Subjectivism and Modern Life

[nosos]

Sorry was being distracted by a big argument in general..

I'd be tempted to say the exact opposite - that our existence is always at least in part extrinsic to our capacity to conceptualise the experience of it. Which makes the kind of symptoms explored by psychoanalysis (eg. dreams) philsophically interesting because they are the closest we get to intuiting the historically contingent forms of our experience as individual 'subjects'.

What is closed off to the waking 'individual' subject might be partially accessible to us in the form of dreams, aesthetic images or other forms of thought beyond narrow 'rational' cognition

I'd completely agree with this. I wasn't being particularly clear. What I meant by the idea that we're "phenomenologically bound" to our experience of subjectivity is that we can never step outside of it and describe it objectively: any attempt to conceptualise it is simply a reflexive manifestation of it.

I think we can get a handle on other experiences of subjectivity but never by trying to get a "view from nowhere" objective description of them. Culture/knowledge/interaction all gives us some means to subtly blur the boundaries, to start to fuse our respective horizons i.e. the tacit background understandings and meanings that perpetually frame our concious experience. It's just that I think you actually need some actually existing Other to do this with. When you're speculating about potential future forms of subjectivity, I'd say you're bound into a rational, objectivising and speculative way of thinking that precludes the sort of "inside" perspective that you need.

 

[articul8]

to subtly blur the boundaries, to start to fuse our respective horizons i.e. the tacit background understandings and meanings that perpetually frame our concious experience. It's just that I think you actually need some actually existing Other to do this with.

I have some sympathy with this, but I think the "fusing horizons" model lacks openness to a more radical kind of futurity, whereby some Event radically reconfigures the terrain on which all subjectivity is structured. Change to models of subjectivity can occur through revolutionary moments of rupture - it needn't be evolutionary and ameliorative.

 

[CJohn]

I have some sympathy with this, but I think the "fusing horizons" model lacks openness to a more radical kind of futurity, whereby some Event radically reconfigures the terrain on which all subjectivity is structured. Change to models of subjectivity can occur through revolutionary moments of rupture - it needn't be evolutionary and ameliorative.

Though doesn't this come back to the original point that we cannot speculate beyond this rupture, we are bounded by the psychological terrain in which we currently inhabit. I guess trauma - the intrusion of the real - might constitute one such break that reorders the symbolic order. Though prior to this it is beyond any reflective capacity to conceptualise this 'revolution', hence its intrusion is ultimately traumatic.

 

[gorski]

Actually, I'd say there is a consesus in at least Critical Theory/on the Left, that at all times, we have already started conceptualising what things would be like beyond the merely present, dominant Mode of Production.

When a Rupture occurs - it doesn't happen unprepared, in a vaccum.

There are elements in the present that always point to a way out! In all things Human there is never just one option - there are always many options and even those hitherto unforseen, of course - but some preparation has to be done for a rupture to happen!

In Modernity, at least, this is exactly what a Critically minded Thinker does: looks for a strand or elements of Reality that point to its overcoming, towards a Novum - in an emancipatory direction, of course...

 

[articul8]

but some preparation has to be done for a rupture to happen!

In Modernity, at least, this is exactly what a Critically minded Thinker does: looks for a strand or elements of Reality that point to its overcoming, towards a Novum - in an emancipatory direction, of course...

Yes - this is true. I'd just add that the "preparation" involves recognition of the limits of our ability to conceptualise "the next". There is greater 'real' potential in each historical instant than we are capable of understanding.

 

[Fruitloop]

Actually, I'd say there is a consesus in at least Critical Theory/on the Left, that at all times, we have already started conceptualising what things would be like beyond the merely present, dominant Mode of Production.

When a Rupture occurs - it doesn't happen unprepared, in a vaccum.

There are elements in the present that always point to a way out! In all things Human there is never just one option - there are always many options and even those hitherto unforseen, of course - but some preparation has to be done for a rupture to happen!

In Modernity, at least, this is exactly what a Critically minded Thinker does: looks for a strand or elements of Reality that point to its overcoming, towards a Novum - in an emancipatory direction, of course...

This is an important point IMO. There is sometimes such a strong aversion to modes of thinking that could be seen as utopian or whatever that you end up with this slightly mind-bending denial of any imagining of future conditions. Goes with a social tendency in this country towards a leftism that is very backward-looking in orientation - examples abound....

 

[gorski]

Yes...

...agreed, A8 and Fruity!

...and especially the usual type of "common sense" approach to things, going through all walks of life, all spheres, classes and groups of peoples, not just in the UK but in any society...

Although, if I am being allowed to be a bit biased - by the inner logic of the thing itself - less so on the Left, especially the Academian kind,frequently pushing it all forward...

 

[Fruitloop]

Zizek on utopia:


cat->pigeons

 

[gorski]

He isn't even funny on this one... And as always, "prepisivač" [nowt new, all taken from others, slightly repackaged]... "Utopia as an exercise in free imagination"... Can he move on...? There are other meanings/subsequent developments put into it, after that one, FFS... and much more interesting than Fukuyama, who is equally unoriginal and boring!!!

"Utopia = the physics of imagination", as Zola thought. Well, let's see...

Positive Utopias ["traditional type"] - Campanella and others - are written as reports from a voyage ["gnoseological tourism"]. In a sense those are constructed/envisaged as a "constructive critique"... whereby one doesn't really change the exiting/"reality". It begins, therefore, as an observation of injustice and an impossibility of freedom within the [merely] existing. In effect, mutatis mutandis, it'll be a pedagogical dictatorship, with an essential change in the very essence of an individual.

Freedom appears here as a trans-subjective quality: something proclaimed by those who managed to exalt themselves to the "gnosis"/realisation of it. It is essentially preceding the New Epoch's establishing of a Modern Subject. Reason appears as a [mediated] authority in relation to the insanity/madness of the [merely] existing.

Morus thinks of it as the deepest realisation/knowledge, as freedom from the darkness of ignorance. Campanella takes it to its logical conclusion: a Man is suitable/apt/fit/likely to be free, in principle. However, that is being decided/deliberated upon at the highest level [by a gathering of academics, like F. Bacon etc.]. In effect, freedom is left out of individual's reach!

Ergo, Utopia aims at making Reason into a centre of all relationships, bringing into the play maximum rationality. Politics is imagined in line with the "Natural Science", as opposed to power plays, scheming, corruption, immorality of the politicians, as if it is possible to introduce the "natural-scientific 'Reason'" amongst people, without actually objectifying them, whereby one is manipulating them "for their own good". Various themes/levels of analysis are constantly being mixed up: theoretical and practical [episteme apodeiktike and episteme praktike].

With Machiavelli, we have seen something very different: he gave up on freedom before there was any attempt at winning it via a proper struggle! Within "un-freedom" [as a permanent status] one is trying to find the least un-free modus vivendi.

As we know, the essential difference in Modernity is that from Descartes onwards we have a new agenda: auto-formed person = Modern [self-]establishing of Subjectivity. Ideals of such "Utopias", which are trans-individual [Morus, for instance], are basically under this level! They are dealing with forming of personality, under the assumption of the one doing it being "auto-formed".

Negative Utopia - as opposed to all that - appears as a satire of the existing/"Reality", via extrapolation of its most worrying trends/potential consequences [a turnover has happened: "reading out" of trends from Reality, trends that "direct/characterise" the Epoch!]

Orwell, Huxley [written his in times of a great economic crisis] and co. - are not trying to set up a prognosis! Rather, one simply reads out Reality's tendencies of development. I.e. one is not going to Utopia but it is coming to one! Ergo, whatever we are doing matters not; it is coming and we can do jack shit about it [to stop it].

With Orwell, for instance, the really essential change has happened: we can see an end to the historical type of thinking, whereby the progressivism, from Liberals to Hegel and onwards, has finally been shut down! By internalising power [even the last remaining sphere of Humanity, our emotive part] and becoming one with the Leader, everything is being put into regime's service.

The very last remaining possibility of freedom, that of thinking, is then reduced immensely, by lexical devastation, and so even that is problematic [see some of the posters here thinking this is possible with AI and shite... ]... Suddenly, the world is solid, firm, unchanging and unchangeable: it has no History, Past is waiting for us as Future. So, there's turning over, in this position, as it were, but no real, proper turnover!

[Maybe Phil is right again, when he claims we're dealing with fanatics here, with this "idea" we've seen in this very section, that the very core of Humanity, that of Freedom and so on, can, indeed, be "computed"... ]

Not going further. But Žižek as a philosopher is unoriginal, a bore and not even on the ball minimally, if we're serious at all...

 

[fudgefactorfive]

I think it leads to atomization: in the sense that we come to understand ourselves as individuals with “inner depths” (which we have an obligation to explore and so “find ourselves”) and thus we are, at a basic level, separate from the world and from others. It turns our moral focus inwards and consequently away from social externalities. It also leads to subjectivism: if moral values are a matter of individual preference then what weight could any values hold in determining individual conduct?

that's a lot to dump on poor old freedom ...

freedom of action, of possibility is by definition overwhelming - that is why it is exhilarating - and you might say that increased possibility leads to increased fear, since there are more possibilities for something nasty biting you - but jeez lighten up, no need to take it out on adrenaline.

choosing is good - having the leisure time to actually reflect on what you're doing is nice for you though, some people don't always get the chance - so you might say freedom is a bit of a privelege, granted

personally i find owning a good duvet helps enormously, for hiding purposes when you get it wrong

but choosing to do right is good, it's a tautology - good moral values arise independently in and of themselves. we evolved the ability to evaluate events in 4D, predicting possible futures from the point of view of other animals and then ourselves, and that was that. we evolved a way of co-ordinating behaviour: language. we started sharing judgements on what is good and what is right, based on survival. we started backing up values with force. we learned how that doesn't always quite work out so good.

society is supposed to be about enabling that, transmitting good practice, keeping an eye out for stragglers. that's why other animals do it

instead, in london 2008, society is just a giant marketplace

we are the only species that is invoicing itself to death

It also breaks down processes of self-narrative. To maintain a coherent sense of self over time, we articulate (and rearticulate) the relationships between otherwise discrete events in our lives so as to form an ongoing narrative.

why is that a bad thing?

i think you give more credit to humans for being consistently self-aware than we actually are

 

[nosos]

I have some sympathy with this, but I think the "fusing horizons" model lacks openness to a more radical kind of futurity, whereby some Event radically reconfigures the terrain on which all subjectivity is structured.

I don't see any way to say anything concrete about such a change beyond rationally speculating about the material basis of that reconfiguration. If we're rationally speculating about its material basis, I don't see how we can concieve of what these changes would feel like 'from the inside'*.

Change to models of subjectivity can occur through revolutionary moments of rupture - it needn't be evolutionary and ameliorative.

I don't disagree. I just don't see what we can say about what they might be like. Our subjectivity is the horizon of our experience. The fact of such a "revolutinary moment of rupture" renders our speculations about the form of our subjectivity post-rupture woefully inadequate.

*For lack of a better phrase

 

[gorski]

Maybe I misunderstand but: what would you say of/how does it square with, say, Kant's big "revolution" in his own and then the world's thinking, at the gentle age of 50 or so... He certainly pushed his limits and with it the limits of all of us...

 

[CJohn]

Surely this is fairly straightforward. Of course we can speculate about the form of - for instance - a new society post-revolution. What we cannot do is feel what this would feel like, or imagine how we would experience it. So when I said - "Though doesn't this come back to the original point that we cannot speculate beyond this rupture, we are bounded by the psychological terrain in which we currently inhabit" - i simply mean we cannot transcend our current subjectivity and throw ourselves into a future existence in which the very form on which our experience of ourselves is based has changed.

I'm trying to make a simple point, though I imagine I'm communicating it very badly .

 

[nosos]

CJohn just said very well precisely what I was saying very badly. I'm not saying it's impossible, or that we can't speculate, I'm just saying that speculating is terribly inadequate if we're attempting to get a grip on the phenomenology of the post-rupture subjectivity.

 

[kyser_soze]

Even easier...we can't feel what a world without money would be like...

 

[gorski]

So, we had it since the beginning of time? We haven't "imagined" it at some point?

 

[kyser_soze]

So, we had it since the beginning of time? We haven't "imagined" it at some point?

 

[CJohn]

So, we had it since the beginning of time? We haven't "imagined" it at some point?

 

[gorski]

Any of you conservative lot ever thought of how we get to have anything Novel? [Jeez, the Anglo-Saxons... ]

According to you, it seems, nothing new under the Sun - as in EVER...

In all things Human: at the beginning there was Future!

As opposed to animals, methodically speaking...

Or God, for that matter...

Cheers!

 

[CJohn]

Erm, still not following you. Unless you have (mis)interpreted what I said to imply that we are incapable of thinking and planning for the future, coming up with novel ideas, plans, projects etc. Thats definitely not what I implied. In fact subjectivity makes no sense abstracted from where one is going, who we're becoming, the end point etc. We're always ahead of ourselves, in this respect, an unfinishing product.

 

[gorski]

...minus the "end point"...

 

[kyser_soze]

BTW, you know exactly what I mean about being able to imagine a cashless society...

 

[gorski]

Do I? I'm not even sure I know [for sure] what I mean by it...

 

[CJohn]

...minus the "end point"...

The end point is death (in the Real).

 

[gorski]

I wasn't sure if you meant "purpose" or that end point - which is a bit obvious and... oh, well...

I don't fall into category of those thinkers whereby that part is THE element of their thinking, like Heidegger and his lot... I just can't live my life under the "fear and nearing of the inevitable and relentless coming of the end point..."

There is much more to life than that, as you have mentioned!

And here is one of them:

You said this

i simply mean we cannot transcend our current subjectivity and throw ourselves into a future existence in which the very form on which our experience of ourselves is based has changed.

I think you are in a metaphysical bind there and are not reading what we wrote above - the rupture is not happening in a vacuum! It is being prepared and the future is always already present in the "now"!

We can and we always do not just imagine but are even excited by the anticipation and preparation of both the new order and how we would feel about it/in it all!

It's actually one of the moving principles of the New Society and how we see our very own [Human] Nature! That is when we are realising that it is we/us who are making it our own, as it is not given and somehow unchanging!

The principles of Freedom and Creativity, Imagination are extremely exciting and moving us to the core of our potential!!

 

[CJohn]

i simply mean we cannot transcend our current subjectivity and throw ourselves into a future existence in which the very form on which our experience of ourselves is based has changed.

I think you are in a metaphysical bind there and are not reading what we wrote above - the rupture is not happening in a vacuum! It is being prepared and the future is always already present in the "now"!

We can and we always do not just imagine but are even excited by the anticipation and preparation of both the new order and how we would feel about it/in it all!

Hmmm, I don’t know if I’m philosophically savvy enough to see any bind, but I personally don’t see one.

Of course a rupture doesn’t happen in a vacuum, I didn’t imply this. Also yes a conceived future is always already present, though this is a materially unrealised future, which we have to make manifest in-the-world. The process of actualising this fantasy however recreates the space in which subjectivity arises giving shape to new forms and textures of experience, which we could not fore-feel.

 

[gorski]

Hmmm, I don’t know if I’m philosophically savvy enough to see any bind, but I personally don’t see one.

Of course a rupture doesn’t happen in a vacuum, I didn’t imply this.

Sorry, it looked like that to me when you said:

Originally Posted by CJohn
i simply mean we cannot transcend our current subjectivity and throw ourselves into a future existence in which the very form on which our experience of ourselves is based has changed.

I stated why - processuality in your thinking isn't present, to my mind - and I call that a metaphysical bind.

Also yes a conceived future is always already present, though this is a materially unrealised future

Not fully, obviously, otherwise we wouldn't be talking about it in these terms but it is here in many elements - already! That is the preparation of the future, the new process beginning and undermining the old, the New being born...

which we have to make manifest in-the-world. The process of actualising this fantasy however recreates the space in which subjectivity arises giving shape to new forms and textures of experience, which we could not fore-feel.

I disagree, as I explained. You certainly ARE in a metaphysical bind as you simply can't see and recognise that this doesn't just happen, but that it must be prepared and that many an element of a New Era is already present in the Old one, as it is being dismantled!

You can see it with Enlightenment, for instance, quite clearly...

Being prepared in Italy, as an obvious example... Then England and France and US come in... etc.

But it doesn't just happen in a vacuum!!! That's my point. The process, not just what simply and absolutely is right here and now - but also the tendencies etc.

 

[CJohn]

I do find it hard to follow you, given that I am trying to conceptualise changes in our subjective experience of self and other. In fact I think I’m arguing something so straight forward and trivial that’s its really not saying very much.

we cannot transcend our current subjectivity and throw ourselves into a future existence in which the very form on which our experience of ourselves is based has changed.

I stand by this statement. An example of this is that it would be impossible to feel, let alone conceptualise what it would be like to have language whilst we are pre-verbal. Another would be, that I cannot feel what it would feel like to be a person before I had the psychological capacity to represent myself and others to myself as complete objects that have a consistency in time and space (as opposed to say partial-objects). Thus in these instances my sense of subjectivity is related to the form of my (in this instance) psychological development, and the shift to more complex mental functions – e.g. the acquisition of language or object constancy – heralds the emergence of new forms of subjective experience. There is a break or rupture, the emmergence of something new that previously could only be seen as potentialities, and beyond our ability to for-feel or fore-tell. Transitions between developmental poles are of course a gradual process, NOT all or nothing shifts (as I think you see me as saying). However there is at some point a emmergence of a new state that is radically different such that at the 'start' of this movement we could not have conceptualised it in terms of how it would feel at the 'end'.

I then allied this same line of thought to societal change , or change resulting from revolutionary rupture of the way that our interpersonal interactions are symbolically mediated. This is perhaps where things go awry and were misunderstand each other. Ok, given that I see being as essentially inseparable from the world, I thus also see the experience of ourselves as subjects as tied to the world in which we are in. Thus any changes in this will also alter our sense of what it is like to be a subject. Maybe I can change what I said to: The process of actualisation of revolutionary ideals recreates the space in which subjectivity arises giving shape to new forms and textures of experience, which we could not fore-feel. Again my focus being subjective experience, whereas you are talking about the evolution of ideas, I think....

 

[gorski]

Humans [and our society] are a process. Never from one fixed state/system to another, never just like that.

It is possible to "see into the future", if not completely, as that future is always already present in the present. It just doesn't fall from the sky, John.

In other words, Feudal subjects can and indeed must be able to foresee what would it be like to be free of feudal chains. They must be able to do that if the change is ever going to happen.

When Voltaire claims in a public lecture that "All Men are equal" a few ladies lose consciousness... Obviously, he is still a feudal subject but he is looking far beyond it! Imagining it and so is his audience to whom it is unthinkable and "the end of the world as they know it"...

I can't see your point as non-metaphysical, as in anything except "static". That is to say, as opposed to "processual", "history making with consciousness", "historical thinking" of the dialectical kind.

Hope that clears it...

 

[gorski]

Again, "feeling" is not absolutely separable from thinking and imagining, even if it can't be absolute...