The World in Human Hands
It is tempting at this point to pronounce the winner in the contest of who is the most materialistic within the continental tradition. I will resist such a temptation. The reason is not that they are all equally materialistic in the approach and understanding, but that they should each be seen as part of an ongoing process of development and adjustment. Each discussion occurs in a different time frame, as part of a different cultural and historical context. For that reason, each of our authors brings something slightly different to the discussion.
Kant is still heavily influenced by the discussion of human nature in which authors seek to define a universal conception of the self that will serve as a foundation for social and political prescriptions. Once the subject has been defined, social and political action is a derivative. Such a characterization must be static, immune from the transformations that take place in the social, natural, or technological environments. Such a method for the construction of the subject cannot be consistent with the dynamic processes that form our understanding of the world.
Yet Kant still brings something important into the discussion. With the idea that the brain processes sensation, Kant has created the space for the mind as the mediator of experience. It is the mind that interprets the world. It does not capture its essence. The mind constructs its picture of reality, an illusion of the real, that allows the human being to function and survive. All in the physical world is known to us only by appearance.
Kant’s dualism ultimately creates a problem for its materialist elements. The division of the phenomenal and noumenal does provide Kant the basis for his claims of universal morals and sweeping ethical pronouncements. However, the metaphysics of the noumenal cannot be defended within a materialist world view. Thus, the continental tradition finds itself at a crossroad. One can move in the direction of Hegel and Husserl and try to give foundational substance to the noumenal through metaphysics or one can move in the opposite direction and focus on the material and the transformation of sensations into cognitions as the key to understanding consciousness.
Marx provides the critical first step. By the middle of the nineteenth century evolutionary biology was making its presence felt and the genius of Marx was his ability to comprehend the significance of these ideas for philosophy and social inquiry. If Darwin is correct, everything we know and believe about the world has human origins. The mind creates a cognitive illusion of reality that includes human history, ethics, and human subjectivity, and the prescriptive elements of the social order. These are all fabrications of the mind interacting with the totality of the lived experiences of human beings. There can be no transcendental guidance, not by an omnipotent deity or cosmological idea.
We must look to ourselves and the processes that are part of human existence in order to understand the origin of our interpretations. Marx points to society and culture in a general sense, and to the process of material production more specifically. Human beings must survive in order to make history. The time frame for our social evolution is shorter than that of biological evolution, but it is nonetheless transformative. What is different? In biology the organism is itself transformed as it adjusts to the environment. Social evolution involves human beings transforming the environment to have it meet their needs and desires. Human beings alter the environment in order to enhance their existence. This is carried out by an act of living will, a fusion of cognition about the social and natural world coupled with a determination to exist and thrive.
Marx identifies that nexus and in doing so begins a transformation in the continental tradition. Human beings are motivated by the material necessities of their existence. As a result, they have created ever more efficient forms of productivity, expanded the means of administration and control over ever larger territories of the earth, and created an interpretive understanding of the natural world that has assisted these processes. The system is driven by change. It is historical and dynamic.
But Marx often fails to fully appreciate that in a dynamic system it is impossible to fully articulate the essence of the beings that are influenced by the dynamics of the system. Essence is a static concept. For a materialist, there can be no concept of human nature used for normative critique. There can be no teleological conception of history that motivates the process. There can be no single cause of transformation given the vast array of stimuli that enter the domain of human reason. Marx goes beyond the ordinary metaphysics of language in pushing this part of his position.
But despite these problem, Marx has begun something important. He has demonstrated the possibility of conceiving the world as something which is in human hands. Continental philosophy now has a materialist variation.
Max Weber moves further down the road of materialism than is usually recognized. This is the case in two ways. Most common understandings of Weber reflect on his use of empirical data. He engages in studies, gathers statistical data, and brings an empirical edge to the exploration of social matters.
However, there is another materialist side of Weber that comes from his larger methodological framework. Weber stresses the necessity of interpretation. The world is infinitely complex and the only means of grasping it is to try and articulate an understanding that is causally sufficient for what the researcher seeks to explain. So in the last chapter of The Methodology of the Social Sciences Weber articulates a technique of taking a slice out of reality in order to try and understand the world. Even if this is not identical to the method of Derrida in Dissemination, there is something very close to that position in Weber’s procedure. The point is that social inquiry is moving in a direction that affords a greater appreciation for the limits of human cognition in a world of infinite stimuli.
What is also striking in Weber’s analysis is the means by which social inquiry is validated. In the study of history and culture, knowledge claims must be validated both empirically and empathetically. The experience being described by the investigator must speak to the experience of the listener. This is a central component of Weber’s interpretive sociology.
It means that there is always a subjective element in any inquiry into social phenomena. This is not to suggest that there are not facts of history, but that the arrangement of those facts into a causal scheme is an interpretive enterprise. For that reason, there are always potential alternatives interpretations. The world is actually full of competing interpretations. Our cultural struggles over norms and values cannot be separated from these competing narratives. In the final analysis, what we perceive as our ideal and material interest are the material forces of change in the world.
Friedrich Nietzsche also explores the limitations of human cognition. Accepting that we cannot have any transcendental knowledge, Nietzsche sees the world filled with false narratives of human subjectivity and the conditions of human existence. Metaphysics is rejected in favor of a hard, cutting critique of human weakness and limitations. Yet to Nietzsche, the species deludes itself into believing it can commune with the gods and possess their transcendent wisdom.
While human beings build civilization, everything we construct is built on quicksand. Beliefs have no foundation other than repetition. In this sense, there is some similarity to Weber. However, with Nietzsche even the natural sciences represent a reflection of ourselves back to ourselves. Not only are they interpretive in character, but they are human-centric in the most extreme sense. They tell us only what we are capable of understanding. They give us only appearances, never the essential truth that we crave.
So we live our lives according to the illusions of truth that we have constructed for ourselves. There is no escape from this condition. However, there is Joyful Wisdom for Nietzsche. It is Nietzsche who wants to dissipate the despair that can infect the culture as a result of a materialist understanding of the world. The loss of foundational truths can leave some adrift, in a condition of anomie and senselessness. Yet despite all the negative elements in Nietzsche’s critique of our existence there is one bright ray of hope. Dionysus can set us free. We are free of the camel’s burden. We are free to take charge of ourselves in the world.
Much of Nietzsche finds its way into poststructuralism. As Jacques Derrida puts it, Nietzsche is writing in a time before linguistics. It is possible to put Nietzsche’s insights into a more contemporary framework and explore the implications of such a position.
To Baudrillard, a world filled with illusion means simulation. We live in a mirage created from the mix of interests, technology, and power. The institutional edifice we have constructed manifests the interests of an elite that seeks to continue the existing structures of power through the maintenance of a narrative that legitimates their domination. The nexus of technological change and the development of the symbolic order reinforce the structure of domination and creates the potential for a dystopian future.
Derrida outlines the means by which the illusions of any era are passed on and transformed. Dissemination is a process of cultural transmission. World views are embedded within language. Language is metaphorical and therefore cannot capture the essence of any object or person. There is only text connecting to other texts back through the span of time.
Derrida’s accomplishment is to provide a systematic description of how the process of language and culture regenerate themselves. The legitimacy of those texts comes from their grafting onto existing texts. The illusion takes on the character of the real as the texts are repeated and connected. Thus, what Derrida has explained is a material process among human being by which the symbolic take on the character of the actual through the process of transmission.
For Foucault, this process has serious political implications. The contextual nature of knowledge construction means that our political lives are constructed out of a mixture of institutional power and technological context. Power is everywhere, in all institutional structures. Institutions maintain themselves by generating a self-reinforcing form of knowledge. Institutions do not reflect our essential natures but seek to construct our understanding of subjectivity in a way that legitimates and maintains the existing systems of power and domination.
Foucault also has significant insights regarding the relative and contextual nature of knowledge and the present order of politics. If we live in a historical system that is dynamic, then the relative nature of the present needs to be understood against the material backdrop of history. The modern period and the notion of nation-state sovereignty emerged and reinforced one another. When we step back and look at the present with a materialist understanding of history, we can see both the arbitrary character of present order and the repressive nature of its functions.
What Marx understood was the idea that if we begin with the assumption that history means change, and that such changes will affect the thoughts and ideas of beings living within history, then making people conscious of the dynamics of change and its effects on their understanding of the world will liberate them from both the mental chains that confine their thinking and the physical chains that constrain their bodies. Such is the nature of the materialist understanding of the world.
Today we have the linguistic tools to extend the project of human liberation. As Foucault understood, we cannot eliminate power. Society will need to be organized. Collective action will need to be taken. Those that violate the well-being of others will need to be restrained in their actions. However, materialism allows the asking of a different set of questions regarding the nature of social life and the character of human interaction. We no longer need to be constrained by the question, “What is true?” When we accept that we are historical creatures constructing relative and contingent truths we are in a position to ask a different question. We can ask, “How do we choose to live?”
Such a question is possible only within the materialist framework because only materialism put the world squarely in human hands. There is no historical purpose other than that which we assert. There is no method of production or social organization other than that which is constructed by human beings.
Various forms of transcendentalism are seductive. They provide foundational support for a fixed and static understanding of people and life. They often contain pronouncements of agendas and programs that follow from their assumptions. Life has a simplicity about it when directed by stable notions of truth and identity.
However, within a materialist framework, such notions that have appeared throughout history must be abandoned. Not only are their foundational underpinnings epistemologically unsupportable, but they are dangerous in several senses. Much has already been said about the political dangers. A self-referencing system of narratives reflecting the interests of power presents a danger to anyone not living within the dominant structure of subjectivity.
However, there is another danger that emerges from transcendentalism generally. Transcendental claims rely on the division of the human being into mind/matter or soul/body, or some other such claimed bifurcation. The problem is that such a division gives life an illusory character. It reifies a heuristic linguistic metaphor into foundational support for the transcendence of human life, a life which has no direct connection to physical nature.
Such a life is separated from the world. It is independent of the natural conditions of existence and the material necessities that support such an existence. We alter the environment. We change the conditions of life for ourselves and the other species living in the world. We pretend to converse with the gods while we wallow in the cesspool of our own creation. As a species, we will not stop being a threat to ourselves and all the other living species in our world until we extinguish the idea that we are not material beings living in the world
Materialism brings us back into the world. We must engage multiple narratives of life and survival. We need to understand the physicality of existence in order to have a functional understand of our relationship to the world. We must look at the implications of Darwin both for philosophy and life.
My attempt in this work was to show an evolution of thinking about how we understand the world. The continental tradition in philosophy has developed a strongly materialist component. However, this discussion is far from over. The next chapter has yet to be written.