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omegaphilosophia · 20 days ago

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The Philosophy of Relational Ontology

Relational ontology is a branch of metaphysics that focuses on the idea that entities exist and gain their meaning through their relationships with other entities, rather than being independent and self-contained. It challenges the traditional, substance-based ontology, which views entities as possessing intrinsic properties that define them in isolation. In relational ontology, the essence or identity of things is shaped by the web of relations in which they are embedded.

1. Core Concepts of Relational Ontology

Being-in-Relation: The foundational idea of relational ontology is that entities are defined by their relations rather than their inherent qualities. In this view, no entity exists in isolation; rather, all beings are interconnected, and their existence is shaped by their relationships with others. This contrasts with the traditional substance ontology, which sees entities as having intrinsic, unchanging properties.

Relational vs. Substantial Ontology: Substantial ontology posits that things exist independently and their identity is determined by their internal characteristics. Relational ontology, by contrast, holds that the essence of a thing arises from its relations to other things, making these relations central to the understanding of existence.

2. Historical and Philosophical Roots

Process Philosophy: A key influence on relational ontology comes from process philosophy, especially the work of Alfred North Whitehead. In process philosophy, reality is understood as a series of interconnected events and processes, with entities constantly in flux, shaped by their interactions with others. Whitehead’s concept of actual occasions and the interrelatedness of events is foundational to relational thinking.

Phenomenology and Existentialism: Philosophers like Martin Heidegger and Maurice Merleau-Ponty also emphasize the relational nature of existence. Heidegger’s concept of being-with-others (Mitsein) highlights how human existence is fundamentally relational, and Merleau-Ponty explores how perception and embodiment are shaped by our relationships with the world and others.

Eastern Philosophy: Relational ontology is often compared to ideas from Buddhism and Taoism, which emphasize the interconnectedness of all things. The Buddhist notion of dependent origination (pratītyasamutpāda) states that all phenomena arise in dependence on causes and conditions, denying the existence of independently existing entities.

3. Relational Ontology in Social and Political Philosophy

Identity and Social Relations: In social philosophy, relational ontology is applied to understand how personal and social identity is formed through relations. Feminist philosophy and social constructivism often draw on relational ontology to critique individualistic and essentialist understandings of identity, emphasizing that identity is shaped by social, cultural, and historical contexts.

Interpersonal Ethics: Relational ontology informs ethical discussions about the self and others, suggesting that ethical behavior arises not from abstract principles, but from the recognition of our interdependent existence. Philosophers like Emmanuel Levinas argue that ethics is grounded in the relationship between self and the other, where the face of the other demands a response that acknowledges their humanity.

Communitarianism: In political theory, relational ontology is aligned with communitarianism, which critiques liberal individualism. Communitarians argue that individuals are deeply embedded in social and communal relationships, and these relationships are essential for understanding justice, rights, and responsibilities.

4. Relational Ontology in Science and Environmental Ethics

Quantum Physics and Relational Ontology: Some philosophers argue that modern physics, particularly quantum mechanics, supports a relational view of reality. Quantum entanglement, for instance, suggests that particles do not have definite properties until they interact with other particles, supporting the idea that entities are defined by their relations.

Ecological and Environmental Ethics: Relational ontology also plays a significant role in environmental philosophy. It challenges the anthropocentric view that humans are separate from nature, emphasizing instead that humans are part of a larger ecological web. Deep ecology and other environmental movements adopt relational thinking to advocate for the intrinsic value of ecosystems and the interdependence of all life forms.

5. Critiques and Challenges

Objectivity and Relational Ontology: Critics of relational ontology question whether it can account for objective knowledge. If entities are only understood through their relations, it may be difficult to establish an objective foundation for truth. Relativism is a potential problem if all meaning is seen as dependent on particular relationships and contexts.

The Problem of Individual Autonomy: Another critique focuses on the implications for individual autonomy. If entities, including persons, are fully constituted by their relationships, critics argue that this could undermine the idea of personal freedom and responsibility. Relational autonomy attempts to address this by emphasizing that autonomy itself is relational, shaped by social interactions and dependencies.

6. Relational Ontology in Contemporary Philosophy

Poststructuralism and Deconstruction: In poststructuralism, relational ontology resonates with philosophers like Jacques Derrida, who emphasize the instability of meaning and the play of differences. Deconstruction challenges the notion of fixed identities and emphasizes the relational nature of language, meaning, and existence.

New Materialism: In new materialist thought, relational ontology influences discussions about the agency of matter and the interconnectedness of human and non-human entities. Philosophers like Karen Barad draw on quantum physics to argue that matter itself is relational, challenging the traditional divide between subjects and objects.

7. Relational Ontology in Religion and Theology

Theology and Relationality: In theology, relational ontology has been influential in discussions of the nature of God and divine action. Process theology builds on the relational ideas of process philosophy to argue that God is not a distant, unchanging entity, but is dynamically involved in the unfolding of the world through relationships with creation.

Interfaith Dialogue and Relational Being: Relational ontology also plays a role in interfaith dialogue, where understanding religious differences requires an appreciation of the relational context in which beliefs and practices develop.

Relational ontology challenges the traditional notion of independent entities with fixed identities, proposing instead that existence and meaning are fundamentally shaped by relationships. This approach has profound implications across philosophy, from metaphysics and ethics to politics, science, and theology. By focusing on interconnectedness, relational ontology offers a framework for understanding the complexity of identity, ethics, and existence in a world defined by interaction and interdependence.

#philosophy #epistemology #knowledge #learning #education #chatgpt #ontology #metaphysics #ethics #psychology #Relational Ontology #Metaphysics of Relations #Process Philosophy #Interconnectedness #Social Ontology #Environmental Ethics #Relational Identity #Quantum Relationality

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cosmicanger · 1 year ago

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DENI PONTY

Lovers on a Sofa.

Oil on canvas. 460x610 mm; 18 1/8x24 inches. Signed and dated in oil, lower left recto. 1992.

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learabeau · 11 months ago

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Liste culturelle 2023

JANVIER

LIVRES

Le mur invisible de Marlen Haushofer

Histoire du Protestantisme de Jean Baudérot

FILMS

Godland de Hlynur Palmason

Dune de Denis Villeneuve

FEVRIER

SERIES

Tuca and Bertie de Lisa Hanawalt

Demon Slayer de Koyoharu Gotoge

FILMS

Le Retour des hirondelles de Li Ruijun

Wasabi de Gérald Krawczyk

All of Them Witches de Mona Panchal

LIVRES

Chaque geste compte. Manifeste contre l'impuissance publique de Dominique Bourg et Johann Chapoutot

La cabane magique. Panique à Pompéi de Mary Pope Osborne

Assassination classroom de Yusei Matsui

MARS

SERIES

Hollywood de Ryan Murphy

Supernatural de Eric Kripke

LIVRE

L’existentialisme est un humanisme de Jean-Paul Sartre

FILM

Fight Club de David Fincher

AVRIL

LIVRES

Peter Pan de Barrie

Informal beauty. The photograhs of Paul Nash de Simon Grant

Perceptions de Nathalie Man

La société des personnes vulnérables. Leçons féministes d’une crise. de Najat Vallaud-Belkacem et Sandra Laugier

Les hommes sont absents de Nathalie Man

FILMS

Bullet Train de David Leitch

Atonement de Joe Wright

Porco Rosso de Hayao Miyazaki

BlacKKKlansman de Spike Lee

Hokusai de Hajime Hashimoto

MAI

FILMS

It follows de David Robert Mitchell

Midsommar de Ari Aster

Little women de Greta Gerwig

Guardians of the Galaxy. Vol.3 de James Gunn

LIVRES

Le chat noir et autres histoires de Edgar Allan Poe

Déclaration des droits de la femme et du citoyen de Olympe de Gouges

JUIN

LIVRES

Émotions, souffrance, délivrance de Doctor Tuan Anh Tran

Capital: Vientiane de Guez, Pichelin and Troub's

Something to hide. Exploration des messages cachés du rock de Diego Gil et Johann Guyot

FILMS

Air de Ben Affleck

Eating our way to extinction de Kate Winslet

Susan, jour après jour de Stéphane Manchematin et Serge Steyer

Palm Springs de Marx Barbakow

Mike and Dave need wedding dates de Jake Szymanski

Clueless de Amy Heckerling

Spider-Man : Across the Spider-Verse de Joaquim dos Santos, Kemp Powers et Justin K.Thompson

JUILLET

LIVRES

Bathory. La comtesse maudite d'Anne-Perrine Couet

Une rainette en automne (et plus…) de Linnea Sterte

FILMS

Prisoners de Denis Villeneuve

Tarzan de Kevin Lima et Chris Buck

Turning Red de Domee Shi

AOUT

FILMS

Mercenaire de Sacha Wolff

Behind every good man de Nikolai Ursin

The Fast and the Furious de Rob Cohen

Born behind stones de Carina Freire

Lands that Rises and Descends de Moona Pennanen

LIVRE

Des âmes et des saisons : Psycho-écologie de Boris Cyrulnik

SEPTEMBRE

FILMS

Body Samples de Astrid de la Chapelle

Galb'Echaouf d'Abdessamad El Montassir

La ciudad de los fotógrafos de Sebastian Moreno

Happiest Season de Clea DuVall

En communauté de Camille Octobre Laperche

Barbie de Greta Gerwig

Encanto de Byron Howard et Jared Bush

Mon amour, mon ami d'Adriano Valerio

Bottoms d'Emma Seligman

LIVRES

Lettres à un jeune poète de Rainer Maria Rilke

Ich de Martina Weinhart

Poèmes à la nuit de Rainer Maria Rilke

SERIE

Downtown Abbey d'après l'oeuvre de Julian Fellowes

OCTOBRE

FILMS

Downtown Abbey de Michael Engler

Downtown Abbey : Une nouvelle ère de Simon Curtis

Sur le rocher de Sandrine Rouxel

Dangereuse Alliance d'Andrew Fleming

Folie douce, folie dure de Marine Laclotte

The Craft : Les Nouvelles sorcières de Zoe Lister-Jones

Trois mille ans à t'attendre de George Miller

The Crow d'Alex Proyas

Le jardin des planches de Monique Barrière

On vous parle du Chili : Ce que disait Allende de Chris Marker et Miguel Littin

LIVRES

L’œil et l'Esprit de Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Vivian Maier en toute discrétion de Françoise Perron

Des histoires vraies de Sophie Calle

Henri Cartier-Bresson des collections Photo Poche et introduction écrite par Jean Clair

Palm Springs 1960 - Robert Doisneau par Jean-Paul Dubois

Vivian Maier Self-Portraits de John Maloof et Elizabeth Avedon

NOVEMBRE

FILMS

Crimson Peak de Guillermo del Toro

Astérix et Obélix. Mission Cléopâtre d'Alain Chabat

Le Garçon et le Héron d'Hayao Miyazaki

Hamama & Caluna d'Andreas Muggli

Journal de Sébastien Laudenbach

In Paris Parks de Shirley Clarke

LIVRES

Ces hommes qui m'expliquent la vie de Rebecca Solnit

Pulp Poiesis : Écriture(s) en suspens(ion) d'Alizée Pichot

Enfant de la nuit polaire de Julia Nikitina

DECEMBRE

LIVRES

Nouveaux poèmes suivi de Requiem par Rainer Maria Rilke

Pampilles de Florentine Rey

Notes sur la mélodie des choses et autres textes de Rainer Maria Rilke

FILMS

Willy's Wonderland de Kevin Lewis

Family Switch de Joseph McGinty Nichol

Skyscraper de Shirley Clarke

Le monde après nous de Sam Esmail

Sensitive Content de Narges Kalhor

Snow Job : the Media Hyteria of Aids de Barbara Hammer

They Are Lost to Vision Altogether de Tom Kalin

Autour d'eux, la nuit de Vassili Schémann

Blight de John Smith

Tér d'Istvan Szabo

Chicken Run : La Menace nuggets de Sam Fell

SERIE

Lupin de George Kay et François Uzan

#movies #films #books #tv series

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nicklloydnow · 2 years ago

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“But intellectual life is flourishing in the cafés, institutes and academies, as refugees forge community in exile. And at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, one of France’s most prestigious research universities, Alexandre Kojève has taken over Alexandre Koyré’s seminar on The Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) by G W F Hegel. Between 1933 and 1939, Raymond Aron, Georges Bataille, André Breton, Gaston Fessard, Jacques Lacan, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Éric Weil, Hannah Arendt, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Frantz Fanon, Raymond Queneau, Emmanuel Levinas all come to hear his lectures. A collection of the most renowned thinkers of the day, who would come to lay the intellectual foundations for 20th-century philosophy, political thought, literature, criticism, psychology and history. It is said that Kojève’s lectures were so intricate, so deft, that Arendt accused him of plagiarising. Bataille fell asleep. Sartre couldn’t even remember being there.

(…)

The short answer is that Kojève made Hegel accessible by bringing to the surface one of the essential elements of his work: desire. Kojève did not deny he was providing a reading of Hegel that transformed the text. His interpretation has been described as ‘creative’, ‘outrageous’ and ‘violent’. The question Kojève placed at the centre of his lectures was: ‘What is the Hegelian person?’ And he answered this question through a discussion of human desire by centring a brief section in the Phenomenology titled ‘Independence and Dependence of Self-consciousness: Lordship and Bondage’, which is popularly rendered as ‘the master/slave dialectic’. And by centring this nine-page section of a 640-page work, Kojève offered readers a way to grasp an otherwise elusive text.

Poetic in its opacity, perplexing in its terminology, Hegel’s work offers an understanding of the evolution of human consciousness where the finite mind can become a vehicle for the Absolute. But what does that mean? Kojève took the lofty prose of Hegel down from the heavens and placed it in human hands, offering a translation: this is a book about human desire and self-consciousness. Or, as the philosopher Robert Pippin writes:

Kojève, who basically inflates this chapter to a free-standing, full-blown philosophical anthropology, made this point by claiming that for Hegel the distinctness of human desire is that it can take as its object something no other animal desire does: another’s desire.

What was Kojève’s reading of the master/slave dialectic?

In Kojève’s reading, human beings are defined by their desire for recognition, and it is a desire that can be satisfied only by another person who is one’s equal. On this reading, Kojève unfolds a multi-step process: two people meet, there is a death-match, a contest of the wills between them, and whoever is willing to risk their life triumphs over the other, they become the master, the other becomes a slave, but the master is unable to satisfy his desire, because they’re recognised only by a slave, someone who is not their equal. And through the slave’s work to satisfy the master’s needs, coupled with the recognition of the master, ultimately the slave gains power.

What is essential for Kojève is that one risk their life for something that is not essential. The one who shrinks before the other in fear of death becomes the slave. The one willing to die – to face the inevitability of their own non-existence – becomes the master. In other words, desire is an exertion of the will over an other’s desire. Or, as the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan would come to say: ‘Desire is the desire of the Other’s desire.’ It is not an attempt to possess the other person physically, but to force the other person in that moment of contest to make the other give, to bend their will, in order to achieve superiority. And in this moment, Kojève writes: ‘Man will risk his biological life to satisfy his nonbiological Desire.’ In order to gain recognition in this sense, one must be willing to risk everything – including their life. It is a struggle for mastery of the self.

Instead of Hegel’s roundabout of self-consciousness that exists in itself and for itself but always and only in relation to another, Kojève gives us: self-consciousness is the I that desires, and desire implies and presupposes a self-consciousness. Thinking about the relation between the finite mind and Absolute knowledge is opaque, but desire is human. People know what it feels like to desire, to want, to crave to be seen, to feel understood. Desire is the hunger one feels to fill the absence inside themselves. Or, as Kojève put it: ‘Desire is the presence of absence.’

(…)

Perhaps most importantly, what Kojève understood was the extent to which we humans desire to exercise some control over how other people see us differently from the ways in which we see ourselves. However tenuous or certain our sense of self-identity may seem, it is our very sense of self that we must risk when we appear in the world before others – our identity, desire, fear and shame. There is no guarantee that we will be seen in the way we want to be seen, and feeling misrecognised hurts when it happens, because it wounds our sense of self. But this risk is vital – it is part of what makes us human, it is part of our humanity. And whereas Kojève’s reading drives toward an ideal of social equality that affirms one’s preexisting sense of self when confronted by an other, for Hegel, one must take the other’s perception of the self – whatever it may be – back into their own self-consciousness. In other words, whereas for Hegel freedom rested upon the ability to preserve difference, for Kojève it rested upon the ability to preserve one’s own identity at the expense of difference.

In bringing the lofty language of Hegel down from the heavens, Kojève offered readers a secular understanding of human action, which requires each and every individual to reckon with the inevitability of their own death, their own undoing. And in doing so he shifted the focus toward the individual as the locus of social change, where history unfolds toward an aristocratic society of equals, where all difference is destroyed. Influenced by Karl Marx’s account of class struggle as the engine of history, and Martin Heidegger’s understanding of being-toward-death, Kojève’s reading of the master/slave dialectic presents another form of contest between oppressor and oppressed, where mastery over another in order to master oneself becomes the means to equality, and ultimately justice within society. Kojève adopted the master/slave dialectic in order to develop what Michael Roth called ‘a schema for organising change over time’, to think about the movement of history. And the master/slave dialectic unfolds at the level of the individual and the level of society, where the self gains recognition as a desiring subject through the endless battle for recognition that is appearing in the world with others, and the level of society where all past historical movements will be judged within a framework of right, which is the end of history.

This has been in part the legacy of Kojève. Influenced by Kojève’s reading of the master/slave dialectic, Sartre argued in Being and Nothingness (1943) that man’s freedom is found in negation. In The Second Sex (1949), Beauvoir turned to Kojève to think about women’s oppression in relation to man and the need for intersubjective recognition. Lacan’s ‘mirror-stage’ follows Kojève’s reading of Hegel to understand the role of desire as a lack in the formation of human subjectivity. Bataille turned to Kojève to argue that one could experience full self-sovereignty only in a moment of pure negation. For Foucault, it led to the belief that there is no desire free from power-relations – his central theme. And for Fukuyama, this historical contest of wills evolving along a linear temporal plane toward an equal and just society has become the much-mocked ‘end of history’ thesis – the idea that Western liberal democracy has evolved as the final form of human government in the postwar world. The postwar world Kojève himself helped to shape, before his untimely death in 1968. Ultimately, Fukuyama’s thesis captures the difference between Hegel and Kojève’s Hegel: for Kojève, the ideal of universal equality won through an endless battle for recognition was always an individualist notion that required domination when confronted by otherness. But for Hegel, human freedom could be won only through collectivity by embracing the opacity of otherness that we are constantly confronted with in ourselves, and in the world with others. It is an acceptance of that fact that self-mastery will always remain an illusion.”

#kojeve #kojève #alexandre kojève #philosophy #leo strauss #francis fukuyama #stalin #hegel #hegelian #sartre #bataille

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stoptellinglieslois · 5 months ago

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Art by Deni Ponty

#Lovers on a sofa 1992

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toutmontbeliard-com · 8 months ago

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Le 19, CRAC Montbéliard : programme d'avril 2024

Voici le programme du 19, Centre Régional d’Art contemporain, de Montbéliard d'avril 2024 : Cum Panis : le pain et ses écologies Une exposition collective, du 10 février 2024 au 5 mai 2024 au 19, Crac Co-curatrices : Grace Gloria Denis et Adeline Lépine Avec des œuvres de : Amanny Ahmad, Broudou Magazine, Grace Gloria Denis, Ymane Fakhir, Sameer Farooq, Anna Bella Geiger, Alison Knowles, Valeria Mata, Gordon Matta-Clark, Julia Morlot, Claude Ponti, Lúcia Prancha, Marie Preston, Lexie Smith et Louise Johansson Waite. Avec des objets issus des collections du Musée de Grenoble et du Musée de la Résistance et de la Déportation de Besançon. Une exposition collective rassemblant des pratiques artistiques internationales à propos du pain, de ses écologies et de ses effets sociaux, politiques, économiques, culturels et esthétiques. Dernière visite commentée de l'exposition le dimanche 7 avril à 15h30. Entrée libre. Dans le cadre de Pays d’Agglomération de Montbéliard Capitale Française de la Culture 2024. Avec le soutien du Centre Culturel Canadien et de l'Institut Français à Tunis. ADOS - ATELIER POV : mercredi 10 avril 2024 de 14h30 à 16h30 Tu sais pitcher une anecdote en 3 minutes et tu te sens l’âme d’un·e critique d’art ? À l’image d’un vrai journaliste, viens découvrir le pain et son histoire sous ses aspects même les plus extravagants et donne-nous TON point de vue sur l’exposition Cum Panis. Atelier d’analyse critique à partir de 14 ans. Entrée libre. CLUB DU LEVAIN : samedis 13 et 27 avril 2024 à partir de 16h00 Participez à la constitution d’une bibliothèque de levain. Déposez, échangez, nourrissez, dégustez les levains et mettez la main à la pâte lors de rencontres organisées deux samedis par mois avec les artistes et médiateurs de l’exposition. Basés sur la libre initiative, l’échange et le partage d’expériences, ces temps conviviaux sont ouverts à toutes et tous, petits et grands, boulangers aguerris ou amateurs. Samedi 13 avril 2024 : l'artiste de l'exposition Sameer Farooq proposera une présentation de son travail et de ses recherches autour des pains plats dans les pays utilisant des fours tandoor. Entrée libre. VISITE EN FAMILLE : samedi 6 avril 2024 de 16h00 à 17h30 C’est une catastrophe ! Ne pouvant résister à sa gourmandise, Tadoramour a dévoré la baguette magique d’Isée. Pour remédier à ce problème aidons Tadoramour à préparer une nouvelle baguette en retrouvant sa recette oubliée. Résolvons ensemble les énigmes du 19 et retrouvons les ingrédients essentiels à la préparation d’une bonne baguette magique ! Gratuit, réservation au 03 81 94 13 47 ou [email protected] STAGE VACANCES : Bienvenue au Pain Palace ! Du mardi 16 avril 2024 au vendredi 19 avril 2024 , 14h00-17h00 Pendant les vacances, c’est toi l’artiste ! À l’occasion de sa nouvelle exposition consacrée au pain, le 19 ouvre son tout nouveau restaurant, le Pain Palace ! Pour cela, nous avons besoin de ton aide. De la création de son enseigne à l’élaboration d’un menu hautement créatif nous t’invitons à rejoindre cette nouvelle aventure et convier ta famille pour une performance culinaire originale en fin de semaine. Atelier arts plastiques pour les 7-12 ans, tarif 30 €. Sur réservation au 03 81 94 13 47 ou [email protected]. BUS TOUR TRAC* spécial familles : samedi 20 avril 2024 de 14h00 à 18h00 Le Bus Tour TRAC* (Tiny réseau d’art contemporain de l’axe Belfort-Montbéliard) reprend du service avec un circuit spécial familles : visites d’expositions, rencontre d’artiste et propositions ludiques adaptées au jeune public au 19, Crac, à l’École d'art de Belfort et à l'Espace multimédia Gantner (visites ludiques et jeu de piste - à partir de 6 ans), le tout en transport en commun. Réservation par mail à [email protected] ou en cliquant ici. Départ 13h00 de Besançon et retour à 19h00 ou départ 14h00 de Montbéliard et retour à 18hOO. infos > 03 81 94 13 47 ou [email protected] ou www.le19crac.com Read the full article

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zololacan · 9 months ago

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Library 280

Pierre Bourdieu et al., Richard Nice - The Logic of Practice-Stanford University Press (1992)

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36 Critique of theoretical reason

principle, in the different areas of practice. Sometimes the anthropologist

presents as the objective principle of practice that �hich is obtained and

constructed through the work of objectification, projecting into reality

what only exists on paper; sometimes he interprets actions which, like rites

and myths, aim to act on the natural world and the social world, as if

they were operations designed to interpret them. 5 Here too, the so-called

objective relation to the object, which implies distance and externality,

comes into contradiction in a quite practical way with the practical

relationship which it has to deny in order to constitute itself and by the

same token to constitute the objective representation of practice :

'His vision [that of a simple participant in a rite] is circumscribed by

his occupancy of a particular position, or even of a set of situationally

conflicting positions, both in the persisting structure of his society, and

also in the role structure of the given ritual. Moreover, the participant is

likely to be governed in his actions by a number of interests, purposes,

and sentiments, dependent upon his specific position, which impair his

understanding of the total situation. An even more serious obstacle against

his achieving objectivity is the fact that he tends to regard as axiomatic

and primary the ideals, values, and norms that are overtly expressed or

symbolized in the ritual. . . . What is meaningless for an actor playing a

specific role may well be highly significant for an observer and analyst of

the total system' (V. Turner 1967: 67).

Only by means of a break with the theoretical vision, which is experienced

as a break with ordinary vision, can the observer take account, in his

description of ritual practice, of the fact of participation (and consequently

of his own separation from this) ; only a critical awareness of the limits

implied in the conditions of production of theory can enable him to include

in the complete theory of ritual practice properties as essential to it as the

partial, self-interested character of practical knowledge or the discrepancy

between the practically experienced reasons and the 'objective' reasons of

practice. But the triumphaliJill of theoretical reason is paid for in its

inability, from the very beg�nning, to move beyond simple recording of

the duality of the paths of knowledge, the path of appearances and the

path of truth, doxa and episteme, common sense and science, and its

incapacity to win for science the truth of what science is constructed

against.

Projecting into the perception of the social world the unthought content

inherent in his position in that world, that is, the monopoly of 'thought'

which he is granted de facto by the social division of labour and which

leads him to identify the work of thought with an effort of expression and

verbalization in speech or writing - 'thought and expression are constituted

simultaneously', said Merleau-Ponty - the 'thinker' betrays his secret

conviction that action is fully performed only when it is understood,

interpreted, expressed, by identifying the implicit with the unthought and

by denying the status of authentic thought to the tacit and practical thought

that is inherent in all 'sensible' action.6 Language spontaneously becomes

the accomplice of this hermeneutic philosophy which leads one to conceive

Objectification objectified 37

action as something to be deciphered, when it leads one to say, for example,

that a gesture or ritual act expresses something, rather than saying, quite

simply, that it is 'sensible' (sense) or, as in English, that it 'makes' sense.

No doubt because they know and recognize no other thought than the

thought of the 'thinker', and cannot grant human dignity without granting

what seems to be constitutive of that dignity, anthropologists have never

known how to rescue the people they were studying from the barbarism

of pre-logic except by identifying them with the most prestigious of their

colleagues - logicians or philosophers (I am thinking of the famous title,

'The primitive as philosopher'). As Hocart (1970, 32) puts it, 'Long ago

[man] ceased merely to live and started to think how he lived; he ceased

merely to feel life : he conceived it. Out of all the phenomena contributing

to life he formed a concept of life, fertility, prosperity, and vitality. ' Claude

Levi-Strauss does just the same when he confers on myth the task of

resolving logical problems, of expressing, mediating and masking social

contradictions - mainly in some earlier analyses, such 'La geste d' Asdiwal'

(1958) - or when he makes it one of the sites where, like Reason in history

according to Hegel, the universal Mind thinks itself, 7 thereby offering for

observation 'the universal laws which govern the unconscious activities of

the mind' (1951).

The indeterminacy surrounding the relationship between the observer's

viewpoint and that of the agents is reflected in the indeterminacy of the

relationship between the constructs (diagrams or discourses) that the

observer produces to account for practices, and these practices themselves.

This uncertainty is intensified by the interferences of the native discourse

aimed at expressing or regulating practice - customary rules, official

theories, sayings, proverbs, etc. - and by the effects of the mode of thought

that is expressed in it. Simply by leaving untouched the question of the

principle of production of the regularities that he records and giving free

rein to the 'mythopoeic' power of language, which, as Wittgenstein pointed

out, constantly slips from the substantive to the substance, objectivist

discourse tends to constitute the model constructed to account for practices

as a power really capable of determining them. Reifying abstractions (in

sentences like 'culture determines the age of weaning'), it treats its

. ' 1 " " ' 1 1 " d f d constructions - cu ture , structures , socia c asses or mo es 0 pro uc-

tion' - as realities endowed with a social efficacy. Alternatively, giving

concepts the power to act in history as the words that designate them act

in the sentences of historical narrative, it personifies collectives and makes

them subjects responsible for historical actions (in sentences like 'the

bourgeoisie thinks that . . . ' or 'the working class refuses to accept

. . . ') . 8 And, when the question cannot be avoided, it preserves appearances

by resorting to systematically ambiguous notions, as linguists say of

sentences whose representative content varies systematically with the

context of use.

Thus the notion of the rule which can refer indifferently to the regularity

immanent in practices (a statistical correlation, for ex amp-Ie ), the model

constructed by science to account for it, or the norm consciously posited

38 Critique of theoretical reason

and respected by the agents, allows a fictitious reconciliation of mutually

contradictory theories of action. I am thinking, of course, of Chomsky,

who (in different contexts) describes grammatical rules as instruments of

description of language ; as systems of norms of which speakers have a

certain knowledge; and finally as neuro-physiological mechanisms ('A

person who knows a language has represented in his brain some very

abstract system of underlying structures along with an abstract system of

rules that determine, by free iteration, an infinite range of sound-meaning

correspondences' ( 1 967)). But it is also instructive to re-read a paragraph

from the preface to the second edition of The Elementary Structures of

Kinship, in which one may assume that particular care has been taken with

the vocabulary of norms, models or rules, since the passage deals with the

distinction between 'preferential systems' and 'prescriptive systems' :

'Conversely, a system which recommends marriage with the mother's

brother's daughter may be called prescriptive even if the rule is seldom

observed, since it says what must be done. The question of how far and

in what proportion the members of a given society respect the norm is

very interesting, but a different question to that of where this society

should properly be placed in a typology. It is sufficient to acknowledge

the likelihood that awareness of the rule inflects choices ever so little in

the prescribed directions, and that the percentage of conventional marriages

is higher than would be the case if marriages "jere made at random, to be

able to recognize what might be called a maH'ilateral operator at work in

this society and acting as a pilot: certain alliances at least follow the path

which- it charts out for them, and this suffices to imprint a specific curve

in the genealogical space. No doubt there will be not j ust one curve but

a great number of local curves, merely incipient for the most part, however,

and forming closed cycles only in rare and exceptional cases. But the

structural outlines which emerge here and there will be enough for the

system to be used in making a probabilistic version of more rigid systems,

the notion of which is completely theoretical and in which marriage would

conform rigorously to any rule the social group pleases to enunciate' (Levi

Strauss 1969 : 33, my italics).

The dominant tonality in this passage, as in the wh()le preface, is that

of the norm, whereas Structural Anthropology is written in the language

of the model or structure ; not that such terms are entirely absent here,

since the metaphors organizing the central passage (,operator', 'curve' in

'genealogical space', 'structural outlines') imply the logic of the theoretical

model and the equivalence (which is both professed and repudiated) of the

model and the norm : 'A preferential system is prescriptive when envisaged

at the level of the model, a prescriptive system can only be preferential

when envisaged at the level of reality' ( 1 969 : 33).

But for the reader who remembers the passages in Structural A nthropology

on the relationship between language and kinship (for example, "'Kinship

systems", like "phonemic systems", are built up by the mind on the level

of unconscious thought' [Levi-Strauss 1968 : 34]) and the imperious way

in which 'cultural norms' and all the 'rationalizations' or ' secondary

Objectification objectified 39

arguments' produced by the natives were rejected in favour of the

'unconscious structures', not to mention the texts asserting the universality

of the fundamental rule of exogamy, the concessions made here to

'awareness of the rule' and the dissociation from rigid systems 'the notion

of which is entirely theoretical', may come as a surprise, as may this

further passage from the same preface : 'It is nonetheless true that the

empirical reality of so-called prescriptive systems only takes on its full

meaning when related to a theoretical model worked out by th e natives

themselves prior to ethnologists' ( 1 969: 32, my italics) ; or again :

'Those who practise them know full well that the spirit of such systems

cannot be reduced to the tautological proposition that each group obtains

its women from 'givers' and gives its women to 'takers'. They are also

aware that marriage with the matrilateral cross cousin (mother's brother's

daughter) provides the simplest illustration of the rule, the form most

likely to guarantee its survival. On the other hand, marriage with the

patrilateral cross cousin (father's sister's daughter) would violate it

irrevocably' ( 1 969 : 32, my italics).

It is tempting to quote in reply a passage in which Wittgenstein effortlessly

brings together all the questions evaded by structural anthropology and,

no doubt, more generally by all intellectualism, which transfers the objective

truth established by science into a practice that by its very essence rules

out the theoretical stance which makes it possible to establish that truth :

'What do I call ' the rule by which he proceeds'? - The hypothesis that

satifactorily describes his use of words, which we observe ; or the rule

which he looks up when he uses signs ; or the one which he gives us in

reply when we ask what his rule is ? - But if observation does not enable

us to see any clear rule, and the question brings none to light ? - For he

did indeed give me a definition when I asked him what he understood by

'N', but he was prepared to withdraw and alter it. So how am I to

determine the rule according to which he is playing? He does not know

it himself. - Or, to ask a better question : What meaning is the expression

'the rule by which he proceeds' supposed to have left to it here ?' ( 1 963 :

38-9).

To slip from regularity, i.e. from what recurs with a certain statistically

measurable frequency and from the formula which describes it, to a

consciously laid down and consciously respected ruling (reglement), or to

unconscious regulating by a mysterious cerebral or social mechanism, are

the two commonest ways of sliding from the model of reality to the

reality of the model. In the first case, one moves from a rule which, to

take up Quine's distinction ( 1 972) between to fit and to guide, fits the

observed regularity in a purely descriptive way, to a rule that governs,

directs or orients behaviour - which presupposes that it is known and

recognized, and can therefore be stated - thereby succumbing to the most

elementary form of legalism, that variety of finalism which is perhaps the

most widespread of the spontaneous theories of practice and which consists

in proceeding as if practices had as their principle conscious obedience to

consciously devised and sanctioned rules. As Ziff puts it :

40 Critique of theoretical reason

'Consider the difference between saying "The train is regularly two

minutes late" and "As a rule, the train is two minutes late" . . . There is

the suggestion in the latter case that that the train be two minutes late is

as it were in accordance with some policy or plan . . . Rules connect with

plans or policies in a way that regularities do not . . . To argue that there

must be rules in the natural language is like arguing that roads must be

red if they correspond to red lines on a map' ( 1 960 : 38).

In the second case, one acquires the means of proceeding as if the

principle (if not the end) of the action were the theoretical model one has

to construct in order to account for it, without however falling into the

most flagrant naiveties of legalism, by setting up as the principle of practices

or institutions objectively governed by rules unknown to the agents -

significations without a signifying intention, finalities without consciously

posited ends, which are so many challenges to the old dilemma of

mechanism and finalism - an unconscious defined as a mechanical operator

of finality. Thus, discussing Durkheim's attempts to 'explain the genesis

of symbolic thought', Levi-Strauss writes :

'Modern sociologists and psychologists resolve such problems by

appealing to the unconscious activity of the mind ; but when Durkheim

was writing, psychology and modern linguistics had not yet reached their

main conclusions. This explains why Durkheim foundered in what he

regarded as an irreducible antinomy (in itself a considerable progress over

late nineteenth-century thought as exemplifi� by Spencer) : the blindness

of history and the finalism of consciousness. Between the two there is of

course the unconscious finality of the mind' ( 1 947: 527, my italics).

It is easy to imagine how minds trained to reject the naivety of finalist

explanations and the triviality of causal explanations (particularly 'vulgar'

when they invoke economic and social factors) could be fascinated by all

the mysterious teleological mechanisms, meaningful and apparently willed

products without a producer, which structuralism brought into being by

sweeping away the social conditions of production, reproduction and use

of symbolic objects in the very process in which it revealed immanent

logic. And it is also easy to understand the credit given in advance to Levi

Strauss 's attempt to move beyond the antinomy of action consciously

oriented towards rational ends and mechanical reaction to determinations

by locating finality in mechanism, with the notion of the unconscious, a

kind of Deus ex machina which is also a God in the machine. The

naturalization of finality implied in forgetting historical action, which leads

one to inscribe the ends of history in the mysteries of a Nature, through

the notion of the unconscious, no doubt enabled structural anthropology

to appear as the most natural of the social sciences and the most scientific

of the metaphysics of nature. 'As the mind is also a thing, the functioning

of this thing teaches us something about the nature of things ; even pure

reflexion is in the last analysis an internalization of the cosmos' (Levi

Strauss 1 966: 248, my italics).

One sees the oscillation, in the same sentence, between two contradictory

explanations of the postulated identity of mind and nature : an essential

i I

Objectification objectified 4 1

identity - the mind i s a thing - o r a n identity acquired through learning

- the mind is the internalization of the cosmos. The two theses, which are

merged with the help of the ambiguity of another formulation, 'an image

of the world inscribed in the architecture of the mind' ( 1 964 : 346), in any

case both exclude individual and collective history. Beneath its air of radical

materialism, this philosophy of nature is a philosophy of mind which

amounts to a form of idealism. Asserting the universality and eternity of

the logical categories that govern 'the unconscious activity of the mind',

it ignores the dialectic of social structures and structured, structuring

dispositions through which schemes of thought are formed and transformed.

These schemes - either logical categories, principles of division which,

through the principles of the division of labour, correspond to the structure

of the social world (and not the natural world), or temporal structures,

imperceptibly inculcated by 'the dull pressure of economic relations' as

Marx puts it, that is, by the system of economic and symbolic sanctions

associated with a particular position in the economic structures - are one

of the mediations through which the objective structures ultimately structure

all experience, starting with economic experience, without following the

paths of either mechanical determination or adequate consciousness.

If the dialectic of objective structures and incorporated structures which

operates in every practical action is ignored, then one necessarily falls into

the canonical dilemma, endlessly recurring in new forms in the history of

social thought, which condemns those who seek to reject subjectivism, like

the present-day structuralist readers of Marx, to fall into the fetishism of

social laws. To make transcendent entities, which are to practices as essence

to existence, out of the constructions that science resorts to in order to

give an account of the structure and meaningful products of the accumulation

of innumerable historical actions, is to reduce history to a 'process without

a subject', simply replacing the 'creative subject' of subj ectivism with an

automaton driven by the dead laws of a history of nature. This emanatist

vision, which makes a structure - Capital or a Mode of production - into

an entelechy developing itself in a process of self-realization, reduces

historical agents to the role of 'supports' (Trager) of the structure and

reduces their actions to mere epiphenomenal manifestations of the structure's

own power to develop itself and to determine and overdetermine other

structures.

The Imaginary Anthropology of

Subjectivism

J ean-Paul Sartre deserves credit for having given an ultra-consistent

formulation of the philosophy of action that is accepted, usually implicitly,

by those who describe practices as strategies explicitly oriented by reference

to ends explicitly defined by a free project or even, with some interactionists,

by reference to the anticipated reactions of other agents. Thus, refusing to

recognize anything resembling durable dispositions or probable eventualit

ies, Sartre makes each action a kind of antecedent-less confrontation

between the subject and the world. This is seen clearly in the passages in

Being and Nothingness where he on the awakening of revolutionary

consciousness - a 'conversion' of consciousness p roduced by a sort of

imaginary variation - the power to create the sense of the present by

creating the revolutionary future that denies it:

'It is necessary to reverse the common opinion and acknowledge that it

is not the harshness of a situation or the sufferings i t imposes that lead

people to conceive of another state of afftirs in which things would be

better for everybody. It is on the day tJiat we are able to conceive of

another state of affairs, that a new light is cast on our trouble and our

suffering and we decide that they are unbearable' (1 957: 434-5, my italics ;

cf. also 1 953).

If the world of action is nothing other than this imaginary universe of

interchangeable possibles, entirely dependent on the decrees of the

consciousness that creates it, and therefore entirely devoid of objectivity,

if it is moving because the subj ect chooses to be moved , revolting because

he chooses to be revolted, then emotions, p assions, and also actions, are

merely games of bad faith:

'It is no accident that materialism is serious ; it is no accident that it is

found at all times and places as the favourite doctrine of the revolutionary.

This is because revolutionaries are serious. They come to know themselves

fi rst in terms of the world which oppresses them . . . The serious man is

'of the world' and has no resource in himself. He does not even imagine

any longer the possibility of getting out of the world . . . he is in bad

faith' ( 1 957: 580).

The same incapacity to encounter 'seriousness' other than in the

disapproved form of the 'spirit of seriousness

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