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    Ágnes Heller, A radical philosophy

    Johnathan R. Razorback
    Johnathan R. Razorback
    Admin


    Messages : 20724
    Date d'inscription : 12/08/2013
    Localisation : France

    Ágnes Heller, A radical philosophy Empty Ágnes Heller, A radical philosophy

    Message par Johnathan R. Razorback Lun 23 Jan - 14:57

    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 twvin 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)

    "Philosophical systems are just as "inexhaustible" as works of art are. The possible interpretations of them are therefore also endless." (p.33)

    "Social scientists need to receive some form of philosophy in order to be clear as to their own task. The mere discovery and cataloguing of social facts is an extreme case and can anyway hardly be considered as science, for no connection between the facts is constructed. Sciences become genuine sciences of society through a social theory, on the basis of which the facts can be placed in context and the given facts turned into the facts of the theory. This ordering principle always consists of two components: method and value. Method itself stems largely from philosophy, although doubtless every theoretical social science discipline possesses methods and methodological principles appropriate to its object. This does not however apply to values.

    The value or values which guide the theory can stem from two sources . Firstly, social scientists can start from values that are present in their everyday life and in their everyday consciousness, values which are indeed unreflected. Such values are taken almost as "natural". In this case social scientists are guided in the production of theory by the system of prejudices of their period and social class, and of which they mostly have no consciousness at all. They can even assume that their starting point is value neutral, since it is not guided by some value system constructed by a philosophy. However, we know that there is no such thing as "empty" consciousness, not even when philosophical astonishment [...] has been carried out and the world is being posed "childish" questions. When not even this occurs, then every prejudice is simply transposed into the theory and appears there in a mask of apparent self-evidentness. When Max Weber demanded value neutrality in social theory, he was in his polemics quite correctly attacking this routine and unreflected value transposition. However, value freedom does not form a realistic alternative to control by the value system of unreflected everyday thought. This is not just because value freedom is unachievable: in philosophy the unachievable can still act as a guiding principle. Philosophically seen, the claim for its impossibility is not an argument against Max Weber. What is decisive is that it is not only impossible, but also undesirable.

    In our opinion the desirable alternative is the reception of the value system or value hierarchy of a philosophy and its self-conscious application in the creation of a theory. However, in so far as philosophy gives the social sciences values or a value hierarchy, and in so far as social theory absolutely consciously applies this to the theory, then we are no longer dealing merely with a reception that guides cognition, but rather with an evaluative and cognition-guiding reception." (pp.44-45)

    "For philosophy the highest good is not simply true knowledge, but rather a knowledge the truth of which can only be understood through autonomous rational thought and which can only be confirmed by rational arguments. Philosophy therefore satisfies the need for a rational creation of value rationality and the need to "apply" this in autonomous thought. In philosophy there is no separation between theory and practice: theory and practice are always fused." (p.51)

    "The world of myths is gone. The fact that science has taken the place of myths and emphasis on true knowledge that of belief, that there is no longer any "credo quia absurdum", all this we regard not as degradation but as an achievement of the human spirit. The fact that in the bourgeois world epoch the growth of knowledge itself became a fetish and that the totality collapsed into incoherent "jobs" does not lead us to the conclusion that one should return to myths or to revelation. Rather we are claiming that philosophy as a rational utopia based on autonomous , rational thought, as unity of theory and practice, as a "world", is suited to mediate between the totality and the partial. Not because it is the science of sciences, not because it formulates "the most general laws", but because it offers us values and a form of life which allows us to live our own thoughts and to transform them into social action. If one wishes to understand the world as a whole and to understand one's own place in it as a unitary personality, then one needs a philosophy." (p.51)

    "True and false, good and bad, beautiful and ugly, all are value orientation categories. Value orientation belongs to our social nature, to our human existence. One can just as little "get behind" them or "transcend" them as one can everyday speech. However one thinks and acts , however one feels and experiences , we think, act , feel and experience through them. Only if we placed ourselves in a position outside society could these categories be pure objects of our thought . If I claim or deny, demand, forbid or order, love or hate, desire or detest, if I want to achieve something or to avoid something, if I laugh, cry, work, rest, j udge or have twinges of conscience, then always I am guided by one or other value orientation category, indeed often by more than one. Nothing is therefore more self-evident than that every value orientation category is a concept of everyday speech. And it is equally self-evident that everyone also knows what these concepts mean and therefore uses them in a relevant way." (pp.53-54)

    "In their environment humans experience the world as something that is "ordered" by value orientation categories. If one says "Don' t do that, that is bad", then the world of their experience is enriched in that the thing that has been named has been classified in their developing understanding under the category "bad" and "to be avoided". At the same time they receive a norm in relation to action: that is something one must not do, that is a way one should not act." (p.55)

    "Binding value orientation categories are those which demand from people that they rise above particularity ; non-binding ones are those which do not make such a demand. Only the moral orientation category, the good, and the cognition-guiding category, the true, have clear binding functions. All the other categories are only binding if they contain a moral aspect. This applies to the "holy" in all religions in which the relationship to the transcendental possesses a moral value content, and to the "beautiful" in societies where the category either has or aims to have a moral or religio-moral content. Following the particular value orientation category that is internal to an activity also involves a binding aspect, because this also contains a moral aspect." (p.60)

    "When naive philosophy declared that not "this" was good but "that", it constructed its highest good in such a way that it always referred to existing values. It chose one method of applying the value orientation categories, confronted it with another, expanded its usage, gave a new content to it or added a broader one, in order then to declare: "Look at the good, this is the highest good!" Up until Kant bourgeois philosophy by and large followed the same path. In the ever more property-orientated bourgeois world it shifted the value hierarchy in favour of the useful and the successful. More and more everyday thought identified the useful with the good and the non-binding value orientation category thus absorbed the binding category within itself. In this way naive philosophy, of whatever form, was expressing an existing social process, namely the transformation of moral judgement . It in no way abandoned the good as the highest good, but rather was concerned to deduce the good itself from the useful. Kant however wanted to turn his back completely on the bourgeois use of value orientation categories: therefore he could in no way accept the conventional value judgements. In order to be able to recreate an imperative and binding form of morality this imperative had to be categorical: it could no longer be based on non-bindingness or on accident, but had to reject them. Countless philosophical problems and antinomies resulted from this." (p.61)

    "Since we live in a period of world-historical consciousness, we must also reflect historically on our own ideals. We must be conscious that our rational utopia is a utopia of our time. Yet the claim that the structure of philosophy -of each and every philosophy- expresses the structure of the personality which raises itself to the standpoint of the species is not contradicted by the historicity of the form of the ideals. The linkage of the good and the true corresponds both to the demand that each individual should through transcendence of their own particularity strive for the simultaneous realisation of the good and the true, and to the demand that each individual should shape their life, their action and their thought according to this norm. In its relation to the existing values of the species, philosophy expresses the structure of the developing personality independent of those aspects of development it concretely ascribes to the species-being." (pp.66-67)

    "All philosophies assume [...] that humans can only correspond to the ideal of humanity if they think rationally and act according to value rationality. In its structure philosophy therefore can only represent the ascent of the species because it is always convinced of these two characteristics of the human being. It is important to be clear on this so that one does not hold philosophy's choice of ideals to.be arbitrary. A choice of values which always recognises at least two characteristics of human beings as always the same cannot be completely arbitrary. A choice of values can equally hardly be completely arbitrary if within a world historical period it is always characterised by a consensus about the fundamental value of the highest good." (pp.67-68)

    "If one considers the positivist philosophies which are rooted in the nineteenth century and which today are still flourishing and in a certain sense even dominant, then one could say judgement has been passed on this period. It has been passed, in that no judgement was passed. That is to say, positivism in all its shapes and forms tore away from all philosophies their crown -the highest good. There is in this philosophy no longer any highest good, and hence there can be no rational utopia. It offers no Ought to set against what is ; it recommends no new or alternative forms of life. It thus, whether it wants to or not, confirms and consolidates precisely what is." (pp.68-69)

    "The beautiful is no longer the "concern" of philosophy, not even of the philosophy of art, but instead is degraded to being merely the "private concern" of artists and connoisseurs. Yet, as has already been said, in this heaven the beautiful is no dispensable god; in any case its empty place suggests a certain "emptiness" on earth. Without the highest good however this heaven does not exist at all. And yet philosophical relevance has equally been denied to the highest good - and with it to morality. It is claimed that our value judgements cannot be true and that our choice of values is "irrational" and subjective. Nothing is more revealing than the naive self-evidentness with this claim is expressed. If there is anything which can destroy ethics, it is meta-ethics. To reduce the philosophy of morality to an analysis of the logic of moral claims is "merely" to make incidental what that philosophy should express: morality itself.

    The idea of the true appears to fare better. Science, the decisive productive force in the world of today, cannot do without a clear criterion of true knowledge. The fact that the ever more powerful natural sciences require a particular application and definition of the idea of true knowledge for this sphere is self-evident , and no one can doubt the right, even the duty, of philosophy to work out in this sphere the relevant idea of the true and its criteria. Yet neither science nor mathematics demands that philosophy should take the real or claimed criteria of true knowledge of their areas as a universally valid idea of truth. A philosophy which has occluded the question of the highest good and the question of the truth of values as "myths" has made science itself into a myth. Now neither natural science nor mathematics is an ideology. Yet all the same Habermas is correct:· they were made into ideology. Philosophy raised them to ideology, in that it reduced the criterion of truth to logical thinking and the true knowledge of facts." (pp.69-70)
    -Ágnes Heller, A radical philosophy, Basil Blackwell, 1984 (1978 pour la première édition allemande), 196 pages.


    _________________
    « La question n’est pas de constater que les gens vivent plus ou moins pauvrement, mais toujours d’une manière qui leur échappe. » -Guy Debord, Critique de la séparation (1961).

    « Rien de grand ne s’est jamais accompli dans le monde sans passion. » -Hegel, La Raison dans l'Histoire.

    « Mais parfois le plus clair regard aime aussi l’ombre. » -Friedrich Hölderlin, "Pain et Vin".

    Johnathan R. Razorback
    Johnathan R. Razorback
    Admin


    Messages : 20724
    Date d'inscription : 12/08/2013
    Localisation : France

    Ágnes Heller, A radical philosophy Empty Re: Ágnes Heller, A radical philosophy

    Message par Johnathan R. Razorback Jeu 30 Mai - 11:08

    "This reduction is, we must repeat, of an ideological sort. For here, as in every ideology, an individual case is generalised: the pragmatic of the natural sciences is made a criterion of all true cognition, according to which only what is quantifiable is true, and hence scientific. As such, only the quantifiable social sciences could raise a claim to truth. Every ideal, above all the ideal of the good, would thus be "unscientific", so that the truth \Vould be irrelevant since it is precisely not quantifiable. A mathematical model is realisable and thus is scientific; the values of a utopia are unquantifiable and thus unrealisable, misleading, "unscientific". Facts, so it is claimed, are independent of values." (p.70)

    " "Everything is lost" argues Kant if philosophical value does not guide the theory of praxis. For if theory bases itself only on previous experience then praxis too can only build on previous experiences. With the aid of such theories what exists cannot be overcome, and the "everything" that is lost is the future of humanity." (p.71)

    "Today Max Weber's concept of the difference between value rational action and purposive rational action is well known and applies. We wish to use these categories, in particular that of value rationality, but with a slightly different meaning. We asssume that what values shape a given action depends not only on the attitude of the actors to the end and the values, but also by the quality of the action and by the quality of the end itself. People could never have had an "attitude" to relate all their action to the highest values, in other words, to orientate decisions and choices to the highest value. At the same time however, purposive rationality is not simply a question of "attitude" either ; there are types of activity which required purposive rationality even when human activity was primarily "orientated" to values. We accept Max Weber's claim that in the bourgeois epoch purposive rationality has "absorbed" value rationality as a striking formulation of a tendency. By this we mean that purposive rationality extended beyond the types of activity to which it had earlier been related and had had to be related, and shaped all spheres and types of human activity. Thus the illusion was created that value rationality was "irrational".

    In describing these concepts we return, at least for our starting point , to Aristotle. His categories are so "transparent" because he lived in a time when value rationality could not be doubted, but when purposive rationality had also emerged as a particular kind of rationality in relevant areas of human action. Aristotle describes purposive rational action with the term techne, that of value rationality with the term energeia ; he separates clearly from each other the two types of activity to which he applies the one or the other term. Techne is creation, meaningful work worthy of the free person ; energeia is social action.

    When I apply myself to the realisation of an end in creation I do not any more raise the question of whether the purpose is valuable. In this situation I understand work as a technological process. The determination of the value content -the purpose of the work- is not part of the work itself but rather a part of social activity. In work the purpose is already "given": as an ideal aim in the heads of humans. Therefore my work is rational when I can choose the necessary means for the realisation of the given aim, and when with the help of these means I can realise the aim. The sole criterion of purposive rationality lies in the realisation of the given aim. The confirmation (and indeed the only confirmation) that my activity was successful is the appearance of the aim that was in my head as an object that is as it is. This Aristotelian model is doubtless the model of all purposive rationality. Therefore the solution of every task of a technical nature depends on purposive rationality. The problem in bourgeois society is not in fact that there are types of activity which can only be successfully realised if the value content of the aim is not questioned, but instead has to be accepted as given and attention concentrated exclusively on the selection of the purposive necessary to realise it. The problem is far more that this type of activity is preferred even when it is unnecessary, indeed even when it is unacceptable: it is uniquely unacceptable for the establishment of the goal itself.

    The criterion for rationality in Aristotle's value rational action, energeia, is something other than that in purposive rationality. Value rationality is a characteristic of social action, of interaction, of communication. Certainly within value rationality one is also guided by differing intentions, but by ones which form a value relationship and which are values ascribed both by the society in which we live and by us ourselves. For example, if we have to defend our country against an aggressor or if we hold that slaves should be freed, then it is demanded of us that we use all our strength in this situation to observe the norm or to establish a law which we believe to be just. The value rationality of an action or of a series of actions does not depend in any way at all on whether or not the aim is achieved. Our deeds are no less value rational if the homeland in fact experiences a defeat, if the slaves are not liberated, etc.

    There are two criteria of value rationality. First, that the actors continually hold fast to their values, and second, that this value itself enjoys social recognition. From the standpoint of purposive rationality the task of the individual consists in realising an aim, but from the standpoint of value rationality it is in maintaining the value to which one has pledged oneself. Aristotle expresses this by saying that "energeia" really amounts to continual virtuous activity. If people cease to act according to a value and to an aim held to be valuable, then the value looses its validity and the realisation of the aim loses its value rationality. In this context, whether a value is rational or not hinges not on the "nature" of the value but on us humans who have chosen to observe it. Its rationality depends on whether we can act continually under its guidance, according to its meaning and for its realisation In this sense it is irrelevant whether or not the aim is actually achieved.

    Here however we must pause for a moment. Within the category of value rationality we have also been considering value choice. If we isolate the aspect of value choice from the totality of the action and of the personality of the person concerned and from their relationship to the world, then the idea of value choice has no meaning. In the moment of choice one cannot be guided by the value one has chosen. This would require a logical fragmentation of the actions of a unitary personality, and that is something we reject. If a person chooses a value his or her consciousness is not a "blank page" . One always arrives at the choice of new values as the consequence of continually upholding particular values. The choice of new values is a free and conscious act, because it is an act of choice and decision. However, it is no way an act that is independent of previous value rational actions, and this act of choice is itself an action. At the same time however every value choice will subsequently confirm or disprove its own rationality. In so far as one subsequently continually acts according to the chosen value and with the intention of upholding the values, the choice reveals itself as rational; if one does not, then it can certainly be said that the value choice was "irrational" (although I myself would claim that this terminology has no meaning, since really in this case no act of value choice has occurred). A value which is not adequate to the function of guiding rational action cannot count as having been chosen. Doubtless values can lose their rationality, although this is completely independent of whether they are inherited or chosen values. Further, one can even claim that at least in dynamic societies values that are merely inherited lose their rationality more frequently than ones that are chosen.

    The second criterion of value rationality is social recognition. As far as we are concerned, this refers not to the action, but to the value itself: society has to accept the chosen value as a value. This certainly does not imply any consensus of an entire epoch or society in relation to the form of a given value, but is mostly a question of a representative consensus (of a social class, stratum or community) which always expresses a given need. If today somebody were to choose acquiring slaves as a value, we could immediately claim that their value choice was irrational, even if people could be found who agreed with them. Yet for Aristotle this same belief counted as a value, indeed even as "art" ! If today in Europe someone started to honour the cow as "holy", we would certainly not regard their value choice as rational, even though in India today cows certainly are holy because there this is a recognised value based on a social consensus. Europeans who stigmatise worshipping holy cows in India as "stupid" only prove their
    own stupidity: namely the fact that they know no other rationality than that of purposive rationality. Incidentally, it is characteristic of people in bourgeois society to classify value rationality as "stupidity" even in regard to values which are easy to understand and which are recognised in their own society. Decency, honour and truth count as "empty humbug" which the "clever person" dismisses. Can philosophy then be blamed if it understands value choice as irrational ?

    But nonetheless, this is also philosophy's fault. For as long as even one value enjoys social recognition and for as long as this is actively and continually upheld by j ust one person, then philosophy must uphold value rationality as a value and cannot classify value choice - any value choice whatsoever - as "irrational". There are countless values on which we agree, even when we from time to time put forward others, and there are not a few people who continually and actively uphold these values.

    As the objectification of value rationality, philosophy cannot give up value rationality, for that would contradict its own definition. This certainly does not mean that it must also challenge purposive rationality when it is justified and when it is in its proper place. We consider it necessary to stress this, since for many the justified rejection of the contemporary dominance of purposive rationality could lead to the demand that one should again abolish the specificity of purposive rationality, or to an idealisation of primitive societies in which purposive rationality is not yet differentiated within value rationality. One meets this demand and this idealisation especially in romantic ethnographic literature, for example in Levi-Strauss' work on myths . Doubtless in certain primitive societies the labour process itself was not purposive rational nor were the technical aspects of the economy separated from the values of the society, and doubtless today one can still find societies that are partly like this . However, if one starts from a sense of responsibility for the problems of our own times, then such a type of society can serve us neither as a model nor as an ideal. This is primarily because such a "model" could only be realised at the cost of the complete disnantling of modern industry and technology, and because the administration of large social entities without such a differentiation of purposive rationality would be impossible . One could perfectly well object here that this is only relevant from the point of view of our own value choice because we do give priority to the dynamic in a society. This is a preference we do not wish to disguise, nor do we want to deny that we see the development of production as the essential condition of the future society. However, it is quite another question what sort of development and what direction of development we hold to be sensible for production ; equally, we believe the content and the direction of the development should be decided by value rationality.

    Once however the direction of the development is fixed for a period of time by value rationality and by value discussion, then its realisation is inconceivable if at the same time purposive rationality is eliminated. Today humanity is no longer the mere sum of isolated or relatively isolated small units, but rather, given world communication, a unity which cannot be split into individual components. And in addition, today it is a question of four (and tomorrow perhaps six) billion people. Given these two factors, the future of humanity without purposive rationality or without the differentation of the purposive rational form of action from value rationality can only even be imagined as a vision of chaos and famine. Those therefore who glimpse in the period before the differentiation of purposive rationality some form of "golden epoch" cannot in any way put this forward as a rational utopia for humanity.

    However, let us return to the problem of value. An epoch is not only characterised by the concrete hierarchy of value orientation categories, in which at least in principle the orientation categories of good and evil always have primacy as the necessarily imperative categories, but also by the value hierarchy as such. The spheres , types of activity, objectifications, feelings, etc. , to which we apply the different value orientation categories, and which therefore are values because they enter into a "value relationship", are "hierarchialised" in different ways. Normally the society lays down a particular value hierarchy, but this can be modified according to strata, communities and even individuals. It is a question of the structure of the particular society what room to manoeuvre is availiable for these modifications. The "fixed" value hierarchy, that is to say, the firmly fixed system of material values all mutually ranked one above the other, disintegrated with the emergence of bourgeois society: its re-creation is neither possible nor desirable. This however does not mean the collapse of all value hierarchies. The hierarchy can determine the "place" of the value, such as the place of loyalty in the moral value hierarchy, or the relations in which the value enters , such as to whom should one be loyal (to master, friend or cause ?) and equally it can specify the meaning of the value, such as the meaning of loyalty (to whom is one truely loyal ?). The vertical and horizontal ordering of all the values we term the value system.

    Just like society, individuals are not characterised by a single value but by a system of values. Within this system many values are, at least in everyday life, morally indifferent and function merely as "instructions" . In relation to the values of usefulness and pleasantness there is nothing "bad" about this : it would be bad if one had to chose them autonomously in every single case. If before washing one's hands one had to consider whether one chose the value of hygiene, then it would be impossible to survive.

    However, the higher a value stands, the greater is the role of morality in our relationship to it , and so the greater is the importance of our conscious decision for it. Values with a moral content are thus values which are distinguished by the fact that our active relationship to them contains a moral aspect. Such values cannot function as mere "instructions for use". That they cannot function as such means in no way that they do not de facto function as such, but rather that they ought not to do so. The rationality of these values is --from a particular point of view -- created precisely by our conscious choice and by the continual activity which corresponds to it.

    If we through an action consciously realise values or want to realise them, if we therefore proceed with a value rational orientation, then we do not necessarily choose the value that stands highest in the hierarchy, but rather a value that is adequate to the given form of activity. For example, Aristotle held generosity to be a value standing higher in the hierarchy of moral values than courage, but he would have found it absurd if in war somebody practised the virtue of generosity and not that of courage in relation to the enemy. Adequacy to the situation is an aspect of value rational action that cannot be eliminated, any more than can be adequacy to the subject, which can be eliminated from the standpoint of neither the acting subject nor the subjects with whom one acts collectively or whom the action affects.

    Adequacy to the subject and adequacy to the situation are determined by several factors . Since an extensive analysis of them belongs to the sphere of ethics , we will content ourselves with a few examples. Since a part of value rationality is the continual upholding of a given value, when one judges the value rationality of a subject's action one cannot abstract from the value rationality of the same subject's earlier actions ; when the subject however chooses a new value in an action, they must do so consciously and must explicate the value. Often two subjects carry out the same action, but from a moral standpoint this is not the same action. If someone acts on the basis of new values, wihtout considering them and without revising their earlier actions, then from the point of view of the acting subject the value rational action is not subject-adequate and is not the moral equivalent of a subject-adequate action. Alternatively, if somebody's passions conflict with their aims and the latter are held to be valuable, then their value rational action must be seen as meritorious and be given greater recognition ; the assessment is subject-adequate from the point of view of the acting subject. Or, our loyalty too is in one way dependent on to whom or to what we are loyal. We can be loyal in that we unconditionally commit ourselves to a person or to a cause, or we can be loyal with distance and criticism. Whether we link loyalty to the value of unconditional acceptance or to that of criticism has to be determined by both the object and the circumstances of the loyalty - it has to be adequate to both the subject and the situation.

    The fact that neither situation adequacy nor subject adequacy can be removed produces what we want to call the dilemma of morality. It has to be remembered that good and evil are the pair of orientation categories which guide actions with moral content. Nonnally, if not in all areas of application, this pair of value orientation categories orders or for bids. That is to say, each use of these values takes the fonn of rules of action and behaviour which must be obeyed. Morality is thus a system of rules which -in the case of conflict- ought to take precedence over all other systems of rules. Kant's categorical imperative formulates this imperative character of morality in that he assumes, as we do not, that the moral law contradicts all other systems of rules, so that to choose is at the same time to exclude.

    Every value rational action has to be adequate to the situation and the subject and not just the object. From the point of view of morality, object adequacy means to correspond to the system of rules. The moment however that one acts , this system of rules is applied in a concrete situation and to concrete people. It follows from this that we can certainly clairn the universal validity of our moral values, but we can hardly claim the universal validity of our moral actions. And the higher are the values on which we base our allegiance to the system of moral rules, the less we can make this claim. Maxims such as "Every person .should have the right to personal freedom" or "Other people's needs should always be considered" can claim universality. If however on the basis of these values I decide to get divorced, then I cannot make any claim for the universal validity of my action. I cannot say that everyone who claims that every person should have a right to personal freedom or that the needs of others should be considered should get divorced. This would be absurd. Certain British moralists want to solve the dilemma of morality by arguing that everyone should act as they would wish anyone in their situation to act. This however is just as absurd. If we argue that no two leaves on a tree are identical, how can we then in any way claim that several concrete people in one concrete situation act in exactly the same way as several other concrete people in another concrete situation, let alone claim that they should act in exactly the same way ? Every person is an unrepeatable individual, and every situation is an unreplicable individual process.

    The concrete situation and the subject who acts, together with the person with whom the subject acts or whom the action concerns, frequently demand that one moral value is preferred to another without the latter thereby losing its claim to universal validity. The higher are the values which the action involves, the more corr1mon and the more unavoidable it is that one confronts this dilemma. If it is a question of washing one's hands before one eats , then I can confidently declare that everyone ought to wash their hands before they eat. If however I exclaim, "Thou shalt not kill", but kill people in war or vote against the hanging of a mass murderer, or if I proclaim justice to be a value but then as the occasion arises show mercy instead of justice, or in the name of justice show no mercy to a person pleading for mercy, then in none of these cases can I wish my action to have any claim to universal validity. Neither the choice of values nor value rational action can exclude the aspect of personal responsibility. The higher the value, the less this is possible. We are personally morally responsible for our choice of values and our value rational actions. Anyone who wants to eliminate the aspect of personal responsibility or individual choice from value rationality wishes to eliminate value rational action itself.

    At this point I would like to return briefly to the idealisation of primitive societies. As we have seen, in such societies there is no pure and differentiated purposive rationality. However, this also means that there is no pure value rationality. The emergence of pure value rationality depends on the differentiation of means rationality. One recalls the "Not this is good, but that" or the "Not this is beautiful, but that" - the objectifications of value rationality have arisen due to the differentiation of value rationality.

    The elimination of situation and subject adequacy from value rationality does not lead to confirming the universal validity of maxims, but to scandalising basic common sense. Kant had attempted it: the result is well known. If a murderer is looking for his victim, there is no reasonable and respectable person who, on the grounds that one should not lie, could claim that one should tell him where he would find him." (pp.76-85)

    "People do not act on the basis of a single value and that they are not guided by a single value. Instead their whole value system is at work and they have to observe values which are also adequate to the situation in which they act. Somebody who consciously chooses or reaffirms their value also has a conscious value hierarchy, but in it one or more values \Vill have a dominant function, that is to say, will occupy the place of the "highest standing" values. We will term these the "leading values". The system of values is either coherent or incoherent, depending on whether or not there are contradictions between the leading values and the other values in the value hierarchy. A coherent value system is one without contradictions: every value is subordinated to, related to, or indifferent to the leading values. Everyone is obliged to strive to make their value system coherent.

    Not every action is directly determined by the leading values . Nonetheless one has to try to ensure that the values which are decisive for the action do not contradict the leading values . This has nothing to do with what we earlier described as the "dilemma of morality". At the level of value choice there is no contradiction at all between "Thou shalt not kill" and love of the fatherland, nor between justice and mercy. They can all concurrently, in the same way and at the same time raise the claim to universal validity. In each case the contradiction results from the concrete situation. However, when the Kantian formula that no one should treat someone else as a mere means serves for someone as a leading value and that same person accepts violence, or when someone in the same breath advocates equality and inequality between the sexes, or democracy and the restriction of free opinion, then we can rjghtly speak of an incoherence of the value system." (pp.85-86)

    "The unavoidable basis of value choice and of value rational action, the claim to universal validity of the chosen values, stands at the centre of modern philosophical controversies over values. One could crudely sketch the proponents' positions by saying: one side puts forward the view that in itself the claim to universal validity reveals the irrationality of value choice. That is, values are not objective, for one person will choose this value and another that value. According to this argument, contradictory values oppose each other and each makes the same claim to universal validity. The values cannot be "true", if only for the reason that mutually opposing values all claim to be true. According to the representatives of this position, it therefore follows that a reasonable and successful value discussion is impossible: the subjectively chosen values face each other, each is immovable, value choice cannot be changed by arguments. The adherents of the opposing position want to retain the objectivity of values. Since however they accept, at least in many aspects, the arguments of the previous position, they attempt to ground the values transcendentally (Scheler).

    The theoretical basis of the antagonism which emerges from the discussion of the universal validity of values is to be found, so we would argue, in the fact that the structure of value rationality is conceptualised as analogous to that of purposive rationality: its social basis is the structure of bourgeois society itself." (pp.87-88)

    "In order to avoid this dilemma, we must never lose sight of the basic criterion of value rationality. Above all, one must differentiate between valid values and the concrete nature of the content of the valid values. For the sake of simplicity we shall consider first the preferred pair of the imperative orientation categories themselves: customary ethical values.

    The first thing to emerge here is that a social consensus exists in relation to the leading moral values. And this applies not to a given social "moment" but also to overarching historical epochs. Courage, honesty (honour), justice and friendship counted as leading moral values when it was held to be true knowledge that the speed at which objects fall depends on their weight. Goodness and love were leading moral values when knowledge of the horror vacui of nature counted as true knowledge. True knowledge of nature has undergone much greater changes than the truth of values has. To explain this circumstance however one needs neither God nor Platonic Ideas. People create their moral ideas themselves : the different moral values are not creations of one and the same social period, but rather have emerged continually. They do however have one unique feature: once they have crystallised, then they live on as ideas, because they retain their social recognition and people uphold them in their regular actions. It can happen that some values are moved lower and others higher within the hierarchy, but in any case the invariable values select themselves from these ideas. These values however have universal validity. To claim that they are universally valid is therefore neither arbitrariness nor subjectivism; it is simply to express their empirical universal validity.

    It is not difficult to determine which moral values are universally valid. They are the values which morally relativise their opposites : their "opposite" can never have any claim to universal validity and can only gain acceptance as an exception. Consider for example justice. This value is universally valid and its validity does not require any further confirmation: nobody can choose injustice as a value. "Justice" has relativised injustice. I can say "In this particular case I must be unjust, because ... ", but I cannot say that I strive for injustice. The universally valid moral values express humanity's species character. This is the reason why the exceptional case of a deliberate choice of a non-value is always condemned as devilish. "I am determined to prove a villain" is a devilish principle. In the same fashion love has relativised hate, truth betrayal, sympathy indifference to suffering, courage cowardice. From now on we shall tenn universally valid moral values "value ideals".

    Our starting point was the moral sphere, for here we could most clearly explicate our own concerns: no single value ideal can be considered as an "archetype" and as given to people from birth ; without exception all value ideals have emerged historically.
    Every single value could originally only be interpreted in one way. For example, courage meant courage in war. Later it was more and more generalised into an ideal endowed with different meanings and so became the centre of a value reference system of an epoch and of a cultural milieu. The centres of such value reference systems were not primarily formed by pure moral value ideals, but by those value ideals which also contained a moral aspect, a moral meaning and a moral interpretation. The value ideals which structure our time and our cultural milieu are freedom, personality, equality, happiness, humanity and human life. The majority of these value ideals are today accepted in all significant cultural milieus. It is in general the case that the more historical epochs they have existed in and the more cultural milieus they have been effective in, the less likely is their universal validity to be questioned. Thus, for example, nobody can openly say that their aim is the unhappiness of other people or that their leading value is the suppression or the destruction of personality. As for equality, it is incidentally the case that it in our cultural milieu it has not become a universally valid value to the same extent as freedom and personality." (pp.88-89)

    "The assumption that usually in value discussion universally valid values stand opposed ' to each other is highly questionable. Moreover, it is quite impossible for all the values which are held by two people and which claim universal validity to collide with one another. Normally collisions between values are in no way caused by universally valid values, but by their interpretations. What for example does freedom mean ? The independence of nations, freedom of thought, to do and to be allowed to do what one wishes, or the free choice of the community ? And so on. Or take -another example: what does life mean ? The development of biological life ? The quality of life ?

    All our values are interpreted values. If we make claims for their universal validity, then we do this at least for a concrete meaning and for a particular interpretation. The interpretation of a value always implies a recommendation for action that is right according to the value. The purposes are always fixed according to the interpreted value; it is this that guides value rational action. In the same way we make judgements and theories on the basis of interpreted values. In different interpretations the same values recommend quite different and often even contradictory actions, and they are frequently the basis for different models of society. Thus for example A and B could say that for them equality counts as a value. In A's understanding this means that every person should have the same share of everything; by contrast in B's understanding it means that equal people should have equal shares in everything. The two interpretations of the same value give two different recommendations for action, for judgement and for the creation of theories, and they are the basis of two different models of society." (pp.89-90)
    -Ágnes Heller, A radical philosophy, Basil Blackwell, 1984 (1978 pour la première édition allemande), 196 pages.


    _________________
    « La question n’est pas de constater que les gens vivent plus ou moins pauvrement, mais toujours d’une manière qui leur échappe. » -Guy Debord, Critique de la séparation (1961).

    « Rien de grand ne s’est jamais accompli dans le monde sans passion. » -Hegel, La Raison dans l'Histoire.

    « Mais parfois le plus clair regard aime aussi l’ombre. » -Friedrich Hölderlin, "Pain et Vin".

    Johnathan R. Razorback
    Johnathan R. Razorback
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    Messages : 20724
    Date d'inscription : 12/08/2013
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    Ágnes Heller, A radical philosophy Empty Re: Ágnes Heller, A radical philosophy

    Message par Johnathan R. Razorback Dim 11 Aoû - 12:50

    "Positivist thought analyses value choice and value-guided action analogously to the schema of purposive rationality, and hence is not able to comprehend the rationality of the former. One recalls here Aristotle's model of purposive rationality: the plan of the house has been drawn up and comprises our purpose - now we have to build the house.

    The action is rational if this house is actually built. We have however seen that while in their actions people are certainly guided by a value, they understand this value very differently: depending on how they interpret it, they strive to realise differently evaluated goals under the guidance of the same value idea ! From this it follows that one can never "realise" a value ideal: one cannot build "the house" of freedom or of equality. People struggle for different freedoms and immediately fill the idea contained in the word "freedom" with different meanings . The idea of the value is "maintained" by continual action which is related to it - it is through this that this particular action becomes rational. At the same time however it is possible that particular ends related to a value idea are never achieved, while particular interpretations can certainly be mutually exclusive . Once again this means that "the house" has not been built.

    Against this background we can only repeat : the realisation of goals is not the precondition for value rational action. At the same time - and we will return to this again later - it is quite possible to conceive of quite different applications of the value idea being realised together. One cannot build a house if one starts on the cellar and the attic at the same time and if one "understands" the house in two different ways. In relation to values however this is not impossible, indeed it is normal. For example, if someone demands equal citizenship rights for women, someone else demands equal educational opportunities for the rich and for the poor, and a third demands the restructuring of the distribution of income in society in order to create more equality, then - to remain with the same analogy - the construction of the cellar, the second storey and the attic is being undertaken at the same time and from completely different points of view. None the less, all of this still refers to one and the same value idea - equality. The "confusion" between the structure of purposive rationality and the structure of value rationality and the dominance of purposive rationality as the real rationality shows an affinity with the structure of bourgeois society. That is not to say that there is no value rational action in bourgeois society: bourgeois society was the first society to· require a type of human beirg who subordinates their whole life to an idea: the citizen. Bourgeois society made the ideas of freedom, fraternity and equality into value ideas, and bourgeois society needed these ideas if it was to survive through the bourgeois revolutions and the national wars. At the same time the private bourgeois individual handed over both the determination of values and value rational action to the citizen . Bourgeois private life became more and more guided by usefulness. That is not to say that other values were not effective, but rather that their control function lost its "certainty". Values were relativised and rules reduced to rules of propriety. In pre-bourgeois society the validity of the values was, so to speak, "natural". In antiquity the guarantee for this was the fixed value hierarchy of the city community; in the Christian Middle Ages it was the ideal community (through the mediation of religion God was the indubitable source of all values and of the value hierarchy). It is easy to see that , despite all this, even in those periods no consensus existed over the interpretation of values. It is unnecessary to refer again to philosophy, but is enough to remember a well-known fact of everyday life - the Bible. The Sermon on the Mount, for example, was interpreted in very different and indeed in very contradictory ways. In bourgeois society however there is no community life and no community to lay down a firm value hierarchy. Although for religious consciousness God as creator of values has not ceased to be a "value guarantee", the majority of people have become atheists in their practice. Only to a continually declining extent does religion (if one leaves aside the sects) offer them a form of life. The belief that as an individual it is possible to choose freely one's values emerges at the same time as the idea of the value of freedom. The differences and the contradictions in the interpretations of values therefore produce the appearance that no guarantee exists for the validity of values.

    That is also the reason why writers and thinkers are once again concerned to restore, but only in this connection, the religious guarantee to its function - as does Rousseau in his famous allegory of the bridge of Poul-Serrho, or Dostoievski, who puts into the mouth of one of his heroes that if there were no God, then everything would be allowed. We have said appearance, meaning not an optical illusion, but rather the form of the appearance of the factual antinomy of bourgeois society. In a society which announces that people choose their values themselves and that value is a human creation, the majority of people have no possibility of participating in the creation of values but instead are excluded from it. An existential basis for value rational action, which places people in a position where they become conscious of the universal validity of values without any fixed value hierarchy and without any religious guarantee, can only be laid when the determination of values is the common affair of all people. So long as this is not the case, then there will always be a justification for interpreting value rationality as analogous to purposive rationality, for the appearance that value choice is irrational has not been removed." (pp.90-93)
    -Ágnes Heller, A radical philosophy, Basil Blackwell, 1984 (1978 pour la première édition allemande), 196 pages.



    _________________
    « La question n’est pas de constater que les gens vivent plus ou moins pauvrement, mais toujours d’une manière qui leur échappe. » -Guy Debord, Critique de la séparation (1961).

    « Rien de grand ne s’est jamais accompli dans le monde sans passion. » -Hegel, La Raison dans l'Histoire.

    « Mais parfois le plus clair regard aime aussi l’ombre. » -Friedrich Hölderlin, "Pain et Vin".


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