If we phenomenologists are to follow consciousness through its frustrations, as well as comprehend the master and slave dialectic, must we inevitably resign ourselves to Hegel’s racist ideals that he later confirms in his Lectures on the Philosophy of History and his lectures on anthropology from Encylopaedia [sp] of the Philosophical Science? Before we agree to just let conscious run it course (and us simply follow again, as Hegel suggest), one must analyze where his grand project led and see if it was worthwhile. While Hegel would celebrate the entire process of consciousness, some his conclusions that arise from PS (especially in the context of the master-slave dialectic) towards race are simply unacceptable, and might lend to regarding parts of the endeavor worthwhile and not the entire process.
In his anthropology, Hegel states that rationality is implicit in mankind allowing for equal justice, but this does not keep Hegel from making prescribing how to rank the “races” he has created (39). He grants all humans rationality, yet on the next page he prescribes that “Negroes are to be regarded as a race of children who remain immersed in their state of uninterested naïveté. They are sold, and let themselves be sold…(40)” This seems contradictory, as well as just blatantly wrong and bigoted. It is no surprise that Caucasian Europeans represent the highest manifestation of culture and Reason. Of course Hegel is a product of the times, but for someone who identifies with Kantian sentiments, one could project that eventually someone would stir the ship of equality in right direction. Kant was equally as blinded towards the intricacies of concept of race, but given his insistence upon never treating others as mere means to a desired result, or end, it is surprising that Kant would justify slavery. I guess Hegel was doomed to repeat the same concessions in his philosophy given that Kant clearly did the same.
That is not to say that phenomenology is a worthless endeavor, but one must take it with a grain of salt given Hegel’s whole body of work, much like one must read Aristotle and Plato with discretion on their views on females in society. However, is this grossly racist conclusion, which arises especially in the context of Hegel’s master-slave dialectic, a reason to disregard the PS in general? I would hope that the Phenomenology can be salvaged, much like the Kant remains in tact with regards to epistemology (unless you are Rorty) despite his egregious writings on race and justifications of slavery. So proceed with caution, fellow phenomenologists.
Works cited- Bernasconi, Robert, and Tommy L. Lott, eds. Idea of Race. Indianapolis: Hackett Pub., 2000. Print.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
I found this week’s reading to be particularly interesting given the fact that I was out of town at Mardi Gras in New Orleans all weekend. It is well-known for being a less than traditionally moral environment. I was faced with an abundance of choices of all kinds. Sometimes, however, it became a bit of a dilemma when the option became whether or not to pursue a night of crazy fun on Bourbon Street or to make what was probably the better decision. As I was reading up on Hegel’s “Morality” section, a certain concept really struck a chord with me. The idea that the conscience can determine what is right to do based on gut feelings and thinking through all the possible consequences really intrigued me. Do I dare have that other Hand Grenade if it means having to call my roommate at 5 AM to pick me up? Do I go spend the rest of the night with the adorable boy from New York despite having an adorable Valentine date waiting at home? My conscience certainly was in action this weekend. According to Hegel, the conscience can make anything seem morally right if you really think it through and build up a good argument. For example, I should really have that extra drink because I’m in New Orleans for Mardi Gras and I don’t know when I’ll be back. My conscience has proved to be incredibly helpful. If one doesn’t necessarily have a set moral plan for all situations (case in point) the conscience can really help to make the decision process easier. It must serve as the moral authority in each case where a set way of deciding isn’t ready. In the Guide to Hegel it says “ the individual who acts from conscience will look evil to others who abide by the established moral order”. I think this is so true. I have made some really sketchy decisions in the past and some of my more prudish or responsible friends have questioned my choices. Generally speaking, however, my conscience has served me well. I have very few regrets and the times I regret the most are times that my conscience was not my guide. Without a set rule for all potentially morally questionable situations, there is nothing else to do but listen to your conscience. It will fill the “moral void”. My advice is listen to that conscience, it is usually the best judge other than my best friend of what is the correct thing to do. And for those who were curious, yes I had the extra Hand Grenade and yes I went home alone and drove back up to Memphis just in time for my Valentine date. To quote both Marvin Gaye and Jiminy Cricket, “Let your conscience be your guide.”
Hegel’s Master-Slave Dialectic and Sexual Oppression
With it being the beginning of V-week I thought I would try to find something relevant to what we have been reading and that also dealt with women’s issues. In my search I found an essay by Luke Roelofs entitled Hegel’s Master-Slave Dialectic and Sexual Oppression. In the article Roelofs attempts to use the master-slave dialectic as a reason for patriarchal societies. The main argument of the article is that the conflict between two males is different from the conflict between a male and a female because the female when subjugated to the male is seen as a sexual object. The interaction between a male and female thusly emphasizes the physical differences between the two. The article brings up the idea marriage and states that;
“The wife will no doubt work for the master as well, but will be assigned tasks that do not give her sense of her own agency because they do not involve any change, any production, but merely the maintenance of things as they are… …She pours her effort into making the bed: it is slept in, and becomes messy again. So she repeats her work, repeats it every day, and as a result teaches herself… …that her work is simply static, something that exists and does not change or end, i.e. an object.”
The article puts forth that patriarchy stems from a need in individuals to exert their mastery over others and since everyone can’t be a master humans reached a sort of social contract where each master is allocated a certain subset of humanity to lord over. The article references that in most species males fight over access to females to gain the right to reproduce. Whereas humans, which are social animals, the conflict between males leads to a peace between them based on an agreement that allows for an allocation of slaves (women) to masters (men) such that a patriarchy is created. The society that is created excludes women through systematic sexual abuse and objectification. The argument that Roelofs presents is interesting but seems to adhere very loosely to Hegelian master-slave dialectic as it ignores the fact that in Hegel’s system when a consciousness no matter the gender interacts with another consciousness there is a struggle. Therefore I don’t believe it even allows for two males to broker a peace between each other to subjugate females since the whole point of the system is a struggle for acknowledgment of themselves as more than objects. I do feel the argument is interesting and presents an interesting take on the source of patriarchy through a Hegelian lens I’m just not sure how sound the argument actually is. What do you all think of this argument?
Here is the link to the essay
Truth as a Self-Sufficent Activity
For Hegel, truth is the activity of coming to knowledge. However, we ought to be careful thinking that the happening of truth is something like a gradual linear progression. Rather, it seems to me, that truth is like walking down a path you have never been on, wearing shoes that don't fit you and without water. As you keep walking, you are going to get lost (probably more than once) and your feet are going to hurt so much that you chuck your shoes, relieving the tension in your feet only briefly before you have to keep walking again (barefoot). Then finally if you don't find some water soon you are totally going to pass out. But if you make it through this weird journey, there will be water at the end, or rather, you'll realize that you could have been eating the leaves that were everywhere along the way the whole time to stay hydrated. If you only would have known! But hey, thats the truth right?
This description pits nature squarely against the individual, which is what I think the Phenomenology brings to light: the tumultuous relationship between consciousness and the external world. However, it is not just consciousness struggling against the world, but struggling with identifying itself within that world. The master-slave dialectic bring forth the fundamental issue of how one can know oneself in the world as both a subject and an object. But only through resistance can consciousness come to know anything. But if consciousness makes the same mistakes over and over again, learning though trial and error but continually failing, then what is it that motivates consciousness to continue? Is it consciousness itself?
This description pits nature squarely against the individual, which is what I think the Phenomenology brings to light: the tumultuous relationship between consciousness and the external world. However, it is not just consciousness struggling against the world, but struggling with identifying itself within that world. The master-slave dialectic bring forth the fundamental issue of how one can know oneself in the world as both a subject and an object. But only through resistance can consciousness come to know anything. But if consciousness makes the same mistakes over and over again, learning though trial and error but continually failing, then what is it that motivates consciousness to continue? Is it consciousness itself?
Do countries participate in the master slave dialectic?
Sovereign countries, in many ways, behave like the individuals that compose them. While this is true, the similarities are not endless, and one might consider the activity of countries playing out the master slave dialectic a rather tenuous connection. Tenuous as it may be, who else is better suited to explore such a connection if not the philosopher?
Certain themes run throughout all of history but the manifestation of these themes changes with the times and so it is important to identify them in each time period and not be fooled by the fresh veneer. To attest to the veracity of this claim I will posit slavery as one such theme that runs constant in history while changing its appearance. Slavery was present in most of the ancient cultures and continued to exist in various forms until the present. Though many people are not aware, slavery is still thriving today, it has changed locations and in some places has even taken the guise of lawful work, but it still exists in shockingly high numbers.
In particular I want to examine countries that subjugate others through war. Do the countries that attack and conquer other countries truly recognize their sovereignty if they wage war against them? Is this the same as a consciousness trying to gain recognition? Hegel writes that a consciousness must present itself to the other, and doing so is showing “that it is not attached to any specific existence, not to the individuality common to existence as such, that it is not attached to life.” (p.113) I argue that in claiming to be a country, a country is staking its existence on being recognized as such by other sovereign countries.
When the Romans were expanding their empire they fought and defeated many barbarian tribes. These barbarians they conquered had structure and ordered societies, and yet they were not recognized as equal with the Romans and were defeated. This to me looks to be the life and death struggle that Hegel refers to on page 114 “ They must engage in this struggle, for they must raise their certainty of being for themselves to truth, both in the case of the other and in their own case. And it is only through staking one’s life that freedom is won.” This trend can be seen in almost every war throughout history.
Countries are like individuals in that to establish their freedom and gain true recognition they must stake their lives (existence) on it. In the case of one country waging war upon another, the aggressing country does not recognize the other as its equal and the attacked nation must stake its life in fighting back or else become subservient (the slave) to the other.
Certain themes run throughout all of history but the manifestation of these themes changes with the times and so it is important to identify them in each time period and not be fooled by the fresh veneer. To attest to the veracity of this claim I will posit slavery as one such theme that runs constant in history while changing its appearance. Slavery was present in most of the ancient cultures and continued to exist in various forms until the present. Though many people are not aware, slavery is still thriving today, it has changed locations and in some places has even taken the guise of lawful work, but it still exists in shockingly high numbers.
In particular I want to examine countries that subjugate others through war. Do the countries that attack and conquer other countries truly recognize their sovereignty if they wage war against them? Is this the same as a consciousness trying to gain recognition? Hegel writes that a consciousness must present itself to the other, and doing so is showing “that it is not attached to any specific existence, not to the individuality common to existence as such, that it is not attached to life.” (p.113) I argue that in claiming to be a country, a country is staking its existence on being recognized as such by other sovereign countries.
When the Romans were expanding their empire they fought and defeated many barbarian tribes. These barbarians they conquered had structure and ordered societies, and yet they were not recognized as equal with the Romans and were defeated. This to me looks to be the life and death struggle that Hegel refers to on page 114 “ They must engage in this struggle, for they must raise their certainty of being for themselves to truth, both in the case of the other and in their own case. And it is only through staking one’s life that freedom is won.” This trend can be seen in almost every war throughout history.
Countries are like individuals in that to establish their freedom and gain true recognition they must stake their lives (existence) on it. In the case of one country waging war upon another, the aggressing country does not recognize the other as its equal and the attacked nation must stake its life in fighting back or else become subservient (the slave) to the other.
Writing In The Particular:
Hegel's arrangement of the individual and the universal with the particular as a sort of mediating instance of both reminded me of the advice I've gotten many times in fiction workshops. In fact, the evolution of my work has a sort of consciousness-quest spirit to it: I began (as do many beginning writers, I imagine) with writing from experience. But the first thing new members of workshops learn is that true stories never convince anyone. There's a disconnect between what's being told and its significance for the author and the reader; as you write from memory, you struggle to construct what you know perfectly, not to give it resonance as a piece of literature. There's a relationship between specific events and people that you know and the ones everyone else does, and it's that relationship that gives fiction its power.
So I jumped, by default, to blanket universals. But pointing constantly to characteristics shared with others is overwhelming and uninteresting, and that method encounters the same problems consciousness had with choosing between the one and the many. The characters get lost in generalities and it starts to seem irrelevant to what extent they exist.
A good fiction professor (if mine are any indication) will advise students to start with the particular. It’s a strange phenomenon – less strange to we phenomenologists – that using specific details as a way toward universal experience influences readers more effectively. There’s some solace to be found in an interestingly nuanced creation that gently reminds you of your own world. Reading Hegel has given me an extended appreciation for how this works – it seems a function of the way we construct our understandings of the world and the way he explains our relation of that understanding to other consciousnesses.
It’s an interesting example of a question I’ve struggled with in terms of Hegel’s system. It seems that if the “truth is the whole” – that is, that each part of this individual-particular-universal arrangement is equally necessary and important, that what choices one makes don’t matter. I’m thinking especially in terms of the thesis-antithesis-synthesis model we talked about early on; in that case, which side of the argument I’m on is irrelevant as long as my opinion exists. And the fiction writing analogy I’m trying to draw here supports that idea. The particular details don’t actually matter, as long as they’re there to provide a pathway to the universal.
Halley
So I jumped, by default, to blanket universals. But pointing constantly to characteristics shared with others is overwhelming and uninteresting, and that method encounters the same problems consciousness had with choosing between the one and the many. The characters get lost in generalities and it starts to seem irrelevant to what extent they exist.
A good fiction professor (if mine are any indication) will advise students to start with the particular. It’s a strange phenomenon – less strange to we phenomenologists – that using specific details as a way toward universal experience influences readers more effectively. There’s some solace to be found in an interestingly nuanced creation that gently reminds you of your own world. Reading Hegel has given me an extended appreciation for how this works – it seems a function of the way we construct our understandings of the world and the way he explains our relation of that understanding to other consciousnesses.
It’s an interesting example of a question I’ve struggled with in terms of Hegel’s system. It seems that if the “truth is the whole” – that is, that each part of this individual-particular-universal arrangement is equally necessary and important, that what choices one makes don’t matter. I’m thinking especially in terms of the thesis-antithesis-synthesis model we talked about early on; in that case, which side of the argument I’m on is irrelevant as long as my opinion exists. And the fiction writing analogy I’m trying to draw here supports that idea. The particular details don’t actually matter, as long as they’re there to provide a pathway to the universal.
Halley
Gut feeling and perspective
While writing the précis for our upcoming class, I found myself really identifying with Hegel’s theory about the conscience. He explains that the conscience relies on gut feelings and an understanding of the consequences of actions to determine what the moral choice is in a situation. When this method is applied, morality becomes subjective. Some might have an issue with this as they believe that morality is not subjective and moral choices are the same for everyone. While in theory we might like to believe that morality is a universal constant, in practice it is shown that what might appear as the moral decision to one person would appear different to another.
While we might idealize morality and believe it should show us the clear righteous path, the truth is things are rarely that simple. Most decisions involve conflicts of interest and don’t appear to have an identifiable or correct solution. The best we can hope for is that we make the best decision based on what we know and our perspective. While Kant wants us to believe there is a greatest good that we should strive for, he also says it is unobtainable. This means, just as Hegel points out to us, that the highest good isn’t founded in reality, but abstract pure thought. In this way, it is should be impossible to apply to reality as it does not exist in that realm.
I have long thought that morality was something that could not be universalized. Situations rarely, if ever, appear identical to all the individuals involved. People like to dismiss the idea that “truth is subjective” by bringing up the logical argument that A can never equal ~A. While it is always true that A cannot equal ~A, I don't think that is what the idea of truth being subjective is referring to. Instead, I think the idea of truth being subjective has to do with individual’s perspectives and how they can see things differently. Obviously I’m not saying that two people can look at the same thing and describe it differently, but what I am saying is two people can be involved in a situation in which they see the reasons and causes of things differently. I’m sure everyone has been in a fight with one of their friends in which both parties believe they are right. Maybe the dispute never gets settled, but you move on anyway. Sure you can say truth is whatever can be universalized or something similar, but the thing is we make up the ideas and complex systems. What is truth? Truth is a concept we invented so we could categorize things and convey beliefs to others. It seems as though we sometimes act as though truth or morality is something that predates our existence and we have to try to measure up to it, but really we make these things up. As such, I think it’s appropriate for Hegel to say that moral choice is based on perspective. Gut feeling is the only thing that can count for anything because that’s all we can really be sure of: how things appear to us. Since the only thing we can be sure of is our perspective of events we must base our moral decisions on that.
While we might idealize morality and believe it should show us the clear righteous path, the truth is things are rarely that simple. Most decisions involve conflicts of interest and don’t appear to have an identifiable or correct solution. The best we can hope for is that we make the best decision based on what we know and our perspective. While Kant wants us to believe there is a greatest good that we should strive for, he also says it is unobtainable. This means, just as Hegel points out to us, that the highest good isn’t founded in reality, but abstract pure thought. In this way, it is should be impossible to apply to reality as it does not exist in that realm.
I have long thought that morality was something that could not be universalized. Situations rarely, if ever, appear identical to all the individuals involved. People like to dismiss the idea that “truth is subjective” by bringing up the logical argument that A can never equal ~A. While it is always true that A cannot equal ~A, I don't think that is what the idea of truth being subjective is referring to. Instead, I think the idea of truth being subjective has to do with individual’s perspectives and how they can see things differently. Obviously I’m not saying that two people can look at the same thing and describe it differently, but what I am saying is two people can be involved in a situation in which they see the reasons and causes of things differently. I’m sure everyone has been in a fight with one of their friends in which both parties believe they are right. Maybe the dispute never gets settled, but you move on anyway. Sure you can say truth is whatever can be universalized or something similar, but the thing is we make up the ideas and complex systems. What is truth? Truth is a concept we invented so we could categorize things and convey beliefs to others. It seems as though we sometimes act as though truth or morality is something that predates our existence and we have to try to measure up to it, but really we make these things up. As such, I think it’s appropriate for Hegel to say that moral choice is based on perspective. Gut feeling is the only thing that can count for anything because that’s all we can really be sure of: how things appear to us. Since the only thing we can be sure of is our perspective of events we must base our moral decisions on that.
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