that the non-cognitive statements of the history of philosophy possess some other kind of meaningfulness. The positive characterization of cognitive meaningfulness varies from author to author. It has been described as the property of having a truth value, corresponding to a possible state of affairs, naming a proposition, or being intelligible or understandable in the sense in which scientific statements are intelligible or understandable.[8] Another characteristic feature of logical positivism is the commitment to "Unified Science"; that is, the development of a common language or, in Neurath's phrase, a "universal slang" in which all scientific propositions can be expressed. [9] The adequacy of proposals or fragments of proposals for such a language was often asserted on the basis of various "reductions" or "explications" of the terms of one special science to the terms of another, putatively more fundamental one. Sometimes these reductions took the form of set-theoretic manipulations of a handful of logically primitive concepts; [10] sometimes these reductions took the form of allegedly analytic or a priori deductive relationships.[11]. A number of publications over a period of thirty years would attempt to elucidate this concept.

Einheitswissenschaft
The Vienna Circle published a collection called Einheitswissenschaft (Unified Science) edited by Rudolf Carnap, Philipp Frank, Hans Hahn, Otto Neurath, Jorgen Jorgensen (after Hahn's death) and Charles Morristhe aim of which was to present a unified vision of science. The collection was halted, after the publication of several monographies, because of problems arising from World War II. The list of philosophers and scientists who

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contributed to these works is impressive. The complete list of contributors is given here for the historical record. Einheitswissenschaft (Unified Science), edited by Carnap, Frank, Hahn, Neurath, Jorgensen (after Hahn's death), and Morris (from 1938):

Hans Hahn, Logik, Mathematik und Naturerkennen, 1933 Otto Neurath, Einheitswissenschaft und Psychologie, 1933 Rudolf Carnap, Die Aufgabe der Wissenschaftlogik, 1934 Philipp Frank, Das Ende der mechanistischen Physik, 1935 Otto Neurath, Was bedeutet rationale Wirtschaftsbetrachtung, 1935 Otto Neurath, E. Brunswik, C. Hull, G. Mannoury, J. Woodger, Zur Enzyklopdie der Einheitswissenschaft. Vortrge, 1938 Richard von Mises, Ernst Mach und die empiristische Wissenschaftauffassung , 1939

These works are translated in Unified Science: The Vienna Circle Monograph Series , originally edited by Otto Neurath:, Kluwer, 1987.

International Encyclopedia of Unified Science


In 1938 the publication of the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science started under the auspice of logical positivists. It was an ambitious project, and never completed. Only the first section, Foundations of the Unity of Sciences, was published; it contained two volumes, for a total of twenty monographs published from 1938 to 1969:

Otto Neurath, Niels Bohr, John Dewey, Bertrand Russell, Rudolf Carnap, Charles Morris, Encyclopedia and unified science, 1938, vol.1 n.1 Charles Morris, Foundations of the theory of signs, 1938, vol.1 n.2 Victor Lenzen, Procedures of empirical sciences, 1938, vol.1 n.5 Rudolf Carnap, Foundations of logic and mathematics, 1939, vol.1 n.3 Leonard Bloomfield, Linguistic aspects of science, 1939, vol.1 n.4 Ernest Nagel, Principles of the theory of probability, 1939, vol.1 n.6 John Dewey, Theory of valuation, 1939, vol.2 n.4 Giorgio De Santillana and Edgar Zilsel, The development of rationalism and empiricism, 1941, vol.2 n.8 Otto Neurath, Foundations of social sciences, 1944, vol.2 n.1 Joseph Henri Woodger, The technique of theory construction, 1949, vol.2 n.5 Philipp Frank, Foundations of physics, 1946, vol.1 n.7 Erwin Frinlay-Freundlich, Cosmology, 1951, vol.1 n.8 Jorgen Jorgensen, The development of logical empiricism, 1951, vol.2 n.9 Egon Brunswik, The conceptual framework of psychology, 1952, vol.1 n.10 Carl Hempel, Fundamentals of concept formation in empirical science , 1952, vol.2 n.7 Felix Mainx, Foundations of biology, 1955, vol.1 n.9 Abraham Edel, Science and the structure of ethics, 1961, vol.2 n.3

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Thomas Kuhn, The structure of scientific revolutions, 1962, vol.2 n.2 Gherard Tintner, Methodology of mathematical economics and econometrics, 1968, vol.2 n.6 Herbert Feigl and Charles Morris, Bibliography and index, 1969, vol.2 n.10

Perhaps the most famous work published in the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science is Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions . However, every entry in the encyclopedia is of substantial scientific and philosophical value.

Monographs on the Scientific World-Conception


A third collection was published by the Vienna Circle from 1928 to 1937. This collection was entitled Schriften zur wissenschaftlichen Weltauffassung (Monographs on the Scientific World-Conception), and was edited by Schlick and Frank. Scientists and philosophers such as Karl Popper contributed. The contributors and monographs were:

Richard von Mises, Wahrscheinlichkeit, Statistik und Wahrheit, 1928 (Probability, Statistics, and Truth, New York: MacMillan Company, 1939) Rudolf Carnap, Abriss der Logistik, 1929 Moritz Schlick, Fragen der Ethik, 1930 (Problems of Ethics, New York: PrenticeHall, 1939) Otto Neurath, Empirische Soziologie, 1931 Philipp Frank, Das Kausalgesetz und seine Grenzen, 1932 (The Law of Causality and its Limits, Dordrecht; Boston: Kluwer, 1997) Otto Kant, Zur Biologie der Ethik, 1932 Rudolf Carnap, Logische Syntax der Sprache, 1934 (The Logical Syntax of Language, New York: Humanities, 1937) Karl Popper, Logik der Forschung, 1934 (The Logic of Scientific Discovery, New York: Basic Books, 1959) Josef Schcheter, Prolegomena zu einer kritischen Grammatik, 1935 (Prolegomena to a Critical Grammar, Dordrecht; Boston: D. Reidel Pub. Co., 1973) Victor Kraft, Die Grundlagen einer wissenschaftliche Wertlehre, 1937 (Foundations for a Scientific Analysis of Value , Dordrecht; Boston: D. Reidel Pub. Co., 1981)

Philosophers associated with logical positivism


There is an extensive list of philosophers who are associated to some degree with logical positivism.

The Vienna Circle

The physicist and philosopher Moritz Schlick, one of the first philosophers interested in the theory of relativity. He taught at the University of Vienna, where he held the chair of theory of inductive science. In Vienna, he organized the discussion

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group known as the Vienna Circle. Schlick can be considered the father of logical positivism, as he formulated the verifiability principle[12]. Rudolf Carnap, one of the major philosophers of the twentieth century, a leading exponent of logical positivism, and co-author of the Vienna Circle manifesto. He made contributions to the philosophy of science, the philosophy of language, the theory of probability, and classical, inductive and modal logic. Since ordinary language is ambiguous, Carnap asserted the necessity to study philosophical issues in artificial languages, governed by the rules of logic and mathematics. In such languages he dealt with problems like the meaning of a statement, the distinction between analytic and synthetic, a priori and a posteriori, necessity and contingency, the different interpretations of probability, and the nature of explanation. Carnap taught at the University of Prague, the University of Vienna, the University of Chicago, Harvard University, and the University of California at Los Angeles. The philosopher of science Herbert Feigl, who encouraged Karl Popper to write the book Logik der Forschung. His 1931 article with A. E. Blumberg, "Logical Positivism: A New Movement in European Philosophy" in The Journal of Philosophy, was one of the first reports on logical positivism published in the United States, and promoted the spread of logical positivism. He taught at the University of Iowa and at the University of Minnesota, where in 1953 he founded the Minnesota Center for the Philosophy of Science, the oldest center for the philosophy of science in the world. The physicist Philipp Frank, a student of David Hilbert and Ludwig Boltzmann, who was an editor of the series Monographs on the Scientific World-Conception and Unified Science; he contributed to the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science with the 1946 work "Foundations of physics". He taught at Harvard University and wrote about the theory of relativity. The logician and mathematician Kurt Gdel attended meetings of the Vienna Circle weekly between 1926 and 1928, but, although he is sometimes mistaken for a positivist, and his greatest achievements "are still often tallied among positivism's greatest success stories"[13], he was actually committed to Platonism, and many of his core ideas were diametrically opposed to those of the rest of the Circle. [13] Gdel proved the completeness of first-order logic and the incompleteness of formal arithmetic. Gdel also worked on set theory and non-classical logics, such as intuitionistic logic and modal logic. He proved that the continuum hypothesis is consistent with the axioms of classical set theory. He was interested in the mathematical aspects of the theory of relativity, and proved the existence of solutions of Einsteins relativistic equations in which time travel to the past is possible. The mathematician Hans Hahn, co-author of the Vienna Circle manifesto, who taught at Innsbruck, Bonn and Vienna; among his students there were Karl Popper and Kurt Gdel. The philosopher and sociologist Otto Neurath, who played an important role in the development of logical positivism. He was co-author of the manifesto of the Vienna Circle (it is supposed that he was indeed the principal author), planned and directed the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, was an editor of the journal Erkentnnis and of the series Unified Science, and founded and directed the International Foundation for Visual Education. 58

The philosopher Friedrich Waismann, who was one of the few members of the Vienna Circle admitted to the meetings with Wittgenstein. He taught philosophy of mathematics and philosophy of science at the University of Cambridge and at the University of Oxford.

Germany and the Berlin Circle


In Germany, members of the Berlin Circle contributed in an essential way to the development of logical empiricism:

The physicist and philosopher Hans Reichenbach, the founder of the Berlin Circle. He studied with Albert Einstein, Arnold Sommerfeld, Ernst Cassirer, David Hilbert, Max Planck, and Max Born. He is one of the fathers of the frequency interpretation of probability. He taught physics at Technische Hochschule in Stuttgart, philosophy of physics at the University of Berlin; he was chief of the department of philosophy at the University of Istanbul; he taught philosophy at the University of California at Los Angeles. He wrote about the philosophical meaning of the theory of relativity, which he studied under the teaching of Albert Einstein, and quantum mechanics. The logician and philosopher Kurt Grelling, a victim of Nazism; it is supposed that he died with his wife in the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1942, although it also has been reported that Grelling was killed in 1941 at the border between France and Spain while he was trying to escape in Spain. Grelling was a teacher in secondary school and was interested in logical problems. A semantic paradox is named after him, the Grelling paradox, formulated in 1908] by Grelling and Leonard Nelson. Grelling collaborated with Kurt Gdel and in 1936 he published an article in which he defended Gdel's theorem of incompleteness against an erroneous interpretation, according to which Gdel's theorem is indeed a paradox like Russell's paradox. The philosopher Carl Gustav Hempel, a leading member of logical positivism. He studied philosophy with Hans Reichenbach, physics with Max Planck, logic with von Neumann and mathematics with David Hilbert. He taught in New York, at the City College and at Queens College. Later, Hempel taught at Yale University, at Princeton University and, well on in years, he continued in teaching at the University of California, Berkeley and Irvine, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the University of Pittsburgh. He contributed to the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science. He is well-known for his studies on the logic of confirmation and explanation.

Scandinavia

As early as 1930 Scandinavian philosophers were interested in logical positivism. Finnish Eino Kaila employed for the first time the expression "logical neopositivism" for denoting the new philosophical movements (E. Kaila, "Der logistische Neupositivismus" in Annales Universitatis Aboensis, 1930). Eino Kaila published in 1939 a work pervaded by the principles of logical positivism ( The human knowledge, in Finnish). He taught philosophy at the University of Helsinki. Among his students was Georg Henrik von Wright, who published a study about

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logical positivism (The Logical Empiricism, 1943, in Finnish). Wright contributed to the development of modal logic and deontic logic. Finn Jaakko Hintikka, who had Wright as a teacher, pursued Carnap's studies on inductive logic. Hintikka's article "A two-dimensional continuum of inductive methods" in Aspects of inductive logic (eds. J. Hintikka and P. Suppes, 1966), extended the methods Carnap used in The Continuum of Inductive Methods, 1952. Swedish philosopher ke Petzll (author of Der logistische Neupositivismus, 1931) was mainly influenced by the Vienna Circle and in 1930 or 1931 he went to Vienna, where he took part in theVienna Circle's meetings. Later he founded a new journal, Theoria, published in Gothenburg; in that journal Hempel published his very first description of the paradoxes of confirmation (Le problme de la vrit, 1937). Danish philosopher Jrgen Jrgensen very actively collaborated with neopositivists. After Hans Hahn's death in 1934, Jrgensen became an editor of the Vienna Circle's series Unified Science; later he collaborated on the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, to which he contributed the 1951 essay The Development of Logical Empiricism. In Norway, the young Arne Nss was strongly influenced by logical positivism, especially so in his doctorate Erkenntnis und wissenschaftliches Verhalten (1936). This lead to a forceful postivist bent for parts of Norwegian philosophy.

United Kingdom

English philosopher Alfred Jules Ayer played an important role in the spread of logical positivism. His 1936 work Language, Truth and Logic gained immediate success. In that book, he completely accepted both the verification principle and the distinction between analytic and synthetic propositions; hence he asserted that metaphysical sentences are meaningless.

Poland

Logical positivism had extensive contacts with the group of Polish logicians who developed several branches of contemporary logic. Polish philosophy was greatly influenced by Kazimierz Twardowski, who studied at the University of Vienna and taught at Lwow; he is the founder of Polish analytic philosophy. He taught several Polish philosophers and logicians. Among them were: Jan ukasiewicz, who developed both the algebra of logic and manyvalued propositional calculus, which influenced Carnap's inductive logic and Reichenbach's interpretation of quantum mechanics, in which Reichenbach employed a three-valued propositional calculus. He contributed to Erkenntnis, the journal of logical positivism, edited by Carnap and Reichenbach. Stanisaw Leniewski, who was interested in the logical antinomies. Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz, who taught philosophy of language, epistemology and logic, and contributed to Erkenntnis. Tadeusz Kotarbiski, who asserted that many alleged philosophical problems in fact are scientific problems, i.e. they are the object of empirical

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science and not of philosophy, which deals with logical and ethical problems only. The Polish logician Alfred Tarski, who developed the theory of semantics in formal language, took part in the congresses on scientific philosophy organized by the Vienna and Berlin Circles; he greatly influenced Carnap's philosophy of language. Carnap was interested in logical syntax but, after the publication of Tarski's works, he turned to semantics.

Italy
Relations between Italian philosophy and logical positivism developed in the early stages of logical positivism.

The Italian mathematician and philosopher of science Federigo Enriques took part in the congresses on scientific philosophy and collaborated on the International Encyclopedia, and Neurath and Carnap contributed articles to the journal Scientia edited by Enriques. In 1934, Ludovico Geymonat published a work on logical positivism: La Nuova Filosofia della Natura in Germania. Geymonat had the opportunity to study with Schlick, Reichenbach, Carnap, and Waismann. He later held the first chair in Italy of philosophy of science. The interest of Italian philosophy in logical positivism was primarily directed towards historical research. Francesco Barone distinguished himself with his work Il Neopositivismo Logico, 1953, a detailed and up-to-date historical and philosophical analysis of logical positivism.

Criticism and influences


Early critics of logical positivism said that its fundamental tenets could not themselves be formulated in a way that was clearly consistent. The verifiability criterion of meaning did not seem verifiable; but neither was it simply a logical tautology, since it had implications for the practice of science and the empirical truth of other statements. This presented severe problems for the logical consistency of the theory. Another problem was that, while positive existential claims ("there is at least one human being") and negative universals ("not all ravens are black") allow for clear methods of verification (find a human or a nonblack raven), negative existential claims and positive universal claims do not allow for verification. Universal claims could apparently never be verified: How can you tell that all ravens are black, unless you've hunted down every raven ever, including those in the past and future? This led to a great deal of work on induction, probability, and "confirmation", which combined verification and falsification.

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Karl Popper, a well-known critic of logical positivism, published the book Logik der Forschung in 1934 (translated by himself as The Logic of Scientific Discovery published 1959). In it he presented an influential alternative to the verifiability criterion of meaning, defining scientific statements in terms of falsifiability. First, though, Popper's concern was not with distinguishing meaningful from meaningless statements, but distinguishing "scientific" from "metaphysical" statements. He did not hold that metaphysical statements must be meaningless; neither did he hold that a statement that in one century was "metaphysical" while unfalsifiable (like the ancient Greek philosophy about atoms), could not in another century become "falsifiable" and thus "scientific". About psychoanalysis he thought something similar: in his day it offered no method for falsification, and thus was not falsifiable and not scientific. However, he did not exclude it being meaningful, nor did he say psychoanalysts were necessarily "wrong" (it only couldn't be proven either way: that would have meant it was falsifiable), nor did he exclude that one day psychoanalysis could evolve into something falsifiable, and thus "scientific". He was, in general, more concerned with scientific practice than with the logical issues that troubled the positivists. Second, although Popper's philosophy of science enjoyed great popularity for some years, if his criterion is construed as an answer to the question the positivists were asking, it turns out to fail in exactly parallel ways. Negative existential claims ("there are no unicorns") and positive universals ("all ravens are black") can be falsified, but positive existential and negative universal claims cannot, although Popper thought himself these could be deemed as verifiable[14]. Logical positivists' response to the first criticism is that logical positivism is a philosophy of science, not an axiomatic system that can prove its own consistency (see Gdel's incompleteness theorem). Secondly, a theory of language and mathematical logic were created to answer what it really means to make statements like "all ravens are black". A response to the second criticism was provided by A. J. Ayer in Language, Truth and Logic, in which he sets out the distinction between "strong" and "weak" verification. "A proposition is said to be verifiable, in the strong sense of the term, if, and only if, its truth could be conclusively established by experience." (Ayer 1946:50) It is this sense of verifiable that causes the problem of verification with negative existential claims and positive universal claims. However, the weak sense of verification states that a proposition is "verifiable... if it is possible for experience to render it probable" (ibid.). After establishing this distinction, Ayer goes on to claim that "no proposition, other than a tautology, can possibly be anything more than a probable hypothesis" (Ayer 1946:51), and therefore can only be subject to weak verification. This defense was controversial among logical positivists, some of whom stuck to strong verification, and claimed that general propositions were indeed nonsense. Subsequent philosophy of science tends to make use of certain aspects of both of these approaches. W. V. O. Quine criticized the distinction between analytic and synthetic statements and the reduction of meaningful statements to immediate experience. Work by Thomas Kuhn has convinced many that it is not possible to provide truth conditions for science independent of its historical paradigm. But even this criticism was not unknown to

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the logical positivists: Otto Neurath compared science to a boat which we must rebuild on the open sea. Logical positivism was essential to the development of early analytic philosophy. It was disseminated throughout the European continent and, later, in American universities by the members of the Vienna Circle. A.J. Ayer is considered responsible for the spread of logical positivism to Britain. The term subsequently came to be almost interchangeable with "analytic philosophy" in the first half of the twentieth century. Logical positivism was immensely influential in the philosophy of language and represented the dominant philosophy of science between World War I and the Cold War. Many subsequent commentators on "logical positivism" have attributed to its proponents a greater unity of purpose and creed than they actually shared, overlooking the complex disagreements among the logical positivists themselves.

Footnotes
1. ^ "Positivismus und Realismus", Erkenntnis 3:1-31, English trans. in Sarkar, Sahotra (ed.) Logical Empiricism at its Peak: Schlick, Carnap, and Neurath. New York: Garland Pub., 1996, p. 38 2. ^ For a very informative and somewhat cute summary of the effect the Tractatus had on the leading logical positivists, see the Entwicklung der Thesen des "Wiener Kreises" 3. ^ Carnap, op. cit. 4. ^ See the essays by Carnap and Neurath in Ayer's Logical Positivism. 5. ^ Friedman, Michael, Reconsidering Logical Positivism. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999. 6. ^ For a classic survey of other versions of verificationism, see Hempel, Carl. "Problems and Changes in the Empiricist Criterion of Meaning." Revue Internationale de Philosophie 41 (1950), pp 41-63. 7. ^ For the classic expression of this view, see Carnap, Rudolf. "The Elimination Of Metaphysics Through Logical Analysis of Language." Erkenntnis 2 (1932). Rpt. in Logical Positivism. Ed. Alfred Jules Ayer. New York: Free Press, 1959. 60-81. Moritz Schlick, a key figure in the logical positivist movement, did not believe ethical (or aesthetic) sentences to be cognitively meaningless. See Schlick, Moritz. "The Future Of Philosophy." The Linguistic Turn. Ed. Richard Rorty. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. 43-53. 8. ^ Examples of these different views can be found in Scheffler's Anatomy of Inquiry, Ayer's Language, Truth, and Logic, Schlick's "Positivism and Realism" (rpt. in Sarkar (1996) and Ayer (1959)), and Carnap's Philosophy and Logical Syntax. 9. ^ For a thorough consideration of what the thesis of the unity of science amounts to, see Frost-Arnold, Gregory, "The Large-Scale Structure of Logical Empiricism: Unity of Science and the Rejection of Metaphysics" at [1] 10. ^ As in Carnap's (1928) Logical Structure of the World. 11. ^ As in Carnap's Testability and Meaning 12. ^ Murzi, Mauro (2006). Philosophy of Logical Positivism. Page 26. Retrieved May 22, 2007. 13. ^ a b Goldstein, Rebecca (February 2005). Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Godel.
W. W. Norton, 74-75.

14. ^ Popper, K., The Logic of Scientific Discovery, chapter 13

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Further reading

Achinstein, Peter and Barker, Stephen F. The Legacy of Logical Positivism: Studies in the Philosophy of Science. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1969. Ayer, Alfred Jules. Logical Positivism. Glencoe, Ill: Free Press, 1959. Barone, Francesco. Il neopositivismo logico. Roma Bari: Laterza, 1986. Bergmann, Gustav. The Metaphysics of Logical Positivism . New York: Longmans Green, 1954. Cirera, Ramon. Carnap and the Vienna Circle: Empiricism and Logical Syntax. Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1994. Edmonds, David & Eidinow, John; Wittgenstein's Poker, ISBN 0-06-621244-8 Friedman, Michael. Reconsidering Logical Positivism. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999 Gadol, Eugene T. Rationality and Science: A Memorial Volume for Moritz Schlick in Celebration of the Centennial of his Birth. Wien: Springer, 1982. Geymonat, Ludovico. La nuova filosofia della natura in Germania. Torino, 1934. Giere, Ronald N. and Richardson, Alan W. Origins of Logical Empiricism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997. Hanfling, Oswald. Logical Positivism. Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1981. Jangam, R. T. Logical Positivism and Politics. Delhi: Sterling Publishers, 1970. Janik, Allan and Toulmin, Stephen. Wittgenstein's Vienna. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1973. Kraft, Victor. The Vienna Circle: The Origin of Neo-positivism, a Chapter in the History of Recent Philosophy. New York: Greenwood Press, 1953. McGuinness, Brian. Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle: Conversations Recorded by Friedrich Waismann. Trans. by Joachim Schulte and Brian McGuinness. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1979. Mises von, Richard. Positivism: A Study in Human Understanding. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1951. Parrini, Paolo. Empirismo logico e convenzionalismo: saggio di storia della filosofia della scienza. Milano: F. Angeli, 1983. Parrini, Paolo; Salmon, Wesley C.; Salmon, Merrilee H. (ed.) Logical Empiricism Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003. Reisch, George. How the Cold War Transformed Philosophy of Science : To the Icy Slopes of Logic. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Rescher, Nicholas. The Heritage of Logical Positivism . Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1985. Salmon, Wesley and Wolters, Gereon (ed.), Logic, Language, and the Structure of Scientific Theories: Proceedings of the Carnap-Reichenbach Centennial, University of Konstanz, 21-24 May 1991, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1994. Sarkar, Sahotra. The Emergence of Logical Empiricism: From 1900 to the Vienna Circle. New York: Garland Publishing, 1996. Sarkar, Sahotra. Logical Empiricism at its Peak: Schlick, Carnap, and Neurath . New York: Garland Pub., 1996.

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Sarkar, Sahotra. Logical Empiricism and the Special Sciences: Reichenbach, Feigl, and Nagel. New York: Garland Pub., 1996. Sarkar, Sahotra. Decline and Obsolescence of Logical Empiricism: Carnap vs. Quine and the Critics. New York: Garland Pub., 1996. Sarkar, Sahotra. The Legacy of the Vienna Circle: Modern Reappraisals . New York: Garland Pub., 1996. Spohn, Wolfgang (ed.), Erkenntnis Orientated: A Centennial Volume for Rudolf Carnap and Hans Reichenbach, Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991.

Werkmeister, William (May, 1937). "Seven Theses of Logical Positivism Critically Examined". The Philosophical Review 46 (3): 276-297. Werkmeister, William (July, 1937). "Seven Theses of Logical Positivism Critically Examined II". The Philosophical Review 46 (4): 357-376.

See also
People

Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz Alfred Jules Ayer Richard Bevan Braithwaite Rudolf Carnap Herbert Feigl Philipp Frank Kurt Grelling Hans Hahn Carl Gustav Hempel Tadeusz Kotarbinski Thomas Kuhn Stanislaw Lesniewski Jan Lukasiewicz Ernest Nagel Otto Neurath Karl Raimund Popper Hans Reichenbach Moritz Schlick Alfred Tarski Kazimierz Twardowski Friedrich Waismann Ludwig Wittgenstein David Rynin

Institutions

Berlin Circle Vienna Circle 65

Other philosophical movements


Positivism Sociological positivism

External links
About logical positivism

Feigl, Herbert. 'Positivism in the Twentieth Century (Logical Empiricism)', Dictionary of the History of Ideas, 1974, Gale Group (Electronic Edition) Kemerling, Garth. 'Logical Positivism', Philosophy Pages Murzi, Mauro. 'Logical Positivism', The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief, Tom Flynn (ed.). Prometheus Books, forthcoming (PDF version) Murzi, Mauro. 'The Philosophy of Logical Positivism' Passmore, John. 'Logical Positivism', The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Paul Edwards (ed.). New York: Macmillan, 1967, first edition Shalizi, Cosma Rohilla. 'Logical Positivism' Logical positivism

About philosophical subjects pertinent to logical positivism


Hjek, Alan. 'Interpretations of Probability', The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2003 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.) Rey, Georges. 'The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction', The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2003 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.) Ryckman, Thomas A., 'Early Philosophical Interpretations of General Relativity', The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2001 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.) Woleski, Jan. 'Lvov-Warsaw School', The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2003 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.) Woodward, James. 'Scientific Explanation', The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2003 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)

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Marxism
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Marxism

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Marxism is both the theory and the political practice (that is, the praxis) derived from the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Any political practice or theory that is based on an interpretation of the works of Marx and Engels may be called Marxism; this includes different forms of politics and thought such as those of Communist Parties and Communist states, as well as academic research across many fields. There are many theoretical and practical differences among the various forms of Marxism. Most forms of Marxism share:

an attention to the material conditions of people's lives, and social relations among people a belief that people's consciousness of the conditions of their lives reflects these material conditions and relations 68

an understanding of class in terms of differing economic relations of production, and as a particular position within such relations an understanding of material conditions and social relations as historically malleable a view of history according to which class struggle, the evolving conflict between classes with opposing interests, structures each historical period and drives historical change a sympathy for the working class or proletariat and a belief that the ultimate interests of workers best match those of humanity in general.

The main points of contention among Marxists are the degree to which they are committed to a workers' revolution as the means of achieving human emancipation and enlightenment, and the actual mechanism through which such a revolution might occur and succeed.

Classical Marxism
For more details on this topic, see Classical Marxism. Classical Marxism refers to the body of theory directly expounded by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. The term "Classical Marxism" is often used to distinguish between "Marxism" as it is broadly understood and "what Marx believed", which is not necessarily the same thing. For example, shortly before he died in 1883, Marx wrote a letter to the French workers' leader Jules Guesde and to his own son-in-law Paul Lafargue, both of whom claimed to represent Marxist principles, in which he accused them of "revolutionary phrase-mongering" and of denying the value of reformist struggles [1] . Paraphrasing Marx: "If that is Marxism, then I am not a Marxist". As the American Marx scholar Hal Draper remarked, "there are few thinkers in modern history whose thought has been so badly misrepresented, by Marxists and anti-Marxists alike."[citation needed]

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

Karl Marx - Co-founder of Marxism (with Engels) Karl Heinrich Marx (May 5, 1818, Trier, then part of Prussian Rhineland March 14, 1883, London) was an immensely influential German philosopher, political economist, and socialist revolutionary. Marx addressed a wide variety of issues, including alienation and exploitation of the worker, the capitalist mode of production, and historical materialism. He 69

is most famous, however, for his analysis of history in terms of class struggles, as summed up in the opening line of the introduction to the Communist Manifesto: "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." The influence of his ideas, already popular during his life, was greatly broadened by the victory of the Russian Bolsheviks in the October Revolution of 1917. Indeed, there are few parts of the world which were not significantly touched by Marxian ideas in the course of the 20th century.

Friedrich Engels was the co-founder and a proponent of Marxism. Friedrich Engels (November 28, 1820, Wuppertal August 5, 1895, London) was a 19th century German political philosopher. He developed communist theory alongside Marx. The two first met in person in September 1844. They discovered that they had similar views on philosophy and on capitalism and decided to work together, producing a number of works including Die heilige Familie (The Holy Family). After the French authorities deported Marx from France in January 1845, Engels and Marx decided to move to Belgium, which then permitted greater freedom of expression than some other countries in Europe. Engels and Marx returned to Brussels in January 1846, where they set up the Communist Correspondence Committee. In 1847 Engels and Marx began writing a pamphlet together, based on Engels' The Principles of Communism. They completed the 12,000-word pamphlet in six weeks, writing it in such a manner as to make communism understandable to a wide audience, and published it as The Communist Manifesto in February 1848. In March, Belgium expelled both Engels and Marx. They moved to Cologne, where they began to publish a radical newspaper, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. By 1849, both Engels and Marx had to leave Germany and moved to London. The Prussian authorities applied pressure on the British government to expel the two men, but Prime Minister Lord John Russell refused. With only the money that Engels could raise, the Marx family lived in extreme poverty.

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After Marx's death in 1883, Engels devoted much of the rest of his life to editing and translating Marx's writings. However, he also contributed significantly to feminist theory, seeing for instance the concept of monogamous marriage as having arisen because of the domination of man over women. In this sense, he ties communist theory to the family, arguing that men have dominated women just as the capitalist class has dominated workers. Engels died in London in 1895.

Early influences
For more details on this topic, see Influences on Karl Marx. Classical Marxism was influenced by a number of different thinkers. These thinkers can be divided roughly into 3 groups:

German Philosophers including: Immanuel Kant, Georg Hegel, Ludwig Feuerbach English and Scottish Political Economists including: Adam Smith & David Ricardo French Social Theorists including: Jean-Jacques Rousseau; Charles Fourier; Henri de Saint-Simon; Pierre-Joseph Proudhon; Flora Tristan; Louis Blanc

Other influences include:


Antique materialism, e.g. Epicurus, Lucretius Giambattista Vico Lewis Morgan

Main ideas
The main ideas to come out of Marx and Engels' collective works include:

means of production: The means of production are a combination of the means of labor and the subject of labor used by workers to make products. The means of labor include machines, tools, equipment, infrastructure, and "all those things with the aid of which man acts upon the subject of labor, and transforms it". [2] The subject of labor includes raw materials and materials directly taken from nature. Means of production by themselves produce nothing -- labor power is needed for production to take place. mode of production: The mode of production is a specific combination of productive forces (including the means of production and labour power) and social and technical relations of production (including the property, power and control relations governing society's productive assets, often codified in law; cooperative work relations and forms of association; relations between people and the objects of their work, and the relations between social classes). base and superstructure: Marx and Engels use the base-structure metaphor to explain the idea that the totality of relations among people with regard to the social production of their existence forms the economic basis, on which arises a

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superstructure of political and legal institutions. To the base corresponds the social consciousness which includes religious, philosophical, and other ideas. The base conditions both, the superstructure and the social consciousness. A conflict between the development of material productive forces and the relations of production causes social revolutions, and the resulting change in the economic basis will sooner or later lead to the transformation of the superstructure. [3] For Marx, though, this relationship is not a one way process - it is reflexive; the base determines the superstructure in the first instance and remains the foundation of a form of social organisation which then can act again upon both parts of the base-structure metaphor.[citation needed] The relationship between superstructure and base is considered to be a dialectical one, not a distinction between actual entities "in the world". [citation
needed]

class consciousness: Class consciousness refers to the self-awareness of a social class and its capacity to act in its own rational interests. ideology: Without offering a general definition for ideology[4], Marx on several instances has used the term to designate the production of images of social reality. According to Engels, ideology is a process accomplished by the so-called thinker consciously, it is true, but with a false consciousness. The real motive forces impelling him remain unknown to him; otherwise it simply would not be an ideological process. Hence he imagines false or seeming motive forces. [5] Because the ruling class controls the society's means of production, the superstructure of society, as well as its ruling ideas, will be determined according to what is in the ruling class's best interests. As Marx said famously in The German Ideology, the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. [6] Therefore the ideology of a society is of enormous importance since it confuses the alienated groups and can create false consciousness such as commodity fetishism (perceiving labor as capital ~ a degradation of human life).[citation needed] historical materialism: Historical materialism was first articulated by Marx, although he himself never used the term. It looks for the causes of developments and changes in human societies in the way in which humans collectively make the means to life, thus giving an emphasis, through economic analysis, to everything that co-exists with the economic base of society (e.g. social classes, political structures, ideologies). political economy: The term "political economy" originally meant the study of the conditions under which production was organized in the nation-states of the newborn capitalist system. Political economy, then, studies the mechanism of human activity in organizing material, and the mechanism of distributing the surplus or deficit that is the result of that activity. Political economy studies the means of production, specifically capital, and how this manifests itself in economic activity. exploitation: Marx refers to the exploitation of an entire segment or class of society by another. He sees it as being an inherent feature and key element of capitalism and free markets. The profit gained by the capitalist is the difference between the value of the product made by the worker and the actual wage that the worker receives; in other words, capitalism functions on the basis of paying workers less than the full value of their labour, in order to enable the capitalist class to turn a profit. 72

alienation: Marx refers to the alienation of people from aspects of their "human nature" (Gattungswesen, usually translated as 'species-essence' or 'species-being'). Alienation describes objective features of a person's situation in capitalism - it isn't necessary for them to believe or feel that they are alienated. He believes that alienation is a systematic result of capitalism.

Class

Marx believed that the identity of a social class is derived from its relationship to the means of production (as opposed to the notion that class is determined by wealth alone, i.e., lower class, middle class, upper class). Marx describes several social classes in capitalist societies, including primarily:

the proletariat: "those individuals who sell their labour power, (and therefore add value to the products), and who, in the capitalist mode of production, do not own the means of production". According to Marx, the capitalist mode of production establishes the conditions that enable the bourgeoisie to exploit the proletariat due to the fact that the worker's labour power generates an added value greater than the worker's salary. the bourgeoisie: those who "own the means of production" and buy labour power from the proletariat, who are recompensed by a salary, thus exploiting the proletariat.

The bourgeoisie may be further subdivided into the very wealthy bourgeoisie and the petit bourgeoisie. The petit bourgeoisie are those who employ labour, but may also work themselves. These may be small proprietors, land-holding peasants, or trade workers. Marx predicted that the petit bourgeoisie would eventually be destroyed by the constant reinvention of the means of production and the result of this would be the forced movement of the vast majority of the petit bourgeoisie to the proletariat. Marx also identified various other classes such as the

the lumpenproletariat:, criminals, vagabonds, beggars, etc. People that have no stake in the economic system and will sell themselves to the highest bidder. the Landlords:, as a class of people that were historically important, of which several still retain some of their wealth and power. the Peasantry and Farmers:, this class he saw as disorganized and incapable of carrying out change. He also believed that this class would disappear, with most becoming proletariat but some becoming landowners.

Marx's theory of history

For more details on this topic, see Historical materialism. The Marxist theory of historical materialism understands society as fundamentally determined by the material conditions at any given time - this means the relationships which people enter into with one another in order to fulfill their basic needs, for instance to 73

feed and clothe themselves and their families. [7]. In general Marx and Engels identified five successive stages of the development of these material conditions in western Europe.[8] The First Stage was called Primitive Communism - hunters and gatherers with no private property. The Second Stage is Slave Society, considered to be the beginning of "class society" where private property appears. Private property, it should be noted, in the terminology of Marx's time, for Marx, and for Marxists today, does not mean the possessions of a person, but the ownership of productive property or property which produces a profit for the owner, such as corporate ownership, share ownership, land ownership, and, in the case of slave society, slave ownership, since the slaves worked the land, mines and other means of producing the material means of existence. The slave owning class "own" the land and slaves, which are the means of producing wealth, whilst everyone else has very little or nothing; mainly the slave class, slaves who work for no money. Slave society collapsed when it exhausted itself. The need to keep conquering more slaves created huge problems, such as maintaining the vast empire that resulted, and slave society (the Roman Empire) found itself in a dead end, and was eventually overrun by what it called "barbarians". The Third Stage is Feudalism, where there are many classes such as kings, lords, and serfs, some little more than slaves. A merchant class develops. Out of the merchants' riches a capitalist class emerges within this feudal society, but the old feudal kings and lords cannot accept the new technological changes the capitalists want. The capitalists are driven by the profit motive, but are eventually prevented from developing further profits by feudal society where, for instance, the serfs are tied to the land and cannot become industrial workers and wage earners. Marx says Then begins an epoch of social revolution (The French Revolution of 1789, Cromwell in Britain, etc) since the political organization of society (or the property relations) is preventing the development of the capitalists' productive forces. [9] The Fourth Stage is capitalism. Here the profit motive rules, and people, freed from serfdom, work for the capitalists for wages and the capitalist class are free to spread their laissez-faire practices around the world. Laws are made to protect wealth and the wealthy. But, according to Marx, capitalism, like slave society and feudalism, also has failings, inner contradictions, which will lead to revolution. The working class to which the capitalist class gave birth, is the "grave digger" of capitalism. The worker is not paid the full value of what he or she produces. The rest is surplus value - the capitalist's profit, what Marx calls the "unpaid labour of the working class." The capitalists are forced by competition to drive down the wages of the working class to increase their profits. Marx believed that capitalism always leads to monopolies and leads the people to poverty; the fewer the restrictions on the free market, (e.g. from the state and trade unions) the sooner it finds itself in crisis.

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The Fifth Stage (yet to be attained) is Communism, although Lenin, basing himself on a thorough study of the writings of Marx and Engels, divided this into two stages: first socialism, and then later, once the last vestiges of the old capitalist ways have withered away, communism (Lenin: The State and revolution). Socialist society arises from a self conscious movement of the vast majority, and thus a socialist society is the government of the vast majority over their own lives:

The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority. The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole superincumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air. [10]

Now the productive forces are once again free to develop, but in a democratically planned way, without the vast waste of anarchic capitalist society, its wars and destruction of the planet. Society leaps forward, and everyone has plenty of personal possessions, but no one can exploit another person for private gain through the ownership of vast monopolies, etc. Classes are thus abolished, and class society ended. Eventually the state will "wither away" and become obsolete, as people administer their own lives without the need for governments. Few applications of historical materialism, the philosophical system used by Marxism to explain the past progressions of human society and predict the nature of communism, account for a stage beyond communism, but Marx suggests that what has ended is only the "prehistory" [11] of human society, for now, for the first time, humans will be no longer be at the mercy of productive forces (e.g. the free market) which act independently of their control. Instead human beings can plan for the needs of society and the preservation of planet, inclusively, democratically, by the vast majority, who now own and control the means of production collectively. By implication, then, only now does the real history of human society begin.

Marxist schools of thought


Western Marxism
For more details on this topic, see Western Marxism. Western Marxism is a term used to describe a wide variety of Marxist theoreticians based in Western and Central Europe (and more recently North America), in contrast with philosophy in the Soviet Union, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia or the People's Republic of China. Structural Marxism For more details on this topic, see Structural Marxism. Structural Marxism is an approach to Marxism based on structuralism, primarily associated with the work of the French theorist Louis Althusser and his students. It was influential in 75

France during the late 1960s and 1970s, and also came to influence philosophers, political theorists and sociologists outside of France during the 1970s. Neo-Marxism For more details on this topic, see Neo-Marxism. Neo-Marxism is a school of Marxism that began in the 20th century and hearkened back to the early writings of Marx, before the influence of Engels, which focused on dialectical idealism rather than dialectical materialism. It thus rejected economic determinism being instead far more libertarian. Neo-Marxism adds Max Weber's broader understanding of social inequality, such as status and power, to orthodox Marxist thought. The Frankfurt School For more details on this topic, see Frankfurt School. The Frankfurt School is a school of neo-Marxist social theory, social research, and philosophy. The grouping emerged at the Institute for Social Research (Institut fr Sozialforschung) of the University of Frankfurt am Main in Germany. The term "Frankfurt School" is an informal term used to designate the thinkers affiliated with the Institute for Social Research or influenced by them: it is not the title of any institution, and the main thinkers of the Frankfurt School did not use the term to describe themselves. The Frankfurt School gathered together dissident Marxists, severe critics of capitalism who believed that some of Marx's alleged followers had come to parrot a narrow selection of Marx's ideas, usually in defense of orthodox Communist or Social-Democratic parties. Influenced especially by the failure of working-class revolutions in Western Europe after World War I and by the rise of Nazism in an economically, technologically, and culturally advanced nation (Germany), they took up the task of choosing what parts of Marx's thought might serve to clarify social conditions which Marx himself had never seen. They drew on other schools of thought to fill in Marx's perceived omissions. Max Weber exerted a major influence, as did Sigmund Freud (as in Herbert Marcuse's Freudo-Marxist synthesis in the 1954 work Eros and Civilization). Their emphasis on the "critical" component of theory was derived significantly from their attempt to overcome the limits of positivism, crude materialism, and phenomenology by returning to Kant's critical philosophy and its successors in German idealism, principally Hegel's philosophy, with its emphasis on negation and contradiction as inherent properties of reality. Cultural Marxism For more details on this topic, see Cultural Marxism. Cultural Marxism is a form of Marxism that adds an analysis of the role of the media, art, theatre, film and other cultural institutions in a society, often with an added emphasis on 76

race and gender in addition to class. As a form of political analysis, Cultural Marxism gained strength in the 1920s, and was the model used by the Frankfurt School; and later by another group of intellectuals at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in Birmingham, England. Analytical Marxism For more details on this topic, see Analytical Marxism. Analytical Marxism refers to a style of thinking about Marxism that was prominent amongst English-speaking philosophers and social scientists during the 1980s. It was mainly associated with the September Group of academics, so called because they have biennial meetings in varying locations every other September to discuss common interests. The group also dubbed itself "Non-Bullshit Marxism" (Cohen 2000a). It was characterized, in the words of David Miller, by "clear and rigorous thinking about questions that are usually blanketed by ideological fog". (Miller 1996) Marxist humanism For more details on this topic, see Marxist humanism. Marxist humanism is a branch of Marxism that primarily focuses on Marx's earlier writings, especially the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 in which Marx exposes his theory of alienation, as opposed to his later works, which are considered to be concerned more with his structural conception of capitalist society. It was opposed by Louis Althusser's "antihumanism", who qualified it as a revisionist movement. Marxist humanists contend that Marxism developed lopsided because Marxs early works were unknown until after the orthodox ideas were in vogue the Manuscripts of 1844 were published only in 1932 and it is necessary to understand Marxs philosophical foundations to understand his latter works properly. Key Western Marxists
Georg Lukcs

Georg Lukcs (April 13, 1885 June 4, 1971) was a Hungarian Marxist philosopher and literary critic in the tradition of Western Marxism. His main work History and Class Consciousness (written between 1919 and 1922 and first published in 1923), initiated the current of thought that came to be known as Western Marxism. The book is notable for contributing to debates concerning Marxism and its relation to sociology, politics and philosophy, and for reconstructing Marx's theory of alienation before many of the works of the Young Marx had been published. Lukcs's work elaborates and expands upon Marxist theories such as ideology, false consciousness, reification and class consciousness.
Karl Korsch

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Karl Korsch (August 15, 1886 - October 21, 1961) was born in Tostedt, near Hamburg, to the family of a middle-ranking bank official. In his later work, he rejected orthodox (classical) Marxism as historically outmoded, wanting to adapt Marxism to a new historical situation. He wrote in his Ten Theses (1950) that "the first step in re-establishing a revolutionary theory and practice consists in breaking with that Marxism which claims to monopolize revolutionary initiative as well as theoretical and practical direction" and that "today, all attempts to re-establish the Marxist doctrine as a whole in its original function as a theory of the working classes social revolution are reactionary utopias."[12] Korsch was especially concerned that Marxist theory was losing its precision and validity in the words of the day, becoming "vulgarized" - within the upper echelons of the various socialist organizations. His masterwork, Marxism and Philosophy is an attempt to reestablish the historic character of Marxism as the heir to Hegel.
Antonio Gramsci

Antonio Gramsci (January 22, 1891 April 27, 1937) was an Italian writer, politician and political theorist. He was a founding member and onetime leader of the Communist Party of Italy. Gramsci can be seen as one of the most important Marxist thinkers of the twentieth century, and in particular a key thinker in the development of Western Marxism. He wrote more than 30 notebooks and 3000 pages of history and analysis during his imprisonment. These writings, known as the Prison Notebooks, contain Gramsci's tracing of Italian history and nationalism, as well as some ideas in Marxist theory, critical theory and educational theory associated with his name, such as:

Cultural hegemony as a means of maintaining the state in a capitalist society. The need for popular workers' education to encourage development of intellectuals from the working class. The distinction between political society (the police, the army, legal system, etc.) which dominates directly and coercively, and civil society (the family, the education system, trade unions, etc.) where leadership is constituted through ideology or by means of consent. 'Absolute historicism'. The critique of economic determinism. The critique of philosophical materialism.

Louis Althusser

Louis Althusser (October 16, 1918 - October 23, 1990) was a Marxist philosopher. His arguments were a response to multiple threats to the ideological foundations of orthodox Communism. These included both the influence of empiricism which was beginning to influence Marxist sociology and economics, and growing interest in humanistic and democratic socialist orientations which were beginning to cause division in the European

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Communist Parties. Althusser is commonly referred to as a Structural Marxist, although his relationship to other schools of French structuralism is not a simple affiliation. His essay Marxism and Humanism is a strong statement of anti-humanism in Marxist theory, condemning ideas like "human potential" and "species-being," which are often put forth by Marxists, as outgrowths of a bourgeois ideology of "humanity." His essay Contradiction and Overdetermination borrows the concept of overdetermination from psychoanalysis, in order to replace the idea of "contradiction" with a more complex model of multiple causality in political situations (an idea closely related to Antonio Gramsci's concept of hegemony). Althusser is also widely known as a theorist of ideology, and his best-known essay is Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses: Notes Toward an Investigation .[13] The essay establishes the concept of ideology, also based on Gramsci's theory of hegemony. Whereas hegemony is ultimately determined entirely by political forces, ideology draws on Freud's and Lacan's concepts of the unconscious and mirror-phase respectively, and describes the structures and systems that allow us to meaningfully have a concept of the self.
Herbert Marcuse

Herbert Marcuse (July 19, 1898 July 29, 1979) was a prominent German-American philosopher and sociologist of Jewish descent, and a member of the Frankfurt School. Marcuse's critiques of capitalist society (especially his 1955 synthesis of Marx and Freud, Eros and Civilization, and his 1964 book One-Dimensional Man) resonated with the concerns of the leftist student movement in the 1960s. Because of his willingness to speak at student protests, Marcuse soon became known as "the father of the New Left," a term he disliked and rejected.

Post Marxism
For more details on this topic, see Post-Marxism. Post-Marxism represents the theoretical work of philosophers and social theorists who have built their theories upon those of Marx and Marxists but exceeded the limits of those theories in ways that puts them outside of Marxism. It begins with the basic tenets of Marxism but moves away from the Mode of Production as the starting point for analysis and includes factors other than class, such as gender, ethnicity etc, and a reflexive relationship between the base and superstructure.

Marxist Feminism
For more details on this topic, see Marxist feminism. Marxist feminism is a sub-type of feminist theory which focuses on the dismantling of capitalism as a way to liberate women. Marxist feminism states that capitalism, which gives 79

rise to economic inequality, dependence, political confusion and ultimately unhealthy social relations between men and women, is the root of women's oppression. According to Marxist theory, in capitalist societies the individual is shaped by class relations; that is, people's capacities, needs and interests are seen to be determined by the mode of production that characterises the society they inhabit. Marxist feminists see gender inequality as determined ultimately by the capitalist mode of production. Gender oppression is class oppression and women's subordination is seen as a form of class oppression which is maintained (like racism) because it serves the interests of capital and the ruling class. Marxist feminists have extended traditional Marxist analysis by looking at domestic labour as well as wage work in order to support their position.

Marxism as a political practice


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Since Marx's death in 1883, various groups around the world have appealed to Marxism as the theoretical basis for their politics and policies, which have often proved to be dramatically different and conflicting. One of the first major political splits occurred between the advocates of 'reformism', who argued that the transition to socialism could occur within existing bourgeois parliamentarian frameworks, and communists, who argued that the transition to a socialist society required a revolution and the dissolution of the capitalist state. The 'reformist' tendency, later known as social democracy, came to be dominant in most of the parties affiliated to the Second International and these parties supported their own governments in the First World War. This issue caused the communists to break away, forming their own parties which became members of the Third International. 81

The following countries had governments at some point in the twentieth century who at least nominally adhered to Marxism: Albania, Afghanistan, Angola, Bulgaria, Chile, China, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Ethiopia, Hungary, Laos, Moldova, Mongolia, Mozambique, Nicaragua, North Korea, Poland, Romania, Russia, the USSR and its republics, South Yemen, Yugoslavia, Venezuela, Vietnam. In addition, the Indian states of Kerala and West Bengal have had Marxist governments. Marxist political parties and movements have significantly declined since the fall of the Soviet Union, with some exceptions, perhaps most notably Nepal.

History
The 1917 October Revolution, led by Vladimir Lenin, was the first large scale attempt to put Marxist ideas about a workers' state into practice. The new government faced counterrevolution, civil war and foreign intervention. Many, both inside and outside the revolution, worried that the revolution came too early in Russia's economic development. Consequently, the major Socialist Party in the UK decried the revolution as anti-Marxist within twenty-four hours, according to Jonathan Wolff. Lenin consistently explained "this elementary truth of marxism, that the victory of socialism requires the joint efforts of workers in a number of advanced countries" (Lenin, Sochineniya (Works), 5th ed Vol XLIV p418.) It could not be developed in Russia in isolation, he argued, but needed to be spread internationally. The 1917 October Revolution did help inspire a revolutionary wave over the years that followed, with the development of Communist Parties worldwide, but without success in the vital advanced capitalist countries of Western Europe. Socialist revolution in Germany and other western countries failed, leaving the Soviet Union on its own. An intense period of debate and stopgap solutions ensued, war communism and the New Economic Policy (NEP). Lenin died and Joseph Stalin gradually assumed control, eliminating rivals and consolidating power as the Soviet Union faced the horrible challenges of the 1930s and its global crisis-tendencies. Amidst the geopolitical threats which defined the period and included the probability of invasion, he instituted a ruthless program of industrialisation which, while successful, was executed at great cost in human suffering, including millions of deaths, along with long-term environmental devastation. Modern followers of Leon Trotsky maintain that as predicted by Lenin, Trotsky, and others already in the 1920s, Stalin's "socialism in one country" was unable to maintain itself, and according to some Marxist critics, the USSR ceased to show the characteristics of a socialist state long before its formal dissolution. Following World War II, Marxist ideology, often with Soviet military backing, spawned a rise in revolutionary communist parties all over the world. Some of these parties were eventually able to gain power, and establish their own version of a Marxist state. Such nations included the People's Republic of China, Vietnam, Romania, East Germany, Albania, Cambodia, Ethiopia, South Yemen, Yugoslavia, Cuba, and others. In some cases, these nations did not get along. The most notable examples were rifts that occurred between the Soviet Union and China, as well as Soviet Union and Yugoslavia (in 1948), whose

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leaders disagreed on certain elements of Marxism and how it should be implemented into society. Many of these self-proclaimed Marxist nations (often styled People's Republics) eventually became authoritarian states, with stagnating economies. This caused some debate about whether or not these nations were in fact led by "true Marxists". Critics of Marxism speculated that perhaps Marxist ideology itself was to blame for the nations' various problems. Followers of the currents within Marxism which opposed Stalin, principally cohered around Leon Trotsky, tended to locate the failure at the level of the failure of world revolution: for communism to have succeeded, they argue, it needed to encompass all the international trading relationships that capitalism had previously developed. The Chinese experience seems to be unique. Rather than falling under a single family's selfserving and dynastic interpretation of Marxism as happened in North Korea and before 1989 in Eastern Europe, the Chinese government - after the end of the struggles over the Mao legacy in 1980 and the ascent of Deng Xiaoping - seems to have solved the succession crises that have plagued self-proclaimed Leninist governments since the death of Lenin himself. Key to this success is another Leninism which is a NEP (New Economic Policy) writ very large; Lenin's own NEP of the 1920s was the "permission" given to markets including speculation to operate by the Party which retained final control. The Russian experience in Perestroika was that markets under socialism were so opaque as to be both inefficient and corrupt but especially after China's application to join the WTO this does not seem to apply universally. The death of "Marxism" in China has been prematurely announced but since the Hong Kong handover in 1997, the Beijing leadership has clearly retained final say over both commercial and political affairs. Questions remain however as to whether the Chinese Party has opened its markets to such a degree as to be no longer classified as a true Marxist party. A sort of tacit consent, and a desire in China's case to escape the chaos of pre-1949 memory, probably plays a role. In 1991 the Soviet Union collapsed and the new Russian state ceased to identify itself with Marxism. Other nations around the world followed suit. Since then, radical Marxism or Communism has generally ceased to be a prominent political force in global politics, and has largely been replaced by more moderate versions of democratic socialismor, more commonly, by aggressively neoliberal capitalism. Marxism has also had to engage with the rise in the Environmental movement. A merging of Marxism, socialism, ecology and environmentalism has been achieved, and is often referred to as Eco-socialism.

Social Democracy

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Social democracy is a political ideology that emerged in the late 19th and early 20th century. Many parties in the second half of the 19th century described themselves as social democratic, such as the British Social Democratic Federation, and the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. In most cases these were revolutionary socialist or Marxist groups, who were not only seeking to introduce socialism, but also democracy in undemocratic countries. The modern social democratic current came into being through a break within the socialist movement in the early 20th century, between two groups holding different views on the ideas of Karl Marx. Many related movements, including pacifism, anarchism, and syndicalism, arose at the same time (often by splitting from the main socialist movement, but also by emerging of new theories.) and had various quite different objections to Marxism. The social democrats, who were the majority of socialists at this time, did not reject Marxism (and in fact claimed to uphold it), but wanted to reform it in certain ways and tone down their criticism of capitalism. They argued that socialism should be achieved through evolution rather than revolution. Such views were strongly opposed by the revolutionary socialists, who argued that any attempt to reform capitalism was doomed to fail, because the reformers would be gradually corrupted and eventually turn into capitalists themselves. Despite their differences, the reformist and revolutionary branches of socialism remained united until the outbreak of World War I. The war proved to be the final straw that pushed the tensions between them to breaking point. The reformist socialists supported their respective national governments in the war, a fact that was seen by the revolutionary socialists as outright treason against the working class (Since it betrayed the principle that the workers of all nations should unite in overthrowing capitalism, and the fact that usually the lowest classes are the ones sent into the war to fight, and die, putting the cause at the side). Bitter arguments ensued within socialist parties, as for example between Eduard Bernstein (reformist socialist) and Rosa Luxemburg (revolutionary socialist) within the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). Eventually, after the Russian Revolution of 1917, most of the world's socialist parties fractured. The reformist socialists kept the name "Social democrats", while the revolutionary socialists began calling themselves "Communists", and soon formed the modern Communist movement. (See also Comintern) Since the 1920s, doctrinal differences have been constantly growing between social democrats and Communists (who themselves are not unified on the way to achieve socialism), and Social Democracy is mostly used as a specifically Central European label for Labour Parties since then, especially in Germany and the Netherlands and especially since the 1959 Godesberg Program of the German SPD that rejected the praxis of class struggle alltogether.

Socialism

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Although there are still many Marxist revolutionary social movements and political parties around the world, since the collapse of the Soviet Union and its satellite states, very few countries have governments which describe themselves as Marxist. Although socialistic parties are in power in some Western nations, they long ago distanced themselves from their direct link to Marx and his ideas. As of 2005, Laos, Vietnam, Cuba, and the People's Republic of China - and to a certain extent Venezuela had governments in power which describe themselves as socialist in the Marxist sense. However, the private sector comprised more than 50% of the mainland Chinese economy by this time[citation needed] and the Vietnamese government had also partially liberalised its economy. The Laotian and Cuban states maintained strong control over the means of production. Alexander Lukashenko president of Belarus, has been quoted as saying that his agrarian policy could be termed as Communist. He has also frequently referred to the economy as being 'market socialism'. Lukashenko is also an unapologetic admirer of the Soviet Union. North Korea is another contemporary socialist state, though the official ideology of the Korean Workers' Party (originally led by Kim Il-sung and currently chaired by his son, Kim Jong-il), Juche, does not follow doctrinaire Marxism-Leninism as had been espoused by the leadership of the Soviet Union. Libya is often thought of as a socialist state; it maintained ties with the Soviet Union and other Eastern bloc and Communist states during the Cold War. Colonel Muammar alQaddafi, the leader of Libya, describes the state's official ideology as Islamic socialism, and has labeled it a third way between capitalism and communism. In the United Kingdom, the governing Labour Party describes itself as a socialist political party and is a member of the socialist organisation, Socialist International. The Party was set up by trade-unionists, revolutionary and reformist socialists such as the Social Democratic Federation and the socialist Fabian Society.

Communism
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A number of states have declared an allegiance to the principles of Marxism and have been ruled by self-described Communist Parties, either as a single-party state or a single list, which includes formally several parties, as was the case in the German Democratic Republic. Due to the dominance of the Communist Party in their governments, these states are often called "communist states" by Western political scientists. However, they have described themselves as "socialist", reserving the term "communism" for a future classless society, in which the state would no longer be necessary (on this understanding of communism, "communist state" would be an oxymoron) for instance, the USSR was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Many Marxists contend that, historically, there has never been any communist country. Communist governments have historically been characterized by state ownership of productive resources in a planned economy and sweeping campaigns of economic restructuring such as nationalization of industry and land reform (often focusing on collective farming or state farms.) While they promote collective ownership of the means of production, Communist governments have been characterized by a strong state apparatus in which decisions are made by the ruling Communist Party. Dissident 'authentic' communists have characterized the Soviet model as state socialism or state capitalism. Marxism-Leninism Marxism-Leninism, strictly speaking, refers to the version of Marxism developed by Vladimir Lenin known as Leninism[citation needed]. However, in various contexts, different (and sometimes opposing) political groups have used the term "Marxism-Leninism" to describe the ideologies that they claimed to be upholding. The core ideological features of MarxismLeninism are those of Marxism and Leninism, viz. belief in the necessity of a violent overthrow of capitalism through communist revolution, to be followed by a dictatorship of the proletariat as the first stage of moving towards communism, and the need for a vanguard party to lead the proletariat in this effort. It involves subscribing to the teachings and legacy of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (Marxism), and that of Lenin, as carried forward by Joseph Stalin. Those who view themselves as Marxist-Leninists, however, vary with regards to the leaders and thinkers that they choose to uphold as progressive (and to what extent). Maoists tend to downplay the importance of all other thinkers in favour of Mao Zedong, whereas Hoxhaites repudiate Mao. Leninism holds that capitalism can only be overthrown by revolutionary means; that is, any attempts to reform capitalism from within, such as Fabianism and non-revolutionary forms of democratic socialism, are doomed to fail. The goal of a Leninist party is to orchestrate the overthrow the existing government by force and seize power on behalf of the proletariat, and then implement a dictatorship of the proletariat. The party must then use the powers of government to educate the proletariat, so as to remove the various modes of false

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consciousness the bourgeois have instilled in them in order to make them more docile and easier to exploit economically, such as religion and nationalism. The dictatorship of the proletariat refers to the absolute power of the working class. It is governed by a system of proletarian direct democracy, in which workers hold political power through local councils known as soviets (see soviet democracy). Trotskyism For more details on this topic, see Trotskyism. Trotskyism is the theory of Marxism as advocated by Leon Trotsky. Trotsky considered himself a Bolshevik-Leninist, arguing for the establishment of a vanguard party. He considered himself an advocate of orthodox Marxism. His politics differed sharply from those of Stalin or Mao, most importantly in declaring the need for an international "permanent revolution". Numerous groups around the world continue to describe themselves as Trotskyist and see themselves as standing in this tradition, although they have diverse interpretations of the conclusions to be drawn from this. Trotsky advocated proletarian revolution as set out in his theory of "permanent revolution", and he argued that in countries where the bourgeois-democratic revolution had not triumphed already (in other words, in places that had not yet implemented a capitalist democracy, such as Russia before 1917), it was necessary that the proletariat make it permanent by carrying out the tasks of the social revolution (the "socialist" or "communist" revolution) at the same time, in an uninterrupted process. Trotsky believed that a new socialist state would not be able to hold out against the pressures of a hostile capitalist world unless socialist revolutions quickly took hold in other countries as well. On the political spectrum of Marxism, Trotskyists are considered to be on the left. They supported democratic rights in the USSR, opposed political deals with the imperialist powers, and advocated a spreading of the revolution throughout Europe and the East. Trotsky developed the theory that the Russian workers' state had become a "bureaucratically degenerated workers' state". Capitalist rule had not been restored, and nationalized industry and economic planning, instituted under Lenin, were still in effect. However, the state was controlled by a bureaucratic caste with interests hostile to those of the working class. Trotsky defended the Soviet Union against attack from imperialist powers and against internal counter-revolution, but called for a political revolution within the USSR to restore socialist democracy. He argued that if the working class did not take power away from the Stalinist bureaucracy, the bureaucracy would restore capitalism in order to enrich itself. In the view of many Trotskyists, this is exactly what has happened since the beginning of Glasnost and Perestroika in the USSR. Some argue that the adoption of market socialism by the People's Republic of China has also led to capitalist counterrevolution. Maoism 88

For more details on this topic, see Maoism. Maoism or Mao Zedong Thought (Chinese: , pinyin: Mo Zdng Sxing), is a variant of Marxism-Leninism derived from the teachings of the Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong (Wade-Giles transliteration: "Mao Tse-tung"). The term "Mao Zedong Thought" has always been the preferred term by the Communist Party of China, and the word "Maoism" has never been used in its English-language publications except pejoratively. Likewise, Maoist groups outside China have usually called themselves Marxist-Leninist rather than Maoist, a reflection of Mao's view that he did not change, but only developed, Marxism-Leninism. However, some Maoist groups, believing Mao's theories to have been sufficiently substantial additions to the basics of the Marxist canon, call themselves "Marxist-Leninist-Maoist" (MLM) or simply "Maoist." In the People's Republic of China, Mao Zedong Thought is part of the official doctrine of the Communist Party of China, but since the 1978 beginning of Deng Xiaoping's market economy-oriented reforms, the concept of "socialism with Chinese characteristics" has come to the forefront of Chinese politics, Chinese economic reform has taken hold, and the official definition and role of Mao's original ideology in the PRC has been radically altered and reduced (see History of China). Unlike the earlier forms of Marxism-Leninism in which the urban proletariat was seen as the main source of revolution, and the countryside was largely ignored, Mao focused on the peasantry as the main revolutionary force which, he said, could be led by the proletariat and its vanguard, the Communist Party of China. The model for this was of course the Chinese communist rural Protracted People's War of the 1920s and 1930s, which eventually brought the Communist Party of China to power. Furthermore, unlike other forms of MarxismLeninism in which large-scale industrial development was seen as a positive force, Maoism made all-round rural development the priority. Mao felt that this strategy made sense during the early stages of socialism in a country in which most of the people were peasants. Unlike most other political ideologies, including other socialist and Marxist ones, Maoism contains an integral military doctrine and explicitly connects its political ideology with military strategy. In Maoist thought, "political power comes from the barrel of the gun" (one of Mao's quotes), and the peasantry can be mobilized to undertake a "people's war" of armed struggle involving guerrilla warfare in three stages.

Other
Some libertarian members of the laissez-faire and individualist schools of thought believe the actions and principles of modern capitalist states or big governments can be understood as "Marxist". This point of view ignores the overall vision and general intent of Marx and

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Engels' Communist Manifesto, for qualitative change to the economic system, and focuses on a few steps that Marx and Engels believed would occur, as workers emancipated themselves from the capitalist system, such as "Free education for all children in public schools". A few such reforms have been implemented not by Marxists but in the forms of Keynesianism, the welfare state, new liberalism, social democracy and other changes within the capitalist system, in most capitalist states. To Marxists these reforms represent responses to political pressures from working-class political parties and unions, themselves responding to perceived abuses of the capitalist system. Further, in this view, many of these reforms reflect efforts to "save" or "improve" capitalism (without abolishing it) by coordinating economic actors and dealing with market failures. Further, although Marxism does see a role for a socialist "vanguard" government in representing the proletariat through a revolutionary period of indeterminate length, it sees an eventual lightening of that burden, a "withering away of the state."

Disputing these claims


Many academics dispute the claim that the above political movements are Marxist. Communist governments have historically been characterized by state ownership of productive resources in a planned economy and sweeping campaigns of economic restructuring such as nationalization of industry and land reform (often focusing on collective farming or state farms.) While they promote collective ownership of the means of production, Communist governments have been characterized by a strong state apparatus in which decisions are made by the ruling Communist Party. Dissident communists have characterized the Soviet model as state socialism or state capitalism. Further, critics have often claimed that a Stalinist or Maoist system of government creates a new ruling class, usually called the nomenklatura. However Marx defined "communism" as a classless, egalitarian and stateless society. Indeed, to Marx, the notion of a socialist state would have seemed oxymoronical, as he defined socialism as the phase reached when class society and the state had already been abolished. Once socialism had been established, society would develop new socialist relations over the course of several generations, reaching the stage known as communism when bourgeois relations had been abandoned. Such a development has yet to occur in any historical self-claimed Socialist state. Often it results in the creation of two distinct classes: those who are in government and therefore have power, and those who are not in government and do not have power thus inspiring the term "State capitalism". These statist regimes have generally followed a command economy model without making a transition to this hypothetical final stage.

Criticisms
For more details on this topic, see Criticisms of Marxism.

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Criticisms of Marxism are many and varied. They concern both the theory itself, and its later interpretations and implementations. Criticisms of Marxism have come from the political Left as well as the political Right. Democratic socialists and social democrats reject the idea that socialism can be accomplished only through class conflict and violent revolution. Many Anarchists reject the need for a transitory state phase. Some thinkers have rejected the fundamentals of Marxist theory, such as historical materialism and the labour theory of value, and gone on to criticize capitalism - and advocate socialism - using other arguments. Some contemporary supporters of Marxism argue that many aspects of Marxist thought are viable, but that the corpus also fails to deal effectively with certain aspects of economic, political or social theory.

Notes
1. ^ See in particular MIA introduction at "The Programme of the Parti Ouvrier" 2. ^ Institute of Economics of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R. (1957). xiii. 3. ^ See Marx: A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859), Preface, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1977, with some notes by R. Rojas, and Engels: AntiDhring (1877), Introduction General 4. ^ Joseph McCarney: Ideology and False Consciousness, April 2005 5. ^ Engels: Letter to Franz Mehring, (London July 14, 1893), transl. by Donna Torr, in Marx and Engels Correspondence, International Publishers 1968 6. ^ Karl Marx, The German Ideology, [1] 7. ^ See in particular Marx and Engels, The German Ideology 8. ^ Marx makes no claim to have produced a master key to history. Historical materialism is not "an historico-philosophic theory of the marche generale imposed by fate upon every people, whatever the historic circumstances in which it finds itself". (Marx, Karl, Letter to editor of the Russian paper Otetchestvennye Zapiskym, 1877) His ideas, he explains, are based on a concrete study of the actual conditions that pertained in Europe. 9. ^ Marx, Preface of A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy Marx, Early writings, Penguin, 1975, p425-6 10. ^ Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto 11. ^ Marx, Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy Marx, Early writings, Penguin, 1975, p426 12. ^ Karl Korsch (1950) Ten Theses on Marxism Today 13. ^ Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses: Notes Toward an Investigation is available in several English volumes including Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays

References

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This article or section includes a list of works cited or a list of external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks in-text citations.
You can improve this article by introducing more precise citations. Avineri, Shlomo (1968). The Social and Political

Thought of Karl Marx .

Cambridge University Press.


Kolakowski, Leszek. Main Currents in Marxism. Parkes, Henry Bamford (1939). Marxism: An Autopsy. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Screpanti, E; S. Zamagna (1993). An Outline of the History of Economic Thought. Sowell, Thomas (1985). Marxism: Philosophy and Economics. New York: William Morrow, 281 p. ISBN 0-688-06426-4. McLellan, David (2007). Marxism After Marx. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

See also
Other articles about Marxism

Analytical Marxism Anti-Revisionist Austromarxism Communism Contributors to marxist theory Council communism Criticisms of communism Cultural Marxism Dialectical materialism Dictatorship of the proletariat Economic determinism False consciousness Historical materialism Legal Naturalism Liberalism Marxian economics Marxist film theory Marxist historiography Marxist humanism Marxist literary criticism Marxist philosophy Marxist philosophy of nature Marx's theory of alienation Neo-Marxism Post-Marxism 92

Western Marxism

See also

Anarchism Anarchism and Marxism Antagonistic contradiction Crisis theory Critical theory Communist state Communist party Communitarianism Eco-socialism Freiwirtschaft Historicism Lewis H. Morgan Labor theory of value Luxemburgism Materialism Marxist revisionism Monthly Review Political economy Political philosophy Producerism Rethinking Marxism Social-conflict theory Social evolutionism Socialism

Further reading

The London Philosophy Study Guide offers many suggestions on what to read, depending on the student's familiarity with the subject: Marxism

External links
General resources

Marxists Internet Archive Marxmail.org A Marxism FAQ - under construction Libertarian Communist Library Marxism archive The Last Superpower - discussion on Marxism Marxism Page Marxist.net Marxist Resources from the Committee for a Workers' International

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Marxism FAQ Marx Myths & Legends Extensive bibliography

Introductory articles

Introductory article by Michael A. Lebowitz History of Economic Thought: Marxian School Modern Variants of Marxian political economy

Marxist websites

Rethinking Marxism: A journal of economics, society, and culture MRZine A project of Monthly Review Foundation Marxist.com In Defence of Marxism Pathfinder Books, Marxist bookstore online Solidarity Economy: Marxist theory, analysis and debate

Specific topics

Debating Marxism Michael Albert (ParEcon) vs. Alan Maass (Marxism) Marx on India and the Colonial Question from the Anti-Caste Information Page

Critiques of Marxism

Main Currents of Marxism. Volume I: The Founders, Volume II: The Golden Age, Volume III: The Breakdown critique by Leszek Koakowski The Open Society and Its Enemies. Volume II: The High Tide of Prophecy (Hegel, Marx and the Aftermath) critique by Karl Popper "Madisonian Democracy and Marxist Analysis: Ryder on the Constitution" by Sterling Harwood (in Chrisopher B. Gray, ed., Philosophical Essays on the United States Constitution: A Collection of Bicentennial Essays Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1989) Liberalism, Marxism and The State, by Ralph Raico A Farewell to Marx: An Outline and Appraisal of His Theories, by David Conway Marx Lite, by Thomas J. DiLorenzo Marxist Dreams and Soviet Realities, by Ralph Raico Marxism, by David L. Prychitko Marxism As Pseudo-science, by Ernest Van Den Haag Lecture XXXV "A Philosophy of Life" includes a critique by Sigmund Freud

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Neopragmatism
Neopragmatism, sometimes called linguistic pragmatism is a recent (since the 1960s) philosophical term for philosophy that reintroduces many concepts from pragmatism. It has been associated with a variety of thinkers, among them Richard Rorty, Hilary Putnam, W.V.O. Quine, Donald Davidson, and Stanley Fish though none of these figures have called themselves "neopragmatists".

Background
Neopragmatists, particularly Rorty and Putnam, draw on the ideas of Classical Pragmatists such as Charles Peirce, William James, and John Dewey. Putnam, in Words and Life (1994), enumerates the ideas in the Classical Pragmatist tradition, which newer pragmatists find most compelling. To paraphrase Putnam: 1. antiscepticism (the notion that doubt requires justification just as much as belief); 2. fallibilism (the view that there are no metaphysical guarantees against the need to revise a belief); 3. antidualism about "facts" and "values"; 4. that practice, properly construed, is primary in philosophy. (WL 152)

Rorty Writings
In 1995 Rorty wrote: "I linguisticize as many pre-linguistic-turn philosophers as I can, in order to read them as prophets of the utopia in which all metaphysical problems have been dissolved, and religion and science have yielded their place to poetry." Rorty and Pragmatism : The Philosopher Responds to His Critics , edited by Herman J. Saatkamp (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1995). This "linguistic turn" strategy aims to avoid what Rorty sees as the essentialisms ("truth," "reality," "experience") still extant in classical pragmatism. Rorty writes: "Analytic philosophy, thanks to its concentration on language, was able to defend certain crucial pragmatist theses better than James and Dewey themselves. ...By focusing our attention on the relation between language and the rest of the world rather than between experience and nature, post-positivistic analytic philosophy was able to make a more radical break with the philosophical tradition." Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 21, no. 1 (Winter 1985). Three Basic Moves. Linguistic pragmatism revises pragmatism in three basic moves. First, one applauds pragmatists such as James and Dewey for repudiating a variety of methods and goals in traditional philosophy. Second, one renounces their attempts to reconstruct what should not be reconstructed. Finally, once one accepts the idea that only language is 95

available to furnish philosophy's materiel. This step complete, one can create freely, even poetically, to serve whatever ends seem best. Many people are now writing about "neopragmatism" and so we can expect that definitions will proliferate.

External links

Beyond Realism and Antirealism: John Dewey and the Neopragmatists The Neopragmatist Turn

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New Confucianism
New Confucianism (Traditional Chinese: , "Contemporary New Confucianism") is a new movement of Confucianism that began in the twentieth century. It is deeply influenced by, but not identical with the Neo-Confucianism of the Song and Ming dynasties. The term itself was first used as early as 1963 (in two articles in the Hong Kong journal Rensheng). However, it did not come into common use until the late 70s. There is considerable debate over what exactly "New Confucianism" is, and who counts as a "New Confucian." New Confucianism is often associated with the essay, "A Manifesto on Chinese Culture to the World," which was published in 1958 by Tang Junyi, Mou Zongsan, Xu Fuguan and Zhang Junmai. This work is often referred to as the "New Confucian Manifesto," although that phrase never occurs in it. The Manifesto presents a vision of Chinese culture as having a fundamental unity throughout history, of which Confucianism is the highest expression. The particular interpretation of Confucianism given by the Manifesto is deeply influenced by Neo-Confucianism, and in particular the version of NeoConfucianism most associated with Lu Xiangshan and Wang Yangming (as opposed to that associated with Zhu Xi). In addition, the Manifesto argues that while China must learn from the West modern science and democracy, the West must learn from China (and the Confucian tradition in particular) "a more all-encompassing wisdom." Consequently, we might say that a "New Confucian" is anyone who (1) believes that Confucianism can and should accommodate modern science and democracy, (2) argues that Confucianism has a distinctive contribution to make to Western thought, and (3) interprets Confucianism along the general lines of Neo-Confucianism. On this characterization, leading contemporary New Confucians would include Liu Shuxian of Academia Sinica in Taiwan, Tu Wei-ming of Harvard, Robert Neville and John Berthrong of Boston University, and Chen Lai of the University of Beijing. Many philosophers would agree with the New Confucians that Confucianism is a living and valuable contemporary philosophical position, but would dissent from reading Confucianism in terms of the thought of Neo-Confucians such as Wang Yangming. It would be an overly loose use of the term to describe such philosophers as "New Confucians."

External links

The importance of universal principles in Confucianism and the problems connected to Jiang Qings concept of political Confucianism and his theory of particular principles

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References

Umberto Bresciani, Reinventing Confucianism: The New Confucian Movement, Taipei, Taiwan: Ricci Institute for Chinese Studies, n.d. Very helpful series of capsule biographies of every major New Confucian thinker. John Makeham, ed., New Confucianism: A Critical Examination, New York: Palgrave, 2003. A collection of critical essays discussing major figures in the New Confucian tradition. Makeham contributed the introduction and two articles, all of which are very helpful in understanding the political complexities involved in defining who is or is not a "New Confucian."

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Ordinary language philosophy


Ordinary language philosophy is a philosophical school that approached traditional philosophical problems as rooted in misunderstandings philosophers develop by forgetting what words actually mean in a language. These approaches typically involve eschewing philosophical "theories" in favour of close attention to the details of the use of everyday, "ordinary" language. They are generally associated with the later work of Ludwig Wittgenstein and the works of Gilbert Ryle, J.L. Austin, Peter Strawson, and Norman Malcolm. The name comes from the contrast between these approaches and the earlier approaches that had been dominant in analytic philosophy, now sometimes called ideal language philosophy. Ordinary language philosophy was a dominant philosophic school between 1930 and 1970, and remains an important force in present-day philosophy.

History
Early analytic philosophy had a less positive view of ordinary language. Bertrand Russell tended to dismiss language as being of little philosophical significance, and ordinary language as just being too confused to help solve metaphysical and epistemological problems. Frege, the Vienna Circle (especially Rudolf Carnap), the young Wittgenstein, and W.V. Quine, all attempted to improve upon it, in particular using the resources of modern logic. Wittgenstein's view in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus more or less agreed with Russell that language ought to be reformulated so as to be unambiguous, so as to accurately represent the world, so that we could better deal with the questions of philosophy. The sea-change brought on by Wittgenstein's unpublished work in the 1930's centred largely around the idea that there is nothing wrong with ordinary language as it stands, and that many traditional philosophical problems were only illusions brought on by misunderstandings about language and related subjects. The former idea led to rejecting the approaches of earlier analytic philosophy--arguably, of any earlier philosophy--and the latter led to replacing them with the contemplation of language in its normal use, in order to "dissolve" the appearance of philosophical problems, rather than attempt to solve them. At its inception, ordinary language philosophy (also called linguistic philosophy) had been taken as either an extension of or as an alternative to analytic philosophy. Now that the term "analytic philosophy" has a more standardized meaning, ordinary language philosophy is viewed as a stage of the analytic tradition that followed logical positivism and that preceded the yet-to-be-named stage analytic philosophy continues to be in (Rortyian neopragmatism and Kripke-esque philosophy). Although heavily influenced by Wittgenstein and his students at Cambridge, ordinary language analysis largely flourished and developed at Oxford in the 1940s, under Austin and Gilbert Ryle, and was quite widespread for a time before declining rapidly in popularity in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It is now not uncommon to hear that "ordinary 99

language philosophy is dead". Wittgenstein is perhaps the only one among the major figures in this vein to retain anything like the reputation he had at that time. On the other hand, the linguistic turn remains one of most important and controversial movements in contemporary thought, and many of the effects of this turn, which are felt across many academic disciplines, can be traced to ordinary language philosophy.

Central ideas
Wittgenstein held that the meanings of words reside in their ordinary uses, and that that is why philosophers trip over words taken in abstraction. From England came the idea that philosophy has got into trouble by trying to understand words outside of the context of their use in ordinary language (cf. contextualism). For example: What is reality? Philosophers have treated it as a noun denoting something that has certain properties. For thousands of years, they have debated those properties. Ordinary Language philosophy would instead look at how we use the word "reality". In some instances, people will say, "It seems to me that so-and-so; but in reality, such-andsuch is the case". But this expression isn't used to mean that there is some special dimension of being that such-and-such has that so-and-so doesn't have. What we really mean is, "So-and-so only sounded right, but was misleading in some way. Now I'm about to tell you the truth: such-and-such". That is, "in reality" is a bit like "however". And the phrase, "The reality of the matter is " serves a similar function to set the listener's expectations. Further, when we talk about a "real gun", we aren't making a metaphysical statement about the nature of reality; we are merely opposing this gun to a toy gun, pretend gun, imaginary gun, etc. The controversy really begins when ordinary language philosophers apply the same levelling tendency to questions such as What is Truth? or What is Consciousness?. Philosophers in this school would insist that we cannot assume that (for example) 'Truth' 'is' a 'thing' (in the same sense that tables and chairs are 'things'), which the word 'truth' represents. Instead, we must look at the differing ways in which the words 'truth' and 'conscious' actually function in ordinary language. We may well discover, after investigation, that there is no single entity to which the word 'truth' corresponds, something Wittgenstein attempts to get across via his concept of a 'family resemblance' (cf. Philosophical Investigations). Therefore ordinary language philosophers tend to be antiessentialist. Of course, this was and is a very controversial viewpoint. Anti-essentialism and the linguistic philosophy associated with it are often important to contemporary accounts of feminism, Marxism, and other social philosophies that are critical of the injustice of the status quo. The essentialist 'Truth' as 'thing' is argued to be closely related to projects of domination, where the denial of alternate truths is understood to be a denial of alternate forms of living. Similar arguments sometimes involve ordinary language philosophy with other anti-essentialist movements like post-structuralism.

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Important books of ordinary language philosophy


The Claim of Reason by Stanley Cavell Sense and Sensibilia by J.L. Austin Blue and Brown Books by Ludwig Wittgenstein Philosophical Investigations by Ludwig Wittgenstein Philosophy and Ordinary Language by Oswald Hanfling The Concept of Mind by Gilbert Ryle Dilemmas by Gilbert Ryle Individuals by P.F. Strawson

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Phenomenology
Phenomenology has at least three main meanings in philosophical history: one in the writings of G.W.F. Hegel, another in the writings of Edmund Husserl in 1920, and a third, deriving from Husserl's work, in the writings of his former research assistant Martin Heidegger in 1927:

For G.W.F. Hegel, phenomenology is an approach to philosophy that begins with an exploration of phenomena (what presents itself to us in conscious experience) as a means to finally grasp the absolute, logical, ontological and metaphysical Spirit that is behind phenomena. This has been called a "dialectical phenomenology". For Edmund Husserl, phenomenology is "the reflective study of the essence of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view"[1] Phenomenology takes the intuitive experience of phenomena (what presents itself to us in phenomenological reflexion) as its starting point and tries to extract from it the essential features of experiences and the essence of what we experience. When generalized to the essential features of any possible experience, this has been called "transcendental phenomenology". Husserl's view was based on aspects of the work of Franz Brentano and was developed further by philosophers such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Max Scheler, Hannah Arendt, Dietrich von Hildebrand and Emmanuel Levinas. Martin Heidegger believed that Husserl's approach overlooked basic structural features of both the subject and object of experience - what he called their "being", and expanded phenomenological enquiry to encompass our understanding and experience of Being itself, thus making phenomenology the method (in the first phase of his career at least) of the study of being: ontology.

The difference in approach between Husserl and Heidegger influenced the development of existential phenomenology and existentialism in France, as is seen in the work of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. Munich phenomenology (Johannes Daubert, Adolf Reinach, Alexander Pfnder in Germany and Alfred Schtz in Austria), and Paul Ricoeur have all been influenced. Readings of Husserl and Heidegger have also been crucial aspects of the philosophies of Jacques Derrida and Bernard Stiegler.

Historical overview of the use of the term


While the term "phenomenology" was used several times in the history of philosophy before Husserl, modern use ties it more explicitly to his particular method. Following is a list of thinkers in rough chronological order who used the term "phenomenology" in a variety of ways, with brief comments on their contributions:[2] Friedrich Christoph Oetinger (1702 - 1782) German pietist, for the study of the "divine system of relations". 102

David Hume (1711 1776) Scottish philosopher, called variably a skeptic or a common sense advocate. While this connection is somewhat tendentious, Hume, in A Treatise of Human Nature, does seem to take a phenomenological or psychological approach by describing the process of reasoning causality in psychological terms. This is also the inspiration for the Kantian distinction between phenomenal and noumenal reality. Johann Heinrich Lambert (17281777) (mathematician, physician and philosopher) for the theory of appearances underlying empirical knowledge. Immanuel Kant (17241804), in the Critique of Pure Reason, distinguished between objects as phenomena, which are objects as shaped and grasped by human sensibility and understanding, and objects as things-in-themselves or noumena, which do not appear to us in space and time and about which we can make no legitimate judgements. Georg Hegel (17701831) challenged Kant's doctrine of the unknowable thing-initself, and declared that by knowing phenomena more fully we can gradually arrive at a consciousness of the absolute and spiritual truth of Divinity. Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, published in 1807, prompted many opposing views including the existential work of Sren Kierkegaard, Martin Heidegger and JeanPaul Sartre, as well as the materialist work of Marx and his many followers. Franz Brentano (1838-1917) seems to have used the term in some of his lectures at Vienna, where Edmund Husserl studied with him and came under his influence. Carl Stumpf (1848-1936), student of Brentano and mentor to Husserl, used it to refer to an ontology of sensory contents. Edmund Husserl (18591938) established phenomenology at first as a kind of "descriptive psychology" and later as a transcendental and eidetic science of consciousness. He is considered as the founder of contemporary phenomenology.

Max Scheler (1874-1928) developed further the phenomenological method of Edmund Husserl and extended it to include also a reduction of the scientific method. He influenced the thinking of Pope John Paul II and Edith Stein. Martin Heidegger (18891976) criticized Husserl's theory of phenomenology as he attempted to develop a theory of ontology that led him to his original theory of Dasein, the non-dualistic human being.

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Alfred Schtz (1899-1959) developed a phenomenology of the social world on the basis of everyday experience which has influenced major sociologists such as Harold Garfinkel, Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann.

Later usage is mostly based on or (critically) related to Husserl's introduction and use of the term. This branch of philosophy differs from others in that it tends to be more "descriptive" than "prescriptive".

Husserl and the origin of his Phenomenology


Husserl derived many important concepts that are central to phenomenology from the works and lectures of his teachers, the philosophers and psychologists Franz Brentano and Carl Stumpf.[3] An important element of phenomenology that Husserl borrowed from Brentano was intentionality, the notion that the main characteristic of consciousness is that it is always intentional. Intentionality, which could be summarised as the "directedness" or "aboutness" of mental acts, describes the basic structure of consciousness. Every mental act is directed at or contains an object the so-called intentional object. Every belief, desire, etc. has an object to which it refers: the believed, the desired. The property of being intentional, of having an intentional object, is the key feature which distinguishes mental/psychical phenomena from physical phenomena (objects), because physical phenomena lack intentionality altogether. Intentionality is the key concept by means of which phenomenology attempts to overcome the subject/object dichotomy prevalent in modern philosophy.

Precursors and influences


Skepticism (for the concept of the epoch) Descartes (Methodological doubt, cogito) British empiricism (Locke, Hume, Berkeley, Mill) Immanuel Kant and neokantianism (for Husserl's transcendental turn) Bernard Bolzano (for his ideas on Logic as Wissenschaftslehre) Karl Weierstrass (Husserl studied under him in Berlin and took over many elements for his Philosophy of Arithmetic) Franz Brentano (for the concept of intentionality and the method of descriptive psychology) Carl Stumpf (psychological analysis, influenced Husserl's early works)

Husserl's Logische Untersuchungen (1900/1901)


In the first edition of the Logical Investigations, still under the influence of Brentano, Husserl describes his position as "descriptive psychology". Husserl analyzes the intentional structures of mental acts and how they are directed at both real and ideal objects. The first volume of the Logical Investigations, the Prolegomena to Pure Logic, begins with a devastating critique of psychologism, i.e., the attempt to subsume the a priori validity of

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the laws of logic under psychology. Husserl establishes a separate field for research in logic, philosophy and phenomenology, independently from the empirical sciences.[4]

Transcendental phenomenology after the Ideen (1913)


Some years after the publication of the Logical Investigations, Husserl made some key elaborations which led him to the distinction between the act of consciousness ( noesis) and the phenomena at which it is directed (the noemata).

"noetic" refers to the intentional act of consciousness (believing, willing, hating and loving ...) "noematic" refers to the object or content (noema) which appears in the noetic acts (respectively the believed, wanted, hated and loved ...).

What we observe is not the object as it is in itself, but how and inasmuch it is given in the intentional acts. Knowledge of essences would only be possible by "bracketing" all assumptions about the existence of an external world and the inessential (subjective) aspects of how the object is concretely given to us. This procedure Husserl called epoch. Husserl in a later period concentrated more on the ideal, essential structures of consciousness. As he wanted to exclude any hypothesis on the existence of external objects, he introduced the method of phenomenological reduction to eliminate them. What was left over was the pure transcendental ego, as opposed to the concrete empirical ego. Now (transcendental) phenomenology is the study of the essential structures that are left in pure consciousness: this amounts in practice to the study of the noemata and the relations among them. The philosopher Theodor Adorno criticised Husserl's concept of phenomenological epistemology in his metacritique "Against Epistemology", which is anti-foundationalist in its stance. Transcendental phenomenologists include: Oskar Becker, Aron Gurwitsch and Alfred Schutz.

Realist phenomenology
After Husserl's publication of the Ideen in 1913, many phenomenologists took a critical stance towards his new theories. Especially the members of the Munich group distanced themselves from his new transcendental phenomenology and preferred the earlier realist phenomenology of the first edition of the Logical Investigations. Realist phenomenologists include: Adolf Reinach, Alexander Pfnder, Johannnes Daubert, Max Scheler, Roman Ingarden, Nicolai Hartmann, and Hans Kchler.

Existential phenomenology

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Existential phenomenology differs from transcendental phenomenology by its rejection of the transcendental ego. Merleau-Ponty objects to the ego's transcendence of the world, which for Husserl leaves the world spread out and completely transparent before the conscious. Heidegger thinks of conscious being as always already in the world. Transcendence is maintained in existential phenomenology to the extent that the method of phenomenology must take a presuppositionless starting point - transcending claims about the world arising from, for example, natural or scientific attitudes or theories of the ontological nature of the world. While Husserl thought philosophy to be a scientific discipline that had to be founded on a phenomenology understood as epistemology, Heidegger held a radically different view. Heidegger himself phrases their differences this way: For Husserl, the phenomenological reduction is the method of leading phenomenological vision from the natural attitude of the human being whose life is involved in the world of things and persons back to the transcendental life of consciousness and its noetic-noematic experiences, in which objects are constituted as correlates of consciousness. For us, phenomenological reduction means leading phenomenological vision back from the apprehension of a being, whatever may be the character of that apprehension, to the understanding of the Being of this being (projecting upon the way it is unconcealed).[5] According to Heidegger, philosophy was not at all a scientific discipline, but more fundamental than science itself. According to him science is only one way of knowing the world with no specialized access to truth. Furthermore, the scientific mindset itself is built on a much more "primordial" foundation of practical, everyday knowledge. Husserl was skeptical of this approach, which he regarded as quasi-mystical, and it contributed to the divergence in their thinking. Instead of taking phenomenology as prima philosophia or a foundational discipline, Heidegger took it as a metaphysical ontology: "being is the proper and sole theme of philosophy".[5] Yet to confuse phenomenology and ontology is an obvious error. Phenomena are not the foundation or Ground of Being. Neither are they appearances, for as Heidegger argues in Being and Time, an appearance is "that which shows itself in something else," while a phenomenon is "that which shows itself in itself." While for Husserl, in the epoch, being appeared only as a correlate of consciousness, for Heidegger being is the starting point. While for Husserl we would have to abstract from all concrete determinations of our empirical ego, to be able to turn to the field of pure consciousness, Heidegger claims that: "the possibilities and destinies of philosophy are bound up with man's existence, and thus with temporality and with historicality".[5] However, ontological being and existential being are different categories, so Heidegger's conflation of these categories is, according to Husserl's view, the root of Heidegger's error. Husserl charged Heidegger with raising the question of ontology but failing to answer it, instead switching the topic to the Dasein, the only being for whom Being is an issue. That is neither ontology nor phenomenology, according to Husserl, but merely abstract anthropology. To clarify, perhaps, by abstract anthropology, as a non-existentialist 106

searching for essences, Husserl rejected the existentialism implicit in Heidegger's distinction between being (sein) as things in reality from Being (Da-sein) as the encounter with being, as when being becomes present to us, i.e. is unconcealed. [6] Existential phenomenologists include: Martin Heidegger (1889 1976), Hannah Arendt (1906 1975), Emmanuel Levinas (1906 1995), Gabriel Marcel (1889 1973), Jean-Paul Sartre (1905 1980), Paul Ricoeur (1913 - 2005), and Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908 1961).

Criticisms of phenomenology
Daniel Dennett has criticized phenomenology on the basis that its explicitly first-person approach is incompatible with the scientific third-person approach, going so far as to coin the term "autophenomenology" to emphasize this aspect and to contrast it with his own alternative, which he calls heterophenomenology. Dennett's criticism reflects a more general attitude among analytic philosophers of mind. Phenomenologists, however, are often quick to point out that the relationship between phenomenological and natural scientific methods has been a major theme in phenomenology since at least Husserl [see The Crisis of the European Sciences], though Dennett makes no real attempt to engage with the work of phenomenologists on this issue. Many proponents of phenomenology argue that natural science can make sense only as a human activity, i.e., an activity which presupposes the fundamental structures of the 'first-person perspective.' While not hostile to the natural sciences per se, many thinkers in the phenomenological tradition would regard criticisms such as Dennett's metaphysical rather than purely scientific claims, and thus susceptible to the usual criticisms directed at metaphysical theories of all kinds [see anything by Heidegger]. Powerful defenses of the phenomenological approach against science-inspired reductive naturalism have been made by Hubert Dreyfus and Charles Taylor among others.

Phenomenology in architecture
Main article: Phenomenology (architecture) Beginning in the 1970s, phenomenology, with a strong influence from the writings of Martin Heidegger, began to have a major impact on architectural thinking. Christian Norberg-Schulz was an important figure in this movement. A Norwegian, he graduated from the Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule ETH in Zurich in 1949 and eventualy became Dean of the Oslo School of Architecture. His most important writings were Genius Loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture (New York: Rizzoli, 1980) and Intentions in Architecture (1963). These books were widely read in architectural schools the 1960s and 1970s. Another architect associated with the phenomenology movement was Charles Willard Moore, who was Dean of the School of Architecture at Yale from 1965 to 1970. Though interest in phenomenology has waned in recent times, several architects, such as Steven Holl and Peter Zumthor, claim to be phenomenologists. Alberto Prez-Gmez,

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professor of architectural history at McGill University, is also known as a defender of phenomenology.[7]

List of Phenomenologists and Phenomenology-Derived Theorists


Peter Berger Maurice Blanchot Stanley Cavell Jacques Derrida Mikel Dufrenne Hans-Georg Gadamer Aron Gurwitsch Martin Heidegger Michel Henry Edmund Husserl Roman Ingarden Karl Jaspers Richard Lanigan Emmanuel Levinas Thomas Luckmann Gabriel Marcel Maurice Merleau-Ponty Eugene Minkowski Christian Norberg-Schulz Jose Ortega y Gassett Alexander Pfnder Georges Poulet Adolf Reinach Paul Ricoeur Jean-Paul Sartre Max Scheler Alfred Schtz Herbert Spiegelberg Edith Stein Pierre Thevenaz Herman Van Breda Karol Wojtya

See also

Phenomenology of religion Hermeneutics Geneva School Structuralism 108

Existentialism Deconstruction Gestalt therapy Phenomenography

Poststructuralism Social constructionism Gestalt therapy Dark Star, in which an artificially-intelligent superbomb is taught phenomenology, with unexpectedly dire results.

Philosophy of technology Emergy Personhood Theory Important publications phenomenological psychology in

Further reading

The IAP LIBRARY offers very fine sources for Phenomenology. The London Philosophy Study Guide offers many suggestions on what to read, depending on the student's familiarity with the subject: Phenomenology Dermot Moran, Introduction to Phenomenology (Oxford: Routledge, 2000) Charting phenomenology from Brentano, through Husserl and Heidegger, to Gadamer, Arendt, Levinas, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty and Derrida. Robert Sokolowski, "Introduction to Phenomenology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2000) - An excellent non-historical introduction to phenomenology. Herbert Spiegelberg, "The Phenomenological Movement: A Historical Introduction," 3rd ed. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1983). The most comprehensive source on the development of the phenomenological movement. David Stewart and Algis Mickunas, "Exploring Phenomenology: A Guide to the Field and its Literature" (Athens: Ohio University Press 1990) Michael Hammond, Jane Howarth, and Russell Kent, "Understanding Phenomenology" (Oxford: Blackwell 1995) Christopher Macann, Four Phenomenological Philosophers: Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty (New York: Routledge: 1993) Jan Patoka, "Qu'est-ce que la phnomnologie?" In: Qu'est-ce que la phnomnologie?, ed. and trans. E. Abrams (Grenoble: J. Millon 1988), pp. 263 302. An answer to the question, What is phenomenology?, from a student of both Husserl and Heidegger and one of the most important phenomenologists of the latter half of the twentieth century. William A. Luijpen and Henry J. Koren, "A First Introduction to Existential Phenomenology" (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press 1969) Richard M. Zaner, "The Way of Phenomenology" (Indianapolis: Pegasus 1970) Hans Kchler, Die Subjekt-Objekt-Dialektik in der transzendentalen Phnomenologie. Das Seinsproblem zwischen Idealismus und Realismus . (Meisenheim a.G.: Anton Hain, 1974) (German) Hans Kchler, Phenomenological Realism: Selected Essays (Frankfurt a. M./Bern: Peter Lang, 1986) Mark Jarzombek, The Psychologizing of Modernity (Cambridge University Press, 2000). Pierre Thvenaz, "What is Phenomenology?" (Chicago: Quadrangle Books 1962) ed. James M. Edie, "An Invitation to Phenomenology" (Chicago: Quadrangle Books 1965) - A collection of seminal phenomenological essays. 109

ed. R. O. Elveton, "The Phenomenology of Husserl: Selected Critical Readings" (Seattle: Noesis Press 2000) - Key essays about Husserl's phenomenology. eds. Richard Zaner and Don Ihde, "Phenomenology and Existentialism" (New York: Putnam 1973) - Contains many key essays in existential phenomenology. Albert Borgmann and his work in philosophy of technology. eds. Natalie Depraz, Francisco Varela, Pierre Vermersch, "On Becoming Aware: A Pragmatics of Experiencing" (Amsterdam: John Benjamins 2003) - searches for the sources and the means for a disciplined practical approach to exploring human experience. Don Idhe, "Experimental Phenomenology: An Introduction" (Albany, NY: SUNY Press) Sara Ahmed, "Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects Others" (Durham: Duke University Press 2006)

External links

What is Phenomenology? About Phenomenology About Edmund Husserl Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry Organization of Phenomenology Organizations Romanian Society for Phenomenology Phenomenology Online Dialectical Phenomenology The New Phenomenology

Journals

Bulletin d'analyse phnomnologique Janus Head: Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature, Continental Philosophy, Phenomenological Psychology, and the Arts Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology Research in Phenomenology Studia Phaenomenologica Newsletter of Phenomenology Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology The Roman Ingarden Philosophical Research Centre Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences

References
1. ^ Smith, David Woodruff (2007), Husserl, London-New York: Routledge

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2. ^ Partially based on Schuhmann, Karl (2004), ""Phnomenologie": Eine Begriffsgeschichtilche Reflexion", in Leijenhorst, Cees & Piet Steenbakkers, Karl Schuhmann. Selected Papers on Phenomenology, Dordrecht / Boston / London: Kluwer, at 1-33 3. ^ Rollinger, Robin (1999), Husserl's Position in the School of Brentano, Dordrecht / Boston / London: Kluwer 4. ^ On the Logical Investigations, see Zahavi, Dan & Frederik Stjernfelt, eds. (2002), One Hundred Years of Phenomenology (Husserl's Logical Investigations Revisited) , Dordrecht / Boston / London: Kluwer; and Mohanty, Jitendra Nath, ed. (1977), Readings on Edmund Husserls Logical Investigations, Den Haag: Nijhoff 5. ^ a b c Heidegger, Martin (1975), "Introduction", The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, Indiana University Press 6. ^ I have attempted to respond to the request for clarification of Heidegger's distinction between being and Being. My info source was http://www.uni.edu/boedeker/NNhHeidegger2.doc. It was not copied and pasted but rephrased for copyright reasons. 7. ^ Mark Jarzombek - The Psychologizing of Modernity (Cambridge University Press, 2000) - has tried to contextualized this history by showing the way in which phenomenology grew out of and yet critiqued the psychology movement in the arts.

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Hermeneutics
Hermeneutics may be described as the development and study of theories of the interpretation and understanding of texts. In contemporary usage in religious studies, hermeneutics refers to the study of the interpretation of religious texts. It is more broadly used in contemporary philosophy to denote the study of theories and methods of the interpretation of all texts and systems of meaning. The concept of "text" is here extended beyond written documents to any number of objects subject to interpretation, such as experiences. A hermeneutic is defined as a specific system or method for interpretation, or a specific theory of interpretation. However, the contemporary philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer has said that hermeneutics is an approach rather than a method and, further, that the Hermeneutic circle is the central problem of interpretation. Essentially, hermeneutics involves cultivating the ability to understand things from somebody else's point of view, and to appreciate the cultural and social forces that may have influenced their outlook. Hermeneutics is the process of applying this understanding to interpreting the meaning of written texts and symbolic artifacts (such as art or sculpture or architecture), which may be either historic or contemporary. In the last two centuries, the scope of hermeneutics has expanded to include the investigation and interpretation not only of textual and artistic works, but of human behaviour generally, including language and patterns of speech, social institutions, and ritual behaviours (such as religious ceremonies, political rallies, football matches, rock concerts, etc.). Hermeneutics interprets or inquires into the meaning and import of these phenomena, through understanding the point of view and 'inner life' (Dilthey) of an insider, or the first-person perspective of an engaged participant in these phenomena.

Etymology
The word hermeneutics is a term derived from ', the Greek word for interpreter. This is related to the name of the Greek god Hermes in his role as the interpreter of the messages of the gods. Hermes was believed to play tricks on those he was supposed to give messages to, often changing the messages and influencing the interpretation thereof. The Greek word thus has the basic meaning of one who makes the meaning clear.

Scriptural hermeneutics
A common use of the word hermeneutics refers to a process of scriptural interpretation. Throughout religious history scholars and students of religious texts have sought to mine the wealth of their meanings by developing a variety of different systems of hermeneutics. Philosophical hermeneutics in particular can be seen as a development of scriptural

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hermeneutics, providing a theoretical backing for various interpretive projects. Thus, philosophical and scriptural hermeneutics can be seen as mutually reinforcing practices. Rabbi Ishmael of the Amoraic era of Judaism interpreted laws from the Torah through 13 hermeneutic principles. This is the first appearance of hermeneutics in the world, through the exegetic interpretation of Biblical texts.

History of Western hermeneutics


Hermeneutics in the Western world, as a general science of text interpretation, can be traced back to two sources. One source was the ancient Greek rhetoricians' study of literature, which came to fruition in Alexandria. The other source has been the Midrashic and Patristic traditions of Biblical exegesis, which were contemporary with Hellenistic culture. Scholars in antiquity expected a text to be coherent, consistent in grammar, style and outlook, and they amended obscure or "decadent" readings to comply with their codified rules. By extending the perception of inherent logic of texts, Greeks were able to attribute works with uncertain origin.

Ancient Greece and Rome


Aristotle strikes a chord in his treatise De Interpretatione that reverberates through the intervening ages and supplies the key note for many contemporary theories of interpretation. His overture is here:
Words spoken are symbols or signs (symbola) of affections or impressions (pathemata) of the soul (psyche); written words are the signs of words spoken. As writing, so also is speech not the same for all races of men. But the mental affections themselves, of which these words are primarily signs (semeia), are the same for the whole of mankind, as are also the objects (pragmata) of which those affections are representations or likenesses, images, copies (homoiomata). (Aristotle, On Interpretation, 1.16a4).

Equally important to later developments are texts on poetry, rhetoric, and sophistry, including many of Plato's dialogues, such as Cratylus, Ion, Gorgias, Lesser Hippias, and Republic, along with Aristotle's Poetics, Rhetoric, and On Sophistical Refutations. However, these texts deal more with the presentation and refutation of arguments, speeches and poems rather than the understanding of texts as texts. As Ramberg and Gjesdal note, "Only with the Stoics, and their reflections on the interpretation of myth, do we encounter something like a methodological awareness of the problems of textual understanding" (Ramberg & Gjesdal). Some ancient Greek philosophers, particularly Plato, tended to vilify poets and poetry as harmful nonsensePlato denies entry to poets in his ideal state in The Republic until they can prove their value. In the Ion, Plato famously portrays poets as possessed:

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You know, none of the epic poets, if they're good, are masters of their subject; they are inspired, possessed, and that is how they utter all those beautiful poems. The same goes for lyric poets if they're good: just as the Corybantes are not in their right minds when they dance, lyric poets, too, are not in their right minds when they make those beautiful lyrics, but as soon as they sail into harmony and rhythm they are possessed by Bacchic frenzy." (Plato Ion, 533e-534a)

The meaning of the poem thus becomes open to ridicule whatever hints of the truth it may have, the truth is covered by madness. However, another line of thinking arose with Theagenes of Rhegium, who suggested that instead of taking poetry literally, what was expressed in poems were allegories of nature. Stoic philosophers further developed this idea, reading into the poets not only allegories of natural phenomena, but allegories of ethical behavior. Aristotle differed with his predecessor, Plato, in the worth of poetry. Both saw art as an act of mimesis, but where Plato saw a pale, essentially false imitation in art of reality, Aristotle saw the possibility of truth in imitation. As Critic David Richter points out, "for Aristotle, artists must disregard incidental facts to search for deeper universal truths"--instead of being essentially false, poetry may be universally true. (Richter The Critical Tradition, 57). In the Poetics, Aristotle called both the tragedy and the epic noble, with tragedy serving the essential function of purging strong emotions from the audience through katharsis.

Early Biblical hermeneutics


The early Jewish Rabbis and the early Church Fathers deployed similar philological tools; their Biblical interpretations stressed allegorical readings, frequently at the expense of the texts' literal meaning. They sought deeper meanings below the outward appearance of the text. Examples of such interpretations include the views of Philo of Alexandria, Origen, and the Talmudic writings. Traditional Jewish hermeneutics differ from the Greek method in that the rabbis considered the Tanach (the Jewish bibilical canon) to be inviolate. They did not consider inconsistencies in the text to be mistakes or corruptions. These problematic sections of the text were believed to be deliberate and containing meanings which had to be teased out of the text through the process of exegesis. As a result, the rabbinical interpreters created a secondary, esoteric reading of the text based on these problematic sections. This was one of the bases of early Kabbalah and the Gematria, which posited mystical or "secret" meanings to the Biblical text based on the letters of the text themselves and even their numerical value.

Medieval hermeneutics
Medieval Christian interpretations of text incorporated exegesis into a fourfold mode that emphasized the distinction between the letter and the spirit of the text. This schema was based on the various ways of interpreting the text utilitized by the Patristic writers. The literal sense (sensus historicus) of Scripture denotes what the text states or reports directly. The allegorical sense (sensus allegoricus) explains the text with regard to the doctrinal content of church dogma, so that each literal element has a symbolic meaning. The moral 114

application of the text to the individual reader or hearer is the third sense, the sensus tropologicus or sensus moralis, while a fourth level of meaning, the sensus anagogicus, draws out of the text the implicit allusions it contains to secret metaphysical and eschatological knowledge, or gnosis.
The hermeneutical terminology used here is in part arbitrary. For almost all three interpretations which go beyond the literal explanations are in a general sense "allegorical". The practical application of these three aspects of spiritual interpretation varied considerably. Most of the time, the fourfold sense of the Scriptures was used only partially, dependent upon the content of the text and the idea of the exegete.... We can easily notice that the basic structure is in fact a twofold sense of the Scriptures, that is, the distinction between the sensus literalis and the sensus spiritualis or mysticus, and that the number four was derived from a restrictive systematization of the numerous possibilities which existed for the sensus spiritualis into three interpretive dimensions. (Ebeling 1964, 38).

Hermeneutics in the Middle Ages witnessed the proliferation of non-literal interpretations of the Bible. Christian commentators could read Old Testament narratives simultaneously as prefigurations of analogous New Testament episodes, as symbolic lessons about Church institutions and current teachings, and as personally applicable allegories of the Spirit. In each case, the meaning of the signs was constrained by imputing a particular intention to the Bible, such as teaching morality, but these interpretive bases were posited by the religious tradition rather than suggested by a preliminary reading of the text. The customary medieval exegetical technique divided the text in glossa ("glosses" or annotations) written between the lines and at the side of the text which was left with wide margins for this very purpose. The text was further divided into "scholia" which are long, exegetical passages, often on a separate page. A similar fourfold categorization is also found in Rabbinic writings. The fourfold categorizations are: Peshat (simple interpretation), Remez (allusion), Derash (interpretive), and Sod (secret/mystical). It is uncertain whether or not the Rabbinic division of interpretation pre-dates the Patristic version. The medieval period saw the growth of many new categories of Rabbinic interpretation and explanation of the Torah, including the emergence of Kabbalah and the writings of Maimonides.

Renaissance and Enlightenment


The discipline of hermeneutics emerged with the new humanist education of the 15th century as a historical and critical methodology for analyzing texts. In a triumph of early modern hermeneutics, the Italian humanist Lorenzo Valla proved in 1440 that the "Donation of Constantine" was a forgery, through intrinsic evidence of the text itself. Thus hermeneutics expanded from its medieval role explaining the correct analysis of the Bible. However, Biblical hermeneutics did not die off. For example, the Protestant Reformation brought about a renewed interest in the interpretation of the Bible, which took a step away

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from the interpretive tradition developed during the Middle Ages back to the texts themselves. The rationalist Enlightenment led hermeneuts, especially Protestant exegetes, to view Scriptural texts as secular Classical texts were viewed. Scripture thus was interpreted as responses to historical or social forces, so that apparent contradictions and difficult passages in the New Testament, for example, might be clarified by comparing their possible meanings with contemporaneous Christian practices.

Schleiermacher
Friedrich Schleiermacher (November 21, 1768 February 12, 1834) explored the nature of understanding in relation not just to the problem of deciphering sacred texts, but to all human texts and modes of communication. The interpretation of a text must proceed by framing the content asserted in terms of the overall organization of the work. He distinguishes between grammatical interpretation and psychological interpretation. The former studies how a work is composed from general ideas, the latter considers the peculiar combinations that characterize the work as a whole. Schleiermacher said that every problem of interpretation is a problem of understanding. He even defined hermeneutics as the art of avoiding misunderstanding. He provides a solution to avoidance of misunderstanding: knowledge of grammatical and psychological laws in trying to understand the text and the writer. There arose in his time a fundamental shift from understanding not only the exact words and their objective meaning to individuality of the speaker or author. for more information: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy[1]

Dilthey
Wilhelm Dilthey broadened hermeneutics even more by relating interpretation to all historical objectifications. Understanding moves from the outer manifestations of human action and productivity to explore their inner meaning. In his last important essay "The Understanding of Others and Their Manifestations of Life" (1910), Dilthey makes it clear that this move from outer to inner, from expression to what is expressed, is not based on empathy. Empathy involves a direct identification with the other. Interpretation involves an indirect or mediated understanding that can only be attained by placing human expressions in their historical context. Understanding is not a process of reconstructing the state of mind of the author, but one of articulating what is expressed in the work.

Heidegger
Since Dilthey, the discipline of hermeneutics has detached itself from this central task and broadened its spectrum to all texts, including multimedia and to understanding the bases of meaning. In the 20th century, Martin Heidegger's philosophical hermeneutics shifted the focus from interpretation to existential understanding, which was treated more as a direct, 116

non-mediated, thus in a sense more authentic way of being in the world than simply as a way of knowing. Advocates of this approach claim that such texts, and the people who produce them, cannot be studied using the same scientific methods as the natural sciences, thus use arguments similar to that of antipositivism. Moreover, they claim that such texts are conventionalized expressions of the experience of the author; thus, the interpretation of such texts will reveal something about the social context in which they were formed, but, more significantly, provide the reader with a means to share the experiences of the author. Among the key thinkers of this approach is the sociologist Max Weber.

Contemporary hermeneutics
Hans-Georg Gadamer's hermeneutics is a development of the hermeneutics of his teacher, Heidegger. Paul Ricoeur developed a hermeneutics based on Heidegger's concepts, although his own work differs in many ways from that of Gadamer's. Andrs Ortz-Oss has developed his Symbolic Hermeneutics as the Mediterranean response to north European Hermeneutics. His main statement regarding the symbolic understanding of the world is that the meaning is the symbolic healing of the real injury.

Hermeneutics and critical theory


Jrgen Habermas criticized the Conservatism of previous hermeneutics, especially Gadamer, because the focus on tradition seemed to undermine possibilities for social criticism and transformation. Habermas also criticized Marxism and previous members of the Frankfurt School for missing the hermeneutical dimension of critical theory. Habermas incorporated the notion of the lifeworld and emphasized the importance of both interaction and communication as well as labor and production for social theory. For Habermas, hermeneutics is one dimension of critical social theory.

Themes in hermeneutics
Hermeneutic circle
The hermeneutic circle describes the process of understanding a text hermeneutically. It refers to the idea that one's understanding of the text as a whole is established by reference to the individual parts and one's understanding of each individual part by reference to the whole. Neither the whole text nor any individual part can be understood without reference to one another, and hence, it is a circle. However, this circular character of interpretation does not make it impossible to interpret a text, rather, it stresses that the meaning of text must be found within its cultural, historical, and literary context.

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With Schleiermacher, hermeneutics begins to stress the importance of the interpreter in the process of interpretation. Schleiermacher's hermeneutics focuses on the importance of the interpreter understanding the text as a necessary stage to interpreting it. Understanding, for Schleiermacher, does not simply come from reading the text, but involves knowledge of the historical context of the text and the psychology of the author. For Postmodernists, the Hermeneutic Circle is especially problematic. This is the result of the fact that in addition to only being able to know the world through the words we use to describe it, we are also confronted with the problem that "whenever people try to establish a certain reading of a text or expression, they allege other readings as the ground for their reading" (Adler 1997: 321-322). In other words, "All meaning systems are open-ended systems of signs referring to signs referring to signs. No concept can therefore have an ultimate, unequivocal meaning" (Waever 1996: 171).

Meaning Horizon
Hans-Georg Gadamer describes the process of interpreting a text as the fusion of one's own horizon with the horizon of the text. He has defined horizon as "The totality of all that can be realized or thought about by a person at a given time in history and in a particular culture."[citation needed]

Applications of hermeneutics
Sociology
In sociology, hermeneutics means the interpretation and understanding of social events by analysing their meanings to the human participants and their culture. It enjoyed prominence during the sixties and seventies, and differs from other interpretative schools of sociology in that it emphasizes the importance of the content as well as the form of any given social behaviour. The central principle of hermeneutics is that it is only possible to grasp the meaning of an action or statement by relating it to the whole discourse or world-view from which it originates: for instance, putting a piece of paper in a box might be considered a meaningless action unless put in the context of democratic elections, and the action of putting a ballot paper in a box. One can frequently find reference to the 'hermeneutic circle': that is, relating the whole to the part and the part to the whole. Hermeneutics in sociology was most heavily influenced by German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer (see 'Truth and Method', 1960).

Law
Some scholars argue that law and theology constitute particular forms of hermeneutics because of their need to interpret legal tradition / scriptural texts. Moreover, the problem of

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interpretation is central to legal theory at least since 11th century. In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, the schools of glossatores, commentatores and usus modernus distinguished themselves right by their approach to the interpretation of "laws" (mainly, Justinian's Corpus Iuris Civilis). The University of Bologna gave birth to a "legal Renaissance" in the 11th century, when the Corpus Iuris Civilis was rediscovered and started to be systematically studied by people like Irnerius and Gratianus. It was an interpretative Renaissance. After that, interpretation has always been at the center of legal thought. Savigny and Betti, among others, made significant contributions also to general hermeneutics. Legal interpretivism, most famously Ronald Dworkin's, might be seen as a branch of philosophical hermeneutics.

Computer science
Researchers in computer science, especially those dealing with artificial intelligence, computational linguistics, knowledge representation, and protocol analysis, have not failed to notice the commonality of interest that they share with hermeneutics researchers in regard to the character of interpretive agents and the conduct of interpretive activities. For instance, in the abstract to their 1986 AI Memo, Mallery, Hurwitz, and Duffy have the following to say:
Hermeneutics, a branch of continental European philosophy concerned with human understanding and the interpretation of written texts, offers insights that may contribute to the understanding of meaning, translation, architectures for natural language understanding, and even to the methods suitable for scientific inquiry in AI. (Mallery, Hurwitz, Duffy, 1986).

International Relations
Insofar as hermeneutics is a cornerstone of both critical theory and constitutive theory, both of which have made important inroads into the postpositivist branch of international relations theory and (political science), hermeneutics has been applied to international relations (IR). Steve Smith (Academic) refers to hermeneutics as the principal way of grounding a foundationalist yet postpositivist IR theory such as critical theory. An example of a postpositivist yet anti-foundationalist IR paradigm would be radical postmodernism.

Religion and theology


The process by which theological texts are understood relies on a particular hermeneutical viewpoint. Theorists like Paul Ricoeur have applied modern philosophical hermeneutics to theological texts (in Ricoeur's case, the Bible). See also: Biblical hermeneutics, Qura'nic hermeneutics, Talmudical hermeneutics and Exegesis.

Hermeneutics and semiotics


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The being of a symbol consists in the real fact that something surely will be experienced if certain conditions be satisfied. Namely, it will influence the thought and conduct of its interpreter. Every word is a symbol. Every sentence is a symbol. Every book is a symbol. Every representamen depending upon conventions is a symbol. Just as a photograph is an index having an icon incorporated into it, that is, excited in the mind by its force, so a symbol may have an icon or an index incorporated into it, that is, the active law that it is may require its interpretation to involve the calling up of an image, or a composite photograph of many images of past experiences, as ordinary common nouns and verbs do; or it may require its interpretation to refer to the actual surrounding circumstances of the occasion of its embodiment, like such words as that, this, I, you, which, here, now, yonder, etc. Or it may be pure symbol, neither iconic nor indicative, like the words and, or, of, etc. (Peirce, CP 4.447).

See also Abductive Inference and Literary Theory Pragmatism, Hermeneutics and Semiotics written by Uwe Wirth.

References

Aristotle, "On Interpretation", Harold P. Cooke (trans.), pp. 111179 in Aristotle, Volume 1, Loeb Classical Library, William Heinemann, London, UK, 1938. Ebeling, Gerhard, "The New Hermeneutics and the Early Luther", Theology Today, vol. 21.1, April 1964, p. 34-46 Eprint Hans Kchler, "Zum Gegenstandsbereich der Hermeneutik," in: Perspektiven der Philosophie, Vol. 9 (1983), pp. 331-341. (German) Peirce, C.S., Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce , vols. 16, Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss (eds.), vols. 78, Arthur W. Burks (ed.), Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 19311935, 1958. Cited as CP vol.para. Peirce, C.S. (c. 1903), "Logical Tracts, No. 2", in Collected Papers, CP 4.418509. Eprint. Plato, Ion, Paul Woodruff (trans.). in Plato: Complete Works. Ed. John M. Cooper. Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997. pp. 937-949. Ramberg, Bjrn, Gjesdal, Kristin, "Hermeneutics", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2005 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). Eprint. Khan, Ali, The Hermeneutics of Sexual Order Zabala, Santiago, [2] The Hermeneutic Nature of Analytic Philosophy. Introducing Ernst Tugendhat, New York: Columbia University Press, 2008.

See also
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Biblical hermeneutics Qura'nic hermeneutics Computational semiotics Content analysis Deconstruction Discourse analysis Exegesis Interpretation Knowledge representation

Literary criticism Literary theory Meaning (linguistics) Meaning (nonlinguistic) Meaning (semiotics) Pesher Philology Semeiotic Semiosis

Semiotics Sign Sign relation Tafsir Talmudical hermeneutics Truth Truth theory Understanding Wesleyan Quadrilateral

External links

Bibliology and Hermeneutics Course", The Theology Program B&Haudio and video resources from an Evangelcial perspective Ferr, Frederick, "Metaphor in Religious Discourse", Dictionary of the History of Ideas, Eprint Mallery, John C., Hurwitz, Roger, and Duffy, Gavan, "Hermeneutics: From Textual Explication to Computer Understanding?", 1986, PDF Mantzavinos, C. "Naturalistic Hermeneutics", Cambridge University Press Palmer, Richard E., "The Liminality of Hermes and the Meaning of Hermeneutics", Eprint Palmer, Richard E., "The Relevance of Gadamer's Philosophical Hermeneutics to Thirty-Six Topics or Fields of Human Activity", Lecture Delivered at the Department of Philosophy, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL, 01 Apr 1999, Eprint Ramberg, Bjorn, and Gjesdal, Kristin, "Hermeneutics", Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Eprint Szesnat, Holger, "Philosophical Hermeneutics", Webpage

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Postanalytic philosophy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Postanalytic philosophy describes a detachment from the mainstream philosophical movement of analytic philosophy, which is the predominant school of thought in Englishspeaking countries. Postanalytic philosophy derives mainly from contemporary American thought, especially from the works of philosophers Richard Rorty, Donald Davidson, Hilary Putnam, and W.V. Quine. The term is closely associated with the much broader movement of contemporary American pragmatism, which, loosely defined, advocates a detachment from objective truth with an emphasis on convention, usefulness, and social progress. The term postanalytic philosophy itself has been used in a vaguely descriptive sense and not in the sense of a concrete philosophical movement. Many postanalytic philosophers write along an analytic vein and on traditionally analytic topics. In an interview conducted by Wayne Hudson and Win van Reijen, Richard Rorty declared that, "I think that analytic philosophy can keep its highly professional methods, the insistence on detail and mechanics, and just drop its transcendental project. I'm not out to criticize analytic philosophy as a style. It's a good style. I think the years of superprofessionalism were beneficial." [1] Rorty encapsulates the essential goal of postanalytic philosophy in that it is not intrinsically opposed to analytic philosophy or its methods, but only to its ultimate aspirations. Postanalytic philosophy may also be known as postphilosophy, a term used by Rorty to emphasize the fact that philosophy no longer serves the role it used to in society and that this role has been replaced by other media.

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Postcolonialism
Postcolonialism (also known as postcolonial theory, or spelled with a hyphen) refers to a set of theories in philosophy, film and literature that grapple with the legacy of colonial rule. As a literary theory or critical approach, it deals with literature produced in countries that were once colonies of other countries, especially the major European colonial powers Britain, France and Spain; in some contexts, it may include also countries still under colonial arrangements. It may also deal with literature written in or by citizens of colonizing countries that takes colonies or their peoples as its subject matter. People from colonized countries, especially the British Empire, came to universities in Britain; their access to education that was then still unavailable in the colonies opened a new criticism, mostly in literature, especially in novels. Postcolonial theory became part of the critical toolbox in the 1970s, and many practitioners take Edward Said's book Orientalism to be the theory's founding work.

Issues
Postcolonialism deals with many issues for societies that have undergone colonialism: the dilemmas of developing national identity in the wake of colonial rule; the ways in which writers from colonized countries attempt to articulate and even celebrate their cultural identities, in some cases reclaiming them from the colonizers, but in many cases seek to maintain a strong linkage with the culture of the ex-colonizer; the ways knowledge of colonized people have served the interests of colonizers, and how knowledge of subordinate people is produced and used; and the ways in which the literature of the colonial powers is used to justify colonialism through the perpetuation of images of the colonized as inferior. The creation of binary oppositions structure the way we view others. In the case of colonialism, distinctions were made between the oriental and the westerner (for instance: the Orient being emotional and decadent, the Occident being principled and progessive). This opposition was used to justify the 'white man's burden', a perceived "destiny to rule" of the colonizer over naturally subordinate peoples. According to Helen Gilbert and Joanne Tompkins, "the term postcolonialism--according to a too rigid etymology--is frequently misundertood as a temporal concept meaning the time after colonialism has ceased, or the time following the politically determined Independence Day on which a country breaks away from its governance by another state, Not a naive teleological sequence which supersedes colonialism, postcolonialism is, rather, an engagement with and contestation (sic) of colonialism's discourses, power structures, and social hierarchies... A theory of postcolonialism must, then, respond to more than the merely chronological construction of post-independence, and to more than just the discursive experience of imperialism."[1]

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Colonized peoples respond to the colonial legacy by writing back to the center. This came about as indigenous peoples begin to write their own histories, their own legacy, using the colonizers' language (usually English, but sometimes French, Dutch, and other Western European languages) for their own purposes.[2]. As postcolonialist theory has impacted communities of indigenous peoples, it has produced a process called "indigenous decolonization". The literature of this kind is postcolonial literature. Attempts at coming up with a single definition of postcolonial theory have proved controversial, and some writers have strongly critiqued the concept, which is embedded in identity politics. Authors such as Ann Laura Stoler in Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power, have complicated the simplistic binary of colonizer/colonized and argued instead that these pair of social categories need to be viewed as fluid and shifting. Postcolonial work emphasizes the need to re-analyze categories that are assumed to be natural. As a metaphysical, ethical and political theory, it addresses issues such as identity, gender, race and ethnicity: the challenge of developing a national identity in the wake of colonial rule, the ways knowledge of colonized people has served the interests of colonizers, and how knowledge about the world is produced under specific power relations, repetitively circulated, and finally legitimated, to serve certain interests. However, postcolonial theory also encourages one to think about creative forms of resistance colonized peoples across the world have deployed, and how this has complicated and textured the colonial projects of European imperial powers. Postcolonial authors strongly object to the depiction of the colonized as hollow "mimics" of Europeans or passive recipients of power. Following from a Foucauldian argument, postcolonial scholars, such as those in the Subaltern Studies collective, argue that resistance accompanies all deployments of power.

Middle East, Postcolonialism and Identity


Within the last decade , Middle Eastern studies and research have produced several works which focus on the effects of the colonial past on the internal and external political, social, cultural and economic situation of contemporary Middle Eastern countries. See, for example, Raphael Israeli,"Is Jordan Palestine?" in Efraim Karsh and P R Kumaraswamy (eds.), Israel, Hashemites and the Palestinians: The Fateful Triangle (London: Frank Cass, 2003), pp.49-66 and Nazih Ayubi, "Overstating the Arab State" (Bodmin: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, 2001) particularly pp 86-123 A particular focus of attention has been the issue of western discourses on the Middle East and identity formation, or lack thereof: [3]
... most countries of the Middle East, suffered from the fundamental problems over their national identity. More than three-quarters of a century after the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire from which most of them emerged, these states have been unable to define, project, and maintain a national identity that is both inclusive and representative. [4]

As highlighted by the above quote, independence and the end of colonialism has not meant the end of social fragmentations and conflicts within the Middle East.

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As Larbi Sadiki understood and noted in the book The Search for Arab Democracy: Discourses and Counter-Discourses (2004); because borders have been drawn up by European powers, that did not take into account people, old tribal boundaries and history, the Middle Easts present-day identity problem can be traced back to imperialism and colonialism. Indeed, in places like Iraq and Jordan, leaders of the new state were brought in from the outside, tailored to suit colonial interests and commitments. Likewise, most states in the Persian Gulf were handed over to those who could protect and safeguard imperial interests in the post-withdrawal phase, [5] Thus in the Middle East, there have been difficulties in defining national identity at least partly because state boundaries have been defined by colonial boundaries. Except with notable exceptions like Egypt, Iran, Iraq, and Syria, most [countries]...had to [re-]invent, their historical roots after colonialism. Therefore,like its colonial predecessor, postcolonial identity owes its existence to force. [6]

Criticism of the Focus on Identity


Some scholars criticise and/or question the recent post-colonial focus on identity. Bin 'Abd al-'Ali, a Moroccan scholar argues that what is seen in contemporary Middle Eastern studies is 'a pathological obsession with...identity'[7]Nevertheless, scholars such as Kumaraswamy and Sadiki argues that the problem of the lack of identity formation in the Middle East is widespread and that identity is an important aspect of understanding the politics of the contemporary Middle East. Whether the countries are Islamic regimes like Iran, republican regimes like Egypt, Syria, and Algeria, quasi-liberal monarchies like Jordan and Bahrain, democracies as Israel and Turkey, or evolving democracies like Iraq and Palestinian areas, the Middle Eastern region suffers from the inability to recognize, [8] integrate, and reflect its ethno-cultural diversity. Ayubi (2001) questions whether what Bin 'Abd al-'Ali described as an obsession with identity may be explained by 'the absence of a championing social class?'[9]

Founding works on postcolonialism


Frantz Fanon: The Wretched of the Earth (1961) Albert Memmi: The Colonizer and the Colonized (1965) Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Masks (1967) Kwame Nkrumah: Consciencism (1970) Aim Csaire: Discourse on Colonialism (1972) Edward Said: Orientalism (1978)

Other important works


Ashis Nandy. The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self Under Colonialism . (1983) Ashis Nandy. Traditions, Tyranny, and Utopias: Essays in the Politics of Awareness (1987). Benita Parry: Delusions and Discoveries (1983) 125

Gayatri Spivak, "Can the Subaltern Speak?" (1988) Derek Walcott: Omeros (1990) Hamid Dabashi, "Iran: A People Interrupted" (2007) Homi Bhabha: The Location of Culture (1994) Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism (1993) Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, (1986) "Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature" Bill Ashcroft The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literature (1990) Robert J.C. Young Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction (2001) Trinh T. Minh-ha, "Infinite Layers/Third World?" (1989) Chandra Talpade Mohanty, "Under Western Eyes" (1986) Uma Narayan, Dislocating Cultures (1997), and Contesting Cultures"(1997) Anne McClintock, "The angel of progress: pitfalls of the term 'postcolonialism'" Colonial Discourse/Postcolonial Theory, edited by M. Baker, P. Hulme and M. Iverson (1994) Bartholomew Dean and Jerome Levi eds., At the Risk of Being Heard: Indigenous Rights, Identity, and Postcolonial States (2003) University of Michigan Press. ISBN 0-472-06736-2 [1][2] Achille Mbembe, "On the postcolony", edited by The Regents of the University of California (2000) Declan Kiberd, "Inventing Ireland" (1995) Ernesto "Che" Guevara: Colonialism is Doomed Prem Poddar and David Johnson, A Historical Companion of Postcolonial Thought (2005)

References
1. ^ Helen Gilbert, Joanne Tompkins, Post-Colonial Drama: theory, practice, politics, Routledge 1996, ISBN 0415090237 2. ^ Bill Ashcroft, The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literature (1990) 3. ^ Sadiki, L (2004) The Search for Arab Democracy: Discourses and CounterDiscourses India: C. Hurst & Co. Ltd 4. ^ Kumaraswamy, P, R (March 2006) Who am I?: The Identity Crisis in the Middle East The Middle East Review of International Affairs Volume 10, No. 1, Article 5, p1 5. ^ Kumaraswamy, P, R (March 2006) Who am I?: The Identity Crisis in the Middle East The Middle East Review of International Affairs Volume 10, No. 1, Article 5, p1 6. ^ Sadiki, L (2004) The Search for Arab Democracy: Discourses and CounterDiscourses India: C. Hurst & Co. Ltd p 122 7. ^ Bin 'Abd al-'Ali quoted in Nazih Ayubi, "Overstating the Arab State" (Bodmin: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, 2001)p 148

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8. ^ Kumaraswamy, P, R (March 2006) Who am I?: The Identity Crisis in the Middle East The Middle East Review of International Affairs Volume 10, No. 1, Article 5, p1 9. ^ Nazih Ayubi, "Overstating the Arab State" (Bodmin: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, 2001)p 148

See also

Postcolonial literature Inversion in postcolonial theory Colonialism Cultural Alienation Cultural cringe Imperialism Ethnology Post-Communism Nation-building Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak Ranajit Guha Subaltern Studies Alamgir Hashmi Commonwealth Literature: An Essay Towards the Re-definition of a Popular/Counter Culture Chinua Achebe's An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's "Heart of Darkness"

External links

Postcolonial & Transnational Theories Communitarian Agonism Project for a postcolonial Nietzsche Postcolonial Islam Contemporary Postcolonial and Postimperial Literature A special issue of the journal Labyrinthe, 2006 (in French) : "Faut-il tre postcolonial ?" Paper about Post-Colonialism: Definition, Development and Examples from India

References

Bill Ashcroft (ed.) et al. The Post-Colonial Studies Reader Alamgir Hashmi The Commonwealth, Comparative Literature and the World

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Postmodern philosophy

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Postmodern philosophy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Postmodern philosophy is an eclectic and elusive movement characterized by its criticism of the conventions of Western philosophy. Beginning as a critique of Continental philosophy, it was heavily influenced by phenomenology, structuralism and existentialism, including writings of both Sren Kierkegaard and Martin Heidegger. It was also influenced to some degree by Ludwig Wittgenstein's later criticisms of analytic philosophy. As Postmodernism questions the established paradigms and institutions of the conservative culture of the privileged, as did existentialism, it is often attacked and maligned, and its definitions and hypotheses deliberately distorted by those consumed with a sort of conservative "Culture War" mentality. For the most part, postmodern philosophy has spawned substantial literature of critical theory. Other areas of production have included deconstruction and several areas beginning with the prefix "post-", such as post-structuralism, post-Marxism, and post-feminism. Postmodern philosophy is often particularly skeptical about simple binary oppositions that pervade much of Western metaphysics and humanism, emphasizing the problem of the philosopher cleanly distinguishing knowledge from ignorance, social progress from reversion, dominance from submission, and presence from absence.

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While some critics claim that postmodern skepticism appears similar to relativism or even nihilism, defenders of post-modernism in turn sometimes argue that there is a distinct difference: while relativism and nihilism are generally viewed as an abandonment of meaning and authority, postmodern philosophy is generally viewed as an openness to meaning and authority from unexpected places, so that the ultimate source of authority is the "play" of the discourse itself. The essential point is that the meaning of all things is colored by subjectivity, and that for a philosophy or ideology to pretend full objectivity is not only deceptive but also in some cases politically abusive.

Contents

1 History of postmodern philosophy 1.1 Early influences in postmodern philosophy 1.2 Early postmodern philosophers 2 Postmodernism and post-structuralism 3 See also 4 Terms merged into Postmodern philosophy 5 External links 6 Notes

History of postmodern philosophy

History of Western philosophy


Pre-Socratic philosophy Ancient philosophy Medieval philosophy Renaissance philosophy 17th-century philosophy 18th-century philosophy 19th-century philosophy 20th-century philosophy

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Postmodern philosophy Contemporary philosophy See also: Eastern philosophy Indian philosophy Iranian philosophy Chinese philosophy Korean philosophy Christian philosophy Islamic philosophy Jewish philosophy
[edit]

Early influences in postmodern philosophy


Postmodern philosophy originated primarily in France during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, and was greatly influenced by the writings of other earlier 20th century philosophers, including phenomenologists Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, structuralist Roland Barthes, and the logician/linguist Ludwig Wittgenstein. Postmodern philosophy also drew from the world of the arts, particularly Marcel Duchamp and artists who practiced collage.

Early postmodern philosophers


The most influential early postmodern philosophers were Michel Foucault, Jean-Franois Lyotard, and Jacques Derrida. Foucault approached postmodern philosophy from a historical perspective, building upon structuralism, but at the same time rejecting structuralism by re-historicizing[citation needed] and destabilizing[citation needed] the philosophical structures of Western thought.[citation needed]} He also considered how knowledge is defined and changed by the operation of power. In America, the most famous postmodernist is Richard Rorty. Originally an analytic philosopher, Rorty believed that combining Donald Davidson's criticism of the dualism between conceptual scheme and empirical content with Willard Van Orman Quine's criticism of the analytic-synthetic distinction allowed for an abandonment of the view of the mind as a mirror of a reality or external world. He argued that truth was not "out-there", but was in language and language was whatever served our purposes in any particular time; 130

ancient languages are sometimes untranslatable into modern ones. Donald Davidson is not usually considered a postmodernist, although he and Rorty have both acknowledged that there are few differences between their philosophies.[1][2] The writings of Lyotard were largely concerned with the role of narrative in human culture, and particularly how that role has changed as we have left modernity and entered a "postindustrial" or postmodern condition. He argued that modern philosophies legitimized their truth-claims not (as they themselves claimed) on logical or empirical grounds, but rather on the grounds of accepted stories (or "metanarratives") about knowledge and the world -- what Wittgenstein termed "language-games." He further argued that in our postmodern condition, these metanarratives no longer work to legitimize truth-claims. He suggested that in the wake of the collapse of modern metanarratives, people are developing a new "language game" -- one that does not make claims to absolute truth but rather celebrates a world of ever-changing relationships (among people and between people and the world). Derrida, the father of deconstruction, practiced philosophy as a form of textual criticism. He criticized Western philosophy as privileging the concept of presence and logos, as opposed to absence and markings or writings. Derrida thus claimed to have deconstructed Western philosophy by arguing, for example, that the Western ideal of the present logos is undermined by the expression of that ideal in the form of markings by an absent author. [citation needed] Thus, to emphasize this paradox, Derrida reformalized human culture as a disjoint network of proliferating markings and writings, with the author being absent.[citation
needed]

Though Derrida and Foucault are cited as postmodern philosophers, each has rejected many of the other's views. Like Lyotard, both are skeptical of absolute or universal truth-claims. Unlike Lyotard, however, they are (or seem) rather more pessimistic about the emancipatory claims of any new language-game; thus some would characterize them as post-structuralist rather than postmodernist.

Postmodernism and post-structuralism


Postmodern philosophy is very similar to post-structuralism; whether one considers the two identical or fundamentally different generally depends on how invested one is in the issues. People who are opposed to either postmodernism or poststructuralism often lump them together; advocates on the other hand make finer distinctions.

See also

Postmodernism Postmodernity Hyperreality Natural philosophy

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Terms merged into Postmodern philosophy

Postcontemporary theory

External links

Postmodernism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Notes
1. ^ An interview with Rorty 2. ^ Davidson, D., 1986, "A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge," Truth And Interpretation, Perspectives on the Philosophy of Donald Davidson, ed. Ernest LePore, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, afterwords.

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Post-structuralism
Post-structuralism refers to the intellectual developments in continental philosophy and critical theory which were outcomes of twentieth-century French philosophy. The prefix "post" refers to the fact that many contributors such as Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Julia Kristeva were former structuralists who, after abandoning structuralism, became quite critical of it. In direct contrast to structuralism's claims of culturally independent meaning, post-structuralists typically view culture as inseparable from meaning. Post-structuralism is difficult to define or summarize. There are two main reasons for this. First, it rejects definitions that claim to have discovered absolute 'truths' or facts about the world.[1] Second, very few people have willingly accepted the label 'post-structuralist'; rather, they have been labeled as such by others. Therefore no one has felt compelled to construct a 'manifesto' of post-structuralism. [2] Thus the exact nature of post-structuralism and whether it can be considered a single philosophical movement is debated. Indeed, it has often been pointed out that the term is not widely used in Europe (where most supposedly "post-structuralist" theory originates) and that the concept of a post-structuralist theoretical paradigm is largely the invention of American academics and publishers.

History
Post-structuralism emerged in France during the 1960s as an antinomian movement critiquing structuralism[citation needed]. The period was marked by political anxiety, as students and workers alike rebelled against the state in May 1968, nearly causing the downfall of the French government. At the same time, however, the French communist party's (PCF) support of the oppressive policies of the USSR contributed to popular disillusionment with orthodox Marxism. As a result, there was increased interest in alternative radical philosophies, including feminism, western Marxism, phenomenology, and nihilism. These disparate perspectives, which Foucault later labeled "subjugated knowledges," were all linked by being critical of dominant Western philosophy and culture. Post-structuralism offered a means of justifying these criticisms, by exposing the underlying assumptions of many Western norms. Two key figures in the early post-structuralist movement were Jacques Derrida and Roland Barthes. In a 1966 lecture "Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Science", Jacques Derrida presented a thesis on an apparent rupture in intellectual life. Derrida interpreted this event as a "decentering" of the former intellectual cosmos. Instead of progress or divergence from an identified centre, Derrida described this "event" as a kind of "play." Though Barthes was originally a structuralist, during the 1960s he grew increasingly favorable to post-structuralist views. In 1968, Barthes published The Death of the Author in which he declared a metaphorical event: the "death" of the author as an authentic source 133

of meaning for a given text. Barthes argued that any literary text has multiple meanings, and that the author was not the prime source of the work's semantic content. The "Death of the Author", Barthes maintained, was the "Birth of the Reader," as the source of the proliferation of meanings of the text. In his 1976 lecture series, Michel Foucault briefly summarized the general impetus of the post-structuralist movement:
...For the last ten or fifteen years, the immense and proliferating criticizability of things, institutions, practices, and discourses; a sort of general feeling that the ground was crumbling beneath our feet, especially in places where it seemed most familiar, most solid, and closest to us, to our bodies, to our everyday gestures. But alongside this crumbling and the astonishing efficacy of discontinuous, particular, and local critiques, the facts were also revealing something... beneath this whole thematic, through it and even within it, we have seen what might be called the insurrection of subjugated knowledges. Foucault, Society Must be Defended, 7th January 1976, tr. David Macey[3]

Theory
General practices
Post-structural practices generally operate on some basic assumptions:

Post-structuralists hold that the concept of "self" as a singular and coherent entity is a fictional construct. Instead, an individual comprises conflicting tensions and knowledge claims (e.g. gender, class, profession, etc.). Therefore, to properly study a text a reader must understand how the work is related to her own personal concept of self. This self-perception plays a critical role in one's interpretation of meaning. The meaning the author intended is secondary to the meaning that the reader perceives. Post-structuralism rejects the idea of a literary text having a single purpose, a single meaning or one singular existence. Instead, every individual reader creates a new and individual purpose, meaning, and existence for a given text. A post-structuralist critic must be able to utilize a variety of perspectives to create a multifaceted interpretation of a text, even if these interpretations conflict with one another. It is particularly important to analyze how the meanings of a text shift in relation to certain variables, usually involving the identity of the reader.

Destabilized Meaning
In the post-structuralist approach to textual analysis, the reader replaces the author as the primary subject of inquiry. This displacement is often referred to as the "destabilizing" or "decentering" of the author, though it has its greatest effect on the text itself. Without a

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central fixation on the author, post-structuralists examine other sources for meaning (e.g., readers, cultural norms, other literature, etc.). These alternative sources are never authoritative, and promise no consistency. In his essay "Signification and Sense", Emmanuel Lvinas remarked on this new field of semantic inquiry:
...language refers to the position of the listener and the speaker, that is, to the contingency of their story. To seize by inventory all the contexts of language and all possible positions of interlocutors is a senseless task. Every verbal signification lies at the confluence of countless semantic rivers. Experience, like language, no longer seems to be made of isolated elements lodged somehow in a Euclidean space... [Words] signify from the "world" and from the position of one who is looking. Lvinas, Signification and Sense, Humanism of the Other, tr. Nidra Poller[4]

Deconstruction
A major theory associated with Structuralism was binary opposition. This theory proposed that there are certain theoretical and conceptual opposites, often arranged in a hierarchy, which structure a given text. Such binary pairs could include male/female, speech/writing, rational/emotional. Post-structuralism rejects the notion of the essential quality of the dominant relation in the hierarchy, choosing rather to expose these relations and the dependancy of the dominant term on its apparently subservient counterpart. The only way to properly understand these meanings is to deconstruct the assumptions and knowledge systems which produce the illusion of singular meaning. A good example of this is a close reading of the Dylan Thomas poem, "A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London", that incorporates the line "After the first death there is no other." A deconstructionist will view this as widely open: Since there is a "first death," there is the implication that there will be another, yet Thomas contradicts himself in the line by saying "there is no other". Deconstructionists assert that this shows "discontinuity" in the line. This discontinuity points out that the language has a "slipperiness" which makes precise interpretation impossible. Meaning, therefore, is equally in the hands of the reader and the author.

Structuralism vs. Post-structuralism


Post-structuralism may be understood as a critical response to the basic assumptions of structuralism. Structuralism studies the underlying structures inherent in cultural products (such as texts), and utilizes analytical concepts from linguistics, psychology, anthropology and other fields to understand and interpret those structures. Although the structuralist movement fostered critical inquiry into these structures, it emphasized logical and scientific results. Many structuralists sought to integrate their work into pre-existing bodies of

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knowledge. This was observed in the work of Ferdinand de Saussure in linguistics, Claude Lvi-Strauss in anthropology, and many early 20th-century psychologists. The general assumptions of post-structuralism derive from critique of structuralist premises. Specifically, post-structuralism holds that the study of underlying structures is itself culturally conditioned and therefore subject to myriad biases and misinterpretations. To understand an object (e.g. one of the many meanings of a text), it is necessary to study both the object itself, and the systems of knowledge which were coordinated to produce the object. In this way, post-structuralism positions itself as a study of how knowledge is produced.

Historical vs. descriptive view


Post-structuralists generally assert that post-structuralism is historical, and classify structuralism as descriptive. This terminology relates to Ferdinand de Saussure's distinction between the views of historical (diachronic) and descriptive (synchronic) reading. From this basic distinction, post-structuralist studies often emphasize history to analyze descriptive concepts. By studying how cultural concepts have changed over time, poststructuralists seek to understand how those same concepts are understood by readers in the present. For example, Michel Foucault's Madness and Civilization is both a history and an inspection of cultural attitudes about madness. The theme of history in modern Continental thought can be linked to such influences as Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Friedrich Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morals and Martin Heidegger's Being and Time. Structuralists also seek to understand the historical interpretation of cultural concepts, but focus their efforts on understanding how those concepts were understood by the author in his or her own time, rather than how they may be understood by the reader in the present.

Scholars between both movements


The uncertain distance between structuralism and post-structuralism is further blurred by the fact that scholars generally do not label themselves as post-structuralists. In some cases (e.g. Claude Lvi-Strauss and Roland Barthes), scholars associated with structuralism became noteworthy in post-structuralism as well. Along with Lvi-Strauss, three of the most prominent post-structuralists were first counted among the so-called "Gang of Four" of structuralism par excellence: Jacques Lacan, Roland Barthes, and Michel Foucault. The works of Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, and Julia Kristeva are also counted as prominent examples of post-structuralism. Basically, many who began by stating that texts could be interpreted based solely on the cultural and social circumstances of the author came to believe that the reader's culture and society shared an equal part in the interpretation of a piece. If the reader sees it in one way, how do we know that that is the way the author intended? We don't. Therefore, critical reading seeks to find the contradictions that an author inevitably includes in any given work. Those inconsistencies are used to show that the interpretation and criticism of any

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literature is in the hands of the individual reader and will necessarily include that reader's own cultural biases and assumptions. While many structuralists first thought that they could tease out an author's intention by close scrutiny, they soon found so many disconnections, that it was obvious that their own experiences lent a (possibly different) view that was unique to them.

Major works and concepts


Barthes, and the need for metalanguage
Although many may have felt the necessity to move beyond structuralism, there was clearly no consensus on how this was to occur. Much of the study of post-structuralism is based on the common critiques of structuralism. Roland Barthes is of great significance with respect to post-structuralist theory. In his work, Elements of Semiology (1967), he advanced the concept of the "metalanguage". A metalanguage is a systematized way of talking about concepts like meaning and grammar beyond the constraints of a traditional (first-order) language; in a metalanguage, symbols replace words and phrases. Insofar as one metalanguage is required for one explanation of first-order language, another may be required, so metalanguages may actually replace first-order languages. Barthes exposes how this structuralist system is regressive; orders of language rely upon a metalanguage by which it is explained, and therefore deconstruction itself is in danger of becoming a metalanguage, thus exposing all languages and discourse to scrutiny. Barthes' other works contributed deconstructive theories about texts.

Derrida's lecture at Johns Hopkins


The occasional designation of post-structuralism as a movement can be tied to the fact that mounting criticism of structuralism became evident at approximately the same time that structuralism became a topic of interest in universities in the United States. This interest led to a 1966 conference at Johns Hopkins University that invited scholars who were thought to be prominent structuralists, including Derrida, Barthes, and Lacan. Derrida's lecture at that conference, "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Human Sciences", often appears in collections as a manifesto against structuralism. Derrida's essay was one of the earliest to propose some theoretical limitations to structuralism, and to attempt to theorize on terms that were clearly no longer structuralist. The element of "play" in the title of Derrida's essay is often erroneously taken to be "play" in a linguistic sense, based on a general tendency towards puns and humour, while social constructionism as developed in the later work of Michel Foucault is said to create a sense of strategic agency by laying bare the levers of historical change. The importance of Foucault's work is seen by many to be in its synthesis of this social/historical account of the operations of power (see governmentality).

Post-structuralism as Post-modernism
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It is also often claimed that post-structuralists are also more or less self-consciously postmodernists, but no small number of those so designated have expressed consternation at these terms, or even consciously identified themselves as modernists. It is beyond dispute that arguments between those said to be post-structuralists were at least as strident as their objections to structuralism. Therefore, unlike postmodernism, there does not appear to be a core of knowledge which can be labeled as 'post-structuralist'. Contemporary trends in usage seem to employ the term less, rather than to engage with a specific body of scholarship, as there is no unified post-structuralist position with which to engage. The term is also used as shorthand for what is seen as a radicalization of the French, academic leftand its American cousinsfollowing the failure of the May 1968 French-student protests to produce a much-hoped-for revolution. This aspect also has some institutional context: many figures associated with post-structuralism were associated with the University of Paris VIII Vincennes in the northern Parisian suburb of Saint-Denis, established as part of the reorganisation of the French university system in general, and the Sorbonne in particular, either serving on its faculty or as formal and informal advisors on matters of faculty and pedagogy.

Other authors
In addition to those discussed above, the following are often said to be post-structuralists, or to have had a post-structuralist period:

Kathy Acker Jean Baudrillard Judith Butler Flix Guattari Fredric Jameson Sarah Kofman Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe Jean-Franois Lyotard Jean-Luc Nancy Bernard Stiegler

See also

Postmodernism Recursionism Semiotics Social criticism Social theory Structuralism Development criticism

References
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1. ^ Derrida, Jacques; 1983; "Letter to a Japanese Friend"; pp271-276 in Derria, Jacques; Kamuf, Peggy (ed.); 1991; A Derria Reader: Between the Blinds; Harverster Wheatsheaf; Hemel Hempstead; ISBN 0-7450-0991-3 2. ^ Harrison, Paul; 20016; "Post-structuralist Theories"; pp122-135 in Aitken, S. and Valentine, G. (eds); 2006; Approaches to Human Geography; Sage, London 3. ^ Foucault, Michel. Society Must be Defended. (Trans. David Macey). Bertani, Mauro & Fontana, Alessandro (eds.). Picador, NY 2003. 4. ^ Lvinas, Emmanuel. Humanism of the Other. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003. p. 11-12. Barry, P. Beginning theory: an introduction to literary and cultural theory . Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2002. Barthes, Roland. Elements of Semiology. New York: Hill and Wang, 1967. Cuddon, J. A. Dictionary of Literary Terms & Literary Theory . London: Penguin, 1998. Eagleton, T. Literary theory: an introduction Basil Blackwell, Oxford,1983. Matthews, E. Twentieth-Century French Philosophy Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1996. Ryan, M. Literary theory: a practical introduction Blackwell Publishers Inc, Massachusetts,1999. Wolfreys, J & Baker, W (eds). Literary theories: a case study in critical performance. Macmillan Press, Hong Kong,1996.

External links

Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences - Jacques Derrida "Some Post-Structural Assumptions" - John Lye Talking pomo: An analysis of the post-modern movement, by Steve Mizrach Information on Michel Foucault, including an archive of writings and lectures poststructuralism.info - A collaborative web site that aims to allow users not only to describe post-structuralist ideas, but to create new ideas and concepts based on poststructuralist foundations http://www.indiana.edu/~reading/ieo/digests/d104.html Poststructuralism as Theory and Practice in the English Classroom, by HK Bush

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Structuralism
Structuralism as a term refers to various theories across the humanities, social sciences and economics many of which share the assumption that structural relationships between concepts vary between different cultures/languages and that these relationships can be usefully exposed and explored. More accurately it could be described as an approach in academic disciplines in general that explores the relationships between fundamental principal elements in language, literature, and other fields upon which some higher mental, linguistic, social, or cultural "structures" and "structural networks" are built. Through these networks meaning is produced within a particular person, system, or culture. This meaning then frames and motivates the actions of individuals and groups. In its most recent manifestation, structuralism as a field of academic interest began around 1958 and peaked in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

History
Structuralism appeared in academia for the first time in the 19th century and then reappeared in the second half of the 20th century, when it grew to become one of the most popular approaches in academic fields concerned with the analysis of language, culture, and society. The work of Ferdinand de Saussure concerning linguistics is generally considered to be a starting point of 20th century structuralism. The term "structuralism" itself appeared in the works of French anthropologist Claude Lvi-Strauss, and gave rise, in France, to the "structuralist movement," which spurred the work of such thinkers as Michel Foucault, Louis Althusser, the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, as well as the structural Marxism of Nicos Poulantzas. Almost all members of this so-called movement denied that they were part of it. Structuralism is closely related to semiotics. Post-structuralism attempted to distinguish itself from the use of the structural method. Deconstruction was an attempt to break with structuralistic thought. Some intellectuals like Julia Kristeva, for example, took structuralism (and Russian formalism) for a starting point to later become prominent poststructuralists. Structuralism has had varying degrees of influence in the social sciences: a great deal in the field of sociology, but hardly any in economics.

Structuralism in psychology (19th century)


At the turn of the 19th century the founding father of experimental psychology Wilhelm Wundt tried to confirm experimentally his hypothesis that conscious mental life can be broken down into fundamental elements, which then form more complex mental structures. In this part of the 19th century, researchers were making great advances in chemistry and physics by analysing complex compounds (molecules) in terms of their elements (atoms). These successes encouraged psychologists to look for the mental elements of which more complex experiences were composed. If the chemist made headway by analysing water into

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oxygen and hydrogen, perhaps the psychologist could make headway by considering a perception, e.g., the taste of lemonade, to be a "molecule" of conscious experience which can be analysed into elements of conscious experience: e.g., sweet, sour, cold, warm, bitter, and whatever else could be identified by introspection. A major believer was the psychologist Edward B. Titchener who was trained by Wundt and worked at Cornell University. Since the goal was to specify mental structures, Titchener used the word "structuralism" to describe this branch of psychology.[1] Wundt's structuralism was quickly abandoned because its objects, conscious experiences, are not easily subjected to controlled experimentation in the same way that behavior is.

Structuralism in linguistics
Ferdinand de Saussure was the originator of the 20th century reappearance of structuralism, and evidence of this can be found in Course in General Linguistics, written by Saussure's colleagues after his death and based on student notes, where he focused not on the use of language (parole, or speech), but rather on the underlying system of language (langue) and called his theory semiology. However, the discovery of the underlying system had to be done via examination of the parole. As such, Structural Linguistics are actually an early form of corpus linguistics. This approach focused on examining how the elements of language related to each other in the present, that is, 'synchronically' rather than 'diachronically'. Finally, he argued that linguistic signs were composed of two parts, a signifier (the sound pattern of a word, either in mental projection - as when we silently recite lines from a poem to ourselves - or in actual, physical realization as part of a speech act) and a signified (the concept or meaning of the word). This was quite different from previous approaches which focused on the relationship between words and things in the world that they designate. Key notions in Structural Linguistics are the notions of paradigm, syntagm and value, though these notions were not yet fully developed in De Saussure's thought. A structural paradigm is actually a class of linguistic units (lexemes, morphemes or even constructions) which are possible in a certain position in a given linguistic environment (like a given sentence), which is the syntagm. The different functional role of each of these members of the paradigm is called value (valeur in French). Saussure's Course influenced many linguists between World War I and WWII. In America, for instance, Leonard Bloomfield developed his own version of structural linguistics, as did Louis Hjelmslev in Denmark and Alf Sommerfelt in Norway. In France Antoine Meillet and mile Benveniste would continue Saussure's program. Most importantly, however, members of the Prague School of linguistics such as Roman Jakobson and Nikolai Trubetzkoy conducted research that would be greatly influential. The clearest and most important example of Prague School structuralism lies in phonemics. Rather than simply compile a list of which sounds occur in a language, the Prague School sought to examine how they were related. They determined that the inventory of sounds in a language could be analyzed in terms of a series of contrasts. Thus in English the sounds 141

/p/ and /b/ represent distinct phonemes because there are cases (minimal pairs) where the contrast between the two is the only difference between two distinct words (e.g. 'pat' and 'bat'). Analyzing sounds in terms of contrastive features also opens up comparative scope it makes clear, for instance, that the difficulty Japanese speakers have differentiating /r/ and /l/ in English is because these sounds are not contrastive in Japanese. While this approach is now standard in linguistics, it was revolutionary at the time. Phonology would become the paradigmatic basis for structuralism in a number of different forms.

Structuralism in anthropology and sociology


See the main articles at structural anthropology and structural functionalism According to structural theory in anthropology and social anthropology, meaning is produced and reproduced within a culture through various practices, phenomena and activities which serve as systems of signification. A structuralist studies activities as diverse as food preparation and serving rituals, religious rites, games, literary and non-literary texts, and other forms of entertainment to discover the deep structures by which meaning is produced and reproduced within a culture. For example, an early and prominent practitioner of structuralism, anthropologist and ethnographer Claude Lvi-Strauss in the 1950s, analyzed cultural phenomena including mythology, kinship (the Alliance theory and the incest taboo), and food preparation (see also structural anthropology). In addition to these studies, he produced more linguistically-focused writings where he applied Saussure's distinction between langue and parole in his search for the fundamental mental structures of the human mind, arguing that the structures that form the "deep grammar" of society originate in the mind and operate in us unconsciously. Levi-Strauss was inspired by information theory and mathematics. Another concept was borrowed from the Prague school of linguistics, where Roman Jakobson and others analysed sounds based on the presence or absence of certain features (such as voiceless vs. voiced). Levi-Strauss included this in his conceptualization of the universal structures of the mind, which he held to operate based on pairs of binary oppositions such as hot-cold, male-female, culture-nature, cooked-raw, or marriageable vs. tabooed women. A third influence came from Marcel Mauss, who had written on gift exchange systems. Based on Mauss, for instance, Lvi-Strauss argued that kinship systems are based on the exchange of women between groups (a position known as 'alliance theory') as opposed to the 'descent' based theory described by Edward Evans-Pritchard and Meyer Fortes. While replacing Marcel Mauss at his Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes chair, Lvi-Strauss' writing became widely popular in the 1960s and 1970s and gave rise to the term "structuralism" itself. In Britain authors such as Rodney Needham and Edmund Leach were highly influenced by structuralism. Authors such as Maurice Godelier and Emmanuel Terray combined Marxism with structural anthropology in France. In the United States, authors such as Marshall Sahlins and James Boon built on structuralism to provide their own analysis of human society. Structural anthropology fell out of favour in the early 1980s 142

for a number of reasons. D'Andrade (1995) suggests that structuralism in anthropology was eventually abandoned because it made unverifiable assumptions about the universal structures of the human mind. Authors such as Eric Wolf argued that political economy and colonialism should be more at the forefront of anthropology. More generally, criticisms of structuralism by Pierre Bourdieu led to a concern with how cultural and social structures were changed by human agency and practice, a trend which Sherry Ortner has referred to as 'practice theory'. Some anthropological theorists, however, while finding considerable fault with LviStrauss's version of structuralism, did not turn away from a fundamental structural basis for human culture. The Biogenetic Structuralism group for instance argued that some kind of structural foundation for culture must exist because all humans inherit the same system of brain structures. They proposed a kind of Neuroanthropology which would lay the foundations for a more complete scientific account of cultural similarity and variation by requiring an integration of cultural anthropology and neuroscience--a program also embraced by such theorists as Victor Turner.

Structuralism in the philosophy of mathematics


Structuralism in mathematics is the study of what structures (mathematical objects) are, and how the ontology of these structures should be understood. This is a growing philosophy within mathematics that is not without its share of critics. Paul Benacerraf's "What Numbers Could Not Be" (1965) is a seminal paper on mathematical structuralism in an odd sort of way: it started the movement by the response it generated. Benacerraf addressed a notion in mathematics to treat mathematical statements at face value, in which case we are committed to an abstract, eternal realm of mathematical objects. Benacerraf's dilemma is how we come to know these objects if we do not stand in causal relation to them. These objects are considered causally inert to the world. Another problem raised by Benacerraf is the multiple set theories that exist by which reduction of elementary number theory to sets is possible. Deciding which set theory is true has not been feasible. Benacerraf concluded in 1965 that numbers are not objects, a conclusion responded to by Mark Balaguer with the introduction of full blooded Platonism (this is essentially the view that all logically possible mathematical objects do exist). With this full blooded Platonism, it does not matter which set-theoretic construction of mathematics is used, nor how we came to know of its existence, since any consistent mathematical theory necessarily exists and is a part of the greater platonic realm. The answer to Benacerraf's negative claims is how structuralism became a viable philosophical program within mathematics. The structuralist responds to these negative claims that the essence of mathematical objects is relations that the objects bear with the structure. Important contributions to structuralism in mathematics have been made by Nicolas Bourbaki, and also by the genetic epistemologist, Jean Piaget who, in collaboration with the 143

mathematician, E.W. Beth, developed the notion of "mother structures" from which all mathematical formations are considered transformations.

Structuralism in literary theory and literary criticism


In literary theory, structuralism is an approach to analyzing the narrative material by examining the underlying invariant structure. For example, a literary critic applying a structuralist literary theory might say that the authors of the West Side Story did not write anything "really" new, because their work has the same structure as Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. In both texts a girl and a boy fall in love (a "formula" with a symbolic operator between them would be "Boy + Girl") despite the fact that they belong to two groups that hate each other ("Boy's Group - Girl's Group" or "Opposing forces") and conflict is resolved by their death. The versatility of structuralism is such that a literary critic could make the same claim about a story of two friendly families ("Boy's Family + Girl's Family") that arrange a marriage between their children despite the fact that the children hate each other ("Boy Girl") and then the children commit suicide to escape the arranged marriage; the justification is that the second story's structure is an 'inversion' of the first story's structure: the relationship between the values of love and the two pairs of parties involved have been reversed. Structuralistic literary criticism argues that the "novelty value of a literary text" can lie only in new structure, rather than in the specifics of character development and voice in which that structure is expressed. One branch of literary structuralism, like Freudianism, Marxism, and transformational grammar, posits both a deep and a surface structure. In Freudianism and Marxism the deep structure is a story, in Freud's case the battle, ultimately, between the life and death instincts, and in Marx, the conflicts between classes that are rooted in the economic "base." Literary structuralism often follows the lead of Vladimir Propp and Claude Levi-Strauss in seeking out basic deep elements in stories and myths, which are combined in various ways to produce the many versions of the ur-story or ur-myth. As in Freud and Marx, but in contrast to transformational grammar, these basic elements are meaning-bearing. There is considerable similarity between structural literary theory and Northrop Frye's archetypal criticism, which is also indebted to the anthropological study of myths. Some critics have also tried to apply the theory to individual works, but the effort to find unique structures in individual literary works runs counter to the structuralist program and has an affinity with New Criticism. The other branch of literary structuralism is semiotics, and it is based on the work of Ferdinand de Saussure.

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Structuralism after World War II


Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, existentialism like that practiced by Jean-Paul Sartre was the dominant mood. Structuralism surged to prominence in France after WWII and particularly in the 1960s. The initial popularity of structuralism in France led it to spread across the globe. The social sciences (in particular, sociology) were particularly influenced. Structuralism rejected the concept of human freedom and choice and focused instead on the way that human behavior is determined by various structures. The most important initial work on this score was Claude Lvi-Strauss's 1949 volume Elementary Structures of Kinship. Lvi-Strauss had known Jakobson during their time together in New York during WWII and was influenced by both Jakobson's structuralism as well as the American anthropological tradition. In Elementary Structures he examined kinship systems from a structural point of view and demonstrated how apparently different social organizations were in fact different permutations of a few basic kinship structures. In the late 1950s he published Structural Anthropology, a collection of essays outlining his program for structuralism. By the early 1960s structuralism as a movement was coming into its own and some believed that it offered a single unified approach to human life that would embrace all disciplines. Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida focused on how structuralism could be applied to literature. Blending Freud and De Saussure, the French (post)structuralist Jacques Lacan applied structuralism to psychoanalysis and, in a different way, Jean Piaget applied structuralism to the study of psychology. Michel Foucault's book The Order of Things examined the history of science to study how structures of epistemology, or episteme, shaped how people imagined knowledge and knowing (though Foucault would later explicitly deny affiliation with the structuralist movement). In much the same way, American historian of science Thomas Kuhn addressed the structural formations of science in his seminal work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions - its title alone evincing a stringent structuralist approach. Though less concerned with "episteme," Kuhn nonetheless remarked at how coteries of scientists operated under and applied a standard praxis of 'normal science,' deviating from a standard 'paradigm' only in instances of irreconcilable anomalies that question a significant body of their work. Blending Marx and structuralism another French theorist Louis Althusser introduced his own brand of structural social analysis, giving rise to "structural Marxism". Other authors in France and abroad have since extended structural analysis to practically every discipline.

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The definition of 'structuralism' also shifted as a result of its popularity. As its popularity as a movement waxed and waned, some authors considered themselves 'structuralists' only to later eschew the label. The term has slightly different meanings in French and English. In the US, for instance, Derrida is considered the paradigm of post-structuralism while in France he is labeled a structuralist. Finally, some authors wrote in several different styles. Barthes, for instance, wrote some books which are clearly structuralist and others which clearly are not.

Reactions to structuralism
Today structuralism is less popular than approaches such as post-structuralism and deconstruction. There are many reasons for this. Structuralism has often been criticized for being ahistorical and for favoring deterministic structural forces over the ability of individual people to act. As the political turbulence of the 1960s and 1970s (and particularly the student uprisings of May 1968) began affecting academia, issues of power and political struggle moved to the center of people's attention. In the 1980s, deconstruction and its emphasis on the fundamental ambiguity of language--rather than its crystalline logical structure--became popular. By the end of the century structuralism was seen as a historically important school of thought, but it was the movements it spawned, rather than structuralism itself, which commanded attention.

Notes
1. ^ Atkinson, R.L. (1990). Introduction to Psychology, 10th Edition. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

References

D'Andrade, R. 1995. The development of cognitive anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Beth, E.W., and Piaget, J. (1966) Mathematical Epistemology and Psychology . Dordrecht: D. Reidel. Francois Dosse. History of Structuralism (two volumes). University of Minnesota Press, 1998. Kuper, A. 1988. The Invention of Primitive Society: Transformations of an Illusion. London: Routledge. Laughlin, Charles D. and Eugene G. d'Aquili (1974) Biogenetic Structuralism. New York: Columbia University Press. Leach, E. 1954. Political Systems of Highland Burma. London: Bell. Leach, E. 1966. Rethinking Anthropology. Northampton: Dickens. Levi-Strauss, C. 1969. The Elementary Structures of Kinship. London: Eyre and Spottis-woode. Caws, P. 2000 Structuralism: A Philosophy for the Human Sciences New York: Humanity Books

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