Monday, February 12, 2007
subtle rant
If secular ethical formulations like utilitarianism and the Categorical Imperative are historically rooted to particular cultural moments and social necessities, referring to pre-existing communities, what now is the role of these concepts and our ability to conceptualise ideas of individual autonomy and agency in communities profoundly mediated through technological development? In short what is an ethical life once we accept that relations with technology have and will always constitute the terms through which autonomy and agency must be formulated ? Given that in western tradition these concepts have arisen as a resistance to arbitrary coercion, what transformations do they undergo in response to the potentially extreme coercive impact of technology? Because our notions of freedom are mostly defined to prevent an arbitrary and capricious abuse of power, traditionally the exercise of sovereign power, more subtle interventions and trade-offs especially if they accompany certain benefits are difficult to perceive, to predict the consequences of, and if necessary to organise resistance against. Modern liberal-democratic governments because they can claim legitimacy not just on behalf of the most recent election result, but in naked ontological terms as the 'best (or least worst) form of human governance' have whether they know it or not available to them a wide range of activities that can all be justified as necessary to maintain the stability and continuing existence of the 'good' or 'good form'. Most courses of action have been relatively dormant, up until now or have appeared so to the general population - spying, torture, discretionary rather than necessary application of military force. All these courses of action taken to maintain the security of the nation's citizens have never been definitely relinquished as we can clearly see now. It as if the state's claim to be the arbiter of life and death, its infinite interest and right to penetrate and organise the lives of the population is being laid bare. Perhaps these powers can never be dissolved whilst we require a form or process of government to guarantee the 'good' instead of understanding how we can develop different forms of commitment to the 'good', or doing 'good'. The question is what social groupings, if not the state can in fact be 'the good' or hold a 'common good' as its goal? How can societies develop without the figure of Hobbesian authority in some sense always present, latent with the power and consent to commit the obscene? If western liberal democracy cannot imagine it's own obsolescence and replacement by something better in the future, then perhaps it relinquishes its own positive and emancipatory agenda here in the present. It becomes closed to the 'world to come' as Derrida puts it.
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9 comments:
Is utilitarianism rooted to a specific time? I think its advocates would say that it says something about fundamental (psychological)tendencies (without saying 'natural' unless that measn going back to the ancients...there is no 'nature' or essence to be perfected).
the interesting thing-for me-is why an obviously narrow approach has had such mileage. Could it be that in the final analysis it is admitted that differences in theory cannot be resolved (Rights vs Utility vs capabilities) and that only power and technology can resolve them?
But there must be more to it than that? Surely the utilitarian speaks to some aspect of our nature that it would continue to hold so many in its spell?
Certainly, a 'theory' that depends on 'missing persons' (Mary douglas) is useful to the State. But perhaps, also, the desire to be unencumbered by place , the desire to see things in an abstract way , as if everything could be reduced to a *calculus* of pain and pleasure , holds some sort of magnetic charm?
I read recently a academic tome about utilitarianism and pornography by a literary theorist Frances Ferguson - the book is quite a crunch, v. dense, most of it passed me by - she was good on utilitarianism and effectively advocated for its benefits. As well as the pleasure/pain calculus she emphasises the fact that its a theory about the organisation of people, the creation of institutions whether schools, hospitals, prisons, where it becomes possible to rank people, to make relative success and failure actually visable to a community, and this visability creates the motivation that drives the system - people can see a system of reward opperating.
Foucault thinks that this ranking can only be coercive, but it can offer the means for people to develop their talents and abilities, to excel within a meritocratic set-up.
to the degree that the institutional framework enables us to make the utilitarin criteria viable I suppose it can be see as a historical development - perhaps you are right and we have reached a 'final analysis' that would be quite something ! and I'm not being ironic, it really could be the case -
The point about visibility is an interesting one since this would be in accordance with what many see (excuse the pun) as the bias to sight in the western philosophy/thinking.
But it would be quite remarkable since utility in itself is only inferred from the choices (hospitals , schools, etc). It remains something that is, fundamentally, unseen.
I think you're right though, and Bernard Williams makes this point in his interesting section on Utilitarianism in 'Morality': it needs to be represented and money is the best way of doing that. (Marshall had paved the way for that earlier-but that's a technical point).
So, I think a few things are going on.
1. The institutional implications.
2. quantification and/or visibility
3. the reduction of all ethical questions down to a simple criterion (questions of justice now become simpler-in some sense)and the further step of reducing all pleasure to happiness (the late Pope has an interesting few words to say on this)
4. the intertwining with methodological individualism.
5. the connections with rationality (narrowly conceived, of course).
But I think the real key to its success is that it opens up the possibility of a new infinity (simone Weil would say: beware of false infinities). Utility is not , then, an achieved state, but the constant striving for more and more; not desire for a 'thing'-whereby it could be satiated, but for the process itself. To give free rein to the imagination and finally be free of the world. How the moderns hate the world! To say 'worldliness' is, as Hannah Arendt once commented, to miss the point. So, in this sense, surely it is the 'unseen' that 'binds' us now?
6. Pain and pleasure: to relate everything back to the body.
"So, in this sense, surely it is the 'unseen' that 'binds' us now?"
yes I agree very much with you, I think this is a major point, that (at first glance hmm) seems to contradict our experience in western societies of living in the spectacule of screen-capitalism, of continuous visability. Generally speaking the Protestant/Catholic divide, the faith in the invisible/internal of Protestantism in relation to how we deal with the mediated is very relevant, but perhaps not in terms of the ethical requirements it demands of people as Weber framed it, but as you say, how it constructs a attitude of pure extension, that just goes on and on. The idea of process of course is such a huge area that has been central to 20th century art, but as Clark says it is a history of aquiring new habits, but no one will know what exactly they are for. The irony for him is that it can only come down to the ingenuity of an particular individual to invent their own, being the only real speaker, or performer, is a lonely activity.
What is the place and relation of the act to process? I think this is what has been lost, any sense of how acts can 'speak back' to the originating invisible field - all must be context, shared meaning, that paradoxically permit the individual to resist closure through performative ingenuity - take Picasso, Pollack.
This is v. interesting area and the place where people are realising the secular and religious can talk.
After so many centuries in the west of opposition perhaps openings are appearing. To my mind alot of contemporary art, of the 'relational' kind is akin to a certain 'religious' approach to how 'an act' must be willed, must appear, assert and invent communities, actions committed in hope and invitation, rather the coercion.
I'm not sure I agree with your last point Citizen. Perhaps you are right but when one talks of 'inventing' communities then aren't we back in the realms of late cpaitalism or what Bauman calls 'liquid modernity'?
It seems to me-and I may be wrong-that there is very little hope in the west and I wonder what hope there can be without a transcendental relam (of course, there is the political one-at the horizontal level, as it were but I wonder if that itself can be sustained without the religious [must go back to my notes on Ricoeur]).
At some level i think there is ana ffinity but the real difference , for me at least, is that the 'open' of the moderns is like straying in a desert without a kibla , an orientation. It is as if one could only escape totality (co-ercion) by losing oneself .
At the simplest level, we cannot even stand the stranger in our midst, what chance is there for a relation with 'the other'?
We've just had our first serious snowfall here yesterday. I ventured out for a walk and for a moment the desert returned to this little corner of the world.
I hear what you are saying. At the moment I'm impressed by Badiou's idea of fidelity to the event, which I suppose means v. generally a kind of orientation to an event through and in which a kind of universal breaks out. How we receive this or how this comes to us, is not really a 'matter of willing', of 'making it so' bad word choice -as Capt. Picard would say, (I'm not a Trekkie:)).
in my mind at the moment it is connected with certain actions which call for justice, actually, they don't call for it, it's a matter of when people insist and construct through an action (how can justice be willed?), a universal; I suppose the Civil Rights movement in the US comes to mind, the bus boycotts for example. and also it's related to certain kinds of religious expression or ceremony, those markers that lay down paths of commitment, things you can't wait for to 'just happen' - any action of this kind is a sort of conversation or pact made between individuals and the community. 9/11 maybe is an example of a failed act, a false 'event'. An illusory act in its own way, which demonstrates the dangers in assuming to speak for justice.
This is fairly obvious but it doesn't happen against a fixed background, in the sense that like artistic expression, it co-invents, defines how we are to orientate ourselves, it invents the world we sense and can live in.
personally I (at the moment) understand transcendence as a continuing 'arabesque' an unfolding development of the world, a line as Klee says that 'goes for a walk', multiple paths that co-exist within singularities. I'm a little naive but the imagery which sticks with me as someone who grew up 'as a person of the Book' is the garden out of the desert. This Deleuzian approach or what is called 'transcendantal empiricism' to give it the jargon, appeals to me frankly, though it is criticised by people like Badiou as a dressed up liquidity, too readily compatible with contemporary experience. Though I do hold to the idea that we can dsitinguish the value of experience, that there a vivid and open way to live in the world, and there's consumer choice, I really don't think all our abilities have been already limited by capitalism.
But anyway, there's fantastically comprehensive book I'm rereading at the moment by the intellectual historian Martin Jay called 'Songs of Experience' the tug or call of redemptive experience, (either of this world or the next) is surely fundamental and cannot be avoided, even ascetic refusal is to tend a garden.
This is difficult stuff, and every way you approach it, is like trying to pick a strand of spaghetti out of the bowl, you end up with a whole bunch of tangled strings!
Citizen, I think this is the end of our friendship..Captain Picard, indeed! :)
Your points are intersting but difficult for me to understand. "the universal to break out"? Is there still any belief in the universal? Isn't it tainted with the totalitarian?
"call for justice"
again, depends what one means by this. Justice-as -equality (of rights, income, living conditions, opportunities)? I hear the Palestinians or Chechens calling for Justice but by and large "interests" seem to predominate. What ethical stance remains? Universal rights? Perhaps. I don't know. Good "idea" but can thought on its own sustain them?
I like waht you say about commitment but it seems to me-both at a personal and a political level-that this is what is being undermined by capitalism.
It would be interestign to hear what you mean by the word 'community', One hears it a lot -especially muslim community, black community. I thionk R.Sennett once said that it was the attempt to gain warmth. Simone Weil: the State is a cold concern. (so is thought!.."religion and wisdom are full of colour")
The point about "continuous unfolding" is the most difficult one. I wish I had made notes from Ernst Bloch's 'Utopia'. Iqbal has interesting things to say about the 'open universe' (I've put some of Eco's words down in my section, 'The Open').
It is hard not to see the idea of the open in terms of the scientific attitiude: unending process: infinity over cosmos; it is hard not to see it in terms of capitalism: the destruction of limits. (roberto calasso is excellent on this).
But let us put thought to one side.
what would open living entail? are we open to nature? Or do we think of it as dead matter? Are we open to other people? Or is there a greater withdrawl into the private realm of intimacy? For me, the question remains: open to what? Is there any witness to our acts any more? We ourselves are not a witness to our own reality and are forever trying to escape . No?
will have a look at Jay..saw it a couple of weeks ago but never picked it up. Glanced through Nancy's Inoperative Community and did my head in ! Luckily, picked up some Rumi on my way home.
spaghetti?
Try Linguine. Solves all problems! :)
Well to give an example of what I think community can mean or how it can operate, I read an article about reforestation in Niger, something which has now become a policy, though it begain on the small scale; farmers planting trees, an activity which has had many beneficial effects. I think just this power to make decisions on a local level, which in a sense is to give people the power to configure the space they live in, and a place to be able to gesture on our own behalf, is something fundamental to communities.
Within this framework of micro-structuring you've got the basis for viable communal and social life. I think this is one basis for empowerment, that has been traditionally overlooked, probably because from the point of view of the state the local is always just the tribal and in need of supression, a threat to the pseudo-universality of the state. At least you must have an equal conversation and exchange between the local and the larger state.
I think also artistic expression is very much an open process, that is coming to find or discover aspects and qualities of ourselves and the world that sometimes continue and deepen previous notions of the world and to some extent transcend them. It may mirror scientific processes and get caught up in the search for novelty, but at heart, I believe it offers us very profound modes, voices, and forms which accompany us through life, forming us, and which make life avaliable, sensible to us. This also unfolding accompaniment is (however much we praise the individual, achievements, it has no meaning wihin a community of one) a communal and shared process, another access into communal experience. Artists brag about their misanthropic natures, but no one would make anything without the desire to connect. My ambivalence towards organised religion, a discussion I have with my wife alot, I suppose comes from this feeling that yes religions are these wonderful places of developed belief and truth(yes of course!) that are mighty expressions of searching wondering natures, and the place we meet and are content with profound mystery, but they also must remain open to life, to the possibilities of this life as gift. But I don't associate this sort of 'opening' as a blind, mechanical deployment of empty forces, the material world is not an inert dead thing or a perpetual motion machine. I would say opening as a 'gifting' really.
Badiou arguest the language of rights etc has limited itself to 'identity' issues, I'm not sure how, but I don't believe that possessing particular identity should stop us from carrying within us and expressing concern for universality, it's tragic that 'universality' at this moment has become coded as an expression of capitalism and globalisation. Because after all universality is generated by our ability to articulate our differences and create differences, I know this is like trying to have one's cake and eat it too, but I think it's perfectly reasonable and an imperative to believe that harmony is possible, at least greater harmony.
I like Richard Sennett's views alot, I remember reading Conscience of the Eye while at college, and it's still one of my favourite books. I think the city can still be a place where we develop the tools for harmony, or at least learn to recognise what it sounds like, this, I know too, is becoming distinctly implausible, and I can see here in the US how damaging a lost ideal of the urban fabric has been to sustaining belief in a 'universal' democratic community. After all if everytype of person lives on a single street, the community of life there will develop a universal nature. I suppose universal in this sense is the notion, of containing every kind of life, of pattern, of form, another Whitmanesque notion.
Citizen, I think we agree about most things and so just to keep the conversation going let me point to the things we may differ on .
I think Ivan Illich was right to say there's a war against subsistence. The very notion that one has enough just won't fit into the capitalist mentality. So, I don't think a genuine pluralism can develop because these other ways of being are denied legitimacy. What would it mean to have a community that is not deifned by the state as 'subjects' or 'citizens', who are not bound into a unity by the will of the State?
Secondly, I think it is now in the interests of capitalism to incorporate (and not supress)the 'other' into its fold. 'Empowerment' is certainly a powerful word but I think it is worth reflecting that this very same word is used by NGO managers and the World Bank! To me, it sounds very much like the old stories about freedom and choice.
There are no more tribals. As the kid in Lord of the Flies says: what if the beast is *within* ? As Ulrich Beck says, the distinction between what is 'in' and what is 'out' has become blurred with globalisation.
I have little to say on art but tend to agree with Fuller when he asks the question about whther art can survive without a 'common symbolic order'; if art is just about the 'pyschological' then how can it continue to be a 'work' that is understood by all-albeit at different levels? Eventually, hasn't it come down to'tastes': this is what *I* like...and if so, who is there to stand against the democratic choices that favour a Dan Brown or pop art?
Open to life. I think religion is just that ! It is surely the moderns who have tried to escape from her, who have thought of life as meaningless, without purpose, it is they who have thought of life as so much dead matter. No? The great paradox, as Hannah Arendt once remarked: those who have made an idol of life are the true ascetics, the ones who love life the least.And one would have to ask : which life: bios or zoe?
I like the idea of the city and universal community. All i would say is that the reality is somewhat different. Have a look at Mike davis' Planet of Slums (there's a lot of good online case studies as well at UNHABITAT).
One billion people live in slums. These people are invisible and commute like ghosts to work (if they have it) in the city. Some sleep in graveyards (Egypt) , others on the street , and others still on rooftops ( this is the flipside of 'the city in the sky'). Calvino would shudder.
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