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16-12-02-07: Summary Of Essay Twelve Parts Two to Seven
These are Introductory Essays, which have been written for those who find the main Essays either too long, or too difficult. They do not pretend to be comprehensive since they are simply summaries of the core ideas presented at this site. Most of the supporting evidence and argument found in each of the main Essays has been omitted. Anyone wanting more details, or who would like to examine my arguments and evidence in full, should consult the Essay for which each is a précis. [In this particular case, these have not yet been published.]
It is worth recalling that many of the things I take for granted here depend on evidence and argument presented in Part One of Essay Twelve (summary here). Much of what I say below will not be easy to understand without reading Part One, or its summary. Indeed, some of the material here might even seem rather dogmatic; in which case, readers are encouraged to shelve their qualms until the full Essays are published over the next four or five years, where I will fully substantiate the claims I make in this summary.
It is also worth pointing out at the start that when I refer to traditional philosophy as a prime example of ruling-class ideology, I do not mean to suggest that members of the ruling-class invented it (although there are well-known examples where this was the case -- consider Marcus Aurelius and Cicero), but that this is a thought-form that represents either their view of reality or one that serves their interests, and that up until recently it has almost invariably been promoted by thinkers who relied on ruling-class patronage, or who helped run the system for those at the top. [More details can be found below, and even more will be posted in the full versions of these Parts of Essay Twelve when they are published.]
I have tried to limit the length of these summaries to 5000 words or less, but in this case I have clearly failed. This is because this précis attempts to summarise six long essays. When they have all been published, this summary will be broken up into shorter, 5000 word sections.
Finally, this abstract has largely been cobbled-together from notes, so in several places it is still rather rough-and-ready, and it is a little too repetitive. Over the course of the next few re-writes I will endeavour to put these flaws right, so the reader's indulgence is sought in the meantime.
Quick Links
Anyone using these links must remember that they will be skipping past supporting argument and evidence set out in earlier sections. [If your Firewall has a pop-up blocker, you will need to press the "Ctrl" key at the same time or these and the other links here won't work!]
(1) If Reality Is Fundamentally Linguistic, No Wonder It Can Contradict Itself
(2) Social Being Motivates The Philosophy Of 'Being'
(3) Feuerbach's Half-Finished Project
(b) The Politics Of Metaphysics
(c) Ordinary Language Denigrated By Class-Conscious Theorists
(d) Ordinary Language And Workers
(e) Alienated Thought And Fetishised Language
(f) Representationalism And The Inner Bourgeois Individual
(g) The Ideological Heart Of A Heartless World
(h) 'Jargonitis'
(4) Mystical 'Genius' Derives Everything From The Verb 'To Be'
(6) Empty Philosophical Language
Abbreviations Used At This Site
If Reality Is Fundamentally Linguistic, Then Of Course It Can 'Contradict' Itself
In spite of the rich metaphysical pickings that traditional, a priori approach to knowledge outlined in Part One seems to bring in its train, it was and still is invariably done on the cheap, as it were. In order to prosecute it no expensive equipment is required, no elaborate or time-consuming experiments need to be performed. Quite the contrary, anyone with a flair for jargon, a love of prolixity, and, of course, sufficient leisure time can indulge. Indeed, no empirical evidence at all is required to substantiate the bold metaphysical theses that effortlessly roll off the page, since these can be condensed from thought alone.
Metaphysical theories were originally invented by thinkers who (in the main) displayed an aristocratic contempt for ordinary language and empirical knowledge -- and hence for the manual labour on which both are based. [There is an excellent account of this in Conner (2005).] Ordinary language and empirical knowledge are grounded in communal life, which means that they are ultimately based on collective labour and common understanding. Ruling-class hacks (i.e., traditional philosophers') almost invariably dismissed both as unreliable at best, beneath them at worst.
Traditional thinkers were indirectly alienated from communal aspects of the human condition by the social division of labour that scarred early class society. These ancient thinkers were quite open in their contempt for the 'semi-animal' existence they attributed to working people, jut as they were equally convinced of the superiority of their 'culture'. [There is a very clear echo of this in Plato's Republic.]
In that case, the universal inclination DM-theorists display for wanting to derive substantive truths about reality from language alone (i.e., from 'thought experiments', or from a priori theses and trite maxims, etc.) is no surprise. Philosophical theorists have been doing this sort of thing for millennia; it is now part of the philosophical furniture. Since ruling-class hacks have always done this, when DM-theorists copy them it seems to them a perfectly normal way to think and to theorise (because of their own class position and/or origin) -- so normal that no one until recently has either noticed it or exposed it for what it is.
[LIE = Linguistic Idealism.]
This appropriation of traditional thought-forms (outlined throughout this site) thus locates DM-theorists in a philosophical tradition that is possessed of excellent ruling-class bona fides, one consequence of which is that DM is itself a form of LIE.
LIE, is in fact a family of doctrines which share several things in common:
(1) A distortion of the vernacular; (2) the distillation of substantive theses about nature from 'thought experiments' alone; (3) the promulgation of what seem on the surface to be empirical propositions, but which are not since they are applicable throughout all of reality, for all of time on the say-so of the promulgator; (4) the invention of empty neologisms and abstract terminology where words drawn from everyday language will not do; (5) the derivation of 'necessary truths' that supposedly reveal the "essential" aspects of "Being", but which have been obtained from words alone; (6) the confusion of rules of grammar and logic with empirical propositions (which is what in fact allows theorists to 'derive' 'scientific-looking' laws from what are in fact contingent features of language); (7) hasty generalisations to all of reality, for all of time, based on a strictly limited number of examples (all of which are unrepresentative, specially-selected, or suitably distorted,); (8) the 're-interpretation' of everything to fit this a priori picture.
Metaphysicians (and DM-theorists) not only take it for granted that reality has an underlying 'rational' structure, they arrogate to themselves the sole right to uncover its hidden secrets from thought alone, and then inform the rest of us of the eternal truths they have thus exposed.
As noted in Part One, the truth-values of ordinary empirical propositions can only be determined by an interface with material reality; their truth-status is materially-driven.
With metaphysical theses, on the other hand, the opposite is the case: the underlying state of the world is in fact determined by what such theses say. They do not reflect the world, the world reflects them: reality is a reflection of what they declare to be the case. The way the world has to be is determined by their content; they stand out as philosophical pictures, delineating the conceptual boundaries of reality (or 'Being'), as lone theses or as foundational principles, which trace out the logical or essential form of any possible world. That is why no evidence is needed, and none is ever really sought out. No world is conceivable in which they do not apply.
That is of course why Lenin considered the opposite of Engels's thesis about matter and motion so "unthinkable".
Which is also why, contrary to what we are told, such theses can 'safely' be imposed on nature by every single DM-fan. [On this, see Essay Two.]
Beware Greek Philosophers Bearing Metaphysical Gifts -- Or Why Words Have Power
DM is thus situated in an ancient metaphysical tradition, one that was (and still is) based on the systematic misuse and denigration of ordinary material language, as Marx noted:
"The philosophers have only to dissolve their language into the ordinary language, from which it is abstracted, in order to recognise it, as the distorted language of the actual world, and to realise that neither thoughts nor language in themselves form a realm of their own, that they are only manifestations of actual life." [Marx and Engels (1970), p.118. Bold emphases added.]
The vernacular was (and still is) variously regarded by traditional theorists and dialecticians alike as theoretically limited, paradox-friendly, ideologically-compromised, and the repository of unreflective 'commonsense'.
The original, ideologically-motivated attack on 'vulgar' speech began with the inception of class society. From the historical record (in several Parts of Essay Twelve, and to a lesser extent in Essay Three Part One) I show how Greek thinkers incorporated abstract terms into their theories because they could not make ordinary words say what they wanted them to say. In so doing they were quite open about their aims just as they were about their contempt for ordinary human beings, their language, beliefs, experience and culture. The class-confidence of these early thinkers meant they did not have to hide their ideas behind too much metaphysical spin; in fact their thoughts began life intermingles with several genuinely scientific concepts.
The scientific study of nature, and how to control it, began long before developed forms of class society reared their ugly heads (on this see Conner (2005)), but once the latter emerged, science became all too easily overlaid with the class-motivated results of Idealist speculation.
Nevertheless, with the development of technique, when more practically-orientated human beings started to take an increasingly careful note of the material world, and also of the physical and social constraints this imposed on speculation (i.e., when they began to experiment, test and dovetail their theories with observation and improved practice, etc.), science was able to make steady progress and gradually break free from most of the effects of this murky past, partially extricating itself from this intellectual quagmire. However, in order for this to work, scientists had to take material reality (and hence contingency) into account. Traditional Philosophy could not do this. Hence, science was able to distinguish itself from the Idealism that surrounded it on all sides by its increasing contact with the material world and with developing technology.
[Of course, the situation here is vastly more complex than the above suggests, but this is a summary Essay, after all! The distinction between science and philosophy will be delineated more clearly in a later Essay.]
Nevertheless, the first philosophical exercise in linguistic trickery (that we know of in the 'West') took place in ancient Greece, and this was undertaken in order to transform earlier, aristocratically-motivated myths and theogonies into secular and/or metaphysical 'truths' to provide a de-personalised (but now rational) legitimacy for the new forms of class power emerging in and beyond the sixth century BC.
Consider one specific example: the autocratic, antidemocratic and violent politics found in Pythagorean society (situated in Southern Italy in the sixth century BC). Ideologically, this social form was based on the notion that nature is governed by rational, mathematical and hierarchical principles, which the Pythagoreans alone understood. That naturally 'justified' their contempt for democracy. This particular case is important because of the profound influence Pythagorean concepts subsequently exercised on Plato, Neo-Platonists and thus on more recent Platonists (such as Galileo, Hegel and in some respects, Lenin), and hence on much of 'Western' thought. This includes the way that Mathematics and Physics have largely been interpreted ever since; they are, by-and-large, still understood in a thoroughly Pythagorean and/or Platonic manner, pertaining to a hidden world anterior to, and more real than, the world we see around us.
Indeed, as fate would have it, the first use of Weapons of Mass Destruction (that we know of) was directed by the Pythagoreans of Croton on the hapless people of Sybaris, a neighbouring city in Southern Italy. In 510 BC Pythagorean forces diverted the River Crati into Sybaris, wiping out a whole community, killing tens of thousands.
The links between ruling-class thought and violent, anti-democratic state power were less difficult to see in those days.
[It is worth recalling here that Stalin's criminal invasion of Finland (in November 1939) was 'justified' too by dialectical philosophy of similar murderous insincerity (as was the Hitler/Stalin pact). That invasion was an unforgivable attack, and was defended -- hard though this might be for neutral observers to believe -- by Trotsky(!), who, although a principled anti-Stalinist, supported this action by the Red Army on sound dialectical grounds. Socialism spread by tanks, justified by dialectics. Substitutionism -- courtesy of DM!
The result? Tens of thousands of dead workers, and a breathing-space for Hitler. It is now perhaps a little easier to see why workers hate Dialectical Marxism. But, you can still find dialectically-distracted comrades who will try to defend this attack (and who unsurprisingly also fail to notice how impressively unsuccessful they are at attracting workers to their ranks -- not making the obvious connection, so dialectically-myopic have they become).]
Such traditional notions merely helped 'justify' and rationalise the consolidation and reproduction of ruling-class hegemony. Hence, if their rule 'reflects' the underlying 'rational'/'objective' order of reality (as ruling-class hacks have generally claimed, albeit modified accordingly, to suit the needs of each Mode of Production and each ambient ruling elite), then all opposition to the State could be condemned as irrational, against "the natural order", and hence ultimately pointless. The moral order of the state could thus be linked to the 'rational order' of reality. Indeed, the ethical condition of the soul and the structure of the State were not just accidentally linked (for example, in Plato), they were constitutive of the whole cosmos and of rightful governance on earth. The same was true of the various other rational principles mined from thought alone by countless generations of ruling-class thinkers, albeit expressed in different idioms as ambient social conditions required.
Early Philosophers were in fact quite open about this; it is only recently that these notions have retreated into the background. However, they are now making a strong come-back, and just in time for a new wave of Imperialist aggression in the Middle East. Now we have "Islamofascists" where once there were "Barbarians". Now we have various forms of genetic determinism, courtesy of 'Evolutionary Psychology'.
Of course, the principles behind -- and the intentional objects of -- these theoretical flights-of-fancy are, always were and always will be inaccessible to sense perception, 'commonsense' and ordinary material language/evidence.
And rightly so: only in a genuine democracy would mundane things like these really count for much.
Social Being Creates The Philosophy Of 'Being'
Superimposed on all this were a few rather more contingent factors, themselves also a spin-off from class division. The extrapolation from language to eternal truths about the world was an extension of, and justification for, each traditional theorist's own idiosyncratic take on reality, and not solely aimed at rationalising ruling-class power. These idiosyncratic theories were also derived from an alienated view of reality (or, 'Being', as they tended to call it), and ultimately predicated on an earlier division of labour in nascent class society, reflected now the class position of such theorists.
As is well-known by Marxists, in their attempt to free themselves from the constant oppression of nature, human beings found that they not only had to enslave themselves to political and social forms over which they soon lost control, they also had to submit themselves to ideologies that parasitized and rationalised this alienation. Ruling-class ideas thus came to rule because there was no material counter-weight to the Ideal view of reality held by the boss-class and their theoretical prize-fighters.
Superscientific truths derived solely from the meaning of words thus began to mirror the abstract view of reality adopted by this new layer of theorists in ancient Greece, just as their theories reflected their daily experience of class society. In this way, their mode of being mirrored their view of 'Being'. The life of these idlers was largely one of leisure bought (directly or indirectly) at the expense of the necessary labour-time of those whose language and experience they denigrated. In order to give expression to this form of estrangement, these theorists developed Idealist jargon deliberately set in opposition to the 'debased' and 'unreliable' language of those who had to work for a living.
In earlier Theogonies and myths, conflict in this world was linked in with inter-personal rivalries between the 'gods', in a hidden world anterior to the senses. Their verbal wrangles and machinations became the model upon which later Idealist and Hermetic thinkers based the overly-ambitious ideas they imposed on nature and society.
Language, originally the result of collective
labour and developed as a means of communication, is not too good at
representing things. In order to try to do so, theorists found they had to take
words which express the relations human beings have with one another and with
nature and then apply them to the relations that exist in nature itself. Unless
great care is taken, these words will carry with them the inter-human
connotations they possess in their ordinary use. Alas, traditional theorists
were recklessly careless.
Superstitious individuals had earlier tried to
interpret natural processes as the work of various assorted 'spirits' and 'gods', using anthropomorphic language in order to do so. Later,
in more developed class society, priests and
theologians systematically indulged in this 'art form' for ideological reasons (i.e., to
suggest that the natural and social order was divinely-ordained, and so could
not and should not be resisted). Subsequently, as we can see from the record,
ancient Greek thinkers began looking for increasingly secular ways of theorising
about the world (to give a less animistic rationale for the new forms of class
society beginning to emerge in the 6th century BC), but they retained this
transferred and transformed language, not noticing they had in fact banished the
aforementioned 'spirits' and 'gods' in
name only (as
Feuerbach half recognised) -- but, the
anthropomorphic
connotations still remained, and there they remain to this day.
In this way, anthropomorphic notions came to assume cosmic significance and thus entered philosophy, and there they remain, too.
Unfortunately for humanity, this also meant that it became 'natural' for theorists (like Anaximenes and Heraclitus) to see conflict in conceptual, logical and linguistic (but not materialist) terms. [This is indeed from where Hegel appropriated these ideas.]
That, of course, set this new form of discourse in direct opposition to the material language of everyday life. This alienated thought-form was bequeathed to all subsequent generations of thinkers, since they largely shared the same privileged material conditions, and hence the ideological predispositions that came with this slice of the intellectual territory.
In this artificial world inhabited by such indolent thinkers, words appeared to carry with them a hidden form of authority: commands, edicts and orders seemed to possess their own secret power (which, of course, accounts for the ancient and early modern search for the original language 'God' gave to mankind; on this see Eco (1997)).
Words were, after all, capable of moving slaves, servants, and workers effortlessly about the place. Codified into law, words also appeared to possess genuine coercive power, which masked the class domination on which this parasitic social form was based. Naturally, this superficial aspect of official language would blind those who benefited from these social forms to its material roots in class society.
The spurious power that words seemed to possess would naturally suggest to such theoretical 'drones' that if certain forms of language underpinned both their own authority and, more importantly, that of the State. But, if the State mirrored Cosmic Reality, then the conclusion seemed inescapable: the universe must run along discursive lines.
These theorists would thus begin to confuse a conventionalised social form with a secret code that ran the universe, mastery of which would help them grasp the essential aspects of 'Being'.
In that case, such theorists would 'naturally' see reality as not just rational, but as ultimately linguistic, constituted by the word of some 'god', or other. In more ancient religions, the 'Deity' spoke and everything not only sprang into existence, it jumped to attention. Hence, on this view, seemingly inert matter had the capacity to obey orders (but only when addressed with the right sort of language -- hence, once again, the search initiated by sorcerers for these magical words), as if matter were intelligent and possessed of a will of its own. Nature was thus an enchanted 'Being', but, because of this distorted view of language, the nature of this 'Being' could be directly or indirectly linked to the 'legitimacy' of class power.
Indeed, as early theorists saw things, nature was powered by opposing forces: good and evil, light and dark, order and chaos, love and hate, hot and cold -- all were either personified (as good/evil intelligences) or were viewed as discursive principles (i.e., as 'logical' laws -- which were not just 'laws of thought', but were laws governing reality, established by the supreme Logos, who made everything in 'His' image).
Ideas like this appear in all ancient creation myths, in Greek Philosophy, and in Buddhist and Chinese thought (in the latter as Yin and Yang, for instance -- more examples here). For all these thinkers, the inner source of universal movement and/or development was thus ultimately linguistic, governed by such discursive opposites. Either that, or reality was founded on intelligence/will (and thus on language again), and, once more, this was directly or indirectly linked with boss-class hegemony.
Material reality was thus not so much congealed energy as condensed language, no less the slave of 'God' than human servants were slaves/subjects of the state. "Ruling ideas" were thus derived from the alienated ideas of those who in fact ruled (or who rationalised that rule for them). "Ruling ideas" thus ruled society because, for such Idealists, these ideas ruled the world -- and vice versa. As above, so below; the microcosm mirrored the macrocosm.
Few traditional thinkers have strayed far from these ancient thought-forms, even if they found they had to express them in different idioms as each Mode of Production changed, and as each ruling-class altered its legal form and ideological priorities.
This represented perhaps one small ideological step for alienated mankind, but a major step backward for oppressed humanity.
That is because these terminological moves carved ruling-ideas into the fabric of the heavens. And, in one form or another, there they still remain.
Feuerbach's Half-Finished Project
In that case, Feuerbach uncovered only half the truth: it's not just 'God' who is an alienated projection of human nature. The classical view of the cosmos outlined above is in fact a projection of alienated human social relations carried out by the ideologues of those whose interests these manoeuvres served. And these dead concepts have weighed on the brains of the living ever since -- as both tragedy and farce. 'God' may be alienated 'Man' writ large, but the cosmos, as traditional philosophy pictures it, is little more than alienated human social relations writ large, too.
As the traditional view depicted things, the real universe (i.e., that which underpins 'appearances') was in effect an externalisation of the hierarchical relations of power and authority (either apparent or hidden) that exist in class society. In this way, the specially-coded language these theorists used was intimately linked to the continuing order of the Cosmos, and thus with the many and varied forms of the State the class war has thrown-up.
For example, in early Greece, Justice became a cosmic issue, and was closely linked with the course of human affairs. Both at the same time and then later, property, exchange, debt, ransom, value, law, conflict, legal argument, and much else besides, assumed metaphysical/cosmic and social significance.
In Hegel, of course, these notions resurfaced as various assorted "contradictions" -- and so it was that anthropomorphised linguistic expressions (which reflected alienated social relations captured in 'inverted' dialectical thought) were projected on to nature, so that they now ran the universe and society.
[In that case, the alleged materialist inversion this theory underwent (so that Hegel supposedly now 'stood on his feet') has had no effect on this Idealist imposition.]
All of these 'insights' were justified by a priori arguments of some sort, coupled with innovative uses of jargon --, since, of course, this is the only way such theses can be made to seem to work.
As Marx argued:
"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. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance. The individuals composing the ruling class possess among other things consciousness, and therefore think. Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch. For instance, in an age and in a country where royal power, aristocracy, and bourgeoisie are contending for mastery and where, therefore, mastery is shared, the doctrine of the separation of powers proves to be the dominant idea and is expressed as an 'eternal law.'" [The German Ideology, quoted from here.]
"...The philosophers have only to dissolve their language into the ordinary language, from which it is abstracted, in order to recognise it, as the distorted language of the actual world, and to realise that neither thoughts nor language in themselves form a realm of their own, that they are only manifestations of actual life." [Ibid., quoted from here. Bold emphases added.]
Often these outwardly seeming, secular doctrines were overlaid with overtly religious language -- just think of the concepts that Christians use: inherited sin, ransom, debts owed to 'God' (since all of us are 'His' slaves), redemption, 'mediation', and so on. Discourse like this (of a mystical and legalistic drift) had magical qualities imputed to it; language powered the world, just as it supposedly ran the State.
Hence, a superficial social form (i.e., the ability to issue orders, promulgate and enforce laws, or prosecute a legal argument, etc.) was inverted so that it became a 'logical' device 'allowing' philosophers to unmask secrets that lay 'beneath' appearances -- which thus helped them in their endeavour to locate the master key, the Philosophers' Stone, capable of unlocking (and perhaps controlling) the essential nature of 'Being'.
In later metaphysical systems, this open mysticism became hidden behind overt references to the logical principles that 'must' underlie all of reality -- indeed, every 'possible world' -- depersonalised now as cosmic "essences", "dialectical logic", "natural laws", or "necessary truths". The Logos thus became Logic, and Logic ran the world.
This being so, it would be 'natural' for such theorists to conclude that not only is logical, rational, and conceptual analysis capable of unmasking fundamental truths about reality, nothing else could. In that case, only a priori knowledge was genuine knowledge; it alone was reliable. Anything else was not 'proper' Philosophy, and so fit only for derision.
This approach to 'knowledge' is well summarised by the following two authors:
"Empirical, contingent truths have always struck philosophers as being, in some sense, ultimately unintelligible. It is not that none can be known with certainty…; nor is it that some cannot be explained…. Rather is it that all explanation of empirical truths rests ultimately on brute contingency -- that is how the world is! Where science comes to rest in explaining empirical facts varies from epoch to epoch, but it is in the nature of empirical explanation that it will hit the bedrock of contingency somewhere, e.g., in atomic theory in the nineteenth century or in quantum mechanics today. One feature that explains philosophers' fascination with truths of Reason is that they seem, in a deep sense, to be fully intelligible. To understand a necessary proposition is to see why things must be so, it is to gain an insight into the nature of things and to apprehend not only how things are, but also why they cannot be otherwise. It is striking how pervasive visual metaphors are in philosophical discussions of these issues. We see the universal in the particular (by Aristotelian intuitive induction); by the Light of Reason we see the essential relations of Simple Natures; mathematical truths are apprehended by Intellectual Intuition, or by a priori insight. Yet instead of examining the use of these arresting pictures or metaphors to determine their aptness as pictures, we build upon them mythological structures.
"We think of necessary propositions as being true or false, as objective and independent of our minds or will. We conceive of them as being about various entities, about numbers even about extraordinary numbers that the mind seems barely able to grasp…, or about universals, such as colours, shapes, tones; or about logical entities, such as the truth-functions or (in Frege's case) the truth-values. We naturally think of necessary propositions as describing the features of these entities, their essential characteristics. So we take mathematical propositions to describe mathematical objects…. Hence investigation into the domain of necessary propositions is conceived as a process of discovery. Empirical scientists make discoveries about the empirical domain, uncovering contingent truths; metaphysicians, logicians and mathematicians appear to make discoveries of necessary truths about a supra-empirical domain (a 'third realm'). Mathematics seems to be the 'natural history of mathematical objects' [Wittgenstein (1978), p.137], 'the physics of numbers' [Wittgenstein (1976), p.138; however these authors record this erroneously as p.139, RL] or the 'mineralogy of numbers' [Wittgenstein (1978), p.229]. The mathematician, e.g., Pascal, admires the beauty of a theorem as though it were a kind of crystal. Numbers seem to him to have wonderful properties; it is as if he were confronting a beautiful natural phenomenon [Wittgenstein (1998), p.47; again, these authors have recorded this erroneously as p.41, RL]. Logic seems to investigate the laws governing logical objects…. Metaphysics looks as if it is a description of the essential structure of the world. Hence we think that a reality corresponds to our (true) necessary propositions. Our logic is correct because it corresponds to the laws of logic….
"In our eagerness to ensure the objectivity of truths of reason, their sempiternality and mind-independence, we slowly but surely transform them into truths that are no less 'brutish' than empirical, contingent truths. Why must red exclude being green? To be told that this is the essential nature of red and green merely reiterates the brutish necessity. A proof in arithmetic or geometry seems to provide an explanation, but ultimately the structure of proofs rests on axioms. Their truth is held to be self-evident, something we apprehend by means of our faculty of intuition; we must simply see that they are necessarily true…. We may analyse such ultimate truths into their constituent 'indefinables'. Yet if 'the discussion of indefinables…is the endeavour to see clearly, and to make others see clearly, the entities concerned, in order that the mind may have that kind of acquaintance with them which it has with redness or the taste of a pineapple' [Russell (1937), p.xv; again these authors record this erroneously as p.v, RL], then the mere intellectual vision does not penetrate the logical or metaphysical that to the why or wherefore…. For if we construe necessary propositions as truths about logical, mathematical or metaphysical entities which describe their essential properties, then, of course, the final products of our analyses will be as impenetrable to reason as the final products of physical theorising, such as Planck's constant." [Baker and Hacker (1988), pp.273-75. Referencing conventions in the original have been altered to conform to those adopted here.]
This is one of the reasons why the attack on the roots of all forms of 'Western' thought (mounted at this site) is so difficult for comrades to accept (or even to grasp): in their heads, ruling ideas still dominate -- in this case in the shape of dialectical 'logic'. And they all fail to see this, even after it has been pointed out to them, and this is because they accept as 'natural' this traditional, a priori approach to knowledge --, as, indeed, the only way to think 'rationally' about reality. Hence, for them, only a priori speculation (backed up with little or no evidence) could possibly qualify as genuinely philosophical truth. Materially-based scientific knowledge is not enough; Marxism needs a Philosophy. This idea is so firmly lodged in comrades' heads that it rules almost by divine right. [Why this is so is revealed in Essay Nine Part Two.]
In this way, ruling-class ideas have come to rule militant minds.
However, esoteric knowledge (of this sort) is far removed from material reality -- in fact it has been abstracted away from it. As such it is conveniently hidden way beneath surface of appearances, and is thus safe from material confutation. Naturally, in the end this means that such knowledge is occult, mystical, and esoteric -- which, of course, helps account for the popularity of occult and mystical thought among traditional thinkers (and, indeed, among many individual members of the ruling-class -- for example, these days the Masons -- and, alas, far too many Marxist dialecticians). This observation, of course, includes Hegel, a Hermetic mystic of the worst possible kind.
The ancient ideological turn to this new conception of reality clearly mirrored the pseudo-democratisation that took place classical Greece in and around the fifth century BC -- based as the latter was on slavery.
It was now expedient for theorists to transform the earlier personified powers of the 'gods' into impersonal 'forces' and 'laws' in order to provide a more relevant and persuasive rationale for these new forms of class domination (wherein kings and queens no longer ruled, these having been replaced by oligarchies, dictatorships, or early forms of republican governance). Warring, envious and capricious gods (which in effect helped rationalise the interpersonal rivalries between warring royal families) had to be tamed and transformed into the aforementioned impersonal forces, principles and laws -- but, where necessary these were still under the control either of a single supreme 'Deity', or a supreme rational principle, an Absolute. Naturally, a properly ordered Polis had to reflect a similarly rationally organised cosmic order.
Nevertheless, this change still preserved the anthropomorphic and animistic overtones of the old way of seeing things --, even if this was now much harder to see.
Once more, this novel and class-motivated world-view was clearly aimed at demonstrating why nature and society had to be the way they were, linking the power of the State to the necessary structure of 'Being'.
Hegemony so easily derived from hermeneutics.
[It is worth recalling here that "hermeneutics" is derived from the Greek God Hermes, the central character of Hermetic Philosophy -- the system that Hegel bequeathed to our movement. Hermes was 'himself' based on the Egyptian god Thoth, who supposedly invented language and Philosophy (aka 'wisdom') -- and who, incidentally, we are told made the world out of language --, from whom the Greeks derived their word for 'God' (Theos -- and hence Theology), and we our word "theory".]
Ordinary Language Denigrated By Class-Conscious Theorists
As a result, not only did the first wave of ruling-class prize fighters find that they had to dismantle primitive communism physically, they also had to mount a pincer assault on communal language and the common experience of ordinary human beings, centuries later. This is no mere invention; the historical record fully supports this observation. [Details will be given in the full Essay, when it is published.]
They were forced to do this because the vernacular does not allow the formation of a single coherent metaphysical thought (for reasons explained in detail in Essay Twelve Part One), and it cannot be used to confirm the a priori theses metaphysicians invent as the ideological mood takes them.
This explains why traditional philosophers had to invent 'abstract' ideas to populate their theories and rationalise these newly emerging class hierarchies. [This is plain to see in the work of early Greek thinkers where they were quite open about what they were doing.] Of course, such moves became the norm in later thought, and thus did not require such openly ideological 'justification'.
If 'concepts' and/or 'categories' control all of reality, or all of thought (or both, as in Hegel), then no ordinary human could possibly challenge their legitimacy. If anyone were foolish enough to try, that would be evidence enough that they did not "understand" the precursor to dialectics -- i.e., the NeoPlatonic/Hermetic ideas that would later help sink Hegel (and thus Marxism) into a dogmatic quagmire.
In the 'West', this ancient, aristocratic world-view found expression in the use of specially-engineered jargon -- wherein allegedly 'essential' features of reality became the reification of contingent features of Indo-European grammar. As a result, subjects, predicates -- and especially participles of the diminutive verb "to be" (i.e., "is" and "being") --, were imbued with profound ontological significance. The superficial grammatical structure of a few specially-selected sentences was thus considered capable of revealing deep underlying structures of the entire universe.
In these new social settings, the analysis of specially modified linguistic forms was not only metaphysically revealing, it was financially rewarding; patronage was available only to those who theorised along the 'right' lines and who drew the most useful conclusions.
Abstract thought could thus find a home for itself in a world where those who performed material work could find none -- for their thoughts and experiences were denied one.
The language of those who had to work to stay alive was thus doctored and distorted, since it represented the 'debased' experience of those directly alienated by these new social forms. Hence, not only was materialism regarded as a dangerous ideology, the material language by means of which it alone can be expressed had to be constantly denigrated.
In any subsequent rebellion against the State, however, the material language of everyday life rapidly became a focus for expressing the grievances and pressing the demands of those thrown into revolt. To be sure, their justification was often couched in religious terms (a classic example being the work and activity of Thomas Müntzer), but the aspirations and tactics of such groups had to be expressed in the vernacular if support were to be won among ordinary folk. No matter how fervent one's belief in 'God' happens to be, without the right tactics, organisation and means of communication -- all of which are material constraints --, no revolt would last long.
In this way, struggle from below (especially in the last few centuries) has gradually undermined if not inverted the Ideal forms of domination that had been imposed on the majority for thousands of years, thus making the social world increasingly subject to material and collective control. Again, while these struggles might have been expressed in religious terms centuries ago, they have emerged more recently in increasingly overt materialist language.
That is, of course, why revolutionary papers find they have to use ordinary language to communicate with their audiences.
And it is also why the present age is unique; we now possess a material counter-weight to Idealism, one that can help bring an end to the domination not jut or our rulers but also of their ruling-ideas: an international working-class.
Indeed, the ideas represented here were only made possible because the working-class entered the stage of history as a material force.
This also explains why the larger the working-class, the less relevant dialectics becomes, and the smaller the impact Dialectical Marxism has on it.
The tide of history has changed; dialecticians, with their heads deep in the sand, have yet to register this blindingly obvious fact.
In Hegel's work, the Ideal stands proudly on its feet, Absolute master of all. But it wasn't the efforts of comrades like Engels, Lenin or Trotsky who claimed they had turned it the 'right way up'. If anything, they put it on a cart and paraded it about the place, celebrating it as the work of "genius".
On the contrary, it's the struggle of ordinary working people that helped cut this metaphysical Frankenstein off at the knees, for they alone can provide the material counterweight to the Idealism that gives it life.
Marxist intellectuals and/or activists (no matter how devoted they are to the revolution) cannot of themselves do this, and for obvious reasons (these are spelled out in Essay Nine, Parts One and Two): in general these comrades are almost exclusively petty-bourgeois or de-classé individuals, and are thus 'naturally' inclined toward an Ideal view of reality.
In that case, no revolutionary movement can succeed without employing the language of ordinary life, ditching the Ideal. Revolutionaries who think otherwise not only succeed in aligning themselves with those who still, to this day, benefit from or 'rationalise' class domination, they guarantee the further alienation from Marxist politics of those already estranged by the ideologically-motivated ruination of their lives: the majority of workers.
As Marx noted, in all epochs the ideas of the ruling-class rule --, but it helps significantly to that end if erstwhile radicals internalise the elitist thought-forms encapsulated in DM, parrot it back at workers, and attempt to substitute it into their heads. Indeed, those who have adopted this tactic have merely helped disseminate and consolidate alien-class hegemony over 'radical' thought.
Clearly, this makes the defence of ordinary language a class issue.
And yet, up to now, the non-dialectical penny seems not to have dropped, since dialectal Marxists appear not to have noticed that workers en masse have ignored their class-compromised 'theory' for well over one hundred years. [That particular claim is substantiated in Essay Nine Part One.]
Alienated Thought and Fetishised Language
Vernacular speech was originally invented by ordinary human beings who interfaced with one another and with the material world (in collective labour and communal life). In contrast, the specialist languages that express various forms of ruling-class ideology (encapsulated, for example, in traditional Philosophy) contain jargon that interfaces, not with the world, but with yet more jargon.
Indeed, in such circumstances systematic jargon-juggling (aka Metaphysics) has become the philosophical norm, with traditional thought resembling what one imagines a long and detailed commentary on the nature, temperament and predilections of the Jabberwocky might look like.
[This accusation can be levelled, too, but with more justification, against much that passes for academic Marxism. Small wonder then that it has so far had no detectable impact on the class struggle (that is, other than a negative one). On this, see Essay Nine, Parts One and Two, and Noam Chomsky's comments here.]
In this way, traditional theorists systematically mistook and misread a social form (language) for the material world itself, inverting the products of social relations so that they began to mirror and then constitute, in a suitably Ideal form, reality itself, one that reflected in turn their own mode of being: a leisure-dominated life (coupled with the role of official language in legislation and the issuing of orders (on this, see above)).
As a result, these theorists developed an alienated and fetishised view of language; so, what had once been the product of the relations between human beings became inverted and distorted in an ideological form as an expression of the real relation between things, or even as those things themselves (to paraphrase Marx on commodity fetishism). Again, as Marx noted:
"The philosophers have only to dissolve their language into the ordinary language, from which it is abstracted, in order to recognise it, as the distorted language of the actual world, and to realise that neither thoughts nor language in themselves form a realm of their own, that they are only manifestations of actual life." [Marx and Engels (1970), p.118. Bold emphases added.]
This inversion has real material roots in the alienation from collective labour (and from the language that arises from such labour) that class division had forced on ruling-class hacks -- and, indeed, on contemporary Dialectical Marxists (who are, almost to a clone, petty-bourgeois and/or de-classé individuals).
For traditional thinkers, language is representational, it's primary role being (1) to convey 'god's' thoughts to humankind (or, rather, to a very select minority who then 'interpret' them for the rest of us), (2) to depict the 'inner' nature of "Being", and (3) to re-present nature's hidden "essences", thus enabling these class-ideologues 'rationalise' whatever social order happened to be present at the time. In fact, there would be no point inventing metaphysical language if it couldn't do this.
Philosophical language thus became a specialised dialect, the sole property of an educated minority, which helps account for all the obscure jargon it contained, and then for yet more jargon on top of that to 'explain' the original jargon --, and, of course, to ensure that this dialect remained the exclusive property of these elite thinkers, who alone "understood" this esoteric code.
This is indeed one of the central tenets of Hermetic thought; just as Hermes interpreted the 'Gods' to 'select' minorities, so only a suitably arcane language could interpret and/or represent 'God's thoughts' to a similarly exclusive section of humanity. In this way, the inner Linguistic Microcosm could represent the outer Ideal Macrocosm to the 'educated' few.
Hence, discourse was not seen as a social tool created by ordinary human beings in order to facilitate communal life and collective labour. No, its primary function was higher, and it more 'noble': its primary function was to represent reality and express 'thought'. But, this was only abstract 'reality' and rarefied 'thought', capable of being captured only by the 'concepts', categories and ideas of those with too much leisure time on their hands than is good for any human being.
Intellectualist metaphors connected with sight came to dominate theory; you either 'saw' the truth (by "intuition", or by divine illumination), or you were part of the problem -- or, more recently, you did not "understand" dialectics. Hence, ideas and jargon connected with specialised forms of perception (particularly a hidden, inner sort of perception, re-named "speculative thought" by Hegel -- and it is worth recalling that "speculate" comes from the Latin speculum, "to mirror", another eminently Hermetic notion) seeped into all areas of traditional epistemology as representational and cognitivist theories swept the board.
They were the only game in town.
Representationalism And The Inner Bourgeois Individual
However, if only small sections of the population were capable of representing these esoteric ideas to themselves, then that automatically excludes the majority from genuine knowledge, and thus from power. As is well-known, the ruling-class has always preferred secrecy and mystery. No less so here.
On the other hand, if language primary role is communitarian, and hence, if its main function lies in communication, mystery-mongering like this becomes impossible in the vernacular. Everything there is open to view; nothing is hidden (to paraphrase Wittgenstein, once more). [Why this is so is explained in detail In Essay Twelve Part One.]
Nevertheless, according to the metaphysical/representational view of language, human beings have first to learn to represent the world to themselves before they can communicate their ideas to anyone else. Naturally, that makes this theory anti-communal, since it is predicated on exclusivity and individualism. This is also why theories that are built around a priori theses have always appealed to philosophical traditionalists (and, as we now know, to dialecticians), since this allows them concoct such theories in the privacy of their own heads.
Representationalism, of course, became a more overt doctrine in its early modern incarnation concocted at or around the time of the last major change in class power, in the 17th and 18th centuries. This view of language and mind now dominates all forms of traditional thought (indeed, it typifies the bourgeois/individualist view of 'mind' and 'rationality', and which in its essentials has hardly advanced or changed much in the last 300 years) -- even for those theorists who pay lip service to the communicational model..
But, if representationalism were correct, accounting for communication would become problematic. How would it be possible, for example, to explain the meaning of a newly invented piece of jargon if it merely represents things in its inventor's head? Others may pretend to follow what is said (or imagine they can), but beyond that, what content would there be to such pretence? [More on this in Essay Three Part Two, and Essay Thirteen Part Three.]
Representationalism thus threatens not just the status of knowledge, it undermines socially-conditioned meaning (and this is so even for traditionalists, as we saw was the case with Lenin in Essay Twelve Part One).
The communicational model does not fall apart at all. There, meaning emerges from social interaction, not isolated and internalised mental processing. Just as labour creates value, socialisation based on collective labour creates meaning.
Of course, representationalism not only makes it impossible to account for the social nature of knowledge, it helps create the spurious 'problem' of other minds -- for it now becomes obvious that, short of a miracle, no two individuals could share the same ideas about anything, or even so much as a single "abstraction". Far worse: no one could share the same idea even about the 'same idea'.
In contrast once more, by its very nature ordinary language is communitarian;. Only during (but mostly after) socialisation is it possible for human beings to begin to form beliefs about the world, or express them in a comprehensible form (even to themselves). Hence, to state the obvious, children have to be taught language by their parents, carers and peers communicating with them, and training them. Only after they have been successfully inducted into a speech community is it possible for them to begin to represent anything to themselves, or anyone else, for that matter.
In contrast to this, abstract metaphysical language is individualistic, atomistic and representational. If language were primarily of this nature, communication would be impossible. Language, instead of being a free medium of exchange, would thus become a prison trapping thought in a solipsistic dungeon. In fact, no thoughts could be formed given this view. [Why this is so is explained in Essay Thirteen Part Three, where many of the above claims, as well as those below, are defended in depth.]
Hence, according to the traditional view (in its modern form), it is almost as if there were a surrogate inner bourgeois individual in each head. Indeed, representationalism itself suggests that we all have an 'inner spectator' in our skulls; how else could we make sense of these 'inner representations' to 'consciousness'? What is the point of using the word "represent" if there is no one to whom things are represented? If this transitive verb means what we ordinarily take it to mean (that is, if we do not misrepresent its meaning(!), and acknowledge its transitive nature), then the use of this word depends on an homunculus theory of mind.
At this point, the atomistic nature of this traditional line of thought should become plain, for the 'explanatory' core of this approach to language presents us with what looks suspiciously like an isolated individual -- beloved of bourgeois thought -- lodged in each head. This oracular, cranial 'lodger' -- who differs from the Cartesian Soul in name alone -– is far removed from the affairs of communal life. Such a speechless atom would have no need of a public language, nor would it require socialisation. Its 'discourse' (if such it may be called) could not therefore be social, but merely internal, esoteric and private.
In order for this to work, representationalism has had to anthropomorphise the human brain, installing an inner bourgeois social atom in every head.
Thus, the individual strikes back and is living in a skull near you.
However, private property in the means of mental production sits rather awkwardly with an avowedly Marxist account of language.
[As Essay Thirteen Part Three shows, far too many Marxists have uncritically appropriated this bourgeois view of the 'mind' and 'consciousness'.]
Small wonder then that ruling-class ideas have always ruled; every head contains its very own bourgeois ideologue! Or, rather, all who swallow this tale are constrained to think as if they believed this, since representationalism implies that each of us form our own ideas as separate, isolated individuals, only later to share them with others. Indeed, these days, this view seems so natural (even to Marxists) that few question it. DM-epistemology merely reinforces this misconception.
Out of this compromise was born Engels's classic 'problem' of the relation between "thinking and being" [Engels (1888), p.593], which is in fact a 'problem' only for those who accept the validity of representationalism.
In stark contrast to the traditional view of language, the vernacular is already part of the material world; hence any thoughts expressed in ordinary language need no further relating to material reality -- the vernacular is thus able to capture real life in all its complex, material forms.
[This is not to say that it can be used to access all parts of the physical universe without supplementation from scientific and mathematical vocabularies.]
Seen this way, another classic 'problem' simply dissolves.
The Ideological Heart Of The Heartless World
Nevertheless, as a result of profound changes that took place in parts of Southern Europe in the sixth century BC, Metaphysics emerged as an alienated form of ruling-class consciousness: a theory that gave heart to those who ran this heartless world, the ideology that rationalised power and inequality, and served as an intellectual source of the opiate of the oppressor.
To bring this condition to an end will require the end of the conditions that created it. The criticism of Metaphysics thus becomes one with the criticism of the ideas of those who have imposed their system on the rest of us -- and one with the criticism of the ruling ideas that have been imported into Marxism (in the form of dialectics).
To be sure, this criticism must assume material form in the class struggle, but this cannot possibly succeed if those who claim to be its most focussed cadres ape these alien thought-forms. Instead of dialectical comrades trying to reform this theoretical condition, occupying it and altering it from within -- as they have hitherto tried to do by concocting their own version of traditional thought (this being the philosophical equivalent of Reformism) --, Marxist theoreticians should aim rather to smash it.
There is thus no room in revolutionary socialism for any form of Philosophical Entryism.
This Ideal Tiger cannot be de-clawed one clause at a time.
In view of the above, the aim must now be to return Marxist Philosophy to its roots in the material language of working people (as Marx noted); that is, to the language developed by that section of humanity that interfaces with material reality every day.
This accounts for the heavy emphasis placed on the vernacular in these Essays -- and hence, too, this explains my implacable opposition to all forms of traditional Philosophy.
The language used by traditional thinkers (like Hegel) actually insulates the mind from material reality (since it is not based on a material interaction with it -- either in communal life or in collective labour), just as it insulates the minds of comrades who to this day still think Marxism is a ringing success.
That's how good a job it has done on them!
As the historical record shows, Hegel's impenetrable jargon was cobbled-together from terminology and ideas supplied to him by mystics and theorists working within this ancient metaphysical tradition -- but plainly not from those who interacted with the physical world in communal labour. [On this, see Essay Fourteen Part One (summary here).]
Traditional theorists interface with material reality only in their spare time (and seldom in communal labour); most of the time they enjoy the communion of books, ideas and concepts. Small wonder then that such thinkers had to develop a specialised vocabulary --, one that is suffused with words that have no material roots --, in order to give expression to their own particular alienated form of life.
Over the last 2500 years, such theorists have developed and elaborated upon this Ideal view of reality, one that is based on a systematic attempt to derive "necessary truths" from the alleged meaning of a few words (such as, "Being", "mediation", "cause", "contradiction", "substance", "reality", "infinite", etc., etc.). This approach to theory underlies all forms of ruling-class thought, in every Mode of Production, albeit achieving a different form of expression in each.
This being so, there can be no philosophical theory that is not Ideal -- here, at least, Hegel was right:
"Every philosophy is essentially an idealism or at least has idealism for its principle, and the question then is only how far this principle is carried out." [Hegel (1999), pp.154-55; §316.]
And there can be none that is free from ruling-class concepts and priorities. At this site, these sweeping claims are not left as bald assertions, they are thoroughly substantiated in the Essays I have already published.
Hermetic 'Genius' Derives Everything From A Participle Of The Verb "To Be"
One particular 'argument' is of special interest here; it is found in several places in Hegel's work, and it attempts to connect "Being" with "Nothing" and then with "Becoming", by 'deriving' all three from the verb "to be".
Amazingly, this 'argument' was praised by Lenin and Trotsky [Lenin (1961), p.110; Trotsky (1986), p.103; echoed in Rees (1998), pp.49-50], even though this prize piece of Jabberwocky Lore sits right at the heart of the Ideal monster. Rees summarises thus 'argument' in the following way:
T1: "The 'Science of Logic' begins with the most abstract of all human ideas, Being. This is the bare notion of existence shorn of any color (sic), size, shape, taste or smell. This first concept is also, in its way, a totality. Although Being reveals no characteristics or distinguishing marks, it does, nevertheless, include everything. After all, everything must exist before it can take on any particular characteristics. Being is therefore a quality that is shared by everything that exists; it is the most common of all human ideas. Every time we say, 'This is --,' even before we say what it is, we acknowledge the idea of pure Being…. But Being also contains its opposite, Nothing. The reason is that Being has no qualities and no features that define it. If we try to think about pure Being…we are forced to the opposite conclusion, Being equals Nothing.
"But even Nothing is more than it seems. If we are asked to define Nothing, we are forced to admit that it has at least one property -– the lack or absence of any qualities…. This presents us with a strange dilemma: being is Nothing and yet Nothing is something. Hegel, however, is not so stupid as to think that there is no difference between being and Nothing, even though this is what our logical enquiry seems to suggest. All that this contradiction means is that we must search for a new term that…can explain how Being and Nothing can be both equal and separate (or an 'identity of opposites'…). Hegel's solution is the concept of Becoming." [Rees (1998), pp.49-50.]
Because of its centrality, this 'argument' is systematically taken apart line by line in Essay Twelve Part Five, and shown to fail even in its own terms.
There is no way that these concepts ("Being", "Nothing" and "Becoming") could have been derived from "careful empirical work", nor can they be "tested in practice" -- let alone abstracted from anything that is recognisably material.
In the end, the fact that erstwhile materialists (like Lenin and Trotsky) praised this prime example of linguistic mystification is not the least bit puzzling -- once their own ideas are viewed against the class-compromised background of traditional thought.
This is how Trotsky characterised this 'argument':
"The identity of Being (Sein) and Nothingness (Nichts), like the contradictoriness of the concept of the Beginning, in which Nichts and Sein are united, seems at first glance a subtle and fruitless play of ideas. In fact, this 'game' brilliantly exposes the failure of static thinking, which at first splits the world into motionless elements, and then seeks truth by way of a limitless expansion [of the process]." [Trotsky (1986), p.103.]
Whereas Lenin thought it was:
"Shrewd and clever! Hegel analyses concepts that usually appear dead and shows that there is movement in them." [Lenin (1961), p.110.]
Of course, none of this is at all surprising given what has gone before.
However, at no point do Rees and other DM-fans repudiate this style of reasoning, only some of its 'Ideal' implications -- which, coupled with the praise Lenin and Trotsky heaped on this 'argument', indicates for that dialecticians the rejection of Hegelian AIDS is purely formal. By no stretch of the imagination have any of the above conclusions been drawn from an "analysis of real material forces", or anything even remotely like one. The fact that leading DM-classicists could claim to learn anything about the nature of "static thinking" from such woefully defective logic reveals how superficial their frequent and vociferous rejection of AIDS really was. The 'logic' of this passage is entirely bogus and thoroughly Idealist, as George Novack noted:
"A consistent materialism cannot proceed from principles which are validated by appeal to abstract reason, intuition, self-evidence or some other subjective or purely theoretical source. Idealisms may do this. But the materialist philosophy has to be based upon evidence taken from objective material sources and verified by demonstration in practice...." [Novack (1965), p.17. Bold emphasis added.]
The concepts it employs are the result of grossly exaggerated abstractions, tortured 'logic' and terminally dubious assertions.
[AIDS = Absolute Idealism; LIE = Linguistic Idealism.]
In fact, this Hegelian 'derivation' has set a new gold standard for all forms of LIE, for from it everything in existence -- every object, thought and process -- can be 'derived' miraculously from the verb "to be"!
Indeed, to misquote Berkeley here: "to be" is to be blamed.
In order to uncover its well-concealed truths, this innocuous verb has to be transformed into the noun "Being" -– which, now re-born, supposedly names 'everything that exists'. This grandiose 'concept', stripped of all its 'properties', suddenly becomes 'identical' with "Nothing", which in turn immediately and magically produces "Becoming". The entire Trinity from a diminutive "is"; seldom can so much be owed by so few to so little.
First of all, Rees claims that: "The most abstract of all human ideas [is] Being...", but he forgot to say how anyone could possibly know this for sure. Does anyone this side of the Kuiper Belt own an 'abstractometer' calibrated accurately enough to measure the exact level of abstractness possessed by any given word or concept? Does "Being" itself come supplied with its own metaphysical quality assured certificate, which declares the extent to which it has been removed from the material world? Is there a cosmic version of the Guinness Book of Records that catalogues this and other rival champion concepts? If so, Rees was remarkably quiet about it.
Far worse, Rees omitted the carefully collected, materially-based evidence (in the shape of a survey, perhaps, of novice and experienced abstractors alike) that supports this brave conclusion about what human beings can or can't do with their brains and/or concepts.
To be sure, Rees's claim was predicated on the exercise of thought, not on evidence. The idea seems to be that if anyone were to think about things long enough -- forcing the verb "to be" through enough hoops -- they would arrive at a similar result. But, what if they don't? What if someone discovered an even more abstract idea than this one, perhaps as a result of more prolonged and intense meditation? How could Rees rule this out?
Fortunately, we need not wait for the results of experiments nor of surveys designed to test that brave supposition, since this trick has already been pulled off by several Philosophers! According to them, there is something even more abstract idea than "Being"; their undefeated world champion, Mega-Abstraction is Meinong's "Subsistence". This remarkable word/concept, so we are told, nets not only things that actually exist, but also things that do not -- as well as things that cannot -- exist.
Luckily, no concrete evidence is required to substantiate this major advance in human knowledge; in fact all that any future contender for the title of "Champion Abstractor" need do to capture this prize is summon up a greater determination to invent jargon, or fiddle with diminutive verbs, than ever Hegel or Meinong managed to muster.
Of course, Meinong's 'discovery' means that, with respect to Discursive Magic, Hegel was decidedly second rate.
Well, what proof are we offered in support of such easily obtained, eternally-true, bold conclusions? How much carefully gathered experimental evidence is there that substantiates such momentous results? What exhaustive analyses of real material forces are we presented with? Where is the practice that verifies all this 'innovative' science?
To be sure, Rees did offer the following 'proof' (and no doubt the evidence in support will appear in the second edition of TAR):
"Everything must exist before it can take on any particular characteristics. Being is therefore a quality that is shared by everything that exists; it is the most common of all human ideas. Every time we say, "This is --," even before we say what it is, we acknowledge the idea of pure Being." [Rees (1998), pp.49-50.]
One small nagging problem, several in fact: despite these claims, the reader is offered no grounds at all for supposing that "existence" and "Being" are connected, or that they are the same -– or, that "Being" is "shared" by everything which partakes of existence -– or, even that the one so much as suggests the other. There is no argument here either to show that "Being" is a quality, or even that it can be shared. Worse still, no reason is given for believing that there is such a thing as "Being" to begin with --, whether or not it is a quality, object, property, process, state or activity.
Admittedly, there is a word in the English language (viz.: "being"), which variously functions as a participle, or as part of a compound noun (as in "human being"). But, what is this new term "Being" supposed to be? We are not told. And if we are not told, how are we supposed to agree that everything shares it? On the contrary, we are simply left to assume that "existence", "being" and "Being" are one and the same, or that they are connected in some way. Presumably this is because these words look similar, or they seem to mean the same thing, or even that they have traditionally been inter-linked by previous thinkers (with no proof that they are connected in any way).
This is not a promising start to an analysis of a concept that is supposed to be "the most common of all human ideas" -- neither is it an entirely convincing way to demonstrate Hegel's "brilliance".
Thus, the 'evidence' connecting "Being" and "existence" amounts to little more than the superficial typographical similarity between "being" and "Being". The former is a present participle (possibly), while the latter is supposed to be that "quality that is shared by everything that exists". But, how could such an unremarkable auxiliary verb come to imply so much? s we saw in Essay Three Part One, and Essay Twelve Part One, this is a direct consequence of the traditional confusion that all words are names.
However, it seems that this "quality" ("Being") arises only if something already exists, for as Rees indicates:
"Everything must exist before it can take on any particular characteristics. Being is therefore a quality that is shared by everything that exists." [Ibid.]
This clearly says that before anything can take on any "particular characteristics" -- such as the quality of "Being", one presumes -- it must already exist. So "Being" cannot be the same as "existence", since the former is acquired by 'things' that already exist -- a fact conceded by Rees's use of the word "before" --, but which bare 'things' presumably have as yet no qualities (or "characteristics"). "Being" must be a "quality" that 'things' which already exist later go on to acquire -- that is, of course, unless a "quality" here is not a "characteristic". Once again, we are left in the dark.
It could be objected that this use of "before" is logical, not temporal. In that sense, it would be a logical pre-condition for something to acquire characteristics (such as "Being") that it exists. However, Rees's wording does not support such a reading; he is clearly talking about things already existing so that they can partake of any property, or characteristic. But, even if he were making such logical claim, he would be mistaken. There are countless 'things' that do not exist that have certain qualities; several are listed in Essay Twelve Part Five (when it is published). Not only that, it would make the last sentence somewhat pointless if existence were the same as "Being":
T2: Being is therefore a quality that is shared by everything that exists.
Just as it would be pointless saying that "kittenhood" is a quality shared by every baby cat.
Perhaps we could point to the following as an effective reply to several of the above allegations:
T3: Being…is the bare notion of existence…. Being reveals no characteristics or distinguishing marks.
From this, It could be claimed that "Being" must be the same as "existence". This is because:
T4: Everything must exist before it can take on any particular characteristics.
This seems to mean that because "Being" and "existence" have no "characteristics" they must be the same. But, that is not what these sentences say. T4 just says that everything must exist before it can take on any particular characteristics. That does not rule out the possibility of something having general characteristics before it existed -- which would of course mean that non-existent things could possess such unspecified general characteristics. Perhaps they just "Subsist" with these general characteristics? Then subsequently, when they 'pop into existence', they proceed to acquire particular "characteristics", one of which is "Being". Who is to say? Rees certainly does not rule this out, and it is not easy to see how he could.
Perhaps in that case "Being" is a general characteristic that all existing things share? But, even if it were, that would not show it was the same as "existence".
However, even if Rees could rule out the possibility that "Being" is a quality/characteristic that existent things acquire late in the game, as it were, and he had worded T4 more carefully, the assumed identity (or close link) between "Being" and "existence" would still be unsustainable. Since neither of these possess any "characteristics or distinguishing marks" at all, it is impossible to see how anyone could tell (or say) whether they were the same or different. Even the lack of common characteristics and distinguishing marks does not justify their identification. This is, of course, because we need some way of specifying in what way they are identical (or are different), and, as yet we have no information about these two -- except, of course, that we can form no idea of them. Out of desperation we might try to argue that they must be the same in that they both share nothing in common, but that would be about as convincing as the old schoolboy joke that football and rugby are the same because there's an "e" in "either". Anyway, even though there is nothing to tell them apart, there is equally nothing to identify them. Word games aside, this is not entirely convincing logic.
This means that the only way "Being" and "existence" could be identified is by discovering an etymological, semantic or conceptual link between them (since there is no obvious syntactic or "ontological" connection). The word "Being", at least in English, is clearly a transmogrification of the verb "to be". [A similar segue occurs in German.] But, because "Being" is a re-write of a common word, it can have as yet no established meaning -- it loses that right upon being re-written. This means that if "Being" does have a meaning, it must be fixed by an implied convention or an explicit stipulation. In either case, the rest of us plainly have to be told what this word now means. This can be seen from the fact that Rees had to inform us of all this, which he would not have had to have done if "Being" had retained its established meaning (noted above), or if it had a settled meaning of its own. On that basis, the semantic (or, perhaps, 'ontological') discovery outlined earlier that "Being" is shared by everything that exists depends only on a convention already built into the use of that word or on one deliberately assigned to it by those who have a quick sale to make. In the latter case, these two terms ("Being" and "existence") would have no other connection beyond someone's say so. Now, with respect to the former word, its meaning does depend on the philosophical use to which it has been put -- one going back to ancient Greece, and one that is demonstrably Idealist (and arguably mystical) in origin. Worse, the use of neither word in such contexts depends on -- or results from -- material practice. Hence, it is now at little more clear that these two notions are related solely by marriage nor by birth. And, like some marriages, this one is one of convenience.
It might be objected here that the argument outlined in T1 is based on what existence really is, that is, on its true nature. Furthermore, the identification of "Being" and "existence" was not intended, nor is it suggested.
As to the first of these rejoinders: says who? How do we know that "existence" really is as T1 depicts it? The word could be a complete misnomer in such contexts. It could pick out only a tiny fraction of things. It might not denote anything at all. It could name something imaginary. It might not name anything. It might not even be a name. In fact, it might be no more of a word than, say, "BuBuBu" is.
The only obvious response that could be made to this is that T1 is based on what the word "existence" really means. But, that would just confirm the already well-founded suspicion that from the meaning of words (not from 'concepts, in self-development' --, in fact, here, they look more like they are being frog-marched in the required direction) substantive conclusions about reality have been conjured into existence. As was argued at length in Essay Twelve Part One, the sort of specialised terms used in T1 are not like ordinary words whose meanings are publicly accessible and whose import is in no doubt, whose use needs no justification. Philosophical terms possess no such bona fides. What they mean is not up to anyone to guess. They have no meaning -- let alone a "real meaning" -- until one is assigned to them. Terms of art like "Being" do not interface with material reality -- through any or sort of practical activity in the material world, nor any based on established usage --; they are thoroughly Ideal. Hence, we have to be told that "Being" is somehow related to "exist", and that the latter word is somehow defective without this add-on.
As to the second claim -- that "Being" and "existence" were not actually identified in T1 -- little can be said, except that this "brilliant" argument might perhaps fall apart even more quickly if that were the case.
[Further ruminations on this 'argument' can be found in Essay Twelve Part Five when it is published.]
Dialectical 'Logic' derives from Hegel's
(possibly deliberate) misunderstanding
of Aristotle,
and from a linguistic dodge invented in the Middle Ages.
First of all,
Hegel thought that certain sentences contained an in-built contradiction.
If we use Lenin's example:
J1: John is a man.
we can see where this idea came from, and thus where it goes astray. [Hegel in
fact used the sentence, "The rose is red".]
First of all, Hegel accepted a theory invented by
Medieval Roman Catholic theologians (which is now called the
Identity Theory of Predication),
which re-interprets
propositions like J1 in the following way:
J2: John is identical with Manhood.
The former "is" of
predication
was replaced by an "is" of identity.
The argument then went as follows: since John cannot be identical with a general term
(or, rather, with what it represents, a
universal), we must conclude the
following:
J3: John is not identical with Manhood.
But then again, if John is a man, he must be identical with (or at least he must share
in) what other men
are, so we must now conclude:
J4: John is not not identical with Manhood.
Or, more simply:
J5: John is not a non-man.
It's hard to believe, but out of this was born the
Negation of the Negation.
Hegel thought this showed that motion was built into our concepts, as
thought passes from one pole to another, and that this indicated that thought has dialectics built into it.
It also allowed him to cast doubt upon the validity of the 'Law of Identity' [LOI] -- a
'Law', incidentally, that cannot be found in Aristotle's work, but which was invented by Medieval Roman
Catholic theologians, once more.
Hegel thought this showed that it was now possible to state this 'Law'
negatively.
However, in order to proceed, Hegel not only employed a barrage of impenetrably obscure
jargon, he relied on some hopelessly sloppy
syntax. He plainly thought he could ignore the logical/grammatical
distinctions that exist between the various terms he used, or, at least, between the roles
they occupied in language -- i.e., between naming, saying, describing and
predicating (i.e., saying something about something or someone). This 'enabled'
him to pull-off several neat verbal tricks --, and from
the ensuing
confusion 'the dialectic' emerged.
For instance, Hegel thought that the LOI could be stated negatively, and that this implied the so-called Law of Non-contradiction [LOC].
"When the principles of Essence are taken as essential principles of thought they become predicates of a presupposed subject, which, because they are essential, is 'everything'. The propositions thus arising have been stated as universal Laws of Thought. Thus the first of them, the maxim of Identity, reads: Everything is identical with itself, A = A: and negatively, A cannot at the same time be A and Not-A. This maxim, instead of being a true law of thought, is nothing but the law of abstract understanding. The propositional form itself contradicts it: for a proposition always promises a distinction between subject and predicate; while the present one does not fulfil what its form requires. But the Law is particularly set aside by the following so-called Laws of Thought, which make laws out of its opposite. It is asserted that the maxim of Identity, though it cannot be proved, regulates the procedure of every consciousness, and that experience shows it to be accepted as soon as its terms are apprehended. To this alleged experience of the logic books may be opposed the universal experience that no mind thinks or forms conceptions or speaks in accordance with this law, and that no existence of any kind whatever conforms to it." [Hegel, Shorter Logic, quoted from here.]
So, from A =A he thought he could obtain "A cannot at the same time be A and not-A", which is supposed to be the LOC. But, the LOI concerns the conditions under which an object is identical with itself, or with something else; it's not about the alleged identity of propositions, nor of clauses with propositions.
[Indeed, if a proposition had no identity, it wouldn't be a proposition to begin with. That is, if it were unclear what was being proposed, then plainly nothing could yet have been proposed, and so nothing could follow from it.]
In that case, the alleged negative version of the LOI cannot have anything to do with the connection between a proposition and its contradictory. The LOC, on the other hand, is about propositions (or clauses), not objects. Only by confusing objects (or the names of objects) with propositions (and clauses) -- that is, by confusing objects and their names with what we say about them, truly or falsely -- was Hegel able to concoct the 'dialectic'.
[The full details here are rather complex, so I have
omitted them from this Summary. However, readers can find out what these are
here,
here,
here and
here.]
Furthermore, propositions are not objects; if they were they could not be used
to say anything. Sure, we use signs to express propositions, but these signs become symbols (i.e., they signify things for
us, and convey meaning). We achieve this by the way we employ such signs according to the grammatical
complexity our ancestors built into language.
To see this, just look at any
object or collection of objects and ask yourself what it/they say to you. You
might be tempted to reply that it/they say this or that, but in order to report
what it/they allegedly say, you will be forced to articulate whatever that is in a
proposition. You could not do this by merely reproducing the original objects,
or just by naming them.
This is not surprising, since objects have no social history, intellect or
language, whereas we do, and have.
Unfortunately, Engels and Lenin swallowed this spurious Hegelian line of reasoning; and that
is because they both knew no logic -- but they did have a wildly inflated
view of Hegel and his expertise in this area.
[This is not to pick on these two great revolutionaries; many others, who should have known better, have similarly been duped.]
However, because of this misplaced respect for Hegel, Marxists have been saddled with his loopy logic ever since.
Here is Lenin, for example:
"To begin with what is the simplest, most ordinary, common, etc., [sic]
with any proposition...: [like] John is a man…. Here we already have dialectics
(as Hegel's genius recognized): the individual is the universal…. Consequently,
the opposites (the individual is opposed to the universal) are identical: the
individual exists only in the connection that leads to the universal. The
universal exists only in the individual and through the individual. Every
individual is (in one way or another) a universal. Every universal is (a
fragment, or an aspect, or the essence of) an individual. Every universal only
approximately embraces all the individual objects. Every individual enters
incompletely into the universal, etc., etc. Every individual is connected by
thousands of transitions with other kinds of individuals (things, phenomena,
processes), etc. Here already we have the elements, the germs of the concept of
necessity, of objective connection in nature, etc. Here already we have the
contingent and the necessary, the phenomenon and the essence; for when we say
John is a man…we disregard a number of attributes as contingent; we separate the
essence from the appearance, and counterpose the one to the other….
"Thus in any proposition we can (and must) disclose as a "nucleus" ("cell") the
germs of all the elements of dialectics, and thereby show that dialectics is a
property of all human knowledge in general." [Lenin
(1961), i.e., Philosophical Notebooks, pp.359-60.]
In this passage, Lenin felt he could 'derive' fundamental truths about reality, not from a scientific investigation of the world, but from examining a few words seen through Hegel's distorting lens!
[And yet, dialecticians still tell us with a straight face that their theory has not been imposed on nature!]
However, J1 is a descriptive
sentence, so it cannot be treated in the way Hegel imagined. In fact, Aristotle
would have approached it differently. In order to explain its structure, he
would have said, for example:
A1: Manhood applies to John.
[J1: John is a man.]
In other words, J1 describes John; it is not expressing an
identity.
Indeed, it makes no sense to suppose with Hegel that John could be identical with a general term
(any more than it would make sense to suppose you, for example, are identical
with a conjunction, a preposition or an adverb) --, or even with what any of these allegedly represent.
In which case, this example of Medieval Roman Catholic 'logic' is not simply misguided, it's bizarre!
It surely takes a special sort of 'genius' (which we are assured by Lenin that Hegel possessed) to suppose that an object like John could be identical with a predicate, or with the abstraction which it supposedly designated!
Now, if we return to the original sentence, translated this time into Hegel-speak, we can see where the argument goes further astray:
J2: John is identical with Manhood.
It is now impossible to explain what the extra "is" here means (highlighted in green), which has to be used to make the alleged identity between John and Manhood (or whatever) plain.
In fact, if all such uses of "is" expressed disguised identities (as we are assured they must), J2 would now have to become:
J2a: John is identical with identical with Manhood.
as the green "is" is replaced with what it is supposed to mean, i.e., "is identical with" --, in turquoise. After another such dialectical switch, J2a would in turn become:
J2b: John is identical with identical with identical with Manhood.
as this new "is" we would have to use in J2a is given a similar dialectical make-over. And so on:
J2b: John is identical with identical with identical with identical with Manhood.
[These untoward moves can only be halted by those who do not think "is" always expresses an identity; but dialecticians gave up the right to lodge that particular appeal the moment they accepted the Identity Theory of Predication.]
Fortunately, Aristotle's approach short-circuits all this; there is no "is" at all in A1:
A1: Manhood applies to John.
In contrast to this, Hegel's 'analysis' cannot avoid this verbal explosion; indeed, it positively invites it.
Anyone who thinks this is nit-picking need only reflect on the fact that Hegel, or anyone who agrees with him, cannot explain his theory without using J2:
J2: John is identical with Manhood.
But, Hegel's theory stalls at this point, for this extra "is" cannot be one of identity (for the above reasons), and if it isn't, then the theory that tells us that "is" is always one of identity (in such circumstances) must be incorrect.
In fact, this Hegelian trick can only be carried out in Indo-European languages. By-and-large, other language groups do not have this particular grammatical feature. The above moves depend solely on the subject-predicate form taking the copula "is" (and its cognates), which is found almost exclusively in the aforementioned language group.
This shows that Hegel's logic is not just bizarre, it's parochial. Hence, no general conclusions can follow from it (or any at all).
To illustrate more clearly these bogus moves, consider, for example, J1
again:
J1: John is a man.
Given traditional grammar, this is in effect:
G1: S is P.
[Where, "S" = "Subject", "P" = "Predicate".]
Now, we already have the facility in language to express identity (and
uncontroversially so). For example:
G2: Cicero is Tully.
["Tully" was Cicero's other name.
Cicero was a right-wing git who lived in
Ancient Rome, about the same time as Julius Caesar.]
So, G2 quite legitimately means:
G2a: Cicero is identical with Tully.
Or:
G3: A = B.
[Where "A" is "Cicero and "B" is "Tully"; using "="
as the identity sign, here.]
G3 expresses an unambiguous "is" of identity. No problem with that!
But, it is important to note that the identity here is that which exists between two names, or
between two named individuals (depending on how it is read); that is, between
singular terms or whatever they designate. This is typical of the use of
the "is" of identity.
Now, just look at the similarity between the following two forms -- especially between G1 (a predication) and G2 (an identity):
J1: John is a man.
G1: S is P.
G2: Cicero is Tully.
G3: A = B.
Highly influential ancient and medieval logicians noticed this, too, and combined the two distinct forms into one, reading the "is" of predication always as an "is" of identity.
But this now turns the predicate "P" into a name (or singular term), for identities are expressed between names (or, again, between singular terms). Unfortunately, if "P" is a name, it cannot now be a predicate.
Hegel also adopted this odd approach to such propositions, confusing the "is" of identity with the "is" of predication. This then 'allowed' him to claim that propositions like J1 were in fact identity statements. Of course, that means this part of Hegel's 'logic' was based solely on what is in effect a grammatical stipulation (i.e., a dogmatic assertion that these two forms are one, which then creates the sorts of problems we have seen above) --, and, this is a stipulation that destroys the capacity language has for expressing generality, since that is what predicates do (they allow us to say general things of named individuals, etc.), and on this view, they disappear!
Given the 'Hegel treatment', J1 thus becomes J1a and/or J1b:
J1: John is a man.
J1a: John = man/Manhood.
J1b: John is identical with man/Manhood.
[Unfortunately, however, in his dotage Aristotle was already moving in this direction -- i.e., he too was beginning to confuse predication with identity, or, rather, he was beginning to confuse predicates with names, and describing with naming.]
Hence, on this view, just as "Tully" names Cicero, "man" 'names' Manhood --, or perhaps, the class/set of all men. The rationale underlying these moves had already been established by earlier mystics and theorists, who were, among other things, concerned to express the union or identity between the human soul and 'God'/'Being'. Hence they played around with the Greek verb "to be" (and thus the "is" of predication) until it was made to say what they wanted it to say.
Of course, this grammatical sleight-of-hand helps account for the emphasis placed by subsequent Idealists on the 'identity' of 'Thought' and 'Being', which later became the main problematic of German Idealism --, a problematic Engels also accepted.
[On that, see his Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy.]
There is in fact no other reason for adopting the Identity Theory of Predication, which also helps explain why it was theologians and mystics who invented it. Of course, none of this occurred in an ideological vacuum; a brief outline of the relevant details can be found here.
Anyway, logicians after Aristotle, and especially those working in the Middle Ages, began to conflate these two distinct forms as a matter of course. This fed into, and was fed in return by, an increasingly elaborate and complex set of metaphysical theories that supposedly reflect the ultimate structure of reality, and the relation of 'Thought' to 'Being' --, all based solely on this ancient linguistic dodge!
[For example, somewhat similar moves underpinned Anselm's infamous
Ontological Argument
for the existence of 'God'. In this case, too, Anselm thought he could 'derive'
profound 'truths' about 'divine reality', valid for all of space and time --
and beyond -- solely from language/thought.]
So, in the end, J1/G1 and G2-type sentences were both modelled along the lines
expressed in G4 and G5 -- i.e., as identity statements.
J1: John is a man.
G1: S is P.
G2: Cicero is Tully.
G4: A = B.
G5: John = Manhood.
But, once more, this treats predicates as if they were a Proper Names -- i.e., "...is a man"
here becomes
the proper name of Manhood, which it plainly is not. Naming is
not the same as describing. At or soon after birth, we name our children, we do not describe
them (with a singular term). We describe the world around us, we do not name it. A
collection of names is a list; lists say nothing --, just as objects say nothing.
Of course, it could be objected that there are languages in which names do describe. For example, Native Americans use names such as "Sitting Bull", "Crazy Horse", or "Rain In The Face", which describe what the individual concerned either did or was reminiscent of.
Even so, no Native American would argue as follows:
N1: Sitting Bull has just stood up.
N2; Therefore Sitting Bull is no longer Sitting Bull, but is Standing Bull.
But they would argue as follows:
N3: That animal over there is a sitting bull.
N4: It has just stood up, so it is now a standing bull.
These show that the logical use of names is distinct from that of descriptions. Any contingent psychological or idiosyncratic associations a name has are logically irrelevant, no matter how important they are to a given culture.
Hence the name "Sitting Bull" here is a logical unit, and cannot be split up like a description can. This is because, as Aristotle noted (De Interpretatione, Section 3), names are tenseless, but predicates are not. The above examples bring this out, since change applies to predicates, not to names.
[These and other complications are discussed at length in Geach (1968), pp.22-80. See also here.]
So, for Hegel,
"...is a man" became the Proper Name of Manhood, which was then dignified by
being called an "abstraction",
or even worse, an "essence" -- both of which entities were conjured into existence
by this linguistic dodge, and nothing more.
In this way then, dialectics follows solely from ancient and defective
logic compounded by a crass misconstrual of a sub-branch of Indo-European
grammar!
Hard to believe? Well, Marx himself indicated that this was so, as we have already seen:
"The philosophers have only to dissolve their language into the ordinary language, from which it is abstracted, in order to recognise it, as the distorted language of the actual world, and to realise that neither thoughts nor language in themselves form a realm of their own, that they are only manifestations of actual life." [Marx and Engels: The German Ideology, p.118. Bold emphases added.]
Now, even if the above analysis were incorrect in some way, neither
Aristotle nor Hegel (nor anyone else for that matter since) has been able to explain how or why contingent features of Indo-European grammar
could possibly have such profound implications built into them --, or how
they could reveal to us such fundamental truths about
the deep
structure of reality, valid for all of space and time.
I call this approach to knowledge Linguistic Idealism.
More on that above.
Philosophical Language -- Not Of Merchantable Quality
The claim that ordinary language cannot cope with change is also subjected to detailed scrutiny and then refutation. In fact, and on the contrary, it is Hegelian jargon that cannot account for the dynamism we find in material and social reality -- it spectacularly fails to do what had been advertised for it all along. If there were a Sale of Philosophical Goods Act, Hegelian jargon would be Exhibit A for the prosecution.
Ordinary language contains countless words that express every conceivable sort of change, to whatever level of detail is required; practically every verb and adverb stand as clear testimony to that fact. [A long list of such words is given in Essay Four.]
In contrast, Hegelian jargon is wooden, opaque and lifeless, having had its spirit removed without anaesthetic during abstraction.
Unfortunately, DM-theorists have been more intent on repeating the ill-considered criticisms of the vernacular found throughout traditional philosophy. Indeed, their reliance on the opinions of a card-carrying mystic and purveyor of ruling-class forms-of-thought (i.e., Hegel), as justification for their denigration of ordinary material language, thus implicates them in a metaphysical tradition which includes among its ranks some of the very worst apologists of class rule.
In the event, I explain why DM suffers from all the failings of any metaphysic based on a ruling-class view of reality. The latter is in fact a family of views whose denizens contain several things in common; as already noted, chief among these is the belief that reality is 'rational', controlled by a 'Mind' (of some sort), or by mind-like 'laws', or it is 'governed' by mysterious forces that only the initiated are capable of understanding. For its successful depiction, this approach requires a specialised and impenetrable vocabulary, whose terms work rather like the words of the old Latin Mass: they are intended to mystify, and thus help guarantee exclusivity for the elite (but, in this case, exclusivity for the Dialectical Magi who lead our movement).
[LIE = Linguistic Idealism.]
This esoteric language allegedly enables those engaging in 'conceptual analysis' (or, more accurately, the systematic production of empty jargon) to un-mask the hidden "essences" that lie 'behind' appearances, way beyond the reach of the "common herd". Naturally, the superscientific theses that traditional thought managed to weave together are incapable of being confirmed by mere mortals --, which fortunately renders them safe from refutation, and thus beyond democratic control.
Although others have argued along apparently similar lines (pointing out the implications of the traditional idea that reality is 'rational', etc.), the emphasis placed in these Essays is somewhat different. Here both the assertion that reality is rational and its denial are criticised, since they are both metaphysical theses based on Ideal forms-of-thought.
The upshot of this approach is that the last 2500 years of traditional thought (i.e., Metaphysics, and this includes the mystical variety Hegel inflicted on humanity) is little more that ruling-class hot air.
These Essays supply the reader therefore with a rather large material pin.
Wittgenstein's method is enlisted to assist in the removal of this Hermetic poison (DM) from HM. His approach, despite what many of Wittgenstein's epigones claim for it, is neither relativist nor anti-realist. This is because Realism, Relativism, and anti-Realism are all metaphysical theories, and hence are equally non-sensical (i.e., none of them are based on non-materially-grounded language). [This will from part of the main subject of Essay Thirteen Part Two, when it is published sometime in 2010.]
The tactic adopted here thus seeks to destroy Metaphysics in order to make scientific knowledge possible (to paraphrase Kant). In Marxist terms, I do not aim to reform traditional Philosophy from within, but assist in its termination.
This therefore brings to a close the work Feuerbach initiated, for now it is possible to see all forms of alienated human thought for what they really are: the product of a fetishised view of class society -- one based on the assumed powerlessness of working people (all the more to keep them that way).
If the challenge posed here is correct, revolutionaries are forced to adopt other criteria of truth. To that end, a particularly successful criterion (consonant with HM) is suggested -- one that classifies rival theories as defective because they all collapse into non-sense at some point. This is because they all depend on language that has not been derived from material interaction with the world, nor on communal life, but on jargon borrowed from fetishised forms of discourse which reflect ruling-class experience, priorities and interests.
It is also shown in detail how and why attempts to undermine ordinary language will always backfire on its would-be critics (as, for example, we saw happen in relation to Lenin's attempt to declare motion without matter "unthinkable").
Furthermore, ordinary language is to be distinguished from "commonsense" (a distinction most theorists deliberately ignore, fail to notice or misunderstand).
Ordinary language cannot be the same as "commonsense" because every claim expressed in the latter can easily be contradicted in the former. [That argument is expanded upon here.]
Finally, it is also argued that the emphasis placed on ordinary language by certain Analytic Philosophers (up until a few generations ago, at least) was not unconnected with the rise of the working class as a political force in history. The latter-day demise of this tradition in Analytic Philosophy (and the resurgence of Metaphysics, and particularly Hegelianism) is also linked to the change in the balance of class forces that has taken place over the last thirty years or so, leading once again to the ascendancy of Idealism.
In fact, the modern home of 'monetarist' economic theory (the USA) was also the source of the most determined attacks on Ordinary Language Philosophy (OLP). Over the same period, we have witnessed a resurgence of a plethora of right-wing ideas in science (for example, the rise of Sociobiology in the 1970s, which later transmogrified into 'Evolutionary Psychology' in the 1990s). No coincidences these.
This is not to suggest that those working in OLP were revolutionaries, or even that they saw things this way. It is to assert however that their emphasis on ordinary language had material roots, and that did not just emerge out of thin air. In fact, many of these thinkers were socialists of one sort or another. For example, the vast majority of Wittgenstein's friends were Communists or were sympathetic to Trotskyism. Wittgenstein himself wanted to move to the USSR in the mid-1930s, and was offered the professorship at Kazan University (Lenin's old College), which tenure the Stalinists of the day would hardly offer to a non-red.
This, of course, makes the work of the most important philosopher working in OLP (i.e., Wittgenstein) crucially important for the defence of working-class politics. [Although it is not maintained here that he saw things this way, either!]
The working class in previous centuries was far too small and weak to provide a materialist counter-weight to the Idealism found in all forms of ruling-class thought. This is no longer the case.
In fact, the larger the working-class has become, the less impact Dialectical Marxism has had on it.
And we can now see why.
These Essays perhaps represent the first attempt in the modern age to reshape working-class thought de novo, and thus Marxist Theory in toto.
In which case, the Owl of Minerva can get stuffed.
[For those who do not know what the dialectics that is about, Hegel wrote in the Preface to his Philosophy of Right: "The owl of Minerva flies only at dusk" ([Hegel (2005), p.xxi] -- my paraphrase), meaning that philosophical wisdom will only appear at the end of certain periods in history; more details here, here and here.
The last link contains the full quotation.
The Owl of Minerva is also the official journal of the Hegel Society of America, and Minerva was the name of the Masonic journal (which preached radical French Jacobin ideas) that Hegel read in Berne in 1794 -- according to a letter he wrote to Schelling, on 24/12/1794. There is no evidence that Hegel became a Mason, but he was employed at that time by a prominent Mason, Jean Gogel, to tutor his children -- and many of his friends were Masons, as were those who influenced him. It is worth noting that Masonic lodges, especially those in Germany, were heavily steeped in Hermetic Philosophy. More on this in Essay Fourteen (summary here).]
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