Telos: The aim of theory or philosophy should be freedom.
Problem: Echoing and paraphrasing Purloinedcoin’s excellent question, how can one aim at freedom if one doesn’t know what freedom is?
October 11, 2007
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October 11, 2007
Telos: The aim of theory or philosophy should be freedom.
Problem: Echoing and paraphrasing Purloinedcoin’s excellent question, how can one aim at freedom if one doesn’t know what freedom is?
October 12, 2007 at 8:29 pm
I suggest an aim of philosophy should be to love freedom. This casts the problem in a different light. We might say that we know the people we love, but we might not want to say that our love is based upon or has its origin in knowledge. The love of freedom that begins in wonder could be the equivalent of an understanding, or it could not. Possibly it exhausts understanding. Just a thought.
October 12, 2007 at 9:22 pm
I think this somewhat misses the issue that I’m getting at. Suppose, like Plato’s prisoners, we are slaves yet we are not at all aware of our slavery. If this is the case, our pursuit of freedom could, in fact, be a pursuit of slavery… Or rather, it will reinforce the chains that enslave us. The question then is how do we uncover that slavery when that slavery is so thoroughly hidden from us? I’m being intentionally vague as to what such a slavery might be– it could be ignorance, fear, superstition, ideology, passivity, political slavery of direct or systematic sorts, etc. In each case, this slavery would be invisible much like the glasses on my face, as it would be so proximal that it couldn’t be seen. Indeed, much of what we call freedom would itself be slavery under such a view. The question makes more sense in light of Purloindcoin’s remarks.
I do not myself think that philosophy begins in wonder or is a matter of curiosity. Only a very comfortable aristocratic thinker such as Aristotle could say such an obnoxious thing. Rather, philosophy seems to appear at very specific moments in history (I don’t think it exists at all historical moments), when tremendous changes are taking place. With Marx, I would argue that the aim of philosophy is to change the world (or even oneself, though I don’t find personalist philosophies very attractive), not contemplate it. I think the history of philosophy– in those moments where it has managed to exist –bears this out.
October 12, 2007 at 10:57 pm
Dear Levi, – are you saying that philosophying (as in your (fascinating) blog) is akin to “pleasure” versus “desire production” in the Deleuzian sense?
In other words: Philosophy is only worthy of its name when it is revolutionary, action-oriented, and vitalistic. The rest is just the idle ruminations of sherry-drinking gentlemen in green velvet armchairs.
As you write,
Rather, philosophy seems to appear at very specific moments in history (I don’t think it exists at all historical moments), when tremendous changes are taking place.
- are you then implying that philosophy is always political?
October 12, 2007 at 11:12 pm
I forgot to mention that I’m writing this from Berlin, Germany, where philosophy has indeed been political.
There is an interesting German semantic twist to this:
“denken” and “danken” Thinking and thanking.
October 13, 2007 at 12:22 am
Yes, I believe that philosophy is always political… This is not the same as claiming that all philosophy is political philosophy.
I’m not sure where you would get this impression. Being action oriented can often be a way not to produce any change. Sometimes a transformation can take place through something as simple as the formulation of a concept like “cause” or “atom”. I do, however, think there is another orientation of philosophy that is geared towards the defense and naturalization of established, state institutions. Aristotle is certainly such a thinker in his metaphysics and ethics. I often sense that many phenomenological thinkers are of this variety, though I would except Sartre and Merleau-Ponty. In part this simply has to do with the tendency of phenomenology to valorize recognition, urdoxa, as the model of everything else. Thus, while there might be nothing overtly political in Heidegger’s Being and Time or Husserl’s Ideas, it is the form of this thought that is political. Similarly, there is nothing overtly political, nor any over action, in Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition or The Logic of Sense, but the form of this thought is already political.
Perhaps this issue can be seen more clearly in the case of Greek thought. To declare that the world can be explained in its own terms (without the need for myth or transcendence) is already a profoundly political move, even if one is only explaining crop cycles. If this is so, then this is because an entire political system premised on certain mythological and religious structures is immediately undercut by such a claim. I elaborate on this more fully here:
http://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2007/09/07/vernant-and-the-social-origins-of-philosophy/
At any rate, look at those points in history where philosophy occurred and was produced. Then look at what is going on during these times. It seems to me that very little had to do with sitting around and speculating. For instance, I would argue that Hume is hardly interested in an epistemological problem or a “problem of knowledge” at all, but that the entire deployment of the Treatise and Enquiry unfolds against the backdrop of the European revolutions, shifts from monarchial to democratic government, and the critique of religion necessitated for this to occur (monarchy founding itself on religious authorization). Hume’s “epistemological problem” and alleged skepticism, has profound political implications and is everywhere unfurled as a weapon against despots, demagogues, and the priests that authorized them. Was Hume a “man of action”? Nope, not so much. His action was his concepts and what he rendered thinkable.
October 13, 2007 at 1:57 am
Is Zizek’s turning around of the commonly thought problem of the reality behind illusion, and asking to interrogate the reality in illusion not valuable here? If freedom is a special kind of distance from or gap between otherwise unfree conditions, a gap in which Zizek likes to locate the subject, the problem is not so much how do we know to seek freedom if we assume unfreedom. The problem is, what’s going on when we say this is a condition of freedom or unfreedom.
To this effect, h says in the 2006 documentary, Zizek!,”How does a philosopher approach the problem of freedom? It’s not ‘Are we free – or not? Is there God – or not?’ [Philosophy] asks a simple question, which would be call a hermeneutic question. What does it mean to be free? So this is what philosophy basically does: it just asks, when we use certain notions, when we do certain acts (and so on and so on), what is the implicit horizon of understand? It doesn’t ask this stupid ideal questions ‘Is there Truth?’ No! The question is, ‘What do you mean when you say this is True?’”
To this end, it’s disingenuous to posit a telos of freedom for Philosophy, as if freedom were an object to which set our intellectual sights. If we want to say freedom is the absolute imperative function of philosophy, it can only be because it’s a matter of enacting freedom—not finding or creating it. Relating this to my initial point, freedom for philosophy can only be an issue alive in the conditions of unfreedom itself.
October 13, 2007 at 3:47 pm
Is Zizek’s turning around of the commonly thought problem of the reality behind illusion, and asking to interrogate the reality in illusion not valuable here?
What is the condition that enables Zizek to do this? That’s the question. How does this possibility get introduced into the field that’s being interrogated? What is it that makes this form of critique available in the first place. Again, Plato’s allegory of the cave illustrates this question nicely. The prisoners in the cave have no idea that they’re prisoners. You’re treating this position as if it is always there and always already available.
I’m not sure I understand your last paragraph.
October 15, 2007 at 11:40 am
Interesting discussion, as always, Sinthome.
I’m tempted to respond in (late) Husserlian terms: Isn’t ‘freedom’ a theme or horizon in and through which we establish, and re-activate the sense of our world? that is, isn’t the concept of freedom something that’s necessarily ‘hazy,’ since it is not a determinate object (in the sense of Gegenstand), but precisely that guiding ideal, that Telos, which is always being re-negotiated and transformed by our engagements with a world via the development of thinking? Isn’t it expressed in the cultural object we have produced?
And, since a Telos arises out of a given cultural formation (an objektivitaet), which is itself the product previous performances, Might the problematic of ‘Freedom,’ not mark the very problematization of intentionality itself — i.e., that what was intended and what was actualized are not identical, and hence require further effort to distill the spontaneous potentials that ‘inhere’ within the sediment of history, within the world for us?
October 15, 2007 at 12:27 pm
Not only were you tempted to respond in late Husserlian fashion, but I think you did respond in late Husserlian fashion! I think one of the traps of this question lies in conceiving freedom as an eternally abiding attribute of beings such as ourselves, rather than as a situated product of situations, as you describe here.
October 15, 2007 at 11:03 pm
I think “freedom” has often acted as a concept used to justify repression and to enforce certain extant values that are anything but “free.” Certainly, I think this is the current state of horror that the US disseminates. One might wish to interrogate the concept and practice of “freedom.” Not only does it suffer from the liabilities of an abstraction’s lack of content or the possibility under various permutations of repudiation by some determinism, but it may be irredemably an agent in the metaphysics and politics of repression. Certainly, you — Levi and Alexi — begin to suggest something else with “as a situated product of situations” but this hardly seems teleological in character. What then? The traditional elements of freedom — those that still inform the hegemonic formulation of capital, representation, and much philosophy are still mired in a tacit acceptance of — this is broad and fast — largely autonomous subjects and historically constituted material states of affairs. Do we believe any of this any more in their traditional formulations? If not, what then constitutes the conjuncture that the concept of freedom sought to cover? I am not sure, and I too would like help, but does not Nietzsche suggest that what is wanted is not freedom as in the ideal which forms a transcendental horizon subject to the distortions noted but a will to creativity with materials “at hand.” If each takes this priority, does not the new map of the political become an open line of flight figured by the complexity of multivalent inter-action where freedom is always the opportunity to “push” against the last state and not toward that ever receding future of perfected human collectivity or the adequacy of human individual judgment in the staisfaction of rational want?
October 16, 2007 at 2:51 am
Perhaps you come to know what freedom is by aiming at it?
October 20, 2007 at 5:09 am
This won’t satisfy you at all I imagine, but I’d say we use the best guess we have at the time and revise as we go. The work of history and all that…
October 22, 2007 at 5:20 am
Here’s (I hope) a more substantive reply: it seems to me that the ability to formulate the injunction “the aim of philosophy should be freedom” implies at least a rudimentary grasp of some concept of freedom. That is, to ask “are we really aiming at freedom?” implies that one has a sense of freedom already. Now, one could say “we have no idea what freedom is, therefore we must abandon the injunction that philosophy’s aim shall be freedom,” which would be a slightly different matter. Put differently, anyone capable of affirming the injunction that philosophy aim at freedom will already have some sense of the meaning of the term. Like I said, and your post implies as well, some people may not have such a sense of the term (I doubt that this is actually the case, but I don’t have argument to support that), which I think means that implied in the problem is the problem of the relationship between those who affirm and those who do not affirm the injunction. (Not that it really matters, but my argument here is mainly stolen from Andrew Bowie who I think got the argument from Schelling and perhaps from Manfred Frank on Schelling – the argument in that case wasn’t about freedom but about whether Hegel succeeded at producing a presuppositionless philosophy. It’s been a long time since I read it, but I remember Bowie’s book on Schelling as being really excellent.)
October 22, 2007 at 8:46 am
What about the multi-various philosophical schools and systems of Hinduism and Buddhism?
The philosophies of Shankara, Ramanuja, Jnaneshwar, Ramana Maharshi, the Dattatreya Tradition, the Goraknath Tradition, Kashmir Shaivism, Advaita Vedanta, etc etc.
The philosophies outlined in the Avadhuta Gita, the Ashtavakra Gita, The Tripura Rahasya and the Heart of the Ribhu Gita?
The philosophies of Gautama Sakyamuni, Nagarjuna, Hui Neng and the Zen Tradition altogether. The philosophy behind the Mahamudra practices of Naropa and that of Dzogchen and Tibetan Buddism altogether.
The profound philsophy at the root of the Jain and Zoroastrian religions?