It is not unusual for people to respond to claims I make such as the thesis that Continental thought has tended to systematically ignore naturalistic and materialist orientations with rebuttals to the effect that “thinker x is a naturalist and materialist and works in the Continental tradition!” In other words, the idea seems to be that a few counter-examples are sufficient to rebut claims about what is dominant in a population. This is a very curious thing for people to say coming from a philosophical tradition that’s been so significantly influenced by Foucault’s account of power and Althusser’s theory of ideology. Both of these thinkers, in their own ways, teach us that power and ideology function to systematically suppress other orientations of thought on behalf of dominate structures of power and ideology. It’s as if these theories are to be applied to every discipline and set of cultural practices except ones own favored terrain.
To even begin discussing these issues, I believe one has to start within an ecological framework that things in terms of populations. An ecological orientation focuses not in discrete, individual entities, but rather looks at the existence of these entities in a network of relations to other entities defined by interdependencies, feedback loops, and hierarchical relations between what is dominant and subordinate within that ecology. In other words, the fact that something exists is not, within an ecological framework, as important as how that thing is situated in a network of interdependencies to other entities and questions of how much influence that type of entity exercises.
read on!
In any ecology and population there will always be outliers and exceptions. In the world of biology, my favorite example is that of the black moth in Manchester prior to the industrial revolution. Black moths and grey moths belonged to the same species in this population, but the former were far less numerous prior to the industrial revolution due to the ecology of Manchester. Why? Because black moths stuck out like a sore thumb on trees, as well as the brick and cement walls of Manchester buildings. In this historical context, it is perfectly acceptable to say that grey moths were the dominant population in Manchester. Black moths were the exception, rather than the rule.
All of this changed with the advent of the industrial revolution. As a result of coal burning to power the steam engines that ran the factories, buildings and trees became covered in soot. Now black moths enjoyed an advantage as they blended in, while grey moths stuck out like sore thumbs. As a consequence, black moth populations increased as they tended to escape their predators long enough to reproduce, whereas grey moths were increasingly picked off. One lesson here is that no ecology is inevitable and no members of a population inevitably enjoy hierarchical privilege. Things can always change.
We can imagine a person triumphantly claiming that it is illegitimate to claim that gray moths were dominant in the population of moths in Manchester prior to the industrial revolution on the grounds that black moths also existed. This rebuttal, however, entirely misses the point that the question is not whether or not black moths exist or whether gray moths are the only type of moth that exists, but rather what is dominant in a population and what currently defines the vector along which that population is developing. Prior to the industrial revolution, that vector of development was found among the grey moths.
Like anything else, the intellectual world is an ecology. It is an ecology of ideas and texts. Within these ecology we have various species such as “Continental theorists” and “Anglo-American theorists”; and within these species we have various orientations or sub-species like black and gray moths. In the world of Continental theory, there are phenomenologists, deconstructivists, social constructivists, new materialist feminists, speculative realists, Marxists, etc., etc., etc. And within each of these sub-species there are sub-species of sub-species. For example, among the phenomenologists, you’ll have those who continue the work of Heidegger, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Michel Henry, Gilson, and so on. Like any ecology, some of these species will be dominant, enjoying privilege within that ecology, while others will barely appear at all. For example, in the intellectual ecology of the United States, Anglo-American philosophy enjoys prominence, while Continental philosophy is only dimly present. It is there certainly, but it would be absurd and willfully blind to suggest that somehow it is dominant in American academia.
These hierarchical relations are maintained through a variety of mechanisms independent of the content of these various philosophical positions. They are maintained by how departments are structured, by how hiring is done, by what dissertations faculty agree to supervise, by the classes that are taught, by how conferences are organized, by how editorial boards select papers and books to be published, by the availability of various books and journals, by how dissertation directors demand their students organize and write their dissertations, etc. Nor is there some conspiracy here. To be sure, departments make conscious decisions as to what faculty they hire, what curriculum they offer, and what graduate students they admit into their programs, but the process of education itself is a form of subjectivization that aims to reproduce a particular intellectual ecology (i.e., researchers that continue to contribute to a particular research paradigm, i.e., “species”) and there are millions of tiny decisions that no one really thinks of that function to exclude other “species” and reinforce particular ecological relations. Nor is this necessarily a bad thing as those “species” that are reproduced generally have a strong track record of producing excellent research, and many alternative “species” (outsider orientations) are those of cranks.
The situation is the same in Continental thought. To be sure, there are exceptions to the thesis that Continental thought has been dominated by anti-materialist and anti-naturalist orientations. There are thinkers such as Serres, Monad, Thom, etc. There are thinkers such as Donna Haraway who very early on showed great sympathy for naturalism and materialism. However, this does not change the fact that the intellectual ecology of Continental thought has been dominated by phenomenology, deconstruction, and social constructivisms, and that these orientations have, at both the level of intellectual content and organized institutional structures, exercised power in such a way as to render it difficult for materialist and naturalist orientations to have much of a presence. At the level of intellectual content, for example, the phenomenological rejection of the natural attitude coupled with Heidegger’s critique of “enframing”, have made discussion of natural phenomena and science rather anathema (Merleau-Ponty is a notable exception here). Similarly, deconstruction and social constructivism have led us to focus more on text than the natural and the biological world. At the institutional level, graduate programs, curricula, journals, conferences, and publishers have tended to privilege anti-naturalist and anti-materialist orientations, rendering it difficult to discuss these things at all.
None of this, however, is inevitable. Ecologies always exercise an inertia that renders alternatives difficult to form, but things can change. With the rise of the new materialist feminisms, the Deleuze and Guattari renaissance we’re witnessing, growing interest in biology, complexity theory, and chaos theory such as we see from thinkers like Massumi, Protevi, and DeLanda, and the rise of speculative realism, I think we’re already seeing significant changes. Part of this, I think, has to do with changes in the problems we face today. It’s not surprise that with the rise in information technologies, so much interest in semiotics and language arose in the latter half of the last century. Today, we face problems such as climate change that have led to greater interest in materiality and the sciences. Just as the environment of moths changed in Manchester allowing black moths to come into prominence, the environment of thought has today changed calling for new theorizations and generating new questions.
Some people took my remark that we should commit x to flames if it rejects naturalism and materialism as me suggesting that we should simply ignore and forget the entire Continental tradition. I can see how someone might think this if they take that remark at face value and ignore all the other things I’ve written, but given how much ink I’ve spilled discussing Husserl, Heidegger, Hegel, Badiou, Zizek, Lacan, Derrida, Kant, and a host of others, this strikes me as a perverse interpretation of what I said. Just as evolution always builds on prior bodily structures, we never escape the history that preceded us. My claim is not that we should reject or forget this tradition– though I do think we should focus less on commentary and figures and more on problems and questions –but that we should rework what’s worth preserving in that tradition along naturalist and materialist lines. It is untenable to follow Husserl in his rejection of the natural attitude and claim with him that “nature cannot be a condition of the cogito, because the cogito is the condition of nature” (as he claims in Ideas). This doesn’t entail that Husserl and other phenomenologists haven’t somehow taught us a great deal about cognition, the body, and affectivity. Similarly, David Roden shows us how Derrida has a great deal to contribute to our understanding of neurology and mind. While I don’t think that one can credibly endorse Hegel’s project of absolute knowledge or system tout court, that doesn’t entail that Hegel somehow doesn’t teach us a great deal about the world, ourselves, and the social world.
Every shift in an intellectual ecology requires revisions of what came before, sublations of what came before, and also abandonment of certain features of what came before. Thus, for example, we can’t (or I can’t) accept Kant in his own terms because our biological being is completely off the radar in his thought, but that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t provide us with a valuable working model of mind that can’t be reworked in suitably biological and neurological terms. The question is one of how we relate to the tradition or thought that has come before. Do we stick our heads in the sand, continuing to draw on that tradition as if modern physics, chemistry, biology, neurology, mathematics, and contemporary social transformations wrought by technology haven’t occurred and make no demands on us to rethink the being or being, or do we relate to that tradition in terms of these transformations and seek to determine how we might creatively rethink that tradition in light of these transformations?
Larval Subjects . 
October 29, 2012 at 9:10 pm
You hit the nail on the head here: “My claim is not that we should reject or forget this tradition– though I do think we should focus less on commentary and figures and more on problems and questions –but that we should rework what’s worth preserving in that tradition along naturalist and materialist lines.”
It’s true that we spend far too much time on commentary rather than working on problems and offering real solutions. And, yes, the whole point of revisionism is to eliminate or subtract the detritus of dead ideas (ie., ideas that have proven to lead to dead ends). Doesn’t mean we should become bookeepers of knowledge (i.e., this is alive in so and so, and this is dead…). No, it means that we should put the ideas, notions, concepts to work on problem solving, but that in doing this we need to make sure distinguish notions, ideas, and concepts that are of use within our present situations.
We need both commentary and problem solving, and they can both add value to ongoing projects. Obviously young philosophers write commentary while they are in process of working through the issues that concern them in an ongoing struggle to define themselves against tradtition. Yet, as one grows out of this stage one begins to concentrate on the actualy problems of the world rather than on the belabored quandaries of dead thought. What seems difficult is to know what is worth preserving and what is worth letting go of, this is where people tend to battle over nuances and cadences rather than what is actual and needful in philosophy.
October 30, 2012 at 12:10 pm
I think that part of the general disagreements with regard to whether or not the Continental tradition is ‘anti-naturalist’ or ‘anti-materialist’ may have to do with the difference between rejection and ignorance. Does Derrida, for example, *reject* naturalism/materialism or does he simply *ignore* the issues that these -isms are concerned with and focus on something else? As I understand it, Levi generally argues that Derrida rejected them but others seem to assume that he simply ignored them and, consequently, that his thought is, in principle, compatible with them in some way shape or form. Of course the problem with Derrida et al. is that they never really *rejected* much of anything. To reject something is an affirmation in reverse, after all.
Anyway, whether it’s rejection or ignorance it surely must be one of the two — and, whichever it is, this is a problem for these thinkers. In fact I think *ignorance* may even be more of a problem than rejection. If one genuinely believes that the things and forces of naturalism are fallacious bunk then I can see how language- or phenomena-centered philosophies can be justified. However, if you secretly believe in these things but nevertheless place them beyond your philosophical purview and limit yourself, your peers and your students to just a small corner of the wider natural reality then, far worse than rejection or ignorance, this constitutes *abandonment* — abdication, indeed.
I might disagree with an anti-naturalist who genuinely believes that speaking of anything beyond the socio-linguistic is absurd and nonsensical but I would respect their opinion far more than someone who readily accepts the existence of things and forces other than the human but who has given up on them, refused to speak of them and done their best to prohibit anyone else from doing so. The former might be silly but the latter is intellectually unjustifiable, politically malfeasant and morally reprehensible.
If there are ‘true believers’ in anti-naturalism or anti-materialism out there (and I have my doubts about this) then their cherished beliefs should not be so hastily ‘consigned to the fire’ as Levi put it. We must avoid the very worst historical tendencies of Naturalism towards self-righteousness and automatic entitlement in defining what is — at gunpoint if necessary. Let’s not paper over how cruelly this has worked out in the past or how necessary the philosophical reactions — even overreactions — to this history were.
However, let us also call out the phonies for what they are. If you find a place for nature, science, medicine, technology and so on in every part of your life except your philosophising then there is something seriously amiss. The real enemy is not idealism or correlationism but ontological double standards and the philosophical ignorance that they breed.
October 30, 2012 at 1:18 pm
Philip,
Given that naturalism and materialism have historically been the underdog positions, it’s difficult to see how they have been guilty of self-righteous entitlement. It’s hard to see how anything could be more self-righteous than Heidegger’s talk of enframing and the destining of being, or Derrida’s bombast about metaphysics. I also have a difficult time seeing naturalism and materialism as responsible for historical atrocities. Aren’t these more accurately laid at the feet of religion, fascisms, and totalitarianisms?
October 30, 2012 at 7:43 pm
To me, ideas like “Archetypal Astrology” as proposed by Richard Tarnas are way more marginalized than naturalism. Or you know, there are books which say “we shouldn’t take Jung seriously because of his work in alchemy and astrology.” The “mystical” Jung is the best Jung! ;)
I don’t mean to turn this into a “who is more oppressed” thing, lest we fall into “fictimization.” But, I do think that, for instance, astrology (or Tarot, Qabala etc) are taken way less seriously by academics than naturalism. Sure, there is a sort of favoritism for social constructivism and so on in Continental philosophy — but what about the favoritism already expressed for anything which distances itself from what might be considered superstition, folklore etc?
Tarnas makes a compelling case for a sort of acausal orderedness, something along the lines of Leibniz’ pre-established harmony.
I think that metaphors of causality has been favored and perhaps acausal orderedness is the true underdog! In other words, even naturalism assumes causality — just as historicism, social construvism etc do — so wouldn’t the rel break be between causality|acausality?
“The planets themselves are not “causing” anything to be happening in our lives, any more than the hands on a clock are now causing it to be 7:30 PM. Rather, the planetary positions are indicative of the cosmic state of the archetypal forces at that time. The fact that the planets constantly seem to indicate these things with such accuracy simply suggests that the cosmic order is much more profound and pervasive than our conventional beliefs have assumed. But the relationship between a specific planetary pattern and a human experience is best seen as one of meaningful correlation or correspondence, not one of simple linear causality.” (Tarnas)
October 30, 2012 at 11:20 pm
Hello, Levy!
I enjoyed reading this. And made translation, posted in my blog in russian.
http://maxkoval.livejournal.com/69998.html#cutid1
I tried link your ideas to music analysis. I suppose, thinking in terms of “ecology” is proper way to describe what Magma doing. They tend to involve a lot of orientations from contemporary music, such as free-jazz, fusion-rock, and academic practices as well. To be creative in art not mean to discover some brand new way, but to incorporate wide spectrum of tendencies. Artist shouldn’t be afraid of influences, but need to contribute with others, not in literal sence – just formally include technics of writing – but “implant” their thought in the body of his writing.
Hope, it also works with learning of language, and my owful english dont disturb you so much =)
Thanks.
October 31, 2012 at 1:13 am
Here’s an excerpt of a blog post by Jon Lindblom about DeLanda (and by extension Deleuze) which kind of summarizes what might be thought of as a naturalist, anti-anthropocentric position (though by no means a dominant one):
‘[…] what gives birth to organisms is not an essence, but rather a virtual body plan (Deleuze’s concept of the “body without organs”), which may be stretched and twisted in different directions and in this way actualize fully formed organisms. This is precisely the idea of topology, which is the most abstract form of geometry known today, in which Euclidean properties (i.e. length, area, volume, etc.) no longer are relevant, since, in topology, something may suddenly be stretched and folded in various ways – without loosing its fundamental properties (as in the famous example of the coffee cup and the doughnut, which are the same entity in topology).
‘This is Deleuze’s original way to break with both essentialism and idealism, by creating a philosophy in which not only actual material entities are considered real, but where they also are preceded by more significant virtual processes, which, even though they remain imperceptible to us, are considered just as real as fully formed entities. In other words, for Deleuze, matter not only exists independently of our minds, but also has the capacity to express itself independently of our minds (and of essences or a God). This is indeed a highly original philosophical idea, which not only has the guts to grant full existence to the material world, but also refuses to be organized exclusively around that which is human (what Nietzsche called “the human-all-to-human”, Foucault “the episteme of man” and DeLanda “the anthropocentrism of Western philosophy”). Therefore, Deleuze argues that the material world has just as much to teach us about expressivity as the best artists, musicians, poets and writers, and he and Guattari develop an extensive philosophy of non-human expressivity, which starts with the virtual processes of the plane of immanence, and proceeds through the three-dimensional expressivity of geological strata, to the one-dimensional expressivity of the genetic code and even the learnt expressivity of certain animals. This latter example is particularly interesting, since it illustrates that certain birds actually can be said to be artists just like human being […]’ (Source: http://intensivethinking.blogspot.com/2010/09/philosophy-of-manuel-delanda.html)
Does this Deleuzian way out of essentialism and idealism ‘work’? It seems to satisfy materialism, naturalism, and antihumanism/anti-anthropocentrism all at the same time. But it is certainly not naturalism of the type espoused by e.g. Kurtz who would say that spirits, deities, and ghosts are not real and that there is no “purpose” in nature. Nor would this naturalism say that there is no meaning to things. If anything, it decouples humans and meaning — thus rendering humans unnecessary for signification, and showing the world of objects as full of meaning, rather than as meaningless screens for us humans to project meaning onto as many existentialists or phenomenologists would have it. We arrive at something like Paul Auster’s concept of “the language of inanimate objects,” which is how he describes cinema. Or Zizek’s idea of ideology not as what “we” believe but what “It” believes, all the way to what the commodities themselves believe. How could such personification not be anthropocentric? Because it claims that these are not “human qualities” but merely “qualities.” The reason one can decouple humans from meaning is that humans aren’t necessary for meaning. The semiotic goes on persisting regardless of whether or not humans exist.
To adopt Meillassoux’s argument here: nothing which exists phenomenologically is necessary, thus that which does not exist phenomenologically (but rather insists, one might say) actually is necessary. That is: everything which currently exists could be destroyed but reality would go on persisting. The evidence for this is that if anything in the past were necessary for reality to continue (any phenomenological content, that is) then reality would have ended already. We have no reason to believe that anything which currently exists is necessary. (As Bryant pointed out regarding von Trier’s MELANCHOLIA, humans are unnecessary). But this also decouples humans from all those so-called human qualities we have laid claim to: emotion, reason, meaning. It means that if humans are unnecessary, then the correlate is also true: meaning _is_ necessary. If the content is unnecessary, the structure actually _is_ necessary. The argument here is that if everything which currently exists were destroyed, and reality continues persisting, obviously reality contains more than just what exists. This is like Deleuze’s virtual, which has a reality to it even though it doesn’t seem to exist. (or perhaps like Lacan’s big Other/Symbolic order, which does not exist, but nevertheless functions). In any case, to put it in the language used by Bryant in the recent article on Lacan, Masculinity and Psychosis: if phenomenological content is unnecessary for reality to persist, then its opposite — structure — is necessary. The fact that we can find structural isomorphisms between things with vastly different phenomenological content means that all content would be destroyed but still the structures would persist. This is like saying, everyone who currently feels love could cease to exist, but then a million years from now, some other consciousness could develop, and it would know love. Or, reason, music, math, whatever. There are these structural qualities of reality which go on persisting regardless of whether or not anything exists. We need to define reality as more than merely what exists — also what insists, or persists.
My next question is, can we understand Jungian archetypes as “virtual body plans,” BwO’s, which are stretched and twisted to actualize fully formed organisms? Isn’t Jung’s productive, autonomous, impersonal, objective (or even ‘ontological’) unconscious quite relevant? One commonly associates subjective-personal-autonomous but understanding something which is objective and impersonal, but nevertheless autonomous — this ends up with so many of the peculiarities of Jung’s unconscious, like that quip by von Franz: “It is as if something somewhere were ‘known’ in images — but not by us.”
October 31, 2012 at 11:41 am
@Levi
“Given that naturalism and materialism have historically been the underdog positions, it’s difficult to see how they have been guilty of self-righteous entitlement.”
Sorry, I should have been more specific: within the Continental arena, yes, it’s historically been an underdog. But that’s hardly true outside that specific arena, is it? If we look at most other Western discursive traditions — in science, technology, politics, even Anglophone philosophy — naturalism and materialism have hardly been the sickly, downtrodden relatives, quite the contrary. And which has had more ideological influence over the years, Continental philosophy or natural science? Hegel or Darwin? Heidegger or Spencer? Zizek or Dawkins? I’d bet on the latter each time, particularly in the first case!
The picture is complicated, of course, and idealism has its tendrils everywhere but you can hardly ignore the centrality of naturalism to the entire modernist mindset — a mindset hardly troubled, in terms of its practical preponderance, by anything post- or anti-. I definitely know far more hardcore naturalists than I do even mildly militant anti-naturalists (if I know any at all) and the vast majority of people who have no particular interest in one side or the other tend to accept ‘grade school’ naturalism as a given — at least where I’m from. Britain is rather more secular and science-friendly than other parts of the world, of course. I was taught evolution and climate change as facts strictly separate from religious education and the difference was never an issue. Your mileage may vary, as they say.
Anyway, the basic point is that while naturalism/materialism might be all shiny and new in Continental climes they have been the default setting elsewhere in the West. The fact that it’s new and exciting for Continental philosophers says more about that tradition than anything else.
“I also have a difficult time seeing naturalism and materialism as responsible for historical atrocities. Aren’t these more accurately laid at the feet of religion, fascisms, and totalitarianisms?”
Weren’t the colonial administrators who turned up to rationalise and administer the ‘inferior races’ doing so in the name of naturalism, materialism and science? Okay, they were doing so in the name of ‘Empire’ too but not only that. What gave them their ‘white man’s burden’ in the first place? The ideological basis of their venture was that, as Latour put it, they had access to ‘Nature’ while everyone else merely had culture. Of course their ‘Nature’ is rather unlike yours but if you want the good of naturalism you have to at least acknowledge its baggage too — and this it has in abundance. Nothing that’s been so powerful for so long can pretend to be innocent. Making a bonfire from your enemies’ beliefs makes for powerful polemic but you have to stop and consider that some people have put this into practice — and it’s not usually the fallacies and nonsense of the rich and powerful that get consigned to the flames. Are you prepared to look someone who believes that the spirits of their ancestors watch over and protect them in the eye and tell them that their cherished beliefs are worthless and should be immolated? That’s what it takes — and that’s the been the political programme of naturalism over the years.
If you have the stomach for that kind of missionary work, fair enough. Personally, I’d rather turn my scrutiny towards the phonies and cynics who mouth anti-naturalisms but don’t really believe them at all — the people who laugh off the naive realisms of scientists but still pop whatever pill their doctor tells them; those who decry all semantic closure as ‘violence’ but still believe that global warming is a fact that should be acted on; those who endlessly ‘problematise’ everything except their own problematique. These are far more numerous in academic (and blog) circles than true believers, I’m quite sure. A bonfire of *their* half-thought, myopic intellectual balsa wood would be a spectacle that I could enjoy, especially given the season! (It’s Guy Fawkes Night on Monday — we’re all about communal pyromania, us Brits.)
October 31, 2012 at 2:46 pm
Philip,
I think those forms of colonial oppression were far more a matter of religious prejudice and evangelical missions coupled with capitalist dispossession than naturalism. These racisms are based on an Aristotlean/Platonist logic of species/essences that naturalism undermines.
November 1, 2012 at 3:58 pm
“I think those forms of colonial oppression were far more a matter of religious prejudice and evangelical missions coupled with capitalist dispossession than naturalism. These racisms are based on an Aristotlean/Platonist logic of species/essences that naturalism undermines.”
Absolutism and naturalism aren’t oil and water — they can be and have been mixed together. I fully accept that your version of naturalism is fundamentally opposed to metaphysical absolutism but I’d wager that the majority of self-declared ‘naturalists’ wouldn’t recognise your definition of it much at all. Isn’t naturalism usually defined with respect to ‘natural laws’ such as the laws of physics which are supposed to be absolute and everywhere the same — much like God’s powers?
Take the first paragraph from Wikipedia’s entry on the subject (not an authority but perhaps representative of the lowest common denominator):
“Naturalism commonly refers to the viewpoint that laws of nature (as opposed to supernatural ones) operate in the universe, and that nothing exists beyond the natural universe or, if it does, it does not affect the natural universe. Adherents of naturalism (naturalists) assert that natural laws are the rules that govern the structure and behavior of the natural universe, that the universe is a product of these laws.”
I more or less recognise the first sentence in your arguments but not the second and I don’t think that it’s simply dispensable — not without stripping the concept of all historical content. And take Steven Weinberg (as quoted in Pandora’s Hope):
“Our civilization has been powerfully affected by the discovery that nature is strictly governed by impersonal laws. (…) We will need to confirm and strengthen the vision of a rationally understandable world if we are to protect ourselves from the irrational tendencies that still beset humanity”
Okay, he doesn’t use the word but that’s a more standard version of naturalism, to my mind. Is it difficult to see the Platonic, religious and colonialist resonances with that sort of sentiment? ‘We have science so you’d better do as we say!’ You might say that this isn’t genuine naturalism but in that case you need to make clear that you’re severing your naturalism from that word’s history and starting afresh. While your naturalism doesn’t accept the existence of Nature pretty much every other version of it does. By ‘Nature’ with a capital ‘N’ I mean an external, rational, absolute whole governed by laws that are the same everywhere, always. If Nature is an absolute then not only are absolutism and naturalism not opposed, they go hand in hand. And so it makes perfect sense that the colonialists might have been imbued with imperialism, capitalism, racism, religiosity AND naturalism all mixed up together.
In short, naturalism has been many more things than you define it as — and many of these things have been quite inglorious. Consequently, it can’t be so simply separated from rationalism or religion or any of these things. Naturalism has changed as ideas of nature have changed but it’s always been about destruction. If Nature is rational and the human mind achieves truth as it gradually approximates the structure of Nature then there is a political warrant and even an ethical necessity for forcibly converting the irrational, putting them on the track towards truth. For example, if the English language, narrowly defined, is thought to be more ‘rational’ than the many tongues of the natives then doesn’t it make sense to force them to speak only English? Doesn’t the rational structure of Nature itself compel such action? Well, it does, given a certain kind of naturalism. If reality is fundamentally governed by impersonal laws, always and everywhere the same, then what else can a good, humane naturalist do than destroy all the primitive, irrational social structures of the natives and install the more advanced, rational ones?
This isn’t your naturalism but it’s one that I find to be more historically familiar.
November 1, 2012 at 6:01 pm
Philip,
I’m saying that what you’re asserting about colonialism just isn’t very historically accurate. As I said, colonial oppression was far more the result of religion than science. It was more “god has been revealed to us so you better obey or die” than “we have science so you better listen.”
November 3, 2012 at 4:03 pm
I agree to some extent that colonialism was really about religion but I would not say that colonialism was the result of religion. Justification for colonialism was found through misuse and misinterpretation of religion. If this is not true, colonialism would not be denounced both by the secular as well as religious sphere today.
November 3, 2012 at 4:20 pm
If that were true it would entail that religion is something other than how it socially manifests itself (the “misuse” thesis”). I just don’t think we can separate religion from it’s social manifestation. I will say that I think the ultimate cause here is economic.