= THE ABDICATION OF PHILOSOPHY THE ABDICATION OF MAN THE ABDICATION OF PHILOSOPHY = THE ABDICATION OF MAN (A CRITICAL STUDY OF THE INTERDEPENDENCE OF PHILOSOPHY AS CRITICAL THEORY AND MAN AS A FREE INDIVIDUAL) by G.A. RAUCHE, University of Durban-Westville • MARTINUS NIJHOFF / THE HAGUE / 1974 © 1974 by Martinus Ni;ho/f, The Hague, Netherlands All rights reserved, including the right to translate or to reproduce this book or parts thereof in any form ISBN 978-94-015-0345-7 ISBN 978-94-015-0895-7 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-015-0895-7 CONTENTS 1. Preface VII 2. Introduction 1 3. What is Philosophy? 5 4. What is Man? 43 5. Contemporary Forms of the Abdication of Philosophy and Contemporary Forms of Human Thinking and Human Existence 78 6. The Abdication of Philosophy and the Problem of Freedom 135 7. Conclusion 162 Index 166 PREFACE We live in a time of functionalism, operationalism and technologism with all its levelling, depersonalising and dehumanising effects. In such an age, the question arises of philosophy as critical, reflective theory about the world, man's position and purpose in the world and the relationship between philosophy and man as a free individual. This book makes an attempt to give an answer to this question. It has been written from great concern as to the future destiny of mankind, in the light of various contemporary attempts at the abolition of philosophy and at merging it in practice, as this practice is seen by the respective thinker or school of thought. This work may be seen as representing an answer to such attempts, as they are made, for instance, by the advocates of linguistic analysis or by representatives of the so-called Frankfurt School respectively. By an analysis of Western thought in general with emphasis on the present, the author of this book seeks to show that the abdication of philosophy as critical, reflective theory leads to the abdication of man as a critical, reflective individual, one that is free to dissent and to say No to the system. Man is perverted and alienated from his true nature. He is forced to conform and to lead an "unauthentic existence" within the system. The practical consequences for man of this state of affairs with reference to the sciences, to logical positivism and linguistic analysis, to existentialism and to the various brands of contemporary Marxism are discussed in great detail. But it is also shown that all attempts at the abolition of philosophy as critical, reflective theory are made by philosophical methods and thus theories. We have, therefore, to do with an abolition of philosophy by philosophy. From this the conclusion is drawn that philosophy as theory cannot be abolished, because man is by nature a reflective, critical individual and, as such, free. VIII PREFACE From this insight, a new way of thinking becomes possible, one that shows the way out of the existential dilemma and alienation man experiences as a result of functionalistic levelling with its dehumanising and depersonalising effects. The i,mpossibility of the abdication of philosophy as theory of the world and man's position and purpose in the world points to the impossibility of man's abdication as a free individual, in spite of appearances to the contrary. This result should give new hope to contemporary man, who, in his present state of alienation, and the feeling of utter dejection, despair and frustration resulting from it, is frantically searching for a new meaning, new values and a concrete content of life. INTRODUCTION In the times that we live, it appears as though philosophy were finished. We are told that philosophical reflection is futile and that philosophy has failed to provide us with conclusive answers, and that, instead, it has led us into ever greater confusion. It is argued that, in seeking to answer questions which cannot meaningfully be answered, in the sense that its answers are accepted by all, philosophy has not only increased man's perplexity, but has also contributed to turning him into a neurotic being that lives in a state of uncertainty, anxiety and disorientation. From all this, the conclusion was drawn that philosophical questions are the wrong kind of questions asked and that philosophical problems, to speak with Rudolf Carnap, are mock problems. These self-made pseudo-problems would disappear as soon as the pseudo-questions of philosophy were abandoned. Actually, the question of the use and purpose of philosophy is very old. It is already asked in Indian philosophy, e.g., by the nastiks or nihilists, i.e., those who reject the teachings of the Vedas and the Upanishads, e.g., the materialists, but in a certain sense also the Jains and the Buddhists, who were not interested in philosophical and theological questions about the universe and the deity, but, solely and exclusively, in redemption from the suffering and pain of the world; and they sought to bring about this redemption in a practical manner, by adopting a specific way of life. In ancient Greek thought, the use and purpose of philosophy were called in question by the sophists, who considered speculations about the cosmos useless and occupied themselves with man's practical affairs and with the compilation of empirical knowledge in encyclopedic form. The sceptics, too, adopted a critical attitude towards philosophy. They distrusted the senses to such an extent that they, too, questioned the use of theorising about man and the world. All in all, it could be said that the Greek sceptics, notably Pyrrho 2 INTRODUCTION and his pupil Timon of Phlius, sought happiness through the idea of epoche, i.e., the reservation of judgment in view of the fallacious nature of both man's senses and reason. It was these that led us to confusion and contradiction and thus involved us in anxiety, uncertainty and suffering, making us unhappy: It must, however, be pointed out at once that all these retreats from philosophical reflection about the cosmos occur in a reflective spirit and are therefore themselves philosophical in character. More methodical or systematic attempts at the destruction of philosophy as a reflective discipline putting forward theories about life, man and world, were made with the rise of the sciences in the 19th century and were continued with even greater vigour in the 20th century. In fact, in our age reflective philosophy appears to be bankrupt. A host of "philosophers" is watching anxiously and jealously that philosophy abstains from all theory and conceptualisation and restricts itself to a mere analytical activity as far as the language of the sciences or natural language is concerned. To restrain philosophy from relapsing into theory, a number of rules and principles have been established, which, as it were, are signs of direction, sometimes even signs of prohibition, which are supposed to restrain philosophy from running astray again. This trend in contemporary philosophy of keeping away from reflection and theory and the preference of contemporary philosophy for analysis and the functional also become manifest in existentialism and in Marxism. In the former, philosophy elucidates man's existence as an act of self-creation in a foreign and hostile world. In the latter, philosophy illustrates man's productive or creative act of labour as changing the world in such a way that man himself is changed, and a just and harmonious society is established. In existentialism and Marxism, therefore, philosophy is reduced to certain forms of operationalism and actionalism and so is as functionalistic as the neo-positivistic analytical philosophy, i.e., logical positivism, i.e., the analysis of scientific language, and linguistic analysis, i.e., the analysis of ordinary or natural language. Descriptive analysis, operationalism and actionalism appear to be the obsession of our age. We find them not only in the natural sciences (where especially descriptive analysis is most appropriate), but we find them in the social sciences, in psychology and in linguistics as well. Every discipline to-day wants to be scientific in this sense that the methods of the natural sciences are applied in this discipline, lest it be ridiculed as speculative, illusory and unscientific. Thus the methods of the natural sciences are used in the humanities at all costs, without INTRODUCTION 3 considering whether the discipline concerned really lends itself to the application of the methods of natural science or whether its character requires a different approach. This indiscriminate application of the methods of natural science leads to an uncritical scientism, i.e., the blind belief that the methods of natural science will solve all the riddles of man and the universe. This scientism is, however, itself unscientific, in as much as it lacks the power of critical insight and discrimination as to the proper place of the method of the natural sciences. In our opinion, the' methods of the natural sciences have their proper application in studying the world of material objects. They are inadequate, however, when it comes to the study of man, man's relations with his fellowman and human institutions, such as society and the state. It is now the purpose of this work to show that attempts of abdication by philosophy as a critical, reflective discipline (which abdication, to a great extent, has happened to-day) means the abdication of man as a reflective and therefore free individual. After trying to answer the questions: What is philosophy? and: What is man? by' reference to natural science and the history of philosophy, the various forms of the abdication of philosophy, constitutive and reductive forms, will be critically discussed. From these discussions it emerges that, although these various forms of the abolition of philosophy as a reflective discipline, positivism, existentialism and Marxism, actually fail to abolish philosophy because they remain controversial theories themselves, they, nevertheless, adversely affect man's existence. They seduce man from reality and make him conform to their respective theory by insisting that this theory represents truth par excellence. In this way, man ceases to be a critical, reflective being, who is free to say No to the system; for the system is totalitarian in character. But because the attempt to abolish philosophy is itself based on reflection, and thus is philosophical in character in that any such attempt remains a controversial theory which points to man's true nature as a reflective and critical being, the abdication of philosophy and its replacement by any single method, theory or approach are impossible. In showing that man's freedom and the authentic nature of his existence are inextricably linked with the dynamic, critical, controversial and reflective nature of philosophy, the author of this study hopes to make a modest contribution to the overcoming of man's present preoccupation with functionalism, operationalism and actionalism, which preoccupation makes man blind to other aspects of life and prevents him from leading an existence in accordance with his true nature as 4 INTRODUCTION a free individual with his own outlook on life and the world. The author hopes that this work will help man to restore his balance and to recover his freedom as a critical reflective individual, who, by his freedom to think, enriches life by the discovery of new aspects of it, thus leaving behind his present feeling of emptiness, frustration and despair, symptoms of his functionalistic disease. In short, this work is a modest attempt at assisting man to find his way back to sanity and natural reason, in a world that has gone mad and that has lost all sense of sound proportion, a world which, by its totalitarianism, radicalism, extremism and megalomaniac superlatives, hides its weakness, emptiness, impotence and sickness. Since everything in life is changing, however, it stands to reason that man's present functionalistic and operationalistic preoccupation is also a passing phase, which will eventually give way again to a more balanced outlook on life and the world.