Accueil
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%81gnes_Heller
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89cole_de_Budapest
"Philosophy began to present 'itself in the garb of the "exact sciences", it began to attempt to confirm itself before them, claiming to be not just as "exact" as them, but exactly as "exact" as them. It is not as if philosophy had not always aspired to scientificity; it did so, but it used different standards. We can say, with Hume, that it has created its own standards from its own sovereignty. It is hardly surprising that its guilty retreat in front of science produced a counter-tendency. This however involved another surrender: philosophy gave ground to religion, which in the century of the Enlightenment it had already once defeated. The religion that is involved here is no longer any positive religion, but only a religious attitude, the preference for belief instead of knowledge - something that rests on an extremely slender basis which is essentially foreign to philosophy.
In fact the roots of this legitimation crisis of philosophy lay at the same level as those of the crisis in art: the earlier harmony between the task and the aptitude for the task had collapsed. Understandably, philosophy was thus forced to question itself repeatedly, first about the means for its task and then about the task itself.
Kant's critical system is the first representative of "sentimental philosophy" (and it is still today representative of it) : Kant and Schiller are undoubtedly t\vin spirits . Kant poses questions about philosophy's aptitude and ability just as much as he does about its task: for him the determination of the limits of the faculties of knowledge - above all of reason - and the limitation of the task occur in a single philosophical movement . According to him, all of philosophy, with the exception of that of Hume, had been naive and uncritical.
Certainly, philosophy stemmed from an ineradicable metaphysical need, but this did not mean to say that the need itself can be justified. Kant created the model of "sentimental philosophy" without tearing away from philosophy its royal crown. For him, demarcating the limits of philosophy did not mean any retreat - neither before science nor before religion. This novel courage of philosophy bled to death at Waterloo bourgeois philosophy and bourgeois society bade farewell to their heroic epochs at the same time. " (p.2)
"Scarcely forty years after Kant's "Copernican deed" Feuerbach was not able to see any difference at all between philosophy before, during and after Kant. According to Feuerbach, all previous philosophies had been "speculative", in that all previous philosophical abstractions took no account of actual people and of the immediacy of humanity itself. For Feuerbach, only one sort of philosophy was possible, namely anthropology - philosophy had to be refonned again. Feuerbach's reform suggested two ways forward, both of which were taken up. The first led to existentialism and to "Lebensphilosophie", the second led to the radical philosophy of Marx.
Scarcely ten years after Feuerbach had announced his reform of philosophy, Marx in his theses on F euerbach characterised all hitherto existing philosophy, including that of Feuerbach, as yet another attempt merely to "explain" the world. Marx demanded that a radically new philosophy should be created which was suited to changing the world. He thereby turned Novalis' aphorism on its head. Questions had to be posed not to philosophy, but to the world: the world had to be changed so that philosophy itself could be transcended. Not however in that it dissolved itself, but in that it realised itself." (p.3)
"In his History and Class Consciousness, Georg Lukacs first discovered the related characteristics of the "attitude" of Kant and Schiller . We cannot however share the conclusions that he drew from this.
Lukacs describes bourgeois consciousness as total reification and opposes to it a totally un-reified consciousness which he attributes to the proletariat (as represented by an elite). We cannot discuss here how Lukacs' reception of Marx results from his personal biography. Rather, what appears to be more decisive is his theoretical starting point . Lukacs posits the total, all-embracing and all-subsuming domination of both Zweckrationalitat (purposive rationality in the Weberian sense) and the self-regulating market . If this assumption were proved to be correct, then humanity would be headed towards unavoidable destruction and Lukacs' theoretical proposal would at least in theory prove to be the only alternative. However, we accept the argument of Karl Polanyi that the notion of society as co1npletely dominated by the self-regulating market is nothing other than the negative utopia of bourgeois society. And we can add to this: the totalisation of pure purposive rationality is also no less of a negative utopia." (pp.3-4)
"As we shall see, one of the functions of phiiosophy is to de-fetishise. The generalisation of a completely fetishised consciousness would undoubtedly mean the end of philosophy. And there did in fact exist an historical period in which one could have feared that this was happening: in the nineteenth century philosophy was slumbering in a deep hibernation. Admittedly, philosophical centuries cannot be measured by the calendar. The heroic century of philosophy died at Waterloo; its twentieth century came into the world in bloody labour during the First World War - the [Wittgenstein] Tractatus is the century's prelude.
The nineteenth century is the century of positivism. This is clear if one judges it not by the creation of philosophies, but by their reception. The expression "positivism" itself certainly has changed its meaning. When Marx wrote of the "uncritical positivism" in Hegel's Philosophy of Law he did not mean the same thing as contemporary neo-positivism understands by positivism. Nonetheless, this term does have a unitary and inclusive meaning. Whatever form it takes, positivism is the concrete expression of the f etishised bourgeois consciousness. In Hegel this is obscured by the innovative philosophical system which the wonderful eaifice of the phenomenology created. Later however this fetishism was openly to reveal itself.
In fact the nineteenth century had no reception of philosophy at all. In this there was no difference between bourgeois and radical philosophy. For the nineteenth century Marx was no philosopher. And j ust as, as a philosopher, Marx has only been on the agenda since the second decade of our century, so it is also only since that time that Kierkegaard has been appreciated as a philosopher. The twentieth century is an uninterrupted struggle between positivist pseudo-philosophies and genuine philosophies : philosophy is on the point of emerging from its hibernation. This century is on the way to again becoming a "century of philosophy", yet philosophy itself appears not to have noticed this. It seems as if philosophy - including radical philosophy - still suffers from an inferiority complex.
Philosophy is said to be superfluous , because science has stolen its function - philosophy stands on the defensive. The response of philosophy is that not all its functions have been removed, but only particular ones; it has to change, to become different from what it has been up to now. Philosophy is said to have become superfluous, because immediate action has stepped into its place. And philosophy again goes onto the defensive. [...]
Today nobody would deny that philosophy finds itself in a difficult situation. It is equally difficult to deny that there exists a need for philosophy - a need which is even growing and deepening. Today the social sciences are confronted with questions which are slowly making clear to them that they need philosophy. The scientists do not need philosophy to confirm their methods, since they can achieve these without any philosophy; the activists do not need philosophers who bypass philosophy to fight by their side, since they can fight by themselves without philosophers. However, what is needed is a unitary answer to questions of how one should think, how one should act, how one should live at all, and indeed an answer that is genuinely philosophical. And however difficult it may be to be a philosopher, a philosopher's duty is to answer these questions, or at least to do everything possible to give an answer - an answer that is sovereign, autonomous, without self-defence and without excuses.
The time has come for philosophy to become once again committed to itself - and hence to its own past and to the truth of its own sphere." (pp.4-5)
"Every sphere of objectification satisfies a need of some sort. A sphere of objectification is poly-functional if it can satisfy several needs. The different functions can only be equated with each other if they all can be satisfied through a single objectification. Like art, like scientific theory, and partly like religion, philosophy is an independent and autonomous system of objectification . As such it satisfies needs through its form of reception. One can therefore only discover which of its social functions are primary and which are secondary through an analysis of the types of reception involved.
For this reason in what follows we will discuss first of all the structure of philosophical expression, and then the appropriation of philosophy." (p.7)
"The first philosophers, who also created the idea of philosophy, understood philosophy as philosophia, the love of wisdom. Conceptually, wisdom (sophia) contains two aspects: firstly, knowledge, and secondly, upright good conduct, in other words, the True and the Good. The concept of philosophy therefore means the love of the unity between true human knowledge and good human conduct: the love of the unity of the true and the good.
The unity of the true and the good is the highest value of philosophy. Consequently philosophy is the love of the highest value. The expression "love" belongs to the vocabulary of the feelings, but it is absolutely in order here. Every philosophy involves feelings: philosophy's feeling is for the good and the true.
Philosophy wants to know what the true is and what the good is, because philosophy loves the true and the good. It wants to find its Sleeping Beauty, which like a rose is hidden from humanity's sight by a hedge of thorns . It knows that the Sleeping Beauty exists, and it knows that it is also beautiful, yet it does not know what form it takes. As Plato would say, it seeks the Sleeping Beauty in order to recall it, in order to kiss it into life.
The love of the good and the love of the true can be divided. It can happen that the search for the true and the good does not lead to any one single truth and to any one single good. Already for Aristotle the highest good was a double good: the highest good was the welfare of the state; the highest good was also happiness. Yet all truth and all good are tightly interwoven with one another. Philosophy seeks in all truth the true, in all good the good, and in all of them the unity of both." (p.8 )
"Philosophy namely demythologises. The love of the true and the good is always for it amor dei intellectualis. The subject of the passionate recognition of the true and the good is reason : the human being of philosophy is the "rational being". Philosophy opposes to the picturesque ambiguity of mythology the clarity of rational argument. Within the mythological tradition nothing can be questioned ; by contrast philosophy demands that everything be questioned that its own reason does not understand. Philosophy's pretence that it knows nothing is nothing other than an invitation to thinking, to "thinking together", to thinking with each other. A "philosophical training" bears the following inscription: "Come, think with me, let us find the truth together." " (pp.9-10)
"A philosophical system is always founded on the tension between what /s and what Ought to be - it is this which characterises the philosophical system and which brings it to its fullest expression. The unity of the true and the good is the "Ought-to-be". Philosophy always arranges what merely is from the point of view of what ought to be - the ought (the true unity of the good and the true) is the measure by which the reality or unreality of being is assessed. Defetishism is therefore a feature of philosophical systems from the beginning. What else can the dissolution of prejudices be, other than a questioning of what is, from the point of view of what ought to be ?
Certain philosophers have defined what ought-to-be as "essence" in contrast to the "phenomenal" nature or the "appearance" of mere being. Frequently too, appearance and essence are ascribed to different cognitive abilities: until the appearance of empiricism this was nearly always the case. Within philosophy "essence" should not occur as an ontological factor, and further, cognitive abilities should not be classified in relation to how "appearance" and "essence" are understood. Nonetheless, the "essential" and the "inessential" are always present in relation to the interpretation of reality in some form. Namely, for every philosophy what ought to be counts as the most real: nothing can be more real than the true and the good or the unity of the two . To this extent the common commitment of philosophies is ens perfectissimum - ens realissimum. What ought to be is no illusion of fantasy, no mere dream only present in our subjective wishes, bur rather the "Ought-to-be" is precisely what matters , the measure, "the true" or "the most real reality" . What ought to be has so to speak a "topographical location" . In metaphysics this is either the "heights" or the "depths", in certain social philosophers it lies in ideal institutions , in Kant it is in humanity itself- in freedom, in free will as the factum of reason ; others see it in a mode of behaviour or in the relationship to what exists (as for example in Heidegger, who contrasts authentic being with inauthentic being)." (pp.10-11)
"Plato opposed to the world of the shadows the world of ideas ; Aristotle opposed to matter pure form ; Spinoza discovered in the substance the true and the good and what at the same time was most real, with every individual existence being only an manifestation of this substance ; Rousseau confronted the empirical world of the volonte de tous with the essential reality of the volonte generale ; Kant contrasted homo phenomenon with homo noumenon, the former being the source of all evil, the latter the source of good ; in Hegel htnnanity is, also unconsciously, a means for the "self-realisation" of the world spirit ; Marx contrasts to alienated humanity the "species being" and to "all hitherto existing history" true history ; for Kierkegaard the inessentiality of the aesthetic, and the banality of the moral stage, is opposed by the truth and the "knight of faith" who transcends everyday custom ; Lukacs' History and Class Consciousness is constructed from the contrast of empirical consciousness with imputed consciousness ; in Wittgenstein's tragic philosophy one should keep silent about the most true, the good." (p.12)
"Philosophy's function is, with the help of rational thought, to lead rational human beings to the recognition of what ought to be - that good and true which philosophy already knows. This "leading upwards" is the core of the philosophical system and of the "world" of philosophy.
Therefore on the one hand what is is constituted from what ought to be, on the other hand however what ought to be must be deduced from what is, otherwise it would not be possible for every thinking person from the world of what is to be led up to what ought to be. Even Kant, who knew very well that this hurdle existed, did not retreat before it, for philosophy cannot retreat from it. To "lead up" to the categorical imperative he needed the fact of conscience as something that existed.
Yet is this really a "hurdle" ? Can one consider as a "hurdle" to philosophy that which forms its essence ? Can one treat as a "hurdle" to philosophy the fact that it is utopian ? The "utopian spirit" is the spirit of philosophy. Every philosophy is utopian - how else could one describe a construction in which that which ought to be counts as the most real of all that exists , where whatever is counts as unreal in the light of the ultimate reality, and yet the former is deduced from the latter ? In that it does this , philosophy is not merely any utopia, but a rational utopia. If this only meant that philosophy proffered its Ought - its ultimate reality - as knowledge, then one could speak of a pseudo-rationality. However philosophy does not consist only of this. Philosophy offers its utopia to those who think autonomously, to those who are disciplined and systematic thinkers . This utopia really is knowledge, not j ust the appearance of knowledge.
Whoever claims that the rationality of philosophy is mere appearance (since what ought to be cannot be deduced from what is, and anyway philosophy only deduces what it already knows), measures philosophy by a non-philosophical criterion. This overlooks that the real function of deduction is the "leading upwards". Doubtless for philosophy the leading upwards to the unity of what is and what ought appears as primary; doubtless the chain of reasoning is often broken when it deduces from what is . When in Plato's Politeia truth can find no more arguments in the \vorld of being, although it knows itself to be the true, there then follows the "leap" into the transcendental. When Spinoza confirms that one calls good what is useful and then on the contrary asserts that what is useful is what is good, he clearly makes himself guilty of logical inconsistency. This however is a fruitful inconsistency of philosophy, for it follows from the essence, from the utopian character of philosophy.
Every utopia confronts what is with some or other criterion. The differentia specifica of a rational utopia lies in the nature of this criterion. This criterion is, as we know, the unity of the true and the· good . One can only approach the true with the question "What is truth?" "What is truth?" poses the question of cognitive reason, the question posed by people who want to know - not only glimpse, feel or suspect - what truth is.
When Christ declared that he was the truth, Pilate asked him what then truth was . His question was irrelevant , for the two were talking past each other. Christ spoke the language of religion, Pilate the language of philosophy. The religious utopia involves revelation - in it there is no higher claim than "I am the truth". One cannot however answer the question "What is truth ?" with "I am the truth" . The answer can only be, consider, reflect, we want to seek the truth together ; the philosophical utopia demands the thinking cognition of the rational being. Therefore the rational utopia necessarily contains the philosophical attitude." (pp.13-14)
"On the one hand every philosophical system is independent - a unique, unrepeatable and inimitable temple of rationality. Everything from the foundations to the spire is its
inalienable property. Every philosophical system is an individuality: from this perspective there is no development in philosophy. On the other hand every philosophical system is based on knowledge and must therefore work on what it has inherited from its predecessors. In the same way it must reflect the general development of human knowledge, or at least it cannot contradict this growing knowledge. To this extent philosophies do, so to speak, build on each other and philosophical development does exist." (p.16)
"Philosophy possesses the wonderful ability and the courage to pose childish questions: "What is that ?" "What is that for ?" "Why is that like that ?" "Why must that be like that ?" "What purpose has that ?" "Why must that be done like that ?" "Why cannot one act like that ?" " (p.17)
"Philosophical thinking demands no preexisting knowledge [...] Many philosophers were distinguished by their encyclopaedic knowledge, but yet they did not assume such a knowledge in those whom they wanted to "lead upwards" to their own philosophy. Kant, who was legendary for his knowledge, declared that the categorical imperative could be explained without any trouble to a ten-year-old child." (p.18)
"Certainly philosophy came into the world in the agora - it is a child of the democracy of the polis." (p.18)
"Philosophy is a summons to thinking, hence a summons to perceive the true and the good as a unity. This can be succinctly summarised as: "Consider how you should think; consider how you should act ; consider how you should live. " "How you should live" involves "how you should think" and "how you should act". Philosophy as a rational utopia is always the utopia of a form of life. To this extent Kant expressed the "secret" of all philosophies (including contemplative philosophy): this "secret" is nothing other than the primacy of practical reason. The highest good always comprises the goal of utopia as a mode of life. The system is only true if it reveals the highest good. The philosopher has to vouch for the highest good." (p.20)
"Doubtless the reception of philosophy is as varied as there are recipients of philosophy, but nonetheless it is essential to delimit and classify the main types of reception. Only so can we demonstrate both that philosophy is multi-functional and that the different types of reception all indicate the existence of a common need." (p.28)
-Ágnes Heller, A radical philosophy, Basil Blackwell, 1984 (1978 pour la première édition allemande), 196 pages.
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89cole_de_Budapest
"Philosophy began to present 'itself in the garb of the "exact sciences", it began to attempt to confirm itself before them, claiming to be not just as "exact" as them, but exactly as "exact" as them. It is not as if philosophy had not always aspired to scientificity; it did so, but it used different standards. We can say, with Hume, that it has created its own standards from its own sovereignty. It is hardly surprising that its guilty retreat in front of science produced a counter-tendency. This however involved another surrender: philosophy gave ground to religion, which in the century of the Enlightenment it had already once defeated. The religion that is involved here is no longer any positive religion, but only a religious attitude, the preference for belief instead of knowledge - something that rests on an extremely slender basis which is essentially foreign to philosophy.
In fact the roots of this legitimation crisis of philosophy lay at the same level as those of the crisis in art: the earlier harmony between the task and the aptitude for the task had collapsed. Understandably, philosophy was thus forced to question itself repeatedly, first about the means for its task and then about the task itself.
Kant's critical system is the first representative of "sentimental philosophy" (and it is still today representative of it) : Kant and Schiller are undoubtedly t\vin spirits . Kant poses questions about philosophy's aptitude and ability just as much as he does about its task: for him the determination of the limits of the faculties of knowledge - above all of reason - and the limitation of the task occur in a single philosophical movement . According to him, all of philosophy, with the exception of that of Hume, had been naive and uncritical.
Certainly, philosophy stemmed from an ineradicable metaphysical need, but this did not mean to say that the need itself can be justified. Kant created the model of "sentimental philosophy" without tearing away from philosophy its royal crown. For him, demarcating the limits of philosophy did not mean any retreat - neither before science nor before religion. This novel courage of philosophy bled to death at Waterloo bourgeois philosophy and bourgeois society bade farewell to their heroic epochs at the same time. " (p.2)
"Scarcely forty years after Kant's "Copernican deed" Feuerbach was not able to see any difference at all between philosophy before, during and after Kant. According to Feuerbach, all previous philosophies had been "speculative", in that all previous philosophical abstractions took no account of actual people and of the immediacy of humanity itself. For Feuerbach, only one sort of philosophy was possible, namely anthropology - philosophy had to be refonned again. Feuerbach's reform suggested two ways forward, both of which were taken up. The first led to existentialism and to "Lebensphilosophie", the second led to the radical philosophy of Marx.
Scarcely ten years after Feuerbach had announced his reform of philosophy, Marx in his theses on F euerbach characterised all hitherto existing philosophy, including that of Feuerbach, as yet another attempt merely to "explain" the world. Marx demanded that a radically new philosophy should be created which was suited to changing the world. He thereby turned Novalis' aphorism on its head. Questions had to be posed not to philosophy, but to the world: the world had to be changed so that philosophy itself could be transcended. Not however in that it dissolved itself, but in that it realised itself." (p.3)
"In his History and Class Consciousness, Georg Lukacs first discovered the related characteristics of the "attitude" of Kant and Schiller . We cannot however share the conclusions that he drew from this.
Lukacs describes bourgeois consciousness as total reification and opposes to it a totally un-reified consciousness which he attributes to the proletariat (as represented by an elite). We cannot discuss here how Lukacs' reception of Marx results from his personal biography. Rather, what appears to be more decisive is his theoretical starting point . Lukacs posits the total, all-embracing and all-subsuming domination of both Zweckrationalitat (purposive rationality in the Weberian sense) and the self-regulating market . If this assumption were proved to be correct, then humanity would be headed towards unavoidable destruction and Lukacs' theoretical proposal would at least in theory prove to be the only alternative. However, we accept the argument of Karl Polanyi that the notion of society as co1npletely dominated by the self-regulating market is nothing other than the negative utopia of bourgeois society. And we can add to this: the totalisation of pure purposive rationality is also no less of a negative utopia." (pp.3-4)
"As we shall see, one of the functions of phiiosophy is to de-fetishise. The generalisation of a completely fetishised consciousness would undoubtedly mean the end of philosophy. And there did in fact exist an historical period in which one could have feared that this was happening: in the nineteenth century philosophy was slumbering in a deep hibernation. Admittedly, philosophical centuries cannot be measured by the calendar. The heroic century of philosophy died at Waterloo; its twentieth century came into the world in bloody labour during the First World War - the [Wittgenstein] Tractatus is the century's prelude.
The nineteenth century is the century of positivism. This is clear if one judges it not by the creation of philosophies, but by their reception. The expression "positivism" itself certainly has changed its meaning. When Marx wrote of the "uncritical positivism" in Hegel's Philosophy of Law he did not mean the same thing as contemporary neo-positivism understands by positivism. Nonetheless, this term does have a unitary and inclusive meaning. Whatever form it takes, positivism is the concrete expression of the f etishised bourgeois consciousness. In Hegel this is obscured by the innovative philosophical system which the wonderful eaifice of the phenomenology created. Later however this fetishism was openly to reveal itself.
In fact the nineteenth century had no reception of philosophy at all. In this there was no difference between bourgeois and radical philosophy. For the nineteenth century Marx was no philosopher. And j ust as, as a philosopher, Marx has only been on the agenda since the second decade of our century, so it is also only since that time that Kierkegaard has been appreciated as a philosopher. The twentieth century is an uninterrupted struggle between positivist pseudo-philosophies and genuine philosophies : philosophy is on the point of emerging from its hibernation. This century is on the way to again becoming a "century of philosophy", yet philosophy itself appears not to have noticed this. It seems as if philosophy - including radical philosophy - still suffers from an inferiority complex.
Philosophy is said to be superfluous , because science has stolen its function - philosophy stands on the defensive. The response of philosophy is that not all its functions have been removed, but only particular ones; it has to change, to become different from what it has been up to now. Philosophy is said to have become superfluous, because immediate action has stepped into its place. And philosophy again goes onto the defensive. [...]
Today nobody would deny that philosophy finds itself in a difficult situation. It is equally difficult to deny that there exists a need for philosophy - a need which is even growing and deepening. Today the social sciences are confronted with questions which are slowly making clear to them that they need philosophy. The scientists do not need philosophy to confirm their methods, since they can achieve these without any philosophy; the activists do not need philosophers who bypass philosophy to fight by their side, since they can fight by themselves without philosophers. However, what is needed is a unitary answer to questions of how one should think, how one should act, how one should live at all, and indeed an answer that is genuinely philosophical. And however difficult it may be to be a philosopher, a philosopher's duty is to answer these questions, or at least to do everything possible to give an answer - an answer that is sovereign, autonomous, without self-defence and without excuses.
The time has come for philosophy to become once again committed to itself - and hence to its own past and to the truth of its own sphere." (pp.4-5)
"Every sphere of objectification satisfies a need of some sort. A sphere of objectification is poly-functional if it can satisfy several needs. The different functions can only be equated with each other if they all can be satisfied through a single objectification. Like art, like scientific theory, and partly like religion, philosophy is an independent and autonomous system of objectification . As such it satisfies needs through its form of reception. One can therefore only discover which of its social functions are primary and which are secondary through an analysis of the types of reception involved.
For this reason in what follows we will discuss first of all the structure of philosophical expression, and then the appropriation of philosophy." (p.7)
"The first philosophers, who also created the idea of philosophy, understood philosophy as philosophia, the love of wisdom. Conceptually, wisdom (sophia) contains two aspects: firstly, knowledge, and secondly, upright good conduct, in other words, the True and the Good. The concept of philosophy therefore means the love of the unity between true human knowledge and good human conduct: the love of the unity of the true and the good.
The unity of the true and the good is the highest value of philosophy. Consequently philosophy is the love of the highest value. The expression "love" belongs to the vocabulary of the feelings, but it is absolutely in order here. Every philosophy involves feelings: philosophy's feeling is for the good and the true.
Philosophy wants to know what the true is and what the good is, because philosophy loves the true and the good. It wants to find its Sleeping Beauty, which like a rose is hidden from humanity's sight by a hedge of thorns . It knows that the Sleeping Beauty exists, and it knows that it is also beautiful, yet it does not know what form it takes. As Plato would say, it seeks the Sleeping Beauty in order to recall it, in order to kiss it into life.
The love of the good and the love of the true can be divided. It can happen that the search for the true and the good does not lead to any one single truth and to any one single good. Already for Aristotle the highest good was a double good: the highest good was the welfare of the state; the highest good was also happiness. Yet all truth and all good are tightly interwoven with one another. Philosophy seeks in all truth the true, in all good the good, and in all of them the unity of both." (p.8 )
"Philosophy namely demythologises. The love of the true and the good is always for it amor dei intellectualis. The subject of the passionate recognition of the true and the good is reason : the human being of philosophy is the "rational being". Philosophy opposes to the picturesque ambiguity of mythology the clarity of rational argument. Within the mythological tradition nothing can be questioned ; by contrast philosophy demands that everything be questioned that its own reason does not understand. Philosophy's pretence that it knows nothing is nothing other than an invitation to thinking, to "thinking together", to thinking with each other. A "philosophical training" bears the following inscription: "Come, think with me, let us find the truth together." " (pp.9-10)
"A philosophical system is always founded on the tension between what /s and what Ought to be - it is this which characterises the philosophical system and which brings it to its fullest expression. The unity of the true and the good is the "Ought-to-be". Philosophy always arranges what merely is from the point of view of what ought to be - the ought (the true unity of the good and the true) is the measure by which the reality or unreality of being is assessed. Defetishism is therefore a feature of philosophical systems from the beginning. What else can the dissolution of prejudices be, other than a questioning of what is, from the point of view of what ought to be ?
Certain philosophers have defined what ought-to-be as "essence" in contrast to the "phenomenal" nature or the "appearance" of mere being. Frequently too, appearance and essence are ascribed to different cognitive abilities: until the appearance of empiricism this was nearly always the case. Within philosophy "essence" should not occur as an ontological factor, and further, cognitive abilities should not be classified in relation to how "appearance" and "essence" are understood. Nonetheless, the "essential" and the "inessential" are always present in relation to the interpretation of reality in some form. Namely, for every philosophy what ought to be counts as the most real: nothing can be more real than the true and the good or the unity of the two . To this extent the common commitment of philosophies is ens perfectissimum - ens realissimum. What ought to be is no illusion of fantasy, no mere dream only present in our subjective wishes, bur rather the "Ought-to-be" is precisely what matters , the measure, "the true" or "the most real reality" . What ought to be has so to speak a "topographical location" . In metaphysics this is either the "heights" or the "depths", in certain social philosophers it lies in ideal institutions , in Kant it is in humanity itself- in freedom, in free will as the factum of reason ; others see it in a mode of behaviour or in the relationship to what exists (as for example in Heidegger, who contrasts authentic being with inauthentic being)." (pp.10-11)
"Plato opposed to the world of the shadows the world of ideas ; Aristotle opposed to matter pure form ; Spinoza discovered in the substance the true and the good and what at the same time was most real, with every individual existence being only an manifestation of this substance ; Rousseau confronted the empirical world of the volonte de tous with the essential reality of the volonte generale ; Kant contrasted homo phenomenon with homo noumenon, the former being the source of all evil, the latter the source of good ; in Hegel htnnanity is, also unconsciously, a means for the "self-realisation" of the world spirit ; Marx contrasts to alienated humanity the "species being" and to "all hitherto existing history" true history ; for Kierkegaard the inessentiality of the aesthetic, and the banality of the moral stage, is opposed by the truth and the "knight of faith" who transcends everyday custom ; Lukacs' History and Class Consciousness is constructed from the contrast of empirical consciousness with imputed consciousness ; in Wittgenstein's tragic philosophy one should keep silent about the most true, the good." (p.12)
"Philosophy's function is, with the help of rational thought, to lead rational human beings to the recognition of what ought to be - that good and true which philosophy already knows. This "leading upwards" is the core of the philosophical system and of the "world" of philosophy.
Therefore on the one hand what is is constituted from what ought to be, on the other hand however what ought to be must be deduced from what is, otherwise it would not be possible for every thinking person from the world of what is to be led up to what ought to be. Even Kant, who knew very well that this hurdle existed, did not retreat before it, for philosophy cannot retreat from it. To "lead up" to the categorical imperative he needed the fact of conscience as something that existed.
Yet is this really a "hurdle" ? Can one consider as a "hurdle" to philosophy that which forms its essence ? Can one treat as a "hurdle" to philosophy the fact that it is utopian ? The "utopian spirit" is the spirit of philosophy. Every philosophy is utopian - how else could one describe a construction in which that which ought to be counts as the most real of all that exists , where whatever is counts as unreal in the light of the ultimate reality, and yet the former is deduced from the latter ? In that it does this , philosophy is not merely any utopia, but a rational utopia. If this only meant that philosophy proffered its Ought - its ultimate reality - as knowledge, then one could speak of a pseudo-rationality. However philosophy does not consist only of this. Philosophy offers its utopia to those who think autonomously, to those who are disciplined and systematic thinkers . This utopia really is knowledge, not j ust the appearance of knowledge.
Whoever claims that the rationality of philosophy is mere appearance (since what ought to be cannot be deduced from what is, and anyway philosophy only deduces what it already knows), measures philosophy by a non-philosophical criterion. This overlooks that the real function of deduction is the "leading upwards". Doubtless for philosophy the leading upwards to the unity of what is and what ought appears as primary; doubtless the chain of reasoning is often broken when it deduces from what is . When in Plato's Politeia truth can find no more arguments in the \vorld of being, although it knows itself to be the true, there then follows the "leap" into the transcendental. When Spinoza confirms that one calls good what is useful and then on the contrary asserts that what is useful is what is good, he clearly makes himself guilty of logical inconsistency. This however is a fruitful inconsistency of philosophy, for it follows from the essence, from the utopian character of philosophy.
Every utopia confronts what is with some or other criterion. The differentia specifica of a rational utopia lies in the nature of this criterion. This criterion is, as we know, the unity of the true and the· good . One can only approach the true with the question "What is truth?" "What is truth?" poses the question of cognitive reason, the question posed by people who want to know - not only glimpse, feel or suspect - what truth is.
When Christ declared that he was the truth, Pilate asked him what then truth was . His question was irrelevant , for the two were talking past each other. Christ spoke the language of religion, Pilate the language of philosophy. The religious utopia involves revelation - in it there is no higher claim than "I am the truth". One cannot however answer the question "What is truth ?" with "I am the truth" . The answer can only be, consider, reflect, we want to seek the truth together ; the philosophical utopia demands the thinking cognition of the rational being. Therefore the rational utopia necessarily contains the philosophical attitude." (pp.13-14)
"On the one hand every philosophical system is independent - a unique, unrepeatable and inimitable temple of rationality. Everything from the foundations to the spire is its
inalienable property. Every philosophical system is an individuality: from this perspective there is no development in philosophy. On the other hand every philosophical system is based on knowledge and must therefore work on what it has inherited from its predecessors. In the same way it must reflect the general development of human knowledge, or at least it cannot contradict this growing knowledge. To this extent philosophies do, so to speak, build on each other and philosophical development does exist." (p.16)
"Philosophy possesses the wonderful ability and the courage to pose childish questions: "What is that ?" "What is that for ?" "Why is that like that ?" "Why must that be like that ?" "What purpose has that ?" "Why must that be done like that ?" "Why cannot one act like that ?" " (p.17)
"Philosophical thinking demands no preexisting knowledge [...] Many philosophers were distinguished by their encyclopaedic knowledge, but yet they did not assume such a knowledge in those whom they wanted to "lead upwards" to their own philosophy. Kant, who was legendary for his knowledge, declared that the categorical imperative could be explained without any trouble to a ten-year-old child." (p.18)
"Certainly philosophy came into the world in the agora - it is a child of the democracy of the polis." (p.18)
"Philosophy is a summons to thinking, hence a summons to perceive the true and the good as a unity. This can be succinctly summarised as: "Consider how you should think; consider how you should act ; consider how you should live. " "How you should live" involves "how you should think" and "how you should act". Philosophy as a rational utopia is always the utopia of a form of life. To this extent Kant expressed the "secret" of all philosophies (including contemplative philosophy): this "secret" is nothing other than the primacy of practical reason. The highest good always comprises the goal of utopia as a mode of life. The system is only true if it reveals the highest good. The philosopher has to vouch for the highest good." (p.20)
"Doubtless the reception of philosophy is as varied as there are recipients of philosophy, but nonetheless it is essential to delimit and classify the main types of reception. Only so can we demonstrate both that philosophy is multi-functional and that the different types of reception all indicate the existence of a common need." (p.28)
-Ágnes Heller, A radical philosophy, Basil Blackwell, 1984 (1978 pour la première édition allemande), 196 pages.
