Dialectic, Cosmos, and Society
Issue Number 12
Introduction
The Theocratic Temptation: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
Samir Amin
In Defense of Metaphysics
Anthony Mansueto
Postmodernity as the Climax of Modernity: Horizons of the Cultural Future
Boris Goubman
Call for Papers
Introduction
With this issue sharp political and philosophical debate comes to the pages of Dialectic, Cosmos, and
Society. Our lead article, The Theocratic Temptation: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, by Samir Amin, argues
for a radically secularist position which runs counter to the dominant perspective which has been represented in
these pages. Samir Amin is Director of the Forum Tiers Monde in Dakar, Senegal and President of the Provisional
Committee of the World Forum for Alternatives, one of the principal actors in the struggle against global
neoliberalism. Samir Amin has made important contributions to the analysis of the global market economy and its
disastrous impact on economic development in the Third World. In this article he argues that democracy, understood
as the capacity of the people to make their own laws, without reference eternal principles, rational or revealed,
presupposes a radical laicisation of politics, and that certain features of Judaism and Islam --i.e. their focus on
creation of a just society, either on the basis of a past model, that of the social system instituted by the Prophet,
in the case of Islam, or in a future Messianic Age, in the case of Judaism, obstruct this process and thus constitute
real obstacles to democracy. Christianity, on the other hand, because it proclaims a kingdom not of this world, and
teaches that we ought to "render under Caesar what is Caesar's" has at least provided the possibility of an exit from
the "theocratic temptation." For Amin the Scholastic tradition is not, as we have argued, a powerful synthesis
between prophetic religion and the via dialectica, which retains enduring validity, but rather as just a form of
transition to a radically secular social order.
It must be stressed that publication of this article in no sense represents an endorsement of the claims set
forth within it. On the contrary, it is our view that in addition to containing numerous errors of fact and historical
interpretation, the article represents just precisely the sort of secularist agenda which has left progressive forces on
this planet ideologically disarmed for the past 150 years. It also represents an insult to those on the Catholic left
who have struggled for years against the otherworldliness within their own tradition, many of whom have suffered
persecution by both the secular and ecclesiastical authorities. Now they are told the best way to help the progressive
forces is, in effect, just to disappear entirely!
It is precisely because we reject Amin's position that we publish it, in order to spark further debate around
this important question. Representatives of the traditions Amin discusses are especially encouraged to respond.
My own article, "In Defense of Metaphysics," was written before I had read Amin's and has been partly
rewritten to respond. The article extends arguments I have made in earlier articles, responding more directly to those
critics of metaphysics on the right and on the left (Amin now apparently among them) who charge it with a whole
series of crimes from legitimating clerical hegemony to promoting atheism, and from subversion to totalitarianism.
The article demonstrates the profound similarity between the social basis and political valence of right-wing critiques
of metaphysics, such as those advanced by thinkers such as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Arendt, Levinas,
and Derrida and critiques emanating from such supposedly leftist quarters as Maoism and the national liberation
movements.
Our third article, "Postmodernity as the Climax of Modernity: Horizons of the Cultural Future," by Boris
Goubman, asks whether the current postmodern trend really represents something new, or whether perhaps, it isn't
really just the most recent and most radical expression of the critical reflectivity which has characterized the whole
modern epoch. As in his earlier articles, Professor Goubman, who is the Head of the Department of the History
and Theory of Culture and Tver State University in the Russian Federation, argues that while postmodernism must
be taken seriously, we must not abandon the search for universal human values which can help guide our approach
to the critical problems facing humanity in the present period.
Finally, we would like to call our readers attention to the call for papers printed at the back of this issue
of the journal. We would like to expand the debate begun in the current issue. Please read the call and respond. The Theocratic Temptation:
The Theocratic Temptation:
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
The author of these reflections is not a theologian. He is neither a detractor of the three religions considered
herein, nor is he a defender of one or the other of them. He is one of those who are convinced that human beings
are "metaphysical animals," that is to say thinking subjects who pose questions concerning the meaning of life, of
history, of morals, and who, because of this, remain disquieted and cannot satisfy themselves with established
scientific knowledge, which remains and always will remain limited and relative. We thus find the need to complete
scientific knowledge with metaphysical reflection. This need may be filled by an established religion, either one
of the three examined here, or another, such as Buddhism, Taoism, Shamanism, Animism, or by a nonreligious
metaphysical philosophy such as Confucianism or the philosophy developed by the Greeks. Both types of reflection
propose conceptualizations of the relationship between human beings, human society, and the cosmos, but while
religions appeal to revelation, nonreligious metaphysics ignores it.
The author thus feels no antipathy for the believer. Indeed, he feels himself closer to certain believers than to
the many nonbelievers whose social practice does not rise above a cynical egoism. That he is committed to laicism,
and indeed to its most radical expressions, poses for him no contradiction. At issue here is not the validity of
religious beliefs or metaphysical claims, but rather their concrete social and historical impact.
Religion and Society
Religions, after all, are not merely metaphysical systems. They are expressions of social reality. Metaphysics
and social function mutually determine each other in an historical dialectic. It is thus difficult to disentangle
metaphysical claims from the social systems from which they emerge and on which they operate.
This is particularly obvious if we focus in on one aspect of the metaphysics of the three "religions of the book" -
-Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. This is the vision of historical time which they propose. Judaism believes in an
end of time. This hour will sound with the advent of the Messiah who will organize his kingdom here on earth,
that is to say a society which is just and happy and which will endure forever. The convinced believer does not
believe that this reign of justice can be conquered by human action before the end of time. Nevertheless, the
Messiah has not yet arrived. The end of time is still ahead of us.
Islam has adopted a different position on this important question. The Prophet in his lifetime had already
organized, at Medina, a just society. In this sense, even though he is regarded as a prophet, the last of the
prophets, this Prophet can be considered as the one the Jews call the Messiah: the organizer of the Kingdom of God
on earth.
I know full well that this interpretation of Islam and of the time of the Prophet is not the only one even among
Moslems. Many would say that it is not necessary to re-establish the social system which existed in Medina in the
time of the Prophet, that from that epoch one can at best derive certain general principles, and nothing more,
principles which must be adapted to the changing reality of the times. And this relativistic concept has actually
dominated the real history of Islam. But it is only a concept and can be rejected, as it has been in the present period
by those who argue for a return to the sources, the fundamentals. And from the standpoint of this fundamentalist
position, the future lies in the past, in the social system established by the Prophet. What has come since hardly
matters.
Christianity has adopted a third position on the question of the end of time, a point of view which separates it
from Judaism and Islam, and which gives it a specificity both as a metaphysics and as a force which participates
in shaping social reality. But in order to see this difference it will be necessary to come directly to the analysis of
the social reality in question.
Judaism, Chrisianity, and Islam
Judaism is not merely an abstract monotheism; it is also the organizer of an historical society, that of the Jews
in the land of Israel and later that of the Jewish communities in the Diaspora. Judaism produced a complex law
which included not only the great moral principles enshrined in the Ten Commandments, but also an ensemble of
rules which governed individual, family and social life. All of these laws are religious and thus difficult to modify.
It is these laws which permitted the Jews of the Diaspora to survive and to preserve themselves from assimilation.
What appears certain is that such a social conception of religion leaves no real place to the concept of lay society.
It can only produce a theocratic concept of power, which has been preserved by the Jews of the Diaspora. Since
power cannot invent laws, it is there to apply those which God has established once and for all. There is a tendency
today to call theocratic only those forms of power which operate through a religious caste which lays claim to a
monopoly because it alone knows the laws which it is necessary to apply, whether this caste calls itself a synod,
a Church, or something else. This is unfortunate. Theocracy means the power of God, and in practice that of those
who speak in his name. Theocracy is opposed to modernity if by modernity we mean the fundamental concept of
modern democracy: that human beings freely establish their own laws and because of this are responsible for their
own history.
Jewish law has relatively few provisions regarding the organization of power. By comparison with other states
in the region, the powers of the judges and the kings were ill-defined. But this weakness is only an additional
argument in favor of theocracy. The power of God cannot be weighed down by precise formalisms.
Long forgotten among the Jews of the Diaspora, this natural propensity for theocracy emerged again in the Jewish
State --contemporary Israel. Only those who resist understanding Judaism as a form of social organization will be
surprised.
***
Islam offers, on all planes, a rigorous parallel with Judaism. Islam regulates, in the same manner, on the basis
of its sacred text, all aspects of personal law. It has a similar penal law and practices similar rituals, from
circumcision through dietary restrictions to fixed hours of prayer. It is an ensemble of rules and practices which
organizes society in a way which leaves little room for innovation or imagination.
The Moslems, like the Jews, have little in the way of an elaborate public law. As in the case of the Jews, this
presents no problem. The lack was made up with the invention of the Caliphate and by adapting Byzantine and
Sassinid institutions. The absence of precision concerning the supreme power, which one cannot define when it
comes under divine jurisdiction, meant that it was impossible to transcend autocracy pure and simple.
Autocracy and theocracy go together. For who will speak in the name of God, if not to legislate (no human has
the right), then at least to apply the law? The Caliph --or his substitute the Sultan-- will do it without hesitation.
And the people will see him as "the shadow of God on earth," even when the doctors of the law hesitate to say so.
In this sense power in Islamic countries has always been theocratic, even if the theocracy in question is not
exercised by a caste of religious specialists. Islamic states cannot conceive of themselves otherwise, at least in so
far as they are Islamic states. To do so has required, in the two Islamic regions to laicize radically (Turkey and the
former Soviet Republics of Central Asia), a loud and official rupture with Islam. And these countries may well be
returning to the Islamic norm. But that is another story.
In this sense contemporary political Islam is nothing new. It simply goes further, and wants to transform the
soft theocracies of the Islamic world, contaminated by the surrounding modernity, into theocratic states in the strong
sense of the word, that is to say to give whole and absolute power to a religious caste --a quasi-Church in Iran, the
Azhar in Egypt-- which has a monopoly on the right to speak in the name of God. If this caste cannot succeed in
imposing itself as the exclusive holder of islamic legitimacy, then anybody can --the chief of clans, for example,
or of any sort of band. The result is permanent civil war, as in Afghanistan.
***
Christianity deviated from the theocratic road, then returned to it, before the Christian peoples departed from
it once again.
At the moment of its constitution, Christianity did not appear to break with the Jewish heritage regarding the end
of time. The announcement of the final judgement and the second coming of the Messiah certainly has
eschatological dimensions, which are strongly accentuated in the text of the Apocalypse. This is why there have
been, throughout the history of Christianity, messianic and millenarian movements.
Nevertheless, by the very nature of its message, Christianity broke radically with Judaism. This rupture is
fundamental because the message which is expressed in the dramatic story of Christ is clear: the Kingdom is not
and never will be of this world. If the Son of God himself has been vanquished on Earth, crucified, it is obvious
that it was not the intention of God the Father to establish his kingdom of justice and happiness here below. But
if God refuses to substitute himself for human beings and to solve their problems, then it belongs to humans
themselves to take responsibility and to do so. There is no longer an end of time, and Christ neither proclaims it
as come or coming. In this regard Christ is not the expected Messiah of Judaism, and the Jews were not in error
when they refused to recognize him as such. The message of Christ can, then, be interpreted simply as an invitation
to human beings to make their own history and, if they do it well, that is inspired by the values of which the
Messiah gave an example by his life and death, then they bring themselves closer to the God in whose image they
have been created. It is this interpretation which in the end imposed itself, and which gives to modern Christianity
its particular style founded on a reading of the Gospels which makes it possible to imagine the future as an
encounter between the history made by human beings themselves and divine intervention. The end of time,
imagined as the product of a divine intervention from outside of history, has disappeared.
This rupture then extended itself to the whole field which up to then had been regulated by sacred law. While
Christ made it quite clear that he did not come to abrogate the law, he did make it subject to human judgement,
something which inevitably meant that it would be called into question. The same was true with respect to
dogmatics. While not breaking openly with Judaism, and in fact admitting the Jewish scriptures into its own canon,
it did so in a way which effectively annulled their meaning. The morality proposed in its own sacred texts did not
propose anything sufficiently precise to inspire positive legislation. There is no longer any possible confusion
between legitimate power and God. "Render to Caesar what is Caesar's ..."
All this changed, however, when the Empire, after having combatted Christianity for three centuries, suddenly
embraced it and became Christian. The result was the development of a new law which called itself "Christian."
This happened first in the realm of personal law, but in the organization of power as well, in the relation of the
political and the religious, we see the same evolution towards sacralization. The churches, which had been
constituted as "clandestine parties" to use the language of our epoch, remained so after the "seizure of power." To
the extent that they had been democratic, in the sense of being close to the people, it was by necessity. Now they
lost this character, bringing themselves closer to power and distancing themselves from the faithful who they
henceforth organized on behalf of the rulers. The rulers, for their part, did not allow themselves to be domesticated
by the Churches. They had their own rules of dynastic devolution and attempted to subject the churches as much
as possible to their own logic. The fusion progressed nevertheless, and like the Caliph, the Lord and the King
became more or less sacred personages.
Christianity thus developed towards a "soft theocratic model" managed jointly by clergy and by lay rulers who
did not hesitate to proclaim themselves just as much Christians as the clergy. The result looked much like Islam.
When, in the Christian world, the bourgeois revolution called into question the eternity of the social order which
claimed to rest on immutable Christian principles, when this revolution opened the doors of modernity, invented
the new democracy, when the Enlightenment declared that Men (though not yet Women) make their own history
and must choose their own laws, the defenders of the old order denounced, in the name of Christianity, this
inordinate ambition for human emancipation. Thus Joseph de Maistre, in the France of the Restoration period, could
proclaim democracy to be an absurdity, a dangerous dream, because God is the only legislator, that God alone
makes laws which we only apply. A text which the Ayatollah Khomeini or Sheik El Azhar could have written word
for word! It matters little that by the time de Maistre wrote, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, it was no
longer possible to say just precisely what these Christian laws consisted in: the Ten Commandments? or all the
Roman, Germanic, and Slavic traditions which made up the fabric of the European societies which called themselves
Christian?
By the time de Maistre wrote, it was too late. European society had developed a taste for making its own laws,
without the obligation to refer to Christian principles, which continued to be invoked now and then, but without
rigidity or great conviction. These societies confronted new imperatives. The risk of theocracy was definitively
passed.
From the Old Debate --Reconciling Faith and Reason-- to the New Debate --Laicizing Social Power
Proclaiming God the sole legislator is fine in theory, but hardly practical. Highly civilized, the societies of the
Moslem and European Middle Ages faced a problem: how to reconcile Faith --or more precisely the religion which
is the foundation of legitimate power-- and Reason, which one needs every day not only to solve ordinary problems,
but also to inspire laws and regulations in response to fundamentally new situations.
Moslems, Christians, and Jews in the Diaspora solved this problem in the same way and by the same method -
-Aristotelian Scholasticism-- which is neither Jewish nor Christian, nor Islamic, but rather Greek! The avant-garde,
Ibn Rusd among the Moslems, Thomas Aquinas among the Christians, and Maimonides among the Jews went quite
far. They relativized dogmas, interpreted sacred texts as much as necessary, made up for their deficiencies, and
substituted for the literal reading of the text images which met their educative requirements. The most audacious
were often condemned as heretics (this was the case with Ibn Rusd) by conservative interpreters in service to the
powers that be. But little matter: a European society already in motion lived according to the precepts which these
radicals recommended. The Moslem world, on the other hand refused to and entered into a decline from which
it never exited. Al-Ghazali, the spokesman of Islamic reaction, the enemy of Ibn Rusd, has remained, up to this
day, among the "revolutionary" Ayatollahs of Iran, at the El Azhar, and in Saudi Arabia, the definitive point of
reference in all matters.
***
Beginning with the Renaissance and above all during the Enlightenment, Christian Europe abandoned this old
debate for a new one. It was no longer a matter of reconciling Faith and Reason, but rather Reason and
Emancipation. Reason, having declared its independence, did not deny that there might be an appropriate field where
Faith might be deployed, but if there was it was no longer interested in it. It was henceforth a matter of legitimating
new needs: the liberty of the individual, the emancipation of a society which took the risk of inventing its own laws
and of fashioning its own future. Modernity consists precisely in this qualitative rupture with the past.
This new vision implied laicism, that is to say the abandonment of all reference to religion or to any other
metasocial force in the debate around laws. To be sure, the different bourgeois societies went more or less far in
this regard. The more radical the bourgeois revolution, the more radical the affirmation of laicism. The more the
bourgeoisie compromised with the old order, the more limited the scope of laicization.
Modern Christianity adapted to this profound social transformation. It has had to reinterpret itself from top to
bottom, renouncing the ambition to govern and settling for an effort to inspire believers while compromising with
adversaries. Christianity has become a religion without dogmas.
***
However advanced the products produced by the effort to reconcile Faith and Reason, we must recognize their
limits. In effect these advances were blocked among the Moslems and Jews, and were final defeated in favor of a
return to ancient orthodoxies. By contrast, in the Christian world these advances prepared the way for their own
elimination.
How can one explain this difference? The materialist tradition in history gives priority to social development
and supposes that religions, as part of the ideological instance, will ultimately be reinterpreted in a way which
satisfies the exigencies of the real movement of history. This hypothesis is certainly more fertile than its opposite,
which treats religions as dogmatic ensembles which are given once and for all and which rules out any real historical
explanation in favor of a recourse to "irreducible cultural differences."
But the materialist hypothesis does not exclude reflection on the reasons why certain pathways in the evolution
of religious thought seem to have had the way paved for them, and others not. For the religious instance, like all
of the constitutive instances of social life (economics, politics, ideology), moves according to its own proper logic.
The logic of each of these instances can, therefore, facilitate and accelerate social evolution or block it. In this case
which trend will carry the day? It is impossible to say. It is in this under-determination which lies the freedom of
societies of which the choices (to submit this particular instance to the logic imposed by the evolution of another)
fashions the real history.
This hypothesis of underdetermination permits us perhaps to advance a response to the question posed above.
Judaism and Islam were constituted historically by the affirmation that God is the only true King. The principle of
the "hakimiya" reintroduced by the Islamic fundamentalists of our epoch only reaffirms this principle with greater
force and draws out all of its possible conclusions. What's more, Judaism and Islam give their sacred texts the
strongest possible interpretation. No word is superfluous. Indeed, these traditions have historically expressed severe
reservations about the translation of the sacred text. Both Jews and Moslems are peoples of exegesis. The Talmud
and the Fiqh have no equivalent in the reading of the Gospels.
This double principle explains many of the visible features of the two societies. The sacred texts of both can be
read as compilations of laws and even as Constitutions (Saudi Arabia proclaims the Koran the Political Constitution
of the State) which regulate the details of daily life and invite the believer to "renounce his will and submit integrally
to that of God."
The reconciliation of Faith and Reason was carried out within the limits imposed by this double principle, as
much with Moslem Ibn Rusd as with his Jewish contemporary Maimonides. And in both cases the traditionalist
reaction carried the day, with the return to the Kalam by Ashari and Ghazali, and to Talmudic exegesis with Judah
Halevy. Both proclaimed that certainty lay not with Reason but with Revelation.
If Christianity proved itself more flexible and if, because of this, it eventually broke through the bounds of the
debate around the relationship between Faith and Reason, this is at least in part because Christianity never proposed
to establish the Kingdom of God on Earth and the Gospels never erected a system of positive laws.
The Jews of the Diaspora in Europe could not help but be affected by the radical transformation of the society
in which they were living and of conceptions regarding the relationship of this society to religion. Moses
Mendelsohn thus tried, in the eighteenth century, to carry out a revolution in Judaism comparable to that in which
Christian society was already engaged. In interpreting the Torah not as a body of obligatory legislation, but rather
as a source of inspiration which each can interpret at his pleasure, Mendelsohn set forth on the road towards
laicization. The evolution of European society contributed to this process of assimilation of the Jews, whose "nation"
was declared defunct by the French Revolution, which knew only citizens. Persistent antisemitism, above all in
Eastern Europe, did not permit this Reform to triumph in Judaism as among the Christian population. A Counter-
Reformation emerged in the ghettos, in the form of Hasidism, which allowed the Jews to find compensation for their
inferior status by taking up their humiliation for the love of God.
***
Modern culture is neither Christian nor Judeo-Christian. Its point of reference has been displaced from the old
field of the debate on the relationship between Faith and Reason to a new terrain which ignores religion. Modern
thinkers are fundamentally neither Christian nor Jewish. They are bourgeois --or socialists-- even if they are also
Christians or Jews. Bourgeois civilization is neither the creation of Christianity nor of Judeo-Christianity. On the
contrary, Christianity and the Judaism of Western Europe have been forced to adapt to bourgeois civilization. One
waits for Islam to do the same. It is the condition for the participation of the Islamic peoples in the fashioning of
a future from which they are excluded only by themselves.
In Defense of Metaphysics
Anthony Mansueto
0.0 Introduction
There is, perhaps, no discipline which has been more uniformly derided for a longer period than metaphysics.
Declared impossible (at least as it had traditionally been understood) by Kant (Kant 1781/1969), its assertions were
determined to be logically meaningless by Ayer (Ayer 1937). Dialectical materialism, meanwhile, has historically
maintained that the discipline is unnecessary, in so far as the universe as a whole can be explained on the basis of
purely material principles (Engels 1880/1940). No critique has been so devastating, however --or so revealing of
the temper of our times-- as the claim, which has come from diverse philosophical perspectives and divergent
positions along the political spectrum (Kierkegaard 1848, Nietzsche 1889, Heidegger 1928/1968, Arendt 1958,
Levinas 1965, Derrida 1967/1978, Amin 1988/1989), that metaphysics, quite apart from whether one believes it
to be possible or impossible, meaningful or meaningless is, in fact, at the very root of a plethora of social evils,
from technological domination through imperialism and totalitarianism to atheism and despair. This essay will
analyze what we will call the "political-theological," as opposed to the epistemological (Kant 1781/1969),
cosmological (Engels 1880/1940), and logical (Ayer 1937) critiques of metaphysics. We will begin by identifying
the principal elements of this critique and showing that they are shared across what is usually taken to be a very
wide ideological spectrum which includes religious existentialists and phenomenologists such as Kierkegaard and
Levinas, crypto-fascists such as Nietzsche and Heidegger, democrats such as Arendt, postmodernists such as Derrida
and theoreticians of the national liberation movements such as Samir Amin. We will then identify the common social
basis and political valence of this critique and show why it is played out in somewhat different form in different
social contexts. Finally we will attempt to answer the critique, offering an alternative analysis of the origins of
metaphysics and an argument for its progressive --indeed foundational-- role in the human civilizational project.
Questions about the possibility of metaphysics, as well as an answer to the dialectical materialist claim that the
universe can be explained in terms of purely material principles have been addressed elsewhere (Mansueto 1997,
1998, forthcoming)
1.0 The Emergence of the Political-Theological Critique of Metaphysics
The political-theological critique of metaphysics is a complex and diverse ideological phenomenon. Before we
can analyze either its social basis and political valence or its internal logic we need to define better its principal
characteristics. This means including some elements which may not be shared fully by all of its adherents, and
leaving aside some others which may be prominent within certain sub-trends, such as religious existentialism or
postmodernism, but which do not characterize the phenomenon as a whole. Broadly speaking the main elements of
the political-theological critique of metaphysics include:
1) a common definition of metaphysics as a universal causal theory which attempts to rise rationally to first
principles of both explanation and of action,
2) an historical analysis which locates the origins of metaphysics in ancient Greece, and more specifically
in Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, so that history is either divided between a pre-Socratic golden age and later
medieval and modern periods of metaphysical/political/technological domination, or else between two
historical streams identified variously with Athens and Jerusalem, Center and Periphery, the Same and the
Other, and
3) an ideological analysis which links the search for a causal theory with making or techne, and which
charges metaphysics with legitimating both earlier tributary empires and later technological forms of
domination, as well as, in its religious forms, humanity's rebellion against God.
1.1 The Antidialectical Tradition
The origins of this critique can be traced back, at the very least, to the high middle ages, to the Augustinian
reaction to Aristotelian dialectics, and to the parallel reactions against Aristotelianism in Islam and Judaism.
Aristotelian dialectics, especially in its Averroist form, elevated philosophy, which grasps the truth in intelligible
form, above religion, which conveys the truth in confused and imaginative form to the masses. It stressed the
ordering of matter, and thus of the entire material universe, to God, who drew forth the potential for organization
which is latent in matter through the operation of secondary causes, of which human reason in both its theoretical
and practical-technical dimensions were among the most important. For many Augustinians this was tantamount
to a materialist pantheism which undermined divine freedom and sovereignty. A whole host of "corrective"
strategies, from Bonaventurian exemplarism to Scotist voluntarism and Occamist nominalism was employed to reign
in metaphysics and safeguard revelation and divine liberty. In this sense the Protestant Reformers, with their claims
that we know God only on the basis of revelation and are justified only on the basis of faith, simply radicalize the
Augustinian reaction of the middle ages.
Even so, Augustinianism in its Catholic and Protestant forms never entirely abandoned metaphysics. Paley's
argument from design and Berkeley's subjective idealism (Berkeley 1710, Paley 1802) --the two dominant strategies
in Protestant apologetics in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries-- certainly represent a retreat from the bold
claims of an Aquinas, a Maimonidies, or an Ibn Rusd, but they are, nonetheless, strategies for rising to first
principles on the basis of rational arguments. They may represent by-ways or dead ends, but they are, nonetheless,
part of the larger via dialectica. Even Kant (Kant 1761/1969), who rejects the possibility of a rational ascent to first
principles, comes to this conclusion only after attempting such an ascent and, having reached his conclusion,
immediately turns to the task of finding a new way to ground science, ethics, and religion. It is not until the middle
of the nineteenth century, with Kierkegaard (Kierkegaard 1840/1941), that we find philosophers beginning to make
arguments against philosophy as it has historically been understood --not simply restricting the scope of human
reason, but actually arguing that the via dialectica is itself a path to perdition. For Kierkegaard the very attempt
to construct a system excludes the possibility of discovering God, because in rendering the universe intelligible it
rules out in advance the encounter with another free personality --human or divine. God is known only in the radical
inwardness of human subjectivity, only after we have despaired of the effort to comprehend and organize the world
on the basis of some principle accessible to reason.
Kierkegaard is one font of the political-theological critique of metaphysics; the other is Nietzsche (Nietzsche
1889/1968). At first no two figures could seem more different: the radical Christian and the prophet of the anti-
Christ. And certainly their reasons for rejecting metaphysics are nothing if not diametrically opposed. Kierkegaard
(who continues in the tradition of the Augustinian reaction) rejects metaphysics as a manifestation of human pride
and the will to power; Nietzsche rejects it precisely because it represents a retreat from the raw struggle for power
which, in his mind, is the only real principle which governs the universe --an attempt on the part of the weak-
spirited to hide from the world as it is in the name of the world as it should be, a search for some pre-existing
pattern of organization on which to depend rather than a bold struggle to organize the universe ourselves, as best
we can, in full knowledge that our efforts will, in time, be swept away.
What is rejected by Kierkegaard and Nietzsche both is the presence of a meaning immanent in human activity
and in the universe generally which, however, points beyond itself to an intrinsically meaningful ground. Both
ultimately regard meaning as a function of power. For Kierkegaard this power is always and only the power of God
before which the only proper human response is one of radical submission. Nietzsche, on the other hand, scorns
such submission and counsels us to join the eternal struggle in which meanings are created and destroyed.
These two strains flow together in the work of Martin Heidegger, where we find the first really complete and
rigorous statement of the political-theological critique of metaphysics. Heidegger's work is notoriously complex
and obscure and has been buried in layer upon layer of commentary, so that it becomes difficult to say anything
about him without risking exposure for some scholarly faux pas. This complex of defensive ramparts, however, in
fact conceals a cluster of relatively simple claims. Heidegger's early critique of metaphysics, set forth in Problems
of Phenomenology (Heidegger 1927) and Being and Time (1928) focuses on the failure of thinkers, beginning with
Plato, to grasp the distinction between Being and beings, and instead attempts to theorize Being as the beingness
of beings --i.e. it thinks Being in entitative terms. Where the pre-Socratics, according to Heidegger, were able to
think the self-manifestation of Being, something he associates with the term physis or nature, Plato and Aristotle
increasingly use the language of morphe (form) and energeia (actuality). Form, and especially the Good or the
"form of forms" is, for Plato, what really is and that in terms of which this world of appearance must be explained
and judged. Aristotle goes even further down this road, arguing that it is form which actualizes matter, bringing
things into being. Rather than simply allowing Being to manifest itself, to present itself as a question, it is reduced
to something other than Being, something which can be comprehended --and once comprehended, used to ground
our own process of making, our own process of bringing into being. Indeed, as Heidegger points out, the very
notion of morphe derives from the language of the craftsman: it is the look or appearance given to something by
its producer. Energeia, similarly, is rendered in German as Wirklicheit, from the root for work. Metaphysics thus
grounds technology, and the larger technological mode of relating to the world.
Later (Heidegger 1941) Heidegger modified both his historical analysis and his philosophical position.
Increasingly identifying ancient Greek and German romantic thought, he claimed to hear in Plato and Aristotle
echoes of the earlier Greek aletheia or unconcealment of Being and located the crystallization of metaphysics in the
"translation" of Greek thought into Latin, the language of road builders and empire makers, a crystallization which
is completed in the Middle Ages when Being is identified with the supreme maker, the Christian Creator God. This
process culminates, of course, in Thomas, who is the supreme philosopher of the "ontotheologic," the universal
causal-explanatory system in which Being is simply an instrument for explaining and ultimately manipulating entities.
Modern metaphysical theories, such as those of Descartes and Hegel --or for that matter Marx-- differ only in giving
human rather than divine subjectivity or labor pride of place. Nietzsche's claim that the world is just the "will to
power" is simply the culmination of this long metaphysical tradition, and offers nothing but another formulation of
the first principle.
Being, for the later Heidegger, manifests itself in a people only through the voice of the few who help it to
discover its "god," a sort of mythos under which Being is revealed.
... the essence of the people is its "voice." This voice does not, however, speak in a so-called immediate
flood of the common, natural, undistorted and uneducated "person." The voice speaks seldom and only in
the few, if it can be brought to sound ... (Heidegger >1934/1989: 319
A Volk is only a Volk if it receives its history through the discovery of its god, through the god, which
through history compels it in a direction and so places it back in being. Only then does it avoid the danger
of turning only on its own axis ... (Heidegger >1934/1989: 398-399).
In this regard Heidegger remains close to Kierkegaard, seeing humanity as a passive instrument of Being rather than
an active creator of meaning. After the "turn" in his thought, however, Heidegger also becomes more interested
in analyzing the historical process by which Being is unconcealed --or by which it "withdraws" leaving the world
subject to techne and to the will to power-- than he is in the existential analysis of Dasein (human being or literally
"being-there") as an opening to Being. While the historical process is treated here simply as a product of Being's
unconcealments and withdrawals, the effect is, nonetheless, to reinstate the Nietzschean focus on the nexus between
power and meaning, while endowing this nexus with an ontological legitimation which makes the forcible irruption
of meaning in history no longer the product of finite human organizing activity, but rather an epiphany of Being
itself. It is this notion of the historical destiny of the people as an unconcealment of Being, by Being, which made
Heidegger vulnerable to the appeal of Nazism, which appeared to him as the possible occasion of just such an
unconcealment.
After its first complete formulation in the work of Heidegger, the political-theological critique of metaphysics
developed in a number of apparently very different directions. Levinas (Levinas 1965) argued that Heidegger's
continued use of the language of Being perpetuated the effacement of the Other in the interests of power and
domination which had characterized the whole Greek philosophical tradition, which he refers to as "ontology" and
advocates a new "metaphysics" rooted in confrontation with the radically Other, the victim, in which alone we can
discover --but never conceptually possess-- God. This line of reasoning has been taken up by Latin American
liberationists, explicitly by Miranda (Miranda 1972, 1973) and Dussel (Dussel 1998), and more loosely and
eclectically by others, for whom the encounter with the poor and oppressed becomes the unique privileged
hermeneutic key for reading the scriptures --and reality in general.
The "democrat" Hannah Arendt does not frame her argument in terms of a critique of metaphysics, but the link
to the thought of her fascist lover (Heidegger) is readily apparent. At the very core of Arendt's political theory is
a sharp distinction between labor, work and action. By labor she means the physical, biological, and economic
processes which are necessary to sustain life. Labor leaves nothing behind except life itself, and perhaps the
freedom of another (the master) to engage in work or action. By work she means the process of producing objects
which possess some permanence, serve some purpose beyond themselves, and which are executed in accord with
some pre-conceived plan. Work is an intrinsically teleological process. By action she means the disclosure of the
subject in relationship with other subjects ÄÄa process which unlike labor or work directly presupposes the
presence of others, which, consequently has a characteristic frailty, and the outcome of which is always uncertain
(Ardent 1958). Arendt criticizes the entire tradition of Western political philosophy from Plato though Marx, which,
she says, understands politics as a form of fabrication or work rather than as the quintessential form of action.
Plato and Aristotle elevated lawmaking and city building to the highest rank in political life ... because they
wished to turn against politics and against action. To them, legislating and the execution of decisions by vote
are the most legitimate political activities because in them men "act like craftsmen:" the results of their action
is a tangible product, and its process has a clearly recognizable end. This is no longer, or rather, not yet
action (praxis) properly speaking, but making (poesis) which they prefer because of its greater reliability.
It is as though they had said that if men only renounce their capacity for action, with its futility,
boundlessness, and uncertainty of outcome, there could be a remedy for the frailty of human affairs (195).
The tradition which Arendt criticizes, of course, reaches its consummation, in the work of Marx, for whom the
transformation of the working class from mere makers of physical objects, into the conscious makers of history,
constitutes the highest possible level of human development.
The link between making and metaphysics is located for Arendt as for Heidegger in the Platonic doctrine of
forms or ideas, though Arendt focuses on the term eidos rather than morphe. She notes that according to Aristotle,
Plato himself was the one to introduce this term into philosophical usage and that Plato (Republic X) explicitly uses
an analogy with craftsmanship to explain the doctrine.
Is there any difference between the critiques of metaphysics advanced by Heidegger and Arendt? Absolutely. For
Heidegger the critique of metaphysics makes way for the disclosure of Being, something which he makes quite clear
takes place first and foremost in the historical destiny of peoples. This is especially true after the "turn" in his
thinking, when he becomes less and less concerned with the existential analysis of Dasein and more and more
concerned with the historical conditions for a new unconcealment of Being. For Arendt, on the other hand, the
critique of metaphysics clears the way for a disclosure of the subject in action, to other like subjects, from whom
there is some possibility of recognition. Thus the pull in Arendt's theory towards a broadly "democratic" politics.
Note, however, that both share a common rejection of work, and of the historical movements which have regarded
work or creativity as a privileged opening to understanding Being itself: i.e. Catholicism and dialectical materialism.
We should note as well that Arendt's "democratic" politics is fully as elitist as Heidegger's fascism: it is only those
who have been freed from the necessity of labor and from the obsession with work who are really capable of public
life.
The most radical expression of the political-theological critique of metaphysics is, of course, that advanced by
the postmodernists. There are many varieties of postmodernism, but for our purposes the most relevant is
undoubtedly the deconstructionism of French philosopher Jacques Derrida (Derrida 1967/1978). Derrida develops
his position dialectically, accepting the Heideggerian critique of all earlier metaphysics and Levinas' critique of
Heidegger. But he then goes on to point out that Levinas, as well, is unable to escape the "violence" of
metaphysics. In finding God in the face of the Other, do we not efface the differance and specificity of the Other
as surely as if the Other (and his suffering) were reduced to a necessary expression of the divine first principle, an
object of divine providence, of a vanishing moment of the human historical process? What Derrida suggests is that
violence is unavoidable: there is no escape. The best that we can do is to unmask the violence embedded in our own
discourse and that of others in an effort to contain the damage.
1.2 Dialectics Against Itself
It should hardly be surprising to discover a hostility to metaphysics among thinkers who are the heirs to the
Augustinian reaction. It is something else to find such hostility among the heirs of Aristotle and Hegel. And yet
the Marxist tradition, which has had an ambiguous attitude towards metaphysics from the very beginning, has
increasingly embraced its own variant of the political-theological critique. One of the more cogent statements of this
position comes from Egyptian Marxist Samir Amin. Amin, for those who are not familiar with his work, is one of
the principal theorists of the national liberation movements. He contributed significantly to the analysis of unequal
development and unequal exchange and has consistently argued, against both the hegemonic neoliberal trend, but
also against the dominant tendencies on the left, in favor of a radical delinking from the world market and a broadly
Maoist approach to the problems of socialist construction (Amin 1976, 1977, 1978, 1980, 1982, 1985). While not
a philosopher, he has shown increasing interest in recent years in ideological questions.
Amin's comments on metaphysics are contained in a short book published in 1988 entitled Eurocentrism
(1988/1989). The book is part of his larger polemic against the dominant social democratic and pro-Soviet
"revisionist" tendencies in the international communist movement which, he says, have erred in a number of related
ways:
1) stressing the leading role of the development of the productive forces rather than the class struggle in the
historical process,
2) focusing on the leadership of the industrial working class rather than on the alliance of the working class and
the peasantry, and
3) situating the center of the world revolutionary movement in the advanced capitalist centers (especially Europe)
rather than in the national liberation movements of the Third World.
At the same time, with the crisis of socialism and the rise of various nationalist and religious trends with in the
national liberation movements, especially in the Islamic world, the critique of Eurocentrism has come increasingly
to mean the critique of Marxism, which is increasingly understood as just another European import. Eurocentrism
is an attempt to reframe the critique of Eurocentrism in a way which does not give aid and comfort to Islamic
fundamentalism and which leaves open room for a "truly universal culture" based on the common experience of the
revolutionary struggle against imperialism.
Amin situates "metaphysics" in the context of the emergence of what he calls tributary social formations. In
communal societies, where there was little or no systematic exploitation, the social structure did not require any
special legitimation; the religion of communal societies was first and foremost an expression of humanity's
dependence on the natural world. As warfare and conquest became strategies for economic growth and development,
the need arose to legitimate what would otherwise have been transparently exploitative social relationships.
Furthermore, as empires grew, so too did the need of ideologies which transcended the religious particularism of
the individual city or region. Rational metaphysics, of the kind developed independently in Greece, China, and
India and brought to perfection in the various scholasticisms of the long "medieval period," (which begins for Amin
with the Hellenistic era and not after the collapse of Rome, presented the universe as a vast hierarchical system
in which all finite systems derive from a supreme first principle --a sort of abstract, cosmic reflex of the tributary
imperial structure itself. It is only the advent of capitalism, in which the relations of exploitation are opaque, which
eliminated the need for metaphysical reflection and legitimation.
It is interesting to note that Amin regards Soviet dialectical materialism, and indeed the entire tradition springing
from Engels' Dialectics of Nature, as itself quasi-metaphysical. Indeed in so far as it is both a universal causal
theory, and centered on grounding human techne it would also count as metaphysical from the standpoint of the
other thinkers we have been considering, even though it has no recourse to immaterial principles. Elsewhere (Amin
1979/1980, 1981/1982) Amin has argued that the Soviet Union, far from being socialist was in fact a "statist"
society, something which he describes in terms which suggest a sort of industrialized version of the tributary state.
And the political expression of Soviet "diamat" is, of course, the "workerism," the privileging of productivity over
revolutionary struggle, which is the principal object of Amin's polemics.
In a recent paper which appears in this issue of Dialectic, Cosmos, and Society, Amin nuances his critique of
metaphysics slightly, acknowledging that human beings are "metaphysical animals" which by their very nature pose
fundamental questions of meaning and value. At the same time, he develops an even more radical critique of
metaphysics as an obstacle to the democratic revolutions. Judaism and Islam, he notes, are both oriented
fundamentally towards the establishment of a society in which the divine will is fully accomplished, through the
medium of a revealed law. For Judaism the complete realization of this project remains in the future, in the
messianic age. For Islam the messiah has, in a sense, already come, in the form of the Prophet, whose law Islam
seeks to extend by conquest or conversion throughout earth. In both cases, however, the ideal remains a society in
which the revealed law is actually realized. This has made it difficult for Judaism and Islam to accommodate
themselves to democracy, the essence of which for Amin is the right of the people to make their own laws and their
own history, without reference to either a revealed or a rational metaphysics. Christianity, on the other hand, while
it has often succumbed to the theocratic temptation, has an easier time accommodating itself to democracy because
of its insistence that the kingdom of God is not of this world and that the people are free to work out their historical
destiny under the guidance of only the broadest moral principles. Metaphysical systems, in other words, in order
to be compatible with democracy, must not ground a revealed or natural law which stands in the way of the free
legislative activity of the people themselves by setting up principles of which human positive laws are regarded as
mere applications.
2.0 Social Basis and Political Valence
How should we understand the social basis and political valence of the political-theological critique of
metaphysics? We would like to suggest that the leftist rhetoric of many of its practitioners aside, this critique can,
in fact be understood only within the context of the ideological strategy of the bourgeoisie. Here it is necessary to
distinguish between the spontaneous ideologies generated by the market system and the conscious ideological
maneuvers made by the bourgeoisie in its attempt to hegemonize or at least neutralize resistance to capitalism. The
marketplace spontaneously, and quite apart from any conscious legitimation strategy, tends to undermine dialectical
reasoning and to break down metaphysical systems of the sort elaborated by the great philosophers of the Arabic
and Latin middle ages. This is because people in a market society experience their social world either as a system
of only externally related atoms (individuals) or as a system of quantities (prices). They soon begin to think of
society as a whole in much the same way. Neither sort of system has any sort of global end, and thus provides no
basis in experience for concluding to a cosmic telos, which was the aim of Aristotelian metaphysics. Thus the
increasing difficulty which bourgeois philosophy, from the rationalists and empiricists through Kant, has experienced
in the struggle to rise rationally to a first principle. Indeed, by the time we arrive at Kant, philosophy has even
become skeptical about our ability to know things in themselves, a reflex, as Lukacs points out, of the market's own
inability to "know" the use-value of things, as opposed to the commodity- form under which all things appear in
the market system (Lukacs 1922/1971). At the same time, even in Kant there is no attempt to tear down
metaphysical constructs. The historic aim of metaphysics, which was to ground science, ethics, and religion, remains
central and the collapse of rational metaphysics impels Kant to seek an alternative road to the ground.
Ideology is not, however, simply a product of our efforts to make sense out of the universe under definite, and
sometimes alienating social conditions. It is also a political weapon. And from the very beginning the bourgeoisie
has faced a complex and difficult political task. It has had to rely on the support of the broad masses of the working
classes (petty bourgeoisie, proletariat, peasantry) in order to break the back of the old feudal classes while at the
same time containing any move on the part of these masses towards autonomous political power. It has had to break
down the tributary states while containing movement in the direction of socialism. This has required the bourgeoisie
to elaborate ideologies which constrain the working classes to see the universe in a way which is compatible with
its own class aims.
Lukacs suggests that the bourgeoisie has, historically, used two distinct ideological strategies. During the period
of its rise, when it could still present itself as a force for progress vis-a-vis the old feudal classes, and during
periods of economic stabilization since then, it has employed a direct apologetic, arguing that capitalism is, in fact,
a force for the development of human capacities. After about 1848, however, the developing contradictions of
capitalism and the emergence of the workers movement puts the bourgeoisie on the defensive. It became
increasingly difficult to legitimate capitalism as a force for social progress, which was being constrained both by
ever deeper economic crises and by bourgeois resistance to the economic and political demands of the working class.
The result was the elaboration of an "indirect apologetic," which argued not so much that capitalism was just as that
a just society is impossible --and that socialism was therefore an empty dream. By the end of the century, this
indirect apologetic had taken on the additional task of legitimating imperialist war and expansion --something deeply
in conflict with the ideals of the democratic revolutions, but also the only way a capitalist society could resolve its
internal contradictions (Lukacs 1953/1959).
The indirect apologetic was advanced along a number of fronts. At the epistemological level it became
increasingly common to claim that it is impossible to make objective, rational judgements of value and that all
knowledge is in a certain sense interpretive and perspectival. Physics, biology, sociology and psychology all stressed
the absence of any underlying arche or telos in the systems they studied, other than the endless drive of all systems
to survive and prosper, a line of reasoning which culminates in Nietzsche's doctrine of the "will to power." But
without objective judgements of value and without some arche/telos to serve as criterion no critique of the
marketplace or argument for a nonmarket allocation of resources is possible. And imperialist war seems like simply
a natural expression of the underlying cosmic struggle for power. Lukacs points out that these theses were shared
in common both by liberals such as Weber (and we might add Arendt), who seemed to believe that democracy
represented Germany's best hope for realizing its imperial destiny, and protofascists such as Nietzsche and
Heidegger.
Lukacs' theory has extraordinary explanatory power, but it also has some limitations from the standpoint of our
task. Lukacs is, first of all, unable to measure the extent to which Marxism itself is affected by the dynamic which
he identifies --something which is reflected in its rejection of a transcendental first principle and its ambivalence
on cosmic teleology even as it struggles to uphold a realist epistemology and the objectivity of value. More broadly,
because of his own acceptance of the bourgeois account of history and his own complicity in the rejection of
metaphysics, Lukacs misses the fact that both the "direct" and "indirect" apologetics are, in fact, much older than
he allows, and in fact embrace nearly the whole history of philosophy since the middle ages. This in turn makes
it difficult to extend Lukacs' theory into two domains which he does not consider: postwar imperialism and its
dialectical contrary: the national liberation movement.
We have already mentioned that the political-theological critique of metaphysics actually traces its roots to the
Augustinian reaction of the thirteenth century and fourteenth centuries. We need now to analyze this reaction in
a bit more detail, and above all to understand what it was reacting against. Like its critics, we too trace the origins
of metaphysics to Ancient Greece. But unlike the critics of metaphysics, we see it as a progressive response to a
profound social crisis. Located on the periphery of the great tributary empires of the Mediterranean Basin, Greece
conserved communitarian and archaic social forms longer than other parts of the region. Early movements in the
direction of tributary empire in Crete and Mycenae collapsed and gave rise to a protracted "dark age" in which these
tendencies reasserted themselves. During this period, low levels of exploitation made possible key innovations in
agrarian technology: the specialized cultivation of grapes and olives, for which the rocky hillsides and coastlines
were eminently well suited. The result was the development of village communities into prosperous poleis which
thrived on a growing export trade (Andersen 1974).
The emergence of market relations, even of the petty commodity variety, however, led to rapid internal
differentiation. The old royal-priestly authorities --the archontes and dynasts-- were overthrown by nouveaux riches
merchants and the peasant masses were gradually driven into debt peonage. The result was a series of peasant
revolts which were settled differently in different cities. It is the Athenian settlement which interests us most. Here
moderate agrarian reforms which guaranteed peasant land rights were coupled with the formation of a democratic
public arena in which all landholders could participate. The large latifundialists, in the meantime, were forced to
turn to chattel slaves, mostly prisoners of war, as a source of labor power.
We have already noted above the impact of market relations in the ideological sphere: a gradual loss of
confidence in the ultimate meaningfulness of the universe and even in the objectivity of knowledge. In Athens this
trend was accentuated by political developments. The combination of continued economic inequality with a formally
democratic political arena required the ruling classes to gain the consent of the mass for policies which were not
in their interest --i.e. expansionist warfare aimed at securing markets and a steady supply of chattel slaves. Schools
of rhetoric grew up to train young men of the ruling class to make persuasive arguments in the public assemblies -
-and if necessary to "make the worse appear the better cause." This is the origin of the sophistic tradition. Moderate
sophists such as Protagoras taught that morality was simply a matter of social convention; radicals such as Gorgias
denied the objectivity of knowledge altogether.
The Socratic tradition emerged largely as an attempt to reground ethics and thus mount a resistance to the
sophists and their bourgeois constituency. Socrates himself concentrated on showing the internal contradictions of
the sophistic position and in the process invented the dialectical method. Plato went on to demonstrate the necessity
of a cosmological and metaphysical foundation for ethics and to sketch the outlines of what a just society might look
like. It was Aristotle, however, who actually did the hard work of grounding knowledge of transcendental
principles, making an argument for cosmic teleology, rising through that teleology to a first principle, the Unmoved
Mover, which is infinite, necessary, perfect, and divine, and then grounding ethics in that metaphysical principle.
If the doctrines of Plato and Aristotle remain rather aristocratic then it is only because the low level of development
of the productive forces made a "philosophical democracy" or a society of philosophers impossible; the best that
could be imagined was a society governed by philosophers, that is by those who actually know the Common Good
and can order society to it. This is a principle shared by Hegel, Marx, Engels, Lenin, and the whole dialectical
tradition. As the critics of metaphysics point out, the whole mentality of the Socratic tradition is not that of a landed
elite, be it tributary or bourgeois, but rather that of the craftsman. Indeed, while Plato probably came from an elite
family, Socrates is reputed to have been a shoemaker and Aristotle a physician.
It might be objected that this Greek birth of metaphysics marks the whole tradition as essentially European and
thus at least incipiently Eurocentric. What about the traditions of Asia, Africa, and the Americas? Two points are
in order here. First, many of the societies in Africa and the Americas remained communitarian or archaic in
character. They conserved a wisdom, an insight into first principles which is no less authentic for being
imaginatively rather than conceptually articulated, and had no need to defend this wisdom from skeptical assaults
and thus no need for dialectics and the metaphysical doctrine in which it terminates. Those societies which
succumbed to tributary exploitation generally also conserved communitarian village structures which served as a
crucible for prophetic resistance which sometimes took the form of a resurgent cult of the Great Mother (Tonantzi,
Isis) (Stone 1976), and sometimes took the form of a transformation of tributary war gods in a popular revolutionary
direction (the cult of YHWH, whose name probably was originally 'El yahwi sabaoth yisrael, El who brings into
being the armies of Israel) (Gottwald 1979). While this prophetic criticism was opaque to the ruling classes it made
obvious sense to the peasantry to whom it was principally directed. Dialectics was still unnecessary. It is only in
market societies that dialectics becomes necessary, and marketization was always much weaker in Asia, Africa, and
the Americas than Europe and the Mediterranean Basin.
This said, it must be noted that markets did develop in the advanced tributary societies of Asia, and in India and
China in particular. The more abstract sort of religious speculation reflected in Buddhism and later Hinduism
reflects the influence of the formal abstraction engendered by market relations, as does much Confucian
scholasticism. The latter, in fact, often seems to attempt with a more concrete terminology (e.g. "heaven" and
"earth" rather than "form" and "matter" philosophical constructions remarkably similar to those of the medieval
Aristotelian tradition.
Dialectics, far from being intrinsically Eurocentric or a mechanism of European hegemony is a means of
defending the authentic wisdom, the authentic insight into the organizing principle of the universe which is a legacy
of humanity's communitarian/archaic era under the conditions of alienation engendered by the market economy.
While the failure to develop, or to fully develop, the dialectical method does not compromise the authenticity of a
wisdom or make it an unworthy contribution to the universal culture of humanity, no wisdom can survive in a
market society without the defense which dialectics alone can mount.
Dialectics had, from the very beginning, a complex relationship with the great prophetic religions (Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam). It should be noted, to begin with, that these religions themselves derived from movements
of popular resistance. Norman Gottwald (Gottwald 1979) has shown convincingly that Judaism emerged from a
series of peasant revolts in late bronze age Canaan, which undermined the rule of the tributary warlords of the
region and established, for at least a brief period, a revolutionary communitarian society in which the village
community once again became the organizing institution of human society. Pressure from the resurgent tributary
forces, now armed with iron technology, forced Israel to take on many of the characteristics of a tributary state --
monarchy and standing army, centralized temple cult, etc.-- but the prophetic tradition kept alive the ethos which
had developed during the peak of the revolution, as well as the "metaphysics" which grounded it. Against the cult
of the ba'alim --the name means lord, master, owner of land, and husband, and was used both for the earthly
warlord and his heavenly reflex-- the prophets defend the worship of 'El yahwi sabaoth yisrael --El who brings into
being the armies of Israel. As Israel met with defeats and reverses, and as these defeats and reverses turned
themselves into opportunities to exercise a transforming effect on a global scale, it became increasingly apparent
that the struggle was about more than simply Israel's own liberation. The prophets helped Israel to discover that
the God they met on the battlefields of Jezreel, who gave them amazing victories over a far more powerful enemy,
was in fact the creator of heaven and earth, the causative power of Being itself. Thus the revolutionary struggle
of a band of peasants from the hill-country of Judea and Samaria becomes the locus of the revelation of the divine
name, YHWH (Exodus 3:13-16). Judaism preserves this truth in the insight that it is above all in ethical conduct
that God is encountered.
Christianity and Islam, by comparison, represent a far greater degree of accommodation with the tributary state.
For Christianity this accommodation is facilitated by the element of otherworldliness which forms an irreducible
part of the religion. Unlike Judaism, which in most forms remains resolutely committed to the acceptance of human
finitude, Christianity promises its adherents deification or, what amounts to the same thing, knowledge of God in
essence, something which is inconceivable within ordinary human history. There is always a danger, however,
that this recognition of our ordering to a good beyond history will leave history itself unredeemed, a tendency which
is exacerbated in the Pauline and Augustinian political theology. According to this theology, human beings, having
turned from God to themselves become hopelessly bound in sin and can be redeemed only by divine grace. This
grace is mediated by the substitutionary atonement of the crucified God. Grace, furthermore, cannot touch the
hegemonic political-economic structures which are actually constituted by the human pursuit of wealth and power.
Even if the saved gain the upper hand, these structures remain necessary to restrain the wicked, the lovers of
pleasure and honor, who will not respond to appeals to serve the Common Good. In the case of Islam, the
accommodation with the tributary state comes about because the very mechanism for realizing the Law, and thus
social justice, is itself a movement of Arabic military expansion which leads to the creation of new tributary states.
In both cases, however, the ethical principles which emerged from the prophetic critique of the tributary state, and
indeed the prophetic dynamic itself remain intact. These religions thus constituted a brake on exploitation and opened
up the possibility of renewed social progress in the regions of their influence.
Dialectics exercises dual impact on the prophetic religions. On the one hand, as the prophetic religions came
into contact with the increasingly marketized metropoles of the Hellenistic and Roman empires, they required new
forms of legitimation, something which was supplied first by Platonic and later by Aristotelian philosophy which
demonstrated the ultimately meaningfulness of the universe, existence of God, and the reasonableness of revelation,
etc. Second, in Europe in particular, as the technological revolution of the middle ages lead to a rebirth of
civilization, and especially the development of the guild system, the urban communes, and the universities,
Aristotelian metaphysics in particular helped soften the otherworldliness of Christianity by showing that matter, as
the potential for form, is naturally ordered to God, and that all forms of organization --and human civilization in
particular-- far from being merely the product of pride and greed, are in fact a real participation in the life of God.
Progressive elements within the hierarchy found these developments encouraging. Indeed, the more positive
outlook on human civilization in principle at least, opened up new possibilities for clerical influence. If civilization
is ordered to God, then the Church has something to contribute to its direction and development. If it is simply an
expression of greed and pride, as Augustine had argued, then while the Church can use it, it has little reason to hope
that it can hegemonize it. These progressive tendencies were most prominent in the mendicant orders, and
especially in the Order of Preachers, whose leading theologian, Thomas Aquinas, retheorized the Christian call to
divinization in a way which built on, rather than pitting itself against, nature and civilization. Other elements in the
hierarchy, however, were threatened by the new dialectics, which in their more radical manifestations raised the
spectre of a human ascent to God without benefit of priestly mediation --a claim made, as we noted above, by the
followers of the radical Averroist Amalric of Bena. The result was a series of condemnations and a resurgence
of Augustinian theology which ultimately culminated in the Reformation. In response to this reaction, the secular
intelligentsia of the urban communes, the original bearer of the new dialectics, became increasingly protective of
its autonomy, allying itself with the Empire against the Papacy and beginning to produce a new anticlerical polemic
stressing the independence of the state from clerical control. Where earlier Averroist theories had, like the more
moderate Thomist theory, grounded the autonomy of the state on its natural ordering to God, something which did
not require clerical baptism or the trappings of cult, later political Averroism, especially of the Padovan school,
increasingly limits the state to creating the conditions for social order, and excludes it from higher order tasks such
as cultivating virtue or promoting the Common Good --the only way in their mind of protecting it from clerical
meddling (Goerner 1965). The result is close to later liberal theories in which the state is merely the guarantor of
the market order.
What we have, here, of course, are the ancestors of what Lukacs calls the "direct" and "indirect" apologetics
for capitalism. The Augustinian hierarchy and its Protestant heirs attack the dialecticians for their undue optimism
about human nature and for reducing God and humanity alike to mere moments in a universal, causal system which
at once undermines freedom and fails to acknowledge the reality of sin. The implication, of course, is that the
"reality of sin" makes a just social order impossible, a refrain which differs only in form from the atheistic
pessimism of a Nietzsche or a Freud and which in either key is music to the ears of the bourgeoisie. The secular
intelligentsia, in the meanwhile, distances itself more and more from any "metaphysics" --even a dialectical
metaphysics-- which might give aid and comfort to the clergy, and makes common cause with the "democratic"
bourgeoisie, anxious to present itself as a force for progress against the pretenses of prelate and peer alike. Both
apologetics leave the working classes ideologically disarmed. The secular intelligentsia, now agent of the
bourgeoisie's direct apologetic, leaves them without any metaphysical ground from which to ground their ethical
claims against the market order. The Augustinian reaction, preparing the ground for the indirect polemic, charges
that any attempt to access that ground in order to leverage such a critique represents an assault on divine freedom
and thus a negation of the divine love which alone can rescue humanity from its misery. The bourgeoisie laughs.
How does this analysis bear on the nineteenth and twentieth century thinkers who represent the fully developed
form of the political-theological critique of metaphysics? The renewal of dialectical thinking in the work of Hegel
represents first and foremost an attempt to answer Kant's critique of pure reason by arguing --as Thomas had more
than five centuries earlier-- that there is a form of reason higher than the Kantian Verstand, what Hegel called
Vernunft (Hegel 1830/1971) and what the scholastic tradition knew as the separatio (Aquinas. In Boethius De
Trinitate). This higher form of reason goes beyond a formal description of the laws relating phenomena to each
other --beyond even an analysis of underlying structures-- to grasp the organizing principle of things and thus the
reason for their existence. Hegel's rediscovery of this sort of reason (which, with an arrogance typical of the
modern world he took as an original discovery) enabled him to reconstruct rational metaphysics and, drawing on
the extraordinary experience of the democratic revolutions to enrich the cosmic teleology on which it had been
based, with a grasp of historical teleology and the ultimate meaningfulness of the human civilizational project. He
even begins a critique of the market order. The social basis of this philosophical achievement is the broad
democratic movement of which Hegel was a part, which in his time included but also transcended the bourgeoisie.
We should note, however, that Hegel answers only those aspects of the critique of metaphysics which we have
classed as spontaneous effects of the alienation generated by the market system --largely the epistemological critique
mounted by Kant on the basis of the contradictions within and between rationalism and empiricism. He seems
largely unaware of the radical Augustinian critique of metaphysics as an assault on divine freedom and human
responsibility, and while he distances himself from the more radical secularizers within the intelligentsia, he blithely
reproduces within a Protestant context what amounts to a moderate (Arab) Averroist position on the religious
question, apparently without even being aware of it. Religion is, for Hegel, simply an imaginative statement of
truths grasped more completely and more profoundly by philosophy and above all by his own system.
By comparison with Hegel, Marx and Engels represent both a step forward and a step backward. On the one
hand Marx is able to extend Hegel's critique of the marketplace and show that continued progress requires more
than bureaucratic regulation and amelioration of its contradictions. At the same time, Marx more than Hegel is
caught up in the "direct apologetic" of the bourgeoisie, which attempts to show the progressive character of the
market system. This is reflected not only in Marx's "hymn to capitalism" in the Manifesto (Marx 1848/1878) but
also in his critique of religion. The net result, as in the case of other progressive thinkers hegemonized by the direct
apologetic was to disarm the working class. Without an adequate metaphysical and cosmological foundation, Marx's
ethical claims against capitalism and on behalf of socialism become simply an expression of the interests of one
particular group --just another form of perspectival knowledge, just another assertion of a raw will to power
vulnerable to the Augustinians and the practitioners of the indirect apologetic.
Engels presents a more complex problem. His Dialectics of Nature (Engels 1880/1940) is nothing if not an
attempt to argue for the ultimately meaningfulness of the universe and thus to supply dialectical materialism with
a more adequate cosmological foundation --a foundation which is "metaphysical" from the standpoint of the political-
theological critique, if not from the standpoint of the authentic metaphysics of Aristotle and Thomas. Specifically,
he argues that matter has within itself a principle of motion which leads to the development of ever more complex
forms of organization. This motion is governed by the "three laws of the dialectic:"
1) Quantitative changes in material systems eventually develop to the point where they lead to qualitative
difference, and thus new forms of organization.
2) This process is driven by internal contradictions, such as those which Marx discovered between the forces and
relations of production but which, not confined to the social form of matter, characterize physical and biological
systems as well.
3) The contradictory character of material systems notwithstanding, the drive is always towards a higher
synthesis, the "negation of the negation" of which Hegel had spoken, so that not only human history but the
whole cosmic evolutionary process has a definite upward direction.
Engels' strategy, however, foundered on the emerging pessimism of nineteenth century science, something which
was reflected most immediately in the somber predictions of cosmic heat death after the discovery of the Second
Law of Thermodynamics but which, as we have noted, finds its fullest expression in the Nietzschean doctrine of
cosmic struggle and eternal return. The most he can offer is the hope of a continuous cycle of birth, death, and
rebirth. This growing cosmological pessimism was partly, of course, a spontaneous product of the deepening internal
contradictions and growing stagnation of the market system. But mathematical physics, which has been the carrier
of cosmological pessimism in the capitalist era, from the very beginning received no small aid and comfort from
the forces of the Augustinian reaction. As Pierre Duhem (Duhem 1909) pointed out at the beginning of this century,
it was the Augustinian critique of Aristotelian physics, motivated by a concern that this physics undermined divine
freedom and human responsibility, which set in motion the turn toward empirical investigation in the later Middle
Ages, a turn which was especially advanced in Franciscan circles, from Robert Grosseteste, who developed a kind
of early version of the Big-Bang theory, to William of Occam, whose principles still govern scientific investigation
of the more empiricist sort. If God is radically free to organize the universe in whatever way he wills, then the only
way to discover that organization, is through empirical research. The effect, of course, is to drain the universe itself
of any intrinsic meaning. Contemporary physical cosmology, with its willingness to violate the principle of sufficient
reason by positing an origin through "quantum fluctuations," and its extreme pessimism regarding the long-range
future of the universe, is simply an extension of this trend.
From here we must trace out the divergent paths taken by practitioners of the political-theological critique of
metaphysics during the nineteenth and twentieth century. We must distinguish, first of all, between those who come
to this critique out of the tradition of the Augustinian reaction and the indirect apologetic and those who come to
the critique from the standpoint of a dialectics hegemonized by the direct apologetic. The first group includes both
the religious existentialists and phenomenologists and militant atheists such as Nietzsche, Arendt, and Derrida, as
well as those who stand in between (i.e. Heidegger). In the case of the religious existentialists and phenomenologists
the social basis is more or less transparent. Thinkers such as Kierkegaard, Jaspers, Levinas, and Dussel represent
the interests of various clerical groups threatened by the secular intelligentsia, and especially the organized secular
intelligentsia represented by the Communist Party --but also deeply alienated by a capitalism which, they
increasingly understand, is the real agent of secularization. Their doctrines allow them to distance themselves from
the brutality of the market order but, as Lukacs pointed out, at the same time legitimate the market by arguing that
the alienation it generates is, in fact, an ineluctable characteristic of the human condition. They aim their main
ideological blows against the left, which persists in attempting to find at least limited and conditional meaning in
human history, and scrupulously avoid answering critiques from the Thomistic center, which they simply pretend
does not exist.
The atheistic variant of the critique has a similar social basis. From its origin the Augustinian tradition derived
from a dualism within the ruling classes between those who had become frustrated with the endless agon and sought
rest in God, and those who found the struggle still a source of joy. Nietzsche and Arendt represent the latter group:
the first a full blown apologist for imperialist conquest and war, the latter a theorist of the more temperate agon
of the democratic polity in which peer tests strength against peer. Nietzsche is the theorist of the imperialist upsurge
of the late nineteenth century, Arendt of the imperialist stabilization of the postwar period. These ideological trends
also, however, have an hegemonizing function. Even in periods of capitalist stabilization there remain those for
whom the progress of the market system represents a degradation of economic independence, power, and social
status. This is true for leaders of nonmarket, especially religious institutions, as well as most of the "humanistic"
as opposed to the technocratic intelligentsia and broad layers of the traditional petty bourgeoisie. These sectors
naturally gravitate towards the left and towards socialism which alone (among existing systems) can answer their
concerns for an ethical reflection on the allocation of resources. What an ideology such as Arendt's does is to disarm
these sectors, branding over-arching ethical claims as "ideological" or even "totalitarian" and to engage them in a
form of political activity which flatters their desire to function as "leaders" concerned with "values" in a restored
"public arena" while short-circuiting any critique of the underlying social structure. Indeed, Arendt's work, along
with Nietzsche, provides much the ideological infrastructure for the "institutionally based organizing" of Saul
Alinksy's Industrial Areas Foundation (Mansueto 1995). The appeal of and ideology like Arendt's is strengthened
by the fact that most of the religious and secular-humanistic intelligentsia is already powerfully determined by
irrationalist ideologies which undermine their confidence in the possibility of any rational public discourse on value.
In the case of religious leaders this usually means some form of Augustinianism. Those who reject authoritarian
legislation of morality grounded in divine revelation have little alternative but to accept a politics of democratic
negotiation. Much of the secular humanistic intelligentsia on the other hand is directly formed in a milieu where
"hermeneutic" theory influenced by Heidegger and Weber is already dominant.
Heidegger stands --sociobiographically and ideologically between these two groups. An ex-seminarian who more
or less consciously rejected Thomism for a conservative Augustinian variant of Catholicism at a time when Neo-
Thomism was ascendant (Caputo 1982), Heidegger's mature philosophy remains scrupulously ambiguous on the
religions question. On the one hand, "Being" for Heidegger remains finite in the sense of being radically dependent
on Dasein (human being) for its unconcealment. At the same time each historical order is itself a specific
unconcealment of Being which functions in his system in a way which is not too different from the Augustinian God.
Radical openness to God, for Heidegger is, however, not associated with a retirement from the agon, something
which he accepted only when forced to by the failure of his attempt to exercise ideological leadership over the Nazi
movement --to become, in effect the Nazi pope to Hitler's emperor, and later by the collapse of the whole Nazi
project.
Deconstructionist postmodernism of the sort represented by Derrida derives from a social base similar to that of
the other atheistic variants of the political-theological critique, but articulates the standpoint of those who choose
to retire from the agon, but without finding rest in God. In order to understand them we will need first to consider
the development of the political-theological critique of metaphysics within Marxism.
We have already noted that Marxism, from the very beginning, integrated elements of an authentic resurgence
of the dialectical tradition with elements which reflect both the spontaneous alienation generated by the market
system and the conscious apologetics of the bourgeoisie, which constitute a form of bourgeois hegemony over the
socialist movement. In tracing the subsequent development of Marxism, it is necessary to distinguish between the
three arenas in which Marxism has exercised influence: the Soviet bloc, the European (and to a far lesser extent
North American) workers movements, and the national liberation movements of the Third World. From the
standpoint of the analysis set forth here, it is hardly surprising that the Soviet tradition should have been more
friendly to Engels' dialectics of nature than the European. The attempt to find a cosmological ground for socialism
and indeed a pull towards metaphysics makes sense in the context of a successful revolutionary struggle which
provides a basis in experience for hope in the ultimate meaningfulness of the universe. This pull towards a
resurgence of metaphysics has come from widely diverse directions within the Soviet tradition, including both the
"tektology" of Bogdanov (Bogdanov 1928) and his followers, which pretended to be a "universal science of
organization" which replaced philosophy once and for all, but which, as a universal causal theory which claims to
explain the universe and order action, qualifies as metaphysical from the standpoint of the political-theological
critique, and the "dialectics" of Deborin and the "Menshevizing idealists," which represents a return, through Hegel,
to positions not unlike those of the Arab and Latin Averroists (Wetter 1958, Joravsky 1961, Dahm 1988).
We must note, however, that the pull back towards metaphysics was sharply resisted by elements within the
Communist Party, and that the ensuing conflict had a very specific political content. Both the "tektological" and
the dialectical trends were based in the Communist Academy and the Institute of Red Professors, institutional
predecessors of the Institute of Philosophy of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Lenin, in spite of his emphasis on
ideological discipline within the party, seemed willing to tolerate and even encourage a quasi-independent
philosophical leadership based in these institutions --and this in spite of the fact that Bogdanov had been Lenin's
chief competitor for leadership within the Bolshevik party during its early years, and Deborin a former Menshevik
who joined the Communist Party only late in life. After Lenin's death, however, both trends were attacked for,
among other things, conciliating religion, and for failing to "integrate theory and practice," or, as the Maoists would
later say, to "put politics in command." Under the leadership of Deborin's former student Mitin, "dialectical
materialism" was retheorized in such a way as to give priority to the principle of contradiction, rather than that of
"the negation of the negation," as had been the case for both Bogdanov and Deborin, and ideological leadership was
transferred to the Central Committee, with the Communist Academy and the Institute of Red Professors, now
merged into the Academy of Sciences, reduced to the status of a support staff.
At issue here is a concern on the part of the party apparatus that both the resurgent metaphysical tendencies
represented by Bogdanov and Deborin (which certainly differed very profoundly from each other), and the existence
of a philosophical authority independent of the party, would ultimately constrain their political autonomy. Here the
metaphysicians are cast in the role of a new clergy, with the party defending the autonomy of the lay sphere --and
in the process being hegemonized by the "direct apologetic" which leaves socialism's moral claims inadequately
grounded. This configuration was not, however, stable. The new theorization of dialectical materialism, in a way
which gives priority to the principle of contradiction, had the effect of making organization and meaning purely and
simply a product of power (here human rather than divine), so that the metaphysicians become the object of a
critique similar to that mounted by Nietzsche. Hegemonization by the direct apologetic almost instantaneously
becomes its opposite and the metaphysicians, unable to constitute themselves as an autonomous philosophical
authority, find themselves being persecuted by the secular political authorities for much the same reasons they had
been persecuted earlier by the Augustinian reaction --with the difference, of course, that now it is the sovereign
freedom of the General Secretary, rather than that of God, which they are accused of constraining. The long hand
of the bourgeoisie's ideological strategy, in other words, made the Communist Party actually (or at least made it
more nearly like) what cheap bourgeois propaganda had always claim it to be: just an expression of the raw will
to power, an attempt to claim for humanity, or even for one man, what rightly belonged only to God.
In Europe, on the other hand, the principle of contradiction never completely overshadowed the other principles
of the dialectic. Social democrats emphasized the slow, quantitative accumulation of forces in the hope that this
would eventually lead to qualitative change. A diverse cluster of thinkers including Lukacs and the Frankfort School
emphasized the search for wholeness and a higher synthesis --what Lukacs called "the standpoint of totality (Lukacs
1922/1971)." Only the Gramscian trend emphasized concrete political analysis, something which focused them on
the identification of political contradictions. What all these trends had in common, however, was a rejection of the
dialectics of nature and a tendency to transform Marxism into a purely sociological theory or into a philosophical
anthropology ungrounded by any metaphysics.
This is, once again, hardly surprising given the situation of the left in Europe. Cosmological pessimism retained
its hold over the defeated workers movements. But in Europe as in the Soviet Union, the conscious political
strategies of the bourgeoisie also played a role. Even as Stalin and Mitin moved to constrain the resurgence of
metaphysics in the Soviet Union, European Marxists rejected Soviet "diamat" and the dialectics of nature, which
remained an integral part of Soviet doctrine even after Mitin, in large part because it seemed to chain them to a
larger cosmohistorical process --and a central political authority legitimated by that process-- which constrained their
autonomy. Socialist humanism became simply a left-wing form of secular bourgeois individualism.
Eventually, of course, the European left recognized this. The response, however, was not a turn towards
metaphysics in search of a ground (and this in spite of the powerful opening by and to the Catholic Church during
the 1960s and 1970s) but rather the "Althusserian reaction" which, even more so than Mitin's diamat gave priority
to the principle of contradiction, and rejected the search for meaning and direction in even the limited arena of
human history in favor of concrete political analysis of "complex structured totalities." Marxism was reduced to
an analytic tool for the workers movement, which asked for an needed no ethical justification.
Deconstructionist postmodernism of the sort promoted by Derrida is simply the self-consciousness of this dynamic
on the part of a section of the secular intelligentsia --the section most jealous of its autonomy and least interested
in trading some of that autonomy in order to have an impact on the real world. Deconstructionists are, more
specifically, drawn from those sectors of the intelligentsia (i.e. people trained in the humanities and the theoretical
social sciences) who have been most subjected to the pressures of proletarianization in the postwar period, who
fought and lost a struggle against this dynamic in the 1960s, and who then cut a deal with the bourgeoisie, which
has agreed to provide them with comfortable academic sinecures provided they disarm, and provide specialized
ideological disarmament services for the bourgeoisie should any new movements of resistance arise.
Marxism in the Third World represents a more complex problem. Third World Marxism derives almost
uniformly from the Soviet tradition, which accepts the dialectics of nature but interprets it a way which gives
priority to the principle of contradiction --or from Maoism, which accentuates the importance of the principle of
contradiction even further, effectively depriving the other principles of practical import (Mao 1937/1971). But Third
World Marxism has almost always been more or less integrated to one or another degree with indigenous traditions.
In some cases the contribution of Marxism to the ideological mix has been rather small --little more than a vague
impetus towards socialism-- while in other cases it is Marxism rather than the indigenous tradition which has
dominated. Third World Marxism thus represents a complex and diverse phenomenon from the standpoint of the
analysis we have been developing. In order to understand it we must first consider the complex social basis of the
national liberation movements which have been the carriers of Marxism in the Third World, and then assess the role
of diverse Marxist trends and indigenous ideologies within these movements.
The national liberation movements have been regarded by the Leninist tradition as based in an alliance of the
national bourgeoisie (i.e. the bourgeoisie which produces, or wants to produce, domestically for domestic
consumption), the petty bourgeoisie, the peasantry, and an only incipient proletariat which must, however, struggle
for hegemony within the movement, something usually taken to mean the effective political and ideological
monopoly of the Communist Party. This analysis has much to commend it, notwithstanding the complex issues
surrounding the possibility of a real national bourgeoisie in a completed global capitalist system. What it neglects,
however is the complex character of the intelligentsia which organizes these movements, at least part of which has
strong connections to indigenous, precapitalist structures. At the lower echelons this means organic intellectuals
of the peasantry with strong ties to village community structures --e.g. the "catechists" of the popular church in
Latin America, who often come from families which have exercised leadership in indigenous, pre-Christian
religions, and their equivalents elsewhere. At the higher echelons it has meant intellectuals drawn from gentry,
noble, or even courtly circles who find themselves displaced and marginalized by the process of capitalist
development. There are, of course, also intellectuals drawn from the ranks of the national bourgeoisie, the petty
bourgeoisie, and the working class, as well as intermediate types, such as the Conservative semi-capitalist
latifundiaries of Nicaragua who, marginalized by the Somocista monopoly, produced a whole generation of
revolutionary intellectuals.
Regimes such as those led by the Indian National Congress and the various Arab, African, and Asian Nationalist
and Socialist movements are generally characterized as national bourgeois or petty bourgeois in character. Even
many regimes led by organizations with strong Marxist-Leninist tendencies, such as the Frente Sandinista de
Liberaci¢n Nacional (FSLN) never claimed to be proletarian in character, and were in fact quite clear in stating that
their immediate aims were not socialism but rather national development, while others, such as the Peoples'
Republic of China and Vietnam, have abandoned an earlier emphasis on socialist construction, now regarded as a
misguided "left" deviation, in favor of an emphasis on economic growth.
But let us look at this analysis in a slightly different light. What we have here are societies which began their
revolutionary history as basically capitalist in character, and which like other capitalist countries (including the
imperialist metropoles) ran into fundamental obstacles to growth and development. Lacking the geopolitical-military
positioning and resources to export these contradictions to a colonial periphery, the societies in question opt for the
only real road forward: mobilization of the people around a nationalist ideology with vaguely socialist overtones
designed to legitimate a state led process of industrialization. If one leaves out the specification that the societies
in question not only lacked a colonial periphery to which contradictions might be exported, but that they in fact
were the colonial periphery to which contradictions were being exported one might as well be talking about
Germany, Italy, Spain, or Portugal during the 1920s and 1930s as China or Tanzania in the 1960s. The parallel is
even more striking once one is willing to admit that the supposed national bourgeois and petty bourgeois tendencies
in the national liberation movements in fact don't look very bourgeois at all in the European or American sense.
These movements are not driven by small manufacturers or Main Street shopkeepers, but rather, as we suggested
above, by displaced elements of the precolonial, usually tributary ruling classes, especially those associated with
the state apparatus and by their associated intellectuals.
There is, of course, one important difference. Those who are resisting imperial domination, even in a very
inadequate way, can make moral claims which those who are engaging in imperial domination cannot. But even
here the lines are not so clearly drawn. Is Arab nationalism a struggle for liberation from European imperialism
or a movement of imperial restoration? It would be difficult to deny that there are elements of both at work in this
complex historical phenomenon.
It is within this context that the interaction between Marxism and indigenous traditions, and the struggle between
various tendencies within Marxism has played itself out. Where indigenous traditions have conserved strong
communitarian or archaic tendencies (e.g in Africa) or have other elements which support the development of human
social capacities (e.g. the Ashokan Buddhism of Burma) there has been a tendency towards investment in education,
health care, and other activities which promote the development of human capacities, even while the level of
development of the productive forces has been low. Where the indigenous traditions are marked by a strong element
of tributary-imperial restorationism, on the other hand, as in the Arab countries and the Islamic realm generally,
the tendency has been to use state revenue to support a large military establishment, something which drains
resources away from civilization building activities.. We should note, further, that the relationship of Third
World revolutionary elites to their own indigenous traditions looks suspiciously like that of conservative European
intellectuals over the course of the past two centuries to their traditions. The result is a cluster of ideologies which
look a great deal like French traditionalism or German objective idealism in Afro-Asian or indigenista attire. Is
Vasconcelos with his intuitivist ideology of the Raza Cosmica really so far from Schelling? Is Nyere's appeal to
African tradition as a solution to the contradictions of capitalism really so different from de Maistre's appeal to the
French? Romantic nationalism, in the Third World as in Europe, allows elites to mobilize the masses in service to
a nationalist project, with more or less authentic popular content, without creating an objective standard by which
the leadership of the elites might be judged, something which would follow immediately from the constitution of
an authentic metaphysics which abstracted the intelligible content of the popular traditions and derived from that
content definite moral principles.
More profound engagement between Marxism in the Soviet mold and indigenous traditions has generally involved
two marked changes on the Marxist side. On the one hand, there has generally been real skepticism about the
possibility of national capitalist development and the existence of an authentically nationalist bourgeoisie. Second,
the militant secularism of the Soviet party has been softened to make room for a mass-mobilizing "linking ideology"
(Lancaster 1988) which draws on the authentic if prephilosophical wisdom of the peasant communities as an
ideological reserve for the national liberation movements, without allowing the formation of a real synthesis between
dialectics and indigenous wisdom in terms of which the party and the national liberation movement might be held
accountable.
This dynamic is most apparent in the case of liberation theology, which for the most part eschews the Thomistic
dialectics characteristic of earlier Catholic theology in favor of a largely biblicist social ethics. The appeal here is
the authority of revelation even if the scriptures are interpreted according to what Cardinal Ratzinger and the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith call a "rationalist hermeneutic," e.g. some sort of sociological
reductionism. Liberation theology for the most part has remained within the framework of a "left-wing
Augustinianism" which grounds the preferential option for the poor (not, mind you, the working classes) not on their
creative participation in the life of God but rather precisely in their suffering and their poverty which through an
intellectual sleight of hand is confused with the voluntary poverty of the religious and taken as a sign of the ordering
of the will to God. The struggle within the Catholic Church over liberation theology is really just a struggle within
its Augustinian wing between these leftist forces and more traditional Augustinians who insist on an actual scrutiny
of the will before rendering judgement on the spiritual state of the individual. It is, in other words, Ratzinger's
Bonaventure against Boff's Angelo Clareno. Both parties reject the ultimate meaningfulness of the human
civilizational project. Thomas is nowhere to be found.
What liberation theology does is to link the peasant communities, and working class communities which conserve
a memory of the village community, and thus a spontaneous ability to understand the universe as ultimately
meaningful and ordered to God, to the national liberation movements, via their organic intellectuals, e.g. catechists
and other subaltern "pastoral agents." At the same time, the biblicist ethics and the underlying Augustinian theology
actually subverts the spontaneous teleology of the indigenous wisdoms in favor of a doctrine which makes meaning
and value a function of power: ultimately that of God, and immediately that of the revolutionary commandantes,
who play a role in the scheme not unlike that of the Emperor Frederick in radical Joachite doctrine. The people and
their pastoral agents don't notice that this is happening. Their most pressing demands are, after all, being
prosecuted and their "faith" is being respected. But when the commandantes abandon the people, either after a
successful revolution or after a negotiated settlement (Petras 1997) the people are ideologically disarmed. Nothing
in the liberationist political culture, in either its secular or religious dimensions, allows them to ground specifically
anticapitalist demands --the only demands which will really improve their situation in the long run.
Maoism reflects a fundamentally different configuration of forces within the national liberation movements. As
we suggested earlier, at the philosophical level Maoism represents the reduction of dialectical materialism to the
principle of contradiction --i.e. the claim that every system generates internal contradictions which provide the
unique and permanent basis for development toward higher levels of organization. Both the role of the quantitative
accumulation of forces and the goal of achieving a higher synthesis are eclipsed by a focus on identifying and
"playing" the principal contradiction during any period or conjunction. In terms of political analysis, this focus
allowed Mao and his followers to perceive clearly one of the principal dangers of the whole process of socialist
construction: the contradiction between socialist property forms and the residues of commodity production, which
reproduce bourgeois ideology and consumerist values and can lead to a capitalist restoration --something which did
indeed eventually take place in the Soviet Union, even if one is skeptical about the claim that the restoration
occurred under Khrushchev rather than Gorbachev. At the same time, the Maoist focus on contradiction tended to
obscure the real achievements of the Soviet system in the areas of technological, economic, political, artistic,
scientific, and philosophical development --i.e. the enormous contribution of the Soviet system to the human
civilizational project, which is after all the whole point of socialism. More broadly, the Maoist focus on the
principle of contradiction carries even further than Soviet diamat the transformation of Marxism in a Nietzschean
direction --into a theory in which power grounds meaning rather than meaning power.
Maoism has, based on its analysis of the "principal contradiction" of the imperialist system, argued that the
progressive bloc should be based on alliance between not only the working class and the peasantry, but also the
national bourgeoisie, which produces domestically for domestic consumption in the countries of the Third World.
This alliance was reflected in the generous terms of compensation for "patriotic" businessmen whose enterprises
were nationalized early in the revolution, in the strategy of delinking from the global market coupled with radical
land reform and rural demand-led industrialization during the peak years of Maoist dominance, and in the turn
towards privatization within the context of a still carefully regulated and protected market economy in the past 20
years. At the same time Maoism, especially in its leftist forms, has been ruthless in its attacks against the tradition
of the old Mandarin intelligentsia, mobilizing a series of campaigns against Confucianism and "self-cultivation"
which led eventually to the Cultural Revolution. The bearers of these attacks on the intelligentsia were, however,
themselves intellectuals --generally students whose prospects for intellectual employment were poor under the rather
spartan Chinese regime-- acting in conjunction with the Red Army, with its poor peasant base, against the principal
organization of the secular intelligentsia, i.e. the Communist Party. As late as the 1970s it would have been easy
to regard the political significance of this movement as more or less transparent: an "ultra-left" movement of
marginalized intellectuals and poor peasants frustrated by the ability of the socialist system to meet their demands,
and determined to break the alliance with the national bourgeoisie and accelerate the pace of socialist transformation.
Their defeat could, similarly, have been read as the triumph of national bourgeois elements within the anti-
imperialist bloc. This analysis, however, fails to comprehend the real political valence of the Cultural Revolution.
By liquidating the older gentry intelligentsia, especially its partially modernized section which was organized in the
Communist Party apparatus, the Gang of Four and their allies removed or at least weakened one of the principal
obstacles to marketization in China. They acted, in other words, as agents of the national bourgeoisie in its struggle
against what Amin calls the "statist" (i.e. civilization building) tendency which gained the upper hand in the USSR.
In this regard they are not unlike the deconstructionist postmodernists of Europe and North America, who often
embraced Maoism during their youth. This is, again, hardly surprising given the Nietzschean transformation of
Marxism worked by Mitin and Mao.
What does this tell us about the position of our friend Samir Amin? Samir Amin has historically identified himself
with the Maoist trend, but his Maoism is heterodox at best, and he can neither be credited with the Maoists' insight
into the dynamics of capitalist restoration in the Soviet Union nor blamed for the Cultural Revolution. But the
trajectory of his own political-ideological development closely tracks what we have identified as the developing
agenda of Maoism. In the 1970s he was an apologist for the Khmer Rouge; by the early 1980s he was defending
Maoism in terms of its contributions to economic growth --i.e. in distinctively "national bourgeois" terms. In later
1980s he took up the critique of metaphysics, an indirect blow at the religious left, which by that point was
practically the only left which remained, in favor of a universal culture based on the struggles of the poor and
oppressed; now, at the turn of the new millennium he tells us that Moslems and Jews (and by extension everyone
else as well) must learn from Christian Europe the radical laicism which renders religious metaphysics inert and
accept what he himself acknowledges to be the fully bourgeois culture of secularism.
It can only be said that for those of us who have benefited from Amin's often incisive economic analysis, and
who respect his lifetime of service to socialism, this turn is very disappointing. Has the prophet of delinking has
become the ideological agent of Coca Cola Corporation and the international bourgeoisie? Samir would do well to
heed a Maoist adage too often forgotten: to consult with and learn from the people. And the people that Samir
purports to defend are not, for the most part laicists or secularists. While maintaining a healthy skepticism about
the political agendas of various clerical groupings, they remain resolutely convinced of the ultimate meaningfulness
of the universe. It is this conviction and this conviction alone which grounds their judgement against imperialism
and against the bourgeoisie, and which sustains them in their struggle for a new order which will make it possible
for them, or at least their children or their children's children, to develop more fully their capacity to participate
in the movement of matter toward ever more complex forms of organization, a movement grounded in the infinitely
attractive power of God. They are, in short members of the Party of Meaning and of Hope, which is the only true
Party of Justice. Samir, alas, has defected to the faction of nihilism and despair.
A note, finally, is in order regarding that new wave of movements in the Third World which, having rejected
Marxism and indeed all global ideologies and "totalizing metanarratives" are often, therefore, classified as
postmodern. I am thinking, especially of movements such as the Ejercito Zapatista de Liberaci¢n Nacional. Here
a sharp distinction must be made between the communities which constitute the base of the movement and the
political and ideological leadership, which seems, in the case of the Zapatistas, to be embodied in one person. If
the indigenous and peasant communities of the Lacondan rain forest have, perhaps, grown weary of revolutionary
commandantes and ideological vanguards which in the long run only betray them, and have thus chosen to distance
themselves from the dialectical tradition, this is understandable. If they taken the further step of deciding to find
their own voice and join the global dialogue in search for principles of meaning and value in terms of which the
universe can be understood and action ordered, this is to be applauded. But the decision of a group of peasants to
assert their autonomy in the struggle for liberation is not to be confused with the rejection of dialectics by secular
intellectuals, for whom dialectics has always been the only road to wisdom. The Mayan communities of Chiapas
have their own traditions on which to draw in charting a course for the future; Marcos does not. It would be a
shame if his fashionable disillusionment with Marxism and other forms of "metaphysics" undermined the ability of
the people of Chiapas to tap into the dialectical tradition when the time comes to confront the challenges of the
marketplace, and to build the alliances with other communities around the planet which this confrontation will
require.
3.0 For a New Metaphysics
Our analysis suggests that metaphysics plays a powerfully progressive role within the workers movement. It is
rational metaphysics, product of dialectical reasoning, which allows us to rise to the transcendental principles of
value which alone can ground our critique of the market order --and our proposal for an alternative allocation of
resources. It also suggests that we need to see the international workers movement --and its relationship to other
progressive forces-- in a very different light. We have already made it clear that we do not believe dialectics and
the metaphysics in which it terminates is the only wisdom. On the contrary, peasant communities around the planet
have conserved their own wisdom, expressed in the imaginative form of religious mythologies and prophetic oracles,
and this wisdom has served and will continue to serve as a catalyst for revolutionary action directed at the creation
of a social order which permits the full development of human capacities along the diverse lines envisioned by
humanity's many different cultural traditions.
By comparison with these peasant communities, the international workers movement both enjoys a supreme
advantage and suffers a profound defect. On the one hand, the workers movement is the carrier of a tradition
uniquely adapted to do battle with the market system, something peasant communities have only recently had to
confront. This tradition includes the whole of dialectics --both the logical-cosmological-metaphysical dialectics of
Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, and the historical dialectics of Hegel, Marx, and Engels. In this sense the workers
movement needs to trace its history (and its struggle with the bourgeoisie for hegemony within the democratic
movements) back to the guilds and the mendicant orders and not merely to the trade unionism and socialism of the
nineteenth century. It is this capacity to confront the marketplace, and not the technological superiority of tools with
which it works or the fact that it has "nothing to lose but its chains" which constitutes the basis for the leading role
of the workers' movement within the larger progressive block. At the same time, the workers movement has been
subject to the alienating impact of market forces far more intensely for a far longer period than have the peasant
communities. This is reflected in the more profound influence of bourgeois ideology. The Marxist rejection of
religion and metaphysics is only the first phase of this influence. Once the ordering to transcendental principles of
value has been undermined, socialism becomes simply a way for workers to increase their consumption levels. The
degeneration into "economistic" social democracy and the option for alliance with imperialism follow like
clockwork. At the same time, the crisis of metaphysics undermines the intelligentsia's ordering to the Common
Good and transforms it into just another (relatively privileged) interest group within civil society, anxious to defend
its privileges and consumption interests against encroachments by both the state and the marketplace. Thus
deconstructionism ...
Metaphysics does not make the workers movement of the advanced industrial centers into an adversary of the
peasant and worker movements of the periphery. Rather, an authentic metaphysics binds these movements together
in a common ordering to the Beautiful, the True, the Good, and the One, an ordering which is expressed in a
common commitment to the full development of human capacities along the diverse pathways made possible by the
incredible variety of human experience. It is when the metaphysical ground for the ethical claims of socialism is
undermined that the workers movement of the Center turns towards economism and succumbs to the imperialist
temptation. Metaphysics does not make the national liberation movements into agencies of tributary restoration.
It is, on the contrary, the rejection of metaphysics which opens the way for irrationalist nationalisms which mobilize
the masses for national development but inevitably lose sight of the long range goal of comprehensive human
development. It is not metaphysics which has made the communist movement, in both the center and the periphery,
occasionally degenerate into totalitarian violence, but rather the rejection of metaphysics which, under the sign of
"contradiction," reduces politics to a war of all against all.
The rebirth of metaphysics is the condition for the rebirth of the international workers movement and of the unity
between that movement and peasant communities around the world which are carriers of their own unique wisdoms,
and which will reject any movement which is founded on a rejection of the principles to which those wisdoms, as
much as any rational metaphysics, are ordered. Let us turn from the darkness and towards the light, knowing that
while our path is crooked, and that growth takes place only through struggle and contradiction, it always and only
leads upward, towards an ever fuller development of human capacities in a society where, on the other side of the
doubt and despair induced by the market order and fomented by the bourgeoisie and its ideological agents, we will
once again find the universe transparent to its ground and our hearts ordered to the single Good in which they can
alone find rest.
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Postmodernity as the Climax of Modernity:
Horizons of the Cultural Future
Boris Goubman
The final years of the twentieth century have become a time of radical
reconsideration of the legacy of modernity. This reconsideration began in the
1950s, though it was not until the end of the 1960s or the beginning of the 1970s
that there was a real sense of a break with the past and that a pattern of
postmodernist cultural reflection definitively set in. Philosophers and historians
of culture are intensively debating the question of whether the coming of this
period marked the end of modernity or its climax, opening the horizons of the
completely unknown future. In any event, the change of the pattern of cultural
reflection looks very important and deserves special attention for it evidently
reveals the coming of the new period in history. The understanding of specific
features of the postmodern situation and the pattern of cultural reflection
belonging to it should contribute to the comprehension of the contemporary stage
of history and the future cultural prospects of mankind.
To understand the contemporary cultural situation means to penetrate in the
spectrum of similarities and differences arising from its comparison with the
classical stage of modernity. The Enlightenment started with a radical break with
the traditional society and its cultural stereotypes. Reverence before the past and
tradition, accepted symbols and the established order of things sanctioned by
myth and religion constitutes the image of traditional society. On the contrary,
critical reflection becomes the main force of development for modernity: all
forms of social practice are reconsidered in the light of reason that should give
a definite evaluation of their effectiveness (Habermas 1989: 27). The triumph
of formal rationality and of a calculative approach to the universe desacralizes
the world and leads to the disappearance of naive symbolism. As a result,
science allied with technology is considered as the main tool for comprehension
and conquest of the world. In contrast to the medieval period, modernity
generates a total divorce between the spheres of Truth, Beauty, and the Good.
Philosophers of the modern period proposed different theories regarding their
relations, all subject to scientific images of the world which pretended to
universality, thus revealing their power function.
Relying on the ideas of M. Weber, F. Nietzsche, and the theorists of the
Frankfurt School, M. Foucault revealed the mechanisms of the disciplinary
society in modern Europe. He gave a description of the tools of power and
knowledge rationalizing all the cells of European society: the penitentiary
system, social control, medical care, education , demography, politics etc. The
enforcement of power and knowledge in different segments of society, according
to Foucault, is the destiny of Western culture. The idea of pastoral power was
the first step in this direction, and then state power gradually established itself
as the main factor of political control. Totalization was accompanied by
individualization in the modern period (Foucault 1995: 85). The police state used
all the resources of power-knowledge on all levels of human life actively
forming the social body. Science was a true ally of power, an active tool of the
conquest of the world. However, the regimentation of social life did not abolish
the rights and liberties of an individual: on the contrary, they increased together
with the expansion of rational control.
Modernity brought with itself the globalization of social relations . This was
the natural outcome of the development of capitalist society. Such changes
produced considerable impact on the human understanding of time and space.
Prior to the new age, time was perceived as rigidly related to space. With the
invention of a mechanical watch, time became divorced from space, and the
standards of its perception were universally accepted as conditions of
measurement of all social events. The spatial dimension also obtained the quality
of universality. Thus, time and space lost their concreteness and became "pure"
forms of perception of the world.
These changes in space-time perception could be explained in terms of their
liberation from the local context due to the global social relations on the basis
of commodity-monetary exchange. Money became the universal symbolic tool
of exchange of qualitatively different commodities and services produced and
offered in different societies and cultures. In the works of K. Marx and G.
Simmel, the symbolic function of money was portrayed as specific for the
universal exchange process born in the period of modernity. Simultaneously, the
liberation of social relations from the local context resulted in the confirmation
of the authority of expert systems instead of the institutions of the traditional
society (Giddens 1995: 27). Trust in the impersonal expert systems and
monetary symbols is one of the characteristic features of modernity.
Modernity brought with itself such important institutions as the national state,
the use of industry for the sake of the conquest of nature, the capitalist
economy, and military power based on new technologies. Undermining the
foundations of the traditional society and its culture, the Western world gave
birth to the wave of modernization, spread rational standards of truth and value
born within its boundaries over the planet. Western civilization organized on the
national state basis produced new forms of universalism implanting them in the
context of other cultures.
The culture of modernity was inspired by the spirit of innovation, the
permanent desire to create and to arrive at previously unknown results in all
possible areas of culture from science to artistic activity. This search for the new
demands a particular type of cultural reflection as a basis for the self-identity of
Western civilization in the period of modernity.
Ideas of humanism, rationalism, and essentialist pictures of historical progress
crowned by the global utopias of the future constituted the basis of the pattern
of self-identity that prevailed in Western civilization during the modern period.
Modernity was nourished by the Renaissance ideal of the value of a human
person capable to choose his or her own destiny. At the same time, reason
aspired to understand the structure of the universe in order to find the basis for
the creation of the rational social order. Society, based on individual autonomy
and strict rational regulation of every segment of the social whole, inspired by
the horizon of constant self-renovation, needed the image of a progressive
development of mankind led by victorious reason. No wonder that such
historical theories are related to universal utopias portraying a certain ideal
society.
The epoch of the radical separation from the basic foundations of modernity
is often called "postmodern" or considered as a climax of the previous period
of the new age history. A. Giddens argues that it is a mere radicalization of
modernity. "Post-modernism, if it means anything, is best kept to refer to styles
or movements within literature, painting, the plastic arts, and architecture. It
concerns aspects of aesthetic reflection upon the nature of modernity" (Giddens
1995: 45). Giddens is willing to acknowledge the emergence of the new pattern
of reflection, but his point is that this is not an argument in favor of the
definition of the contemporary epoch as "postmodern" and radically opposite to
modernity. He believes that the change of the cultural consciousness is much
less essential than the preservation of the institutions of modernity, despite their
possible transformation. The contemporary situation was born on the basis of the
radicalization of modernity: "Its most conspicuous features - the dissolution of
evolutionism, the disappearance of historical teleology, the recognition of
thoroughgoing , constitutive reflexivity, together with the evaporating of the
privileged position of the West - move us into a new and disturbing universe of
experience " (Giddens 1995: 52-53). Giddens is rightly pointing out that the
contemporary epoch stems from the modernization process with its global effect
making all cultures related to the destiny of the Western world.
On the opposite pole, theorists interpreting the contemporary situation in the
postmodern key emphasize the signs of its break with the foundations of classical
modernity. G. Vattimo expresses this point of view in the following way: "The
"post-" in the term "postmodern" indicates in fact a taking leave of modernity.
In its search to free itself from the logic of development inherent in modernity
- namely the idea of critical "overcoming" directed toward a new foundation-
post-modernity seeks exactly what Nietzsche and Heidegger seek in their own
peculiar "critical" relationship with Western thought" (Vattimo 1991: 80).
Emphasizing the point of similarity of his own approach with the logic of
Nietzsche and Heidegger, the Italian philosopher proposes to look at modernity
from a certain distance. He is for the radical break with the legacy of
modernity. J.-F. Lyotard is far more reserved in this respect than his Italian
colleague: the prefix "post", in his opinion, leads rather to the critical
reconsideration of the classical stage of the culture of modernity, to the first step
in this direction. "You can see that when it is understood in this way, the
"post-" of "postmodern" does not signify a movement of comeback, flashback,
or feedback, that is, not a movement of repetition but a procedure in "ana-": a
procedure of analysis, anamnesis, anagogy, and anamorphosis that elaborates an
"initial forgetting" (Lyotard 1992: 80). Obviously, this initial "forgetting" is the
first step from the border line between the classical stage and its opposite, which
is inconceivable without preserving the heritage of the past and its refutation. In
this version, even the most radical break is accompanied by a moment of
memory about the object to be overcome.
Representatives of the postmodern trend of thought clearly understand that in
the process of separation with modernity it is impossible to break in a radical
way with Enlightenment institutions. For Lyotard, "the question of
postmodernity is also, or first of all, a question of expression of thought: in art,
literature, philosophy, politics" (Lyotard 1992: 79). Thus, he speaks primarily
about a transformation in thought patterns capable of changing our image of the
world community and even to promoting the development of new global
institutions. Both Lyotard and Giddens are in complete agreement regarding the
importance of the emerging new pattern of reflection, but the French theorist
considers it a sufficient ground to speak about the new epoch, while his British
colleague understands this period as high modernity.
The postmodern situation in culture is the outcome of the reflexive
understanding of the new age history, and in this sense it is simultaneously a
phenomenon of high modernity and its critical self-refutation. Given that any
society with its specific culture is endowed with the particular pattern of
self-reflection and self-description, one could rightly come to the conclusion that
postmodernity should be viewed as an epoch representing the climax of
modernity and its self-refutation. The impulse of modernization is far from being
totally exhausted, and it is a kind of paradox that the postmodern condition born
in the highly developed Western world is a fruit of this very process having a
certain catalyzing effect for its future destiny. Since modernity still exhibits
creative potential, one could rightly expect a certain synthesis of its legacy with
the thought paradigm born in the postmodern period.
With the coming of postmodernity, the new pattern of reflection established
itself as an efficient tool of criticism of the foundations of the classical rationalist
thought. Its affinity with the Romantic type of reflection is beyond any doubt.
R. Rorty, a leading theorist of postmodernism, acknowledges the impact of
Romantic reflection on this trend of thought: "The important philosophers of our
own century are those who have tried to follow through on the Romantic poets
by breaking with Plato and seeing freedom as the recognition of contingency"
(Rorty 1992: 25-26). The revival of Romantic ironic reflection, according to
Rorty, looks as a symptom of the general crisis of metaphysical thought. The
new postmetaphysical epoch means the end of the old pattern of philosophizing,
the transition to the free ironic game with historical realities and life problems.
The change of time-space perception is also in the focus of attention of the
theorists of postmodernity. Time, according to F. Jameson, appears today as
bound together with the perception of speed. In the final years of our century,
time is given through the description of the objects found in the world. This
very kind of time perception revealed in the works of M. Proust becomes
prevailing today. Jameson comes to the conclusion that in the postmodern period
" time has become space anyhow" (Jameson 1994: 21). Thus, the spatial
dimension suppresses temporality, the stream of time. This is a homogeneous
space of progressive urban expansion and consumer society (Jameson 1994: 21).
Unlike traditional society, the events happening today are not anchored to a
certain place and determined by the rhythms of nature. If time is strictly related
to speed, then one should acknowledge its relations with global and cultural
space. Subjective time perception is expressed in spatial images that are different
not only from traditional society, but also from liberal capitalism.
The postmodern ironist subjects to doubt the basic thought patterns of
classical modernity: he is totally possessed by the spirit of aesthetic play with
tradition. The postmodern epoch is a period of self-negation of classical
humanistic consciousness and its transition to another form. Although the
followers of postmodernism are not speaking about the value of the person, the
imperative of ironic reflection constantly reminds us about its persistent presence
as a shadow of their arguments. The ironic oblivion of the rationalist platform
goes hand in hand with the attack on all metanarrative theories attempting to
create global views of reality (Lyotard 1993: 18). Such an approach logically
produces the refutation of essentialist theories of historical progress together
with global utopias of the future.
As a pattern of cultural reflection, postmodernism is obviously a fruit of the
Western world. In their negation of the foundations of the modern paradigm of
thought, those who follow the postmodern line of argument are not able to
proclaim their own views to be the symbol of the real downfall of modernity
standards: were they to do this, they would be accused of restoring a
metanarrative discourse crowned by an eschatological finale. Besides, such a
picture would be too simple a vision of history, unable to take into account the
impulse of modernization still nourished by the West. The utopia of the end of
history, of the final triumph of the liberal program of social development is alien
to the foundations of the postmodernist consciousness. Appealing to the example
of the postcommunist stage of development in Eastern Europe, J. Baudrillard
expresses his deep suspicions about the coming "end of history". "Now that the
triumphal illusion of the West annexing the East --for the greater glory of
democracy, of course-- has faded, we can sense that it might be the other way
around, with the East gobbling up the West by blackmailing it with poverty and
human rights. The East's great weapon is no longer H-bomb, but Chernobyl"
(Baudrillard 1994: 39). But if the end of history is illusory, one has no reason
to speak about the fading away of the tide of economic, scientific, technological,
and political modernization, about the transition of mankind to the postmodern
type of development due to the spreading influence of the reflexive pattern
created by Western elite intellectuals at the end of our century. The
postmodernist reflexive activity reveals new facets of the modernization
consciousness showing that its conceptual basis should be reconsidered anew in
the perspective offered by the contemporary West.
Undermining many stereotypes of modern consciousness, postmodernist
reflection, almost in spite of itself, is stimulating the search for a positive
perspective. Ironic reflection, damaging all metanarrative constructions and
global utopias of the future, indirectly poses questions concerning the
competence of reason that should help create the conditions for a dialogue
between different cultures. Given the crisis of classical linear views of historical
progress, the dialogue of different civilizations in space and time becomes a very
serious theoretical problem. Finally, in the light of the coming new millennium,
there remains the question of the universal values significant for different
cultures.
The followers of the postmodernist pattern of reflection should not avoid the
question of the competence of reason, creating a wide spectrum of different
interpretations of the world. They should be particularly interested in the
relations between language and rational structures of thought, as well as between
language and sensory and emotional human relations to the world. It is possible
to go along the path of ironic negation of any type of a metanarrative
reconciliation of radically opposed nonidentical poles and their assimilation into
a monologue, but anyway the real point is to be attentive to the voice of the
other, his rational strategy or type of critical reflection. In this case, the problem
of the rational structure of the dialogical thought becomes of primary
importance. The negation inherent in the style of thought of postmodern epoch,
R. Bernstein rightly points out, should bear in itself the opportunity for a
positive assertion. "We must recognize that there cannot be any critique without
some sort of affirmation, that we cannot avoid asking the question, critique in
the name of what ?" (Bernstein 1995: 318). Contemporary philosophical critique
necessarily develops itself in the space of rupture and reconciliation.
Unlike the classical linear progressive vision of history, contemporary
interpretations are based on the idea of the variety of civilizations engaged in an
active dialogue in diachronic and synchronic perspectives. One-sided views
focused on Europe as the center of the historical universe make way for more
balanced visions that appeared not only under the influence of discoveries in
ethnology and cultural anthropology, but also due to the growing multi-
culturalism of the Western world. History is no longer portrayed as a straight
highway, but should be viewed as a tree with multiple boughs stretching in
different directions.
Since the modernization process still has as its well the old center of the
Western world, there arises a question regarding the applicability of the
universals, values, and life patterns formed within the boundaries of the West
to the context of other cultures. From the point of view of a follower of
postmodernist philosophy, it is a false problem due to the incompatibility of
different cultures. However, it is a really important task to find a basis for
mutual understanding and agreement for various cultures in order to solve urgent
contemporary problems. The values of nature, life, human gender, personality
and its freedom, justice, democracy, culture with its universal dimensions of
Truth, Beauty, and Good still constitute the eternal field of contemporary
discussions. Their different visions and interpretations correlative to various life
worlds stimulate debates which often have political significance and impact on
the course of historical events. The issue of justice, for example, attracts the
attention of scholars trying to define its universal aspects and at the same time
to find a way for contextualizing of this concept in the multiplicity of cultures.
Stimulating an attentive attitude to the otherness, the postmodernist reflection
leads to the contextualization of firmly established universals in the process of
cultural dialogue. These universals, however, do not loose their intersubjective
significance (White 1992: 147).
The situation at the end of the century clearly reveals the need of the positive
solution of high modernity problems in the light of the postmodernist reflexive
pattern created by the intellectuals of the developed Western countries. New,
previously unknown fruits can be expected as the result of such a positive
synthesis: pasting together seemingly heterogeneous "critical ontologies" may
contribute to the creation of the new visions of culture and history, to the
reconsideration on this basis of the universals of Western consciousness having
direct influence on social and political life and to the birth of synthetic forms of
culture and of social institutions that accompany the modernization process.
Conservative and postmodernist reaction will still accompany modernization in
the nearest future. The consequences of modernity are definitely revealed by
postmodernist consciousness catalyzing modernization, giving it a qualitatively
new dimension.
REFERENCES
Baudrillard, Jean. The Illusion of the End. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994.
Bernstein, Richard. The New Constellation. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1995.
Foucault, Michel. Politics. Philosophy. Culture. New York: Routledge, 1988.
Giddens, Anthony. The Consequences of Modernity. Cambridge: Polity
Press,1995.
Habermas, Jurgen. Der philosophische Diskurs der Moderne. Frankfurt am
Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1989.
Jameson, Fredric. The Seeds of Time. New York: Columbia University Press,
1994.
Lyotard, Jean-Francois. The Postmodern Explained. Minneapolis: University of
Minneapolis Press, 1993.
Rorty, Richard. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1992.
Vattimo, Gianni. The End of Modernity. Oxford: Polity Press, 1991.
White, Stephen. Political Theory and Postmodernism. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1992.
Dialectic, Cosmos, and Society
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Call for Papers
Over the course of the past several issues, the Editors of Dialectic, Cosmos, and Society have advanced a number
of theses which taken together constitute a comprehensive analysis of the current situation and the general outlines
of a philosophical system. While our contributors have often written on themes which bear in some way on one
or more of these theses, we have as yet had very little focused response to our claims. We are therefore asking
the members of our International Advisory Board and inviting our readers to write a focused response to one or
more of the following theses. The responses will be published in a special issue of Dialectic, Cosmos, and Society
which will appear in late 1999 or early 2000. Proposals or papers should be submitted to the above paper and/or
email addresses, preferably in electronic form --ASCII/Plain Text format preferred. Queries and requests for further
information are also welcome.
Philosophical Theses
1) The human intellect is capable of knowing objects outside itself, beginning with sensation and proceeding by
abstraction, comprehending the underlying structures and ultimately the organizing principle of the physical,
biological, and social universe. This act of abstraction is made possible by what Aristotle called the Agent
Intellect but which can now be identified as human society itself. Participation in increasingly complex structures
makes possible ever higher degrees of abstraction. The alienation engendered by exploitative social structures,
on the other hand, tends to distort the activity of the intellect and give rise to ideological deformations.
2) The universe is a complex self-organizing system which develops towards ever higher degrees of organization,
a development which terminates only in God.
3) Ascending through, not around, the special sciences, and based on an understanding of the universe as an
organized, meaningful system, the intellect can rise to a first principle which is infinite, necessary, perfect, and
thus divine, in terms of which alone the universe can be explained and the transcendental properties of which -
-Beauty, Truth, Goodness, and Integrity-- provide an objective criterion by which the judgements of value can
be made.
4) These transcendental principles of value ground a natural law ethics in which the development of higher
degrees of organization generally, and of human capacities specifically, constitutes the general moral imperative.
This imperative in turn provides the unique basis on which the market allocation of resources can be contested
and alternative methods of allocating resources grounded.
We have also advanced the following sociological and political theses:
5) Human civilization constitutes a real participation in the cosmohistorical evolutionary process, contributing
to the development of increasingly complex forms of organization. The progress of human civilization depends
on (but is not driven by) increasing productive capacities and thus on technological development. This
development is regulated and sometimes constrained by social structures which determine the allocation of
resources to various activities. But this is not the whole story; it misses the fundamental teleological ordering of
human social activity. Social progress is driven by the attractive power of the Good, something which is
mediated by human knowledge, whether that knowledge is theoretical or practical and technical. Social
revolutions (i.e fundamental, structural transformations of human society) occur when the existing social structure
becomes an obstacle to the realization of higher goods which are both technologically possible and knowable
given the current level of intellectual development and the degree of ideological deformation due to both to the
spontaneous effects of exploitative social structures and the conscious ideological strategies of exploiting classes.
6) The foundational steps in the human civilizational project were taken during the period between roughly 7000
and 3000 B.C.E., a period in which communitarian social structures and gender equality predominated and the
dominant ideology focused human energy on grasping and realizing the latent potential of the ecosystem. This
progress was cut short by the advent of the warlord state which made conquest and exploitation its principal
strategy for economic development, transferring resources from activities which promote human development
towards warfare and luxury consumption and engendering ideologies which identify creativity with conquest and
sacrifice. The great salvation religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Judaism, Islam, and
Christianity among others) represent various responses to this development, from otherworldly flight through
accommodation to revolutionary political resistance.
7) In a market system people experience society as a system of quantities (prices) or only externally related atoms
(individuals). Soon they begin to think of the universe as a whole in much the same way. In either case they
lack the basis in experience for grasping the universe as an organized, meaningful system. Just as the market
knows only appearances (commodities) and not things in themselves (use-values) people gradually lose confidence
in the ability of the senses and the intellect to confer knowledge of things as they are. This makes a rational
ascent to first principles --and thus an adequate metaphysical foundation for ethics-- impossible. The result is
to leave the working classes ideologically disarmed in face of the agnosticism of the marketplace.
8) The planet's first true market society was ancient Greece, which gave rise to a plethora of skeptical ideologies.
The dialectical tradition emerged out of the efforts of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle to reground ethics and thus
to rescue the polis from the predations of the emerging bourgeoisie and reorder it to the Common Good. While
their own political projects failed, the philosophical tradition they established gradually merged with Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam and, in the systems of Ibn Sina, Ibn Rushd, Maimonides, and Thomas Aquinas formed
the most advanced ideological expression of the resurgent civilizing energy of the European middle ages, which
found its expression in the first significant increases in agrarian productivity, the first significant use of animal,
wind, and water power, in the democratic struggles of the urban communes, and in the creation of the university.
This, and not any supposed revolutionary activity of the bourgeoisie, is the true source of the industrial,
democratic, and scientific revolutions.
9) Gradually, probably as a result of the increased commerce resulting from the Crusades and especially the
European conquest of the Americas, of Africa, and eventually of much of Asia, the market system replaced
feudalism and the bourgeoisie gained hegemony over the democratic movements. In order to secure this
hegemony the bourgeoisie drew on the spontaneous ideologies of the market place, rationalism, empiricism, and
eventually critical idealism, to undermine the epistemological and metaphysical foundations of the dialectical
tradition and to mount a dual polemic against prelate and peer, a polemic which seemed progressive in the light
of the irrationalist Augustinian reaction into which the religious institutions were falling. Secular intellectuals
more concerned with defending their autonomy from clerical control than with promoting a society ordered to
the Common Good, and Augustinian clerics more concerned with defending their privileges vis-a-vis the
emerging secular intelligentsia than with actually doing the will of God are co-responsible for the fact that the
bourgeoisie was able to gain hegemony over the democratic movements at the expense of both the working
classes and the Church.
10) As long as economic progress continued, this strategy worked. But beginning in the middle of the nineteenth
century, as economic contradictions mounted and the emerging workers movement threatened the leadership of
the bourgeoisie, a new approach became necessary. Adopting what Lukacs calls an "indirect apologetic" the
bourgeoisie stopped arguing that capitalism meant progress and began arguing instead that social justice and social
progress were illusions --at best the fantasies of those too weak to confront the reality of a universe without
meaning (a theme which dominated physical cosmology after the middle of the nineteenth century, with its
prophecies of imminent cosmic heat death and its catastrophic theories of cosmogenesis) and at worst a mask for
a totalitarian will to power. The epistemological critique of metaphysics was thus supplemented by a political-
theological critique.
11) The direct apologetic prevails in periods of capitalist stabilization and economic progress, the indirect
apologetic in times of crisis, but both are always at work --and both have significantly deformed dialectical
materialism, the historic ideology of the international workers movement. Marx seems more influenced by the
direct apologetic, mistaking a correct critique of Augustinian Christianity for a general critique of religion.
Engels was more influenced by the indirect apologetic, his effort in the Dialectics of Nature to argue for the
ultimate meaningfulness of the universe and thus provide Marx's ethical claims with a cosmological if not a
metaphysical ground ultimately yielding to the cosmological pessimism promoted by bourgeois "science." In
either case, while dialectical materialism has generally upheld a realistic epistemology and the objectivity of
value, its concessions to cosmological pessimism (more apparent in European than in Soviet Marxism) and its
recalcitrant atheism mark the enduring hegemony of the bourgeoisie in the workers movement which remains
ideologically disarmed.
12) The principal ideological task for progressive forces in the present period is to reground the ethical principles
on the basis of which we criticize the market order and propose an alternative system for allocating resources -
-one which gives priority to the development of human social capacities. This in turn requires an affirmation of
epistemological realism, cosmic teleology, and the existence of a transcendental first principle --i.e. God in terms
alone of which the universe can be explained and action rightly ordered. While particular philosophical systems
represent partial and always inadequate attempts to grasp the truth, affirmation of these metaphilosophical claims
is in fact necessary in order to ground a consistently progressive politics in the present period. By the same token
we must undertake a vigorous struggle against those tendencies which reject these claims --including religious
irrationalism, neoliberalism and postmodernism in all its forms.