Culture as Learnables: An Outline for a Research on the Inherited Traditions

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Fachrichtung Philosophie Lehrstuhl Prof. Dr. K. Lorenz Universität des Saarlandes FR 5.1 Philosophie Postfach 151150 D-66041 Saarbrücken

Tel. 0681 / 302-2301

Culture as Learnables. An Outline for a Research on the Inherited Traditions Narahari Rao

Version Juli 1997 with Appendix

ISSN 1420-5690 (Version Jan. 1999)

Dedicated

To

K. Srinivasan, Mysore

the teacher to whom I owe more than a sense of discrimination towards all those ephemeral threads worth pursuing.

Contents

Preface 0 1

Introduction: ‘Cultural Difference’ and The Theories of Culture

1

Reflection as Making the Alternatives Available 1.1 Situating the Question: Traditions as Heritage Sentiment 1.2 In Place of Definitions 1.3 Theoretical Stance 1.3.1 Deliberation to Decide and to Make the Alternatives Available 1.3.2 Is Theory a Deferred Decision? 1.4 Under-labouring and other Philosophical Tasks 1.5 Object- vs. Conceptual Questions and Empirical versus Heuristic Theories 1.6 The Category Habit

5

2

The Modernity Paradigma

25

3

The ‘Humanity’ and The Given World of the ‘Intelligibles’ 3.1 Aristotle’s Good and the Humanitas 3.2 The methodological Problem 3.3 Cultivation of humanity: Individual to Social Ideal of Perfection 3.3.1 The Philosophy of History and the ‘Culture of the Inward Man’ 3.3.2 ‘Natural’ as against ‘Animal’ Origin of Language 3.4 Aristotle: The One Given World of Objects and Many Customs 3.4.1 A Heuristic Device 3.4.2 Speech and Polis Rooted in a Common Natural Power of Man

4

Revelations Naturalised by Universalising the Polis: Aquinas 4.1 Ennobling the Heritage of the Athens 4.2 God: the Ruler and the Artificer i

5 9 13 13 15 16 21 22

49 49 50 52 52 54 57 57 58 66 66 68

4.3

4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 5

6

7

4.2.1 The Eternal Law The Artificer and His Art 4.3.1 Potentiality and Actuality: the Form 4.3.2 The Agent and the Patient 4.3.3 The Capacities: Defining Actions in Terms of ‘Accusatives’ Theology: a Practical or a Theoretical Discipline 4.4.1 The Theoria-Ideal Two Forms of Knowledge to Two Different Ways of Being ‘True’ The Will: ‘Reason’ versus ‘Instinct’ 4.6.1 The Greek Philosophy vs. the Christian faith 4.6.2 The ‘Human Acts’ and the ‘Acts of a Man’ A Side-Glance at the Stoics

Establishing a Polis: Imitating God’s Creation or Participating in It? 5.1 By Way of a Summary: The God, the World, and the Souls in Between 5.2 Knowledge as Propositions and Cultures as Belief Systems 5.3 ‘Natural Reason’: Two Conceptions 5.4 Making the Polis by Imitating God’s Creation Kant: The making of the Naturgeschichte 6.1 Kant’s ‘Love Affair with Metaphysics’ 6.2 The Man, the Maker and the Social Animal 6.3 Anthropology from a Pragmatic Standpoint 6.3.1 Education as Partaking in the Idea of Humanity 6.3.2 ‘Pragmatic’ vs. ‘Theoretical’ Knowledge 6.3.3 The Idea of Perfection 6.3.4 Nature as a Teleological System 6.3.5 Potentials Endowed by Nature (Naturanlagen) 6.4 Naturgeschichte 6.4.1 Three Types of Narratives 6.4.2 The Economy of Nature 6.4.3 The History as a Means of Instruction 6.4.4 The Cosmopolitan Order and the Theory of Stages The Creations of the Unfinished Animal: The Human World Myths, Sciences and other Wonders of the Earthy Angel 7.1 The German Tradition: the ‘Humanisation’ and the Grundlegung ii

68 71 72 74 76 77 78 85 88 88 89 94 96 96 98 103 109 114 114 115 119 119 121 125 126 130 131 131 133 135 141 144 144

7.2 7.3

7.4

8

The Human Animal and its Angelic Faculty Herder: The ‘Instinctless Animal’ and its Special Faculty 7.3.1 Language, the Prototype and the Centre of Human Institutions 7.3.2 A Not Sense-bound species and the Besonnenheit 7.3.3 ‘Merkwort’: ‘Clear’ versus ‘Distinct’ Thinking 7.3.4 The ‘Instinct’ versus the Creations of the Unfinished Animal 7.3.5 The Critique of Utility as the Root of Language and Society 7.3.6 Human Institutions: Creations of a Special or a Deficient Animal? 7.3.7 ‘Individualism’ versus ‘Communitarianism’: a Historical Footnote Cassirer: Mythical versus Scientific Symbolic Forms 7.4.1 Kantianism as a ‘Philosophy of Culture’ 7.4.2 The Task of Providing ‘the logic of Humanities’ 7.4.3 The Tradition of Logic versus the Contrastive Method

Cultures: Phenomena versus Learnables 8.1 The Pilgrim, the Mountain, the Wanderer, and the Heathen 8.2 The Pragmatic Turn 8.3 Investigating ‘Cultures’: What, When and Why? 8.3.1 Anthropology, Context and ‘Ethnocentrism’ 8.3.2 Represented versus Representer’s Context 8.3.3 Ethnographic Representation and Philosophical Hermeneutics 8.3.4 ‘Mother India’: Amnesiac or Barren Mother of her Religions? 8.3.5 Adventures, Holy Duties and Administration in Strange Lands 8.3.6 Representer’s Purpose and Constitution of Domains 8.3.7 Cultures: ‘When?’ versus ‘Why?’ 8.4 Knowledge versus Phenomena 8.4.1 Concepts versus Objects 8.4.2 Reasons versus Causes 8.4.3 ‘Making Sense of a Situation’: Beliefs Inadequate and Unnecessary 8.4.4 Learnable versus Manipulable 8.5 Varieties of Knowledge and Configuration of Learning iii

147 149 149 152 153 154 156 158 159 161 161 162 165 172 172 174 176 176 178 179 181 187 193 195 199 199 200 202 206 209

8.6

A Whirlwind Detour to the Scene of Recent Anthropology 8.6.1 ‘Thick Description’ 8.6.2 The Story of What Anthropology is 8.6.3 Human Sciences as Purveyors of ‘Local Knowledge’

210 211 214 215

Appendix 1: Samkhya: Developing Discriminatory Capacities as the Educational Ideal 217 Appendix 2: Deutsche Zusammenfassung / German Summary

220

Bibliography

237

iv

Preface

This book is part of a wider project. The nature of the project is elaborated in the first chapter, and therefore there is no need to go into it. Though it involves pleasure, from conception to birth is a laborious process. It took a long time for me to bring this into a recognisable gestalt. Research, like human life in general, is inconceivable without the context of a community. The innumerable nameless people who have a part in breathing spirit into a work can neither be mentioned exhaustively nor thanked sufficiently. I have received the co-operation of many whom I know, and still more number of them indirectly through their presence in the scholarly community. The realisation grows slowly how much of one’s thinking is dependent on the countless minds across the spatial and temporal borders of one’s own existence. Whitehead says somewhere that the measure of the success of learning is what remains after one has forgotten that which has been learnt. The sources of those thoughts that afforded casual pleasure, irritation, anger and stimulation are neither noted nor remembered. So, first of all, let me pay my homage to all those countless scribes whose thoughts have reached me, however much they might have been distorted in the process of my apprehending them. If not anything else, I have learnt humility in the process of writing this book. To overcome the hubris but at the same time not to lose sight of the objectives entertained when one’s thinking horizon was narrower, is not an easy task. But I think it is important. So apologies to all those who think that the thoughts of the past masters have been slighted by my brashness. In the same way as a human child, a project to become capable of running on its own requires tending after the birth. The co-operation needed is even more than what is required at the stage of pregnancy. I hope this will be forth-coming equally after, as it was before, the birth. Let me here thank those whose immediate help was depended upon as representing also those whose co-operation is not explicitly acknowledged. First

v

of all I thank Prof. Dr. Annely Rothkegel, to whose pressure to write down of things I was contented with talking, owes the birth of this book. Secondly, the stimulation of the formulations by Prof. Dr. Kuno Lorenz during the seminars which I am privileged to host jointly with him over the years has gone into the formation of this book. The same thing holds good to the countless discussions I had with Dr. Dietfried Gerhardus, both during formal sessions, and much more in informal sessions of visiting art exhibitions. For many clarifications, especially on Greek and Latin terms I have depended upon Dr. Shahid Rahman. To him my thanks are due both for this help, and also for other casual discussions of Philosophy in coffee breaks. Back in Mysore University in the 70s I used to call research jocularly as the activity of the Researchers in between the frequent coffee breaks. Shahid has made it possible that it is also an activity carried during those coffee-breaks. Further my association and discussions with the group of Anthroplogists, Philosophers and the students of Cogntive Science around the journal of Cultural Dynamics, edited in Gent, Belgium, especially with Prof. Dr. S.N Balagangadhara, Mr. Wilem Derde, Dr. Harrij van Bouwhuisen, Dr. Tom Claes, has given me my acquaintance with the more recent trends in and around the discipline of Anthropology. The project of this book is, at least in parts, consonant with their aims of establishing a discipline for the study of comparative knowledge systems. Similarly Prof. Dr. Hansgeorg Hoppe and Mr. Ralph Seidel have given me the pleasure of discussing Philosophy with them in recent years. In the last stages of this work Mr. B.P.C. Rao, a visiting scientist in FraunhofferInstitut, Saarbrücken from IGCAR, Kaplakkam, India, has been an invaluable help. Let me express my thanks for the warmth, both mundane and philosophical, all these persons have afforded me. Needless to say that for all the imperfections I carry the responsibility. Saarbrücken, June 1997

B. Narahari Rao

vi

0

Introduction: ‘Cultural Difference’ and the Theories of Culture

‘Cultures’ in the sense in which this book is concerned with are different legacies of ways of going about in the world resulting from the different pasts of different groups of people. The ‘culture research’ as understood here is a task of making those knowledge inheritance from the past available for teaching and learning to the future generations. As I see it, the philosophical task in this connection is to provide an answer to the question, what constitutes cultural difference, as against, say, individual or social or biological differences? One step in accomplishing this task, I will argue, is overcoming an important legacy of the existing philosophical theories of culture. Most of these theories are motivated by the question, why human beings have culture? In discussing its underlying assumptions and the lines of thinking motivated by it, we will have to deal with two predominant uses of the word ‘culture’ markedly different from the one I am concerned with. One of them is that used in the context of the discussion about the ‘cosmopolitan democracy’1, i.e. a democratic polity where groups of people with different habits, backgrounds and customs can live without destructive conflict. The underlying question here is whether a notion of ‘good life’ need to be shared for this kind of polity to work. The concept of culture as used here is wielded by those who put forward the ‘substantive’ concept of liberal democracy as against the ‘procedural’ conception of it. Whereas for the latter, all that democracy requires is an acceptance of a certain set of procedures to resolve the interindividual or inter-communal conflicts, the former stresses the need for a shared idea of what good life consists of, and in this sense, a shared culture.

1

The term used by Anthony Giddens (cf. Giddens, A. 1984). This is also the context of thinkers like Charles Taylor (cf. Taylor, C. 1992), and the more popular discussions like that of ‘multiculturalism’. 1

The discussion of ‘culture’ connected with the democratic polity implicitly or explicitly gets tied to the question of ‘modernity’, i.e., how the democratic polity came into being, what kind of values accompanied its birth, and whether and how those not sharing these values are to be treated equally. Suppose there are groups who do not share the idea of good life needed to make the liberal democracy work, how should the ethos of such groups need to be understood? One line of approach is to consider that such groups are not yet evolved enough to appreciate the liberal democracy. That is, their tastes are not yet ‘civilised’ enough. Thus, in the controversy between procedural and substantive conception of democracy, still another use of ‘culture’ - that in order to single out ‘the cultivated tastes’ from that of ‘the not cultured’ confronts us. This conception has a long intellectual history and the feuilleton use meant to refer to the offerings like theatre, music, paintings etc., is only one of its more conspicuous derivatives. In fact, I will argue that the discussion of ‘culture’ within the context of modernity, invariably borrows from the discourse created by the German tradition of philosophy of history (Geschichtsphilosophie), which, in its turn, combines a theory of the historical evolution of human ethos with that of a theory of the distinction between the cultured and not cultured. I will term this paradigm for discussion of culture as the ‘modernity paradigm’. The substantial part of this book (chapters 2 - 7) is a discussion of the various shades of the modernity paradigm and how it comes in the way of providing a theory of what constitutes a cultural difference. A minor part, chapter 8, attempts to draw out a theory of cultural difference by surveying critically certain distinctions in the philosophical tradition and modifying and extending them. After indicating in the first chapter the nature of the philosophical task undertaken in this work, in the second chapter I will deal delineate the conceptual outline of the modernity paradigm by focusing on certain distinctions casually made use of in our daily talk. For this purpose I select a short passage from a journalistic writing, and then go into the history of certain words occurring in that passage. 2

The next few chapters (chapters 3 - 7) go into excavating the category habits that shaped the modernity paradigm. There is in this century a long tradition of criticism of the notion of ‘given’ in the theory of knowledge. One way of describing the intent of chapter 3 to 7 of this book is to consider the consequences of this to the investigation of culture. The tradition of conceptualising culture, as is the case in all other disciplines, originated in the background of certain fundamental category habits dominating the intellectual world. I will be investigating in the following the category habits informing one of the influential paradigms for the investigation of culture, which I have called ‘modernity paradigm’. My thesis is that it is underpinned by a notion of the ‘given’, and secondly, that it may be viewed as the result of the 18th century attempt at naturalising the Christian theological assumptions, which in their turn are the result of combining the heritage of the ancients with that of the Christianity. I will discuss in the following the formulations given by Kant and Herder to a thesis held by many that culture is the result of man being demarcated from animals through reason. I will trace the concepts in use in the modernity paradigm to these formulations and them in their turn to the Christian mediation of Aristotle. Chapter 3 traces the Aristotelian model of polis and the underlying distinction between the things that grow by themselves, (here onwards the generated) and the things that are made. The chapter 4 shows how the introduction of the creator God into this system by the medieval Christianity alters the nature of concepts presumed in the Aristotelian model, even though the terminology remains Aristotelian. The focus of chapters 5 and 6 is the way the mediation of Aristotle through Christianity was inherited by thinkers like Hobbes, Kant, Herder, and how they in their turn shaped through that inheritance the characteristic notions we have inherited to talk about man and society. Chapter 8 attempts to extend the Fregean distinction between ‘giving reasons’ and ‘explaining by giving causes’ by suggesting the criterion of learnable versus manipulable as the criterion to distinguish looking at something as knowledge versus looking at it as phenomenon. This is elaborated further into a concept of 3

‘configuration of learning’ to replace the traditional concept of ‘belief system’. It is argued further that the concept of configuration of learning would be a better means of conceptualising the inherited attitudes to life (Lebenshaltungen) available in the traditions of this world than the concept of belief system.

4

1 1.1

Reflection as Making the Alternatives Available

Situating the Question: Traditions as Heritage Sentiment

Two sentiments underlie this work: (i) Many different traditions or ‘cultures’ existing in the world are a heritage not to be lost (here onwards this will be referred to as ‘traditions as heritage sentiment’). (ii) There is neither a unique right manner of behaving nor a unique right way of conceiving the world of objects, even though not every manner is right and not every conception of the world, appropriate. This work attempts both to formulate, and to examine the conceptual obstacles for formulating some of the research tasks arising out of taking these sentiments seriously. The first sentiment involves noting a fairly obvious empirical fact and a normative attitude towards it. However, as in the case of all common sense sentiments the moment we ask what it would mean in terms of tasks we can undertake, we are likely to be at a loss what we mean by the sentiment itself. For example, what should be brought under ‘culture’ or ‘tradition’? According to historians, there was - and according to the popular opinion in Europe, there still is - a practice of committing widows to fire in India. No doubt that all over the world there are many such practices passed on to us by the past generations. Are they what we want to consider as valuable heritage? Obviously not. Or, are the monuments and exquisite artefacts resulting from a way of life that we want to consider as valuable, and worth preserving? Whereas in the former case, we are led to justifying many cruel practices and support their continuation, in the latter case, we are led to consider culture only in terms of artefacts that can be preserved even when the civilisation that produced it is dead and gone. The Roman way of life was destroyed long back even though the museums of the world are full of things Romans have left behind. To give a sense to the ‘culture’ as indicating only such remnants of dead generations, and only them as worth preserving is not doing justice to the sentiment I mentioned. What else then? This book doesn’t address such questions, but hopes to make some headway in

5

clarifying the sentiment so that some of the possible ways of answering such questions would become foreseeable. In continuation of what is said in the previous paragraph, perhaps, I also need to state a third sentiment, a methodological one, in addition to the other two: one of the tasks of philosophical investigation is that of giving voice to inchoate sentiments prevailing in one’s milieu and make them capable of formulation into interesting questions for investigation. The common sense sentiments are valuable, not as ultimate truths, but as something to goad us to reflect and enquire. This implies that clarity, though an important goal, is not the criterion to identify a valuable piece of research. Though effort has to be made to avoid the wooliness of thinking, interesting problems should not be avoided or denied because they appear to be incapable of clear formulation at the present. Now back to the first two sentiments. In contrast to the first, the second sentiment is more in the nature of a result of a philosophical climate of opinion than just an easily observable empirical fact. Even if one considers the assertion that there are no sets of unique right manners as an empirical observation, that there is no unique world may be disputed by our common sense. Some kind of philosophical tutoring is needed to concede that there is no set of unique right world. This fact reveals the status of such sentiments: they are not of the nature of empirical belief statements which can be verified or falsified by adducing certain kind of evidence; rather, they are more in the nature of norms or guidelines for orientation in the contemporary milieu, in the so called global village, either to perceive the tasks it engenders or to solve the problems it throws up. It is necessary to demarcate the concern guiding this work from that underlying another prevailing discourse. For the last few years an important debate is going on in the context of how to gestalt a cosmopolitan democracy of the industrialised countries: how people with different cultural backgrounds can, and ought to, live together? This is a practical question, in the sense of a question of recognising, and getting sensitised to, the fact of our social world where people from different 6

backgrounds live. The fact of many different ‘cultures’ living in close proximity gives rise to the practical question concerning the rights and obligations not only towards different individuals, but also towards different groups. The scope and limits of such group rights may call for profound conceptual elucidation. Situated in such a context, the clarification of the sentiment that all different cultures are a heritage not to be lost, may take the following line. Basic to liberalism is the assumption that all individuals have ‘equal dignity’ and correspondingly have a ‘right’ to be respected equally. Analogous to an individual one may construe group identities, and claim that such identities are constituted by the pasts of a group, and therefore the concerned groups have ‘rights’ to what they consider as their pasts. Accordingly, it may be claimed that we have an obligation to ‘respect’ these rights to the past of a people. (It is not clear what exactly this ensues in practical terms. Perhaps the demand is for a ‘Kulturpflege’ in the sense of preserving the monuments, folklore, dances and such things. In this line of thinking, apart from sentimentality, the issue of the cultures as valuable heritage boils down to appreciating and preserving certain ‘aesthetic objects’ and ‘artistic forms’ arising from the practices of certain groups and geographical locations). Such arguments and oppositions to them constitute a field of discourse regarding plurality of cultures. At least a dominant part of the debate under the banner of 1

‘communitarianism versus individualism’ , is constituted by the question of the 2

group versus individual rights, and arguments for and against the conceptual underpinnings to claim rightness of one or the other position. The sentiments I mentioned at the outset, and the problems for research that I envisage, may be mistaken as within this field of discourse. But in fact the question that inspires this work is of a different nature. My question is whether, and how, cognitive gain can be derived from the fact of existence of plurality of traditions. At this juncture, it is not possible to give a clear idea of the nature and scope of the ‘cognitive gain’ I am speaking of. I can only indicate with the help of an example. If I succeed in making my intuitions 1 2

Taylor, C. (1992) is an example. Cf. Avineri, S./de-Shalit, A. (eds.) 1992. 7

understandable, the example I am giving now should look too intellectualistic to be adequate. But for the moment, even intellectualistic sounding example must suffice to indicate what I am going for. In this book I will be showing the enormous role played in the European intellectual tradition by two pairs of distinctions: (i) generated (or ‘things that grow by themselves’ such as plants, animals, more generally, all biological organisms) and made (things that are the results of human making such as tables, buildings, cars etc.), (ii) intelligible and sensible. (For the present, we can take this contrast to mean as that between the entities that require the intellectual capacities to discern them, and those that do not, leaving the question, where exactly to draw the line between the intellectual and sense-capacities.) As will be shown, it is almost impossible to think of any theoretical discourse on the social and cultural affairs without the influence of these categories. In saying this, I am neither criticising nor bemoaning the fact of this influence. Those distinctions are very powerful and productive heuristic devices that have proved their usefulness in the history of the growth of our knowledge. My point is rather that today it is almost impossible to visualise how an alternative to those distinctions can look like. Yet, these distinctions are the products of only one culture. What are the conceptual means employed by those others not familiar with the European theoretical tradition to think of things or issues that we cannot think of thinking without the distinctions, generated versus made and sensible versus intelligible? To come to know this, in the sense of being capable of using the alternative conceptual means than the ones we are accustomed to, is certainly an important knowledge gain. In the following, rather than proving that there are specific research tasks flowing from the tradition as heritage sentiment, I am going to start with it as an assumption. I also want to make a suggestion as to what the traditions as heritage sentiment can mean, without hinging upon concepts like ‘respecting the identity of peoples’. My suggestion would also render the supposition that different traditions are heritage of humanity (and not merely of respective human groups) 8

much more intuitively plausible. The suggestion turns on a ruling assumption of the present day set up that we have an obligation to preserve and enhance any inherited knowledge. Suppose we add to this the following innocuous looking propositions, certain research tasks become apparent. (i) It is one of the characteristics of being human that one becomes adult by acquiring various action or behavioural dispositions from the milieu in which one is born. These dispositions are the results of experience, trial and error, and reflections of past generations. They constitute the ways and means handed down both for leading a successful life and for solving the problems arising in the course of it, i.e. they are knowledge dispositions. (ii) Different groups of people in different regions of the world have different pasts and that is what makes for different ‘cultures’ in the world. Putting together (i) & (ii) one can draw a conclusion that traditions or ‘cultures’ are conceptualisable as forms of knowledge. In other words, one implication of taking the sentiment that plurality of cultures or traditions available in the world are the heritage of humanity, is that we recognise the obligation of looking at traditions as knowledge, and investigate them accordingly. I submit that at this juncture of history, even to start off, such an investigation involves a considerable amount of - to use a diction from Locke - conceptual underlabourer’s work. 1.2

In Place of Definitions

I have already used above and will be using in the following such concepts as ‘culture’, ‘society’, ‘community’, ‘tradition’ etc. Without doubt these are some of the most widely and variably used concepts. It is a custom in the philosophical community to expect some definitions of such concepts when they become the means of talking about a focus theme of a philosophic work. But I am not going to fulfil this expectation. The reason for this violation of a convention lies in the nature of this work itself. It will become clear that for my purpose a rough and ready use available in our daily discourse is sufficient. When not, I am going to indicate the meaning as and when necessary. As I will explain in the next section, this is a work of 9

philosophical under-labouring, and as such, it does not require the specialised instruments of those who build more solid structures of empirical theories. I don’t require, for example, a criterion to identify particular societies and cultures, but only the admission that it makes sense to speak of different ‘cultures’ and ‘societies’ without bothering for the moment on where to draw the line of demarcation between one and another society, between one and another culture. There is no difficulty in understanding that there are groups or communities living elsewhere than in the big cities and metropolitan countries of Europe and America (or even in Japan) whose ways of going about in the world significantly differ from what we are accustomed to, but yet they lead a fairly orderly and satisfied life with the usual grumbles, quarrels and other imperfections ensuing from the practical contingencies. One need not idealise the way these people live, but nor one need to have the image (often transported and abetted by the media) that their life is penurious, brutish, exploited, terrorised and corrupt. Such things certainly exist in many places on this Globe, but my concern is not with them, but with the normal life differently led than the one we are accustomed to. To indicate that there are normal life styles differently led than ours, one can use the diction that there are different ‘cultures’ than ours. It should also make sense if I say that those normal ways of life other than ours are learnable, and these learnable ways are the results of the experience, trial and error, toil, and reflections of the past generations of those groups of people. On that very general level there should not be any difficulty in understanding the talk of ‘different cultures’ and them as ‘learnables’. But there comes the catch when once we take up the task of conceptualising the significant traditions inherited from the pasts of different groups of people: how should we distinguish the individual differences from the cultural differences of a group? We have to have some conceptual means of distinguishing what is inherited from the past of a large group from that which is an individual fluke, however interesting it may be in itself. In fact it is my thesis that we don’t yet have a proper instrument for identifying cultural difference from other types of differences. To take a point that is made by N.

10

Goodman very powerfully: logically speaking anything is different from anything 3

else in any number of ways, and similarly, similar in any number of ways. The identification of the difference or similarity is a consequence of a defined framework of search. In other words, in order to investigate the different learnable ways of doing things manifested by the variety of groups with significantly different pasts, we require a theory that can give some handle to distinguish the individual difference from the cultural difference, i.e. we require a theory of cultural difference. This work does not pretend to accomplish that task. It is only a minor part, even though I claim, a very significant part of the enterprise of providing such a theory. My contention is that there are obstacles to be cleared on the way to such a theory. In chapter 2, I am going to show how the very word ‘culture’ is deeply embedded in a theoretical tradition arising from attempts to answer a different question than what constitutes a cultural difference. In the subsequent chapters, I will follow through a dominant line that contributed to the shaping of the very notion of ‘culture’. We cannot avoid using the concepts in use today to refer to the important things we want to talk about, as for example, that which I indicated in the last paragraph. But nor can we easily shrug off the load of implication threads transported through the history of the concepts we use. That conceptual baggage may rather be a burden in our task than an aid for our work. To make aware of what we are committing ourselves when we use the word ‘culture’ is one of the conceptual under-labourer’s work done in this book. Whereas some aspects of the history of the word ‘culture’ is explicitly handled in chapter 2, the other frequently used words will not be examined in detail. So a few remarks here on their history and the nuances of my use of them. I will be often talking of ‘traditions’. In the bulk of this work, this expression is interchangeable with ‘culture’, but in the latter part, especially in chapter 5, I will introduce a distinction between ‘culture’ and ‘tradition’, and give a technical sense to these words: the former is commandeered to refer to looking at actions or 3

Cf. ‘Seven Strictures On Similarity’ in: Goodman, N. (1972) p. 437-448. 11

behaviour as manipulable and caused, and the latter to refer to looking at them as learnable. This specific use will be elucidated in detail at the proper juncture. I will be often saying things like ‘the pasts of a group constitute the tradition it inherits’. The word ‘group’ is my preferred expression where normally words like ‘society’, ‘people’, or even ‘nation’ are used. One advantage of using ‘group’ in contrast to these latter terms is that the range of extension of the former term can be left open. It is used here in such a way that it is inclusive of even large aggregates of people: when we speak of a culture or tradition of a ‘group’ we have to assume certain level of validity to the broad distinctions prevalent such as the ‘Western culture’, ‘Indian Culture’, ‘Chinese culture’, ‘African Culture’ etc. but more specific delimitation can be left open. However, there are some disadvantages too. The ‘group’ conveys a sense of being a mere aggregate without any other binding than the coevalness or togetherness or some common past, which today is external to the members of the group. I certainly don’t intend to have these associations of meaning. But the danger of being identified with such associations are preferable than some of the connotations conveyed by those other words mentioned above. Unlike ‘culture’, the expression ‘society’ is more recently invented to talk of an aggregate of people with certain institutions binding them. Its present use is almost the technical one given to it by the Sociologists even though its use has become indispensable even in the day to day orientation. Still in Herder’s time, the word ‘nation’ was doing the job we today delegate to the word ‘society’, but it is now commandeered even in daily use to talk about either the institution of Nation States or of the people living in a Nation State; the formation of this latter institution has some connections with the history of the word ‘culture’, and is almost contemporaneous with that history. The other part of the job ‘nation’ was performing in Herder’s time is taken over today by the word ‘people’, used with singular and plural (to be distinguished from the mass noun having only one form, ‘people’, used to refer to any group of human beings) or the German ‘Volk’. When talking about culture or tradition I want to keep aloof from associations that the terms ‘nation’, ‘people’ and ‘society’ have, and therefore I will be speaking of the pasts of a ‘group’ wherever it is not too awkward, and avoid speaking of the pasts of ‘a people’. 12

1.3

Theoretical Stance

1.3.1

Deliberation to Decide and to Make the Alternatives Available

One of the tasks of a theoretical under-labourer is to make the theoretical stance itself understandable, especially when the venture looks so outlandish as the present one. What kind of venture is it to identify cultures as knowledge dispositions, and to preoccupy with the problems thereof? In what way does it contribute to our knowledge or welfare? ‘Theoretical’ and ‘practical’ have varied associations; so it is prudent to specify the sense in which theoretical stance is used here. We can distinguish the situation of deliberating when a decision is called for from a situation of reflection in a mood of taking stock, i.e. of a free reflection on our action and other dispositions in a pensive mood. Just as we can distinguish an interest in cycling as an immediate practical means in order to reach some place from that of experimentally riding the cycle to find out the different modes of cycling, similarly, deliberation to decide, and reflection as an experimental taking stock of one’s actions and dispositions, can be distinguished. The former can be considered to be a ‘practical’ concern, and the latter, a theoretical one. A theoretical concern may be motivated by a belief that the knowledge acquired by the theoretical activity has a practical efficacy. Nevertheless the theoretical activity is not the same as applying the available knowledge. Further, one has to distinguish the approach of pragmatism as a philosophical doctrine or method as to how to elucidate the theoretical concerns from a pragmatic interest in theories, i.e., an interest in theories in order to solve specific practical problems. The former is a way of clarifying the meaning of an assertion or a theory, by asking the question, what difference it would make in terms of actions if one or the other assertion is maintained. One can be following purely theoretical concerns within the philosophical approach of pragmatism. Broadly speaking my approach is pragmatic in the philosophical sense, but my interest is of a theoretical nature.

13

A convenient way of distinguishing practical from theoretical situation is by identifying these in terms of their relation to the alternative courses of action. Practical situation is one where deliberation is required or done in order to take a decision, i.e. it is deliberation involved in choosing one course of action eliminating thereby other alternative courses of action from one’s purview. Theoretical situation, on the other hand, is

that of making the alternatives

available for a choice, i.e. it is a situation of adding to, and not eliminating from, the available fund of courses of action open to ourselves. We can translate these distinctions onto the level of theoretical engagement itself, and derivatively also onto the disciplines and (research and educational) institutions. One can conceive a discipline for the study of the inheritance from the pasts of different communities (I will be using the word ‘tradition’ in such a context) or different ‘cultures’ with a critical task in view, i.e. a task of exposing the ideological and other underpinnings that underlie certain thought structures, category habits and habits of behaviour. This critical reception is analogous to elimination of alternatives in a situation of decision, for what is being done in such a discipline is that of showing such things as what harm would accrue from such and such habits, what good would ensue from such and such thought style or behaviour. In contrast, one can conceive a discipline that envisages the study of a culture in order to reconstruct the ways of going about in the world available in that culture. Sometimes, of course, the former type of task may be needed as a preliminary to the latter type of study. For instance, when we have a tradition of conceptualising the other cultures we have already the concepts and theories about those cultures which are rooted in the past of the theoretical tradition which gave rise to those theories and concepts. Such concepts and theories are likely to seep deep into our habits of looking at other cultures that we need effort to look at others as unfamiliar: there may be a familiarity of what the unfamiliar ought to be. A critical enquiry into the historical forces and concerns shaping that tradition of looking at other cultures may then be required in order to free oneself from those bequeathed conceptual habits that come in the way of looking at the alternatives to what is familiar to us. In fact the considerable part of this book 14

devotes to the work of this nature; it reflects on the inherited conceptions with which we think and talk about other cultures, and tries to ask what implications our ways of talking commit us to, and how these implications have been transported through the history of the intellectual tradition in the context of which theories and categories to talk about culture took birth. The import of this part of the work, is thus, in a broad sense, ‘critical’. But it is only a preliminary to a more constructive part, and eventually, I hope, to a new constructive discipline. 1.3.2

Is Theory a Deferred Decision?

Another aspect of the theoretical stance, as I understand it, can be mentioned briefly by drawing attention to an opposite view of what theoretical reflection is. There is a view of the theory that it is related to problem solving when conflicts arise between the already existing habitual modes of orientation in the world. According to this conception, theoretical stance is a specialised mode of those rudimentarily existing behaviours in the biological domain: it is supervenient to a threat to the accustomed behaviour, or a conflict between two or more of such behaviours. Within the context of that view, theoretical activity can only be envisaged when we have some actual conflict, however rudimentary it may be. This view is traceable to a particular reading of Herder’s conception of man as an animal that lacks instincts (‘instinktloses Tier’). In this view all human capacities 4

arise from that aspect of man which makes him, in contrast to other animals, a ‘deficient being’ (‘Mängelwesen’), i.e. he is deficient in those capacities that all animals have which are required for a normal biological survival. Man cannot act without a deferred decision, because often he doesn’t have the capacity to decisively act. Reflection is of the nature of this deferred decision to act, and therefore it is necessarily related to an actual or a possible situation where the habitual mode of behaviour is inadequate. Taken to its logical conclusion, this would imply that a habituated mode of life that is successful does not require to be reflective. Projected on to my project, this would mean that only those groups or societies which are finding themselves on the receiving end of the onslaught of the ‘modernisation’ require to think on their inherited modes of actions. For they 4

See Gehlen’s appropriation of Herder for his conception of the Philosophical Anthropology, in: Gehlen, A. (1978) p. 73-85. 15

are threatened of extinction. The so called modern set up has successfully defeated those other groups who may be surviving in margins of a global society. So, what is the point in looking at the forms of behaviour or actions of exactly those societies which are defeated in the process of global hegemony, as learnables? Thus the action oriented view of human being, in the sense given to it by the view that man is a deficient being, would imply that a theoretical stance as I have elucidated in the previous part of this section, is a self-delusion. Theories when not shown as related to actual or possible conflicts are meaningless. In contrast to this, my view may be read as a view of human being as endowed with a theoretical capacity, which can be exercised without reference to actual and possible conflicts. Both these views are the expression of man as a special animal with ‘reason’ as a capacity, one conceiving reason as a negative term to be defined in terms of ‘instinct’, and the other conceiving it as a positive term not definable as substitute for ‘lack of instinct’. The special niche of these views in the intellectual tradition will become clear as we proceed further in the following pages. 1.4

Under-labouring and Other Philosophical Tasks

In the above I have often used the term ‘conceptual under-labouring’ to refer to the kind of philosophical task I am setting myself. It is time I gave some elucidation of it. As assumed in this work, to philosophy in a broad sense belongs the task of investigating the inter-connections of implications of the concepts we use. Ryle has given to this the name ‘drawing the logical geography of concepts’.

5

Within this broad characterisation we can distinguish between three different kinds of (sub-) tasks, (i) that of providing an overview or encyclopaedic view, (ii) that of addressing the major paradoxes arising from the practices of different sciences, and (iii) that of showing the niche of a felt problem, thereby helping to found new methods of enquiring into hitherto neglected areas.

5See

Ryle, G. (1949), p. 9-10. 16

What I have termed as the ‘task of providing the encyclopaedic view’ is what in the beginning of this century used to be called ‘Metaphysics’. It was an ambition 6

to synthesise the knowledge available into a unified system of theory. Such ambitions are neither feasible nor necessary, and therefore they have been, by and large, given up. However, we can attempt to articulate the insight meant to be conveyed by the encyclopaedic view in a different way than the attempt to construct a unified and complete theory of the world. It is that the concepts we use are enmeshed with each other in terms of implication threads, and any inventions we make have consequences elsewhere than the immediate field for which the inventions were thought of. The attempt to provide an overview is the attempt to rise above the immediate point of interest. It is an attempt to make the available practices understandable at a reflective rather than at a habitual level. But any such understanding is achieved in the very process of constructing a system of implication threads from a knowing-how level of knowledge to go about in the world: at an habitual level we can say, that we know how to move from one saying to another, what it implies and what it is implied by, even though at moments we may be stuck and confused. The construction of a system of concepts has to take recourse to this knowing-how level of knowledge, even though it may bring out the wider significance of the one or the other knowledge we already possess. But such bringing to the notice of the significance of the knowledge already possessed takes place by the process of confrontation of the knowing-how level knowledge and the constructed concepts, rather than as the end result statable in a theoretical system of propositions. The mistake of the conception of providing a ‘metaphysical system’ was that it was often conceived as if the insight to be gained is in the system as a result rather than in the process of constructing the system itself.

7

Overviews are generally attempts at making the available practices or knowledge understandable by focusing on their inter-connections. They may open up new avenues for research in either of the two ways. First, by rearranging what we 6 7

See for an interesting discussion of the notion of Metaphysics: Pears, D.F. (ed.) (1959). See Ch. 6 in: Rao, N. (1994). 17

already know, it may make us see things in a fresh way and make us enquire into connection that may exist that has not been thought significant enough to be pursued. I hope, what I am going to narrate in the chapters 2 - 7, will be perceived as of this nature. I am hoping that particular kind of focus on the history of the concerns that shaped the concepts we have inherited to talk about cultures can be made to yield insights. I will draw attention to some well known facts such as (a) that the ancients were not Christians, (b) that intellectually it is the philosophies produced by the ancients, especially that of Aristotle, that were the mainstay of the Christian theology, and it is through the mediation of the Christian philosophers that the philosophy of the modern period originated. And I hope to raise a question as to the significance of these facts for a theory of culture. The second way an attempt to provide an overview may open up new avenues of (empirical) research is as a result of the difficulty experienced in juggling the current concepts in use to cohere with each other. When such difficulties are acute we can consider the philosophical task as that of a second variety. This variety of task is especially thrown up in a context of a more and more specialisation: the specialised domains of investigations give rise to more and more specialised technical concepts meant for effective conduct of enquiry within those fields; but the habits of thinking engendered by the disciplines one works in day in and day out would make one susceptible to think of even other issues, i.e. those issues that are outside the purview of that discipline, with the same category habits. Moreover, the specialised concepts may even percolate to daily talk, and one may not be clear about which implication threads to be right, and which not, and why that which is right, is right. These conflicts call for resolution in such a way that we would get an overview of the niche within which these concepts function. As the famous example goes, in Kant’s time it was thought that the new science of physics of the day, the Newtonian physics with its paradigm of explaining everything in terms of the motion transmitted from one particle to another, preached a kind of view that is inimical to the free-will; Kant wanted to ‘make room for faith’ without denying the validity of the new science. Instead of 8

8See

Vorrede zur 2. Aufl., Kritik der reinen Vernunft, B 34-35. 18

‘making room for faith’ one can even say that he wanted to make room for the possibility of assuming responsibility for the acts of omission and commission essential for the legal institutions to work. He drew the logical geography of the concepts like ‘cause’, ‘freedom’, the ‘legal’ and ‘moral responsibility’, and such like concepts. Kant’s philosophy has the special feature that it can be either considered as resolving the paradox arising out of the frameworks of concepts underlying the specialised practices, like physics and legal institution for example, or as attempt to construct an encyclopaedic kind of overview. But this is not the case with one of the progenies of the problems that Kant attempted to solve. The conceptual paradox of the conflict between causality and free-will has its progeny in the analytical philosophy of mind: The following three assumptions appear equally compelling, but they conflict with each other. i) the mental has physical consequences - the decisions result in actions that involve physical effects; ii) the physical should be conceived as having only physical causes; iii) the mental cannot be reduced to physical phenomena, i.e. there are such things as ‘intending’, ‘wishing’ etc. which cannot be explicated in terms of physiological concepts.

9

One can say that the whole of analytical philosophy of mind is constituted by the attempted solutions to this paradox, and the arguments for and against such solutions. Common to both the conceptions delineated above is the activity of reminding us what we already know in the contexts when we have overlooked it. This reminding is also part of the third conception, the Lockean under-labourer conception of the philosophical task. As I have said already, the present work is motivated by the Lockean notion of philosophy as under-labourer of empirical sciences, but it also attempts to combine this with the notion of philosophy as clarifying what we already know. When I say that dispositions handed down one generation to another are the endowments we have for orienting and solving the problems of life, I am just reminding what more or less everyone knows. 9

This formulation of the mind-body problem in a new context of Analytical Philosophy is due to P. Bieri, cf. his introduction to Philosophie des Geistes (Bieri, P. 1993). 19

Everyone who has an acquaintance with a milieu where the formal institutions of education like schools are lacking, know fully well how much of things have been learnt by the children in the process of growing in that milieu. Even those who do not have a direct acquaintance with such milieus can imagine the situation of growing old without formal schooling yet learning the skills needed to master the problems of life. So in specifying the behavioural dispositions acquired from a milieu as knowledge dispositions, I am merely reminding what many know or, at least, can imagine, and giving it a technical name, so as to give it a wider significance than what one generally recognises. This attempt to give wider significance to something one already knows is what the under-labourer conception of the philosophical task is. It is a sustained attempt to think through common sense intuitions in order to clarify certain questions which may open up new domains of investigation. The best example of this kind of work is that of Saussure drawing a distinction between langue and parole on the one hand and langue and langage on the other. He suggested that for an 10

investigation of languages, one can distinguish the ‘speech event’ in the sense of particular sayings by individuals at different places and times from the ‘language system’ (or langue) that is made use in order to produce these sayings. Similarly, language system is different from the totality of the possibilities it opens up for an individual to make use of. Thus by distinguishing language system from its particular uses by individuals on the one hand, and from an open system to which each individual and generation can contribute, on the other, Saussure opened up the possibility of making linguistics an empirical science we know of it today. (Chomsky’s distinction between competence and performance, as far as its immediate heuristic value apart from its particular type of psychologistic embedding is concerned, is identical with that of Saussure’s langue and parole). It also opened up a possibility of looking at human actions and institutions in terms of the underlying structure, and we know how extensive Saussure’s distinction has been made use of, ranging from that in the investigations of texts and myths to social systems. 10

See the third chapter in the part titled ‘Introduction’ in: Saussure, F. (1959). Also cf. the section 4.1.1. Contrastive and definitional uses of Technical Terms’, in: Rao, N. (1994), p. 9396. 20

1.5

Object- vs. Conceptual Questions and Empirical vs. Heuristic Theories

In the foregoing as well as in the following I have assumed that there is a distinction between empirical and conceptual enquiries. As is well known, about this distinction there are controversies. I just ignore those controversies, and assume for my purpose the distinction in the following way. We have an empirical question at hand when, in order to answer it, some information that we do not yet possess is required. When what is required is essentially thinking through the available information and rearranging it, then we have a conceptual question at hand. As I have already indicated in the previous section, this rearranging may goad us into an enquiry of a domain to get new information. On a higher level of abstraction it may goad us to conceive the domain in a new way and see whether this new way of conceiving the domain is empirically fruitful, whether it can generate interesting new theories which can be empirically tested etc. This distinction between conceiving a domain in a new way to generate empirically testable theories and the formulation of the empirical theories themselves, i.e. those theories for which a fairly clear criterion of empirical falsifiability exists, is generally accepted, however much the controversy may exist regarding where to draw the line, and how impermeable the line is. We can term those suggestions to look at a domain in a particular way as ‘heuristic theories’. Saussure’s demarcation, discussed in the foregoing section, of language system from speech event on the one hand, and langage on the other, is a heuristic suggestion, a powerful and fruitful one, but nevertheless not an empirical theory. It generated interesting empirical theories, and has brought into existence the empirical science of linguistics. But drawing that distinction was dependent upon no new facts unavailable before him, it was just reminding us the significance of the distinctions we can make, and making us able to ask interesting questions about particular languages, giving rise thereby to a mass of information about many languages of the world.

21

In the following I will be discussing the role played by the distinction between things that are made and things that are generated, or that grow by themselves, in the history of the European intellectual tradition. It is a heuristic distinction drawn from the daily life but then applied to any number of issues, including that of the nature of human knowledge, and the very human nature. Their influence in the conceptual apparatus we use to talk and formulate questions about culture is the theme of a considerable portion of this book. Similarly, but with a little more tutoring behind it, is the distinction between sense or instinct versus reason. This distinction gets made use of to characterise man as distinct from animals on the one hand, and gods or God on the other. In a secularised form, this heuristic distinction gets later used in order to distinguish (in the philosophical anthropology) man from animals by considering him as free from binding to the natural environment, ‘umweltfrei’ or ‘weltoffen’ in contrast to the animals which are considered as bound to the environment or Umwelt. How large a portion of our distinctions - both in phenomenological sociology and sociology of science actually stem from such heuristic distinctions is an interesting project of research. 1.6

The Category Habit

In the following I will be using the term ‘category habit’ to convey the idea that there are habits of thinking moulded by dominant models of thinking. I have borrowed this term from Ryle, and therefore what he says about it is appropriate for my purpose too: „I think it is worthwhile to take some pains with this word ‘category’, but not for the usual reason, namely that there exists an exact, professional way of using it, in which, like a skeleton key, it will turn all our locks for us; but rather for the unusual reason that there is an inexact, amateurish way of using it in which, like a coal-hammer, it will make a satisfactory knocking noise on doors which we want opened to us. It gives the answers to none of our questions but it can be made to arouse people to the questions in a properly brusque way. 11

Category habits like all other habits are not consciously held beliefs, nor consistent theories, nor even consciously followed strategies of thinking. They are habits of thought that can be identified as giving rise to a certain array of 11

Ryle, G. (1954) p. 9. 22

arguments and a line of thinking. Because these lines of thinking do not constitute a part of the consciously followed strategy of thinking on a question, they are not necessarily followed consistently. Rather, they are habits of thinking fostered by assumptions that are accepted as trivially or evidently true, and therefore thought of as not requiring extra scrutiny. They involve models taken as paradigms for any theorisation. One example for the category habit that has played a role in the history I am narrating is the habit fostered by Christianity of thinking of the world as made by God, thus erasing the distinction that was there for the ancients between the generated things such as plants and the made things such as beds. This resulted in thinking about the nature on the same lines as involved in that of making things by man. For the ancients, whereas the mechanics was a techne and was meant to conceptualise the principles involved in effecting the movements of the bodies, the Astronomy was a theoria conceptualising the principles of part of the movements found in the nature, i.e. in things that have their principles of change within themselves. Therefore, it was not possible for them to imagine that the latter could be conceived in the same lines as movements produced by man, i.e. thinking of identifying the principles involved in mechanics with the causes in the field of Astronomy. What was not possible for the ancients to imagine was made possible for Galileo because of the category habit of thinking the world as made and not as something generated. A similar type of consequence for a thinking 12

about human institutions because of the category habit effected by the Christian mediation of the philosophy of Aristotle will be pointed out later in chapters 3 and 4 .

12

I have discussed this elsewhere in more detail, see section ‘God as the Artificer and Nature as the Artefact’, in: Rao (1994). Also, see chapter 3 in Watkins (1965). The upgrading of the practical arts into theoretical disciplines and the ensuing 'knowledge-is-power-ideal' is traced by Randall to the alliance between the study of medicine and that of Aristotle in Padua. See Randall, J.H. (1961); he has also shown that experimental physics owes a lot to an Aristotelian school of Medicine in Padua. Also cf. Serene E. (1982, p. 496-518), see especially p. 505 and footnote 7 on that page; James, A./ Weisheipel, O.P. (eds.) (1982, p. 521-36), both in: Kretzmann et al. (eds.) (1982). 23

To bring to light such category-habits is different from a historical empirical study of the history of philosophy. That is, it is assumed here that there is a task of the philosophical study of history of ideas or philosophy in contrast to the historical study of ideas or philosophy. The former is a task of identifying the category habits governing the thinking of an author, a current of thinking or an epoch. The latter has the task of weighing the evidence for one reading against another of an author, a current of thinking, or an epoch. These two tasks are mutually dependent upon each other; for to formulate a reading, one must construct a coherence system of concepts, and this is what is done in a philosophical study of a thinker, an epoch etc. Nevertheless a logical distinction between these tasks can be maintained, even though not the separability of them in practice.

24

2

The Modernity Paradigm

This chapter is meant to identify and elucidate a category habit pervading our discourse on social and cultural issues. My suggestion is that underlying our culture discourse there is a paradigm of thinking which I will designate as ‘modernity paradigm’. This paradigm is epitomised in the following credo of one of the reputed Dutch journalists: „I would suggest that the primitive is a condition of life wherein the instinctive, subjective and collective values tend to predominate: the civilised condition of life is where the rational, objective and individual take command. Throughout history the two have been at one another’s throats because it appears that the value of one depends on the rejection of the other.“

1

Since there will be occasion for repeated reference to this passage I require a term of convenience; so I will use ‘epitome’ here onwards to refer to this passage. The decisive concepts in the epitome are the ‘primitive’ and the ‘civilised’ condition with the correlation of them to collectivist and instinctive values on the one hand, and individualist and rational values, on the other. As a precaution perhaps I need to remark that my interest is not in the controversy concerning the evaluative associations of the terms ‘primitive’ and ‘civilised’, but rather in the congealed conceptual history that can be discerned from the listing of the subjective, instinctive and collective on the one hand, and the rational, objective and ‘individual taking the command’, on the other. This contrast underlies a lot of models for social investigation, and our discourse on social and cultural issues are saturated with it. An evocative image is that of a society where the individual is in an organic relation with nature and tradition as contrasted with a society where he is an autonomous entity with his own decision playing a role. Thus the same paradigm of thinking can be espoused even by reversing the evaluation: sometimes the collective orientations are considered as noble and sometimes the 1

Cf. van der Post, L. (1964), p. 272. 25

individual ones. Either way one can construct a history of human evolution from (or to) a collectivist to (or from) an individualist orientation, irrespective of whether as a story of progress or of degeneration. What is more interesting is to trace the history of the term ‘civilised’ and its association with ‘the individual taking command’. This term has a longer history than its opposite member in the epitome, the ‘primitive’ 2, even though it is doubtful whether the association with ‘individual taking command’ is equally old. Whereas the ‘primitive’ came into use sometime in the second half of the 19th century, and especially as a term of art in the discipline of Cultural Anthropology, the ‘civilised’ is derived from civis, the city, a direct translation of the Greek ‘polis’, - a term used by Aristotle in his Politics in the sense of

a human

association formed from a group of villages; further, according to Aristotle, polis shows a higher level of realisation of the human purposes than other forms of association such as family and village. I will be discussing later the relevant passage of Politics, and its significance for social and cultural theory. For the present I want to merely assert that it is a particular interpretation put on this passage by Kant and the German idealism from which, ultimately, the conceptions of instinctive and collective orientation versus rational and individualist orientation stem.3 Further, Aristotle’s conception involves a notion of ‘good’ (agathos) that human beings can and have to achieve, and the human actions and institutions can be judged as the grades of realisation of that human good. I have used the phrase ‘have to’ in the previous sentence deliberately to distinguish it from the ‘should’ of command and ‘ought’ of obligation. For the ‘good’ here is conceived not as something a moral law commands to our attention. But it is not a mere object of desires either. It is more akin to a biological urge that would manifest itself under proper conditions and care. This 2

The Greek and Roman words of contrast to the ‘civilised’ was ‘barbaric’. In the 18th century, and till the word ‘primitive’ was invented the word in use was ‘savage’ and sometimes, ‘brute’. In other words, the word ‘primitive’ is already a sanitised substitute for still more condescending or outright abusive terms. 3 Kant and Herder’s philosophy of history and their connection to the passage in Politics will be discussed in chapter 5 and 6 respectively. 26

is evident by the fact that for Aristotle every ‘natural kind’ substance has the ‘good’ it can achieve and man is only one of the ‘natural kind’ substances. The good each natural kind object can and has to achieve can be discovered by enquiring into what Aristotle calls ‘the why’ of them. The answer to the why of each thing is the nature of it, and to know the nature is also to know what the good it is capable of. In the case of man, by knowing the ‘why’ of his existence, i.e. his nature, one can recommend towards what good he has to and can strive for. (I will use throughout the phrase ‘has to and can’ and grammatical variations of it to indicate the sense of urge that an Aristotelian good is meant to evoke.) Obviously, this idea of the good requires a more elaborate interpretation and I will not be able to go into it. My purpose is a limited one of drawing attention to the connection between that notion of good, either Aristotelian or some unsystematised precedent of it, and the Greek ideal of education of the citizen of polis - the wise and good man (kalos k’agathos). This educational ideal transmitted through mainly, but not exclusively, by the writings of Aristotle was to become later the ideal of Cassiodorus’ programme of education, the civilitas, the ‘cultivation’ of a human being; 4 the metaphor of cultivation is more than a fashion of talking: it is the outcome of Aristotle’s, a very specific sort of, biological model for understanding the nature of things, including that of human being, and its implications for the ideal through which to shape and live one’s life. Still later, especially the study of humanitas - education proper to man believed by its propagators in the 15th century to be the Greek ideal of paideia, is meant as development of all the virtues - ‘virtues’ in the sense of perfection one has the potentials for, and not in the mere moral sense of actions in accordance with principles of justice5 - that the human being is capable of; it too is informed 4

Cassiodorus lived in the 6th century CE. The word ‘civilitas’ occurs in the work called Instituiones divinarum et saecularium et litterarum, the second part of which contains a brief exposition of seven liberal arts, considered as valuable inheritance from the pagan learning. This second part was most widely used in the mediaeval period and commented upon, and is the source of the Carolingan conception of the liberal arts to be taught in the newly established schools for monks, which later became the model for the organisation of the universities in late mediaeval period. Cf. Ziegler, T. (1904), p. 19 and 26, also see: Leff, G. (1958), p. 55-73. 5 Sometimes the virtue ethics is considered as a transitional form of ethics between the Aristotelian notion governed by the notion of ‘good’ and modern notions governed by that of ‘right’. 27

by the ‘good’. In short, the notion of good, in the sense of what man can and has to strive for, used to underlie the notion of making someone or some group cultured or civilised. If we focus now on the use of the words ‘civilised’ and ‘primitive’ in the epitome, it is striking in its ambiguity as to whether to be descriptive or evaluative. This ambiguity is pregnant of historical traces of both the Aristotelian recommendatory use and the more modern, and ostensibly, mere descriptive use. On the one hand, ‘the civilised’ and ‘the primitive’ appear to be meant to designate the conflicting ethos characterising the ‘natural condition’, that is, the conflicting ethos to be found within any society. On the other hand, the passage leaves no doubt that the civilised ethos is something to be strived after. In this use ‘civilised’ and ‘cultured’ are synonymous. ‘Culture’ used to be what it in a popular feuilleton usage still is: a term to mark off the cultivated individuals, and perhaps also a strata of society, from the uncultivated. It was not specifically meant to compare the whole ‘societies’ taken as exhibiting the different ‘ways of life’. The ‘primitive’, on the other hand, is borrowed from the academic use in the discipline of Cultural Anthropology and there it is meant to refer to ‘a way’ of life of the whole society. Though one can distinguish between the history of the word ‘culture’ and that of ‘civilisation’, still, it is undisputed that the coming into being of a term, whether ‘civilisation’ (in expressions such as ‘civilised nations’) or ‘culture’, to speak of the whole way of life of a people, and compare it with the way of life of another such people or nation is comparatively recent.6 The emergence of this new use of ‘culture’ in English to refer to a ‘way of life’, and ultimately its being incorporated into the vocabulary of social sciences, has been traced by Raymond Williams in his landmark study of the history of the semantic web connecting ‘industry’, ‘democracy’, ‘class’, ‘art’ and ‘culture’. 7 One significant contributory factor, however, he fails to mention, namely, the 6 7

Cf. The preface by Willimas, R. (1958). Cf. Williams, R. (1958). 28

controversy about ‘ancients’ versus ‘moderns’.8 (The trace of this controversy is visible in the very term central to the discipline that took birth in the 19th century, the Sociology: ‘the modern’ as against the ‘traditional’ society). 9 Starting as a controversy in the medieval universities about the text books to be used, it became by the 15th century a divide between those who upheld the place of ‘the wisdom of the ancients’ (in the form of inherited texts) in education and those who decried them in favour of more recently created knowledge. In the course of the 17th to the 19th century, this latter came to be identified with natural science and its methods, and the former with the literary heritage. Also, natural science was identified with analytical and particularised knowledge, whereas the literary heritage was associated with a much more essential development of man’s humanity, a ‘holistic’ development of human abilities. There were many different coinages of terms to make roughly this same contrast. Pascal’s esprit de geometrie and esprit de finesse, is perhaps one of the earliest, and also most clearly drawn, even though his contrast as an educational ideal was not meant to imply the cultivation of one to the exclusion of the other. Pascal uses these terms to contrast the exercise of particular skills and capabilities, on the one hand, and an involvement of the ‘whole man’ in the exercising capacities and judgements, on the other.10 The divide between those who emphasise the religious and literary heritage in the education of man to cultivate his humanity and those who emphasise the scientific knowledge as the ideal of education to emancipate him is an important current, recurring again and again in different guises. 11 To one such recurrence in 19th 8

See Sorell, T. (ed.) (1995), especially, part III: Modernity in Morals and Politics. For the centrality of the contrast modern vs. traditional to the classical sociology, see Giddens, A. (1989). The following succinctly puts the point: „The Social Sciences had their first formation somewhere around the mid 18th century in Western Europe. Emerging as a set of concerns having claims to ‘universality’ they were from their beginnings confined by perspectives and emphases reflecting their contexts of origin. The leading figures in the ‘classical social theory’ of the 19th and early 20th centuries were all preoccupied with the transformation of the ‘traditional’ into the ‘modern’ - in some sense - and the implications of this for likely future developments“ by Giddens A. (1989), p. 250. 10 Cf. Kearns, E.J. (1982), p.102-103. 11 Cf. on the C.P. Snow’s attack on ‘Two Cultures’ and its precedents and successor currents in British and American Literary Criticism, in: Lepenies W. (1988), chapter 6. 9

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century England we owe the incorporation of ‘culture’ into the vocabulary of the social sciences. ‘Culture’ entered first as an instrument of polemics in the controversy regarding the nature of social reform. On the one side there were ‘utilitarians’ or ‘philosophical radicals’ as they were called, and on the other side the protagonists of ‘culture’. Bentham, James Mill, John Stuart Mill, Aldous Huxley, and Herbert Spencer at different periods were representatives of the former camp; Coleridge, Carlyle and Mathew Arnold similarly of the other camp. Coleridge’s use of the word ‘culture of feeling’ was meant roughly in the same way as Pascal’s esprit de finesse. Cultivation is for him, „the harmonious development of those qualities and the faculties that characterise our humanity.“12

We will have occasion to see the philosophical significance of the emphasised word ‘humanity’ later. The expression ‘common humanity of mankind’ is quite ubiquitous in the writings of the 19th century. Coleridge’s ally, Wordsworth, makes use of this notion to describe the nature of knowledge the poetry conveys in contrast to other kinds of knowledge in use in daily life: „Aristotle, I have been told, has said, that Poetry is the most philosophic of writing: it is so: its object is truth, not individual and local, but general and operative; not standing upon external testimony, but carried alive into the heart by passion; [...] possessed of that information which may be expected from him, not as a lawyer, a physician, a mariner, an astronomer, or a natural philosopher, but as a Man. [...] He (the poet) is the rock of defence for human nature; an upholder and preserver, carrying everywhere with him relationship and love. In spite of difference of soil and climate, of language and manners, of laws and customs: in spite of things silently gone out of mind, and things violently destroyed, the Poet binds together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society, as it spread over the whole earth, and over all time.“ 13

In the very language of Wordsworth, persons acquainted with the literature of Christian piety can unmistakably identify the religious origin of the notion of a knowledge of ‘whole man’. My interest, however, is to draw attention to the contrast made between the specialised knowledge and the supposedly holistic and 12 13

Cf. Coleridge, S.T., ed. by Coburn, K. (1969), vol. X. p. 42-3. Hutchinson, T. (ed.) (1908), p. 938-939. 30

‘universal’ knowledge that poetry affords. In a similar vein to Wordsworth above, Shelly’s Defence of Poetry is directed against evaluating the ‘calculating faculty’ above that of ‘imaginative faculty’: „While the mechanist abridges, and the political economist combines, labour, let them bewares of their speculations, for want of correspondence with those first principles which belong to the imagination, do not tend, as they have in modern England, to exasperate at once the extremes of luxury and want. [...] The rich have become richer and the poor have become the poorer. [...] Such are the effects which must ever flow from an unmitigated exercise of the calculating faculty.“ 14

The ‘calculating faculty’, in the same way as Pascal’s esprit de geometrie, is used above in a more general sense than the exercise of a mathematical skill. It is also an indirect reference to Bentham’s doctrine of „hedonic calculus“ for choosing between the alternative courses of action. Bentham’s interest was in the Principles of Morals and Legislation, as this title of the book he published suggests.15 More generally, he and his followers, especially J.S. Mill, Huxley, and Spencer were interested in establishing the project of scientific study of man or ‘moral science’ as Mill called it. However, the controversy did not take place in the form of an academic dispute on how to study human phenomena, but on a question of social reform. Mainly the question was with regard to the nature of education and the responsibility to educate the citizens.16 J.S. Mill and his peers as well as followers were ‘utilitarians’ upholding the need for scientific subjects in the education. Their opponents thought that they were downgrading the education for ‘culture’. ‘Culture’ was meant to connote the need for an education for the cultivation of humanity of man and to emphasise the role of literature and literary sensibility in such a cultivation. 17

14

P.B.Shelly, ‘A Defence of Poetry’, in: MacIntyre and Ewing (ed.) (1930), p. 270. Bentham, J. (1989). 16 See Williams, R. (1958) part I, especially, chapters 2, 4, 6 and 7. 17 This divide reappears within the discipline of Anthropology, in a transformed fashion as between those upholding the naturalistic approach and those calling for hermeneutic method. 15

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Though not directly discussed, a question about the method of investigation did play a role in this controversy. J.S. Mill captures this accurately while writing on his assessment of the relative merits and drawbacks of Bentham and Coleridge: „By Bentham beyond all others, men have been led to ask themselves in regard to any ancient or received opinion, Is it true? and by Coleridge, what is the meaning of it? The one took his stand outside the received opinion, and surveyed it as an entire stranger to it: the other looked at it from within, and endeavoured to see it within the eyes of a believer in it.“ 18

Thus the divide between philosophical radicals and their opponents is the answer they gave to the question: is a third person perspective sufficient and appropriate for the study of the human phenomena? The former answered it in the affirmative and the latter in the negative. The answer that the study from a third perspective is sufficient I will call ‘naturalism’ 19. The proponents of naturalism extolled the application of ‘experimental methods’ (a third person approach par excellence) and the knowledge gained by it for the social reform. The opponents of naturalism denied the usefulness of such knowledge for cultivating the moral sphere of man. To make this contrast between the knowledge from a first person and from a third person perspective understandable, let me give an example: Durkheim put forward the hypothesis that religion binds individuals into a social cohesion. 20 Suppose this to be true, it then is a piece of knowledge about society obtained by ‘experimental method’ in the sense the philosophical radicals gave to it; i.e., it is knowledge obtained by a third person perspective. The opponents of naturalism would argue that such a hypothesis, even if true, would not give us any clue as to the beliefs the practitioners of religion entertain as reasons (as against causes) for the actions they perform. Thus for the opponents of culture, though science and 18

John Stuart Mill, Collected Works, Vol. X. p. 119. This term is fairly accepted in philosophic circles. But there is no term capable of consensus for the opponents of naturalism; I thought of using ‘idealism’, but not all opponents would be willing to consider their position is ‘idealistic’. Idealism as a current is too closely associated with the German idealism of Schelling, Fichte and Hegel. I also thought of ‘humanism’, but its is too wide a term to demarcate the group of people I want to designate. So I am using in the following sometimes the term ‘protagonists of culture’ just for convenience. For a detailed discussion of the ‘first person’ and ‘third person’ perspective, see chapter 8. 20 See Durkheim, E. (1915). 19

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scientific method can contribute to the development of specialised skills, in the domain of morality it has no value; for moral capacity is not of the nature of a specialised skill. Of course, it too requires to be developed through education, but the education required is not that in science but in literature. Poetry or Literature has the task of developing the ‘culture’ of man, by instilling in him a knowledge of a variety that informs the ‘whole man’ and his ‘whole way of life’. Naturalism can be traced back to the attempts to put the practical philosophy ‘on the secure path of science’ such as that of Hobbes in the 17th century which then culminated in the project of a moral science by Mill. The desire to establish a science of human nature is equally motivated by the engagement in the social issues of the day as the motivation of those who opposed naturalism. Locke’s attempt to determine the limits and scope of human understanding was conceived as a contribution to overcome the passions that lead to civil war. Hobbes similarly believed that if Leviathan (the artificial body of the State) is founded on the basis of a sound science of human nature, peace and prosperity can be ensured. 21 This project was later taken over in the attempt to establish a ‘science of commonwealth’ (Adam Smith and James Mill). All these were efforts of thinking directed at the specific social issues of the times in which the concerned philosophers lived, like that of overcoming the civil war (Thomas Hobbes), or the alleviation of misery of working men by effecting the legal reform (James Mill). In other words, the proponents equally as the opponents of naturalism were motivated by an ideal of ‘common humanity’ and engaged in social reform, and therefore looked at knowledge in terms of its power to bring about a more perfect form of society. But they differed in the conception of knowledge that can become effective in that endeavour. For naturalism, knowledge is something that is gained from the ‘experimental method’, i.e. from a third person perspective. For the opponents, i.e. the protagonists of ‘culture’, there is another form of knowledge - a knowledge that in some sense involves the ‘whole man’ and his ‘whole way of life’, and that which can be gained only by involving a first person 21

Cf. Introduction in: Hobbes (1651, cit. 1969), p.59. 33

perspective. In a later chapter I will go into elucidating these two conceptions of knowledge and argue in detail that the issue turns on the conception of the relation between the ‘ideal’ and the ‘actual situation’, whether we can have knowledge of the former or it is something to be had on the basis of just a decision or will. For the present it is enough to point out that for the opponents of naturalism, ‘culture’ cannot have a mere descriptive use, for it is conceived as an ideal to be actualised, and thereby it necessarily issues in judgements whether, and to what extent, an action or an actual situation realises the ideal. One further point of emphasis: even the proponents of naturalism in the 19th century entertained the notion of a ‘common humanity’ and used it in a selfassured manner. The exact meaning of the term as they used it is difficult to fix, but its use certainly indicates the belief in a common measure of perfection with which to judge the achievements of different epochs and civilisations: one thing that the 19th century writers were not squeamish about was evaluating. Also, its kinship to, or even identity with, striving after ‘spiritual perfection’ was clearly acknowledged. While reading the philosophical literature of the 19 th century England, one is struck by the fact how important this notion of perfection then was, and how today it is no part of the general vocabulary, except perhaps in some ceremonial talk. In his essays meant to assess Coleridge and Bentham, and to integrate their contributions by reconciling their opposing views on society, Mill remarks that: „Man is never recognised by Bentham as a being capable of spiritual perfection as an end,“ 22

and, as against this, though a Benthamite himself, he commends the contribution of what he calls the ‘Germano-Coleridgian school’ as following: „But the peculiarity of the Germano-Coleridgian school is, that they saw [...] to the fundamental principles involved in all such controversies. They were the first [...] who enquired with any comprehensiveness or depth, into the inductive laws of the existence and growth of human society. [...] They were the first to bring forward [...] essential principles of all permanent social existence. They thus produced [...] a philosophy of society, in the only form in which it is yet possible, that of a philosophy of history; not a defence of particular ethical or religious doctrines, but 22

Cf. John Stuart Mill, Collected Works, Vol. X., p. 95. 34

a contribution, the largest made by any class of thinkers, towards the philosophy of human culture. 23 [...] They [...] who regarded the maintenance of society [...] in a state of progressive advancement as a very difficult task, (therefore led to) enquire, both what were the requisites of the permanent existence of the body politic, and what were the conditions which had rendered the preservation of these permanent requisites compatible with perpetual and progressive improvement. And hence that series of great writers and thinkers, from Herder to Michlet, by whom history [...] has been made a science of causes and effects; who by making the facts and events of the past have [...] an intelligible place in the gradual evolution of humanity, [...] afforded the only means of predicting and guiding the future, by unfolding the agencies which have produced and still maintain the present. The same causes have naturally led the same class of thinkers to do what their predecessors never could have done, for the philosophy of culture. For the tendency of their speculations compelled them to see in the character of the education existing in any political society, at once the principal cause of its permanence as a society, and the chief source of its progressiveness [...]. Besides, not to have looked upon the culture of the inward man as the problem of problems, would have been incompatible with the belief which many of these philosophers entertained in Christianity, and the recognition by all of them of its historical value [...]. But here too, let us not fail to observe, they rose to the principles, and did not stick in the particular case. The culture of the human being had been carried to no ordinary height, and human nature had exhibited many of its noblest manifestations, not in Christian countries only, but in the ancient world, in Athens, Sparta, Rome, [...]. Every form of polity, every condition of society, whatever else it had done, had formed its type of national character. What that type was, and how it had been made what it was, were questions which the metaphysician might overlook, but a historical philosopher could not. Accordingly, the views respecting the various elements of human culture and the causes influencing the formation of national character, which pervade the writings of the Germano-Coleridgian school, throw into the shade everything which had been effected before, [...].“ 24

There are several things of interest in this perceptive assessment of the German idealism. I will confine myself to three points. First, Mill identifies the significance of the ‘Coleridge and the German school’ in the setting up of a view 23 24

John Stuart Mill, Collected Works, Vol. X., p. 138-139. John Stuart Mill, Collected Works, Vol. X., p. 139-140. 35

of the spiritual perfection that Bentham lacked. Moreover, it was set up as an ideal for the perfection of the body politic, i.e. for social perfection, and not merely for an individual cultivation. Secondly, he identifies the German school to have built a philosophy of history which he considers as a contribution towards the ‘philosophy of human culture’. The word ‘culture’ is used here clearly in a recommendatory sense, since what Mill refers to are ‘the noblest manifestations of human nature’ and not just ‘a way of life’. But there is a twist, and with it, we come to the third point: bearing in mind that in his day the word ‘philosophy’ indifferently meant what we today distinguish into separate disciplines, science and philosophy, his commendation of the contribution of the ‘German school’ was as a contribution towards his own endeavour of establishing a science of man, or ‘moral science’. This contribution, he identifies, first, with that of making the history the ‘science of causes and effects’, and second, with ‘making the facts and the events of the past have an intelligible place in the gradual evolution of humanity’. This reveals the historical (and also the kind of conceptual) link that exists between the German

Geschichtsphilosophie and the Spencerian

evolutionism. The latter is a hypothesis within the framework of naturalism espoused by Mill; but its scheme of evolution stems from the speculative history provided by the German idealism. In spite of there being a dominance of ‘Absolute Idealism’ of Green and Bradley in the philosophy departments at the fin de siècle England, especially in Oxford, naturalism did succeed in Britain by the end of 19th century as far as the social study is concerned.25 The word ‘culture’, that which was an instrument of polemic against naturalism, itself entered into the vocabulary of naturalism: a new discipline came into being that appropriated and incorporated the term ‘culture’ to form ‘Cultural Anthropology’. The moving spirit behind the emergence of this discipline is evolutionism, which can be looked at as a particular hypothesis within the approach of naturalism. Also, Cultural Anthropology was conceived as an encompassing and unified idea of scientific study of man - a sort of universal history of the ‘German Philosophy of History’ variety, but based on empirical 25

See chapter 3 of Skorupski, J. (1993). Also see the chapters 3 and 4 in part II in: Lepenies, W. (1988), p. 93-111. 36

methods. These philosophical moorings along with the dominant representative of it, Herbert Spencer - who was very popular in his time amongst intelligentsia are, of course, now forgotten. But not the new discipline, though it also changed the name from ‘Cultural’ to ‘Social Anthropology’. The original adjective ‘cultural’ was meant to contrast it with the biological study of man and also to oppose biologism: The term ‘Anthropology’ connoted in England of 19 th century the study of physical characteristics of man - what now is called as Physical Anthropology. ‘Culture’ came to be understood as those aspects that are inherited historically rather than biologically, but those that can be studied equally naturalistically as any other features of phenomena. The extent of the change in the meaning of ‘culture’ effected by this embedding of it in a naturalistic approach to the study of man can be gauged by comparing the Coleridge’s use of ‘culture’ 26 - used in the context of a programme of cultivating a humane ‘feeling’ that is to pervade the ‘whole man’ - to that of ‘culture’ as ‘that complex whole’ as defined in the following: „Culture or civilisation, taken in its widest ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.“

27

This definition by Tyler is considered as historically first initiating the discipline of Social Anthropology. But whereas ‘culture’ as a ‘whole way of life’ earlier in the century was meant to imply an educational ideal, Tyler’s term ‘culture’ as a ‘complex whole of capabilities inherited by man as a member of society’ is meant to be a mere descriptive term, and meant not to contain any implication of an ideal to be realised.28 In Germany too there was a struggle between naturalism and its opponents. In fact, Coleridge borrowed his ideas largely from the German idealists, and his 26

see above note 12. Tyler, E.B. (1871, cit. 1958), p. vii. 28 Tyler’s definition still echoes the use by the Coleridgians in that it retains the idea of an inherited knowledge though the teleological aspects of their use has been elided. But in Malinowski’s use it becomes explicitly an indifferent use to both to refer to the ‘knowledge’ and ‘institutional order’, thus opening the way to speak of the study of the functioning of institutions of a society as the study of its ‘culture’. 27

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circle and followers are referred to by J.S. Mill as ‘Germano-Coleridgian school’29. But, unlike in Britain, naturalism did not have a sway in Germany. 30 Yet, here too, the word ‘culture’ gets transformed from its use in Herder 31 as something implying an educational ideal into a wholly descriptive use in Max Weber. The current generated by the concern with ‘the wisdom of the ancients’ developed in Germany a conception of human studies involving a ‘hermeneutic method’. The latter was originally meant as a method of interpreting texts, but later, by an extension of the original meaning, came to mean interpreting any human expression, whether in texts or in actions. Human expressions are considered as embodying ‘Sinn’. This latter concept can be best understood as an extension of our day to day talk of ‘the meaning of an expression’. To apprehend something as a sign, and not merely as a mark, is to consider the mark as an expression of some meaning. This is simple enough to grasp, and if used within limits need not involve any controversy. This simple idea, if applied within a framework that distinguishes behaviour and action on the basis of the latter being behaviour plus something else, a ‘mental event’ for instance, opens the possibility of conceiving an ‘action’ as similar to a mark plus meaning or Sinn. Thus Sinn becomes correlative to the intention of a subject and has to assume its logical priority to the former. ‘Sinn’ is thus a concept arising out of a Cartesian framework. For my narrative, the following is noteworthy. The hermeneutic approach makes all human actions expressions of meaning, and thereby opens up the avenue for a particular sort of justification as to why naturalism cannot give us knowledge of the human realm: to understand an action is to know what meaning it expresses. This we cannot know by observing behaviour - because behaviour is only a mark, i.e. a vehicle or medium to convey ‘meaning’ or ‘Sinn’. Thus understanding human actions is different from knowledge attained through 29

See footnote 23. Cf. for the opposition to sociology in Germany by literary circles in: Lepenies, W. (1988), especially chapter III; the title of the German original: Die Drei Kulturen is meant to be a pun, on the one hand denoting the Cultures of France, Germany, and Britain, and on the other, the cultures of natural science, literature, and of sociology. 31 See for a detailed discussion of Herder chapter 7. 30

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observation and explanation of the corresponding behaviour. An action can be understood only through interpretation and not through observation. Thus ‘understanding’, ‘interpretation’, and ‘Sinn’ (or ‘meaning’) are important concepts in the hermeneutic approach. Max Weber incorporates them in his conception of sociology as following: „Soziologie (im hier verstandenen Sinn dieses sehr vieldeutig gebrauchten Wortes) soll heißen: eine Wissenschaft, welche soziales Handeln deutend verstehen und dadurch in seinem Ablauf und seinen Wirkungen ursächlich erklären will. „Handeln“ soll dabei ein menschliches Verhalten (einerlei ob äußeres oder innerliches Tun, Unterlassen oder Dulden) heißen, wenn und insofern als der oder die Handelnden mit ihm einen subjektiven Sinn verbinden. „Soziales“ Handeln aber soll ein solches Handeln heißen, welches seinem von dem oder den Handelnden gemeinten Sinn nach auf das Verhalten anderer bezogen wird und daran in seinem Ablauf orientiert ist.“ 32

With the notion of ‘Sinn’ as conceived in the above passage, it may be noted, the difference between an ideal guiding an action, or being actualised in an action, and the meaning (or Sinn) of a sign, gets erased. Thus we have another important aspect of the transformation of the notion of ‘culture’ involving an ideal of human good - in the sense of what human beings can and have to do - to a descriptive use, where the ideal becomes the Sinn attached to actions by the subjects. I will be discussing later the philosophical and historical significance of this conception of a subject attaching Sinn (i.e. Weber’s ‘Handelnder’ who attaches to a behaviour a ‘subjective Sinn’), thus exhibiting a capacity of will. Now if we again look at the use of the word ‘values’ in the epitome, it becomes obvious that the author uses it in the same way as Max Weber uses the word Sinn. The diction is indeed quite different from that of Weber and more akin to the diction of naturalism: ‘values’ are said to ‘predominate’ in one way in the primitive condition and in another way in the civilised condition. But the language of ‘values’ is not that of naturalism; it requires ‘subjects’ who entertain them. Thus it is meant in the sense of human beings entertaining values: in the primitive condition, according to the author, human beings stick to the collectivist

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Weber, M. (1984) (6.Aufl.), p.19. 39

and subjective values, and in the civilised condition, to the objectivist and rational values. Even this last contrast stems from Max Weber’s elucidation of the difference between the modern and traditional societies. Max Weber makes use of his notion of sociology (see passage quoted above) to understand the ‘modernity’ - both its emergence and dynamic, and the conditions of its emergence. The formulation he gives to the modernity paradigm can be summarised as follows. ‘Modernity’ as found in the contemporary Occident is characterised by the two features: (i) scientific-technical attitude, as against magical-mythical attitude of the premodern societies, towards nature, (ii) rational organisation of (formally) free labour, 33 i.e. organisation by submission to law as against submission through natural binding 34 such as personal relationships - either due to deference or fear. The modernity paradigm involves a further assumption that all forms of social life other than the ‘modern’ ones can be looked at in terms of the pre-history of modernity. This last would be too strong a formulation as far as Max Weber is concerned. But it captures accurately the assumption made by Marx and Marxians in their models for the study of society and history. In a weaker form Max Weber too subscribes to this assumption. According to him, only the Occidental form of social life - the capitalist organisation of (formally) free labour, and the corresponding civil constitution (bürgerliche Ordnung) with its law - once it comes into being, is destined to prevail on all other social forms. Other forms in 33

„In einer Universalgeschichte der Kultur ist also für uns, rein wirtschaftlich, das zentrale Problem letztlich nicht die überall nur in der Form wechselnde Entfaltung kapitalistischer Betätigung als solcher: des Abenteurertypus oder des händlerischen oder des an Krieg, Politik, Verwaltung und ihren Gewinnchancen orientierten Kapitalismus. Sondern vielmehr die Entstehung des bürgerlichen Betriebskapitalismus mit seiner rationalen Organisation der freien Arbeit. Oder, kulturgeschichtlich gewendet: die Entstehung des abendländischen Bürgertums und seiner Eigenart, die freilich mit der Entstehung kapitalistischer Arbeitsorganisation zwar im nahen Zusammenhang steht, aber natürlich doch nicht einfach identisch ist.“ In: Weber, M. (1973), p. 349. „[...] der Occident kennt in der Neuzeit daneben eine ganz andere und nirgends sonst auf der Erde entwickelte Art des Kapitalismus: die rational-kapitalistische (betriebliche) Organisation von (formell) freier Arbeit.“ ibid. 347. 34 The term, ‘natural binding’ is mine and not Weber’s but it encapsulates neatly the contrast Weber makes in the following, and connects it to Weber’s Kantian inspiration (Weber, M. 1973, p. 351f.). 40

the history of mankind do not possess such a destiny of universalisability. In this, and for Max Weber only in this sense, forms of social life other than the ‘modern’ ones can be looked at in terms of the pre-history of modernity. 35 In spite of this weaker version of universal history, the category habit informing Max Weber’s conception of, and questions about, the modernity has parallels to that of Marx’s question and answer: under what conditions did capitalism emerge, and once emerged what are its internal dynamics? Weber’s conception as that of Marx can equally be traced to Kant’s, and derivatively, to that of the German idealism, conception of Naturgeschichte - an elaboration of which I will undertake in chapter 6. Max Weber attempts to whittle down the teleological elements of this very specific doctrine of the German tradition. He is interested in making the speculative conceptions underlying Naturgeschichte in Kant’s writings on Geschichtsphilosophie into a model for empirical investigation.36 By making use of a Kantian notion, ‘the self-directing individual’, one can bring all the different formulations of modernity under one single contrast: the group or society of self-directing individuals37 versus the group or society that does not exhibit this capacity among the members of its group. The adjective ‘selfdirecting’ is important, but I am not going to explain it at the moment; its Kantian sense and locus in the intellectual history will become clearer as we proceed further in the following pages. If we paraphrase the term ‘collective values’ with 35

The researchers of modernisation processes in economic sphere - in the socalled theories of development - have made this into their model to investigate the conditions required to industrialise the agriculture dominated societies. In microscopic application the same model has been applied in the socalled domain of enterprise culture, to refer to the styles of personal relationships prevailing within a firm. 36 In Soziologische Grundbegriffe (1984, p. 19) Max Weber distinguishes the conception of Sinn as required for ‘empirische Wissenschaften vom Handeln’ from the ‘dogmatischen’ conception of Sinn, and thereby indicates that he wants his model to fulfil the strict criterion of usefulness for empirical investigation. Weber’s modernity paradigm is elegant, thorough going, and highly influential. He brings together all varied concepts associated with the modernity model in his essay Vorbemerkung zu den gesammelten Aufsätzen zur Religionsoziologie (cf. Weber, M. 1973). The essay contains a lot of seminal ideas and is rich in suggestions. 37 As may be evident for the informed reader, this coinage is a modification of Norbert Elias’ term ‘society of individuals’ (cf. Elias, N. 1987). For Elias there is no need for the adjective ‘self-directing’, because, the word ‘individual’ implies that. Since in daily use this implication is absent, I have added the adjective for my purpose of building up of a model on the basis of concepts understandable in common sense terms. 41

‘exhibiting a lack of self-directing capacity’ then ‘primitive’ in the epitome becomes ‘a condition of life wherein the capacity for self-direction is absent’. It is the one pole of history and the modernity the other pole. In the latter, individuals ‘take command’. Thus we have the notion of history as the development from the primitive to the modern, meaning, from the man who is yet to develop his capacity for self-direction to a civilised condition where he has developed that capacity. In this reading we have the speculative histories constructed by Hegel, Marx, and many others in the 19th century in a nutshell. In the 20th century, as in Weber, 38 the ‘modern’ and the ‘primitive’, or any other equivalent of it, are, ostensibly at least, made into purely structural categories, without assuming that real history passes necessarily from one condition to another, but rather that some societies exhibit ‘primitiveness’ and some ‘modernity’. The epitome appears to be in this vein, with perhaps an added assumption that in one and the same society some groups may behave like the people in a ‘primitive condition’. Succumbing to ‘collective, instinctive and subjective values’ is what, in this reading, the mob or mass psychology is. This would indeed imply that, applied to the whole societies, ‘primitive’ means that they are herd-like. Again the word ‘herd’ should be dissociated from its evaluational connotation and just taken to mean that no mechanism for co-ordinating the self-directing individuals exists, and to the extent that there is a group or ‘society’ 39, it functions as an undifferentiated mass. Of course, it may be conceded that a group or society of completely self-directing individuals as well as completely behaving as a herd is a fiction, but nevertheless the empirical usefulness of these fictions may be argued for. What is important for this model, however, is that these fictions are used primarily for describing the 38

Weber does not use the term ‘primitive’ society because his focus of interest was not the genesis of the ‘early’ forms of society as in the case of many others, but in the genesis of bürgerliche Gesellschaft. But as I noted earlier, his notion of traditional society as characterised by natural binding both in its relation to nature and in social relations, can be conceived as less developed capacity for self-direction. 39 The word ‘society’ and its German equivalent ‘Gesellschaft’ are themselves of recent origin, and were meant to connote the community where law of a contractual nature predominates over law in the sense of custom. That is, law governing the human relations are more in the nature of putting contractual obligation rather than that of ‘natural’ binding sort. The latter sort of law (the Sitte) is supposed to be characteristic of Gemeinschaft. 42

behaviour and not to judge them as right or wrong. To the extent that the latter judgement is there, it is meant again as a description of a lower form of human behaviour in comparison to another form that is higher, judged as higher and lower by a standard other than what is available in the descriptive content, and a standard, that cannot be made available descriptively. 40 In order to show that the category habit underlying Max Weber’s thinking is that of contrasting societies in terms of a concept of self-directing capacity, let me draw the attention to the motivation underlying his Religionssoziologie, and suggest that it be read in the light of Cassirer’s theory of what the mythical form of thinking, in contrast to that of scientific form, is. In his introductory remarks for the collection of his Essays on Sociology of Religion, Weber writes, „Es kommt [...] darauf an: die besondere Eigenart des okzidentalen und, innerhalb dieses, des modernen okzidentalen Rationalismus zu erkennen und in ihrer Entstehung zu erklären. Jeder solche Erklärungsversuch muß, [...] die ökonomischen Bedingungen berücksichtigen. Aber es darf auch der umgekehrte Kausalzusammenhang darüber nicht unbeachtet bleiben. Denn wie von rationaler Technik und von rationalem Recht, so ist der ökonomische Rationalismus in seiner Entstehung auch von der Fähigkeit und Disposition der Menschen zu bestimmten Arten praktisch-rationaler Lebensführung überhaupt abhängig. Wo diese durch Hemmungen seelischer Art obstruiert war, da stieß auch die Entwicklung einer wirtschaftlich rationalen Lebensführung auf schwere innere Widerstände. Zu den wichtigsten formenden Elementen der Lebensführung nun gehörten in der Vergangenheit überall die magischen und religiösen Mächte und die am Glauben an sie verankerten ethischen Pflichtvorstellungen. Von diesen ist in den nachstehend gesammelten und ergänzten Aufsätzen die Rede.“ 41

I suggest that the expression ‘obligation rooted in the magical-mythical conceptions of nature’ can be thought of as a contrast to the scientific attitude to nature, since Weber explicitly identifies the use of natural science and lack of any restraining factor, unlike in India and China, in the attitudes in using it for economic purposes, as one of the main constitutive elements of Capitalism. 42 40

In Kantian terms that will be discussed later, for naturalism the use of ‘self-directing individuals’ has to be determinative, and not reflexive. 41 Weber, M. (1973), p. 351f. 42 Der spezifisch moderne okzidentale Kapitalismus nun ist [...] durch Entwicklungen von technischen Möglichkeiten mitbestimmt. [...] Das heißt aber in Wahrheit: durch die Eigenart der abendländischen Wissenschaft, insbesondere der mathematisch und experimentell exakten und 43

Let us now look at this contrast in the light of how Cassirer elaborates the contrast between scientific and mythical attitudes. Cassirer’s ideas on myths were representative of many others in the late 19th century and early 20th century, i.e., the intellectual milieu within which Weber’s terminology has its origin. Cassirer makes a structural classification of symbolic forms where myth and science form two poles, and astrology takes a niche in between them, thus in spite of being concerned merely with varieties of human thinking and showing them as so many varieties of human spirit, still the underlying modernity paradigm is unmistakable. In many places in his writings he implicitly identifies these predominant modes of thinking (i.e., myths, astrology and science) respectively in societies characterised by primitive cultures, high cultures such as that of India and China, and the science-oriented modern West. This latter classification is not specific to Cassirer but quite prevalent till the second world war, and in non-academic circles even now. For Cassirer, Weber’s two aspects that divide the pre-modern from the modern the magical-mythical attitude to nature and the human relations fostered by natural binding - are the characteristic features of the mythical and expressive symbolic form. In the scientific symbolic form on the other hand, the rule of constitution of the individual is what dominates, i.e. individual objects are not given and found for knowledge, but constituted through the laws. Thus, what is mentioned as two separate aspects in my summary formulation of the ‘modernity’ - the principle governing the attitude towards nature and the principle governing the social relations - are brought under one principle by Cassirer. The organisation of social relations in terms of ‘natural binding’ and the assumption of ‘magical-mythical’ powers in nature come both under mythical symbolic form; scientific attitude towards nature and the organisation of human relationships through commonly accepted rules or laws comes under the scientific rational fundierten Naturwissenschaften. [...] Und warum taten die kapitalistischen Interessen das gleiche nicht in China oder Indien? Warum lenkten dort überhaupt weder die wissenschaftliche, noch die künstlerische [...] in diejenigen Bahnen der Rationalisierung ein, welche dem Okzident eigen sind?“ Weber, M. (1973), p. 349-351. 44

(wissenschaftliche) symbolic form. The latter uses a temporal in contrast to the spatial schematism used by the former. The basic feature is the degree of ‘selfdirecting’ exhibited in the one and the other.43 It now becomes clear that the notion of self-directing does underlie Max Weber’s model: in modernity self-directing capacity expresses itself in rationalisation in every field, and in the traditional societies self-directing capacities are hemmed by the mythical modes of thinking, which is another way of saying: it is characterised by the predominance of natural binding towards nature and in interpersonal relationships. In Norbert Elias’s Civilisation Process, we have another formulation, now given a dialogical twist. His interest is to trace how the coming into being of the notion of the ‘private’ individual is connected with the coming into being of a specific form of society in history. The civilisation process is for him an individualisation process and he embeds his theory of individualisation in a theory of the specific nature of man in contrast to animals. „Daß man die Gestalt der psychischen Funktionen eines Menschen niemals allein aus seiner ererbten Konstitution zu verstehen vermag, sondern immer nur aus der aktuellen Verarbeitung dieser Konstitution in der Verflechtung mit anderen Menschen, aus dem Aufbau des Menschenverbandes, in dem der Einzelne aufwächst, das hat also letzten Endes seinen Grund in einer Eigentümlichkeit der Menschennatur selbst, in der relativ starken Lösung der menschlichen Beziehungssteuerung aus dem Bann der ererbten, reflexartigen Automatismen. Dank dieser Lockerung, deren Vorhandensein bekannt genug ist, deren naturgeschichtliche Genese wir freilich erst ahnen, wird die Beziehungssteuerung des einzelnen Menschen einer gesellschaftlichen Verarbeitung in höherem Maße fähig und bedürftig als die aller anderen Tiere. Dank dieser gesellschaftlichen Verarbeitung wird der Aufbau des Verhaltens, die Gestalt der Selbststeuerung in Beziehung zu anderen bei den Menschen mannigfaltiger und verschiedenartiger als bei allen übrigen Tieren; dank ihrer wird sie mit einem Wort „individueller“. Auch

43

For a detailed discussion of Cassirer, see chapter 7. 45

von dieser Seite her beginnt sich so die Gedankenkluft zwischen Gesellschaft und Individuum zu schließen.“ 44

Here it becomes evident that the ‘individual taking command’ of the epitome is conceived as an outcome of a feature that singles out humans from animals. Anyone familiar with Kant can immediately recognise the central thesis is Kantian in origin, and it is another statement of the Kant’s Naturgeschichte as elaborated in his Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht.45 Whereas in all the writers we have mentioned so far the implicit assumption is that groups living elsewhere than the industrial milieus of Western Europe and America (or more generally, though vaguely, ‘the West’) are deficient in the notion of individuality, and correspondingly the capacity for self-direction (and also a corresponding conception of ‘nature’), there are in recent years many works which are critical of the European use of the modernity paradigm to characterise the Non-European societies. The discourse of these authors can nevertheless be considered as coming under my characterisation of the modernity paradigm. These works usually blame the use of the categories of modernity to criticise the way other societies were conceptualised in the last two hundred years. Mainly the critique runs that Europe conceived Non-European cultures in terms of deficient modes of ‘subjectivity’, i.e. of less capacity for self-direction. Said’s ‘Orientalism’ does this with regard to Arabs,46 Ronald Inden’s ‘Imagining India’ does this with regard to India, 47 Antje Linkenbach (1986) does this with regard to those cultures considered as having only mythical forms of thinking, Martin Fuchs (1996) similarly criticises the conceptual framework underlying the discourse in use among the academics and activists within and around the social revolt movements in India. In all these, the conceptual framework is derived from the modernity discourse making use of the concepts of self-directing capacity of 44

Elias, N. (1987), p.59-60. In his recapitulation and setting out the overall plan and conception of the book, his Kantian inspiration becomes even more evident. See chapter Zusammenfassung: Entwurf einer Theorie der Zivilisation, in: Elias, N. (1987) Bd. II, p. 312-445. 45 for a detailed discussion see Ch. 5. 46 Cf. Said, E. (1978). 47 Cf. Inden, R. (1990).

46

human individuals or groups, and a critique of the conceptualisation is undertaken to show how the ‘other’ is attributed a passive rather than an active disposition. The interest of such accounts is what can be broadly termed as the critique of ideology or Ideologiekritik. My interest is of a different nature. These conceptions in use to talk about culture have specific historical roots. What are they? Obviously these conceptions are not derived from a procedure of empirical generalisations, even if there may be efforts to find some kind of empirical corroboration for the theoretical assumptions made on some other grounds. What are these other grounds that make these assumptions important? In other words, my interest in identifying this model, and tracing in the following pages the conceptual genesis of it, is not an effort to put one more nail on the coffin of the supposedly dead ‘modernity’, but rather to grasp our modes of discourse as arising out of one predominant intellectual tradition. This interest is part of an enquiry on how to go about conceptualising the knowledge available in other traditions than the tradition in which the present conceptions in use to talk about other cultures originated.

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3 3.1

The ‘Humanity’ and The Given World of the ‘Intelligibles’ Aristotle’s Good and the Humanitas

In the second chapter I delineated the modernity paradigm and some of the themes and controversies that went into its formation, though mainly in the 19th century England, but to a certain extent, also in Germany. I also quoted Mill’s assessment of German Idealism, 1 and pointed out how Mill assimilates the specific conception of Geschichtsphilosophie of the German tradition to the ‘philosophy of culture’ which in its turn is conceived as a contribution to the ‘science of man’ thus signalling a conception of science of man within the fold of naturalism. I also indicated how his reading of the Geschichtsphilosophie could pave the way for combining its evolutionism with his naturalism, thus giving rise to a discipline of studying the ‘primitive societies’, the discipline of Cultural Anthropology as initiated by E.B.Tyler. 2 This transition from a speculative universal history to a purported empirical science assuming evolutionism is a significant turn in the history of the culture theory as well as of the term ‘culture’. For it gave rise to the current use, with all its implications, of the term ‘culture’ as a descriptive term to refer to the ‘whole way of life’ of a society. Simultaneously I hinted at some of the deeper lying layers of categories continuing from almost the ancient period that has contributed to the surface growth of the modernity paradigm. I said that the conception of culture is closely related with the notion of the cultivation of ‘humanity’ and that it is descendant of the Aristotelian idea of the ‘good’ the human being can and has to strive for. For Aristotle there is a class of substances that grow by themselves, which have 1

As we saw in chapter 2, Mill uses the term ‘Germano-Coleridge School’, and what he identifies explicitly as their contribution is the philosophy of history. He also mentions Kant in his assessment (Mill, J.S., cit. 1965, vol. X, p. 125), and therefore his designation of ‘GermanoColeridgean school’ is more inclusive than the designation ‘German Idealism’. I have used it here to refer to the whole tradition of Geschichtsphilosophie, including to that of Kant and Herder. 2 There is a popular misconception that the idea of ‘evolution’ originated in the field of biology first, and then, after the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species, made its way into the social theory. In fact the use of ‘evolution’ in the study of social institutions preceded its application in the domain of biology. 49

natures, and these natures determine the end towards which they can and have to strive for. Man is one such substance and the good he is capable of is what sets the life-ideal for him. 3 I also hinted that underlying the educational ideal of the medieval and the Renaissance period, the humanitas, is this Aristotelian conception of a human good. Thus the Aristotelian life-ideal is mediated to the modern period of Europe through the Humanism of the 15th century. All these are preparations for the following thesis of this chapter. As in many domains the scene is set for culture theory too by the distinctions provided by Aristotle. But these were mediated through the Christian tradition. This is of course a truism. But I hope to derive more insights from this truism by constructing a narration in the form of exegesis of some crucial texts. The story line is the following: Two pairs of concepts, the things that grow by themselves and the things that are made, and the sense capacity and capacity for intellection, transformed through the introduction of the creator God provide the category habits within which the modernity paradigm arose. 3.2

The Methodological Problem

There is one methodological difficulty in tracing back these category habits. It is part of the modernity paradigm itself to have built a story of progress from the ancients to the present as, a myth oriented to logos oriented, from a religion and cosmos centred to a secular and human centred, outlook. According to this story, even though the pre-christian philosophy was not theological in a Christian sense, nevertheless it was theistic. Similarly, the ancients, especially Plato and Aristotle, are attributed an objectivist value orientation, thus making them holders of a view of one world of objects and customs. According to this story, the ‘multiculturalism’ is a modern achievement due to the emancipation from a religion oriented, and less tolerant, outlook of the traditional societies. In other words, respecting plurality and many cultures are considered as the achievements of Europe of the modern period, a result of modernisation. Of course, it is also part of this modernity paradigm to revere the ancients and assert that they are the 3

Cf. Aristotle, cit. 1995, Nicomachean Ethics, 1097b 14-20; for an elucidation of Aristotle’s ‘theoria ideal’ see Rao (1994), p. 62-84. 50

originators of the logos oriented line of thinking, i.e. Greek thinkers made the discovery of reason thereby emancipating the attitude towards nature and society from the mythical orientation. Sometimes it is even claimed that there was in the medieval period a falling behind the achievements of the ancients. This paradigm of history writing is so massive and fruitful that it is impossible for a single newcomer to the philosophy of history to overturn it. It is even foolish to try to overturn it at present. What I want to do is to present a plausible, and hopefully an illuminating construction, leaving for others better equipped than myself to probe whether my suggestion can be corroborated in a historical-empirical manner. My aim is to draw attention to some well known facts and raise a question as to the significance of these facts for a theory of culture. (i) It is well known that the ancients were not Christians. (ii) Intellectually it is the philosophies produced by the ancients, especially that of

Aristotle4, that were the mainstay of the Christian theology and it is through the mediation of the Christian philosophers that the philosophy of the modern period originated. What are the bearings of these facts for a theory of culture? My submission is that there is a bearing, and a proper focus on the history of the concerns that shaped the concepts we have inherited to talk about cultures can be made to yield insights. In adjusting the lenses to perceive that history, my aim is not that of telling a story of progress or regress. It is rather to identify the Aristotelian scheme of concepts as starting from a fairly simple common sense orientation, and show how the addition of a creator God results in some specific shifts and ruptures within that conceptual framework. The Christian mediation of the thinking of the ancients 4

My confining myself Aristotle is to some extent influenced by my limitations of knowledge, but it is also grounded in the nature of the case. As Copleston, F.C. (1952) emphasises, one cannot overestimate the significance of the Aristotelian philosophy as the mainstay of the mediaeval period. Cf.: „In the Middle Ages Aristotle was, indeed, known as ‘the Philosopher’, and he was so named because his system was for the mediaevals ‘philosophy’ to all intents and purposes. [...] If we speak for example, the attempts of St. Thomas to reconcile the Aristotelianism with the Christian theology, one will realise the nature of the situation better if one makes the experiment of substituting the word ‘philosophy’ for the word ‘Aristotelianism’.“ Cf. Copleston, S. (1952), p. 239. 51

results in a very specific conception, both responsible for the emergence of a view that the physical world is a system of mechanism, and an approach to the practical philosophy, considering it to be a matter of discovering universal or universalisable rules. Both these involve a notion of the given. The nature as a machine and the natural law as God imprinted notion of what is good are part and parcel of the same conceptual framework, which is the result of adding a creator God to the Aristotelian system. 3.3

Cultivation of humanity: Individual to Social Ideal of Perfection

3.3.1

The Philosophy of History and the ‘Culture of the Inward Man’

Before beginning the story in Greece, let me revert back to Mill’s assessment of the German Geschichtsphilosophie. The transition I mentioned, that from a speculative history to the science of man within a naturalistic mould, was executed by Mill, it appears, more or less consciously. There is, however, another transition that was effected, not by Mill, but by his German predecessors. There is a vague hint at this in the passage I quoted from Mill in the last chapter. The particular sentence is worth repeating: . „Besides, not to have looked upon the culture of the inward man as the problem of problems, would have been incompatible with the belief which many of these philosophers entertained in Christianity, and the recognition by all of them of its historical value [...].“ 5

How does this looking at the ‘the culture of the inward man as the problem of problems’ relate to what Mill designates as the contribution to the ‘philosophy of culture’ in the sense of a ‘science of society’? In other words, the ‘German school’, as Mill calls it, effected a transition from a notion of cultivating ‘the inward man’ to a notion of a ‘philosophy of history’; the former is the humanists’ educational ideal of cultivating the perfections appropriate for human beings (instilling humanity), and the latter, a speculative account of the evolution of ideas and institutions, and as Mill indicates, it involved a moral message regarding social ideal to be realised, i.e. it sets up an ideal of social perfection. But how does the educational ideal of cultivating the individuals’ ‘inner life’ link up with the latter? 5

Mill, J.S., cit. 1965, p.139. 52

A clue as well a key to answer this question is found in the following, seemingly simple, passage by Kant. „Kinder sollen nicht dem gegenwärtigen, sondern dem zukünftig möglich besseren Zustande des Menschengeschlechts, das ist: der Idee der Menschheit, und deren ganzer Bestimmung angemessen, erzogen werden.“ 6

I said ‘seemingly simple’ because the diction above appears common sensical but the qualifying phrase ‘der Idee der Menschheit, und deren ganzer Bestimmung angemessen’7 betrays an underlying assumption central to the whole of Kantian philosophy of history and morals, of what it is to approach a human being as a human being. Therefore an elucidation of this quoted phrase can simultaneously throw light on how an educational idea of instilling humanity in individuals could culminate in a purported account of the historical process of the humanisation of human race.8 Kant calls such an account by the term ‘Naturgeschichte’, and often uses the expression ‘what nature makes out of man’ in contrast to ‘what man has to make out of himself’ to indicate its theme. These expressions along with the specific Kantian conception of teleology will be elaborated later in this chapter. But a preliminary question may be raised: what does ‘nature’ in this term ‘Naturgeschichte’ refer to? It is certainly not used in the sense of flora and fauna of the earth. As a point of entry into this unusual term ‘Naturgeschichte’ let me draw attention to an apparently unusual use of the term ‘natural’ by Herder in his well known treatise on the origin of language.9

6

Abhandlungen über die Pädogogik, Kant, Werke, cit. 1975, A 17,18. Band 10, 704. The expression ‘deren ganzer Bestimmung angemessen’ is difficult to translate into English, because, the word ‘Bestimmung’ can be taken simultaneously both at the level of language, in which case it is to be translated as ‘definition’, and at the level of objects, in which case it has to be translated as ‘destiny’: To say of a feature that it is the ‘Bestimmung’ of human being means simultaneously that it is the defining characteristic of being human and that it is the destiny of human race. 8 The theological connection of Kant’s philosophy of history would become even more clear if we read Kant’s passage above in the light of the short tract by Lessing, Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts (‘The Education of the Human Race’). Cf. Lessing, G.E., Werke, cit. 1996, Bd. VIII, p. 489-510. 9 Cf. Herder, J.G. (cit. 1966), Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache. 7

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3.3.2

‘Natural’ as against ‘Animal’ Origin of language

Regarding language, Herder puts forward what he calls the natural origin thesis, and opposes it, not merely to the thesis of the divine origin but also to that of the animal origin.10 Both the latter are faulted for neglecting the human nature in their explanations of what the human language is and how it comes into being. As will become clear later, language is here a prototype of human institutions, and what is said with regard to it applies equally to other institutions. The divine origin thesis, in Herder’s characterisation of it, conceives language in the manner of a finished good given as a gift by God, thereby approaching language as if it is a ‘complete’ and closed system not open to human shaping of it. Thus it fails to account for the fact that human language is ‘unfinished’, in the sense, that it is remade by human beings constantly and open to such remaking. In other words, the divine origin thesis does not do justice to the fact that man is a maker, and not merely a receiver, of his language and culture. Not the divine grace, but the human nature, argues Herder, is what can explain the origin and nature of language. The same fault of overlooking the human nature is attributed to the other thesis too, which is identified by Herder as held by Condillac: it is said to make language the outgrowth of the animal rather than the human nature of man. A proper understanding of Herder crucially depends upon grasping this contrast he makes between the animal and the human aspect of the nature of man. The ‘animal’ as used in the phrase ‘animal origin’ is not meant as a term to refer to the animal kingdom other than man, but rather, as a term to designate man looked upon as a token of the type, human animal: to consider man in terms of his animal nature is to look upon him as an empirical specimen of the human species. In this aspect, an individual human being, as any other animal, has to be considered as the complete exemplar of his species. But, to consider a human being in terms of his characteristic of humanity is more than this: it is to look 10

See the first part titled ‘Haben die Menschen, ihren Naturfähigkeiten überlassen, sich selbst Sprache erfinden können?’ in the first section of Abhandllung über den Ursprung der Sprache, cit. 1966, p. 5-24. 54

upon him in terms of the aspect of his participation in the ‘idea of Man’, the rational animal. This last formulation is a Kantian one; though in details Herder may differ from the implications to be drawn from such a formulation, a broadly similar distinction between two ways of looking at human beings underlies Herder’s demarcation of the natural from the animal origin thesis. His main criticism of the latter is: „Und da die Menschen für uns die einzigen Sprachgeschöpfe sind, die wir kennen, und sich eben durch Sprache von allen Tieren unterscheiden: wo finge der Weg der Untersuchung sicherer an als bei Erfahrungen über den Unterschied der Tiere und Menschen? - Condillac und Rousseau müßten über den Sprachursprung irren, weil sie sich bei diesem Unterschied so bekannt und verschieden irrten: da jener die Tiere zu Menschen und dieser die Menschen zu Tieren machte.“ 11

Thus he identifies with the animal origin thesis the mistake of attempting to explain language in terms of characteristics that man shares with the animals rather than that single him out from the animal kingdom as a whole. That human beings share the expressive needs with the animals is not disputed by Herder: „Hier ist ein empfindsames Wesen, das keine seiner lebhaften Empfindungen in sich einschließen kann; das im ersten überraschenden Augenblick, selbst ohne Willkür und Absicht, jede in Laut äußern muß. Das war gleichsam der letzte, mütterliche Druck der bildenden Hand der Natur, daß sie allen das Gesetz auf die Welt mitgab: ‘Empfinde nicht für dich allein, sondern dein Gefühl töne!’, und da dieser letzte schaffende Druck auf alle von einer Gattung einartig war, so wurde dies Gesetz Segen: ‘Deine Empfindung töne deinem Geschlecht einartig und werde also von allen wie von einem mitfühlend vernommen!’ [...] Diese Seufzer, diese Töne sind Sprache. Es gibt also eine Sprache der Empfindung, die unmittelbares Naturgesetz ist. Daß der Mensch sie ursprünglich mit den Tieren gemein habe [...]. Eigentlich ist diese Sprache der Natur eine Völkersprache für jede Gattung unter sich, und so hat auch der Mensch die seinige.“ 12

That is, the expressive needs bring about a mode of communication specific to each species of animals, and man has his characteristic expressive mode which is universally understood by all human beings irrespective of their particular languages. The mistake however is to identify such modes with the human language, and still worse, pressing expressive need into service to explain why 11 12

ibid. p. 20. ibid. p.6-7. 55

man invented the human language. If language is conceived to have originated out of such needs, then language would be similar to those other, species-specific modes of communication existing in each species of animals; language in that case would still be considered as specific to man in the sense that it is one species of a generic feature, ‘communicative behaviour’, which differentiates man from each of the other species of animals, each of which have their own speciesspecific mode of that generic feature. But language would not be specific to human being in the sense of a feature that singles him out from the animal kingdom as a whole. Formulated in this way, the kinship of the Herder’s assertion with the theological belief is evident. The underlying contrast has a Christian origin: human being has both an animal and a divine aspect, the latter is his being endowed with reason. Herder (as well as Kant) develops this theological assumption into a heuristic device for providing theory of human institutions. The critique of the animal origin hypothesis is directed against a more general target than that of merely explaining language. It is simultaneously a critique of naturalism and individualism implied in the English tradition of social contract theory. For Rousseau and French Philosophers, and indirectly, the English liberal tradition of social contract theory are identified as the representatives of the animal origin hypothesis. According to the theoretical tradition of Social contract theory, man in a state of nature is an individual with needs and desires recognisable as our own, and thus, we can explain both language and political community by enquiring into the human nature by empirical methods. Thus, for example, the need to communicate with others, and to conserve the acquired knowledge through a means common to all, can be seen being considered important in our milieu. This same need can be pressed into service to explain why man invented language. But this would make the human nature logically prior to human making in a sense that implies that man, like other animals, comes to the world endowed fully with the capacities he requires - as a ‘finished’ and ‘complete’ animal. But in fact, Herder points out, man is an ‘unfinished’ animal both his endowed dispositions and the language are ‘open’ to change, are in a

56

continuous process of being made, which results necessarily in the existence of the plurality of human languages and institutions. I will come back to Herder at a later stage to give a fuller exposition of his theory of language and culture. 13 This brief excursion is meant only to focus on the categories he makes use of: against the divine origin thesis, the character of language as being made by man is stressed, against the animal origin thesis, the character of language as the outgrowth of human nature is stressed. These two categories, being made and growing out of a nature, require a fuller appreciation in terms of their locus in the intellectual tradition. To provide for that, I must begin my story to where it belongs, to Greece; to be more precise to Aristotle. 3.4

Aristotle: The One Given World of Objects and Many Customs

3.4.1

A Heuristic device

A non-philosophical or naive day to day orientation in the world can be captured by saying that there are objects that are located at some place and endure for over a period of time. We can perceive them as they are through our capacity to cognise, be it perceptually or through more elaborate theoretical means. By exercising our will and the appropriate skill we can make or destroy some of these objects. We can say, this conception has a substance model of identity on the one hand, and reception and construction model of human capacities, on the other. Whether in making or in cognising, it is the nature of the substances that resists the arbitrariness of our will, and thus providing for orderliness and objectivity. In other words, there is a unique world of objects with their nature that provides for the cognition and what one can strive for. Add to this the fact that the customs of different communities vary. An inevitable question then is, how these customs are governed and constrained by human nature? In my reading of the philosophical tradition, this question underlies a long line of thinking which sought to bring customs too under ‘natures’ becoming actual. This was especially facilitated, if not initiated, by the Christian reading of Aristotle, which started off with a conception of revealed commands as the basis of customs. 13

See Ch.7, especially section 7.3. 57

3.4.2

Speech and Polis Rooted in a Common Natural Power of Man

In effect, the Aristotelian system can be viewed as an attempt to capture the common sense picture delineated above with a minimum number of conceptual distinctions. There are substances that exhibit either actualised or potential forms. All processes, including knowledge ones, are actualisations of forms. Substances are either that are made or that grow by themselves. I will use here onwards, the terms made and generated to these two sorts of substances, and ‘making’ and ‘generation’ to the actions or processes through which these substances come into being. The made have no principle of their becoming within themselves, and the generated have them. More generally in the Aristotelian terminology, one can classify the substances into those whose why or principle of existence lie outside of themselves and those who have their why within themselves. The latter constitute a system of natural kinds whose essences can be investigated and systematised, and thus resulting in an episteme. The former constitute the sphere of techne, and within this sphere there are many different ways one can make and shape the world. Suppose we equate the world of customs with the rules or constitution governing a social association like the city, the polis, these are, according to Aristotle, made and not generated, and so they belong to the sphere of techne and not to that of episteme. Thus he may be considered as having assumed a unique world of natural objects, but in the sphere of customs to have assumed a plurality. 14 14

That the ancients conceived a world of objects with their natures is undisputed. What is highly improbable is that they conceived also a unique world of norms underlying the customs. For, it can be argued that for Aristotle laws are made, of course, by taking into consideration what good needs to be achieved, but yet for him, there is no such thing as a ‘norm’ that can be discovered. The description of Roman cities which as far as its ideational level justification is concerned is borrowed from the Greek thinking. This is how Wiedeman (1990, p. 69) speaks of: „The Roman empire was made up of about 1200 city units, plus a considerable number of ethnic groupings which we label ‘tribes’ and/or ‘client kingdoms’. The divine forces worshipped in each of these units might be seen as similar, analogous, or parallel; one obvious example is the Juno, the cohesive force which gives life to any social unit, whether a family or a city-state. The Roman worshipped not only the Juno who had once belonged to their own kings - but also the Junones of other states whom the Romans had invited to abandon their original communities and settle at Rome. [...] These Junones were parallel, but not identical, in the same way as the many Jupiters and Zeuses worshipped throughout the empire were parallel but not identical. Each cult honoured its own god“. The plurality of customs is part of the ancients’ experience is argued fairly elaborately, by Balagangadhara (1993). Burkert, W. (1985), p. 332-337, argues that Plato’s Laws is a conception of theocracy and that of a strict one custom view, which ‘if taken to its logical 58

However, it is one thing to admit that customs differ as a matter of fact, but quite another equally to concede that the rationale underlying them can belong to the category of made, and so of multiple nature. Aristotle did want to clarify the nature of social association in terms of the underlying purpose, the why, of them. While it is true that political associations or polis are the things made and so the knowledge concerning them is of the nature of techne, still, those who make the polis, the citizens, are human beings, and it is their purposes that govern the nature of the constitutions: do citizens have a nature or are they made? One straight forward Aristotelian answer could be that human beings are natural kinds, and what applies to other natural kinds applies to them too. But there are complications. Aristotle defines a polis as ‘a body of citizens sufficing for the purposes of life’ and citizen as ‘he who has the power to take part in the deliberative and judicial administration of any state.’ 15 By ‘power’ is not meant here something conferred on someone by a legal statute but in the sense of abilities and skills on the basis of which legal endowments are conferred. According to Aristotle, there are powers that come to us by nature such as the senses that have to be there before in order to be exercised, and those come to us by habituation (the ethos), i.e. those powers that we acquire by exercising them

conclusion would mean the abolition of cult’. But he himself suggests that his polis not only allows the multiple cults, but enjoins it. He explains this as due to a ’dubious compromise with the existing state of affairs or of a perspicuous eye for a real life“. This is to attribute to Plato a bad faith. A better reading is called for that makes sense of why Plato enjoins the practice of plurality of religions in his polis. 15 Cf. Aristotle, cit. 1995, Politics, 1275 b, 15-25. 59

such as ‘virtues’.16 The deliberative capacity is of the latter kind. Aristotle also suggests that „legislators make the citizens good by forming the habits in them, and this is the wish of every legislator, and those who do not effect it miss their mark, and it is in this that a good constitution differs from a bad one.“ 17

This, along with his suggestion that the polis is „something prior in order of nature to the family and the individual“ 18, may be taken to mean that the ethos of the citizens is made. However, Aristotle also says „When several villages are united in a single complete community, large enough to be nearly or quite self-sufficing, the state comes into existence, originating in the bare needs of life, and continuing in existence for the sake of a good life. And therefore, if the earlier forms of society are natural, so is the state, for it is the end of them, and the nature of a thing is its end. For what each thing is when fully developed, we call its nature, whether we are speaking of a man, a horse, or a family. Besides, the final cause and end of a thing is the best, and to be selfsufficing is the end and the best. Hence it is evident that the state (polis) is a creation of nature, and man is by nature a political animal.“ 19

In other words, the polis20 is an outcome of man’s nature. 16

„VIRTUE, then, being of two kinds, intellectual and moral, intellectual virtue in the main owes both its birth and its growth to teaching (for which reason it requires experience and time), while moral virtue comes about as a result of habit, whence also its name [...] is one that is formed by a slight variation from the word [...] (habit). From this it is also plain that none of the moral virtues arises in us by nature; for nothing that exists by nature can form a habit contrary to its nature. For instance the stone which by nature moves downwards cannot be habituated to move upwards, not even if one tries to train it by throwing it up ten thousand times; nor can fire be habituated to move downwards, nor can anything else that by nature behaves in one way be trained to behave in another. Neither by nature, then, nor contrary to nature do the virtues arise in us; rather we are adapted by nature to receive them, and are made perfect by habit.“ „Again, of all the things that come to us by nature we first acquire the potentiality and later exhibit the activity (this is plain in the case of the senses); for it was not by often seeing or often hearing that we got these senses, but on the contrary we had them before we used them, and did not come to have them by using them); but the virtues we get by first exercising them, as also happens in the case of the arts as well. For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them, e.g. men become builders by building and lyre players by playing the lyre; so too we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.“ Cf. Aristotle, cit. 1995, Niceomachean Ethics, bk. II, 1103a 15 - 1103b 5. 17 Cf. Aristotle, cit. 1995, Nicomachean Ethics, bk. II, 1103b 5. 18 Cf. Aristotle, cit. 1995, Nicomachean Ethics, bk. I, ch.2, 1253a 18. 19 Cf. Aristotle, cit. 1995, Politics, bk. I, 1252b 25 - 1253a 2. 20 In the passage quoted above the ‘polis’ is translated as ‘state’. A more straight forward translation is perhaps ‘city’, since on the face of it Aristotle is talking of associations for living 60

One way of reconciling these apparently conflicting suggestions is as follows: the customs and constitutions of different cities are made by the respective citizens, but this making is governed by the human nature of being a political animal. This is to make human nature logically prior to polis. But there are different ways of conceiving that ‘logical priority’. Logical priority of human nature may be taken to mean that the human individuals have their innate needs and desires, such as need for security and the corresponding desire, which results in their forming political associations. Thus the human desire coupled with will to fulfil those desires is the source of human institutions. This is the line taken by Hobbes and the English tradition of social contract theory; it is this line of thinking that is identified by Herder as the animal origin thesis of human language. Another line of thinking may seek to emphasise Aristotle’s assertion that polis is a natural compound,21 and the citizen, like the parts of a body is nothing without the whole body, i.e. polis. In that case the coming into being of a polis from the smaller units like family and villages is the end of the human species as a whole, and not of particular individuals taken separately. This would imply that in the case of human beings, the nature one speaks of, is an attribute of the whole species, but the individual is made through the polis. This is roughly the line taken by Kant and Herder.22 What is important is to note that in both lines of thinking, the notion of human nature, and the question, in what sense man is a maker, are central. The problem is mainly that which arises due to the application of the categories, of generation together like family, village and city. But Aristotle is also referring to the city as more an actualisation of human purpose, thereby grading the family and village as the less perfect realisation of human good. Secondly, his focus is on the nature of constitution and governing required for a city. Third, his reflections in this treatise provided a framework for reflections on the State in the European tradition. On account of these three considerations, the translating polis as ‘state’ is appropriate. However, in order to retain the ambiguity between ‘state’ and ‘city’ of the original term, I will often use the word ‘polis’ itself. 21 Cf. Aristotle, cit. 1995, Politics, 1253a 1-3; see also C.C.W. Taylor, ‘Politics’ in: Jonathan Barnes, The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle, CUP, 1995. 22 Yet another reading, which looks at the individual-species relationship in the case of human beings as that of part-whole nature, is worked out by attempting to show its biological basis in humans as belonging to a biologically deficient species (‘Mängelwesen’), i.e. deficient in the innate capacities to master the problems set by the natural living environment, in the philosophical anthropology of Arnold Gehlen; cf. Gehlen, A. (1978). 61

and making to the very human action and knowledge itself. The original distinction was made to distinguish between two types of knowledge concerning change, one that involves the human agency and another that lies outside its purview. The former is the sphere of theoria, and the latter techne. Politics is a treatise of techne and not of theoria or episteme. But there are some remarks as the following, indicating the speciality of human endowments in contrast to the capacities found in other animals, and these remarks appear to be source of the idea that man’s rationality expresses itself in the specificity of human institution: „And he who is by nature and not by mere accident is without a state, is either a bad man or above humanity; he is like the ‘Tribeless, lawless, hearthless one’, whom Homer denounces - the natural outcast is forthwith a lover of war; he may be compared to an isolated piece at draughts. Now, that man is more of a political animal than bees or any other gregarious animals is evident. Nature, as we often say, makes nothing in vain, and man is the only animal whom she has endowed with the gift of speech. And whereas mere voice is but an indication of pleasure or pain, and is therefore found in other animals (for their nature attains to the perception of pleasure and pain and the intimation of them to one another, and no further), the power of speech is intended to set forth the expedient and inexpedient, and therefore likewise the just and the unjust. And it is a characteristic of man that he alone has any sense of good and evil, of just and unjust, and the like, and the association of living beings who have this sense makes a family and a state (polis).“ 23

In this passage we find most of the distinctions that were to become prominent in the philosophical tradition for thinking about human affairs. (i) The characterisation of man without polis as being lawless and war mongering - Hobbes’ state of nature. (ii) Tracing back both polis and speech to a common characteristic that singles out human being from other animals, and considering this as the result of the economy of nature (central to Herder and Kant and cited by them as the basis for the speciality of human being who is unlike animals a Gattungswesen - a speciesbeing). (iii) Identifying the having the power of speech in man with that of having the capacity to form standards through which one can gestalt his life (also in Herder). 23

Aristotle, cit. 1995, Politics, bk. I, 1253a 5-20. 62

(iv) Capacity for speech in man in contrast to that of animals have a function other than the expressive (‘emotional’) one (found in Herder). These themes will be touched later with various degrees of detail. For the present all these can be summed up as the thesis that both speech and other human institutions (polis), though belong to the category of made, nevertheless, the process of their making is a process of an actualisation of a ‘nature’ of man. This nature is referred to as ‘reason’ by later writers 24. It is this thesis that both Herder and Kant are interested in elaborating. Herder’s Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache is virtually the elaboration of the above remarks as an answer to his question, given that there are many human languages and ‘nations’ what should be true of ‘human nature’. Thus even though Aristotle may not have formulated the question this way his treatise may be read, and, I suggest, has been read, as an answer to the question, given that there are many varieties of constitutions prevalent in various cities, what must be true of human beings? Thus underlying the effort to build a theory of human cultures is the question of what constitutes a common human nature that expresses itself in various social forms. The agenda of modern philosophy beginning from the 17th century can be looked upon as that of building a theory of human nature which takes into account the scientific developments, either as a model for theorisation or as something to be accommodated with. Implicitly the English tradition and the German tradition differed with regard to the question, what it is to build a theory of human nature? For the English tradition epitomised by Hobbes it is that of building a theory of human needs. For the German tradition it is that of building a theory of human reason, and especially that of differentiating the role of ‘ideas’ in the sense of ideals and the categories, the former the guiding and motivating factors and the 24

This is worth emphasising: though the definition ‘man is a rational animal’ is often attributed to Aristotle, in this form it is not found in his writings. Perhaps we can derive such a definition, if we take the passage quoted above from Politics along with certain other passages in Metaphysics, 980b 25 to 981a 5, and De Anima, bk. III, 3. The original ‘Zoon Exon Logikon’ for which ‘rational animal’ is the Latin equivalent, goes back to Alkmaion, a Pythagorean thinker. 63

later those factors that are responsible for organisation of the sensible material. This bifurcation of intelligibles into those which are pure and those which are mixed with the sense-material is what makes it a theory of ideals of human activities, whether that of theoretical, practical or poeitic activities. At first sight there is also an incongruent exchange of models between these two theoretical traditions: the naturalism takes the making as the model of nature, and idealism takes the generation as the model for understanding man’s history. But the incongruence is only apparent. The models for both is making: the natural science arose out of combining (by Galileo) the mechanism (a techne) and the physics (a theoria) of the ancients and thus transforming the sphere of theoria of the ancients into a sphere of techne. This transformation is the result of an addition of a creator God to the Aristotelian system, whereby the nature becomes the made. Naturalism as an approach to the study of society can be traced to Hobbes and most probably, he adopted it because he was of the opinion that the State is an ‘artificial man’ constructed by ‘imitating the nature which is the art of God’, the word ‘art’ being the term for techne, the principles of construction. 25 Thus he takes the making as the model to understand nature. The idealist tendency of the German tradition takes generation as the nature of nature. But here too, what is taken over is not the straight forward model of generation as found in Aristotle. Rather Kant speaks of nature as ‘making’ man. In other words, even when speaking of the nature the diction of speaking is that of making. To conclude, the discussion by Aristotle of polis and its nature provided the terms of discourse on society in the subsequent period. The conceptual problems were that of arising out of the application of the categories of generated and made to the very human action and knowledge itself. We have the metaphors of cultivating and building used to speak of education, of knowledge, of customs, and of the State. For example, we find Descartes in the 17th century using the metaphor of building for describing his theoretical project of reconstituting knowledge. Hobbes uses the same to reconstitute the State, and he claims to found 25

Cf. Hobbes, Th., cit. 1962, Leviathan, vol. III, p. 59. 64

a science of human nature for that purpose. As will be shown shortly, there are important differences between the category habits informing the politics of Aristotle and that of Hobbes. Yet the inspiration from Aristotle’s politics is unmistakable. In the 18th century, Rousseau and his followers use the organic metaphors to discuss the educational growth of an individual. Herder makes use of that metaphor to speak of social existence and history. The question underlying these discussions is whether, and in what sense, ‘human nature’ is logically prior to the human making. This question, and the attempted solutions to it, still accompany the discourse on culture. This can be seen in the simplified rhetorical question appearing again and again in the debate concerning the issues of education and social reform, whether a characteristic x is due to nature or nurture.

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4

Revelations Naturalised by Universalising the Polis: Aquinas

4.1

Ennobling the Heritage of the Athens

There is a style of writing history of ideas which in the form familiar to us stems from Burkhardt’s Die Kultur der Renaissance. According to him the European history is marked by alternative phases of barbarism and renewal of learning, and every time the renewal occurs the revival of the antiquity played a role. To one such revival in the 15th and the 16th century Italy we owe the mediation of the Greek thinking and the classical ideal of education to the modern times and this has played a very large role in the subsequent intellectual history. Burkhardt however distinguishes the older revival of the ancient learning in the northern Europe from that what occurred in Italian renaissance. „Diejenige Bildung, welche Karl der Große vertrat, war wesentlich eine Renaissance, gegenüber der Barbarei des 7. und 8. Jahrhunderts, und konnte nichts anderes sein. [...] Anders aber als im Norden wacht das Altertum in Italien wieder auf. Sobald hier die Barbarei aufhört, meldet sich bei dem noch halb antiken Volk die Erkenntnis seiner Vorzeit; es feiert sie und wünscht sie zu reproduzieren. Außerhalb Italiens handelt es sich um eine gelehrte, reflektierte Benützung einzelner Elemente der Antike, in Italien um eine gelehrte und zugleich populäre sachliche Parteinahme für das Altertum überhaupt, weil dasselbe die Erinnerung an die eigene alte Größe ist.“ 1

In this passage there is a suggestion that Italian renaissance, in contrast to the earlier Carolingian one represented by Charlemagne, took sides with the ancient learning presumably against the medieval Christianity. The identification in the 14th and 15th century Italy, an idea of a memory of a national past - ‘Erinnerung an die eigene alte Größe’ - is perhaps a sign of the preoccupation with the ‘national identity’ characteristic of Burkhardt’s own times, the second half of the 19th century Europe, and the consequent reading into the past of that preoccupation.2 For my narration another question is more important: how far is 1

Burkhardt, J. (1981), p. 203. Ernest Gellner counters the kind of story implicit in Burkhardt, with this famous epigram: „The nationalism is not the awakening nations to self-consciousness: it invents nations where they do not exist“, in: Gellner, E. (1964), p. 169. On nationalism there is a burgeoning number of publications, but it is almost a consensus opinion that the type of projection of the national consciousness to the earlier periods as found in Burkhardt is a result of the 19th century political 2

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the assumption that the Italian ‘humanists’ - this is how Burkhardt identifies those mediators to the modern world of the ancient learning, 3 and that epithet is commonly used since then to identify the Renaissance thinkers of Italy, if not more generally, all the Renaissance thinkers - took sides with the antiquity as against the medieval Christianity valid? Arguing against a thesis that humanism is of a purely literary movement, and also against the thesis that humanism was repudiating the medieval Christianity in favour of a return to classical heritage of Greece and Rome, a scholar on Humanism concludes as following: „A perusal of the political treatises of the humanists abundantly indicates, the controlling conception is of a renewed Christian society - a truly Christian commonwealth - not of a restored secular political order on the classical model. [...] In that regard an illuminating insight is provided by those artistic and literary artefacts [...] in which the Renaissance concept of man is celebrated. As the iconography of the art and the literary tropes abundantly testify, the human ideal which is here affirmed expresses not a polemical tension between a classical and a Christian conception but a harmonious fusion of the two. And the inspirational source of the synthesis is no less clear. It is the account of man in his original state of perfection contained in the opening two chapters of the Book of Genesis. In effect, the humanists baptised the classical ideal of the vir humanus by subsuming it under the biblical ideal of Man as the imago Dei. This, then, was the end to which the humanists’ promotion of the studia humanitatis was directed: not revival of the classical ideal of the bonae literae as a good in itself; nor yet the revival of the classical ideal of the vir humanus, secular man, as such. What humanists aspired to was the revival of the classical ideal subsumed under the biblical ideal of Man as the image of God.“ 4

In other words, as far as the conception of the scholarly learning is concerned, the motto was not much different than what was envisaged by Alcuin, the brain behind the Carolingian reform of education, who in a letter to Charlemagne expressed the hope:

aspirations rather than based upon hard empirical evidence. See Anderson, B. (1983), Hobsbawm, E. (1990), Gellner E. (1983, 1995). 3 Burkhardt, J. (1981), p. 228. 4 Bradshaw, B. (1991), p. 103. 67

„If your intentions are carried out it may be that a new Athens will arise in France, and an Athens fairer than of old, for Athens ennobled by the teachings of Christ, will surpass the wisdom of the academy.“ 5

What are the conceptual consequences of this thrust of ennobling the heritage of the ‘Athens’ with the biblical revelations? 4.2

God: the Ruler and the Artificer

The notion of divinely revealed biblical commands were meant to govern the sphere of customs (or the ‘moral domain’) and they were meant to be considered as unique. For Aristotle, the customs and constitutions of a city are made by man in the light of his experience and purpose. In making them he certainly has to think about the good they have to serve and the standards in terms of which they need to be judged, and thus he is constrained by his nature; nevertheless customs are not given but made. Further, one cannot apply to them the predicates ‘true’ or ‘false’ even though the customs and constitutions of one city can be judged to be better than that of another city. The situation changes drastically with the advent of the notion of customs as embodying the Divine Commands. Even within this latter framework they are made, but nevertheless given: God made them, but for man they are given. If there is a divergence of customs to that of the Biblical commands, either it is a ‘false’ custom, or one that is in accordance with the commands even if it differs in its appearances and particularities. 6 4.2.1

The Eternal Law

This difference can be clearly seen if we compare the notion of law in Aquinas with that in Aristotle. I will begin with a passage by the latter which is often quoted in support of the thesis that Aristotle did have a conception of the so called ‘natural law’: „Of political justice part is natural, part legal, - natural, that which has everywhere the same force and does not exist by people’s thinking this or that; legal, which is originally indifferent, but when it has been laid down is not indifferent, e.g. that a prisoner’s ransom will be a mina. [...] Now some think that all justice is of this 5

Quoted in: Gordon Leff, G. (1958), p. 55. Thus a twofold novelty gets introduced: (i) the customs become a domain to which predicates ‘true’ and ‘false’ become applicable, (ii) a distinction between ‘appearance’ and ‘reality’ with regard to them gets drawn. 6

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sort, because that which is by nature is unchangeable and has everywhere the same force (as fire burns both here and in Persia, while they see change in things recognised as just. This however, is not true in this unqualified way, but is true in a sense; [...] The things which are just by virtue of convention and expediency are like measure; for wine and corn measures are not everywhere equal, but large in whole sale and smaller in retail markets. Similarly, the things which are just not by nature but by human enactments are not everywhere the same, though there is but one which is everywhere by nature the best.“ 7

Although Aristotle speaks of justice, and by implication of law, as ‘part by nature’, he is careful to distinguish it from those things like fire burning in the same manner irrespective of whether it is in Greece or Persia. He takes it too obvious to need any further comment that such is not the case with regard to law. His speaking of law as ‘part by nature’ is meant to counter those who, because there exist a difference between law and the essence of nature, take it that the former is completely a matter of convention. His point is only that even though law is made, in that making, the purposes expressing human nature are involved, and therefore, of any given law one can judge whether it is the best or not. One may call this ‘natural law’ if one wants, but this conception is quite different from the conception of ‘natural law’ conceived by Aquinas ‘as a directive principle of human actions imprinted on man’. 8 The former is compatible with a theory that suggests that law is an instrument of human happiness effected by human beings by taking into account of the objective constraints of a situation. The latter is not. Aquinas takes Aristotle’s comparison of enacted laws with measures, and makes out of it something quite different: „a law is imposed on others by way of a rule and measure. Now a rule or measure is imposed by being applied to those who are to be ruled and measured by it. Therefore, in order that a law obtain the binding force which is proper to a law, it must be applied to the men who have to be ruled by it. Such application is made by its being notified to them by promulgation. Therefore promulgation is necessary for the law to obtain its force.“ 9

7

Cf. Aristotle, cit. 1995, Nicomachean Ethics, 1134b 19 - 1135a 5. Cf. Aquinas, cit. 1990, Summa Theologica, Ia 2ae, 93.5. 9 Cf. Aquinas, cit. 1990, Summa Theologica, Ia 2ae, 90.4. 8

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Having thus established that ‘promulgation’ is essential for law, it is then defined as „the ordinance of reason for the common good, made by him who has the care of the community, and [the ordinance] promulgated [by him].“ 10

So far things appear fairly simple, and may be acceptable to Aristotle. But already certain things are cleverly tuned to what is to come. For example, Aquinas suggests that „law directs the actions of those that are subject to the government of someone; thus properly speaking, none imposes a law on his own actions.“ 11

Having thus prepared us for a ruler who issues commands, he says that just as a human ruler by „pronouncing“ „imposes a kind of inward principle of action on the man that is subject to him, so God imprints on the whole of nature the principle of its proper actions. [...] The impression of an inward active principle is to natural things what the promulgation of law is to men, because law, by being promulgated, imprints on man a directive principle of human actions.“ 12

Thus law defined in terms of notions familiar to those who are acquainted with a city (polis), i.e. in analogy to a human decree, is now extended to cover the constitution of the whole universe. Thus arises the notion of natural law in Aquinas13: what is done is to take the Aristotelian polis as the model, introduce into it a notion of the ruler and the ruled, and extend the model to cover the whole universe as the subjects of the city of God. Natural law is thus the effect of an attempt to give the Biblical commands the same status as the Aristotelian essences by transforming Aristotle’s physis into a polis. But in this manoeuvre the physis (or nature) gets transformed into a sphere of techne, instead of, as in the case of Aristotle, of theoria. Thus God becomes an artificer and the nature an artefact: „Just as in artificer there pre-exist a type of the things that are made by his art, so too in every governor there must exist the type of the order of those things that are 10

Cf. Aquinas, cit. 1990, Summa Theologica, Ia 2ae, 90.4. Cf. Aquinas, cit. 1990, Summa Theologica, Ia 2ae, 93.5. 12 ibid. 13 Terminologically, what I have represented above as natural law is called by Aquinas the ‘eternal law’. He distinguishes four types of law, but these details are not pertinent for my purpose. 11

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to be done by those who are subject to his government. And just as the type of the thing to be made by an art is called the art or the exemplar of the products of that art, so too the type in him who governs the acts of his subjects bears the character of a law. [...] Now God, by his wisdom, is the creator of all things, in relation to which He stands as the artificer to the products of his art, [...]. Moreover, He governs all the acts and movements that are to be found in each single creature, [...]. Therefore as the type of the Divine Wisdom, in so far as by It all things are created, has the character of art, exemplar or idea, so the type of Divine Wisdom as moving all things to their due end bears the character of law. Accordingly, the eternal law is nothing else than the type of Divine Wisdom, as directing all actions and movements.“ 14

As is well known, Aquinas is an Aristotelian making use of the Aristotelian categories and examples in his arguments. This is evident in the above passage too in that the Aristotelian theme of an artificer and his art is skilfully weaved into the Christian theme of the Divine Ruler. This, however, introduces a subtle shift from the original Aristotelian conception of the relation between artificer and his art. 4.3

The Artificer and His Art

In elucidating the making Aristotle does make use of the example of an artificer, i.e. a builder building a house. It is possible to read this example to mean that in the process of building a builder transfers the form, in the sense of a plan of a house, to the material at hand. Aquinas conception of exemplar in the mind of God gives the impression of this reading, i.e. Aquinas conceives form almost like a plan or design that one can make use of while making an artefact. But if we look closer at Aristotle’s example it does not appear to tally with this. "[...] a man builds because he is a builder, and a builder builds in accordance with the art of building; the art of building, then, is the prior cause, and similarly in all cases [...]."15

Two things are worth noting in this passage. First, what is conceived here as the cause is an art or skill, and second, it is through being characterised by the art or the skill that someone is an agent. This implies that the factor responsible for an 14

Cf. Aquinas, cit. 1990, Summa Theologica, Ia 2ae 93.1. Cf. Aristotle, cit. 1995, Physics, bk. II, 3. 195 b 21.25; see J. Lear's comment on the above passage in Lear, J. (1988), p.33-36. Also see ibid. 141-51; also cf. De Anima, bk. III, 10. 15

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actualisation of the building is not a motive characterising a person independent of the art that is exercised. That is, as far as the action of building is concerned the art itself is the impulse for it, and not something that precedes it, or something that exists independent of it. In other words, Aristotle’s model is of an artisan and his skill rather than an architect and his plan: making is here conceived not in the manner of having a plan and realising it, but in the manner of exercising a skill (i.e. a power) through which a material of one form transforms into another. The skill is conceived as a form characterising an artisan and this is not the same as a plan in the mind of an agent that gets transferred to the object in the process of making. To bring out this distinction much more clearly I need to go into some details of the Aristotelian system. 4.3.1 Potentiality and Actuality: the Form

We have already come across the division Aristotle made between the process of generation and making. Both these processes are processes of becoming, in one case, say a seed into a tree, and in another, a log of wood into a bed. Aristotle's focus theme can be considered to be the becoming of one thing into another. A theory of this involves two components: (i) a theory of potentials that things possess, i.e. a theory of what changes can be undergone by a substance without that substance ceasing to exist; (ii) a theory of agent and patient, i.e. a theory of what initiates and what undergoes the change. The notion of form is introduced in the context of developing his theory of potentials, and his account of change can be considered as an account of the function of form in the process or becoming. Aristotle defines change or becoming as „the actualising of the potential being as such.“16 One implication of this definition is that it is the potential that gets actualised that makes the change what it is; consequently, the identification or definition of a particular process is in terms of that potential which gets 16

Cf. Aristotle, cit. 1995, Physics, bk. III. 1, 201a 10-11. 72

actualised. That is, we cannot understand the process without knowing what the outcome towards which it is directed. This gives us a clue as to how the form is conceived. We can formulate the relation between form, process and potential in the following way. A process or becoming is always initiated by a form of which that form is the endproduct (or 'achievement'). As an end-product of the process the form exists actually and as an impulse for the process it exists as a potential. To say that something is a ‘potentiality’ is to say both that it is an impulse for a process or action, and the end towards which that process or action is directed. For instance, to say that a seed is potentially a plant, is to say both that the plant is a form that resides as an urge in the seed, and as the end-product of the process initiated by this urge. In a metaphor, 'potential' is crying to be 'actualised'. Thus, for Aristotle, 'forms' are logically prior to processes: they pre-exist to processes - not 'actually' but 'potentially'. Since the form is conceived as the end product of a process, the form is not to be equated with the simple gestalt of an object. A neem seed would bring out the neem tree with all its characteristic attributes: it is not merely the outward shape that is what constitutes the form of the neem tree. Similarly, a house is the end product of a building activity, and it has to be conceived in terms of what it is for: the made things in Aristotle’s conception are defined in terms of the ‘for sake of which’, i.e. in terms of the functions they serve. Thus the functionality of the things constitutes the form of the made things. This brings us to another aspect of the theory of potentials: it assumes that things have an essence. The essence of a thing is conceived as the set properties that constitute ‘what it is that for a thing to be that thing’: this is expressible in a definition and discernible through an intellectual intuition (or nous). Definitions are thus both an elucidation of what a thing is and also what it can become. It is thereby simultaneously a description and an elucidation of the ideal towards which that thing tends. So one may say that the notion of a ‘final cause’ - in the sense that something is ‘directed towards an end’ - is essential for Aristotle’s conception. However, the phrase ‘directed towards an end’ can be interpreted 73

differently than what today we are accustomed to. To make sense of the final cause or ‘teleology’ we generally make use of a distinction between the motivation, the factor responsible for impelling us to an action, and the cognition, a factor which may precede the motivation as well as succeed it: precede it, in the sense of apprehending an object that consequently generates a wish for obtaining that object as an end, and succeed it, in the sense of discerning the appropriate strategy to be executed in order to attain the object. This contrast between the motivation and cognition is a modern category habit. But the Aristotelian category of form being either potential or actual, and the assumption that all potential forms tend towards getting actualised, is not ‘teleological’ in the same sense as that there is a motivation located in an agent which directs him to act in a certain way. The Aristotelian mode of analysis is to distinguish different ways in which potentialities can exist and the way they can then tend towards actualisation. It is in this context the analysis of natural capacities and powers are developed. 4.3.2

The Agent and the Patient

Aristotle also has a theory of an agent and a patient in order to explain why a particular change occurred at the time it occurred. The agent coming in contact with a patient initiates a change or becoming in the patient. Whereas the becoming is conceived as an event taking place in an object (the 'substance' or 'subject' is the traditional term) both the agent and the patient are conceived as substances. Let me refer to the event of change as conceived in the Aristotelian framework a 'process' or 'becoming', in order to distinguish it from the modern framework of causality, where one event is conceived as the cause of another event. When 'cause' is spoken of in Aristotle's system, it is not meant to specify an event prior to another event, but to specify the factors involved in one event, say, the event of change that takes place in a substance from a log of wood to a bed. Thus an agent initiating a becoming in a patient should not to be conceived as if there are two separate processes, one, the agent doing something, and another, the patient undergoing something. These two are two different descriptions of one 74

and the same event of change. Aristotle argues that there is a single activity in a given change, and it occurs in the patient, 17 i.e. for Aristotle the substratum of change is the patient and not the agent. There is a single actualisation of the form that causes the becoming to take place. The principle of change is formulated as following: „As a starting point we take it that whatever is produced by nature or art is produced out of what is potentially such-and-such by the agency of what is actually such-and-such.“ 18

I suggest that we can understand this cryptic statement in the following manner. The patient, say bricks, must have the dispositional properties that are appropriate so that the bricks can become the part of the house. For instance the bricks must be hard enough and not brittle in order to be fit to become the part of a house. When a house is built by a builder the transformation takes place at the level of the material brick, and not at the level of the builder. This is what is meant by saying that the change takes place in the patient. But the activity of the builder is essential for the change to take place. That activity too is an actualisation of a disposition; in our example, it is the disposition of the building skill getting exercised by the builder.19 But this skill to be an agent must be in a state of being exercised. Aristotle distinguishes the potential and actual cause: the builder is the potential cause of the house, the builder building is the actual cause.20 The skill itself does not get changed in the process, unless we are considering the learning process of someone who is in the process of becoming a builder. For Aristotle, even in the learning process, as we will see in the next section, it is the person who learns the skill who changes from a state of not having the skill to that of mastering the skill: the skill itself is conceived as being already there in a finished condition in the teacher. 4.3.3

The Capacities: Defining Actions in Terms of ‘Accusatives’

17

Cf. Aristotle, cit. 1995, Physics, bk. III. 3. Cf. Aristotle, cit. 1995, Generation of Animals, 734b 21. 19 Cf. Aristotle, cit. 1995, Physics, bk. III. 3, 202b 26. 20 Cf. Aristotle, cit. 1995, Physics, bk. II. 3, 195b 4-6. 18

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Aristotle uses three paradigm cases for illustration of the ‘agency of what is actually such and such’: the father in the procreation, the builder in the process of building, and the doctor in the process of healing. Whereas the first is an example of a natural power, the latter two are acquired by learning. But what is learnt can hardly be considered as learning a plan. Aristotle does define the activities in terms of the objects. The activity of the house building is defined in terms of the result of that activity, the house - not the plan of house, but house, period. The art or skill of the house building is defined in terms of the ethos formed by the practice of house building. It is a ‘power’ acquired through practising in contrast to the power existing naturally like the ability to see: „of all the things that come to us by nature we first acquire the potentiality and later exhibit the activity (this is plain in the case of the senses); for it was not by often seeing or often hearing that we got these senses, but on the contrary we had them before we used them, and did not come to have them by using them); but the virtues we get by first exercising them, as also happens in the case of the arts as well. For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them, e.g. men become builders by building and lyre players by playing the lyre.“ 21

This conceptual elaboration of learnt powers as against natural powers is given in the context of a system that aims at elucidating the various sorts of powers and capacities the (living) things exhibit rather than aiming at to reveal or divine the unobserved and unobservable causal connections between the events. Aristotle’s conception of form, therefore, need to be dissociated from a reading that identifies it either with a plan of which the visible thing is an embodiment or with the mechanisms underlying a visible thing. In order to understand Aristotle we have to overcome the idea of form in the narrow sense of the gestalt of a thing. For Aristotle a skill is a form that can exist either as a potentiality or as an actuality. As actuality it exists as an exercise of it, i.e. as an activity. He says further that an agent can only effect change in a state of actuality. It is impossible to give sense to Aristotle’s assertion that it is the builder 21

Cf. Aristotle, cit. 1995, Nicomachean Ethics, bk. II, 1103b 5. 76

in the state or the activity of building that is the agent if we conceive form to be a plan. How can a plan be actual and still be in a state of activity? When actual it is an object, and therefore no more can be an agent. Or, one has to bifurcate the agency into a person who is active and a plan which is an instrument in his activity. In that case the notion of agency gets shifted from the Aristotelian notion of form to that of an agent that is conceived as logically prior to the form. I suggest, this is exactly what happens. The consequence of this shift in the notion of agency can be traced in the following three areas: (i) the change in the notion of what the discipline theology is; (ii) the change in the notion of the theory of good life or a theory of what it is to enunciate a life ideal; (iii) the emergence of the notion of a faculty of will. 4.4

Theology: a Practical or a Theoretical Discipline?

It is often thought that the life ideal that Aristotle enunciates for man is the same as that which Aquinas enunciates as the ideal of a religious life. Aristotle recommends a contemplative life and Aquinas a religious one, and since the religious life too is a life of contemplation and prayer, one may presume that the two thinkers enunciate the same ideal. However, if delved a little deeper, one discovers that the models underlying the respective notions of the contemplative life are radically different, one governed by an amoral view, and another, by a moral view of the universe. What is considered as Aristotle’s ‘moral’ theory is not really a theory of moral obligations but a theory of what good life consists of for human beings. It can be considered as a theory as to how to refine the inclinations endowed by nature. Though Aquinas uses the Aristotelian model of capacities in his conception of the world, because for him the Aristotelian polis is the model, his theory transforms the Aristotelian theory of good life into a theory of what it is to be a morally good life. This difference between the two thinkers become conspicuous, as I will 77

show, in their respective conceptions of what the discipline of theology is: for Aristotle it is a theoretical discipline par excellence, for Aquinas, it is both a theoretical and a practical discipline. Before going into the textual evidence to show this, it is necessary to bring out the significance a particular division of disciplines has for Aristotle, and how radical the shift is to allocate the discipline of theology to the class of practical disciplines rather than to that of theoretical ones. 4.4.1

The Theoria-Ideal

The basic premise of Aristotle is that anything that exists strives for perfection that is possible for it. This assumption is embedded in an idea of nature, a theory of different potentialities that are crying to be actualised. In addition, there is an assumption that what is more permanent is more valuable. Aristotle uses the epithet ‘divine’ to indicate this assumption. For example, he speaks of plants and animals taking part in the ‘divine’ by being able to partake in the eternal by reproducing their kind: „[...] for any living thing that has reached its normal development [...] the most natural act is the production of another like itself, an animal producing an animal, a plant a plant, in order that, as far as its nature allows, it may partake in the eternal and divine. That is the goal towards which all things strive, that for the sake of which they do whatsoever their nature renders possible. [...] Since then no living thing is able to partake in what is eternal and divine by uninterrupted continuance (for nothing perishable can for ever remain one and the same), it tries to achieve that end in the only way possible to it, and success is possible in varying degrees; so it remains not indeed as the self-same individual but continues its existence in something like itself - not numerically one, but one in form.“ 22

So, the partaking in the divine is being able in one’s activities to partake in things more permanent, and in the optimal case, in the eternal. But, how can one take part in the eternal? As the passage above makes clear, it is through exercising the potentials that exist in oneself as the capacities. The 'capacities' are potentials attributed to living creatures. Aristotle situates human 22

Cf. Aristotle, cit. 1995, De Anima, bk. II. 4, 415a 26 - b7. 78

knowledge process within this scheme, and therefore, the way human beings can partake in the divine is by actualising the potentially existing knowledge capacities. But how can exercising a knowledge capacity be partaking in the eternal? Is not an exercise of a capacity temporally bound? If we do not keep in mind Aristotle’s special theory of potentials, we are likely to miss how exercising a capacity could be partaking in the eternal. The theory of potentials as a theory of knowledge capacities has the following two features: (i)

it is a knowing-how conception;

(ii)

it is situated within an ontological framework where objects are prior to

processes or actions. For Aristotle, the representation-process is one among the many processes where forms initiate the process and end in the actualisation of forms. Thus it avoids the Cartesian dualism, where the representation process is conceived as a special sphere of reality distinct and separable from the other processes. Further, it brings the processes involved in making and thinking about things under the same head: 'knowing' involved in both is, for Aristotle, a capacity for actualisation; to that extent, knowledge is conceived on a model of knowing how. But the difference between making and thinking is conceived in terms of the different results they bring about. To use a diction from Ryle, the activities are defined in terms of their ‘accusatives’, i.e. the direct objects of the transitive verbs describing those actions.23 This makes the objects logically prior to the process or actions and the latter need to be defined by reference to the former. Consequently, Aristotle distinguishes knowledge process into two types in terms of the very general characteristic of the accusatives of the activities. Knowledge can be of things 'which can be otherwise' and of things 'which cannot be otherwise'.24 The disciplines are divided in terms of whether they occupy 23

Ryle, G. (1971a), p. 171. Cf. Aristotle, cit. 1995, Topics, bk. VI. 6, 145a 25-28. Here Aristotle divides knowledge into theoretical practical and poeitic; but this division is brought under the above two categories in: 24

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themselves with the former or the latter: whereas the theoretical disciplines pertain to the latter, the practical and poeitic disciplines pertain to the former. Thus the division of disciplines is based upon a contrast between the knowledge of the type that while exercising does not bring about the change in the accusative of that act and the knowledge of the type the exercise of which brings about a change in the situation. The former type of knowledge is termed as episteme and the latter type as techne. This implies further that an exercise of knowledge capacities in the theoretical disciplines pertains to those sorts objects over which man has no power: to have power over things is to be capable of making or influencing their becoming. The exercise of such capacities is context-bound and it is the sphere of techne (which in the mediaeval period was translated as Artes from which the term 'arts' in the sense of practical skills is derived). Thus, for instance, while physics is a theoretical discipline mechanics is a techne. Thus, underlying the Aristotelian division of disciplines is the idea of the faculty and its appropriate object. Activities are defined in terms of ‘for the sake of which’ the activity is, i.e. the actions are defined in terms of their accusatives, the appropriate objects. The ability is defined as disposition to actions. The human nature is conceived and elaborated in terms of a hierarchy of potentials of which ‘for the sake of which’ is the accusative of those activities. This outlining of man’s capacities is simultaneously an outline of what man can and has to strive for It is within this context that Aristotle enunciates a life ideal in the following way: "If happiness is activity in accordance with excellence, it is reasonable it should be in accordance with the highest excellence; and this will be that of the best thing in us. [...] this activity is contemplation [...] not only is intellect the best thing in us, but the objects of intellect are the best of knowable objects; [...] the activity of wisdom is admittedly the pleasantest of excellent activities; and at all events philosophy is thought to offer pleasures marvellous for their purity and their enduringness, [...]. And this activity alone would seem to be loved for its own sake; for nothing arises from it apart from the contemplating, while from the practical activities we gain more or less apart from the action. [...] the activity of Nicomachean Ethics, bk. VI. 3-4. 80

intellect, which is contemplative, seems both to be superior in worth and to aim at no end beyond itself, and to have its pleasure proper to itself (and this augments this activity), and the self-sufficiency, leisureliness, unweariedness (so far as this is possible for man), and all the other attributes ascribed to the blessed man are evidently connected with this activity; "25

Let me call the life ideal set above the ‘theoria ideal’. As becomes clear from the above, practical activities, including the engagement in the affairs of the city (the polis) are not considered as the highest form of life by Aristotle. That a participation in the affairs of the polis is not the highest form of life is made even more clear in the following: "Wisdom must plainly be the most finished of the forms of knowledge. [...] Wisdom must be comprehension (nous) combined with knowledge - knowledge of the highest objects which has received as it were its proper completion. For it would be strange to think that the art of politics, or practical wisdom, is the best knowledge, since man is not the best thing in the world. Now if what is healthy or good is different for men and for fishes, but what is white or straight is always the same, any one would say what is wise is the same but what is practically wise is different; [...]. It is evident also that wisdom and the art of politics cannot be the same; for if the state of mind concerned with a man's own interests is to be called wisdom, there will be many wisdoms; there will not be one concerned with the good of all animals (any more than there is one art of medicine for all things), but a different wisdom about the good of each species." 26

The word 'good' in this quotation, as becomes clear by the reference to the art of medicine for different species, is used in a more comprehensive sense than the moral good. The point it makes is that practical knowledge, whether in politics or in medicine, is specific to specific things and situations, i.e. it is a form of knowledge that is context bound. Aquinas appropriates the theoria ideal for religious life, a life of prayer to God. However, the underlying conceptions are different: it may be recalled that giving the commands the status of the Aristotelian essences was effected by Aquinas through the universalisation of the Aristotelian conception of the laws in a polis. Laws are there as ‘an internal motivating principle of action’ in virtue of the 25 26

Cf. Aristotle, cit. 1995, Nicomachean Ethics, bk. X. 7, 1177a 13 - 1177b 25. Cf. Aristotle, cit. 1995, Nicomachean Ethics, bk. VI. 7, 1141a 10-35 81

obligations to be met. Thus a model based on obeying the laws has to conceive the theoretical activity differently. This is indeed so and becomes evident if we compare the use of the word ‘theology’ by Aristotle on the one hand, and by Aquinas on the other. For Aristotle ‘theology’ is a theoretical venture that seeks „the principles and the causes of the things that are, and [...] of the things qua being [...]. “27

What is meant by this becomes clear by the context: Aristotle is discussing here the principles common to all sciences as against particular sciences. He goes on to say that physics (meaning the science of things that grow by themselves), mathematics, and this science that studies the ‘being of things qua being’ are theoretical disciplines. He uses the word ‘theology’ in this context as follows: „If there is something which is eternal and immovable and separable, clearly the knowledge of it belongs to theoretical science - not, however, to physics (for physics deals with certain movable things) nor to mathematics, but to a science prior to both. For physics deals with things which exist separately but are not immovable, and some parts of mathematics deal with things which are immovable but presumably do not exist separately, but as embodied in matter; while the first science deals with things which both exist separately and are immovable. Now all causes must be eternal, but especially these; for they are the causes that operate on so much of the divine as appears to us. There must then be three theoretical philosophies, mathematics, physics, and what we may call theology [emphasis mine], since it is obvious that if the divine is present anywhere, it is present in things of this sort. And the higher science must deal with the highest genus. Thus, while the theoretical sciences are more to be desired than the other sciences, this is more to be desired than other theoretical sciences. [...] If there is no substance other than formed by nature, natural science will be the first science; but if there is an immovable substance, the science of this must be first philosophy, and universal in this way, because it is first. And it will belong to this to consider being qua being - both what is and the attributes which belongs to it qua being.“ 28

The use of the word ‘divine’ in this passage has less to do with the assumption of there being a Divine Being, in the sense of a personal God to whom features like authority, command and such like attributes can be attributed. As already 27 28

Cf. Aristotle, cit. 1995, Metaphysics, bk. VI. 1, 1125b 1-5. Cf. Aristotle, cit. 1995, Metaphysics, bk. VI. 1, 1026 a 19. 82

mentioned, the ‘divine’ as used by Aristotle is an epithet for something that does not change. So, the partaking in the divine is being able in one’s activities to partake in things more permanent, and in the optimal case, in the eternal. If one can take part in the eternal, as man can, by means of theoretical contemplation, then that is the best form of life rather than partaking in the polis, which by nature is less permanent. For Aquinas, on the other hand, as already argued, the right kind of life led in the polis, the life carried out in accordance with the law (the motivating principle) promulgated by God, is exactly what provides the model for what it is to be a good life. This may look insignificant, because, one may think that for Aquinas too the life in cities and states on this earth is of a secondary importance; the right kind of polis is the city of God, and not that on the earth ruled by human beings. That things stand differently becomes evident if we ask, where does for Aquinas the discipline of theology belongs in the division of disciplines as compared to the division of disciplines that Aristotle enunciates. The difference is crucial in terms of the later intellectual history as we will see when we discuss Kant. In the hands of Aquinas, this theology becomes a science which is simultaneously theoretical and practical: „Since this science is partly speculative and partly practical, it transcends all others, whether speculative or practical.“ 29

The word ‘speculative’ in the above passage is a direct translation of the word ‘theoretical’ - both words stemming from the root ‘to see’, one in Greek and another in Latin. Aquinas formulates an objection to this position which in fact states the Aristotelian position. The objection 2 of the article 1. in the ST. reads: „Knowledge can be concerned only with being, for nothing can be known except truth, and truth is convertible with being. But philosophical science treats of all being, even God Himself, so that there is part of philosophy called theology, or the divine science, as Aristotle has proved. Therefore, besides philosophical doctrine, there is no need of further knowledge.“ 30

Aquinas replies to this objection as follows: 29 30

Cf. Aquinas, cit. 1990, Summa Theologica, Ia 1ae, 1.5. Cf. Aquinas, cit. 1990, Summa Theologica, Ia 1ae, 1.1. 83

„Sciences are differentiated according to different natures of knowable things. For the astronomer and the physicist both may prove the same conclusion - that the earth, for instance, is round; the astronomer by means of mathematics (that is, by abstracting from matter) but the physicist by means of matter itself. Hence there is no reason why those things which are dealt with in the philosophical sciences, so far as they can be known by natural reason, may not also be taught us by another science so far as they fall within revelation. Hence theology which pertains to a sacred doctrine differs in genus from that theology which is part of philosophy.“ 31

But, what is said in this last passage does not explain how theology can be both a practical and a theoretical discipline simultaneously as asserted in the earlier quoted passage. Different methods, one that of natural reason and another of biblical revelations, can be claimed on an analogy of the different methods of arriving at truths by Astronomy and Physics. From an Aristotelian perspective, however, a discipline is defined in terms of its accusative, in this case, the theology by the domain of ‘being qua being’. Either this domain is the same as what defines the domain of Aquinas’ theology too, or it is a different domain that has nothing to do with the conception of theology as Aristotle understands. If the domain is of the nature of what Aristotle conceived it, it cannot be the one in terms of which a practical discipline can be defined. 4.5

Two Forms of Knowledge to Two Different Ways of Being ‘True’

There is another consequence of this recasting of the Aristotelian system. Since Aquinas has brought even the nature, a system of substances on their own right in the Aristotelian scheme, under the category of made, it lost its previous independent role: the Aristotelian system was simplified by bringing both the principles constituting the nature, the essences, and the principles constituting the customs and constitutions of polis under one category, the law or plan, of the Great Artisan, the creator God. As a result, the notion of ‘givenness’ itself changes: for Aristotle, the notion of ‘nature’ is that of which the why is within itself, and in that sense it is a ‘given’, i.e. in the sense that it is not permeable to alteration through making. Now the ‘given’ is also looked upon as ‘made’. The Aristotelian distinction between episteme and techne was a distinction between the two types ‘knowing why’, one concerned with knowing the principles of 31

Cf. Aquinas, cit. 1990, Summa Theologica, Ia 1ae, 1.1. 84

nature, and another knowing the principles of making. These become in the hands of Aquinas two types of truths. „The types of the Divine intellect do not stand in the same relation to things as the types of the human intellect. For the human intellect is measured by things, so that a human concept is not true by reason of itself

but by reason of its being

consonant with things, since an opinion is true or false according as the thing is or is not. But the Divine intellect is the measure of things, since each thing has truth in it to the extent that it imitates the Divine intellect, [...]. Consequently the Divine intellect is true in itself, and its type is truth itself.“

32

Even things or objects can be judged to be true or false: the things have to imitate the exemplars in the mind of God, and man has to imitate the things created by God. Thus, what is in Aristotle an elucidation of two different powers, one, in and through nature, and another, acquired by learning, becomes two kinds of looking at objects, as imitating God’s plans, or, as verifying or falsifying our conceptions of them. In the former case, the objects can become the means of finding out what the plans of God are, thereby it gets a character of signs, giving rise to the famous conception of ‘the book of nature’; in the latter case, our conceptions are the means for apprehending objects. This gives rise further to a conception of looking behind the nature to discover its principles of making, i.e. to discover the concealed plans or mechanisms that control the nature as an appearance. As a result later Hobbes could declare, "Philosophy is the knowledge we acquire, by true ratiocination, of appearances or apparent effects, from the knowledge we have of some possible production or generation of the same; and of such production, as has been or may be, from the knowledge we have of the effects. Method, therefore, in the study of philosophy, is the shortest way of finding out effects by their known causes, or of causes by their known effects."33

This idea of finding out the mechanisms of the natural phenomenon by attempting to divine the underlying plans is not confined to Hobbes. It is indeed considered by many historians and the philosophers of the science as quite influential in bringing about the scientific revolution of the 17th and 18th centuries. 34 In a 32

Cf. Aquinas, cit. 1990, Summa Theologica, Ia 2ae, 93.1. Cf. Hobbes, cit. 1962, Of Method, vol. I. 65-90, see p. 65-6. 34 Cf. Larry Laudan (1981, p. 28) refers to the metaphor of clock in the writings of Descartes and has very ably argued for the claim that "Descartes' methodology [...] was fertile source for 33

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passage similar to that of Hobbes, Descartes says that for the development of his account of nature, "the example of certain bodies made by human art was of service to me, for I see no difference between these and natural bodies excepting that the effects of machines depend for the most parts on the operation of certain instruments, which since men necessarily make them, must always be large enough to be capable of being easily perceived by senses. The effects of natural causes, on the other hand, almost always depend on certain organs minute enough to escape every sense. And it is certain that there are no rules in mechanics which do not hold good in physics, of which mechanics forms a part or species [so that all that is artificial is also natural];"35

However, we can observe only the effects of 'God's art' but not the process of making by Him. This fact had two consequences as to the way the method and the character of knowledge in the field of natural philosophy was conceived. First, to get at the mechanisms of nature, one has to construct purported imitations of them and see whether thereby similar effects as found in nature can be brought about. This is the notion of experiment. Second, we can have only hypothetical knowledge of the mechanisms of nature, because, as Descartes admits, "But here it may be said that although I have shown how all natural things can be formed, we have no right to conclude on this account that they were produced by these causes. For just as there may be two clocks made by the same workman, which though they may indicate the time equally well and are externally in all respects similar, yet in nowise resemble one another in the composition of their wheels, so doubtless there is an infinity of different ways in which all things that we see could be formed by the great Artificer [without it being possible for the mind of man to be aware of which of these means he has chosen to employ]. This I most freely admit; and I believe that I have done all that is required of me if the causes I have assigned are such that they correspond to all the phenomena manifested by nature [without enquiring whether it is by their means or by others that they are produced]. And it will be sufficient for the usages of life to know such causes, for medicine and mechanics and in general all these arts to which the knowledge of physics subserves, have for their end only those effects which are

discussion among the English thinkers; and especially his view of the universe as a 'mechanical engine' or clock whose internal parts can only be conjectured about served as an important stimulus for the English writers on the method.“ 35 Cf. Descartes, cit. 1967, vol. I. p. 299. 86

sensible, and which are accordingly to be reckoned among the phenomena of nature."36

This separation of 'real mechanisms' from 'hypothetical knowledge' about them also brings about a change in the very meaning of the word 'principle' from its Aristotelian connotation. Even though in the case of Aristotle's techne, the location of the 'principle' is in the agent who brings about change, nevertheless, for him, 'principle' is a form - a 'form' in the sense of something that provides an end as well as an impulse for the process, rather than any mechanism to be embodied or the procedure to be followed in the making. Further, the conception of 'form' in Aristotle is conceived within a framework of potentiality and actuality, and so the 'principle' of an artefact is a form potential in the artificer and becomes actual in the activity of production. But 'the art of God' to be divined through reasoning - experimental or otherwise - is, on the other hand, more like a blue-print of a machine an inventor has drawn, which is hidden from us, and about which we have to conjecture. This introduces a differentiation of the 'principle' in the sense of 'causal mechanism' embodied in natural objects from 'principle' in the sense of a representation (a statement or proposition) of that causal mechanism by the agent. This changes one further notion crucially for our purpose. In Aristotle the agency was located in the forms. In the Christian theology, the agency becomes logically prior to forms. This is how, I suggest, the notion of will comes into being. 4.6

The Will: ‘Reason’ versus ‘Instinct’

4.6.1

The Greek Philosophy vs. the Christian faith

Copleston in his book on Aquinas gives expression to what may appear as a paradox: „Aquinas speaks of choice being ‘formally’ an act of the reason. And if we assume his doctrine of distinct faculties, this is at first sight appears to be very queer statement. For in the faculty language it would seem that choice should be associated with the will rather than with the reason.“ 37

36

37

Cf. Descartes, cit. 1967, vol. I. p. 300. Cf. Copleston, F.C. (1955), p. 194. 87

The will appears as a separate faculty first in the modern philosophy in the writings of Descartes, and later played important roles in such diverse thinkers as Kant, Nietzsche, and Schopenhauer, and also in the French Existentialism in the 20th century. The paradox that Copleston speaks of has its origin, I suggest, in Aquinas introducing some changes in the Aristotelian boulesis, the practical deliberation, but nevertheless talking in Aristotle’s categories. The notion of the will has its origin in the Christian striving to establish a notion of a faculty independent of the Greek notion of ‘reason’ for orienting in life. In a wider historical enquiry there must be a place to trace the notion of will to the notion of faith which in the early Christian thought was opposed to the heritage of Athens. In fact the reference to Athens in the letter quoted earlier by Alcuin to Charlemagne is a reverberation of a rhetorical question by Tertullian of the second century c.e. ‘What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?’ Aquinas belongs to that stream of thinkers who wanted to answer this question with ‘a lot’, and thereby attempt to combine the heritage of Athens with that of Jerusalem. There was another stream of thinking embodied by Tertullian himself who wanted to demarcate and rebuff the Athenian heritage from that of the heritage of Jerusalem.38 His famous words, ‘I believe because it is absurd’ are quoted very often by the historians of the Church as well as of the Medieval Thinking. The call by him, and the thinkers who took to his line of answer to his rhetorical question, was to put faith on the power of the faith over that of natural reason (i.e. the reason inherent in man’s nature), and their effort was directed at showing the limits of the latter. To this group belonged the powerful English logicians of the later Middle Ages such as Ockham. In fact, the English tendency towards empiricism and assertions of the common sense against the entities postulated by reason can be considered as owing quite a lot to this stream of thinking. 39

38

See Chadwick, H. (1966) especially chapter 1: ‘The Vindication of Christianity’, p. 1-30. Woolhouse, R. (1994, p. 146-171) gives a detailed account of how much Locke reserves for faith against the encroachments of reason to a domain that does not belong to it. His account so strongly reminds one the account given by Chadwick (see the previous note) of the thinking of the early Christian thinkers, yet Woolhouse does not draw attention to this connection. 39

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For my narration I limit myself to a discussion of the attempts by Aquinas to reconcile Aristotle with the doctrines of the Bible. One justification for this is that Aquinas’ account is both thorough and the historically dominant influence on the emergence of the modern philosophy. My aim is to indicate the subtle shifts in the Aristotelian framework introduced by Aquinas because of compulsions of his Christian framework. My suggestion is that the emergence of the notion of a faculty of will is one such result. 4.6.2

The ‘Human Acts’ and the ‘Acts of a Man’

In the beginning of Metaphysics Aristotle distinguishes different faculties living beings are capable of: "By nature animals are born with the faculty of sensation, and from sensation memory is produced in some of them, though not in others. And therefore the former are more intelligent and apt at learning than those which cannot remember; [...] The animals other than man live by appearances and memories, and have but little of connected experience; but human race lives also by art and reasonings.“ 40

This capacity to live by ‘art and reasonings’ is termed in De Anima as being in possession of intellect as one of the potentials man has. The idea of good in Aristotle is the excellence capable of achievement by a being in terms of its potentials. The guiding idea here is perfection. 41 Everything strives for perfection, because it is the characteristic of a potential form to tend towards actualisation. However, there is a hierarchy of potentials, because the form is not to be conceived as several discrete ones existing in a human being, but rather it is an ordering element. Therefore for a human life the form is determined by the ‘higher level’ of psyche: human being can be conceived as having three levels of psyche. He shares with the plants the vegetative anima or psyche like powers of nutrition, growth, and reproduction, with animals the sensitive psyche like powers of sensation, memory. In addition, man has rationality. It is in terms of this last characteristic the specific human form of life and its characteristic goodness is to be achieved. 40 41

Cf. Aristotle, cit. 1995, Metaphysics, bk. I. 980a 28 - 980b 28, p. 255-6. Cf. Copleston, F.C. (1955), p. 193 - 242. 89

The traces of this Aristotelian idea is still visible in Aquinas: „Every being, as being, is good. For all being, as being has actuality, and is in some way, perfect, since every act is some sort of perfection and perfection implies desirability and goodness.“ 42

and „Everything has as much good as it has being: for the terms ‘good’ and ‘being’ are equivalent terms.“ 43

This is not specifically a moral idea. Aquinas transforms it into a moral idea as in the following passage. „Any individual act has some circumstance by which it is drawn into the class of either of good or bad acts, at least by virtue of the intention. [...] But if an act is not deliberate [...] (such as stroking the beard or moving a hand or foot) it is not properly speaking a human or moral act, [...]. And so it will be indifferent, that is, outside the class of moral acts.“ 44 (emphasis mine)

This distinction between ‘human acts’ (actus humani) and ‘acts of a man’ (actus homini) appears at first sight to be the same as the distinction between the physiological level of activity such as twitches and actions. But it is conceived differently. A human act has to proceed from the nature of being human. The nature of being human is being characterised by ‘intelligible’ or having rational appetites. To be intelligible is to be active in the sense of being self-directed in contrast to that of being directed by natural appetite. „Those actions are properly called human of which man is master. Now man is a master of his actions through his reason and his will; whence, too, the free will is defined as the faculty of will and reason. Therefore those actions are properly called human which proceed from a deliberate will. And if any other actions are found in a man, they can be called actions of a man but not properly human actions, since they are not proper to man as man.“ 45

Elsewhere the distinction is made between the acts proceeding from the man’s nature of being sensible and those proceeding from his being intelligible. This becomes in the following passage a contrast between the natural appetite and rational appetite. „Now the first of all causes is the final cause. The reason for which is that matter does not receive form save in so far as it is moved by an agent; for nothing reduces 42

Cf. Aquinas, cit. 1990, Summa Theologica, Ia 2ae, 5.3. Cf. Aquinas, cit. 1990, Summa Theologica, Ia 2ae, 18.1. 44 Cf. Aquinas, cit. 1990, Summa Theologica, Ia 2ae, 18.9. 45 Cf. Aquinas, cit. 1990, Summa Theologica, IIa 2ae, 156.1 also see IIa 2ae, 156.2. 43

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itself from potentiality to act. But an agent does not move except out of intention for an end. For if the agent were not determinate to some particular effect, it would not do one thing rather than another; consequently, in order that it may produce a determinate effect, it must of necessity be determined to some certain one, which has the nature, of an end. And just as this determination is effected in the rational nature, by rational appetite, which is called the will; so in other things, it is caused by their natural inclination, which is called the natural appetite.“46

The point is worth noting that the idea of ‘an agent moving out of intention for an end’ appears here has no place in this way in Aristotle. This has to be seen in the light of Aquinas’ conception of eternal law which I have discussed earlier: we saw that according to him, ‘God imprints on the whole of nature the principles of its proper actions’. 47 The principle of the proper actions is the eternal law. There are two ways of obeying it: (a) ‘by way of an internal motive principle’ which is equivalent to acting through the natural appetites, (b) by knowing what it is, which is equivalent to the rational appetite. In plain terms, whereas other creatures ‘partake in the divine reason by just obeying it’ 48 human beings are to follow it by understanding the commands and thereby internalising the commands as the prompting of the conscience. 49 This obeying the commands by understanding them is what constitutes the rational appetite. In Aristotle, the ‘boulesis’ is the term used for deliberated wish and ‘orexis’ is a term used in a more general sense for any inclination or impulse. The ‘boulesis’ is an adverbial notion used in order to distinguish the voluntary from the involuntary action.50 Thus it is a term to indicate the transition from deliberation to action. „Both of these then are capable of originating local movement, thought and appetite: thought, that is, which calculates means to an end, i.e. practical thought (it differs from speculative thought in the character of its end); while appetite is in every form of it relative to an end; for that which is the object of appetite is the stimulant of practical thought; and that which is last in the process of thinking is 46

Cf. Aquinas, cit. 1990, Summa Theologica, Cf. Aquinas, cit. 1990, Summa Theologica, 48 Cf. Aquinas, cit. 1990, Summa Theologica, 49 Cf. Aquinas, cit. 1990, Summa Theologica, 50 Cf. ‘Wille’ in: Mittelstraß, J. (ed.) (1996). 47

Ia 2ae, 1.2. Ia 2ae, 93.5. Ia 2ae, 93.5. Ia 2ae, 93.6.

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the beginning of the action. It follows that there is a justification for regarding these two as the sources of movement, i.e. appetite and practical thought; for the object of appetite starts a movement and a result of that thought gives rise to movement, the object of appetite being to it a source of stimulation.“

51

If we compare the above passage with the following from Aquinas’s ST I, 82.4, the Aristotelian source of Aquinas’ notion as well as the mutation effected by him can be discerned. „A thing is said to move in two ways. First, as an end, for instance, when we say that the end moves the doer. In this way the intellect moves the will, because the good understood is the object of the will, and moves it as an end. Secondly, a thing is said to move as an agent, as what alters moves what is altered, and what impels moves what is impelled. In this way the will moves the intellect, and all the powers of the soul [...]. The reason is, because wherever we have order among a number of active powers, that power which regards the universal end moves the powers which regard particular ends. And we may observe this both in nature and in political things. For the heaven, which aims at the universal preservation of things subject to generation and corruption moves all inferior bodies, each of which aims at the preservation of its own species or of the individual. The king also, who aims at the common good of the whole kingdom, by his rule moves all the governors of cities, each of him rules over his own particular city. Now the object of the will is good and the end in general, and each power is directed to some suitable good proper to it, as sight is directed to the perception of colour, and the intellect to the knowledge of truth. Therefore the will as an agent moves all the powers of the soul to their respective acts, except the natural powers of the vegetative part, which are not subject to our choice.“ 52

To summarise, my story of the emergence of the faculty of the will is the following. In terms of Aristotle’s conception of potentials the desire or aspiration is the urge inherent because of the forms existing potentially. The good a human being can aspire for is determined by the faculty of reason he has. The end towards which the reason is directed to is the essences constituting the natural kinds, the realisation of which is the ultimate end of man. This explains Aristotle’s ideal of theoria. It is the realisation of reason in its theoretical capacity. The other urge he has is directed towards a good life in polis. This is the 51

Cf. Aristotle, cit. 1995, de Anima, bk. III. 10, 433a 23-25; see also Nicomachean Ethics, bk. VI. 2, 1139a 18 - 1139b 10. 52 Cf. Aquinas, cit. 1990, Summa Theologica, Ia 1ae, 82.4. 92

life that realises the reason in its deliberative capacity. The deliberated wish is the source of choice. A life that is governed by the deliberated wish is an appropriate human form of life in contrast to the mere wish. The latter is an exercise of a natural power in contrast to that of the former, which is a ‘habituated’ or learnt power. Since for Aquinas the polis is the model of good life, the distinction between theoretical and practical realisation of reason vanishes. Instead, the distinction between inclination and deliberated inclination becomes the central contrast. The latter however, is again conceived as motivated by the end, towards which an agent ‘intends’. Thus things move towards the plan that God has imposed. The human being moves towards the end through his own will. Aquinas further identifies the natural inclination or appetite with the sense-power and being directed to singular end, and the rational appetite with the apprehension of the ‘general’ thereby it intending that ‘general’. Thus arises a very lasting and influential contrast in the European tradition of philosophy between the sensible versus the intelligible appetite, the former being identified with the instinct and the latter, also termed ‘rational appetite’, with the will and choice. This is ultimately the source of the contrast mentioned in the second chapter, between the self-directed and other-directed forms of life. 4.7

A Side-glance at the Stoics

One may object to my line of narration by pointing out that the concept of natural law owes more to Stoics than to Christians. In fact, it has been suggested that the concept of natural law was the creation of Justinian Lawyers, and the first clear statement of it is found in Cicero rather than in Aquinas. Aquinas only brought together what he had inherited from the Roman tradition. 53 Though I do not want to go into these details, it can be pointed out that my claim is not that the conception of natural law itself was new, but only that the idea that it is the law impressed by God as a ‘motivating principle of nature’ is due to Christian theme 53

Cf. „Stoicism became a bridge from the ancient to the Christian world, and, more particularly, transformed the classical Greek speculation into a theory unmistakably identifiable as natural law“, in: Weinreb, L.L. (1987), p. 36. 93

of the God, the ruler. This comes out more clearly in that the attempt by Stoics was to reduce the Aristotelian sphere of the made into that of the generated, but in Aquinas hands, the generated gets reduced to the made. That is, stoics erased the distinction between physis and techne in favour of physis, whereas the Christian favourite is the techne, because of the compulsion of looking at the nature as a creation of God. However, it can be granted that the effect of both these streams was the same: to erase the distinction between the made and the generated, and thereby providing the impetus to the modern project of constituting the social life (the sphere of the Aristotelian techne pertaining to the affairs of the polis) on the basis of scientific principles. In Aristotle the question of ethics, though part of the larger question ‘what is the good life for human beings?’ nevertheless - as far as specifically ethics is concerned - is equivalent to the question of ‘how to be a good citizen, how to gestalt the polis?’. To lead an ethical life is to exercise the techne pertaining to the polis. Stoic conception may be considered to have attempted to translate the Platonic assertion that it is possible to investigate ethical questions to an assertion that the sphere of ethics can be situated within the physis. Perhaps the transformation of the question of how to lead a good life into a question of what attitude to take to life has something to do with the Stoic reformulation. Thus stoics left twofold heritage: the attitude as the determinant of the nature of an action and an idea of establishing the polis on the basis of principles of physis, which is to transform the Aristotelian notion of politics as a techne into that of an episteme. Paradoxically, in modern philosophy even though the ‘making’ becomes the central category as against the ‘generation’, the notion of science, the progeny of the Aristotelian episteme, achieves the upper hand over techne: the slogan from Hobbes’ Leviathan in the 17th century to Mill’s moral science in the 19th century was that of establishing the sphere of ethics and politics on the foundation of scientific principles. But what is the understanding of this notion ‘scientific

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principle’? The peculiarity of the notion of scientific principle bequeathed by a transformation of the nature as made will be taken up in the next chapter.

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5

Establishing a Polis: Imitating God’s Creation or Participating in It?

5.1

By Way of Summary: The God, the World, and the Souls in Between

The narration I have endeavoured to build so far is meant to show to what extent the categories for talking about culture are indebted to the Aristotelian theory of polis mediated through the Christian theme of biblical revelations. As took place in the hands of Aquinas this mediation transformed the Aristotelian theory of polis into a theory of the universe, the whole universe being considered as a city of God. But in this universe man has a special place. Being created in the image of God, human being, like Him, is a maker. What proves decisive for the development of the concepts related to culture is that the notion of man being a maker gets combined with the Aristotelian theme of man having a faculty of intellect in addition to a sense-faculty. According to Aquinas, man, in addition to being impressed by the motivating principle of action as in the case of other beings, is also capable of self-regulation: thus through Aquinas the sense faculty gets identified with the capacity to get affected and the faculty of intellect with that of making. What gets bequeathed thus from an effort at ennobling the heritage of Athens can be put into a simplified summary as following. A system consisting of God, the world of (both animate and inanimate) objects, and the human beings placed in between, sharing both the Godly and worldly features, emerges as a picture of the universe. The principle of identity is the ‘substance’. The capacities to be attributed to these substances are the capacity to get affected and the capacity to initiate the affection. The God is the ultimate initiator, the nature, the ultimate object to get affected, and the souls in between, having both the capacities to get affected and the capacity to initiate affection, i.e., both a capacity to receive and to make. The God, the nature, and the soul (psyche) these are the three pillars of a system of the universe.

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This picture is no more that of an Aristotelian conception of explaining everything in terms of the forms in process. Explanation of process is conceived as requiring not merely form and matter, but in addition, an agent-substance to be the bearer of the forms on the one hand, and a characteristic of agency independent of forms, on the other. In effect, this is what the Cartesian conception of two modes of thinking as delineated in the passages below provide. Descartes says that he would accept only „two ultimate classes of real things - the one is intellectual things, [...] the other of material, [...]. Perception, volition, and every mode of knowing and willing, pertains to thinking substance; while to extended substance pertain magnitude or extension.“ 1

Further the attributes of ‘intellectual things’ „are all to be subordinated to two predominant properties, one of which is the perception of the understanding, the other the determination of the will.“ 2

The rationale of this classification is explained further: „When I saw that, over and above perception, which is required as a basis of judgement, there must needs be affirmation, or negation, to constitute the form of the judgement, and that it is frequently open to withhold our assent, even if we perceive a thing, I referred the act of judging which consists in nothing but assent, i.e. affirmation or negation, not to the perception of the understanding, but to the determination of the will.“ 3

It has to be noticed here that the capacities of human psyche corresponding to the Aristotelian distinction between ‘sensible’ and ‘intelligible’ are both brought under the notion of ‘perception of understanding’ and a new faculty is added, the faculty of the will. Thus ‘perception of understanding’ and ‘will’ as the two modes of thinking provide for the capacity to get affected and the capacity to initiate affection respectively. In Aristotle, to be affected is the characteristic of matter4, and to be intelligible is the characteristic of form. This remains so in 1

Cf. Descartes, cit. 1962, vol. I. p. 238. Besides these Descartes says that there are also „certain things which we experience in ourselves, which should be attributed neither to mind nor to body alone, but to those intimate union that exists between the body and the mind [...]. Such are the appetites of hunger, thirst, etc., and also the emotions, [...] of anger, joy, sadness, love, and finally all the sensations such as pain, pleasure, light and colour [etc.].“ 2 Cf. ibid. p. 445. 3 Cf. ibid. p. 446. 4 The word ‘matter’ because of its two uses, the Aristotelian and the Cartesian, may cause some confusion here. The Cartesian use to refer to one of the two ultimate substances, ‘the material substance’, is different from the Aristotelian use: in the Aristotelian sense the Cartesian ‘thinking substance’ too is formed of matter and form. 97

Descartes too, but as a result of substance conception of the soul, a specific form of affection happening to the thinking substance gets postulated: it is ‘the perception of understanding’. But the capacity to initiate action or process, the other characteristic of the Aristotelian form, gets divested from the form and made into an independent mode, the will, of the attribute ‘thinking’. However, unlike the Aristotelian form, which features as a principle of activity in all the processes from the biological growth through making to thinking, the role of the will as a principle of activity is confined to that of assent and dissent (two sub-modes of the will) to the perceptions of understanding. Such a reduced conception of activity hardly recommends itself, especially for understanding the domain of social activity, and it is no wonder that from the moment of its formulation the Cartesian framework was the object of attack. But whatever the criticisms, the basic innovation of his period, 5 the human soul as a substance being characterised by the faculties of understanding and will, remain fairly intact in the subsequent period. The relation between these two faculties, the rivalry or the ways of harmonising their relative claims become an important line of thinking having considerable influence in the emergence of the concepts to talk about culture. 5.2

Knowledge as Propositions and Cultures as Belief Systems

Another area where the mediation through Christian heritage presents itself is the erasing of the distinction between the made and the generated. This brings the customs under the rubric of the made, not by man but by God. This has a paradoxical effect of giving to techne a feature reserved for episteme in the Aristotelian system. In the latter the techne is that sort of knowledge which is context bound; the episteme, on the other hand, because it pertains to the sphere of generated things that exhibit eternal forms that constitute the natural kinds, is the context-invariant variety of knowledge. But the peculiar status of customs being made by a ruler of the universe as a whole, both abolishes the original 5

I say, ‘the basic innovation of his period’, and not merely that ‘made by Descartes’ alone, because this division of the human faculties is found in Bacon too, cf. Bacon, F., cit. 1986, bk. 2, xxv, 1. 98

domain of the episteme and at the same time upgrades the techne by conferring on it the status of being the context-invariant knowledge. Since everything is of the variety of made things the knowledge becomes of one variety: to be knowledge is to be true of a universal domain. Since only propositions can be the bearers of ‘truth’ and ‘falsity’, this results in the birth of the propositional model of knowledge, i.e. the model according to which all knowledge is of the nature of information embodied in propositions. It is worthwhile to dwell awhile on the combination of the notion of techne and that of the universal ruler. For today’s academic reader of the classical texts, because he or she is accustomed to innumerable books, it is easy to overlook the continuous line of arguments, metaphors, often even almost the same diction and passages continuing from one author to the next, and one age to the next. It is especially easy to do this in the case of authors like Descartes or Bacon, because they often paint a picture of themselves as rebelling against and discarding the learning from the ‘Scholastics’. Descartes for example asserts that he has swept away all the earlier learning and has started afresh from the resources available to his lonely mind. 6 But if we remember how thoroughly their formation was through a (comparatively) few classical texts available at their time, and how the notion of authorial ownership of ideas was not yet fixed as today 7 (some of the writings of Hobbes, if published today would be considered as outright plagiarism of Aristotle, and perhaps also of other classical authors!), we can become capable of finding very interesting echoes right across the historical periods. My interest in pointing out the above is not that of apportioning the originality or otherwise for different authors. It is rather to point out the conceptual significance of certain metaphors which otherwise we are likely to overlook. For example, if we read the following passage by Descartes in the light of Aquinas’ combining the notions ‘the ruler’ and ‘the maker’ for elucidating the Creation by God, a new 6

Cf. Descartes, cit. 1967, On Method, Part II, p.87-94. See on this an interesting paper (which, among other things, provides a historical illustration through the citation of the earlier texts in the European tradition, how recent even in the ‘West’ the notion of plagiarism is) by Ikegami, Y. (1987). 7

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insight can be gained as to the connection between the conception of the mechanism and the notion of an action as being governed by maxims. Also the metaphor of building used both by Descartes and Bacon, and also by Hobbes 8, and then later that provided the root metaphor to generate terms for the discipline epistemology, can be appreciated in a new way. „One of the first considerations that occurred to me was that there is very often less perfection in works composed of several portions, and carried out by the hands of various masters, than in those on which one individual alone has worked. [...] those villages, have become in the process of time great towns, are usually badly constructed in comparison with those which are regularly laid out on a plan by an architect who is free to follow his ideas. [...] Thus I imagined that those people who were once half savage, and who have become civilised only by slow degrees, [...] could not succeed in establishing a good system of government as those, who from the time they came together as communities, carried into effect the constitution laid down by some wise legislator.“ 9

Though this passage makes use of the common experience of the time (the time when the absolutist states started emerging in Europe 10 after the religious wars, and whose rulers took pleasure in laying down the new planned cities and pleasure gardens) its rootedness in the classical learning is also unmistakable as the reference to Sparta (left out in the quote) makes it clear. For my purpose, the nature of the reference to the ‘slowly developing city out of the cluster of villages’ is pertinent: it is not merely a reference to the common experience of the time but also to the Aristotelian passage in Politics, of how the city (the polis) is the last in the generation process of the of human associations, the family and the village being the intermediate forms on the way of actualisation of human potential of being a social animal. 11 Throughout his Discourse on Method, and also in other works of his, Descartes makes use of all possible nuances of the metaphor of building but blends it with the notion of a ruler and legislation. One can find a similar blending of the metaphors in other writers of the period.

8

see the passages quoted from Hobbes in the section 5.4. Cf. Descartes, cit. 1967, On Method, Part II, p.87-94. 10 Anderson, P. (1975). 11 Cf. Aristotle, cit. 1995, Politics, 1252a 24 - 1253a 2. 9

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The significance of this for my purpose is the following. The concept of knowledge made equivalent to the Aristotelian episteme by erasing the distinction between techne and episteme, got conceived as a system of rules promulgated by God as laws, which is also simultaneously a system of rules for mechanical construction.12 The artificer and the ruler both have plans, in one case it is a plan of construction of a functioning mechanism, and in another case a ‘motivating principle of action’ for the citizens. When this gets further identified with Aquinas’ theory of inclinations, the natural and the rational, we have the nonhuman objects of nature whose ‘motivating principles of action’ (or ‘maxims’) are natural inclinations, i.e. the mechanisms impressed upon them by God, and in the case of human beings, it is the maxims governing (or rather, that ought to govern) their actions. The dispute that arises later between the approaches of naturalism and idealism was about the way of discovering these maxims: whether one can, or cannot, use the same method both for discovering the maxims impressed by God on the things of nature and those maxims that have to govern the human actions. That natural laws are conceived as the commands of God is stated by Hobbes in a passage that echoes Aquinas very clearly: „These dictates of reason, men used to call by the name of laws, but improperly; for they are but conclusions or theorems concerning what conduceth to the conservation and defence of themselves; whereas law, properly, is the word of him that by right hath command over others. But yet if we consider the same theorems as delivered in the word of God, that by right commandeth all things; then are they properly called laws“ (emphasis mine).

13

In other words, the notion of ‘laws governing nature’ owes its origin to an extension of the laws governing the polis, and not the other way round. But through this extension those laws get the status of the uniquely given, unlike the laws of the polis, their predecessor. To put differently, the propositional model of knowledge comes into being through the following route: the Aristotelian notion 12

For an illustration of this equation of rules promulgated as law by a ruler and the rules for construction of something, i.e. a mechanical rule, see the way Hobbes conceives the Leviathan. Discussion in section 5.4. 13 Cf. Hobbes, cit. 1962, Leviathan p. 80, Ch. iii, p. 147; see also Philosophical Rudiments Concerning Government and Society, 1651, Ch. iii, section 33, vol. ii, pp. 49-50. 101

of forms defining the natural kinds were transformed into God’s dictates and they in turn were identified with the plans and laws, which in their turn are considered as identical. This makes the description of the causal mechanism and the enunciation of the motivating principles of actions to be the same. One consequence, which will be discussed in chapter eight in detail, of this propositional model of knowledge is that the investigation of the action dispositions inherited by different groups become the investigation of beliefs held by them. In the case no identifiable beliefs can be found overtly, one has to assume the ‘implicit’ beliefs, and thus arises a pre-occupation with the beliefs of ‘traditional’ societies, and the corresponding controversies like absolutism versus relativism, the judgements of truth by the participants versus judgements by the observers. The contrast made between the supposed beliefs held in ‘traditional societies’ as against in the modern ones has its roots in an earlier contrast drawn by Descartes between the opinions held due to ‘customs and example’ on the one hand, and the scientific knowledge of which a method can be given to prove their certainty, on the other.14 Historically, one can argue further, this Cartesian contrast, in its turn, is a reformulation of the contrast made by the early Christian fathers between the innumerable traditions prevailing in the Roman empire and the ‘true religion’ of the Christians. For Romans the words ‘religio’ and ‘traditio’ were synonymous.15 The Christian struggle with the intellectual currents existing in the Roman empire resulted in counter-posing the religio with the traditio, the latter consisting of the ‘idolatry’ - a term meaning more than a mere idol worship: in the Christian vocabulary (and also in the vocabulary of Islam, which in its intellectual heritage shares almost everything that Christianity can lay claim to) this term meant the practices not sanctioned by the holy book. In the newer form in the 16th and 17th centuries, the tradition was identified with the ‘Aristotelianism’ and its opposite the scientific knowledge, the knowledge acquired through a proper method (of 14

Cf. Descartes, cit. 1990, Discourse on Method, part II. See for such an argument chapters 1 to 4 in: Balagangadhara S.N. (1994). Also my comments on this, in: Rao N. (1996). 15

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reading the book of nature). It is not an accident that Francis Bacon in the early 17th century uses the terminology of ‘idols’ to refer to the obstacles for acquiring true learning.16 As far as my story is concerned the search for a unique method of arriving at truths characteristic of the late 16th to early 19th centuries is relevant in that it was associated with the notion of ‘natural reason’. The search for a method was a search for an answer to the question, ‘what is the right use of the natural reason?’ This is another way of raising the question about the nature, the scope, and the limits of the ‘natural reason’. What kind of conception is this ‘natural reason’ and what kind of a capacity it was conceived as? 5.3

‘Natural Reason’: Two Conceptions

The term ‘natural reason’ is already found in Aquinas and it probably owes its origin to a contrast between the ‘wisdom’ of the ancients and that conveyed by the divine revelation embodied in the Bible. Whereas the former relies only on the exercise of those capacities of understanding endowed on humans by nature, the latter requires the exercise of faith. The capacity for faith, it can be argued, became in due course of time a separate human faculty, the faculty of the will. In Aquinas, however, the will is identified with the special human form of acquiescing with the divine law, obeying it through an understanding in contrast to the obedience exhibited by other things and animals; the latter obey the Godgiven Law through these being impressed upon them as natural appetite. The connection established between the notion of obedience through natural appetite and the sensible nature of man is one important theme bequeathed to the theory of culture through the system of Aquinas. Perhaps, at this juncture, a word of clarification of the terms ‘sensible’ and ‘intelligible’ is called for. I have so far relied for conveying their special sense on 16

Cf. Bacon, Novum Organum, bk. I, 39-44. 103

the contextual indicators. In this book I am using the word ‘sensible’ to translate the German ‘das Sinnliche’, often using the English adjective as if it is a substantive. A similar convention is adopted in using the word ‘intelligible’. Both these uses depend on the doctrine that there are sense-specific and intellectspecific elements the designations of which function as transitive objects in a description of the exercise of the sense-ability and intellectual ability respectively. Borrowing from Ryle, I will use the term ‘accusatives’ to refer to the sensespecific and intellect-specific objects assumed in this doctrine of actions. Thus the notions of intelligibles and sensibles originated in the context of the Aristotelian conception of actions being defined through their accusatives, an elucidation of which was given in the previous chapter. 17 Though often these commandeered terms have an awkward ring because they conflict with the more common usage of ‘sensible’ and ‘intelligible’, for lack of any other suitable alternatives I am resorting to this special use; however, I indicate the technical nature by using the cursive script. Aristotle distinguishes intelligible from sensible forms, but the former are conceived as analogous to the latter in that just as the sensible forms are correlative to senses, intelligible forms are correlative to the intellect. 18 „Thinking and understanding are regarded as akin to a form of perceiving; for in the one as well as the other the soul discriminates and is cognisant of something which is.“ 19

Further, the capacity to actualise the intelligible forms is mentioned as specific to a small section of the animal world, presumably the humans, and it is then connected with the ability to judge in terms of standards. A further intermediate ability is also alluded to - the ability to imagine - which depends on the sensecapacity and in its turn is depended upon by the capacity for intellection. „That perceiving and understanding are not identical is therefore obvious; for the former is universal in the animal world, the latter is found in only a small division of it. Further, thinking is also distinct from perceiving - I mean that in which we find rightness and wrongness - rightness in understanding, knowledge, true 17

See section 4.3.3.

18

Cf. Aristotle, cit. 1995, De anima, bk. III. 4, 430 a 2-5. 19 Cf. Aristotle, cit. 1995, De anima, bk. III. 3, 427a, 20-22.

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opinion, wrongness in their opposites; for perception of the special objects of sense is always free from error, and is found in all animals, while it is possible to think falsely as well as truly, and thought is found only where there is discourse of reason. For imagining is different from either perceiving or discursive thinking, though it is not found without sensation, or judgement without it. That this activity is not the same kind as judgement is obvious. For imagining lies within our own power whenever we wish (e.g. we can call up a picture, as in the practice of mnemonics by the use of mental images), but in forming opinions we are not free: we cannot escape the alternative of falsehood or truth. Further, when we think something to be fearful or threatening, emotion is immediately produced, and so too with what is encouraging; but when we merely imagine we remain as unaffected as persons who are looking at a painting of some dreadful or encouraging scene.“ 20

Intellect is on the one hand conceived as analogous to the senses in that it has its own specific accusatives, and on the other different from it in that it, unlike senses, is not a bodily organ. This latter is taken to mean two things by Aristotle: first, its 'actuality' consists in taking the form of its objects, and it is pure activity; second, because its actuality consists in pure activity, unlike the bodily rooted activities such as perception there is no decreasing intensity resulting from indulgence, but rather an enhancing due to indulgence. "Sense is not capable of perceiving when the object of perception is too intense, e.g. it cannot perceive sound after loud sounds, nor see or smell after strong colours or smells. But when the intellect thinks something especially fit for thought, it thinks inferior things not less but rather more. For the faculty of senseperception is not independent of the body, whereas the intellect is distinct." 21

This fairly common place observation by Aristotle becomes later the source of Descartes’ argument for the separation of intellectual knowledge from the bodily habits (Descartes almost literally repeats the argument, but now taking the metaphor of light to refer to the scientific knowledge that equally illuminates all things in contrast to the practical arts rooted in acquired bodily dispositions, which because of this makes the proficiency in one skill a hindrance for the

20 21

Cf. Aristotle, cit. 1995, De anima, bk. III. 3, 427b, 7-27. Cf. Aristotle, cit. 1995, De Anima, bk. III. 3, 429 a 29.

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proficiency in another22 ) and the idea that ‘reason’ is identical with the capacity for freedom. Intelligible forms are also the essences defining natural kinds and are contextinvariant. Both in the objects and in the apprehending persons the individuating factor is their matter, and it accounts for variation among the individuals (both animate and inanimate natural things) belonging to a species; in other words, 'matter' is the factor of context-variance. Both the activity of actualising the sensible forms and making artefacts involve the matter as a factor of the activity, and therefore they are context-dependent sorts of knowledge. Intellectual exercise concerning forms of nature is actualisation of pure forms, i.e. actualising the context-invariant variety of knowledge. As discussed already23, even though modern philosophy emerged by eradicating the distinction between the sphere of episteme and that of techne, it nevertheless retained one aspect of the notion of episteme: the context-invariance as the condition of knowledge. We find in Descartes an equation of knowledge acquired by tradition with knowledge through senses, and this in turn is equated with 'opinion'.24 This means that for him the term 'sense-knowledge' and 'opinion' are equivalent to Aristotle's 'empeiria' in one respect - in respect of connoting a means of orienting in the day-to-day world. But his overall thrust was to demarcate knowledge from sense-experience and opinion: he polemicises against the conception of scientific pursuits in analogy with the practical arts and against the supposition that different disciplines have different methods; 25 further, he asserts regarding the method of doubt in the Meditations, that its "greatest benefit lies in freeing us from all our preconceived opinions, and providing the easiest route by which the mind may be led away from the senses".

26

All these can be taken as an effort in the direction of defining intellectual knowledge as context-free. However, now Aristotle’s nature is not available for 22

Cf. Descartes, cit. 1967, Rules for the Direction of the Mind, in: vol. I. p. 1-2.

23

See the section 5.2.

24

Notes against a programme, in: Descartes, cit. 1967, vol. I. p. 443-444. 25 Rules for the direction of the native intelligence, rule 1 in: Descartes, cit. 1967, p. 1-2. 26 Cf. Descartes, cit. 1967, vol. I., p. 140.

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anchoring the context-invariance, for the techne has been declared as the general model of knowledge. The only way of making the latter a context-invariant form of knowledge is to anchor the invariance in the maker who exercises the techne: either in God, the Maker or in man, the maker. (Descartes in fact makes use of both the options in making God the author of innate ideas in man.) Therefore the intellect - that factor that is supposed to render man's doings different from the doings of other animals - becomes the anchorage for context-invariance. This is the source of the notion of ‘natural reason' of the 17th and 18th centuries which spans the subjectivist turn of both the Cartesian and Kantian varieties of the modern philosophy. Since this reason was thought of singling out man from animals, to provide a theory of human nature is the same as providing the scope and limits of natural reason as against Reason as embodied in God. What is of interest from the point of view of the concepts pertaining to culture is that the conception of natural reason gave rise to two projects. The first is a project of increasing man’s power to gestalt his life by finding out a method of how best to use the capacity of natural reason. Underlying this project is the assumption that knowledge is power which as an ideal was counter-posed to Aristotle’s theoria. This is a consequence of the techne model: since knowledge is equivalent to the knowledge for making, and this in turn, when spoken in the Aristotelian terminology, is equivalent to the power residing in the maker,27 the knowledge becomes a power. Hobbes recommends an imitation of God’s creation, i.e. an imitation of the method of making embodied in the natural objects, in order to gain a capacity analogous to His power. As described in the 27

The following passage from Hobbes indicates the connection between the techne model of knowledge and the ideal of ‘knowledge is power’: "The end or scope of Philosophy is, that we may make use to our benefit of effects formerly seen; or that by application of bodies to one another, we may produce the like effects of those we conceive in our mind, as far forth as matter, strength and industry will permit, for the commodity of human life. For the inward glory and triumph of mind that man may have for the mastering of some difficult and doubtful matter, or for the discovery of some hidden truth, is not so much worth the pains of the study of Philosophy requires. [...] The end of knowledge is power; [...] the scope of all speculation is the performance of some action, or the thing to be done." (emphasis is mine) in: Elements of Philosophy, introduction, See English Works of Thomas Hobbes, cit. 1962, vol. I., p. 7. What is referred to by the expression ‘inward glory and the triumph of mind’ in this passage is the Aristotelian ideal of theoria. 107

last chapter28, it was thought that His methods could be discerned by the hypothetical constructions and the knowledge gained thereby can be used for the benefit of mankind. When applied to the man, the natural product, this implies looking at him as embodying certain motivating principles (the ‘mechanisms’ or the Thomist ‘natural inclinations’) impressed on him, the feature singling him out of from other animals being the ‘mental mechanisms’.29 Hobbes looks at the task of providing a theory of human nature as that of providing a theory of human needs. I will discuss in the next section, the rationale of this and how this is connected with the Thomist Aristotelianism. For the moment I just want to suggest that the task of providing a theory of human needs was conceived as taking to man the same imitative stance as towards other natural objects in order to find out the procedures through which God made them. This is the source of naturalism that we came across in the second chapter, and it is to take an interest in increasing the competence pertaining to objects (the object-competence). Below in the next section I will discuss briefly how Hobbes applies his recommendation in presenting his conception of knowledge pertaining to the polis or the State. The second project was that of demarcating the proper use of reason from its improper use. This is the concept of ‘critique’: basically this is to take Aquinas’ idea of man obeying God’s law by making the maxims of his actions himself. This is taking a participatory stance towards God’s act of making rather than an imitative stance recommended by Hobbes. Whereas in an imitative stance we have to discover the God’s plans embodied in the natural objects through a hypothetical procedure of construction of them, in a participatory stance such plans are assumed to be the given modes of regulating one’s actions. It involves a normative attitude, and thus a reflective stance towards actions and inherited 28

See the section 4.5. Watkins, J.W.N. (1965) draws attention to the influence of Harvey, besides Galileo on the methodology of Hobbes. The combination of the mechanical principle with the functional anatomy of the body played an important role in the conception of the Leviathan. According to Watkins the uniformity of the human nature was drawn by an analogy with the uniformity of the human anatomy. See. Ch. III and VI, p. 47-63 and 100-115 respectively. 29

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dispositions. The notion of critique in the course of 19th century develops into the notion of culture critique. The mediating link between critique and culturecritique was provided by an historicisation of reason initiated by Kant.30 This stream of thinking looks at the task of providing a theory of human nature as a task of showing how the feature of being characterised by the intelligible nature, as against the sensible nature of animals, gives rise to the specificity of human institutions, traditions, and the history. This will be discussed in detail in chapters 6 and 7. 5.4

Making the Polis by Imitating God’s Creation

Aristotle’s idea that polis is a natural compound like the body, and that it is made, is used by Hobbes in his Leviathan: "Nature, the art whereby God hath made and governs the world, is by the art of man, as in many other things, so in this also imitated, that it can make an artificial animal. For seeing life is but a motion of limbs, the beginning whereof is in some principal part within; why may we not say, that all automata (engines that move themselves by springs and wheels as doth a watch) have an artificial life? For what is the heart, but a spring; and the nerves, but so many strings; and the joints, but so many wheels, giving motion to the whole body, such as intended by the artificer? Art goes yet further, imitating that rational and most excellent work of nature, man. For by art is created that great Leviathan called a Commonwealth, or State, in Latin Civitas, which is but an artificial man; [...]. Lastly, the pacts and covenants, by which the parts of this body politic were at first made, set together and united, resemble that fiat, or the let us make man, pronounced by God in the creation."31

This passage is of interest on many counts. Here the three themes referred to earlier, of nature as an artefact made by God, of mechanism, and the covenants (i.e. the legislative elements, the covenants being akin to legislation) are all brought together and thus it illustrates perfectly the point about them made in the section 5.2. The Commonwealth is said to be an artefact made by man by imitating the natural man; nature in its turn, however, is called the art of God, the 'art' being the derivation from the Latin translation of Greek 'techne', thus, as to be expected, effacing the Aristotelian distinction between the process of generation 30 31

see next chapter. Cf. Hobbes, cit. 1962, vol. III., Leviathan, p. 1. 109

and process of making. Further, the mechanical procedures of making, ‘the setting together and uniting’, are equated with the declaring of the covenants and pacts, which are further equated with the pronouncement by the God, the ruler, of ‘let us make man’. Thus the characteristic of law as defined by Aquinas - the promulgation as an important condition of bringing into existence of law - is adopted and also given the same status as mechanical procedures. Apart from the expected difference of effacing the distinction between the generated and the made, the Aristotelian terminology is evident throughout the Leviathan and even in the subtitle of the book, the full title being 'Leviathan or The Matter, Form and Power of A Commonwealth Ecclesiastical and Civil'. The 'matter-form' terminology is directly taken over from Aristotle and is also used with identifiably similar meaning as in Aristotle, with another expected difference, that in the notion of agency which rests here on the artificer rather than in the form that resides in the artificer. Further, the description of 'art of men' as an imitation of nature is not an accidental metaphor; throughout the Leviathan the metaphor of 'body', and the body having a matter and an artificer, play a crucial role. Hobbes announces the programme and procedure of the Leviathan as "To describe this artificial man, I will consider First, the matter thereof, and the artificer; both of which is man [...]."32

Further, „Though nothing can be immortal, which mortals make; yet if men had the use of reason they pretend to, their commonwealths might be secured, at least from perishing by internal diseases. For by the nature of their institution, they are designed to live, as long as mankind, or as the laws of nature, or as justice itself, which gives them life. Therefore when they come to be dissolved, not by external violence, but intestine disorder, the fault is not in men as they are the matter; but as they are the makers, and orderers of them [...] for want, both of the art of making the fit laws, to square their actions by, [...] they cannot without the help of a very able architect, be compiled into any other than a crazy building, such as

32

Cf. Hobbes, cit. 1962, vol. III., Leviathan, p. 2. 110

hardly lasting out of their own time, must assuredly fall upon the heads of their posterity. Amongst the infirmities therefore of a commonwealth, I will reckon in the first place, those that arise from an imperfect institution, and resemble the diseases of a natural body, which proceed from a defectuous procreation." 33

The metaphor of the architect which we also came across in Descartes and Bacon, is a reminder of the continuing thread I spoke of earlier. To this another metaphor, that of the body and its susceptibility to diseases is added: Hobbes speaks of giving a diagnosis of the ‘infirmities’ afflicting the body politic comparable to natural diseases. But at the same time the idiom mechanisms, ‘of springs, joints and wheels’, rather than that of the organism is made use of in talking about the body itself. Presumably he considers his work analogous to the theoretical endeavour in the case of medicine which aims at healing. Healing requires an understanding of the mechanisms proper to the body and applying it to restore the original functioning of the body. Whereas the medical man heals the natural body Hobbes' work is intended to heal the 'artificial man'. But in both cases in order to know the causes of the malfunctioning one has to know the proper mode of functioning. The project therefore is that of gaining a knowledge about the proper function, and for this what is recommended is looking at the way God has created the ‘natural body’. But the natural body of Hobbes’ focus is not merely that of the physiologist or anatomist. His interest is in the ‘motion’ and the theory of motion is very much spoken of in the Thomist-Aristotelian idiom. 34 Watkins draws attention to an early work of Hobbes, Short Tract on First Principles and says that the basic ideas delineated there continued in the later work. He quotes the following from that work which is relevant to my story.

33

Cf. Hobbes, cit. 1962, vol. III., Leviathan, p. 167-168. See Watkins, J.W.N (1965) Ch. III. for the influence on Hobbes of the methodology of the Paduan Aristotelians. 34

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„The act of the appetite is a motion of animal spirits toward the object that moveth them. The object is the efficient cause, or agent [...]. Appetite [...] is a passive power [...] to be moved toward the object. The Good is to every thing, that which hath active power to attract it locally.“

Watkins however suggests that this passage leads to ‘a remarkable inversion of the traditional idea of the agent and the patient.’ 35 But what Hobbes present in the passage, as far as it concerns with the ‘agent’ and ‘patient’, is Aquinas’ theory of natural inclinations, pure and simple. Those who are familiar with Aquinas’ theory would not find the passage as inverting the ‘traditional’ role of the agent and the patient at all; he is merely following the Aristotelian line of thinking of defining the actions in terms of the accusatives, and dispositions in terms of the actions defined in such a manner. The consequence of it is to look for a theory of nature in the theory of appetites, which in their turn need to be defined in terms of the appropriate objects that impel the animals. Thus for Hobbes the task of providing a theory of human nature becomes a task of providing a theory of human needs. In the light of this, the criticism by Herder of Condillac that was briefly discussed in section 3.3.2 becomes historically revealing. Condillac is for Herder the representative of the theory of social contract. Herder’s criticism, as we have seen, is that such a theory looks at human being in terms of his animal rather than human nature. Hobbes is using the Thomist theory of nature for building a theory of human nature. Herder is criticising him for overlooking the speciality of man in the Thomist scheme. Instead, he calls for a theory of human reason against that about animal inclinations governing human being. The divide between Hobbes and Herder, between a conception of a theory of human nature as that of his needs and as that about the speciality of human reason has its progenies even today. Roughly, in the English tradition there are more followers of Hobbes and in the German tradition of Herder or Kant. One may use with some caution, the terms naturalism versus idealism to refer to this divide. The latter wants to look at human beings as sharing with God the characteristic of 35

See Watkins, J.W.N (1965), p. 29 & 45. 112

having an intelligible as against the sensible essence. The web of implication threads surrounding this theme will be the focus in the next two chapters.

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6

6.1

Kant: The Making of the Naturgeschichte

Kant’s ‘Love Affair with Metaphysics’

In chapter 3 I began by asking what could be the link between the Christian view of cultivating the ‘inner life’ of man and the ideal of social perfection that the German philosophy at the beginning of the 19th century effected. I haven’t yet answered that question but only hinted at a key and a clue to an answer by quoting a seemingly simple passage from Kant’s Pädagogik. I also mentioned the notion of Naturgeschichte, and the unusual sense of the word ‘nature’ in this expression that betrays a theological origin of the thinking of Kant and Herder. From there I made a jump to Greece in order to trace the categories of ‘making’ and ‘generating’ and the application of them to the very notions of ‘action’, ‘knowledge’ and ‘human nature’. I quoted the passage by Aristotle which can be considered as an answer to the question, given that there are varied human customs, what should be true of human nature. Such a question underlies Herder’s thinking on human institutions. I also indicated that the basic notions later to become prominent in theories of State and culture being already discernible in Aristotle. But it is a fact that Aristotle’s passage was mediated for the thinkers of the modern period through the Christian tradition. So, in the fourth chapter, I went into the conceptual consequences of the professed attempt to ‘ennoble’ the heritage of the Athens with the biblical revelations by a discussion of Aquinas’ attempts in this direction. Mainly I traced it by showing how the addition of the will as a faculty came into being, and the corresponding difference it made to the conception of leading a good life: I suggested, that it transforms the Aristotelian amoral view into a moral conception of what it is to lead a ‘good life’ by bringing into the Aristotelian idea of law of the polis made by man within the constraints of his nature, a notion of command promulgated by God which expresses itself as natural law. I elucidated the conception of the natural law as the consequence of 114

universalising the Aristotelian model of polis to cover his notion of physis, thus transforming the objects of nature into the citizens of a universal city ruled by God, where the biblical commands become the laws promulgated for the good of the creatures. If we read Kant after a reading of Aquinas we can hear a lot of echoes. That Kant has to be situated in a long specific German tradition of Enlightenment where the theological roots of pietism nourished the specificity of it, has long been noted.

1

Recently, Beiser has drawn attention to the fact of Kant’s ‘love affair with Metaphysics’ in his early period, and I take it that the love affair has much to do 2

with the Thomist thinking mediated by Leibniz and Wolf on whom the influence of the Spanish scholastic theologian Suarez Franscisco has been noted. Kant’s conception of practical in contrast to theoretical reason is an attempt to revive the Aristotelian two conceptions of knowledge as against the Cartesian two domains of knowledge. Similarly, the role accorded to the will in moral life, making man himself as the maker of the maxims or commands in terms of which he acts, nevertheless these maxims having universality, is a revival of Aquinas conception rational as against the natural inclinations, and the notion that rational inclinations to be the specific human motivating principle of action. The will as identical with practical reason and as the source of man’s moral life and plans is an attempt to give a new meaning to the conception of man as imago dei. On the whole Kant’s effort can be looked at as that of reviving the earlier Thomist conceptions. But, as all efforts at revival, this too brings its own dynamic to the changed intellectual context rather than simply bringing back the older distinctions to new life. 6.2

The Man, the Maker and the Social Animal

One can approach Kant’s system as one of drawing the logical consequences of two of the assumptions of the Christian theology as underpinned by a neoAristotelian system: 1 2

Cf. Beck, L. W. (1969). Cf. Beiser, F. C. (1992). 115

(i) nature is made, and not something that has its principle of existence (or, the why of its existence) by itself; (ii) man is created in the image of the creator God. In Aristotle, to be affected is the characteristic of matter, and to be intelligible is the characteristic of form. Applied to man, the maker, this would mean two things simultaneously. First, he is human to the extent his action is the actualisation of the ‘intelligible’ and not constituted by the ‘affective’ modes. Therefore, secondly, the nature he cognises is not something that affects him, but something that he, like God, has made: „nur soviel sieht man vollständig ein, als man nach Begriffen selbst machen und zustande bringen kann.“ 3

Similarly, an action is human to the extent it is governed by a maxim made by oneself rather than given or received. Thus to conceive man in the image of God is to conceive the making to be the basic model of human activity, and Kant conceives cognition, making (in the usual sense of bringing about an artefact) and practical action as sub-species of making. However, it has to be emphasised, making ‘nach Begriffen’ and more generally through ‘Entwürfe’, or plans, and not in terms of the normal day to day sense involving the hands and some material. The specific change brought about by Kant in the notions of thinking and will would become especially conspicuous if we contrast them with that of the Cartesian notions: For Descartes, the thinking substance is characterised by a perception of understanding and a will to assent or dissent to it. This is conceiving man more in the mode of being affected rather than being the maker. For in Cartesian conception, the perception of understanding is affection by ideas either adventitiously or necessarily. In action theoretical terms, they are defined in terms of the suffering (Widerfahrnis) aspect rather than the doing aspect of an action. Similarly, the Cartesian will is governed by a principle outside of its powers: if clarity and distinctness of ideas is not respected, the assenting and dissenting to 3

Cf. Kritik der teleologischen Urteilskraft, Kant, Werke, cit. 1975, B 310. 116

ideas would go wrong. In Kant’s conception, the categories and the will are ‘spontaneous’ powers, i.e. powers designating the doing rather than the suffering aspect of an action: the categories connote the spontaneous powers in relation to theoretical (or ‘pure’) action, the will in relation to the action in the practical sphere; it formulates the maxims of conduct, and in formulating the categorical imperative, it is the maker of the principle of conduct absolutely, i.e. without the affective modes having any influence over it. In both cases, of course, there are limitations put on reason, because, man occupies a middle space between animals and angels, i.e. he has, unlike in the case of angels, sensibility as part of his nature. This limitation put by man’s being 4

a creature of sensibility is focused on two levels: in relation to the knowledge of nature and in relation to the conduct guided by ideals. Constraints on reason by the powers of sensibility to yield the knowledge of nature is enquired into in the critique of pure reason. As in the case of Aquinas, to get to know the product of God’s making, the nature, man has to subject himself to the limitations of sensibility; for nature doesn’t obey the dictates of the ‘pure’ human making. In contrast, in the sphere of (moral) conduct, man can become human only by transcending the limits put by the sensibility on the guiding principles of action. The critique of practical reason concerns itself with the nature of reason in relation to the maxims and ideals, and the kind of limits put by the sensibility, and the possibility of, as well as the need for, transcending those limits. But there is one weakness that Kant had to confront in reviving the mediaeval metaphysical foundations. Kant wrote in an era that just preceded the French revolution. The Europe of the 18th century, just like the previous century of the aftermath of the religious wars, demanded a justification of the polis, and not merely ‘the justification of the ways of God to man’. It is one thing to 5

4

In order to emphasise that man cannot do away with sensibility when it comes to his powers of understanding, Kant frequently makes references to a hypothetical possibility of beings in other planets who may have pure intelligible powers in contrast to human beings. 5 Though predominantly about an earlier period, i.e. about the 17th century, Toulmin, S. (1992) delineates the role of what may be broadly called as ‘the social question’ in the rise and spread of modern philosophy. What he says is pertinent equally, if not more, in the case of the rise and spread of Kant’s influence in Germany. 117

universalise the existing picture of a polis, as Aquinas did, and it is quite another to provide for the foundations of a new polis. The very essential feature of practical life in the political context is that of sociality. The making of an artefact as well as that involved in transforming the affects into a phenomenon does not involve the social co-operation in an immediate tangible sense. But social institution and conventions are making in a sense that involve the cohesion of many wills. How are the social institutions, and thereby the conditions of acting socially, are made? In answer to this Kant attempts to combine two of the Aristotelian assumptions, the doctrine of natural kinds and the doctrine that man is rational, and through their conjoint application to human being derive his sociality and history: man has the essence of ‘reason’, a meta-capacity used synonymously with the capacity for ‘freedom’, and consequently his other capacities are realisable not at an individual level, but only at a species level. Man is a species-being (Gattungswesen) and therefore he is required to make his species through his self-activity.

6

This, however, makes the term ‘making’ ambiguous: till now it is the individual human being whose making is spoken of. Now it appears as if the whole species is required to be conceived as the agent. To avoid this ambiguity Kant elaborates an ingenious distinction between conceiving nature as an object of physical science and as that of a teleological system: whereas the former is the product of theoretical thinking the latter is a product of practical (or pragmatic) thinking. The categories needed for the practical thinking are different from that required for theoretical thinking. To clarify the logic of these distinctions is to enter into the whole Kantian system, especially, his programme for a theory of history and culture.

6

This is the famous slogan of Kant ‘Sich im Denken orientieren’. See his ‘Was ist Aufklärung?’ See the 20th century adaptation by Mittelstraß, ‘Was heißt: sich im Denken orientieren? in: Mittelstraß, J. (1982) p. 162-184. 118

6.3

Anthropology from a Pragmatic Standpoint

6.3.1

Education as Partaking in the ‘Idea of Humanity’

To find an entry point let us go back to Kantian notion of education as found in the passage quoted in the third chapter. To begin with, we can approach it with the Aristotelian idea of realisation of the good specific to human beings. But what is the good specific to human beings?

Children, we may remember Kant

asserting in the quoted passage , need to be educated not merely in terms of the 7

immediate needs of the individual or a particular group but in accordance with the possible better state of humanity in the future, i.e. they need to be educated in accordance with the ‘idea of humanity’ and with a horizon of thinking that takes into account of the destiny of the whole mankind - ‘der Idee der Menscheit, und deren ganzer Bestimmung angemessen’. How exactly to unpack this notion of the ‘Bestimmung der Menschen’?

8

As I indicated in the third chapter, the expression ‘Bestimmung’ in the passage in question, unlike ‘definition’ with which it is usually translated, has also a connotation of ‘destiny’: the German ‘Bestimmung’ has both a language- and an object-level connotation, i.e. it involves a combination of both the meanings - ‘the definition of man’ and ‘the destiny of man’. So we need to ask, what according to Kant is the destiny of a human being, not of this or that individual, but of human being ‘in general’? At the first sight, not merely the question but also Kant’s answer appears to be Aristotelian: the destiny or purpose of human being is to develop all the capacities endowed on him by nature, the ‘Naturanlagen’ as he calls it. But with what capacities man is endowed with? and how to find it out? Here comes the Kantian twist, and to understand it we require the whole batteries of specific concepts he makes use of. Kant’s programme, along with all the categories he makes use of for that purpose is encapsulated in the following passage. 7 8

see above 3.4.2. see ibid. 119

„Looking to principles of reason, there is ample ground - for the reflective, though not of course for the determinant, judgement - to make us estimate man as not merely a physical end, such as all organised beings are, but as the being upon this earth who is the ultimate end of nature, and the one in relation to whom all other natural things constitute a system of end. What now is the end in man, and the end which, as such, is intended to be promoted by means of his connection with nature? If this end is something which must be found in man himself, it must either be of such a kind that man himself may be satisfied by means of nature and its beneficence, or else it is the aptitude and skill for all manner of ends for which he may employ nature both external and internal. The former end of nature would be the happiness of man, the latter his culture. The conception of happiness is not one which man abstracts more or less from his instincts and so derives from his animal nature. It is, on the contrary, a mere idea of a state, and one to which he seeks to make his actual state of being adequate under purely empirical conditions - an impossible task. [...] Man, therefore, is ever but a link in the chain of physical ends. True, he is a principle in respect of many ends to which nature seems to have predetermined him, seeing that he makes himself so; but, nevertheless, he is also a means towards the preservation of the finality in the mechanism of the remaining members. As the single being upon earth that possesses understanding, and, consequently, a capacity for setting before himself ends of his deliberate choice, he is certainly titular lord of nature, and, supposing we regard nature as a teleological system, he is born to be its ultimate end. But this is always on the terms that he has the intelligence and the will to give to it and to himself such a reference to ends as can be self-sufficing independently of nature, and, consequently, a final end. Such an end, however, must not be sought in nature. But, where in man, at any rate, are we to place this ultimate end of nature? To discover this we must seek out what nature can supply for the purpose of preparing him for what he himself must do in order to be a final end, and we must segregate it from all ends whose possibility rests upon conditions that man can only await at the hand of nature.“ 9

The categories used above, (i) the determinate and reflective judgements, (ii) the ultimate end of nature and the final end of creation, along with some other important concepts - such as ‘anthropology from a pragmatic standpoint’ - within 9

Cf. Meredith, J.C. (1973, Part II, p. 92f). In deviation from my usual practice, here I am quoting Kant in translation in order to make the reader familiar with the English equivalents I am going tto use in the main text to render Kant’s German terminology. Cf. for the German equivalent in: Kritik der teleologischen Urteilskraft, Kant, Werke, cit. 1975, A 383 - 386. 120

the context of which these distinctions are to be made sense of, can be elucidated in terms of a two stage argument of Kant. (1) It is necessary and justified to use teleological concepts such as purpose or end (‘Zweck’), if our aim is to consider nature or world from a ‘pragmatic standpoint’. (2) When we approach nature as a teleological system then we are compelled to 10

develop an idea of a ‘final end’ , and to see in the idea of a freely acting human 11

being such a final end. 6.3.2

12

‘Pragmatic’ versus ‘Theoretical’ Knowledge

Kant demarcates ‘pragmatic’ from ‘theoretical knowledge of the world’ and correspondingly distinguishes anthropology in ‘pragmatic’ and ‘physiological perspective’. He says, 13

„Die physiologische Menschenkenntnis geht auf die Erforschung dessen, was die Natur aus dem Menschen macht. Die pragmatische Menschenkenntnis geht auf das, was er als frei handelndes Wesen aus sich selbst macht oder machen kann und soll.“14

But this distinction between ‘what nature makes out of man’ and what ‘man as free acting being can and should make out of oneself’, requires a fair amount of elucidation of the Kantian system, and therefore not very enlightening in the beginning as to what these distinctions mean. In order to throw light I will draw attention to some parallel, though not identical, distinctions in Aristotle, and show by contrast what the meaning of these terms could be, and what change of tradition they are the result of. Even though not identical with it, the division, ‘pragmatic’ and ‘theoretical’ is likely to have been conceived in parallel to the Aristotelian division of techne and episteme, and correspondingly, between practical and theoretical philosophy: for Aristotle, the movement and change where human intervention does not and 10

Kant sometimes uses the term ‘zweckmäßiges System’, ibid. Kant makes a distinction between ‘letzter Zweck der Natur’ and ‘Endzweck’. The English equivalents made use of in the translation are ‘the ultimate end of nature’ and ‘final end’ respectively, ibid. 12 Kant speaks of man as ‘frei handelndes Wesen’ as ‘Idee des Endzwecks’, ibid. 13Cf. Vorrede zur Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht, Kant, Werke, cit. 1975, BA III VIII. 14 ibid. 11

121

cannot take place is the physis which is open to theoria. The practical and poeitic knowledge on the other hand pertain to domains open to human making. This cannot be the way to distinguish knowledge types for Kant, because for him there is no such category of growing by itself; all domains are made. It is the perspective (Kant’s expression Hinsicht) from which a domain is constructed that differentiates one domain from another, and not the fact whether something is open to human intervention or not. That is, his conception of knowledge involves a notion of making at a meta-level. This brings hurdles for the task of interpreting the Kantian texts: sometimes metaconcepts are used, sometimes the object concepts. For example, ‘what man makes out of himself’ cannot be taken on the same level as ‘what nature makes out of man’; for in order to identify the latter, one has to have a level of man making use of his capacity of ‘making out of himself’. That is, it is only in the context of man’s effort at trying to make out of himself what he can, and ought to, that he constructs an account of himself as being made by nature in such and such a way. Let me bring another of Aristotelian contrast into the picture. Aristotle distinguishes between two orders of knowledge which he calls „what is prior in nature“ and „what is prior to us“: "Things are prior and more familiar in two ways; for it is not the same to be prior by nature and prior in relation to us. I call prior and more familiar in relation to us what is nearer to perception, prior and more familiar simpliciter what is further away. What is most universal is furthest away, and the particulars are nearest; and these are opposite to each other." 15

Corresponding to the two orders of priority - 'prior in relation to us' and 'prior in relation to nature' - Aristotle conceives two different inference modes - those starting from 'principles' and those starting from 'opinions' (endoxa). These in 16

turn are meant to specify two functionally differing methods. Principles are asserted to be prior in relation to nature. That is, they are logically prior in the system of truths about any domain. Episteme is conceived as representation of 'the 15 16

Cf. Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, bk. I. 2, 72 a 1-5. Cf. Aristotle, Topics, bk. I. 1 & 2, 100a to 101b. 122

order of nature', the principles governing the domain coming at the top and the other truths occurring in descending order. This is also meant as the order of didactic discourse. ‘Prior in relation to us' are 'sense-perceptions' and 'opinions' which in the 'order of nature' are conceived to be the last. Dialectical deduction is supposed to start from the level of 'opinions' and arrive at the principles. That is, the 'order of our knowledge' in contrast to the order of nature ascends from opinions and sense-perception to the level of principles. This is identified by the medieval Aristotelians as the method of investigation.

17

That is, enquiry in

contrast to teaching begins with what is 'familiar to us' and ascends to what is 'familiar in nature'.

18

It is quite evident that Kant’s metaphysical deduction is conceived in parallel to the Aristotelian dialectical deduction: the given practice or opinion is taken as the starting point and the conditions for the possibility of that practice is enquired into. Therefore it is possible to surmise that Kant intends a kind of application of the Aristotelian ‘prior to nature’ and ‘prior to us’. But, since for him an object is to be conceived as made, the very starting point of what is ‘prior to us’ depends upon a sort of making: we can search for the principles in nature only after we choose the ‘Hinsicht’ - the perspectives in terms of which we consider something. Thus, in contrast to Aristotle, ‘prior to us’ too requires a principle - a principle of making that demarcates one domain from another, and within each domain one can search for principles that can explain the domain. In other words, Kant makes the principles of the Aristotelian techne which exist in the agent into a constitutive factor of the Aristotelian ‘prior to us’. Consequently, in contrast to Aristotle, two sorts of principles get introduced: the constitutive principles that constitute a domain and the explanatory principles, that are within the domains already constituted. Thus the objects are made through the choice of a perspective (Hinsicht). But the 19

perspective involved may be one of distinguishing one situation from another, or 17

Cf. Randall, J.H. (1961a). Cf. Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, 71 b 30 - 72 a 5 and Topics bk. I. 1 & 2, 100a to 101b. 19 This is what later Habermas would call ‘knowledge interests’, in: Habermas, J. (1968). 18

123

of measuring up a situation in terms of standards of what ought to be, i.e. in terms of some standard of perfection. In the former case we use the concepts determinatively and in the latter case reflectively. That is, we can understand the Kantian distinction of two sorts of judgements and the corresponding two sorts of knowledge in the following way. A judgement is reflective to the extent it involves implicitly or explicitly a reference to a standard of perfection. Otherwise it is a determinate judgement. The concepts used in reflective judgements are ‘reflective concepts’ and those in determinate judgements are ‘determinate concepts’. As all such distinctions this too has a way of slipping away through the fingers, but roughly, we can consider a judgement such as ‘human beings live in houses’ as a determinate judgement and ‘human beings are free agents’ as a reflective judgement. For, in the former case, no consequences follow to the particular human beings if they do not conform to this judgement. Their not conforming can be considered as counter-instance having implications to the truth or falsity of the judgement made, rather than judging the non-conforming individuals as deficient. In contrast, in the latter case, suppose some particular individuals do not conform to the judgement that they are free agents; then their deviations are conceived as a deficiency of their humanity, and not merely as an instance of the empirical condition that can falsify the judgement made. Thus those judgements, that have implications as to whether the judged instance conforms or does not conform to the standard with which it is measured, are reflective judgements. (Of course, any determinate predicate can be turned into a reflective predicate in that any non-conforming instance is declared as not really falling under that predicate. We have such cases when a statement originally meant as a description is then made into a definition. ) 20

20

A paradigmatic case of this happening is when Cassirer says that people thinking in terms of mythical symbolic form do not have abstract conceptions. He takes the field descriptions of the Ethnologists which are meant to be descriptive accounts as instances of mythical thinking, but then defines mythical thinking as those involving only spatial schematism, thus excluding the instances of temporal schematism in the corpus of the Ethnologists from the extension of the term ‘mythical thinking’. And in a third step suggests that because spatial schematism confines one to the concrete, the mythical thinking is incapable of abstract thinking. What is not clear is what this word ‘incapable’ means: is it meant to be descriptive of the corpus collected by Ethnologists under the rubric ‘mythical thinking’, or meant to set a definitional convention of what ‘mythical thinking’ should be taken to mean? If the former, it is easy to falsify Cassirer’s theory by citing the counter-examples available in the Ethnologists’ corpus, which themselves are very selective. 124

Thus, in the context of Kant, ‘theoretical knowledge’ means the knowledge constituted by determinate judgements, and the ‘pragmatic knowledge’, that constituted by reflective judgements. 6.3.3

The Idea of Perfection

In the context of education the perspective one has to choose is that of improving oneself. Improving oneself involves, on the one hand, an idea of perfection

21

towards which the striving of improvement can direct itself, and on the other, reflective judgements as to the state of one’s present level of perfection. For Kant, enquiry into both these are of ‘pragmatic’ nature, and the results thereof, ‘pragmatic knowledge’. The investigation of man in a pragmatic perspective seeks after the dimensions of those potentials that can be actualised into perfection, and the already achieved levels of their perfection. But a reflection on those capacities potential in oneself involve looking at oneself as a human being and conceptualising one’s potentials in terms of the idea of human potential: in terms of what the definition and destiny (‘Bestimmung’) of a human being is. However, an attempt at conceptualising the capacities potential in oneself as human potentials would make us confront with the fact that human beings depend on the skills and institutions passed on by the previous generations, and their ‘natural capacities’ are not merely a function of the biological potentials. This would mean that the perfection of the natural capacities is a task extending over generations covering the history of the whole species, spanning both the achievements already accomplished in the past and those to be accomplished yet in the future. In other words, man can perfect his natural capacities not at an individual level, but only at a level of the human species as a whole. At this stage, it may be reminded that the above Kantian assertions (or those by me meant as elucidating and elaborating what Kant said) are meant to be reflective, and not determinate judgements. Also to be stressed is the following: a 21

Kant’s term is ‘Idee der Vollkommenheit’, u.a. in: Kritik der teleologischen Urteilskraft, Kant, Werke, cit. 1975, B 404. 125

reflective judgement is something that involves not merely a statement of an ideal but also a reference to the actual sensible world. Judgements, for example, as to the degree of perfection human beings find themselves in, refer both to man as part of a natural process and to an idea of perfection towards which this natural process is conceived as tending. This combination of reference to an ideal and to the natural process (or, to an ‘intelligible Idea’ and to nature as a ‘system of sensibles’) is what constitutes, in Kant’s terms, the Naturgeschichte in contradistinction to a Natubeschreibung. The former is a narration of nature in terms of a teleology, i.e. it is conceiving nature as a system of hierarchical ends, and is distinguished from a mere chronicling of events on the one hand, and that of an explanation of nature from a purely biological, or physiological perspective, on the other. A fuller elucidation of Kant’s idea of Naturgeschichte calls for the elucidation of the notion of nature as a teleological system, on the one hand, and the concept of Naturanlagen, i.e. ‘abilities endowed by nature’, on the other. I will be brief on these, since my focus is not Kant’s system as such, but rather his line of thinking that has resulted in the modernity paradigm as we have it today. Therefore, I will focus on the notion of Naturgeschichte as applied to human history. 6.3.4

Nature as a Teleological System

The propositions with regard to nature as a teleological system that Kant argues are two: (i) to conceive nature as a system we do require a concept of an ‘end of nature’ (‘Naturzweck’), (ii) the concept of an end of nature requires a concept of ‘final end of creation’ (‘Endzweck der Schöpfung’) which, in contrast to that of an end of nature, has to be conceived as ‘unconditioned’. The nature as a system requires some organising perspective only in terms of which one can think of it as a system. This organising perspective is not a feature

126

discovered in the object, but assumed prior to the investigation in order to guide our enquiry: „Übersehen wir unsere Verstandeserkenntnisse in ihrem ganzen Umfange, so finden wir, daß dasjenige, was Vernunft ganz eigentümlich darüber verfügt und zu Stande zu bringen sucht, das Systematische der Erkenntnis sei, d.i. der Zusammenhang derselben aus einem Prinzip. Diese Vernunfteinheit setzt jederzeit eine Idee voraus, nämlich die von der Form eines Ganzen der Erkenntnis, welches vor der bestimmten Erkenntnis der Teile vorhergeht und die Bedingungen enthält, jedem Teile seine Stelle und Verhältnis zu den übrigen apriori zu bestimmen. Diese Idee postuliert demnach vollständige Einheit der Verstandeserkenntnis, wodurch diese nicht bloß ein zufälliges Aggregat, sondern ein nach notwendigen Gesetzen zusammenhängendes System wird. Man kann eigentlich nicht sagen, daß diese Idee ein Begriff vom Objekte sei, sondern von der durchgängigen Einheit dieser Begriffe, so fern dieselbe dem Verstande zur Regel dient. Dergleichen Vernunftbegriffe werden nicht aus der Natur geschöpft, vielmehr befragen wir die Natur nach diesen Ideen, und halten unsere Erkenntnis für mangelhaft, so lange sie denselben nicht adäquat ist.“ 22

In Critique of Judgement, Kant calls such principles used to conceive nature as a system the ‘subjective maxims of judgement’: they are the maxims guiding our thinking to bring about the perfection of knowledge. „Es ist also nur die Materie, sofern sie organisiert ist, welche den Begriff von ihr als einem Naturzwecke notwendig bei sich führt, weil diese ihre spezifische Form zugleich Produkt der Natur ist. Aber dieser Begriff führt nun notwendig auf die Idee der gesamten Natur als eines Systems nach der Regel der Zwecke; welcher Idee nun aller Mechanismen der Natur nach Prinzipien der Vernunft (wenigstens um daran die Naturerscheinung zu versuchen) untergeordnet werden muß. Das Prinzip der Vernunft ist ihr als nur subjektiv, d.i. als Maxime zuständig: Alles in der Welt ist irgend wozu gut; nichts ist in ihr umsonst; und man ist durch das Beispiel, das die Natur an ihren organischen Produkten gibt, berechtigt, ja berufen, von ihr und ihren Gesetzen nichts, als was im Ganzen zweckmäßig ist, zu erwarten. Es versteht sich, daß dieses nicht ein Prinzip für die bestimmende, sondern nur für die reflektierende Urteilskraft sei, daß es regulativ und nicht konstitutiv sei, und wir dadurch nur einen Leitfaden bekommen, die Naturdinge in Beziehung auf einen Bestimmungsgrund, der schon gegeben ist, nach einer neuen gesetzlichen 22

Cf. Kritik der Reinen Vernunft, Kant, Werke, cit. 1975, B 674. 127

Ordnung zu betrachten, und die Naturkunde nach einem andern Prinzip, nämlich dem der Endursachen, doch unbeschadet dem des Mechanismus ihrer Kausalität, zu erweitern.“ 23

When we want to consider human being in terms of his natural capacities we are in fact looking at human being as having a systematic nature or form (in the Aristotelian sense), and this is already conceiving human being in terms of a subjective maxim attributing to nature an end. Such thinking is required if our intention is to acquire pragmatic knowledge (in the already defined sense) of the human beings. In other words, when one undertakes to elaborate the ‘Naturgeschichte’ in contrast to ‘Naturbeschreibung’ one is compelled to look at nature as a teleological system, i.e. as hierarchical system of ends. But the notion of a hierarchical system of ends requires us to make a distinction between ends which are not absolute and the ends which are absolute: „Endzweck ist derjenige Zweck, der keines andern als Bedingung seiner Möglichkeit bedarf. [...] Nehmen wir aber die Zweckverbindung in der Welt für real und für sie eine besondere Art der Kausalität, nämlich einer absichtlich wirkenden Ursache an, so können wir bei der Frage nicht stehen bleiben: wozu Dinge der Welt (organisierte Wesen) diese oder jene Form haben, in diese oder jene Verhältnisse gegen andere von der Natur gesetzt sind; sondern, da einmal ein Verstand gedacht wird, der als die Ursache der Möglichkeit solcher Formen angesehen werden muß, wie sie wirklich an Dingen gefunden werden, so muß auch in eben demselben nach dem objektiven Grunde gefragt werden, der diesen produktiven Verstand zu einer Wirkung dieser Art bestimmt haben könne, welcher dann der Endzweck ist, wozu dergleichen Dinge da sind. [...] Ein Ding aber, was notwendig seiner objektiven Beschaffenheit wegen, als Endzweck einer verständigen Ursache existieren soll, muß von der Art sein, daß es in der Ordnung der Zwecke von keiner anderweitigen Bedingung, als bloß seiner Idee, abhängig ist. Nun haben wir nun eine einzige Art Wesen in der Welt, deren Kausalität teleologisch, d.i. auf Zwecke gerichtet und doch zugleich so beschaffen ist, daß das Gesetz, nach welchem sie sich Zwecke zu bestimmen haben, von ihnen selbst als unbedingt und von Naturbedingungen unabhängig, an sich aber als notwendig, vorgestellt wird. Das Wesen dieser Art ist der Mensch, aber als Noumenon 23

Cf. Kritik der teleologischen Urteilskraft, Kant, Werke, cit. 1975, B 300-301. 128

betrachtet; das einzige Naturwesen, an welchem wir doch ein übersinnliches Vermögen (die Freiheit) und sogar das Gesetz der Kausalität, samt dem Objekte derselben, welches es sich als höchststen Zweck vorsetzen kann (das höchste Gut in der Welt), von Seiten seiner eigenen Beschaffenheit erkennen können. [...] Wenn nun Dinge der Welt, als ihrer Existenz nach abhängige Wesen, einer nach Zwecken handelnden obersten Ursache bedürfen, so ist der Mensch der Schöpfung Endzweck; denn ohne diesen wäre die Kette der einander untergeordneten Zwecke nicht vollständig gegründet; und nur im Menschen, aber auch in diesem als Subjekte der Moralität, ist die unbedingte Gesetzumgebung in Ansehung der Zwecke anzutreffen, welche ihn also allein fähig macht, ein Endzweck zu sein, dem die ganze Natur teleologisch untergeordnet ist. 24

Thus a postulation of a subject - to define something in terms of ‘what for’ or ‘to what end’ something is there, necessitates a subject whose purpose it serves. Such a subject requires to be a purely intelligible being without there being any admixture of sensible content (bloß seiner Idee abhängig). An idea of ‘freely choosing and acting being’ (frei handelndes Wesen), who is not ‘legislated to’, but rather ‘legislates to himself’ is such a being. Thus the notion of Naturzweck logically necessitates an ‘idea of free-will’ which is an end in itself (‘die Idee eines freien Willens, der sein eigener Zweck ist’.) That is, a concept of a ‘self defining being’ that is free from every compulsion and traces of nature, (i.e. causal influence) is considered by Kant as a logical presupposition for a conception of nature as a teleological system. Human being is such a being to the extent that he is not under the compulsion of nature, and to the extent he subjects himself to moral law. Thus the moral law constitutes man 25

as a free acting being, because otherwise, the freedom of an individual is the limit to the freedom of another individual. That is, the idea of freedom requires ‘the idea of an ethical community’ (Idee eines ethischen Gemeinwesens) . But this freedom under the moral law has to be distinguished from the compelling from outside. That is, it has to be distinguished from the obligation defined by the custom and law of a State. Accordingly, Kant also makes a distinction between 24 25

See Kritik der teleologischen Urteilskraft, Kant, Werke, cit, 1975, B 396-399. Cf. Methodenlehre der teleologischen Urteilskraft, Kant, Werke, cit. 1975, A 395. 129

‘civilisation’, in the sense of manners and customs which are the product of a historical process, and ‘culture’ which involves a ‘moral idea’. In the passage quoted earlier from the Critique of Judgement, Kant distinguishes those refinements and happiness that the history has bestowed on man, or what „nature can supply for the purpose of preparing him for what he himself must do in order to be a final end“, 26

from man as the ‘final end’ of creation itself. Thus Kant demarcates ‘morality’ as an idea belonging to ‘culture’ from civilisation where the right use of such ideas belonging to culture is not yet there. This is based on the important distinction: man as the ultimate end of nature and man as the final end of creation. 6.3.5

27

Potentials Endowed by Nature (Naturanlagen)

In order to elucidate this concept I require to introduce some distinctions. I will use in the following the three disposition words available in the common usage, ‘ability’, ‘skill’ and ‘capacity’, in such a way that the former two are commandeered for a purpose of technical distinction, and the last, without such regimentation of its sense, i.e. I will use the word ‘capacity’ indifferently to refer both abilities and skills. An ‘ability’ is a potential capacity of human beings that can be developed into a skill or skills. A ‘skill’ is a disposition discernible in the actions of the individuals when they perform it such a way that their success and accomplishments are not attributable to chance.

28

‘Abilities’ and ‘skills’ are

dispositions attributable to individuals, but the former is a second order disposition over the latter. However we need to distinguish second order dispositions like abilities which are potentials from such second order dispositions like ‘methodical’ which too are conceived over skills. Potentials differ from second order dispositions like ‘methodical’ in that the former, though like the latter are conceived by discerning them through the realised skills, yet unlike the latter, do not imply that the individual to whom those potentials are attributed can necessarily exercise the corresponding skills. 26

Kant, Critique of Judgement, p. 92f. In German: „was die (Natur) zu leisten vermag, um ihn (den Menschen) zu dem vorzubereiten, was er tun muß, um Endzweck zu sein.“ In: Methodenlehre der teleologischen Urteilskraft, Kant, Werke, cit. 1975, A 386. 27 The German terms are ‘letzter Zweck der Natur’ and ‘Endzweck der Schöpfung’. 28 An action can be looked at in terms of its being exercised, a token, or in terms of a type of which the exercise is a token. For action type I use sometimes the term ‘action schema’. 130

6.4

Naturgeschichte

6.4.1

Three Types of Narratives

To approach the Kantian conception of Naturgeschichte (as applied to human history), it is useful to distinguish three different ways human beings can be looked upon, and correspondingly, three distinct types of narratives we can construct with regard to them. First, human beings can be looked upon as having dispositions that distinguish them from one another. In this case we identify them as empirical individuals. The judgements that result in differentiating individuals and their inter-actions can be made both in terms of their skills or in terms of their aptitudes (i.e. in terms of their abilities to develop certain skills). Such attributions constructed into a narration can be called a ‘biographical history’. Kant uses the term ‘chronicle’, but his use is not identical with the present day use of it to refer to a list of dates and events. In his use, chronicle is a way of constructing a narration about human actions and ventures where reference to human nature does not play a role. A second way of looking at human beings is to conceive them in terms of certain capacities that distinguish them from the members of other species. In this case, we look at human beings as the tokens of the type, human being. The skills in that perspective are the modes of development of the abilities human beings as a species are capable of - in Kant‘s terms, they are the results of the development of the abilities endowed by nature (Naturanlage). Constructing a narration of human inter-action at this level, as for example, a narration about economic man or political man, is more than a biographical narration; it involves a reference to human nature. One can make even a comprehensive anthropology at this level the Kantian Anthropology in physiologischer Hinsicht - by bringing together into a coherent whole all the characteristics that single out the individuals as exemplars of human species. The generalisation involved at this level, however, is that of differentiating the individuals or groups from the individuals or groups of other species. The realisation of human capacities in the form of skills are considered here determinatively and not reflectively. They are also used as 131

attributes of individuals and groups distributively; thus skills exemplified by different individuals or groups are handled as invariant features to distinguish the doings of human individuals from that of the individuals of other species of animals. This is, to take the Herder’s characterisation of Condillac we have already come across, to consider human being in terms of his animal nature. His capacities are conceived even at this level as unique to his species, but this uniqueness is looked at an object level, i.e. as skills that human beings can have in contrast to the capacities that each species of animals can have. That is, both the biographical approach and the empirical approach to look at human beings are not approaching human beings from a pragmatic standpoint. The pragmatic standpoint is one where the idea of perfection plays a role. Once we bring to the notion of abilities that human beings can develop a notion of their possible state of perfection we realise the speciality of human being in a different sense than he having speciesspecific features. The capacity to reason is a species-specific feature, but it is species specific in a special way. It is only by appreciating this special way in which the capacity to reason is species-specific that we will be able to look at human being in terms of his humanity. Kant defines the ability to ‘reason’ (Vernunftfähigkeit) as following: „Die Vernunft in einem Geschöpfe ist ein Vermögen, die Regeln und Absichten des Gebrauches aller seiner Kräfte weit über den Naturinstinkt zu erweitern, und kennt keine Grenzen ihrer Entwürfe. Sie wirkt aber selbst nicht instinktmäßig, sondern bedarf Versuche, Übung und Unterricht, um von einer Stufe der Einsicht zur anderen allmählich fortzuschreiten.“ 29

Elsewhere capacity for reason (Vernunft) is conceived as to be in a position to make „von seinen Naturanlagen einen vollständigen Gebrauch“. 30

29

Cf. Idee einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht, Kant, Werke, cit. 1975, A 389. 30 Cf. Idee einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht, Kant, Werke, cit. 1975, A 389. 132

In other words, to look at human being as rational is to consider him as being either in an actual process of learning, and partaking in a process of extending all the other human capacities, or being in a position to use other capacities to the full. We will see soon the far reaching implications of this second expression ‘using the other capacities to the full’. But an immediate observation following from the above assertion is that ‘reason’ is not an ability by itself, it has no content of its own. This is the same as saying that it is a capacity of a higher order: it is the capacity to develop all other capacities, a generalised capacity to learn to learn. Thus ‘rational’ is a meta-level predicate: rationality manifests in other human abilities and skills. This has another far reaching, and perhaps a problematic, consequence: since the ‘complete use’ of all the capacities that human beings are capable of cannot be learnt and possessed by any one individual or group, one can only become rational to the extent one is in the process of making the species in a position to use all the other capacities it is endowed with. This raises a question: what is the relationship between the individual learning and the progress of the species? Is the subject to whom the capacity to reason is attributed the individual subject or the human species as a whole? 6.4.2

The Economy of Nature

It appears, at least at times, that Kant reserves the attribute ‘capacity of reason’ for the species as a whole. In fact he even appears to have contempt to man’s terrestrial nature, thereby towards man as individuated, i.e. as an individual. As a 31

compensation to this not very edifying sight of man as an individual in the earthy state of his life, Kant resorts to an assumption found in Aristotle: the nature cannot do something without a purpose. Therefore, man having been endowed with reason, cannot but develop it to its Bestimmung, i.e. to the full destined 31

See for example: „noch mehr aber, daß das Widersinnische der N a t u r a n l a g e n in ihm ihn noch in selbstersonnene Plagen und noch andere von seiner eigenen Gattung, durch den Druck der Herrschaft, die Barbarei der Kriege u.s.w. in solche Not versetzt und er selbst, so viel an ihm ist, an der Zerstörung seiner eigenen Gattung arbeitet, daß, selbst bei der wohltätigsten Natur außer uns, der Zweck derselben, wenn er auf der Glückseligkeit unserer Spezies gestellet wäre, in einem System derselben auf Erden nicht erreicht werden würde, weil die Natur in uns derselben nicht empfanglich ist.“ In: Kritik der teleologischen Urteilskraft, B 390. 133

actualisation of that capacity. Not merely that. Whatever he does must be in some way be a contribution to the process of actualisation of the human species potential. At least, according to him, one has to assume this while writing human history from a pragmatic standpoint. The activities that appear as ‘planlose’ from an empirical standpoint (i.e. a standpoint where the ‘determinate’ concepts are used) must contain a plan, because otherwise the process of man’s realisation of his essence - the history - would be not history of the species. A history of the human species written in terms of the characteristic that singles it out from the whole of animal kingdom, and that characteristic being a meta-characteristic, must necessarily consider every action of the part of that species as the process of realisation of the species-essence. Consequently, the relationship between the individual and species, in so far as the capacity for reason is concerned, is a partwhole relationship (One can see the beginnings of some sort of ‘objective idealism’ here!).

32

The actualisation of the potential of the capacity of reason is spoken of in the idiom of the human species as a subject undergoing through a process of enlightenment. The complete actualisation of ‘reason’ is said require many 33

generations, each one promoting reason by their experiment, training, and instruction so that „um endlich ihre Keime in unserer Gattung zu derjenigen Stufe der Entwicklung zu treiben, welche ihrer Absicht vollständig angemessen ist. Und dieser Zeitpunkt muß wenigstens in der Idee des Menschen das Ziel seiner Bestrebung sein.“ 34

This would mean that man is a ‘rational being’ only when he is looked upon in terms of his active participation in the ‘humanisation’ or enlightening process of the species. Secondly, to the extent the human beings are rational beings, they not only differ in terms of skills, but also in terms of possessing those skills at a certain stage and a state of their development. For the actualisation of the 32

Perhaps, it may be reminded that the terms here such as ‘complete use of one’s natural endowments’, ‘process of enlightenment’ and ‘rational being’ are not discovered features of the encountered individuals. They are conceptual constructions in the reflection process, and thus ‘reflective’ concepts and not ‘detrminate’ ones. 33 Cf. Idee einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht, Kant, Werke, cit. 1975, A 389. 34 Cf. Idee einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht, Kant, Werke, cit. 1975, A 389. 134

potential abilities is a process extending over long periods of history, and therefore, the mode of use of those (object-level) capacities would continuously change from one period of history to another. The passage just quoted is interesting on another count. Kant asserts there that a reference to a temporal point of an actual development has to be conceived as part of the ‘idea of humanity’. In all other instances where he refers to the ‘idea of humanity’ it appears that he wants to accord it only a regulative status, thus denying any type-token relationship to the real world. In the passage above, however, he appears to be asserting that the ideal is to be conceived as attainable in a real historical point. This insistence on a real historical point, I think, is connected with Kant’s conception as to why a construction of a Naturgeschichte is needed and when it can fulfil its function, i.e. what should be the characteristics embodied by the narration in order that it fulfils its purpose. This is the theme of the next section 6.4.3

The History as a Means of Instruction

As already mentioned, the Naturgeschichte is looking at human affairs from a ‘pragmatic standpoint’, i.e. from a standpoint of looking at how to improve the human situation. For Kant, there are two demands put on such a narration. (i) There is a need for a standard of judgement of the status of perfection one finds oneself in. This assertion presumes, and is a consequence of, Kant’s conception of rationality and the corresponding thesis of man to be a species being. In order to judge the level of accomplishment the species has reached, and what lies ahead, or how much is to be covered yet, one requires a universal history of a teleological kind which takes the whole ‘Bestimmung des Menschen’ into account. (ii) There is a need for a means that provides for a ‘moral certainty’ (moralische Gewissheit) that things do move in the direction of progress.

135

Whereas the first point pertains to bringing to the sensible the force of the intelligible world (i.e. the standard belongs to the category of the intelligible) the second point pertains to bringing to the intelligible the touch of the sensible world. In order to make the sensible world an exemplification of the moral world one is trying to establish, one requires to situate oneself within a teleological process, but this teleological process must be experienced as a real thing. A properly written history can be of a service in this regard. In order to be of service, however, it must fulfil two conditions. On the one hand, it has to be more than an empirical description; for the latter would merely result in making the history ‘a sound and fury signifying nothing’: an empirically written history would record events and persons resembling the individuals we encounter in daily life and their inter-actions. They do not act according to an agreed plan ; rather 35

they appear to be acting at cross purposes most of the times . So a history written 36

on an empirical basis would be aimless aggregate of human actions . But on the 37

other hand, an ideal meant for a realisation in this world has to be more than a mere projection; for an ideal without an evidence of their being grounded in real historical situation with forces effective in real history would not have an appeal needed to engage the mind in the real mundane forces in the becoming of the human being. The existence of progress of mankind “läßt sich nicht a priori [...] sondern nur aus der Erfahrung und Geschichte, mit so weit gegründeter Erwartung schließen, als nötig ist, an diesem ihren Fortschreiten zum Besseren nicht zu verzweifeln, sondern mit aller Klugheit und moralischer Vorleuchtung, die Annäherung zu diesem Ziele (ein jeder, soviel an ihm ist) zu befördern.“ 38

What we have come across earlier, the assertion of a need for a temporal reference point in the ‘Idea of perfect state of humanity’ can be explained as a necessary ingredient of promoting this psychological confidence in the historical progress. It is an attempt to bind the search for salvation to this world by arresting 35

„nach einem verabredeten Plane“ cf. Idee einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht, Kant, Werke, cit. 1975, A 387. 36 “einer oft wider den anderen“, cf. Idee einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht, Kant, Werke, cit. 1975, A 386. 37 „planloses Aggregat menschlicher Handlungen“, cf. Idee einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht, Kant, Werke, cit. 1975, A 408. 38 Cf. Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht, Kant, Werke, cit. 1975, A 327. 136

the feeling that history is an absurd play of human motives and desires and the events shaped by them such that their “Anblick uns nötigt, unsere Augen von ihm mit Unwillen wegzuwenden, und, indem wir verzweifeln, jemals darin eine vollendete vernünftige Absicht anzutreffen, uns dahin bringt, sie nur in einer anderen Welt zu hoffen.“

39

In other words, a history from a pragmatic standpoint has to involve both the sensible and the intelligible elements, the former to make history illustrative and appealing in terms of the emotion (‘anschaulich’) and the latter to make it bestow to the factual content an ideal counterpart in order to make it intelligible in terms of the purpose of the ‘humanisation’ of human race. Thus it must be written in such a way that, on the one hand, it refers to real episodes and persons, but on the other hand, such persons and episodes should become constitutive of the process of realisation of the human species essence. Reminiscent of Aristotle’s idea of poetry as more of an episteme than historia, Kant compares such a history with the narration of fictions.

40

Of course such a history of the species (and not of this or that individual or groups, therefore the term ‘universal history’) is a construction that is based on the data provided by the biographical and empirical history. In this sense it is in line with the Aristotelian methodology, of starting with what is prior to us, i.e. the more sensible level of things and enquiring into what is ‘prior in nature’. But, as made clear earlier, there are two types of principles at work in writing a universal history: the constitutive principle defined by the perspective that looks for the historical lines of perfection possible, and secondly the explanatory principles 39

Cf. Idee einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht, Kant, Werke, cit. 1975, A 410. 40 „Es ist zwar ein befremdlicher und, dem Anscheine nach, ungereimter Anschlag, nach einer Idee, wie der Weltlauf gehen müßte, wenn er gewissen vernünftigen Zwecken angemessen sein sollte, eine Geschichte abfassen zu wollen; es scheint, in einer solchen Absicht könne nur ein Roman zu Stande kommen. Wenn man indessen annehmen darf: daß die Natur, selbst im Spiele der menschlichen Freiheit, nicht ohne Plan und Endabsicht verfahre, so könnte diese Idee doch wohl brauchbar werden; und, ob wir gleich zu kurzsichtig sind, den geheimen Mechanism ihrer Veranstaltung durchzuschauen, so dürfte diese Idee uns doch zum Leitfaden dienen, ein sonst planloses Aggregat menschlicher Handlungen, wenigstens im großen, als ein System darzustellen.“ In: Idee einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht, Kant, Werke, cit. 1975, A 407. 137

which show how the empirical individuals, whatever their conscious intentions may be, are in fact furthering the realisation of rationality. To emphasise again, Kant’s recommendation is that the history as a means of instruction should be written in such a way that it shows the human individuals as partaking in the destiny of the species irrespective of whether they do it consciously or not. But what they can and ought to do as human beings is to partake in it deliberately by being aware of it. This is Thomas Aquinas, pure and simple, and the Christian theme forces itself onto our attention. The theme of Providence becomes even more conspicuous if we remind ourselves the question raised earlier: if the agency is conceived as being located in the species and not in the individual, how can they partake in the process of history? The answer, as has been indicated in the previous paragraph, is that it is by submitting to the purpose manifest in the nature (Naturabsicht) - the will that has foreseen man as the ‘final end of creation’ who has to live by the submission to the moral law. But such a moral law is not manifest in nature in such a way as to be open to an empirical discovery; it has to be discerned through the intelligible character of human beings, and his capacity to discern Ideas and Ideals ‘unconditioned’ from the admixture of sensible elements. This explains the need for writing a fictional history that shows the ways of God (here the ways of the ‘the purpose of nature’ - Naturabsicht) to man. Thus the Naturgeschichte has a double character: on the one hand, as a product of man’s conception and writing (at the level of signs), it is stepping into the history by man self-consciously, to partake self-regulatively in the destiny foreseen for him by nature; on the other hand, at the level of objects, it is a description of how the purpose of nature (Naturabsicht) functions in history as a stern teacher providing the disciplining and instructing the human species for its good. 41

41

It is interesting to compare what Kant says in Über Pädagogik about education with what he says about the role of Naturgeschichte in the becoming of the human species. About education he say: „Disziplin oder Zucht ändert die Tierheit in die Menschheit um. Ein Tier ist schon alles durch seinen Instinkt; eine fremde Vernunft hat bereits alles für dasselbe besorgt. Der Mensch aber braucht eigene Vernunft. Er hat keinen Instinkt, und muß sich selbst den Plan seines Verhaltens machen. Weil er aber nicht sogleich im Stande ist, dieses zu tun, sondern roh auf die Welt kommt: so müssen es andere für ihn tun.“ In: Kant, Werke, cit. 1975, A2. 138

When human history is looked at as part of such a Naturgechichte, suggests Kant, it appears „as unrolling of a hidden plan in order to bring about a condition - an inner state, and for this purpose, also an outer perfect civil constitution, - in which alone all capacities inherent in human species can be developed to the full“. (translated freely by me)42

The ‘inner state’ referred to here, as will become clear later, is that of a condition of culturedness which involves the submission to the moral law. This is the last Compare this with: „[...] oder vielmehr annehmen solle, die Natur verfolge hier einen regelmäßigen Gang, unsere Gattung von der unteren Stufe der Tierheit an allmählich bis zur höchsten Stufe der Menschheit und zwar durch eigene, obzwar dem Menschen abgedrungene Kunst zu führen, und entwickele in dieser scheinbarlich wilden Anordnung ganz regelmäßig jene ursprünglichen Anlagen;“ In: Idee einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht, Kant, Werke, cit. 1975, A 401. Similarly the following is about the tasks of education „Bei der Erziehung muß der Mensch also 1) d i s z i p l i n i e r t werden. Disziplinieren heißt suchen zu verhüten, daß die Tierheit nicht der Menschheit, in dem einzelnen sowohl, als gesellschaftlichen Menschen, zum Schaden gereiche. Disziplin ist alo bloß Bezähmung der Wildheit. 2) Muß der Mensch k u l t i v i e r t werden. Kultur begreift unter sich die Belehrung und die Unterweisung. Sie ist die Verschaffung der Geschicklichkeit. Diese ist der Besitz eines Vermögens, welches zu allen beliebigen Zwecken zureichend ist. Sie bestimmt also gar keine Zwecke, sondern überläßt das nachher den Umständen. Einige Geschicklichkeiten sind in allen Fällen gut, z.E. das Lesen und Schreiben; andere nur zu einigen Zwecken, z.E. die Musik, um uns beliebt zu machen. Wegen der Menge der Zwecke wird die Geschicklichkeit gewissermaßen unendlich. 3) Muß man darauf sehen, daß der Mensch auch k l u g werde, in die menschliche Gesellschaft passe, daß er beliebt sei, und Einfluß habe. Hierzu gehört eine gewisse Art von Kultur, die man Z i v i l i s i e r u n g nennet. Zu derselben sind Manieren, Artigkeit und eine gewisse Klugheit erforderlich, der zufolge man alle Menschen zu seinen Endzwecken gebrauchen kann. Sie richtet sich nach dem wandelbaren Geschmacke jedes Zeitalters. So liebte man noch vor wenigen Jahrzehnten Zeremonien im Umgange. 4) Muß man auf die M o r a l i s i e r u n g sehen. Der Mensch soll nicht bloß zu allerlei Zwecken geschickt sein, sondern auch die Gesinnung bekommen, daß er nur lauter gute Zwecke erwähle. Gute Zwecke sind diejenigen, die notwendigerweise von jedermann gebilligt werden; und die auch zu gleicher Zeit jedermanns Zwecke sein können.“ (in: Über Pädagogik, Kant, Werke, cit. 1975, A 22-24) Compare this enumeration of the tasks of education with the tasks described in connection with what Nature has to accomplish with regard to the enlightenment of the human species: „Ehe dieser letzte Schritt (nämlich die Staatenverbindung) geschehen, also fast nur auf der Hälfte ihrer Ausbildung, erduldet die menschliche Natur die härtesten Übel unter dem betrüglichen Anschein äußerer Wohlfahrt; und Rousseau hatte so Unrecht nicht, wenn er den Zustand der Wilden vorzog, so bald man nämlich diese letzte Stufe, die unsere Gattung noch zu ersteigen hat, wegläßt. Wir sind im hohen Grade durch Kunst und Wissenschaft kultiviert. Wir sind zivilisiert bis zum Überlästigen zu allerlei gesellschaftlicher Artigkeit und Anständigkeit. Aber uns schon für moralisiert zu halten, daran fehlt noch sehr viel. Denn die Idee der Moralität gehört noch zur Kultur; der Gebrauch dieser Idee aber, welcher nur auf das Sittenähnliche in der Ehrliebe und der äußeren Anständigkeit hinausläuft, macht bloß die Zivilisierung aus.“ Kant, Werke, cit. 1975, A 403. 42 „Man kann die Geschichte der Menschengattung im Großen als die Vollziehung eines verborgenen Plans der Natur ansehen, um eine innerlich - und z u d i e s e m Z w e c k e auch äußerlich - vollkommene Staatsverfassung zu Stande zu bringen, als den einzigen Zustand, in welchem sie alle ihre Anlagen in der Menschheit völlig entwickeln kann.“ In: Idee einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht, Kant, Werke, cit. 1975, A 389. 139

step that human being has to take by himself to fulfil that destiny foreseen for 43

him by nature, the destiny of being a ‘freely acting being’. The outer condition, the condition of the perfect civil constitution, on the other hand, has a double status both as a regulative instrument in the hands of individuals in their political engagement and as a description of the purpose of nature (Naturabsicht) in its making of the human history. Two features of human nature provide the structural determinants of the human history that tend to the denouement indicated in the passage just quoted. (i) The human being has two opposing tendencies within himself: a tendency to enter into social relations on the one hand, and a tendency to withdraw into isolation from such relations on the other; in short, the human animal is characterised by the feature of the unsocial sociability.

44

(ii) The full development of human capacities are possible only in the species, but not in the individual.

45

These premises give to Kant’s use of the term ‘culture’ a double character: on the one hand it has a character of a moral appeal or command to human beings to develop his abilities (Kant’s term is Anlagen) to the perfect state possible within the species ‘man’. On the other hand it appears as a descriptive term - to describe a means that prepares human beings to become ‘freely acting beings’ (frei handelnde Wesen). Kant introduces a conception of an institutional order that can be visualised simultaneously as a concrete historical goal of one’s actions, and as a replica of the real historical tendency resulting from the unintended consequence of the basic feature of man as an animal, the unsocial sociability. 43

see the long passage from the Critque of Judgement quoted in the section 6.3.1. Mensch hat eine Neigung, sich zu vergesellschaften; weil er in einem solchen Zustande sich mehr als Mensch, d.i. die Entwicklung seiner Naturanlagen, fühlt. Er hat aber auch einen großen Hang, sich zu vereinzelnen (isolieren); weil er in sich zugleich die ungesellige Eigenschaft antrifft, alles bloß nach seinem Sinne richten zu wollen, und daher allerwärts Widerstand erwartet, so wie er von sich selbst weiß, daß er seiner Seits zum Widerstande gegen andere geneigt ist.“ In: Idee einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht, Kant, Werke, cit. 1975, A 393. 45 „Am Menschen (als dem einzigen vernünftigen Geschöpf auf Erden) sollten sich diejenigen Naturanlagen, die auf den Gebrauch seiner Vernunft abgezielt sind, nur in der Gattung, nicht aber im Individuum vollständig entwickeln.“ In: Idee einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht, Kant, Werke, cit. 1975, A 389. 44„Der

140

This is his ‘Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Perspective’, where an evolutionary scheme of human species development is sketched. 6.4.4

The Cosmopolitan Order and the Theory of Stages

As indicated earlier, in order to be capable of instruction, the purely intelligible, i.e. an ideal, conception of ‘the complete use of one’s natural endowments’ needs to be linked to the actual ‘civil society’. Kant does this by suggesting that a complete use of human capacities is possible only in a society governed by a civil constitution, which in its turn is embedded in a larger whole of federation of such societies with civil constitution, the Volkerbund (the later English translation which was taken up as a political agenda after the first world war, was ‘the league of Nations’). Of course, even such a cosmopolitan society (the ‘weltbürgerliche Gesellschaft’) has a regulative status , i.e. it can only be approximated. But the 46

ideal here is clothed in terms of a tangible plan for political action. With this plan, human being starts partaking in the destiny foreseen for him by nature ‘selfregulatively’ what until then was a role of being pushed by nature. With the help of this link one can offer the necessary political terminology that can serve, on the one hand, to describe the concrete political reality, and on the other, ‘indicate’ the amount of rationality this political reality incorporates. Secondly, Kant adopts an approach that foreshadows the 20th century structuralism: for an understanding of the behaviour and inter-actions of individuals at the social plane their intentions are irrelevant; we can look at the social inter-actions as effects of the unsocial sociability, a feature all exemplars (or tokens of the type) of the human animals share, thus providing the structural determinant of their inter-actions. It is this characteristic that brings about the unrolling of the human capacities: it is the instrument of nature to make man fulfil his destiny foreseen for him by her:

46

„welche an sich unerreichbare Idee aber kein konstitutives Prinzip (der Erwartung eines, mitten in der lebhaftesten Wirkung und Gegenwirkung der Menschen bestehenden, Friedens), sondern nur ein regulatives Prinzip ist: ihr, als der Bestimmung des Menschengeschlechts, nicht ohne gegründete Vermutung einer natürlichen Tendenz zu derselben, fleißig nachzugehen.“ In: Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht, Kant, Werke, cit. 1975, A 333. 141

„Das Mittel, dessen sich die Natur bedient, die Entwicklung aller ihrer Anlagen zu Stande zu bringen, ist der Antagonismus derselben in der Gesellschaft, so fern dieser doch am Ende die Ursache einer gesetzmäßigen Ordnung derselben wird. Ich verstehe hier unter dem Antagonismus die ungesellige Geselligkeit der Menschen; d.h. den Hang derselben, in Gesellschaft zu treten, der doch mit einem durchgängigen Widerstande, welcher diese Gesellschaft beständig zu trennen droht, verbunden ist. [...] Die natürlichen Triebfedern dazu, die Quellen der Ungeselligkeit und des durchgängigen Widerstandes, woraus so viele Übel entspringen, die aber doch auch wieder zur neuen Anspannung der Kräfte, mithin zu mehrerer Entwicklung der Naturanlagen antreiben, verraten also wohl die Anordnung eines weisen Schöpfers; und nicht etwa die Hand eines bösartigen Geistes, der in seine herrliche Anstalt gepfuscht oder sie neidischer Weise verderbt habe.“ 47

In other words, at the level of Naturgeschichte all the products of human development - the manners, the customs, the skills and the artefacts, including that of political orders - are the results of the processes initiated by the characteristic feature of human beings, the unsocial sociability: it pushes the human animal into a combination of antagonism, and a search for the means to harmonise and contain that antagonism. The cosmopolitan order sketched by him is one such means, presumably the most sophisticated and advanced one, of harmonising the antagonism, which guarantees „die größte Freiheit (of the individuals) [...] und doch die genaueste Bestimmung und Sicherung der Gefahr [...] damit die Kräfte der Menschheit nicht einschlafen, aber doch auch nicht ohne ein Prinzip der Gleichheit ihrer wechselseitigen Wirkung und Gegenwirkung, damit sie einander nicht zerstören.“ 48

The ‘cosmopolitan order’ functions both as a sensible embodiment or a concrete temporally tangible endpoint of the process of enlightenment (the Zeitpunkt) and also as a measure of the different institutional arrangements which has embodied the combination of the antagonism and the means of containing it. That is, it is both a concrete liberal order and a measure to put different institutional arrangements in a scale of sophistication and effectiveness.

47

Cf. Idee einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht, Kant, Werke, cit. 1975, A 392. 48 Cf. Idee einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht, Kant, Werke, cit. 1975, A 402. 142

Thus here we find the forerunner of both the Hegelian temporal evolutionary scheme and the Weberian or of Cassirer variety of a structural evolutionary scheme. Both are the results of ideals transformed into a descriptive scheme in order to edify and instruct. (These ideals, in their turn, are the embodiments in not so secular language the Christian theme of the universality of the biblical commands). But in the process only the man is made the theme of conceptualisation of culture and not the different groups with their different pasts. One may attempt to recast Kant’s Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht into a history of a group rather than the history of progress of the whole human kind. This is what some of the post-modernist attempts amount to. But the categories available even for that purpose are the ones provided by the evolution from collectivist to the individualist ethos which is another way of expressing the evolution from instinctive and traditional binding to the binding through the selfgiven law.

143

7

The Creations of the Unfinished Animal: The Human World Myths, Sciences and other Wonders of the Earthy Angel

7.1

The German Tradition: the ‘Humanisation’ and the ‘Grundlegung’

In the field of culture theory it is possible to identify a characteristic German stream. Though including such varied thinkers as Herder, Kant, Hegel, Dilthey, Marx and Weber, still there is a certain flavour in the questions they ask that unites them. It is sometimes traced back to the influence of the German idealism, and sometimes to the specific hermeneutic approach. Though both the suggestions have much to commend about them, my suggestion is to look at this phenomena by situating it within the context of the narrative of this book, that of secularising the theological assumptions underlying the world of objects and customs. Which could be the thread binding the varied pre-occupations of this diverse group of individuals? In raising this question I am not presaging a detailed discussion of these thinkers; for my concern is not with the subtleties of the answers they gave but to isolate the characteristic category habit if any that inform the questions they have asked. We saw in the second chapter that Mill in effect identified the contribution of the German school of his time with ‘evolutionism’ This is a very perceptive judgement both in its reading of the German philosophy of the time and in its identification of the theme of significance for the social sciences: the evolutionism was to have a far more wide ranging influence on the human sciences than Mill could imagine at the time of his writing, and it is still refreshed from time to time for new theoretical applications and endeavour. But, as must have become clear through the elucidation of Kant’s Naturgeschichte in the last chapter, evolutionism was derived from the thesis that human being is a species being (Gattungswesen) and the corresponding view that there is a need for humanisation of the human animal before the proper human form of life can begin. This last, in its turn, is built on the notion of man occupying the middle

144

space between the heaven and the earth, i.e. sharing the angelic nature of being intelligible and the animal nature of being sensible. Thus my suggestion is to identify the characteristic contribution of the German tradition with the influential theme in the thinking on culture that man differs from animals to the extent he has emancipated from his sensible nature either by ‘transcending’ it or ‘sublimating’ it. The contributions to the philosophy of culture by the ‘German School’ that Mill commended is a derivative of this 1

theme, and it can be considered as the main stay of the German tradition from Kant onwards: Hegel’s story of ascension of man to freedom, Marx’s story of primitivism through capitalism to the future communism, Weber’s story of modernisation, the efforts of Neo-Kantianism as well as that of the philosophical Anthropology at ‘Grundlegung’ of the sciences through rooting them in the speciality of the human nature, and Cassirer’s story of humanisation of the world through the symbolic forms - all owe to a contrast between the sensible and the intelligible on the one hand, and the need for a transformation of the former through the latter for the human form of life, on the other. A much more detailed and richer story can be told than I have done of the transformation of the notion of ‘humanisation of individuals through education’ into a notion of ‘the humanisation of the human race’ as found in Kant and the subsequent German philosophy of history. Equally richer narration is possible of my next cursory glance at the field opened up by the Kantian tenet that the world we live in is humanised. The focus in the following is confined to identifying the motivating question of a tradition rather than going into the subtleties involved in answering it. Perhaps we can begin by reflecting on the characteristic German word ‘Grundlegung’ which is used to speak about launching a research question or a discipline. Though it can be translated as ‘laying the foundations’ and in this idiom can lay claim to a tradition going back to Descartes and Hobbes, such a 1

See chapter 2 and section 3.3. 145

translation misses thereby the characteristic Kantian flavour of the German term. Surrounding the notion of ‘Grundlegung’ are the implication threads associated with the tenet that the world is open to different forms of apprehension, and correspondingly it is ‘humanised’ in different ways. Thus ‘Grundlegung’ is connected with the assumption that to lay foundation to a specific field of activity or specific field of studies is to provide for, or to show, the (logical) conditions of its possibility. Further, underlying that assumption is the notion of ‘natural reason’, the emergence of which was traced back in section 5.3 to a transference of the anchorage of the context-invariance of knowledge from the Aristotelian category of nature (because of its elimination through the advent of maker God) to the speciality of human nature as delineated by Aquinas. The tenet that the world we live is a humanised world is a consequence of the formulation the notion of ‘natural reason’ received in the hands of Kant: it started a mode of philosophical study seeking the unity of the world, not in the nature of it, but in that of its human maker, the way or ways the apriori forms of making the world cohere in human nature. Thus it delineated a philosophical task of seeking the underlying apriori forms that make different human activities possible. This also opens one’s horizon of interests: one gets interested, for example, not merely in the way man makes the world in science, legal institutions and Christian theology, but also in myths, which were originally supposed to be the pre-Christian form of religiously coloured world view. Thus, Schelling, Cassirer and Jaspers were interested in the nature of ‘mythical language’ and its relation to philosophy and science (i.e. to see the relation between ‘mythos’ and ‘logos’). Perhaps the conceptual interest in ethnography on the one hand, and artistic expression on the other - both started off their career in the central European tradition - owes to this opening up of the new horizon of interests by the Kantian 2

theme of the ways of making the world. 2

See Ernest Gellner on the central European roots of even the English Cultural Anthropology: Gellner, E. (1995), p. 74-80. 146

7.2

The Human Animal and its Angelic Faculty

To recall what was said in the section 3.4.2: most of the distinctions that were to later become prominent in the philosophical tradition while thinking about human affairs were identified there in a passage from Aristotle ; I summed up the thrust 3

of the passage as the thesis that both speech and other human institutions (polis), though belong to the category of made, nevertheless the process of their making is a process of an actualisation of a nature of man. This thesis is developed by Kant and the German philosophy of history into a theory of the human institutions in the altered logical landscape of the concepts inherited from the medieval mediation of Aristotle. This means effectively a combination of two themes: (i) a theme of the agency not located in the form but in the bearer of the forms - in the context of human institutions, effectively, in the man, the maker; (ii) a theme of the contrast between the sensibility and intelligibility, and the man being the intelligible being. As far as the first theme is concerned, I indicated the perceived task in the last chapter while discussing Kant’s Naturgeschichte: there is the task of accounting for human being as the product of nature and history even while considering him the maker of that history or tradition: how to conceive agency in such a way that 4

it reconciles to the removal of its location away from the Aristotelian form (or away from the Aristotelian self-generating physis), without however transferring it either to the individual maker or to a transcendent Creator, but simultaneously recognising a sort of a role of agency to the individual? As discussed in chapter 6 Kant attempts to solve this problem by bringing the other theme into picture: he interprets man’s intelligible nature as being equivalent to his being a speciesbeing (Gattungswesen), and the individuals being human to the extent they participate in the process of this species being unrolling itself all its capacities, i.e. in the process of its developing into a community of moral individuals living in an ‘outer’ constitutional State of liberal order and an ‘inner state’ of obeying the

3

Cf. Aristotle, cit. 1995, Politics, bk. I, 1253a 5-20. Cf. the conception of ‘Naturgeschichte’ in the previous chapter and also Marx’s assertion that man makes history but in circumastances that he himself has not made. 4

147

Moral Law. This story of ascension of man from necessity to freedom, from his 5

animal sensible nature to a state of being governed by his intelligible nature, is what unites Kant, the German philosophy of history and the later transformation of it into the sociological models of modernisation in the hands of Weber and Talcot Parsoms. Apart from its relevance to the contrast dealt with while 6

considering Kant’s Naturgeschichte, that of ‘self-regulating’ individuals versus ‘nature-bound’ humans, the question of agency pertains more to the domain of the philosophy of history than to the field of culture theory. Therefore in this chapter I will not focus on the aspect of agency in the blending effected by the German tradition of the two themes. The other theme is both more conspicuous and more basic, conspicuous in its influence in shaping the concepts to talk about culture; more basic in that it constituted the terms of formulating the strategy of solving the problem of agency, thus giving rise to the plot of the story of man’s ascension from the realm of necessity to that of freedom. The German tradition brought the assumption that sense-knowledge is context bound and intellectual knowledge is context free (as delineated in 5.3) to bear upon the characterisation of human nature. Translated from a characterisation of the nature of two sorts of knowledge to a characterisation of two sorts of capacities existing in human beings, it would mean that the exercise of the sense capacity binds one to the context and the exercise of the capacity for intellection frees one from the context. A lot of discussion in the theory of culture is a variation of this theme. I will illustrate this by following up one strand, the mythical versus scientific form of thinking, and the corresponding characterisation of the ‘traditional societies’ as closed and the ‘modern societies’ as open. If the exercise of the sense capacity binds one to the context and the exercise of the capacity for intellection frees one from it, then the characterisation of man as a rational animal would mean that he is human to the extent he frees himself from 5 6

See sections 6.5.3 and 6.5.4. Cf. Parsons, T. (1971). 148

the confinement and binding arising out of the exercise of the sense-capacity. The interest in the way man has, and ought to, discipline or ‘sublimate’ the sensecapacity or/and the way the nature (Kant’s picture of her as a stern teacher referred to in the last chapter) disciplines him to bring about his real destiny to come to the forefront, can thus becomes one line of pre-occupation. When this 7

interest gets tied to the evolutionary scheme, either structural or temporal, it yields most of the sociological models available now for characterising different ‘societies’. Of course, one of the pre-conditions for such models to work is to conceive societies as self-enclosed, and conceive them as analogous to a biological organisms, and development as a question of unrolling the essence of that ‘society’. The theoretical devices or subterfuge used for securing such conditions of identity of the investigated society is one of the interesting field for historical-cum-conceptual research. I will however confine myself to the conceptual under-grid rather than the thickets of over-growth, wherein to find the pathways and byways could be a laborious, though perhaps an enticing venture of rambling around. In short, the German tradition drew a twofold contrast between the nature of the capacity or faculty of reason and the sense-capacity or the faculty of sensing: the latter is a capacity to get affected and its exercise is context bound; the former is spontaneous, i.e. an active capacity, and its exercise transcends the confinement of the context. A paradigmatic example of the way this contrast gets worked out as a theory of culture is provided by the way Herder develops the thesis presaged in Aristotle’s Politics that both speech and polis are rooted in a faculty that singles out man from animals. 7.3

Herder: The ‘Instinctless Animal’ and its Special Faculty

7.3.1

Language, the Prototype and the Centre of Human Institutions

One consequence that may be drawn from the Aristotelian passage is that a theory of language is identical with a theory of human institutions. Herder’s Ursprung 7

Kant stresses, at least when it comes to speaking about education, the disciplining view; Herder and Schiller may be considered as holding to a sublimation view. How exactly the notion of ‘sublimation’ has to be understood, and how it differs from ‘disciplining’ is an interesting question in itself, and worth a separate investigation. 149

der Sprache draws this consequence and develops Aristotle’s idea from Politics into such a theory. The underlying idea of Herder is that if we can identify the specificity of human language and its development then we have also a key to answer the question why human beings have culture and how it develops. Of 8

course, in this understanding, unlike for many currents of linguistics today, the language is not merely a system of (syntactic) rules. Rather, it is like the ‘Langage’ of Saussure, a totality of human inherited resource for thinking and orienting in the world. In fact, for Herder to have language, to have culture and to be human are synonymous. For, his programme is to demonstrate the necessity of the origin of language in human beings by showing that there cannot be human thinking or apprehension (Verständnishandlung) without ‘marker sign’ (Merkwort), i.e. a mnemonic aid that does not depend on the vivid memory of the situation remembered. The strategy he adopts to execute this programme is to show that man, not being gifted with any marked sense-capacity, can and has to develop a substitute sixth sense to be able to function. In the above formulation, the ‘can’ is equally important as the ‘has to’: as we will see there are two influential readings of Herder the difference of which depend crucially upon how much stress is laid on ‘can’ in the above formulation. It determines the status of this sixth sense - whether it is an expression of a mere deficiency of ‘instincts’ or or an extra faculty that only human being is gifted with. This sixth sense, to which Herder invents the word ‘Besonnenheit’, is conceived as synonymous with both ‘human understanding’ and the ‘language ability’. The outward expression of it is the Merkwort. Not merely the language but also all other human institutions such as family and community, as well as the traditions that bind the individual across the generations, in short, all those expressions that 8

This last is the assumption, and in fact almost the formulation of Cassirer. Cf. Cassirer, E. (1979). 150

single out human form of life from that of the animals are traced back to the Besonnenheit. „Wenn Verstand und Besonnenheit die Naturgabe seiner Gattung ist, so mußte dies sich sogleich äußern, da sich die schwächere Sinnlichkeit und alle das Klägliche seiner Entbehrungen äußerte. Das instinktlose, elende Geschöpf, [...] das sich selbst helfen sollte und nicht anders als könnte. Alle Mängel und Bedürfnisse als Tier waren dringende Anlässe, sich mit allen Kräften als Mensch zu zeigen; sowie diese Kräfte der Menschheit nicht etwa bloß schwache Schadloshaltungen gegen die ihm versagten größeren Tier-Vollkommenheiten waren, [...] sondern sie waren ohne Vergleichung und eigentliche Gegeneinandermessung seine Art! Der Mittelpunkt seiner Schwere, die Hauptrichtung seiner Seelenwirkungen fiel so auf diesen Verstand, auf menschliche Besonnenheit hin, wie bei der Biene sogleich aufs Saugen und Bauen, Wenn es nun bewiesen ist, daß nicht die mindeste Handlung seines Verstandes ohne Merkwort geschehen konnte, so war auch das erste Moment der Besinnung Moment zu innerer Entstehung der Sprache.“9

This passage when compared with the pssage quoted from Politics in the section 3.4.2 would provide one more evidence to corroborate the suggestion put forward in the section 5.2 that there is a continuing thread running from Aristotle’s Politics to the present day culture theory using identical distinctions, and very often even identical examples, like in this case, the contrast of the activity of bees with that of the human beings, to make the point that human capacity for communication as well as for making the artefacts is different from that of the animals. To come back to Herder’s thesis, the Merkwort, and Besonnenheit of which it is an expression are, on the one hand, the inverse aspect of man being weak in his instincts or sense capacity, but on the other hand, they are what make a human animal into a human being, and they constitute the logical pre-conditions of every human institution. In the next few sections I will elucidate and elaborate this thesis in a little more deatil.

9

Cf. Herder, J.G. (1772, cit. 1981) p. 81. 151

7.3.2

A Not Sense-bound Species and the Besonnenheit

The specificity of human language is traced back by Herder to the ability to change the attention from one focus to another in the field of perception. This ability to turn away from the presence or the ‘immediacy’ of the sensible is what ‘Besonnenheit’ is. This term can only be very weakly translated as ‘reflective capacity’, for Herder’s term also conveys the nuances such as ‘moderation’ and ‘drawing back’ which the word ‘reflection’ in English is not directly associated with. Nevertheless, even though they do not catch all the nuances of the German original, I will use here onwards ‘reflective capacity’ and ‘reflection’ to translate Herder’s ‘Besonnenheit’ and the exercise of the Besonnenheit. The exercise of the reflective capacity is described as ‘sich freidenkende Tätigkeit’, ‘the activity of freely thinking’ which can only be understood as a contrast to the cognition when sense capacity is exercised. This latter, as already mentioned earlier, is supposed to bind one to the context. It is not merely that the term ‘Besonnenheit’ is given sense by Herder in a contrastive fashion; he also conceives the existence of reflective capacity in human beings as an inverse aspect of their not being equipped with better sensecapabilities or instincts. (As already indicated in the section 4.6, from the time of Aquinas the sense-capacity, the capacity for ‘natural inclination’ and ‘instinct’ are identified as the same. Thus in Herder ‘sense-capacity’ and ‘having instincts’ are used synonymously.)

This has led to a reading into Herder an empirical

biological thesis about human species which gives a biological rooting of the human institutions: man is deficient in instincts and consequently he has compensated for it by developing special features; social institutions are one such special compensatory development. Though this thesis put forward by Gehlen may be an interesting thesis by itself, its attribution to Herder is problematic.

10

For, even though Herder does draw out various features that single out human beings as being a consequence from the idea that man is not bound to the sensible or ‘sense-content’ of experience, he couples this with the Aristotelian assumption 10

Cf. Section 9 in the introductory chapter, in: Gehlen, A. (1972). 152

that nature does not endow something without purpose. How to give an empirical content to this dictum that nature does not duplicate and therefore it has made human being capable of reflection by compensating for the capacity withheld from him, the capacity of stronger instincts? However, it is true that in Herder’s thinking a close conceptual connection does exist between man being not bound by the ‘sensible’ content and he being an intelligible being. He draws out the various characteristics that single out human beings as a consequence of his being endowed in such way that there is less capability pertaining to his senses when compared to other animals. He, unlike other animals, is not equipped with appropriate sorts of sense-capacities for discerning the dangers haunting in the environment. Consequently, again unlike in the case of other animals, there is no species-specific natural environment for man to which he is well-adapted, that would make him unsuitable for living in other environments; thus any natural environment is equally suited or unsuited for him. 7.3.3 ‘Merkwort’: ‘Clear’ versus ‘Distinct’ Thinking Similarly, the need to recognise the dangers without being equipped with the sharpness of senses results in the development of a memory form that is not sense-bound, in contrast to that memory of the animals which is sense-bound. To express this Herder uses a classical pair of contrastive terms, ‘distinct’ (‘deutlich’) versus ‘clear’ (‘klar’), a contrast familiar to us from the theory of definitions: defining the term by providing examples is providing a definition that fulfils the condition of being ‘clear’; defining it through providing rules for connecting its implication threads is fulfilling the condition of being distinct. Thus, according to Herder, human orientation is more through being equipped with rules for moving from one situation to another rather than through situations being impressed in memory.

153

Consequently the human language is the medium, or rather the embodiment of a ‘distinct’ rather than that of a ‘clear’ memory. Herder’s formulation of this thesis is to say that the human understanding depends upon the ‘Merkwort’ which in turn is explained by mentioning three contrasts with regard to the conceptual pair ‘clear’ and ‘distinct thinking’. First, the clear thinking is sensible memory („sinnliches Gedächtnis“) and distinct thinking is not dependent on sense bound memory. Secondly, the distinct thinking generalises the experience, thereby making an experience available for others and usable by them, thus making it possible to use the experience of one to improve the living conditions of the species . Thirdly, whereas the clear thinking is a manifold without a discernible 11

unity , the distinct thinking orders the manifold of experience into a distinct unity. 12

In human being even in the state of

utmost sense awareness (sinnlichster

Zustand) the reflective awareness (Besonnenheit) governs. We can say that the 13

capacity to think distinctly is conceived as a capacity to grasp the events in terms of concepts, thereby the experiences of the past and the possible experiences in future can be bound together. 7.3.4 The ‘Instinct’ versus the Creations of the ‘Unfinished Animal’ This characteristic of dependence on the ‘distinct’ memory, and more generally, on the distinct mode of thinking’ in contrast to the clear mode of thinking to which animals due to their sensible nature are confined to, has two consequences for the human animal: (i) it necessitates the development of a form of learning that is not based on sense-experience. (ii) dependence on a mode of thinking that is dependent on learning rather than the sense-equipment gifted along with the birth, makes the human animal in need of care by others in his infancy, and instruction by others for getting equipped for life. Thus it lays the basis for the bindings of family and community.

11

ibid. Cf. p. 75. cf. „ein Traum sehr sinnlicher klarer, lebhafter Vorstellungen, ohne ein Haupgesetz des hellen Wachens, das diesen Traum ordnet“, ibid. p. 76. 13 „Beim Menschen waltet die Besonnenheit selbst im sinnlichsten Zustande“, ibid. p.76. 12

154

Human being can and has to develop a generalised form of learning, i.e. a learning that is not specific to specific contexts. This in turn has two further consequences:

First, the human capacities are predominantly the learnt

capacities, and secondly, a non-context-bound nature of the learning makes it both possible and useful to transmit it across the generations. Human capacities being the learnt capacities has another further feature: learning and perfectioning in human beings has no end to it. „Das unwissendste Geschöpf, wenn es auf die Welt kommt, aber sogleich Lehrling der Natur, auf eine Weise wie kein Tier.“ 14 „Im ganzen Universum gleichsam allein; an nichts geheftet und für alles da, durch nichts gesichert, und durch sich selbst noch minder, muß der Mensch entweder unterliegen oder über alles herrschen, mit Plan einer Weisheit, deren kein Tier fähig ist, von allem deutlichen Besitz nehmen oder umkommen.“ 15

Whereas the animals remain from the beginning to end with almost an unchanged fund of capacities, human beings develop their capacities till the end of their life. Thus human being has a constitutive unfinishedness and a necessity to learn. This fact connects the characteristic of the ‘activity of freely thinking’ (freidenkende Tätigkeit) with the other specific human characteristic, that of unfolding of his powers in the snow-balling type of progression (‘sich seine Kräfte in Progression fortwirken’), both at an individual level and at a species level. Reminiscent of what we have come across in Kant - human animal is human to the extent he participates in the historical process of species getting enlightened - Herder too asserts that the essential aspect of our being is not the enjoyment but progression: „Das Wesentliche unseres Lebens ist nie Genuß, sondern immer Progression, und wir sind nie Menschen gewesen, bis wir zu Ende gelebt haben; dahingegen die Biene Biene war, als sie ihre erste Zelle baute.“

This continuous perfection of the capacities is rooted in the Besonnenheit or reflection. That does not mean that every human action is a reflectively carried action. It only means that the ability is developed through reflection.

14 15

ibid. p. 84. ibid. p.79. 155

The other consequence, the possibility to transmit the experience across the generations gives rise to traditions. Thus language, the embodiment of the distinct mode of memory (as against clear mode, as elucidated earlier), is also the embodiment of traditions, and the binding element that creates communities and ‘Nations’ . 16

7.3.5

The Critique of Utility as the Root of Language and Society

This possibility of traditions is also connected with the necessity of them. Human infant which depends for its equipment on learning, that too on a learning not based on the individual sense-equipment, makes man an animal in need of care by others in his infancy. Herder draws attention to the empirical fact that the human infant both depend on the care of the parents and community, and does get such a care; this disproves the Hobbesian and utilitarian thesis regarding the natrure and possibility of human institutions based on the self-interest. If utilitarians were correct, it should be that human beings develop an interest in the infant out of the utiltity which may accrue out of it. Man being capable of more calculation than the animals, he should be having more callous attitude towards the laborious task of upbringing which hardly has tangible benefits for him. He must be having less emotions than the animals. But in fact the contrary is the case. The utility theory would make the human being to be just careless to their children. But the opposite is the empirical fact. It is not the instinctual endowment that brings the human animal to develop the care and emotional bond towards its community, but rather the other way round: the lack of instincts make humans depend on the parental care, and this gives rise to the bonds of family and community, and the very nature of man being a social animal. 16

The word ‘Nation’ is used in Herder in the sense of a community that is bound by the tradtions embodied in language. The idea of nation as an ethnic entity, though perhaps derivable from some of his utterances - especially because of the centrality of the family in the conception of the community, is not explicitly conceived. Similarly, the notion of ‘Nation State’ is not traceable to Herder. 156

„Und so weiß auch im Ganzen des Geschlechts die Natur aus der Schwachheit Stärke zu machen. Eben deswegen kommt der Mensch so schwach, so dürftig, so verlassen von dem Unterricht der Natur, so ganz ohne Fertigkeiten und Talente auf die Welt, wie kein Tier, damit er, wie kein Tier, eine Erziehung genieße und das menschliche Geschlecht, wie kein Tiergeschlecht, ein innigverbundenes Ganze werde!“17

Nature has made man such a creature that to him the binding through instruction and teaching is essential. This makes language, the outer expression of the 18

special faculty of the instinctless animal, simultaneously the embodiment of the familial memory and bonds. Dependence on such bonds is simultaneously the root of there being the differences between customs and languages and thus giving rise to antagonisms and rivalries, as well as communities and ‘national feelings’. As pointed out earlier, human being is not adapted to any particular natural environment as a consequence of his having no particularised and well developed sense-capacity. This makes his binding not to that of a territory but to that of the communities the focal point of which is the traditions learnt in the laps of his parents and the community surrounding them. Both the sociality and the differences between human groups are not ‘naturwüchsig’ i.e. they are not out19

growths of the ‘natural man’, but yet they are connected with human nature: they are connected with the nature of man being other than that of an inchoately feeling type of animal , thus making him require the Merkwort for his memory 20

and learning. Once such a device is there it has its own logic: the memories and thoughts take shape as words and they travel from mother or father to son or daughter, binding in the process one generation to the next, and thus becomoing the traditions of this and not that community. Thus it sows the seeds of the differences which 17

ibid. p. 96-97. Cf. „Natur hat den Menschen durch Not und Elterntrieb zu einem Wesen gemacht, dem das Band des Unterrichts und der Erziehung wesentlich ist.“ ibid. P.97. 19 see 4th Naturgesetz, cf. Herder, J.G. (1772, cit. 1981). 20 „Der Mensch ist nicht bloß eine dunkel fühlende Auster“, see ibid. p. 77. 18

157

make the antagonism, competition between the groups as well as co-operation between them, both possible and necessary. Necessary, because only through such antagonism, as also Kant suggests , the groups develop their capacities by rivalry 21

and a co-operate based on the goods (both of a material and of a cognitive sort) deficient in each others possession. Thus the nature of family, of education, of sociality of man, and the constitution of the individual through dialogue and tradition, all are traceable to a faculty that stays in an inverse relation to the fact of human Instinktlosigkeit. 7.3.6

Human Institutions: Creations of a Special or a Deficient Animal?

Max Scheler uses the term ‘weltoffen’ to refer to the nature of man arising from his not being bound to the ‘sensible’. This term signals a competing reading of Herder to that of Gehlen: arising out of the assumption that man is not sensebound we have two formulations in the 20th century philosophical anthropology. (i) Man is a deficient being (Mängelwesen). i.e. he is deficient of those things needed to survive in the natural world, and therefore he has to compensate those deficiencies through developing special strategies. Human institutions including language are the results of this compensatory developments. (ii) Man is characterised by a special faculty (Ausstattungswesen), reason, which singles him out from the whole of animal kingdom, and it is through this special endowment man shows his speciality of his institutions. Both these formulations historically derive inspiration from Herder. Whereas the second retains the theological component, the first attempts at deriving from Herder an emprical biological thesis, but nevertheless retaining the notions of ‘reason’ and ‘progress’. It is an interesting case for study of what dangers lay in store when theological doctrines are transformed into scientifc theories without them being purged of normative functions and regulative claims. As already mentioned, Herder specifically makes use of the Aristotelian slogan that nature is economical and does not do anything without a purpose. This would 21

But see for the difference between Kant and Herder in the section 7.3.5. 158

bring him nearer to Scheler, and make his thesis more akin to the assertion that man has a special endowment rather than that man is a deficient being. Nevertheless, it is important to note the close link that exists for him between the lack of natural ‘instincts, i.e. the lack of the binding force of the sense-capacity, and the ‘reflection’ (‘Besonnenheit’) in the human animal. 7.3.7

‘Individualism’ versus ‘Communitarianism’: a Historical Footnote

Perhaps this is a place to add a note on the difference between Kant and Herder and the essential continuity of their difference in the present day debate between two conceptions of the liberal democracy. The difference centres around the role of antagonism and perhaps much more basically about the way the earthy feature of the sensible in the nature of man need to be transformed. Kant and Herder share the distrust against the atomic individualism since both consider it as conceiving human being only in terms of his animal nature. But Herder distrusts the cosmopolitanism based upon the Kantian view of the emanicpation from the sensibility as both the task and the origin of human institutions. Kant’s theory of ‘league of Nations’ as envisaged in his philosophy of history

22

takes the fact of different nations as given, and aims to explain when the condition for the development of all the natural capacities of man is fulfilled and what the ultimate goal of history (history considered from a ‘pragmatic standpoint’) is. He is not interested in the question why different ‘Nations’ - nations understood as ‘substantive wholes’ as gainst mere ‘distribuitive wholes’ - exist. Herder on the other hand appears to be interested in the question, ‘why such substantive wholes as nations exist?’, and he answers them in terms of the nature of the reason as expressing in contrasts. Whereas for Kant ‘antagonisms’ is merely an instrument of nature in the historical process to discipline and educate man into a moral being , for Herder it is the essential aspect of expression of the family bonds. 23

Thus Herder conceives community on the model of family in contrast to Kant who takes a legal view of it similar to that embodied in the social contract view of the State elaborated by his naturalist (a pre-form of utilitarianism) 22 23

See section 6.5.4. See section 6.5.3. 159

predecessors like Hobbes and Locke, and known to Kant and respresented in Herder as Condillac’s writings. This perhaps also explains Herder’s interest in the ‘national character’ or ‘mentalities’ and Kant’s disdain for it. Similarly, there appears in Herder, at least sometimes, a line of thinking that counter-poses will to reason, meaning in such contxts a counter-posing of the force (Kraft) of tradition as against the individual considerations. This stress on the non-deliberate dispositions and the consequences drawn on the basis of it is central for the theory of culture in T.S. Eliot as against the Enlightenment position (and also that of Kant) that conceives the institutions as either due to the Naturgeschichte or due to the beliefs and maxims of the human agent. For Kant the ‘spontaneity’ has to be understood as a rational will; for Herder, however, the spontaneity has the touch of power of traditions working through the individuals. Howver, Herder is less of a systematic thinker, and these assertions are yet to be worked out in terms of their systematic conceptual context. These differences however are within the same paradigm of human being as the intelligible being, and consequently a species being (Gattungswesen), and whose species-essence expresses itself in the creation of communities and history. The difference between Kant and Herder within this common framework is still continuing with variations of nuances in the contemporary debate surrounding the controversy between those espousing individualism and the others espousing communitarianism. The theories of culture as understood in such a paradigm, it may be noted, do not attempt the task of elucidating what it is to speak of cultural differences as against individual and biological differences, but rather take the fact of distinction between cultures as a given phenomena and attempt to explain them in terms of building a theory of human nature. In other words, they are the answers to the question why human beings have culture and not answers to the question, what constitutes a cultural difference? The reason for this is that they are underpinned

160

by the conception of givenness, now, unlike in Aristotle, not the givenness of nature but that of human nature. We will see next how such human nature haunts the theories of culture in the 20th century. 7.4

Cassirer: Mythical versus Scientific Symbolic Forms

7.4.1 Kantianism as a ‘Philosophy of Culture’ The theme I have delineated so far, the sensible versus the intelligible, and the human form of life as shot through the latter, is the underlying thread that connects Cassirer’s voluminous works through and through. His central question is ‘how are cultural forms possible?’ and his answer is that they are made possible through the different modes of organisation of the sensible through the intelligible. The best evidence to support this thesis, now even bringing the theological undercurrent of the tradtion to the forefront, is the following rare criptic formulation by Cassirer where the motto of his whole philsophy of symbolic forms is summarised: „A difference between ‘real’ and ‘possible’ exists neither for the being below man nor for those above him. The beings below man are confined within the world of their sense perceptions. They are susceptible to actual physical stimuli and react to these stimuli. But they can form no idea of ‘possible’ things. On the other hand the superhuman intellect, the divine mind, knows no distinction between reality and possibility.“ 24

Generally, Cassirer uses the word ‘symbolic form’ in place of ‘intelligible’, my formulation of the thesis above is the exact repetition of what he says in many places. Even the substitution of the word ‘form’ to ‘intelligible’ has a tradition to it, especially since in Kant: ‘forms’ are what the intelligible beings impress upon the sensuous manifold to make the latter the human knowledge.

24

Cf. Cassirer, E. (1944, cit. 1992), p. 56. 161

That he belongs to the Kantian tradition is is both a biographical fact and 25

vouched for by Cassirer himself. He claims that Kant’s theory of knowledge can be transformed into a philosophy of culture and this as his achievement. What 26

this term, ‘philosophy of culture’, means for Cassirer will be elucidated by focusing on the one of his intellectual bete noirs, the contrast between myth and science. This preoccupation, of course, stems from the intellectual milieu of his 27

times, but for Cassirer it provides for illustrating a central point of method and therefore it is not merely a question of historical importance, but rather the crux for understanding his very model and method. 7.4.2 The Task of Providing ‘the Logic of Humanities’ First, on method. In an essay titled Die Begriffsform im mythischen Denkens he 28

situates his preoccupation with the myths in the context of providing what he calls a general logic of humanities (allgemeine Logik der Geisteswissenschaften). As his style, the meaning of this phrase doesn not get explained in a straight forward manner, but in terms of a narration of the events in the intellectual history. The general logic of humanities is supposed to have been first posed as a task in the modern times by Vico.29 The further narration is aimed both as a critique of different approaches to this question as well as elucidating the insights that need to be incorporated in the proper accomplishment of the task. What does the word ‘logic’ mean in this formulation?

25

He is a student of Herman Cohen and stems from the Marburg school of Neo-Kantianism. With regard to his Neo-Kantianism see his autobiographical remarks in: Cassirer, E. (1956), p. xxiv. 26 Cf. ‘Critical Idealism as Philosophy of Culture’ in: Verene, D.P. (ed.), 1979. 27 An alternative way of approaching Cassirer’s philosophy could be focusing on his understanding of the emergence of the ‘individuality’. Then also the connection to the notions appearing in the epitome of the chapter 2 is evident. If this theme is chosen, we are equally within the framework of Kantian philosophy of history, since the classical theme that connects the history of the emergence of science and the history of the emergence of individual freedom is the focus theme of German idealism. The idea of law being central to both. Cf. Rudolph, E., (1994) 28 Cf. Cassirer E. (1983). 29 Cf. ibid. p. 5. 162

In many places the logic is equated with the a general theory of science, and it is also conceived as connected with the investigation of the ways the concepts are constructed (Begriffsbildung).30 Further, this logic is conceived in two separate senses, in a narrower and in a more comprehensive one. In a narrower sense, it is equated with the task of investigating the pure forms of knowledge - what is meant is the investigation into the forms available in theoretical or scientific knowledge. In the other more comprehensive sense, it is conceived as a task of investigating the totality of the mental forms of world apprehension (Totalität der geistigen Formen der Weltauffassung). In other words, logic is conceived as that discipline which investigates the forms whether that of knowledge conceived in a narrow sense of scientific knowledge, or, in a more comprehensive sense, as any mode of dealing with the social and natural environment. Consequently, the task of providing the ‘logic of humanities’ he sets before himself has to be understood as a task of giving an account of ‘forms’ made use of in humanities. Though the German expression he uses in this connection ‘Logik der Geisteswissenschaften’ would suggest that he is interested in the forms used in the academic disciplines that investigate the human affairs, as will become evident soon, his intended focus is much wider: the forms made use of by all different human activties, and not merely the academic ones, are to be included in the investigation of the ‘logic of humanities’ envisaged by him. Historically the logic made its appearance, according to Cassirer, in Socratic dialectic. Further, according to him, in that historical gestalt there was an appreciation that the form and content cannot be thought of in separation from each other. But the tradition of logic that emerged later, the formal logic, is one

30

See the following passages (a) 'Logik als allgemeine Wissenschaftslehre' (p. 5) and (b) 'Vor völlig neue Fragen sieht sich dagegen die Logik gestellt, sobald sie versucht, ihren Blick über die reinen Wissensformen hinaus auf die Totalität der geistigen Formen der Weltauffassung zu richten.' (p. 7), (c) 'Schon der Name Logik weist darauf hin, daß in ihrem Ursprung die Reflexion auf die Form des Wissens mit der Reflexion auf die Sprache sich aufs innigste durchdringt. ' (p. 8), all in: Cassirer, E. (1983); also see Cassirer, E. (1928). 163

that he considers as the point of departure for him. Here the focus is on the form in abstraction from the content. He faults this tradition on two counts. (i)

It got tied to naive realist presuppositions.31

(ii) Its understanding of forms is limited by its narrow focus on scientific to the exclusion of all other forms of thinking.32 What needs clarification at this stage is on how he uses the terms 'form' und 'concept'. These terms are used in a way that their senses need to be understood relative to each other: he speaks of ‘form of a concept in a particular thought modality’ (Form des Begriffs in einer Denkmodalität); he also mentions ‘form’ in connection with the type and species of concepts of a discipline such as physics or chemistry. That is, ‘form’ is used to demarcate the type of concepts of a 33

particular discipline from the type of concepts of another discipline, or the type of concepts of a particular modality of thinking from another modality of thinking. The notion of ‘a modality of thinking’ is applied variably in accordance with the context, sometimes to contrast the thinking characterising the particular disciplines such as physics and chemistry, sometimes that of natural sciences as against the humanities, and still some other times to contrast the ‘scientific’ (which includes the mode of thinking of both natural sciences and humanities) as against the ‘mythical’ forms of thinking. By making use of another of Cassirer’s terms, the ‘Weltganzen’, we can say that the form differentiates a particular world - in which particular classes and concepts are constructed - from other worlds. 34 How a world and a variation of a world are to be distinguished and identified depends on the context in which discourse is conducted.

31

35

Cf. Cassirer, E. (1928) ‘Zur Theorie des Begriffs', in: Kant Studien (33) 1928, p.129-136. Cf. Cassirer, E. (1983), p.3. 33 ibid. see p. 9-10. 34 cf. "Alle Begriffsbildung [...]. Die Form der Reihung bestimmt hierbei die Art und die Gattung des Begriffs." Cf. p. 9-10. 35 Cf. the use of the World by Goodman in contexts such as Ways of Worldmaking. Cf. Goodman N., (1978). 32

164

7.4.3 The Tradition of Logic versus the Contrastive Method

Coming back to Cassirer’s identification of the faults of the ‘tradition of logic’: he accuses that tradition to have conceived the concept formation (Begriffsbildung) as a process of ‘mimesis’ (Nachkonstruktion), i.e. a process of consturcting the objects by copying them. By using the term ‘symbolic activity’ to refer to any cognitive activity, we can formulate Cassier’s criticism as following. If concept formation is conceived as a procedure mimetic reproduction of the real there is possibility of separating the investigation of the semantics and syntax, the content, on the one hand, and the organising principles of symbolic activity, on the other. That is, the investigation of form can be conducted in abstraction from the content captured by the symbolic activity. But if it is the case that the concepts provide the very perspective for an object construction, the content is something that is formed by the very form and not available independent of it. This latter position is expressed by Cassirer by saying that the form ‘determines the direction of objectification’.36 To this mutually opposing understanding of ‘forms’ the contrasts in the tradition of philosophy such as ‘synthesis versus analyis’, ‘subjective versus objective’, ‘idealist versus realist’ are traced. For example, the realistic and idealsitic world views are contrasted in the following way. „Wo

die

realistische

Weltansicht

sich

bei

irgendeiner

letztgegebenen

Beschaffenheit der Dinge, als der Grundlage für alles Erkennen beruhigt - da formt der Idelaismus eben die Beschaffenheit selbst zu einer Frage des Denkens um.“ 37

Similarly, to Leibniz the credits is given for discovering the the siginificance of ‘synthesis’ in relation to mathematics as of an activity of ‘free and constrcutive gestalting of the content’ in contrast to the conception of analysis which merely differentiates the aspects by taking the ‘given’ as its directing principle. „Das Entscheidende des Gegensatzes von Synthesis und Analysis liegt in der Hervorhebung einer Funktion der freien, konstruktiven Gestaltung des Inhalts im Unterschied zur bloßen nachträglichen Zergliederung eines Gegebenen. Diesen Begriff des ´Synthetischen´ aber hat Leibniz in seiner Lehre von der ´kausalen

36 37

Cf. ibid. p.9. Cf. Cassirer, E. (1985a), p. 4. 165

´Definition als Bedingung der Möglichkeit des Gegenstandes für die Mathematik entdeckt und gestaltet.“ 38

A similar sort of contrast is expressed, but now explicitly making use of the Kantian terminology, „dasjenige, was nicht im Objekt (als dem ´Ding an sich´) vorgefunden wird, sondern vom Subjekt´selbst verrichtet´werden muß - aber diese Verrichtung erfolgt selbst nach einer allgemein gültigen Regel und besitzt demgemäß in ihrer Idealität zugleich realisierende Bedeutung. Indem der Einzelinhalt, kraft der sprachlichen Formgebung, nicht als solcher bezeichnet, sondern auf das Ganze der möglichen Inhalte bezogen und gemäß seiner Stellung in diesem Ganzen charakterisiert wird, wird er in dieser Beziehung auf die Einheit des denkenden Selbstbewußtseins auch erst nach seinem gegenständlichen Gehalt vollständig bestimmt.“ 39

In line with its mimetic understanding, according to Cassirer, the tradition of logic conceives the of the task exaplaining the construction of concepts as that of providing a theory of abstraction. But, it is in fact a task of finding out the characteristic ‘rule of construction’ underlying each domain rather than abstracting from a given differentiation of a world (Weltgliederung): „Alle

Begriffsbildung

gleichviel

in

welchem

Gebiet

[...]

ist

dadurch

gekennzeichnet, daß sie ein bestimmtes Prinzip der Verknüpfung und der ‘Reihung’ in sich schließt. Erst durch dieses Prinzip werden aus dem stetigen Fluß der Eindrücke bestimmte ‘Gebilde’ [...] herausgelöst. Die Form der Reihung bestimmt hierbei die Art und die Gattung des Begriffs. [...] Die traditionelle logische Lehre vom Begriff pflegt freilich eben diese entscheidende Differenz zu übersehen oder sie zum mindesten nicht zur scharfen methodischen Ausprägung zu bringen. Denn, indem sie uns anweist, den Begriff dadurch zu bilden, daß wir eine Gesamtheit gleichartiger oder ähnlicher Wahrnehmungen durchlaufen, und daß wir aus ihr, indem wir ihre Unterschiede mehr und mehr fallen lassen, nur die gemeinsamen Bestandteile herausheben, geht sie dabei von der Voraussetzung aus, als liege die Ähnlichkeit oder Unähnlichkeit schon in dem einfachen Inhalt der sinnlichen Eindrücke selbst, und sei von ihm unmittelbar und unzweideutig abzulesen. Eine schärfere Analyse zeigt indes genau das Umgekehrte: sie lehrt, daß die sinnlichen Elemente je nach dem Gesichtspunkt, unter dem sie betrachtet werden, in ganz verschiedener Weise zu Ähnlichkeitskreisen zusammengefaßt werden können. An sich ist nichts gleich / oder ungleich, ähnlich oder unähnlich 38 39

Cf. Cassirer, E. (1962), p. 534. Cf. Cassirer, E. (1923), 123f. 166

das Denken macht es erst dazu. Dieses bildet somit nicht einfach eine an sich bestehende Ähnlichkeit der Dinge in der Form des Begriffes nach - sondern es bestimmt

vielmehr,

durch

die

Richtlinien

der

Vergleichung

und

Zusammenfassung, die es aufstellt, selbst erst, was als ähnlich, was als unähnlich zu gelten hat.“ 40

In other words, a discipline has to be conceived not in terms of a given domain; rather the domain is the result of a modality of thinking. The investigation of ‘forms’ is therefore the investigation of a ‘rule for constructing’ a particular ‘content’. Consequently, the question concerning method for Cassirer is: how can one discover these rules of constrcution of different domains, or more generally, the rules of construction constituting different spheres of human cognitive activity? His answer is to suggest a method of counter-posing (das Gegenüberstellen) the very diverse modalities of thinking: the more diverse the modalities are, the more suited they are for this purpose. 41 As already mentioed in the previous section, he makes a relative distinction between ‘a modality of thinking’ and ‘the concepts and classes’ within that modality of thinking, and thus speaks of his task as that of exhibiting the form of concepts by counterposing one mode of concept with another.42 To discover the rule of constructing concepts is to make the form of concepts appearing in a particular modality of thinking apparent or conspicuous, and for this the best suitbale method is to counter-pose one modality to another. To repeat, this method to bring out the form of concepts would work optimally when the modalities of thinking contrasted are different and even estranged from each other to the maximum extent. This requirement of the method would also lead us in the direction of overcoming the other weakness identified with of the tradition of logic, namely the weakness of an exclusive focus on the scientific modality of thinking. First, the specificity of scientific thinking cannot be apprehended fully without counter-posing it to non-scientific modes of thinking. 40 41

Cf. Cassirer, E. (1983), p. 9-10. Cf. 'Auch die verschiedenste [...] des mythischen Bewußtseins gegenüberstellen." Ibid. p.10-

11. 42

Cf. 'Zur Theorie des Begriffs' in: Kant Studien (33) 1928, p.129-136. 167

Secondly, ‘humanities’ (i.e.Geisteswissenschaften) by its very definition is a study of all forms of human activities, and a ‘logic humanities’ must attempt to clarify the forms of human existence in contrast to that of natural existence by taking into account all different modes of human existence. 43 To appreciate what Cassirer is saying here one has to remind oneself the Kantian idea mentioned in the beginning of this chapter that the world we live in is a humanised world.

44

To investigate the conditions of possibility of different

disciplines and activities is to investigate the modes of humanising the world. But if we take this stance, then there is no reason why the attention should be confined to only certain forms and not to others. Artistic and religious practices too become the candidates for attention as specific modes of thinking. These are, however, accepted, sometimes grudgingly sometimes generously, amongst the philosophers as serious activities requiring philosophical attention. But, according to Cassirer, they are all still within the fold of familiar modes of thinking for the scientific community. This however is not the case when it comes to myths and magic. But they too are modes of dealing with the world, and therefore are fit candidates for the Kantian notion of the forms of humanising the world. Thus formulating a ‘logic of humanities’, must involve a consideration of mythical mode of thinking too. There is another reason why myths become methodologically much more interesting. They can serve a double function in the method of counter-posing. First, there is the usual interest in difference, where mythical thinking is put alongside of science, art, language etc., in order to bring out the different formnuances and varieties of human mental activity, and the specific forms underlying all these different modes of activities. 45 But, secondly, there is a special role for the contrast with the myth, because, the myth is considered as quite antithetical to 43

'Die Eigentümlichkeit des geistigen Seins, seine Unterscheidung vom natürlichen aufzuweisen, muß man den Blick 'auf Totalität der geistigen Formen der Weltauffassung richten'. p. 7. See also p. 10 -11. 44 See section 7.1. 45 Cf. p.6. 168

scientific mode of thinking. If the assumption of the antithesis between science and myth is taken seriously it should be expected that such a counter-posing would lead to discovery of completely different variety of difference than the differences otherwise considered. One is tempted to see here a variety of argument that we came across in Herder while claiming that human beings not merely differ from each of the animal species, but differ from the animal kingdom taken as a whole. A similar consideration appears to haunt Cassirer when he speaks about myths: other modes of thinking familiar to modern man all taken together as one class differs from mythical form of thinking. When Cassirer speaks of the specificity of theoretical mode of thinking he means more than what is usually considered as ‘theoretical’; he means the whole of the modes of thinking familiar to modern man. Theoretical mode understood in this way is characterised by carving out a domain of nature distinct from the culture; all distinctions of of modes of thinking in the modern world assume such a distinction even when they sometimes bemoan it. The best way to bring the specificity of such a mode is by counter-posing it with a mode of thinking that does not handle the social and natural environment as ‘nature’. To put it in terms of our theme in this chapter, for Cassirer mythical thinking is not only different, but different in a special way such that a comparison of it with the scientifc or theoretical mode would throw light on how the very constitutive features of the human cognitive appratus, the sensible and the intelligible, are realted. One can exhibit the possible modes of that relation when the extremest way of conceiving the relationship between the general and the particular are visualised and contrasted Cassirer appears to find these extremities in the mythical and scientific thinking. He focuses on the contrast between myth and science by posing it as the following question: What are the respective principles of differentiation of these modes thinking? This is the same question for Cassirer as the question of the way in which the relationship between ‘the general’ and ‘the particular’ is conceived, and that in turn, is the difference between the way these two modes of thinking approach the question ‘why?’. According to Cassirer, the notion of causality is invented to answer the question ‘why?’, and the world as a 169

law governed unity of causal nexus is a common assumption for both mythical and scientific mode of thinking. 46 But though both myth and science ask the question ‘why?’ the scientific thinking answers it by transcending the concrete existence, the mythical thinking on the other hand, does not transcend the limits of the concrete.47 In his analysis of the difference between the causal notion in myth and that in science Cassirer makes use of the following two contrasts: (i) ‘substantial causality’ versus ‘causality as constitution of the particular’; (ii) primacy of spatial to temporal thinking versus the reverse. In fact the first and the second contrast amount to the same, and they both are meant to make the same assertion as the one in the last sentence of the previous paragraph, namely, that the myth does not transcend the concrete as the scientific mode, but the latter is faced with a reverse difficulty, the difficulty of reaching the concrete level. What Cassirer means by the ‘substantive causality’ can be gleaned by what according to him is the motivating question of the mythical mode of thinking. The mythical thinking, he says, is characterised by the question of genesis or the ultimate source, and as a result, it looks towards one substance transforming into another substance, presumably like water becoming earth in the Thalles’ conception of genesis, as an answer to the question ‘why?’. That is, the causal principle for it is an individual concrete ‘substance’. For mythical thinking, says Cassirer, both cause and effect are two gestalts of things (Dinggestalt), and thereby causal process is conceived as a transition from one thing-gestalt to another thing-gestalt. The essence of everything is defined in terms of the conditions of arising of something in terms of the conditions of arising of the 46

The world „als eine gesetzliche Einheit, als ein in sich geschlossenes kausales Gefüge zu denken" is according to Cassirer common for both ‘Wissenschaft’ and ‘Astrologie’. Cf. Cassirer, E. (1983), p.34. 47 „[Die Wissenschaft] begnügt sich keineswegs mit der einfachen Frage nach dem 'Warum' des Seins und Geschehens, - sondern sie gibt dieser Frage, [...] eine spezifische neue Wendung und Prägung. Auch der Mythos fragt nach dem "Warum" der Dinge. [...] Aber er geht trotz allem Bestreben, in den letzten 'Ursprung' der Dinge zurückzugehen, doch letzten Endes über sie selbst und über ihr einfaches konkretes 'Dasein' nicht hinaus." Cassirer, E. (1983), p.36. 170

parts of that thing. As a consequence of this, the whole world remains a concrete single thing connected to each constituent in a part -whole relationship. Thus connections that can be discerned at the sensible level, i.e. the spatial connections, become the guiding principle of causal exaplanation. The ‘substance’ remains the individuating factor. In contrast, says Cassirer, the scientific thinking is characterised by the idea of law as constitutive factor that gives each constituent its individuality. It looks towards the form of change, the functional law that constitutes the existence. The sensible vanishes from the picture and is replaced by an abstract principle, the ‘function’ through which something is conceived as what it is. At this stage of Cassirer’s explanation enters the Kantian conception of schematism. The concept of causality involves either a spatial or a temporal schematisation, i.e. building a scheme of connections. Whereas in the scientific thinking, the schematism occurs through the temporal factor in the mythical thinking supposedly the spatial schematism is the principle of causality. In the former, the temporal continuity, and not spatial contiguity is the determinant factor for discerning the causal connection, in the latter the reverse is the case.

171

8 8.1

Cultures: Phenomena versus Learnables

The Pilgrim, the Mountain, the Wanderer, and the Heathen

The narration of chapter two to seven has concentrated on showing the connections between the Christian theme and the concepts in use both to talk about nature and, especially relevant to the focus of this book, culture. One may look at this narration as neglecting the use value of such concepts to tell truths and concentrating on their contingent connections to the Christian theology. The emphasis on the Christian connections may even be misunderstood as an assertion meant to deny the use value altogether. If that were the case, my project would indeed befit the madness of a Don Quixote. The heuristic fruitfulness of what is bequeathed by the Christian tradition as instanced in conceptions such as ‘mechanism’ is there for all to see. The objective in building the narrative of the origins of certain distinctions by emphasising the contingent Christian circumstances of their birth is meant to emphasise, to use the Kantian-Christian terminology, the made as against the given character of the world we have discovered, and to emphasise, now in contrast to Kant, the local as against the universal character of such making. I hope chapters 2 to 7 have made it clear how massive the presence and the continuity of the tradition is even in the most mundane concepts we use to talk about culture. If an element of making in contrast to givenness is accepted for the concepts we use, then this continuity of tradition is also an indication of the local as against the global character of our concepts, however massive the felt usefulness of these concepts may be. To say this is not to attribute provincialism in any negative sense; nor is it belittling or denying the enormous use value of that tradition in the history of the growth of knowledge. It is just to reject the story of the making of our knowledge as that of a pilgrim’s progress equipped with the divine directions to the only possible summit that exists. Indeed great discoveries are made, but they are the discoveries of a wayward wanderer who had the chance equipment of a Christian sketch-book of directions. That chance possession of a scribbled map has led us to a thick mountain of knowledge. 172

If the present achievements in knowledge are seen in that light, the next suggestion I make, though ambitious in scope but still making only the moderate demands on the credulity of the reader, may be accepted as a plausible venture: somewhat different discoveries may be possible to make with different sketch books found in the hands of the non-Christian wanderers. This is not a suggestion to give up what we possess. Such a suggestion would be foolish indeed. But one may ask for a venture onto the other side of the mountain without assuming that it is dark or desolate there. Or, to mix the metaphors a bit, this is an effort by a heathen to overcome the awe created by a sudden discovery that, unexpectedly, the mountain has come to his doorsteps. Sure, it has transformed the living locale and opened to him that network of clearly laid avenues leading to wonderful spots with ravishing sights. The warning by the wise that there should be no nostalgia for the landscapes, perhaps lost for good, is also well taken. Yet, there may be a place for a reminiscent curiosity about the pathways his and others’ ancestors were using. Perhaps there are equally interesting paths to wander lying out there on the other side of the mountain. Similarly, there must be room for doubts over the appearance of flatlands in the maps made by those whose vision has the penchant for seeing the distant surroundings from the summit of their magic mountain. But how to get hold of those sketch books in the hands of the heathen wanderers? Perhaps they don’t even have sketch books but only the disposition that a Cassirer would recognise as ‘instincts’ for the spatially felt directions rather than the temporally conceived schema of rules for map reading? However, Cassirer’s tools of classification are, at best, tools for evaluation when a familiarity can be assumed. But what are the tools of the research tradition for the prior activity prerequisite for an evaluation, that of becoming familiar with other cultures? Why are ‘religion’ and ‘myth’ the stock in trade to talk about Non-European traditions? They don’t have science and technology, all right. But why should we assume that they have ‘religions’ and ‘myths’? Perhaps they don’t have these things either.

173

These questions, I hope, will look more thoughtful than brash when some conceptual unpacking of them is offered. 8.2

The Pragmatic Turn

One central idea of the 20th century epistemology is that the distinctions we make are literally that: they are made, and not the given fact of nature. This assertion is less dramatic than those worries of some realists suggest: to them this appears as the incredulous denial of existence of the trees and the oceans without man starting worrying about them. No, the assertion in question does not deny that there were stars long before man started worrying about his stars. It only insists on one implication of the logical distinction needed to be made while talking about descriptions, that between the ‘object’ and ‘signs’ or ‘representations’. To identify something as an ‘object’ is to imply that it cannot be exhausted by description, which is another way of saying that any ‘description’, or more generally, ‘representation’, is necessarily selective. Consequently, the criterion of relevance is an important aspect of our identifying something as a representation of something else. If so, the ‘representation’ is bound to the context of purpose for which that representation is made. That is, the distinctions we make are tied to the purposes we have. This, it should be noted, is not the same doctrine as saying that we can get away with any distinctions we like. What the assertion amounts to is only the following: though there does exist the objective pull 1, it makes itself felt only in the fact whether the distinctions we make are serviceable enough for our purposes or not; there is no way of justifying for a set of distinctions the claim of a unique effectiveness and superiority over all other sets, unless of course a Godly purpose is postulated in which all of us partake. The assumption underlying this pragmatic turn in the conception of knowledge can be rephrased in the idiom of ‘concepts’ instead of the above idiom of ‘distinctions’: the concepts we use are not given but made, not individually but through the joint efforts of groups and generations of human beings. Though less 1

The term ‘objective pull’ stems from Quine. See section 2, chapter 1 in: Quine, W.V.O. (1964). 174

dramatic than the realist’s grim warnings suggest, nevertheless this pragmatic turn in the conception of knowledge has some far reaching consequences. One of them is that it makes the propositional knowledge or knowledge made available in intellectual disciplines (which we saw that Descartes wanted to demarcate as context-free from the context-bound sorts that are rooted in bodily habits such as artisanal skills, and more generally the knowledge involving the sensible aspect2) akin to the skills. The intellectual disciplines have the status of the Aristotelian techne and not that of the episteme. I used the repetitive adjective ‘Aristotelian’ in the last sentence deliberately to foreclose the mis-identification of it with the way the Christian successors of Aristotle could understand the techne, as the skill comparable to that in the hands of God, the Artisan of Creation whose Words are the Law governing the universe. In this latter understanding, as described in chapter 5, it attains the status of a universal sort of knowledge. As relevant to the purpose of this book there is another consequence related to the first above. Unlike the first however, this second consequence is still to be appreciated adequately. Suppose knowledge has to be approached more as skills rather than as propositions, then it will imply that most of the research carried out by the Anthropologists in the last hundred and fifty years, whatever else it is, is not likely to be concerned with the knowledge possessed by those different groups about whom the research is being done. In fact this was never conceived explicitly as the objective of the discipline of Anthropology. But still one often encounters the assumption that Anthropology delivers the knowledge possessed by those groups which the Anthropologists study. Does it? Since clarification on this point is a necessary pre-condition of the project envisaged (of which this book is only a part) to take off, I will go into it in the next section. By its very nature it is a sketch of an argument rather than a detailed examination of the whole field of Anthropology. As any discipline today, Anthropology as an institution is enormously diverse with thousands of 2

See the section 5.3. 175

practitioners all over the globe. One can hardly expect a survey of Anthropology in a book like this. The purpose of the next sections is rather to introduce the distinction between two different ways of approaching the practices of others, i.e. as knowledge or as objects. 8.3

Investigating ‘Cultures’: What, When and Why?

8.3.1

Anthropology, Context and ‘Ethnocentrism’

This book started by identifying a widely prevailing sentiment that was designated as the ‘traditions as heritage sentiment’. The question was raised what it means to take that sentiment seriously. As an effort in the direction of an answer, I began by stating two obvious but nevertheless significant assumptions: (i) any knowledge is worth preserving and we have an obligation to see to it that knowledge once produced is not lost, (ii) groups with different pasts are likely to have inherited different dispositions to behave, and these different dispositions, since they are the ways and means of mastering the problems of life for the respective groups, can be considered as knowledge dispositions.3 Both these assumptions can be taken as not involving any difficulties to understand. They are merely a formulation given to the educated common sense of our time, and as such anyone who has grown up in the metropolitan countries, and the elite in nonmetropolitan countries too, would on reflection concede them. Yet from these assumptions a not yet well realised conclusion can be drawn as to an important research task: (iii) since the consequences to group behaviour arising from their different pasts are often referred to as their ‘culture’, we may say that we have an obligation to enquire into the knowledge embodied in different cultures. For our purpose, the problem of the range of extension of the term ‘group’ can be left open. Perhaps in any decision to extend the range or narrow it down, a certain level of validity has to be conferred to the broad distinctions prevalent such as the ‘Western culture’, ‘Indian culture’, ‘Chinese culture’ and ‘African Culture’ etc., which pick out significant traditions, the knowledge dispositions of which may be presumed to differ. But we will be confronted with a problem as soon as we reflect on this task of conceptualising the knowledge dispositions. As far as the 3

For a more detailed statement of this, see the section 1.1. 176

‘Western’ or European Tradition is concerned one can presume that there is no further need to conceptualise that inheritance as ‘knowledge’, both because European tradition has been the source of most of what we take to be knowledge, and further because its contribution and singularity has been the theme of so many scholarly attempts at conceptualisation. But what about the Non-European traditions? How to go about in the task of enquiring into the knowledge dispositions embodied in them? Once one formulates the task as above, it is natural to look for guidance from those disciplines that have a history of concerning themselves with Non-European Traditions, foremost amongst which is Cultural Anthropology. For a century or more Anthropologists have laboured to record, interpret and explain all and sundry beliefs prevalent around the globe; studying and recording the 'worldviews' subscribed to by different groups of people has been at least part of its objective. Therefore, one is likely to consider the enormous knowledge gathered by Anthropology as something that can be looked at as a model of an approach to other traditions as knowledge. How far is this assumption valid? We can examine this possibility by focusing on one specific theme. It is often said that the main danger an Anthropologist must guard against is ‘ethnocentrism’, the problem arising from a projection of one's own ethnie's habits and values onto another. On the face of it, this appears to be a concern to profit from the experience of groups foreign to the researcher (or to his tradition). That is, overcoming ethnocentrism appears as part of a project of overcoming the confinement of one's own habits and methods of going about in the world in order to discover the available alternatives to them. Is that the case? In what connection is ‘ethnocentrism’ considered as a defect to be overcome in Anthropology?

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8.3.2

Represented versus Representer’s Context

Anthropologists are exhorted to pay attention to the ‘context’. But this term is ambiguous; at least it has been used in two different senses: in the sense of a situation describable and in the sense of something presupposed in any successful description. For example, when it is enjoined that behaviours, activities, institutions and texts have to be understood in terms of the context in which they are embedded, the directive is meant to say that we should not take these items in isolation but consider them as parts of a larger whole, and look for the role of respective items in that larger whole. But this latter is as much the object of empirical enquiry as the items embedded in it. That is, the ‘context’ is open to description just as other items of investigation. I will call this 'represented context'4 and it can be contrasted with ‘representer's context’. The latter is something that is the focus in some recent theories where Anthropology is conceived as a genre of writing. The writer has some definite audience in mind and he knows and makes use of the shared conventions and expectations. When one speaks of context in this connection, it is in a sense something already known by the writer and the reader. Enquiry into it is in the form of reflection and elucidation of it rather than in the form of investigating it as an empirical object. If indeed one wants to do the latter, then the writer, the reader, and the practice - of which the writer and reader along with their contexts are parts - become ‘objects’, within a meta-representation, i.e. the investigated context is no longer the representer's but a represented context. But this does not eliminate the representer’s context. Like all descriptions meta-representations too proceed from some specific purpose and are tied to some specific (meta-) representer’s context.

4

The emphasis on context in the tradition of Anthropology goes back to Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown. In their recommendation to use the method of functional analysis of society by attending to the ‘context’, the term is meant in the sense of 'represented context'. The approach of these authors established the academic Anthropology in between two world wars, and has been influential ever since in the institution of 'participatory observation' as a compulsory element in the training for an aspiring Anthropologist. Cf. Harris, M. (1968). 178

If representation is context bound then knowledge too is so, since it necessarily depends on representation. This is what underlies the issue of 'ethnocentrism' which arises because of the recognition of the following two facts: (i) the phenomena of which Anthropology seeks knowledge - the beliefs and practices are, partly at least, constituted by the representation of the bearers of those practices and beliefs; (ii) members belonging to different 'societies' or 'cultures' have different background histories and traditions and therefore they do not share the same conventions and expectations; i.e. they do not share the same representer's contexts. This gives rise to the question as to the status of knowledge acquired through representing the representation. 5 This question is not something specific to the predicament of Anthropology; one can even claim that the present discussion in Anthropology is just taking over the discussion carried under the rubric of 'hermeneutics' to the question of ethnographic representation. 8.3.3

Ethnographic Representation and Philosophical Hermeneutics

But there is an important difference of nuance. Philosophical hermeneutics arose in the context of classical studies, of well acclaimed texts (and art works or semiotic artefacts) of the past.6 Its focus was the question of the status of 'humanistic studies': in contrast to sciences of the past that do get antiquated, something from the past masters needs to be presented as of contemporary relevance. Instead of postulating some a-historical content made available in each of the texts of the past, philosophical hermeneutics sought to specify a different kind of cognitive gain than that of receiving the sciences of the past. For this the inevitability of the admixture of representer’s and represented contexts was seen as an opportunity rather than as a problem: it provides for the extension of one’s thinking horizon through the ‘fusion of horizons’, i.e. it extends the scope of the domain of meaningful talk. It was asserted that encounter with the past masters though begins with our questions and prejudices (Vor-urteile), yet occasions a transcendence of them by confronting us with unfamiliar lines of thinking. 5

See Berg, E./Fuchs, M. (1993) for a documentation of the various issues discussed in recent Anthropology arising out of the problem of representing representation. The Einleitung gives a comprehensive overview of the conceptual and practical issues tackled in the recent SocioCultural Anthropology. 6 See the Einleitung in: Gadamer, H-G./Böhm, G. (1978), p. 7-39. 179

But unlike in the case of the acclaimed texts (and artworks) of classicists, the Anthropologist does not have anything specific to go by. Texts passed on by the intellectual tradition, along with one or many traditions of understanding them, are made familiar by the very process of one’s socialisation. Thus interpretation is an effort at understanding what has already been identified as something communicated, i.e. as signs. Such a starting point does not exist in the case of study of aliens. Anthropology began in the wake of the demarcation of modern society from that of ‘pre-modern’ - the 'primitive', the 'traditional' etc. Seeking, collecting and interpreting the practices and beliefs all over the globe was in order to enquire into the ‘other’ or ‘predecessor’ to the thought forms as well as social forms of ‘modernity’. The fact that what was found elsewhere belongs to the pre-history of 'modern' (meaning, European) forms was taken for granted. Further the interest in them was as phenomena and not as signs. Even when texts and artefacts of aliens were collected the impulse for it came from a curiosity about the phenomena represented by them rather than on something said through them. These are not mere historical legacies which could be given up at will. Unlike the texts of the classicist, what an Anthropologist encounters is an array of unfamiliar behaviour and practices out of which he has to select something as important and collate them into his data. He does not simply discover religion, ritual, or magic, but rather identifies some practices in terms of such categories as ‘religion’, ‘ritual’ and ‘magic’, thereby introducing a way of grouping the practices which may or may not correspond to the groupings and distinctions shared by the group he is studying. It is from his background tradition that the researcher brings to his observation such categories, and also some criterion of what is important and what is not. Thus in an unexpected way the Anthropologist may ‘enlighten’ the subjects he is studying by infusing in them those background categories of his tradition that he

180

has brought to bear on the practices of his subjects. To make clear the enormity of the irony of it all, let me make a slight detour and discuss an example for this. 8.3.4

‘Mother India’: Amnesiac or Barren Mother of her Religions?

For a ‘Western’ reader India is a birth place of many ‘religions’. This supposition is so well entrenched that even the Indian government brochures advertise India being the ‘mother of many religions’, and the Indian elite either uses this supposition to claim the greatness of its past or to bemoan the backwardness of its present, depending upon whether one is nationalistically or progressively disposed. Either way, one hardly takes time to reflect on the fact that none of the Indian languages has a word for ‘religion’. After the so called ‘Bengal Renaissance’, the Indian elite started using the word ‘dharma’ to translate ‘religion’, even though the original connotation of that much misused word is anything but ‘religion’. 7 It can be ‘habit’, it can be ‘obligation’, it can be in some circumstances ‘law’, but in none of the circumstances in its original connotation in Sanskrit and other Indian languages it was used in the sense of a ‘confession’, or in any other connotations that the reader in European languages associates with the word ‘religion’. Of course, one can turn this fact onto its head, and claim that Indians are so ‘religious’ and all their practices are infused with religiosity through and through, that they don’t need a word for distinguishing it from other things they do. Assertions to this effect are not uncommon even in serious academic publications. 7

Not unimportant are the historical circumstances in which ‘dharma’ began to be the word with which to translate ‘religion’. The Indian elite in the third quarter of the 19th century was well versed in the European discussions and started claiming to the Indian past an, in its opinion, advanced view of religion as professed by the Protestant theologians and philosophers of the time, who wanted to emancipate religion from its particularities (the older motive of freeing religion from the ‘idolatry’). The religions of India were therefore claimed to have been clothed in a more universal idiom than their Western counter-parts. ‘dharma’ appeared to connote the best of all the possible worlds, because it is religious and secular simultaneously, ‘secular’, in the sense of being free from the confessional dogmas. On these historical circumstances, and the consequences thereof for the emergence the ‘Hinduism’, Paul Hacker is illuminating. He however tends to considers this as the emergence of ‘neo-Hinduism’, implying thereby that there was more pristine Hindu religion earlier. All the evidence he himself provides speak against such an assumption. Cf. ‘Der Dharma-Begriff des Hinduismus’, (p. 510-524) and ‘Schopenhauer und die Ethik des Hinduismus’ (p. 531-564) both in: Paul Hacker, H. (1978). In fact the whole of the section, E of the book, p. 510-580 has lots of interesting things to say regarding the emergence of the present understanding of ‘Hinduism’ as a religion and its relation to the Bengal Renaissance. 181

I can bring any number of my own reminiscences of my family milieu and similar reminiscences of my friends’ to corroborate the assertion that amongst people in India, who are described as highly religious, there is no notion of ‘religion’. But from a country like India, with both a vast territory and a large and varied populations, one can equally find someone who gives the opposite kinds of reminiscence. Since this book is not conceived as discussing data of empirical research, discussions of that sort is out of place here. Moreover my present interest in discussing this issue is not one of proving, or disproving, that in India there do, or do not, exist religions. Rather my purpose is to provide an illustration of how using the familiar conceptions to grasp unfamiliar cultural aspects can be an obstruction in the task of conceptualising the alternative ways of going about in the world inherited by different groups of people. Therefore let me chose an example of a typical approach to the Non-European traditions where an indicator for the existence of an alternative way of going about in the world is treated casually, and those ways are made to fit the familiar conceptual mould inherited from the Western intellectual tradition. The late B.K Matilal, a reputed philosopher from India, and one who has also the credentials of being an analytical philosopher, uses the following ingenious device to belittle the paradox of India being considered as mother of many religions but yet none of her languages having even a rough equivalent to the word ‘religion’. „If ‘religion’ is not an original Indian word, does it follow that the concept of religion or the thing we may call religion is non-existent in Indian culture? I see no a priori reason that it should. A phenomenon may remain unrecognised, uncategorized, and hence unnamed in a society or a culture. In such a case, a name to identify that particular phenomenon may not exist for the time being in the language of that culture. Later on, when the word is formulated and with it a concept to fit it, attention can be focused upon it as a distinguishable fact. Something like this seems to be true of such words as ‘religion’ and ‘mysticism’, for neither of them are of Indian origin. But phenomena answering these words have been present in Indian culture for a long time, and the concepts are not entirely foreign to it. This partly takes care of the caveat that says that when we are 182

talking about ‘religion’ and ‘mysticism’ in the Indian context we are probably superimposing foreign notions in a culture where they do not belong.“ 8

To get rid of one minor irritant from out of our way: the question of ‘foreign’ versus ‘native’ used in its political nationalistic rhetoric is irrelevant for the issue of whether or not there exist religions in India. The issue, however, is whether one can meaningfully speak of ‘religion’ existing in a community without that community being aware that it exists. Surely, when we talk about ‘religion’, we are not talking about a natural phenomenon? The latter can indeed be spoken of as existing long before one is aware of it, like, for example, someone possessing some cancerous cells in its initial stages without having the slightest idea of having it. But presumably Matilal is not speaking of a natural phenomena, but about the ‘cultural’ phenomena. Matilal chooses the ambiguous idiom of talking about ‘a phenomenon existing in a culture’. If he means by that phrase a behaviour of a people that a researcher can classify as ‘religion’, then a certain arbitrariness is introduced. As Goodman has argued, anything can be considered as similar to anything else by choosing some perspective or the other. 9 If I define some breathing exercises as ‘religious’ practice, then it is a religious practice, whether those people who do it have any inkling or not of what I am talking. However, what is the purpose in issuing such definitional fiats? Should we take ‘religion’ as something like, say, anger or sexual attraction, i.e. a biologically conditioned feature of which we seek instances when we encounter different groups of people? Presumably, the point of constructing a term by issuing a definition is to forge a tool or tools to identify some important aspect of life on the basis of some criterion of importance. In that case, is it not interesting to ask what criterion of importance the researcher uses and what different criterion is used by the subject he is studying? Is not the absence of a notion such as ‘religion’ significant in this connection? One standard reply to questions of the above sort is to say that as researchers we have to use some notion or the other. We are justified therefore in using the notions familiar to us from one’s own tradition, meaning hereby the European 8 9

Matilal, B.K., (1982), p. 154. Cf. ‘Seven Strictures on Similarity’ in: Goodman, N. (1972). 183

research tradition. But my objection is not that some notion or the other is used. Rather, it pertains to the unclarity as to what aim is pursued in using a notion such as ‘religion’ and claiming that it is something like an universal feature characterising every people, even though there are enough indications that lots of communities do not have such notions. The example of Indian languages is of interest because it can be a counter-instance, not only to a dominant assumption that India is a land of religiosity even though hardly any one has done any empirical study on this matter, but also to the assumption that religion is a ‘cultural universal’. So far probably while talking about religions hardly anyone has thought about that it is as an empirical issue whether every community has the notion of religion or not. Thus, perhaps, one is at a loss if asked how to go about it if one wants to test the hypothesis that there is, or there is not, religion in India. ‘Religion’ has been used so far as one of the basic categories of dividing the domains of life within any community, irrespective of whether the subjects of the communities studied do, or do not, use such division of domains by themselves. 10 Religion is a high grade notion unlike, say, ‘hunger’, or ‘food gathering’, or even ‘fear’, ‘sadness’, ‘love’ etc., those of which, presumably, one cannot avoid using to fix a context of human inter-action. Do we require a notion like ‘religion’ or ‘myth’ for such initial fixing up of the context of interaction? If not, then there must be some other cognitive interest in attributing to people notions like religion, when for all practical purposes they can go about in the world without them. More, in an investigation of other cultures, as understood as investigation into the alternative ways of going about in the world than what is familiar to us, such nonexistence of notions that the researcher’s tradition considers as important and universal, is exactly what is interesting, and exactly what signals the existence of an alternative way of doing things.

10

For some of the contradictory definitions offered of ‘religion’ in order to overcome the difficulties of applying this category to describe the practices in India, see chapter 1 in: Balagangadhara S.N. (1994); for how recent the identity of Hinduism as one religion is and the role of the discipline of Indology in forging it, see Stietencron, H.v. 1984, especially the section, titled, „‘Der Hinduismus’: ein von Europäern geprägter Begriff“. 184

The absence of the word ‘religion’ is not merely an absence of a particular phonemic unit. When we use the word ‘religion’, say, to ask a question, ‘which religion do you profess’, or ‘are you an atheist’ we are structuring the possibilities in such a way that some answers are considered as relevant, and some others are not. Suppose this question cannot be asked in another language, it means that the structuring familiar to us is not available to the people using it and knowing no other language. Similarly, it means the structuring of experience that they do is not available to us. The phrase ‘not available’ does not mean that one will not be able to learn another way of structuring than what is familiar; but conceding that one will be able to learn implies also conceding that there are different ways of doing things, some of which are learnt through the process of socialisation by one group, and some others by another group: those who have the category of religion as a means of structuring their social-natural environment, and those who do not have it, differ in their way of doing things. The structuring effected through linguistic means is what can be called ‘implication nexus’. In other words, the absence of the word ‘religion’ in Indian languages suggests that there exists a division of the practices embedded in a different nexus of implications than what we are familiar with when we use the word religion. What is that nexus of implications? This is a very significant question for investigation if we are interested in the differences in the inheritance from the pasts. An approach like that of Matilal makes us incapable of seeing the significance of the question. To clear away the obstacles to see the significance of such questions is what I was referring to in chapter 1 as the conceptual under-labouring needed in order to launch a project of investigating different traditions as different knowledge dispositions. Matilal’s attempt at belittling the significance of the absence of the word ‘religion’ is part of a much more general approach. The approach he represents can be characterised as looking for in the Indian text tradition precursors to the notions and arguments we find in the European intellectual tradition. Thus a study of Indian traditions gets reduced to a historical study of particular arguments in 185

some texts and showing the similarities to some of the currents found in the European tradition. When inconvenient discrepancies arise, they will be explained away, instead of looking at them as signalling interesting alternative possibilities. The underlying category habit is to think that there is one set of significant conceptual distinctions, and the march of the history of thought everywhere, sooner or later, makes the discovery of those distinctions. Consequently, the nonexistence of a notion equivalent to that in the European tradition is looked at as an instance of a deficiency rather than the existence of another conceptual gestalt. Such an approach can exist both as a variety of historical materialistic study of Indian tradition11 or in a nationalistic variety. In the latter sorts, claims get made to the Indian past the discovery of things made by Europeans at a later date. This variety of study of Non-European traditions is ubiquitous not merely with regard to that of India, but also with regard to that of China, of Africa etc. The language is sometimes reverential, sometimes condescending, sometimes outright dismissive, but the basic assumption prevails that all human traditions run on the same track to make the same kind of discoveries, some doing it earlier, and some later, and some failing to do it altogether. 12 This is a more subtle, and for that reason more invidious, legacy from the Kantian model of universal history which we discussed in chapter 6. It leads to a barren approach to the traditions other than that of Europe, since a consequence of it is to make the cognitive value of those other traditions a nullity, for they do not have anything to add to what is made available by the European tradition, except by way of foreshadowing the conceptions found well developed in the latter.

11

An instance of this is Debiprasad Chattopodhyaya (1974). Elsewhere I have distinguished two varieties of this approach, one that of considering the NonEuropean traditions as constituting the pre-history of European ones, and another considering them as counter-images of them. I have used the term ‘Gegenbildkonstruktion’ for this variety of approach to the study of other cultures, see Rao, N. (1989). 12

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8.3.5

Adventures, Holy Duties and Administration in Strange Lands

Investigation or theory building takes place within the ambit of some pragmatic directive that provides a criterion of importance and relevance. 13 Though, as in the case of any discipline, Anthropology has multiple roots including the purely theoretical dynamics created by the intellectual tradition within which it took birth, still, three non-theoretical contributory streams going into its formation are worth noting. Again, as a precaution, let me remark that my purpose in mentioning these is neither to revile the past of a discipline, nor to provide a historically nuanced and well textured narrative of what went on. It is just to remind fairly well known facts to emphasise that the question of the present book, finding alternatives to available ways of doing, was neither implicitly nor explicitly conceived as the objective of Anthropology. First, there were the traveller’s tales meant to advertise one’s exploits in the strange lands rather than to report accurately on them. To be sure, the travellers of the past had closer contact with the ways of those they were visiting than the present day tourists, and often their accounts are more illuminating than the comparable accounts of today’s journalism. But even if their reports were, here and there, used to emphasise that there are customs different than what European guardians of morals considered as inviolable, still, relevant from the point of view of the theme of this book, the reports did not much bother to distinguish the feature of exoticness, say, that characterising the flora and fauna on the one hand, and that characterising the human customs, on the other. Often it is this feature which gives to those reports their present use value when compared to the work done with a more holy, but, for that reason, not necessarily more worthy motive, that of describing the wretchedness or the innocence of the heathens who are yet to receive the message of the true religion. In these days of restoration of the lost reputations of the past heroes of Europe, it is often emphasised how the Christian missionaries, a few of them at least, fought for the rights of the natives against rampages of the greedy and the powerful. 13

Gellner, E., (1993b). 187

Perhaps they did. But moral uprightness does not necessarily lead to an openness to knowledge. The interest in religion and myths that Anthropology retained for a longer time, originated in the pre-occupation of the missionaries, of the more intellectually oriented amongst them at least, in the natural as against the rational religion - the italicised words echo their use by Aquinas, and are in conformity with his use. On the whole, the view of the missionaries with regard to the natives were very much in line with the evolutionary story of from the sensible to the intelligible that Kant later elaborated. Perhaps one of the hotly discussed themes of the late 18th century as epitomised in the title of Hume’s book, The Natural History of Religion, owes more to the works of missionaries doing their holy duty in the outer regions populated by the heathens than due to the compulsions arising out of the internal logic of the conceptual development within the European tradition exclusively. The tenor of the missionaries’ understanding of the modes of life elsewhere than in Europe is captured in the following two passages from Hume’s book: „In the very barbarous and ignorant nations, such as the AFRICANS, and INDIANS, nay even the JAPONESE, who can form no extensive ideas of power and knowledge, worship may be paid to a being, whom they confess to be wicked and detestable, though they may be cautious, perhaps, of pronouncing this judgement of him in public, or in his temple, where he may be supposed to hear their reproaches. Such rude, imperfect ideas of Divinity adhere long to all idolaters; and it may be safely affirmed, that the Greeks themselves never got entirely rid of them“. 14 „But [to] barbarous, necessitous animal (such as a man is on the first origin of society ), pressed by such numerous wants and passions, [...] an animal compleat in all its limbs and organs, is [...] an ordinary spectacle. [...] ask him whence that animal arose; he will tell you, from the copulation of its parents. And these, whence? From the copulation of theirs. A few removes satisfies his curiosity, and set the objects at such a distance, that he entirely loses sight of them. Imagine not, that he will so much start the questioning, whence the whole system or united fabric of the universe arose.“ 15

Apart from the purpose of indicating the current ideas of the 18th century as to what the heathens were capable of, and what not, the passages above are chosen 14 15

Cf. Hume (1757), p.353. Cf. Hume (1757), p.312. 188

to emphasise the historical continuity of themes that still haunt us in the pages of 20th century academic journals: the notion of abstract versus concrete thinking, and certain communities being incapable of abstract ideas. This is also the contrast that is elaborated by Cassirer as the contrast between myths and science. It continued as a theme in Anthropology for a long time to come, and has even now its followers. Incidentally, there is an irony involved here: in the above passage Hume is implicitly making a plea for the famous cosmological argument for a creator God by counter-posing it to the satisfaction with the procreation series as an explanation of generation by the ‘primitive’. 16 The ironical fact is that the former argument is considered to be fallacious by many 20th century philosophers, and the not finding a need to close the infinite series of procreation is the philosophically

more respectable attitude. Apart from such historical ironies

which abound if we delve into the literature concerning the ‘primitives’ and the ‘heathens’, what is intriguing is that the contrast between abstract and concrete thinking is often used without bothering to look at the nature of this distinction. Though a distinction can be made by considering abstract and concrete thinking as logically distinguishable but in reality not separable modes that has meaning only as relative to each other, in somewhat similar manner as the distinction between ‘type’ and ‘token’, it hardly makes sense to conceive them as two separate modes of thinking. A community that can structure the seasons and thinks in terms of ‘auspicious’ and ‘inauspicious’ time for the sowing to begin, and capable of an operation of counting of both the days and the mangoes as ‘seven’: what form of thinking is followed by such a community, the concrete or the abstract?

16

Hume, contrary to what is commonly believed, is not sceptic in connection with faith in God. The point he makes in the same section from which the passage is often quoted to prove his having foreshadowed the logical positivist classification of meaningful sentences, is that Theology is better founded upon faith rather than on natural reason, a position which has a direct ancestry from St. Augustine and has a long theological tradition in Britain which includes such names as Ockham in it. See, Section XII, part III in: Hume D. (1777). 189

Obviously, the contrast, for all its Kantian technical clothing of spatial and temporal ‘schematism’ by philosophers like Cassirer, is more a continuation of a distinction in the tradition between the sensible and the intelligible than based upon either a logical investigation or an empirical investigation of the different forms of thought. One finds the need to formulate the inchoate impression of less sophistication of the ‘natives’ than the Europeans, and the distinction provided by the philosophical tradition becomes handy: what was originally made as a distinction between two faculties possessed by a human being (the sense and the intellect) becomes transformed into two modes of thinking exhibited by two communities, one supposedly developed, and another in the initial stages of development. What is perhaps the most valuable is the third stream that went into the formation of Anthropology: the work done in order to satisfy a practical need rather than the other above two needs of edification of the practitioners themselves. It was the need of the colonial administrator for knowledge of the, to him alien, 'natives' in order to dispense his duties efficiently. For example, what later became one of the stock in trade examples for the discussion of myths amongst primitive people, the Polynesian myths, was first collected by Sir George Grey, an administrator for New Zealand in the mid 19th century. Incidentally, the preface he wrote for the collection of Polynesian mythology is of some theoretical interest: it can enable us to question the assumption made in much of the theoretical work in Anthropology, that the existence of the isolated communities is an empirically unproblematic fact. In the literature until the late 70s, the Polynesian communities were treated implicitly as the unproblematic example for isolated communities. But long before the idea of an empirical research on such things began, already in the mid 19th century, Sir George Grey speaks of the disintegration of the Polynesian society, and its youngsters no longer knowing the myths and traditions of their forefathers. He says that such a fact, along with the need for knowing the people he is administering, motivated him to collect and publish the Polynesian mythology.17 The determinant factor as far as other work of a similar nature were 17

See Preface in: Sir George Grey (1855, cit. 1956) p. III-XII. 190

concerned was the perceived need that a different kind of administrative or management practice is needed than that fit to ‘us’. This need of the colonial administrator, however, coincided back in the metropolis with the need for demarcation of ‘modern’ from ‘pre-modern’ and an attempt to specify the ‘modernity’. As a result, the idea that the natives are ‘different’ and ‘less civilised’ gets embedded into a scheme of speculative history inherited from the German philosophy of history, and thus giving it a quasi empirical touch: ‘their’ present condition becomes the source of a theoretical construct of ‘our’ past condition, which then can provide a starting point for the enquiry into the processes of emergence of ‘our’ or ‘modern’ forms of thinking and society.18 Thus Anthropology becomes a unified discipline: the domain it studies is the ‘non-western’ or ‘non-modern’ social phenomenon. 19 In spite of lapse of time and political changes, this determinant factor of Anthropology is still operative. Usable Anthropological knowledge is still sought in the context of need for expertise for guiding policy decisions regarding the ways to deal with Non-European groups or ‘societies’ - whether this is in the field of foreign policy decisions (think of the debates on how to handle the Middle east situation or dealings with China, or the Far East), or a demand of theoretical models for investigating the conditions and processes of 'industrialisation' of nonwestern regions, or models for ‘understanding’ the ‘specificity' of the supposed enigmatic phenomenon of Japan or the Far East. In all these cases a notion of the ‘other’, in the sense that a situation requiring a different management practice than in ‘our case’, is coupled with an use of theoretical models heavily cast within a framework derived from a contrast between ‘modern’ versus ‘traditional’

18

For a detailed discussion of how even in the structural hierarchies used by the Anthropologists such as people thinking in a ‘mythical mode’ as against in a ‘scientific mode’, the temporal scaling of ‘the Others’ in a past plays a role, cf. Fabian, J. (1983). 19 The idea of ‘Western’ got formed simultaneously as the idea of ‘Modern’. Though these terms are not always used as synonyms, very often one comes across their being used as co-extensive terms. See Giddens, A. (1990). 191

societies, now of course not necessarily using these terms, but terms like ‘societies with individual-centred ethos’ versus ‘community-centred ethos’. 20 The reason why ‘ethnocentrism’ was perceived as an issue is because of an additional thesis in conceiving the domain of Anthropological investigation - that only an idea of culture as viewed by the bearers of that culture can provide a right conception of the phenomenon under investigation. The specific method of the discipline of Anthropology, the participatory observation, was devised in order to fulfil the researcher’s scientific obligations of conducting his observation carefully and accurately. But ‘the culture as viewed by the bearers of that culture’ is collected not because it has a value in itself, but because it is supposed that it makes a necessary contribution to an accuracy of knowledge about the group under study. Suppose we question this assumption that the view of the bearers of a culture contributes to an accurate comprehension of their behaviour. In that eventuality the natives’ views have no place in non-trivial anthropological theory. Of course, one can consider Anthropology as providing us eternal verities of human beliefs. In that case too, those beliefs are of interest as phenomena, and not as knowledge. Certainly, Anthropology provides us knowledge about these beliefs - that there exist such and such beliefs among such and such groups etc. But showing what beliefs exist is not the same as showing that they are knowledge. In other words, within the framework in which the discipline of Anthropology has functioned, the expectation that it may provide a model for investigating knowledge possessed by different human groups, cannot be fulfilled. Again, as a note of caution, my contention is merely that a study of another culture per se is not a study of it as a knowledge disposition. To say this does not imply that, therefore, the discipline of Anthropology has to change its course. The latter kind of statement is possible only when we presume to answer an additional normative 20

One can corroborate this by doing an experiment: take any book on Japan, China, or India, or for that matter on some Latin American milieu, and look for some general description of those milieus not confined to the detailed description of some particular practices (in fact even the description of particular practices are imbued with the idiom I am suggesting), and you are sure to find assertion in the mode of the epitome (referred to in chapter 2), to the effect that they are less individualistic and more communitarian in their ethos, thereby meaning either to apportion blame or praise. 192

question, namely, what the domain of anthropology ought to be. This latter question is not the one I am addressing. All that I am saying is that the Anthropologist’s task has been conceived as that of making available the knowledge about alien human groups and their beliefs, and this is not the same as the task of making the knowledge possessed by them available. 8.3.6

Representer’s Purpose and Constitution of Domains

The above section, besides as a potted pre-history of Anthropology, can also be read as an illustration of a consequence of the pragmatic turn in the conception of knowledge: how a domain of study is structured depends upon the purpose for which the study is intended. This fact can be overlooked, especially when once a discipline is established, one tends to think that the domain presumed by a discipline is something like a natural object out there waiting to be discovered and described. In pursuing any novel type of question such an attitude is one of the main obstacles. For instance, consider the above mentioned contrast, made in the very beginning of social theory, between ‘modern’ and ‘traditional’. This is a conceptual contrast as applied to two sorts of phenomena. This can very easily be confused with another kind of contrast, that between tradition and the current activities. This latter is a contrast as applied to disposition and its actualisation, the type and the token. If we want to study a group or ‘society’, it is an important question, how to arrive at the notion of a particular ‘tradition’ or ‘culture’ shared by this group, when all that we can observe is only the supposed instances of it, i.e. how to identify a type from among the observed data without presupposing that type? In justifying the choice of something as the token of the supposed type, obviously, we can not avoid taking recourse to the researcher's purpose and the usefulness of the choice in terms of it i.e. the representer's context in the terminology introduced in the section 8.3.2. To illustrate: from a common sense point of view, it can very well be argued that no traditions in the sense of action-dispositions can be immutable, since re193

appropriation of them by every new generation inevitably introduces alterations all the more so, and not less, when the populations are illiterate and do not preserve their experiences in the form of texts committed to paper. Less conventions and institutions to ‘preserve the past’, one presumes, the more should be the alterations sneaking into the modes of behaviour of a community. Yet in the history of social theory not only the contrast between Non-European and European ‘societies’ was made in terms of the characteristic of ‘change’, but also an exactly opposite characterisation was made the basis of such a contrast: European societies were conceived as instances of a dynamic sort of social phenomenon, the ‘modernity’, and Non-European societies as instances of another sort, the immutable sort, the ‘traditional’. About the supposed ‘immutability’, whether it is expressed in the reverential idiom of the ‘hoary traditions’ or in the deprecatory idiom of ‘static society’ (as in the famous case of ‘Asiatic mode of production’), we should become sceptical, especially in the light of the instance just mentioned in the previous section: the Polynesian society of the mid 19th century which Sir George Grey saw as disintegrating, nevertheless at a still later date of its existence provided the paradigmatic instance of the selfenclosed, supposedly unchanging and unchanged ‘primitive society’. 21 Originally, apart from the influence of the German philosophy of history, the assumption of a relatively ‘static’ society was meant to serve the purpose of drawing out the specificity of the industrial economic constellation by taking the predominantly agrarian social milieus as a backdrop.22 The contrast was meant more to stress the structural need for expansion of the industrial economy as against no such compulsion existing in the non-industrial agrarian economy. But the contrast was taken over to investigate the nature of ‘cultures’ per se, 21

For a demonstration that the object of the supposed field work of the ‘primitive societies’ simply did not exist, and tracing the origin of the ‘myth of the primitive’, see Kuper, A. (1988). 22 Giddens identifies the problematic of ‘industrial society’, and the corresponding contrast between ‘tradition’ versus ‘modern’, as the focus that gave rise to Sociological theory, see Giddens (1989). Amongst the two German thinkers recognised as the founding fathers of Modern Sociology, Marx is well known as the inheritor of the tradition of the German Philosophy of History. A similar influence on Weber is not that well recognised but ably argued by Alexander von Schelting (1934, cit. 1987), p. 178-247. 194

especially due to a particular reading of Max Weber, and ‘immutability’ was made the very characteristic of being influenced by traditions, change occurring was always seen as due to the ‘Western’ influence or ‘modernisation’. Once such and analogous contrasts get established in a discipline, one becomes oblivious to the underlying purpose in terms of which originally the domain of investigation was construed. The above is not meant to say that in recent Anthropology there is no review of the nature of its domain and its objectives; in fact, an hypochondriac preoccupation with the methods and objectives characterises this discipline compared to any other discipline. I will make a whirl-wind tour of the nature of that discussion as relevant to the project of this book in a later section. But before that, let me come back to the question posed in the section 8.3.1: is there in the research tradition a model for looking at the ways of doing unfamiliar to us as knowledge? What kind of basic concepts are needed in order to formulate questions and theories concerning cultures as knowledge? Where can we look for help and directions to develop such concepts? 8.3.7

Cultures: ‘When?’ versus ‘Why?’

Let us first identify the point of contact between the common sense intuitions and the concepts derived from the tradition to articulate them. In the sense we are concerned with, ‘culture’ becomes an operative word only by occasions such as the felt differences between the familiar and the alien ways of going about in the world. On that level at least, the differences, and therefore the assumption that plurality of cultures exist, are constitutive of the very concept of ‘culture’. But applying standards to judge the ways of doing things is as much part of the common sense orientation. The question ‘are their ways right or our ways?’ could be the point of contact between the notion of culture as constituted by differences and the notion of

‘cultivated way of doing things’ in contrast ‘the not so

cultivated’. Apart from the specific inheritance of the theory tradition of array of concepts concerning the speciality of human being, and the historical specificities connected with the distinction ‘cultivated’ versus ‘non-cultivated’, it is the 195

question of standards that underlies the tendency towards the view that there must be one right set of customs. Thus, a theory of culture that starts off as a reflection on our ways of doing things is required to satisfy the following two demands: (i) to provide the conceptual means to make sense of the felt differences in the ways of doing things encountered normally when two groups meet, and (ii) to make room for the application of standards of right and wrong. The latter demand does not necessarily mean that the standards one is accustomed to should be applicable, but that some standard or the other, probably a standard that itself gets formed in the process of reflection, is applicable. How this second demand can be met without falling into the trap of thinking that there is, or there should be, one world of customs is a crucial question for cultural theory. This book is meant as delineating the tasks and not as accomplishing them. So the reader is forewarned that the second issue, the issue of standards, will not be addressed in adequate detail in this book. But I will attempt to identify one of the paths that begins with a consideration of standards but leads onto a morass. We can reasonably ask what other, to us non-familiar, ways of doing is exhibited by a group, and raise a question why they prefer that way and not another way. This ‘why?’ is a question regarding the objective followed by them. In its turn, the objective itself can become the target of the question ‘why?’: why do they have that objective and not another that is familiar to us? A question about objectives, and rightness or wrongness of them, is a question about the consequences of following a particular mode of action, and how far those consequences are desired and desirable. The discussion about the desirability of the consequences is also not a question of formulating a maxim to decide which consequences ought to be considered as desirable and which not. There are various considerations that one puts forward one’s preferences, but these in turn depend upon the whole lot of other inherited modes of values and ways of doing things. Entering into a discussion of the desirability when two or more different 196

ethos are involved, is a process of acquainting with another mode of life than the one we are familiar with.23 The ‘why?’ in this context can be rephrased into a ‘when?’ question: when, i.e. under what conditions can we still say that it is this particular sort of action and not that? when is it this particular way of leading the life and not that? Such when-questions are part of learning process of identifying an unfamiliar mode of action, or way of life. But one may easily slip from such questions about actions into questions of the sort, why he or she or a particular group has the nature he, or she, or it, has. Whereas the former question is of the sort that helps us to learn another way of doing things than our own, the latter sort is not part of such learning. It is part of seeking explanation to something which is identified as an interesting phenomenon. Assuming that in the original Chinese no straight forward lexical items exist to make a distinction between cheese and butter, we may ask the question why this is the case. An explanation such the following may be offered in answer to such a why-question: unlike in many other areas of the world, in mainland china until recently milk was not part of the staple food; consequently the lexical items concerning milk and milk products are not differentiated to the extent as found in those languages that are spoken in areas where milk is a staple food. For learning Chinese I don’t require this explanation, and what I require is what devices to use in what succession in order to distinguish butter and cheese when I find them: for example, when is a particular expression a device for distinguishing and when for identifying something as similar to something else. Thus in the context of learning an action, the why-question is in fact a whenquestion in contrast to the question ‘why?’ asked to seek an explanation to a phenomenon.

23

Here I am taking a consequentialist as against the Kantian type of ethical position. But my consequentialist position is not, and need not be, that identifies itself with an utilitarian position. My point is merely that the question of desirability of something cannot be decided by way of deducing the desirable from one or a set of maxims. For different nuances of the position regarding consequentialism, see Scheffler, S. (Ed.) (1988). 197

While reflecting on knowledge, the confusion between a ‘why?’, in the sense of a when-question, with that of ‘why?’, in the sense of asking for an explanation, is a real danger. For example, one of the concerns underlying the question of method in the epistemological tradition from Bacon to Descartes and Locke is that of finding the ways and means of increasing human knowledge. But this concern was mixed up with other two: (i) the relative merits and demerits of perception and ‘reason’ as modes of justifying knowledge, (ii) to give an account of the powers of human understanding or human reason, which was bound up with the assumption that providing a theory of how to increase knowledge is a task of providing a theory of the nature of human reason conceived as a special faculty or object. In fact, this latter assumption amounts to conceiving the task of theory of knowledge as a task of explaining the speciality of human being. This side-tracks the issue of how best we can increase and make different sorts of knowledge available, to an issue of why human beings have knowledge that they do. This latter question handles the question of knowledge as if it is a question about a sort of objects, and it commits the fallacy of identifying a when-question, the one regarding a criterion of distinguishing different types of cognitive actions, with the ‘why?’ of seeking explanations on something that is identified as a phenomenon. Translated onto a theory of culture, this confusion would mean confusing the task of identifying the differences of culture in order to make different ways of doing things available, with the task of explaining why human beings have culture. The philosophy of culture of Cassirer that we discussed in chapter 7 is part of this tendency of the epistemological tradition. In him, what starts as an effort to delineate the differences between the different modes of thinking ends up as a theory that professes to explain why different cultural forms are exhibited by different human departments of action and different groups of people. The

198

explanation is that human beings in contrast to animals have symbolic forms as the instrument of mediation between sense-experience and action. 24 My suggestion is that such explanations, even if they are true by themselves, are not relevant to the task of identifying the cultural differences. The theory that is both relevant and needed is one that answers an entirely different question. Though ‘culture’ becomes an operative word by occasions such as the felt differences between the familiar and the alien ways of going about in the world, in itself those felt differences are not sufficient in order to identify the domain of cultural research: logically speaking, anything is different from anything else in innumerable ways; what kind of difference should count as a cultural difference and not, say, a biological or social or an individual difference? Answer to this question is a pre-condition for a programme of cultural research as envisaged in this book. 8.4

Knowledge versus Phenomena

8.4.1. Concepts versus Objects

In the previous section the task of culture theory was implicitly identified as a continuation of the tradition of reflection on how best to increase knowledge. It is further asserted that ‘epistemological tradition’, if understood by disentangling it from questions such as the relative merits and demerits of perception and inference as modes of justifying knowledge, as also the confusion of the questions about knowledge with that of an object question of explaining the speciality of human being, can be considered as efforts in the direction of reflecting on the methods of increasing knowledge. But there is another limitation exhibited by the philosophical tradition. It is that of considering only propositions to be the right candidates for the title of ‘knowledge’. The task before us is that of bringing even the non-propositional modes under the focus of the question, how best to increase our knowledge.

24

See, ‘a clue to the nature of man: the symbol’, chapter 2 in: Cassirer, E. (1992). 199

One of the claims made in the last paragraph is just a restatement of one of the founding slogans of the analytical philosophy: To reflect on knowledge is not the same as conducting a psychological enquiry. Frege suggested that not distinguishing the object and concept is the source of psychologism in logic. Ryle as also later Wittgenstein have drawn the fuller implication of this by saying that enquiry into concepts is not the same variety of enquiry as enquiry into objects. 25 In the further course of the history of analytical philosophy, however, the strict distinction between object-questions and conceptual questions are not only watered down, but questioned outright. In their place positions similar to naturalism and transcendentalism identified in the 5th chapter have re-emerged, now, of course, in a more sophisticated versions of them. I will not be able to go into these developments, and their influences on the field of investigation of culture. I will proceed by stating why it is necessary to retain the distinction between conceptual enquiry and object-enquiry, and even to enlarge the scope of that distinction by bringing a criterion of learnability as the criterion to distinguish the domain of conceptual enquiry from that of object-enquiry. 8.4.2

Reasons versus Causes

Briefly stated, the justification for retaining the distinction between conceptual and object enquiry is the following. The pairs of concepts such as ‘reasons’ vs. ‘causes’, ‘understanding’ vs. ‘explanation’, etc. available in the European philosophical tradition mark out an important difference. Suppose I am invited to a party tonight by my Korean friends who have bought the choicest wines for it. I may tell my neighbour that I am going to get drunk tonight. This statement may be understood in two ways: (i) as a prediction of the outcome of my going to the party tonight, (ii) as a declaration of my decision to get drunk tonight. Suppose I am asked for reasons for my saying so, in case my statement is of the first sort, the reasons I give would be saying things such as the following: my previous experience of such circumstances tells me that one ends up drinking a lot of wine, and in addition 25

The whole of Rao, N. (1994) is on the nature of the conceptual enquiry as contrasted to the object-enquiry. 200

also takes some blue-label whisky at the end, and one inevitably gets drunk. Though these are also called in the common sense usage as ‘giving reasons’, they are in fact, in the terminology of the philosophical tradition, ‘explaining’ the outcome in terms of some ‘causes’ i.e. in terms of causal conditions operating in a party of the sort I have been invited. In contrast to it, suppose my original statement is a declaration of my decision to get drunk; in that case, the reasons I give to justify my decision are of a different nature than the above. It could run something like the following. The party I have been invited is of my close friends, it is a nice company, choicest wines are going to be offered, and I have been immersed too long in work, today I have a right for complete relaxation. These are ‘reasons’ I give to justify the decision I made to act in some particular way, and not the ‘causes’ in terms of which a predicted event can be explained. The elucidation above is given in terms of the distinction between the reasons for a decision and causes in terms of which something is predicted. But the distinction is much more general. It can equally be between justifying a claim and explaining a phenomenon. The enquiry into the nature of valid and invalid justifications of an action or a claim is not the same as an enquiry into the nature of causes operating in a situation. Thus the pairs of concepts such as reasons versus causes, and understanding versus explaining are meant to mark out the difference between approaching something as concerned with knowledge and its variants (such as fallacies, ignorance etc.) as against approaching something as phenomenon. One and the same statement can be approached as a phenomenon or as a knowledge claim. In the first case, for example, one can investigate the statement in terms of the psychological or sociological causes that makes the person to put forward such a claim. But then we are no longer approaching the statement as a knowledge claim; rather we approach it as a phenomenon. To do the former is, for instance, to enquire the exact sense of the statement, its validity, and the nature of grounds that are relevant to decide its validity, and such things.

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The next step that I want to take is to suggest that the investigation of cultural difference, as conceived in Anthropology is mainly that of approaching it as phenomenon. Instead, the project this book hopes to initiate is that of approaching cultures as embodying different knowledge systems, inherited and exhibited by different groups or societies. To specify what constitutes a ‘knowledge system’, however, the contrasts such as ‘reason’ vs. ‘causes’ are inadequate. As indicated earlier, the distinction though important was conceived within a tradition which was preoccupied with separating intellectual knowledge from context-bound varieties of knowledge. As a result, the model of knowledge within the context of which the distinction between knowledge and phenomenon is made is that of the propositional model: a model where to know is to know that something is the case, or to know that a certain rule has to be applied. If this model is taken as the basis for investigation of the knowledge systems, then it would be conceived as a task of identifying beliefs (the stated or implied ‘reasons’) behind the encountered actions. Investigating ‘cultural difference’ would thus become a task of documenting the differences in beliefs prevailing amongst different groups that presumably result in their different ways of going about in the world. This approach which can be designated as ‘beliefs approach’ was fairly wide spread, and still has its adherents in Anthropological Research. So, a short detour may be in order to indicate the conceptual weakness of such an approach. 8.4.3

'Making Sense of a Situation': Beliefs Inadequate and Unnecessary

One question the beliefs approach is intended to answer is: why someone acts in a particular way? What orientation one has that expresses itself in actions? Postulation of beliefs, it is hoped, would answer this question. Thus, for instance, many Anthropologists use the concept of ‘meaning-aspect of an action’ in giving an account of what they are doing. This is in fact a notion borrowed from, or highly influenced by, Max Weber’s conception of ‘Sinnzusammenhänge’ or ‘Sinnhaftigkeit der Handlung’. The basic idea is the following: since communities differ in the way they deal with their environment (both social and physical) they 202

must be structuring their environment differently. Such structuring embodied in actions can be termed as ‘meaning-aspect’ and enquiry into it is a legitimate interest. Two questions, however, are pertinent. First, what for, an explication of ‘meaning-aspect’ is sought? What is considered as appropriate elaboration of ‘meaning aspect’ of an action depends on, what for, i.e. in what context, and for what purpose, it is offered. 26 Secondly, what kind of an approach to meaning aspects of action is fruitful? The main approaches so far can be identified as the variations of the assumption that it has to take the form of excavating a system of beliefs. I venture to say that very few people have neatly expressible beliefs (in fact, even less so in the so called ‘traditional’ societies), and in general, hardly anyone conducts his or her life by looking for directives derivable from this or that belief.27 Now, whatever may be one’s scepticism regarding the worth of this as an empirical assertion, it can easily be shown that there is no conceptual need to postulate beliefs in order to account for the human ability to orient in different situations. A precondition of orienting oneself is only that one has to differentiate the environment in some way. Suppose we call this aspect of an action as that of ‘making sense of a situation’, it is important to note that it is not the same as having a belief and applying it. In fact, beliefs are neither adequate, nor necessary, for that purpose. A belief, even if it exists, need to be interpreted anew in every context if it is to be useful to guide one's actions. This implies that the usefulness of beliefs for a person possessing them depend on his having already some capacity to interpret them and apply them to different contexts. This latter is part of a more general capacity to use words or concepts (or more generally, signs) as instruments of differentiating the environment and thereby orient oneself 26

The question of the reliability of the ‘informant’. There is considerable discussion in Anthropological literature on the problem of contradictory information given by the informants. An extreme case of explaining this is to attribute to the informants a motive of deliberate misleading of the Anthropologists. 27 Such a picture of human conduct is perhaps derived from a wishful idea of an ideal Christian conduct - the conduct derivable from, and justifiable by, recurring to the Biblical or Moral commands. 203

in the world. Thus a capacity to differentiate the environment i.e. to make sense of a situation, is a different, and a logically prior, capacity to that of having beliefs and applying them to master a situation. A second problem with the beliefs approach can be formulated in parallel to the logical maxim that an object cannot be exhausted by description: an action cannot be exhausted by any set of beliefs that may be given as reasons for it. Just as for the purpose of evaluating descriptions, one has to have some criterion whether a description is relevant or not, similarly, to judge the rightness or wrongness of the belief-system offered as an explication of an action, one need to have some criterion of relevance of the offered beliefs for the concerned actions. This implies that to judge what beliefs account to which set of actions, one needs to recur to the context and purpose of the explication. In other words, constructing a belief-system is itself a context-oriented action. If we assume the contrary, we will land in a hopeless position, because we will have no conceivable procedure available to construct the beliefs: the elementary basis for understanding a divergence of opinion is a (real or imagined) situation of acting together in the context of which a divergence from a familiar way of doing things becomes apparent. To make sense of an opinion one has to form an idea of alternative courses of action ensuing from assenting or dissenting to it. That is, at least, as an epistemological procedure an action has to be taken as prior to belief, and as that in terms of which a belief can be made sense of. In that case, any explication of action in terms of belief begs the question. Accounting for meaning-aspect of an action in terms of beliefs is part of a notion of understanding as that of getting into the ‘original’ context of performance of an action. This, in turn, is based upon an idea of overcoming the representer's context. To conceive such a possibility one has to assume that there is (in Thomas Nagel's phrase28) a ‘view from nowhere’ or a universal context within which all human beings have their actions and thinking, and capable of communicating

28

Nagel, Th. ( 1986). 204

with each other by relating to that universal context. We have already come across the theological roots of this conception. I think that the notion of a ‘universal context’ is incoherent, but instead of arguing that out, let me raise the question, what could be a reasonable framework which provides such an universal context? Even if we grant the validity of the most favourable candidate of the philosophers for such a framework - a physical conception of absolute space and time - still, it is not yet enough for constructing a reasonable set of ‘meanings’ or understanding actions. Any reasonably adequate notion of context must involve the educational and historical background of participants as constitutive elements of that context within which communication takes place. This already introduces a level of variability that is sufficient to make the notion of ‘universal context’ less useful an instrument for the purpose of investigating ‘meaning aspect’ of actions. In elucidating the pragmatic conception of knowledge I have already alluded to the fact that the notion of a 'universal context' is a result of overlooking a logical difference between object and its description: an object is more than the sum of its descriptions or representations; that is, a description or, in more general terms, a representation, necessarily means selection, and selection is always tied to some purpose, and this purpose in turn is as much context bound as the representation arising out of it. The idea of freeing the representation from the subjective purposes through a meta-representation of the context of the original representation is an illusion; because, such meta-representations can be replicated infinitely (an infinite regress) and an articulation of a meta-representation is equally bound by what purpose and in what context it is offered. In short, the impossibility of getting out of the representer's context is part of the very nature of the representing activity. This implies that an attempt to represent other traditions cannot be free from the present purposes. So, the question is not so much getting at the original background of a ‘tradition’ one is studying, but

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rather to specify in terms of what present purposes those traditions are approached. 8.4.4

Learnable versus Manipulable

As against the context-invariant conception of knowledge of which the propositional model is a legacy, it is mentioned already that there is an option to take a pragmatic turn in the conception of knowledge, and conceive knowledge in the sense of techne. In the context of the latter, the distinction between knowledge and phenomenon can be drawn using a distinction between two classes of pragmatic orientations: We can look at the observed patterns of behaviour of a community either as something manipulable or as something learnable.29 In the first case the observed something can be confronted in our practical dealings either with an adjustment to it or with a manipulation of it; since both these types of dealings involve manipulation - either of oneself or the objective situation they can be considered as issuing from the manipulative stance. Alternatively we can look at the observed patterns as instances of ways of doing things: the presented way of doing can be considered as an efficient or a deficient way and accordingly we can take a learning or a teaching attitude, both of which I want to subsume under the term ‘learning stance’, because both involve looking at the observed as a learnable something. Thus, the criterion to distinguish knowledge from phenomenon is to see whether something is the result of conceptualising by taking a learning or a manipulative stance. When something is approached as a phenomenon the appropriate question would be one of asking what causes or sustains that particular state of affairs, irrespective whether these states are that of institutions or of beliefs. That is, ‘causing’, ‘sustaining’ and ‘state of affairs’ as used here are conceptualisable in very many different levels and ways: we may speak of physical states and mechanical causation or psychical and social states and functional causation. Saying that traditions are knowledge dispositions, on the other hand, implies that

29

This is an attempt to make the distinctions developed in chapter titled ‘Animal Symbolicum’ in: Lorenz, K. (1990a) and also in: Lorenz, K. (1996): ‘Subjekt’ fruitful for culture research. 206

they can be conceptualised in such a way as to make them available for teaching or learning. Two things need to be said about the use of the ‘learnability’ above. First, to say something is ‘learnable’ is also to say that it can be looked at as a possible way of doing things which is further improvable. This implies further that as a way of doing things, it can be investigated as a domain in its own right with a view of improving and perfecting it. Second, as used here, ‘learnable’ is a contrast notion to that of ‘causal’ and correlative to the notion of knowledge. Just as one can distinguish between different kinds of knowledge (such as skills or information), one can also distinguish between different kinds of learnability. ‘Learnable’, however, is often used differently. On a Kantian use, for example, the capacity to estimate (Urteilskraft) is not ‘teachable’ or ‘learnable’. What is meant is that there are neither any set procedures of teaching how to estimate a situation, nor clear criterion of testing one’s ability to make such judgements. 30 Similarly, Aristotle suggests that teaching ‘practical wisdom’ to young who do not have practical experience is futile; a process of intellectual ‘maturation’ is a precondition of their being able to profit from a political education. 31 But this does not mean that Aristotle wants to claim that ‘wisdom’ is a biological ripening process. Similarly Kant’s claim is not that ‘Urteilskraft’ is inborn. Therefore in my use of the term both these are ‘learnable’ even though there are important differences in kind to be thematised amongst learnables: learning ways of living or ‘attitudes’ is a different form of learning than learning an academic discipline, and this again differs from learning of skills such as cycling. But in order to demarcate a stance to something as knowledge from a stance to it as phenomenon a generic notion of learnability is sufficient.

30

"so zeigt sich, daß zwar der Verstand einer Belehrung und Ausrüstung durch Regeln fähig, Urteilskraft aber ein besonderes Talent sei, welches gar nicht belehrt, sondern nur geübt sein will. Daher ist diese auch das Spezifische des sogenannten Mutterwitzes, dessen Mangel keine Schule ersetzen kann;" I. Kant : Kritik der reinen Vernunft, cit. 1975, A 133-34 / B 172-73. Also see Prange, K. (1974). 31 Aristotle: Nikomachean Ethics, cit. 1975, 1095 a 2-14. 207

To summarise, actions are not necessarily consequences of ‘reasons’ in the sense of beliefs. But they can be looked upon as exhibiting learnable skills. Therefore the term ‘knowledge system’ we spoke of earlier has to pick out knowing how exhibited in actions rather than the beliefs supposedly underlying them. Accordingly, the criterion of picking out ‘knowledge’ against ‘phenomenon’ is not that of identifying occasions of providing ‘reasons’ as against that of providing ‘causes’; it is rather that of identifying something as learnable as against manipulable.

Further, the dispositions to action that are learnable can be termed as knowledge dispositions. The two constituents of this term are chosen with the following considerations. (i) The expression ‘knowledge’ is used in order to emphasise the contrast to behaviour. By ‘looking at something in terms of

behaviour’ are meant the

situations where we may consider an expression of a habit as either a result of a fortunate or an unfortunate formation in an individual, but we do not bring upon it the bearing of judgement in terms of a standard of perfection. In contrast, an action which is an expression of a learnt skill or a learnt ethos will be looked upon as either more or less perfect, adequate or still more perfectible in terms of some standard of perfection. (ii) The expression ‘disposition’ is used to emphasise two contrasts. First, what we are concerned with are conceptualising actions in contrast to the results or resources used in an action, such as sentences and texts. Second, the action we are concerned with is in the sense of the type or schematic aspect in contrast to the token or actualisation aspect - the latter is meant in an inclusive sense to refer to both individual acts and assertions

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8.5

Varieties of Knowledge and ‘Configuration of Learning’

The strict distinction between approaching something as learnable and approaching it as phenomenon not only does not preclude a recognition that there are different kinds of learnables, but it even enables us to identify and conceptualise those differences. There are different skills and different grades of skills requiring certain other skills as pre-condition of their learning. And learning strategy, used and discovered while learning one kind of skill, can be generalised to learn other skills. In this process of wider and deeper generalisation of the strategies of learning more complex forms of learning how to learn emerge.

Broadly, the knowledge dispositions prevailing in community or society can be distinguished into (i) technical skills, both useful and artistic ones, (ii) disciplines that involve methods, information and standards of evaluation, (iii) attitudes within the ambit of which both skills and disciplines are practised.

With regard to the items of this classification, skills and disciplines are well recognised as forms of knowledge. In the case of attitudes, however, the situation is different. Many factors are responsible why this is the case. One of them is certainly, that, unlike skills, attitudes can not be easily or perhaps not at all conceptualised into learnable procedures. Nor can they be equated with the information that a person possesses. But attitudes, in the sense of possible types of stances towards life, do express themselves in many complex ways of dealing with the world, and therefore they do have a claim to be considered as a form of knowledge. In fact, what is often identified as ‘world views’ are attitudes, even though, in such identifications, already a theoretical approach how they are to be conceptualised is embodied, i.e. it is assumed that attitudes are a system of beliefs. However, to say the least, one has to distinguish ‘world view’ in the sense of a belief-system from the attitudes exhibited in the way one acts and leads one’s

209

life. This latter need not be expressed and most of the time are not expressible as beliefs.

Whereas skills and disciplines are comparatively easy to transfer from one culture to another, it is the attitudes, which are neither easily conceptualisable nor easily transferable, that gives a culture its characteristic specificity. It is this that can give substance to the notion of ‘cultural difference’.

As part of his or her socialisation, an individual learns not only technical skills but also, along with them, certain ways of learning: one not merely learns but also learns to learn. A way of learning when it is present in an individual or a milieu does influence other ways of learning prevailing along with it. That is, ways of learning necessarily form a configuration and do not remain separate and discrete. Thus one can speak of a configuration of learning getting formed in a society over the generations, and it is this that gives a holistic rounding off to the way of going about in the world of a community - that is both conspicuous to a visitor and also has an air high intangibility.

To sum up, the concept of ‘configuration of learning’ is one of the means we can fruitfully use in order to identify the cultural difference. But forging this concept is only an opening up of the vast investigative horizon. 8.6

A Whirlwind Detour to the Scene of Recent Anthropology

For a casual reader the question suggested in this book as the central question to be answered in order to approach knowledge dispositions prevailing in different traditions of the world, the question ‘what constitutes cultural difference?’ may appear to be the central focus of recent Anthropological literature. I want to claim, however, that the discussion there often oscillates between conceiving the task of Anthropology to be that of describing a phenomenon and that of claiming that it conceptualises the ways of going about in the world available in different groups. This oscillation is to some extent influenced by the philosophical currents 210

that exist. In this section, I want to take a quick glance at the theoretical efforts to define the domain and objectives of Anthropology: To give some focus to such a swift whirl-wind tour I take efforts of Clifford Geertz as illustrative of the more general trend. 8.6.1

‘Thick Description’

The following is Geertz’s very influential definition of culture, 32 “an historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic form by means of which men communicate, perpetuate and develop their knowledge about and attitude towards life.” 33

It is interesting to compare this definition with the equally influential definition of a hundred years earlier given by E.B.Tyler. „Culture or civilisation, taken in its widest ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.“ 34

The behaviouristic and naturalistic tone of the definition of the 19th century has been transformed into an interpretative understanding of culture. Though this echoes the first person view urged by the ‘protagonists of culture’ in the 19th century,35 nevertheless ‘culture’ is not exactly conceived as an educational ideal as wanted by the ‘protagonists of culture’ in terms of the designation given to them in chapter 2. Though the definition signals the sharing of the specialist claim of an academic discipline as also envisaged by the naturalism of the third quarter of the 19th century, still the discipline is conceived more as a ‘humanistic discipline’ rather than that of a ‘science’. That is, the earlier confident naturalism and the temper of the missionary zeal hoping through the discipline an enlightenment has given place to more unsure and, ostensibly at least, to a tone moderated by sceptical attitude. The behavioural institutional view of what the object of Anthropology is replaced by the notions of ‘discourse’ and ‘symbol’, thus conforming to the 20th century pre-occupation with symbols and language. Whereas Tyler’s definition is meant to launch a new discipline, in the case of 32

For the influence see Shweder, R. A./ LeVine, R. (1984). Geertz, C. (1973), reprinted (1993), p. 89. 34 Tyler, E.B. (1958). 35 Cf. chapter 2. 33

211

Geertz, the established discipline with a history of reflection about its past mistakes, and criticisms of them, makes itself felt in the sceptical tone. The main question that is confronted by Geertz is: how to take note of the criticisms of the past of the discipline but nevertheless give a justification for the existence of Anthropology. His justification can be considered by looking at the main concept he makes use of, the ‘thick description’, a concept borrowed from Ryle. Suppose we distinguish two main aspects through which a discipline can be considered, namely, (a) in terms of method of presentation, and (b) in terms of the peculiarity of the object, ‘thick description’ is the concept through which Geertz brings out his specific conception of both the object and the method of the discipline of Anthropology. The term ‘thick description’ is forged by Ryle in the context of denying that ‘mentality’ is something over and above what is inter-subjectively observable behaviour. He suggests that what we consider as ‘mentality’ is nothing but different descriptions given by bringing an enlarged context to bear on the event described. Suppose we see someone stretching his arms, and bring to this act the context of the soldierly situation and thus describe it as ‘obeying order’, there is no extra event than the stretching of arms, but still the act of stretching the arms and the act of obeying are two different action descriptions. Geertz uses it in order to deny that culture is any special object accessible only to the bearer of a ‘culture’. There is no need for any special access to mentality of the people whose culture is studied. Geertz retains the term ‘meaning’, a notion against which Ryle’s effort was directed at. But now the meanings are no longer the special entities or accusatives of action; they are for Geertz just meant to indicate that the object of investigation of Anthropology is discourse. Discourse is ‘public’ but involves construction by the participants; there is no such thing as a purely given discourse that the Anthropologist seeks an access to. He is engaged

212

in an activity of interjecting in the ongoing discourse with his trained capacities of looking for nuances of differences on a theme that interests him. As result of this view that an Anthropologist interjects into an ongoing discourse, the object, ‘culture’, becomes defined in terms a ‘thick description’, that is, it is enlarging the contexts of narration by the participants. If the Anthropological object is such a processes of enlarging the context of narration, the same is the case of representing such a process. Thus, the Anthropologist, on the one hand brings his background tradition to bear upon the ongoing discourse in the milieu he is doing his field work, and on the other hand, in constructing a representation to the readers back home, brings interjects through his experience in a different milieu in the milieu of the reader. In other words, both the object of Anthropology and the method of it involve a specific form of discourse construction, and the interaction between the two bring about a specific knowledge - the local knowledge. A further illumination of the nature of Geertz’s conception can be cast by putting it in relief to the background concerns of the earlier Anthropology, against which Geertz constructs his conceptions. 8.6.2

The Story of What Anthropology is

Anthropology with its specific institutional infra-structure like journals, specific methods and associations took birth sometime in the 20s and 30s of this century. The characteristic conceptions themselves are in reaction to some of the trends against the background of which the institutional rooting of the discipline of Anthropology took place. Against the Frazer’s evolutionism, the revolt by Malinowski was to stress the field work. 36 But this field work tradition was not necessarily free from the assumptions inherited from the 19th century evolutionism. Instead of the temporal scaling, a structural hierarchy of the societies was built, even when some of the terminology used earlier were eschewed. But one slogan did get established: varying one of the dictums of 36

See on Sir James Georg Frazer in: Malinowski (1944). 213

Harris about language, we can say that ‘cultures vary indefinitely’ is one of the formative assumptions of Anthropology from the beginning of this century. But this meant speaking of communities as self-enclosed units. This is epitomised by the metaphor used by Ruth Benedict in her Patterns of Culture37 of seashell to describe the fine structured differences between the communities. With such assumptions of self-enclosed view of communities, the application of structural methods was easy. Thus along with the overt rejection of evolutionism the conceptual inheritance of evolutionism continued such as the contrast between primitive society and advanced society, each of them being separate formations having separate trajectories. Also, in spite of the assumption of plurality, the approaches like functionalism had to assume the uniformity of human nature in spite of their expressions may differ in different circumstances. This is needed as part of the explanatory framework. For the same categories must be applicable to explain the societies in different places. Thus scientificity and the notion of uniformity of human nature are not given up even when the variability is stressed. The recent discussions that started around the late 60s were governed by rejection of this inheritance, i.e., the rejection of (i) self-enclosed view of the community as assumed in the sea-shell view, (ii) the implicit evolutionary approach embodied in concepts like ‘primitive society’. Both these rejections are embodied by Wolf, in his landmark book, Europe and People without History (1982).38 It can be also considered as rejecting one dominant assumption inherited from the Kantian model of philosophy of history: the history as the unrolling of the human species essence, or the nationalist derivatives from such human species essence conception, i.e., that history is the unrolling of the essences of ‘peoples’ or ‘nations’. Instead of both these, an interaction view of the social formations was brought to the fore, and a world-historical context of contingent circumstances giving rise to different economies, and group-identities, and state formations were stressed.

37

38

See Benedict, R. (1934). Cf. Wolf, E.R. (1982). 214

Wolf asserts that his aim is to situate the supposed isolated communities in the midst of the history and showing that the losers and winners of the history are part and parcel of one and the same history. Anthropology thus becomes showing through snap shots the nodal points of societies constituted by web of relations. But in that case, what is it that is studied by Anthropology? Are there structures that can be identified as starting here and stopping there? In other words, answering the famous question of what defines the boundaries of the ‘society’ which is the central concept for both Sociology and Anthropology of earlier periods becomes an urgent task. Similarly, Wolf’s World-system analysis appeared to give up the very notion of culture, speaking only of nodal points of interactions. In another way it is a continuation of the assumption of scientificity assumed by the 19th century theorists, especially by Marx.

8.6.3

Human Sciences as Purveyors of ‘Local Knowledge’

Thus Geertz’s view is conceived against the background of the classical themes of Cultural Anthropology: It is conceived against (a) the notion of uniformity of human nature. (b) the notion of ‘primitivity’, (c) the notion of ‘scientificity’. In arguing against these tendencies, a specific comparative method is espoused and the classical theme of ‘cultures vary indefinitely’ was given a new formulation. The question a theory of Anthropology needed to answer was: what should be identified as ‘culture’? Older answer was customs, beliefs, rituals. Geertz’s use of the concept of ‘thick description’ suggests, as elucidated earlier, that it is discourse. In suggesting this and giving a specific idea of discourse construction, Geertz could also dispenses with a need to postulate an unchanging ‘essence’ - thus at one stroke distancing from both the uniformity thesis and primitivism thesis. It also distances thereby from scientism. The term ‘local knowledge’ is meant to oppose both a notion of global essence capturable in nomological model, and ‘local essence’ capturable through the 215

access to special ‘meanings’ entertained by the bearers of a culture. The Anthropologist captures the variety of discourses that is necessary to deal with the situations. However, one has to identify, hazily at least, the theme one is interested in through some criterion of importance, and for this purpose the researcher’s tradition does become the point of departure. Thus, his main study is connected with religion on the one hand and the notions connected with law on the other both the classical themes inherited from the days of 19th century. However, Geertz brings to these themes, an approach inherited from Herder: he elaborates Herder’s thesis that human being is an unfinished animal into a thesis that to have a knowledge of human being (i.e. the knowledge that the discipline of anthropology is supposed to deliver) one has to have the knowledge of specific ‘cultures’, the ‘local knowledge’. But this thesis is again an answer to the question ‘why human beings have culture?’ rather than to the question, what it is to investigate cultural difference. It speaks of ‘local knowledge’ but in the process the claim to study the more enduring aspects of the inheritance formed through the experiences of many generations of the past are given up. In contrast, the project envisaged in this book gives up the oscillation between the approach that considers man as a phenomenon and that which focuses on knowledge exercised by him, and does claim that there is a longer term research task concerning the inheritance from the past of different human groups.

216

Appendix 1: Samkhya: Developing Discriminatory Capacities as the Educational Ideal Here I want to illustrate how a possible approach to doing philosophical research (as contrasted to historical and philological research) in Indian Tradition can look like. This is only the bare outline, and meant only for illustrative purpose. Samkhya is one of the six systems, traditionally considered as one of the schools within the the ‘orthodox’ systems, within the ‘vedic’ fold, as contrasted to systems that come under the folds of Buddhism and Jainism, traditionally considered as outside the vedic fold. But for our purpose this fact does not make much of a difference. For the style of philosophising in the Indian tradition is that of a debating style (Vada); this makes the concepts of one particular system the focus and point of departure for developing alternatives to it. Therefore, if we can capture the central concerns of Samkhya in terms of issues relevant and understandable today, we will be opening up a fruitful approach. One aspect of Samkhya is that it provides a scheme of distinctions for many disciplines in the Indian tradition. Samkhya as elaborated in the Samkhya Karika asserts that there are two ultimate principles, Purusa and prakriti, both being involved in the process of bringing about and dissolution of the world characterised by suffering as well as dissolving that world. Purusa

Prakriti Mahat or Buddhi Ahamkara Manas five sense

five action

organs

or motor organs 217

tanmatras

five gross elements

Purusa and prakriti are characterised by using contrastive predicates. (cf. Larson’s chart and explanation; in: Gerald James Larson, Ram Shankar Bhattacharya (ed.s), The Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies, Volume 4: Samkhya, A Dualist Tradition in Indian Philosophy, Princeton University Press, 2014) Purusa is ‘witness’ (sakshi), not characterisable through having parts (kevala), ‘indifferent’ (madhyasthyam),

one who sees (drastrtvam),

and ‘inactive’

or ‘non-generative’

(akartrbhava). In contrast to prakriti he is neither prakrti nor vikrti, thus nether manifest (vyakta) nor unmanifest (avyakta), and thus free from Trigunya, and is something for which the generation and dissolution takes place (Bhoktrtva). The plurality of purusas is argued for in Karika XVIII. Prakriti is characterised as Trigunya and Buddhi is conceived as the first ‘evolute’ out of the generation process. This Buddhi is described as the discriminating capacity and it is attributed a central role both in the generation and dissolution process. What should we make out of this? For my purpose I want to begin with two pairs of distinctions: (i) type vs. token or schema vs. actualisation (ii) action vs. sign action or epistemic action. Samkhyan assertions can be made understandable in terms of the above two pairs of distinctions. In Samkhya the interest is in the epistemic or sign process and not in the process of action of making something. It is the ‘making’ or ‘generating’ involved in the sign-process that is of interest. As every action sign action too involves an actualisation and a schema aspect. In terms of Schema aspect it is ‘inactive’, ‘unchanging’ etc., but without the schema aspect the actualisation is not thinkable. In terms of my scheme the schematic aspect a signaction is the purusa aspect. The actualisation is the prakriti aspect. The ‘generation’ and ‘change’ are characteristics attributable to the actualisation aspect and not to the schemaaspect. Since the exercise of Buddhi or discriminating capacity is both possible in terms of a pragmatic orientation and in terms of a reflexive orientation - i.e., reflecting or epistemically 218

probing the exercise of discriminative capacity itself - it is both responsible for ‘evolution’ where many discriminations of the world of objects take place, and for ‘devolution’ where the discriminating capacity is distinguished into schematic and actualisation aspects - the former then gets recognised as not capable of change, generation etc. The latter is a necessary adjunct for the functioning of the discriminatory capacity, but it in itself is powerless to initiate the generation or dissolution unless there is the schematic aspect. Schematic aspect on the other hand is not the generating and dissolving principle; it is the prakriti that is the generating principle. Both the principle of generating and the principle of Schema involved in the discriminating capacity are not available for perception, but rather have to be inferred through Anumana. That is, they are made available through the means of Anumana. Saankhya conception of ‘buddhi’ as discriminatory capacity, and various conceptions of Samkhya can be conceived as the different modes of discriminatory (or differentiating) capacities (e.g. different sense discriminatory capacities, and different abstract discriminatory capacities). Even differentiating the prakriti and purusha, thereby overcoming the discriminations, is the result of developing the discriminatory capacity.

219

Appendix 2: Deutsche Zusammenfassung / German Summary

1.

Fragen und Grundannahmen

‘Kultur’, wie ich das Wort verstehe, meint die ererbten Umgangsweisen, die sich aus den unterschiedlichen Vergangenheiten von Gruppen ergeben. Dementsprechend verstehe ich ‘Kulturforschung’ als die Aufgabe, solche ererbten Umgangsweisen von verschiedenen Gruppen als aneigbares Wissen zu begreifen und für zukünftige Generationen durch Forschung verfügbar zu machen. Die philosophische Aufgabe konzentriert sich in diesem Zusammenhang darauf, eine Antwort auf die Frage zu finden, was den Begriff des ‘kulturellen Unterschieds’ im Vergleich etwa zum ‘biologischen Unterschied’ oder zum ‘individuellen Unter-schied’ ausmacht. Ein erster Schritt in diese Richtung wird getan, - so werde ich argumentieren wenn man das gewichtige Erbe vorhandener Kulturtheorien überwindet. Viele dieser Theorien sind als Antworten auf die Frage entworfen worden, warum Menschen Kultur haben. Indem wir diese Antworten und die sie begründenden Argumentationslinien diskutieren, werden wir zwei anderen Verwendungsweisen des Begriffs ‘Kultur’ begegnen, die sich von der eingangs erwähnten Verwendung unterscheiden: Kultur als Bezeichnung für Kultiviertheit und als deskriptives Wort für die Gewohnheiten einer Gruppe. Diesen Arbeit liegt die folgende Überlegung zugrunde: mögliche Antworten auf die Frage, warum Menschen durch Kultur ausgezeichnet sind, implizieren nicht schon eine Antwort auf die andere Frage, was denn ein kultureller Unterschied sei. Erst eine Antwort auf die letztere Frage wäre aber die Voraussetzung für eine Konzeptualisierung von Kultur als erlernbare Lebenshaltung. Will man eine solche Frage nach dem kulturellen Unterschied begrifflich fassen und geeignete Antwortversuche machen, erweisen sich die Gedankengänge, die durch die Frage ausgelöst werden, warum Menschen durch Kultur ausgezeichnet sind, eher hinderlich als hilfreich. 220

Inwiefern bisherige Kulturtheorien hauptsächlich aus Versuchen, die erste Frage zu beantworten, hervorgegangen sind, wird durch eine philosophiehistorische Untersucgung aufgezeigt. Hinweise auf das zugrundegelegte Verständnis von Philosophie wie auch zum Thema der Arbeit werden diesen Untersuchungen im 1. Kapitel vorangestellt. Es wird davon ausgegangen, daß Theorie auf zweierlei Weise vorstellbar ist. Zum einen kann man Überlegungen anstellen, wie man aufgrund schon vorhandener Alternativen zu Entscheidungen kommt, zum anderen kann man neue Handlungsmöglichkeiten zum Gegenstand der Forschung machen. Die Theorie im ersten Fall beschäftigt sich mit bereits vorhandenen Alternativen und gibt an, auf welche Weise Handlungen in ihren Wirkungen beurteilt werden können. Ihr Ziel ist es, Entscheidungshilfen für deren Auswahl zur Verfügung zu stellen. Im Unterschied dazu beschäftigt sich die Theorie im zweiten Fall explorativ mit dem Problem, auf welche Art und Weise neue Alternativen überhaupt entwickelt werden können. Der Verwendung von ‘Theorie’ in diesem zweiten Sinne ist der vorliegende Ansatz verpflichtet. Er geht davon aus, daß die Aufgabe der philosophischen Reflexion hinsichtlich der Kulturuntersuchung darin besteht, die anderen (fremden) Kulturen als uns nicht vertraute Handlungsmöglichkeiten aufzufassen und danach zu fragen, wie sie uns verfügbar gemacht werden können. In diesem Sinne ist die vorliegende Arbeit eine begriffliche Prolegomena, auf deren Grundlage empirische Forschung durchgeführt werden kann. Ein solches Vorgehen entspricht der spezifischen Rolle der Philosophie als Disziplin, Hilfsarbeit für die Konstruktion neuer Disziplinen zu leisten. Dieses auf Locke zurückgehende Philosophieverständnis wird erläutert, indem es zwei anderen Möglichkeiten gegenübergestellt wird: gemäß der einen soll die Philosophie Übersichten liefern, gemäß der anderen Paradoxien lösen, welche aufgrund konfligierender Begriffs-systeme entstehen, die aus verschiedenen empirischen Disziplinen stammen. Dabei wird der Alltagsintuition kritisch Rechnung getragen. 2.

Kulturdiskurs: Prägung durch Begriff des ‘Gegebenen’

221

Die Kapitel 2 bis 7 behandeln die begrifflichen Folgen für die Kulturforschung, die sich aus der erkenntnistheoretischen Kritik am Begriff des Gegebenen herleiten, wofür es in der Erkenntnistheorie des 20. Jh.s eine lange Tradition gibt. Ich werde die These vertreten und sie anhand ausgewählten Quellenmaterials belegen, daß die Kategoriengewohnheiten, aus denen unsere Begriffe im Kulturdiskurs stammen, durchgehend vom Begriff des Gegebenen Gebrauch machen. Die die geistige Welt dominierenden Kategoriengewohnheiten bilden gewöhnlich den Wissenshintergrund für Forscher oder Disziplinen. Welche Kategoriengewohnheiten bilden nun den Hintergrund für den uns vertrauten Kulturbegriff und verwandte Begriffe? Es läßt sich zeigen, daß sich das heute gängige Paradigma des Kulturdiskurses den Versuchen verdankt, die Ende des 18. Jh.s bzw. Anfang des 19. Jh.s unternommen worden sind, um theologische Annahmen zu naturalisieren. Ich zeichne die Geschichte der Entstehung des Begriffs ‘Kultur’ aus dem der ‘Kultivierung’ nach, wobei letzterer auf den Aristotelischen Begriff des ‘guten Lebens’ zurückgeführt wird. Auch spüre ich der u.a. von Kant und Herder vertretenen These nach, Kultur sei das Resultat davon, daß Menschen gegenüber Tieren durch das Charakteristikum, ein ‘Vernunftwesen’ zu sein, ausgezeichnet sind. Kant und Herder haben in diesem Zusammenhang eine ganze Palette von Begriffen gebildet. Die Begriffe des Modernitäts-Paradigmas führe ich darauf zurück. Es wird im 2. Kapitel als eines der einflußreichsten Paradigmen des Kulturdiskurses identifiziert. Die Kategoriengewohnheiten, die diesem Paradigma zugrundeliegen, werden ausführlich in den nachfolgenden Kapiteln behandelt. Die in den Kapiteln 3 - 7 diskutierten Tatsachen sind als solche nicht neu, sie dürften vielmehr als bekannt vorausgesetzt werden. Neu ist dagegen die Zusammenschau zentraler Begriffe in der hier gewählten Perspektive, die eine durchgehende Linie von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart nachzeichnet. Anhand der Analyse ausgewählter Textstellen wird gezeigt, wie unsere heutigen Begriffe durch diese lange Tradition geprägt sind und welche Hindernisse sie daher bilden, 222

wenn die Aufgabe der Kulturforschung im Sinne einer Konzeptualisierung fremder Umgangsweisen als erlernbare Lebenshaltungen verstanden werden soll.

3.

Übersicht über die Kapitel 2 - 7

Das

2.

Kapitel

beginnt

mit

einem

Zitat

aus

einem

Buch

des

Gegenwartsjournalisten van der Post, das das vorherrschende Denkparadigma bei der Betrachtung von Kulturen in prototypischer Weise aufzeigt. Wie oben erwähnt, bezeichne ich dieses Denkparadigma als ‘Modernitätsparadigma’. Anhand einer Textanalyse und der Nachzeichnung der Geschichte der zentralen Wörter der Textpassage wie Zivilisation, Kultur und primitiv wird deren Einbindung in die philosophische Tradition verdeutlicht. Es wird gezeigt, daß der Begriff ‘Kultur’ ursprünglich mit dem aristotelischen Begriff agathos in Zusammenhang steht. Diente das Wort ‘Kultur’ zunächst als Bezeichnung für ein individuelles Erziehungsideal, wurde es im Laufe des 19. Jh.s zu einer Bezeichnung für die Gesamtheit des Verhaltens eines Volkes. Sowohl in der englischen als auch in der deutschen Tradition ist dieser Bedeutungswandel zu beobachten, wenn auch auf unterschiedliche Weise. Im 3. Kapitel geht es um den aristotelischen polis-Begriff. Sowohl das auf Hobbes zurückgehende Projekt der Wissenschaft vom Menschen als auch die auf Kant und Herder zurückgehende Begründung der praktischen Philosophie hängen mit den Unterscheidungen zusammen, die bereits in einer Passage aus Politik von Aristoteles zum Ausdruck gebracht worden sind. Des weiteren wird das griechische Ideal der polis mit Positionen in Verbindung gebracht, die sich der Unterscheidung des Gemachten gegenüber dem Gewordenen verdanken. Wichtige Probleme, die Kulturtheorien zu lösen versuchen, hängen vor allem damit zusammen, daß die Unterscheidung gemacht und geworden wiederum auf das menschliche Handeln und Wissen selbst angewendet wird.

223

Das 4. Kapitel beschäftigt sich mit Thomas von Aquin. Er versucht, das Erbe der christlichen Tradition mit dem der griechischen, insbesondere dem aristotelischen Erbe, zu verknüpfen. Hinsichtlich des Begriffes der ‘Natur’ wird das Werden bzw. das Gewordene dem Machen bzw. dem Gemachten gegenübergestellt. In der christlichen Tradition ist dagegen Gott als Macher (Maker) und Gesetzgeber (Ruler) das zentrale Thema. Thomas von Aquin übernimmt die aristotelischen Erläuterungen über die Gesetze der Stadt (polis) als Modell und generalisiert diese als Modell für das Universum: Was als Gesetz für die Stadt Geltung hat, gilt hier nun für das ganze Universum. Die aristotelischen Erläuterungen werden auf eine Weise umfunktioniert, daß die gesamte Natur nun als das Gemachte erscheint. So wird die aristotelische Unterscheidung zwischen gemacht und geworden verwischt. Insbesondere drei Konsequenzen, die sich daraus ergeben, werden im Detail aufgezeigt: (i) Der Theologie, bei Aristoteles eine theoretische Disziplin par excellence, wird eine praktische Dimension hinzugefügt Dies hat eine Wendung vom Begriff des guten Lebens zum moralisch guten Leben zur Folge. (ii) Bei Aristoteles ist die Form Auslöser für jede Aktivität. In bezug auf einen Handwerker z.B. gilt sie als Fertigkeit, die dem Handwerker zukommt. Sie ist Disposition und nicht Plan, nach dem etwas realisiert wird. Anders ausgedrückt: wenn Aristoteles davon spricht, daß die Form in der Seele des Herstellers liegt, denkt er im Modell eines Handwerkers in bezug auf dessen Fertigkeit und nicht im Modell eines Architekten in bezug auf dessen Plan. Das Ausüben einer Fertigkeit ist also zu unterscheiden von der Realisierung eines Plans. (iii) Die Bedeutungsverschiebung des Begriffs ‘Form’ hat den Begriff des ‘Willens’ zur Folge. Während bei Aristoteles die Form selbst als Auslöser für Prozesse und Aktivitäten gilt, benötigt Thomas von Aquin einen von der Form getrennten Agenten, der die Aktivitäten und Prozesse auslöst. Dabei ist die Form nicht mehr Eigenschaft des Agenten selbst, sondern sie wird - wie der Plan eines Architekten - zum Instrument. (Dies allerdings schließt nicht aus, daß das Instrument wiederum als Eigenschaft zweiter Ordnung einem Agenten zugeschrieben werden kann: so gehört es zur Eigenschaft eines geschickten Handwerkers, daß er auch fähig ist, Pläne hervorzubringen. Dies - so würde es 224

Aristoteles ausdrücken - gehört zum ethos des Handwerkers.) Dadurch wird eine Träger-Substanz postuliert, die der Agentenschaft zukommt. Das Prinzip der Agentenschaft für Prozesse ist es, aus dem später der Begriff des Willens hervorgeht. Eine Folge davon ist Thomas von Aquins Auffassung, daß etwas auf zweifache Weise wahr sein kann. Gegenstände sind wahr, insofern sie Exemplare im göttlichen Geist nachahmen. Menschliche Kognitionen sind wahr, insofern sie Gegenstände nachahmen. Aus der Umwandlung des Aristotelischen Begriffsystems durch Thomas von Aquin lassen sich zwei verschiedene Richtungen der neuzeitlichen Philosophie erklären, die naturalistische und die idealistische, Thema des 5. Kapitels. Hinsichtlich der Natur ist es für Hobbes die Aufgabe der Wissenschaft herauszufinden, welche Pläne und Mechanismen in Gegenständen verkörpert sind. Dies kann geschehen, indem man versucht, Naturgegenstände nachahmend herzustellen: geboren ist die experimentelle Methode, die er empfiehlt. Kant und der deutsche Idealismus dagegen betrachten Menschen als Spiegelbild Gottes; deshalb ist ihr Augenmerk darauf gerichtet, wie Ideen in Handlungen wirken. Menschen sind insofern Menschen, als sie Gott (Vernunft) nachahmen. Dieser Unterschied - einerseits Hobbes und andererseits Kant und Idealismus - ist wiedererkennbar im Methodenstreit innerhalb der Anthropologie, wo es um die Frage geht, ob nicht eher die Beobachterperspektive geeignet ist oder doch die Teilnehmerperspektive, um Wissen über Kulturen zu erwerben. Der Beitrag Kants, besonders in Form seines Begriffs der Naturgeschichte, steht im 6. Kapitel im Vordergrund. Menschen sind danach als Menschen charakterisiert, insofern sie Hersteller sind. Sogar die Gegenstände des Wissens werden als hergestellt betrachtet und nicht als gegeben. Die deutsche Umwandlung des individuellen Bildungsideals zu einem sozialen Ideal läßt sich im Anschluß daran nachzeichnen. Auf welche Weise das durch die christliche Tradition vermittelte aristotelische Bildungsideal dem alten Kulturbegriff zugrundeliegt und wie sich dieser bei Kant und dem deutschen Idealismus zu einem sozialemanzipatorischen Begriff verwandelt, wird anhand ausgewählter 225

Texte diskutiert. Hier gilt die Kernidee, der auch dem Kantischen Begriff der Naturgeschichte zugrundeliegt, daß der Mensch ein Gattungswesen ist. Wie im 20. Jh. das Erbe Kants weiterwirkt, ist Thema des 7. Kapitels. Cassirers Begriff der symbolischen Form wird hierzu als Beispiel herangezogen. Was bei Kant als die zwei Pole der Naturgeschichte erläutert wird, erscheint bei Cassirer als

zwei

Sorten

wissenschaftliche

von

symbolischen Formen:

symbolische

Form.

die

Kants

mythische

und

Überlegungen

die zum

Schematismusbegriff werden von Cassirer dazu benutzt, um zu zeigen, daß die mythische Begriffsform den räumlichen Schematismus verwendet und die wissenschaftliche den zeitlichen.

Konsequenz: mythisches Denken bleibt im

Konkreten stecken, wissenschaftliches Denken hat Schwierigkeiten, zum Konkreten zu gelangen. Wissenschaftliches Denken hat die Fähigkeit, mythisches Denken zu thematisieren, umgekehrt gilt dies aber nicht. Hier wird markanterweise deutlich, wie Cassirer Kants Begriff der Naturgeschichte umwandelt. Was bei Kant die Darstellung eines geschichtlichen Prozesses ist, wird bei Cassirer als strukturelle Hierarchie gesehen: auf der unteren Ebene steht die mythische Form, während sich die wissenschaftliche auf einer höheren Ebene befindet. Den Kernpunkt dieses Kapitels insgesamt bildet die Gegenüberstellung von Sinnlichem vs. Intelligiblem. Was bei Herder als Thema des instinktlosen und daher vernunftbegabten Tieres erörtert worden war, findet sich bei Cassirer wie auch bei anderen philosophischen Anthropologen wieder als Thema der Weltoffenheit im Sinne des Freiseins von Umweltbindungen (‘umweltfrei’). Tiere, so ist die These, ‘merken’ durch ihre Sinne die Umwelt und reagieren bzw. ‘wirken’ auf sie durch ihren Instinkt. Hierfür leiht sich Cassirer die Begriffe ‘Merknetz’ und ‘Wirknetz’ bei von Uexküll (1928) aus. Im Unterschied dazu - so Cassirer -

seien beim Menschen symbolische Formen dazwischengeschaltet:

symbolische Formen als die menschlichen Formen des Merk- und Wirknetzes! So wird erklärt, auf welche Weise abstraktere symbolische Formen wie die wissenschaftlichen im Vergleich zu den mythischen in stärkerem Maße das 226

Freisein von Umwelt prägen. Metaphysik vom Sinnlichen zum Intelligiblen wird zum dominanten Sujet der Kulturtheorien. Sowohl die begriffliche Fläche dieses Sujets wie auch seine historischen Wurzeln werden sichtbar gemacht. Im weiteren wird Herders These, daß der Mensch ein ‘unfertiges Tier’ ist, mit dem Begriff des ‘local knowledge’ von Clifford Geertz (1983) in Verbindung gebracht. Nach Geertz ist es Aufgabe der Anthropologie (Social Anthrophology), die Nuancen bestimmter grundlegender Begriffe in verschiedenen Milieus kontrastiv nachzuzeichnen, so z.B.

den Begriff des ‘Gesetzes’ mit dem des

dharma, der im indonesischen Hinduismus vergleichbare Funktionen erfüllt. Aufgezeigt wird hier die Art von Erkenntnisgewinn, der sich aus solchen Vergleichen erzielen läßt. 4.

Auf dem Weg zu einer Alternative

Die in den Kapiteln 2 bis 7 erläuterten Kulturtheorien fokussieren - wie oben skizziert - auf Kultur im Sinne einer Eigenschaft, die Menschen auszeichnet. Es muß festgestellt werden, daß diese Kulturtheorien keineswegs dazu beitragen, verschiedene Traditionen als erlernbare Lebenshaltungen thematisieren zu können. In Kapitel 8 wird daher ein Vorschlag gemacht, wie ein Begriff des kulturellen Unterschieds aussehen könnte. Dabei wird ausgegangen von der klassischen Unterscheidung zwischen Ursachen und Gründen, die im 20. Jh. vor allem mit Frege in Zusammenhang gebracht wird: etwas durch Ursachen zu erklären, ist etwas anderes, als für etwas Gründe anzugeben. Dies ist ein Kriterium, um zu unterscheiden, ob etwas als Wissen oder als Phänomen betrachtet wird. Obgleich diese Unterscheidung sehr wichtig ist, erscheint sie für den Zweck dieser Arbeit doch zu eng. Denn: diese Kriterien können nur für Wissen in Aussageform, d.h. für propositionales Wissen, verwendet werden. Die Annahme, daß Wissen nur in Form von Aussagen zu haben ist, ist auch der Grund, warum in der klassischen Anthropologie die belief systems beliebte Forschungsgegenstände sind. Es wird kurz darauf eingegangen, welcher Art Einwände gegen den belief-systems-Ansatz vorgebracht werden können. Ausgehend von dieser Kritik wird erläutert, wie wichtig es ist, Freges Kriterien zu 227

erweitern. Die geforderten Kriterien sollen ebenfalls dazu taugen, Wissen von Phänomenen zu unterscheiden, auch dann, wenn das Wissen in Form von Fertigkeiten vorhanden ist und nicht nur in Form von Propositionen.

Sogar

umgekehrt werden Propositionen als besondere Formen von Umgangsweisen (knowing-how) thematisiert. Mein umfassenderes Modell besteht darin, Wissen statt in Form von Propositionen als Fertigkeits-Modell zu entwerfen. Folgende Kriterien werden hierzu vorgeschlagen: Eine Handlung oder ein Verhalten kann als manipulierbar oder als lernbar betrachtet werden. Im ersten Fall (manipulierbar) haben wir es damit zu tun, etwas als Phänomen zu betrachten; im zweiten Fall (lernbar) geht es darum, etwas als Wissen zu betrachten. Lernbarkeit statt Gründe-Angeben wird zum Kriterium, Wissen von Phänomenen zu unterscheiden. Geht es um Kulturforschung, kommt eine dritte Form des Wissens zu Proposition und Fertigkeit hinzu: Die Haltungen, die in der Lebensführung zum Ausdruck kommen, sind weder Aussagen, noch sind sie einfache Fertigkeiten oder Disziplinen. Um die Haltungen in den Griff zu bekommen, wird ein eigener Begriff entwickelt: ‘configuration of learning’. Kurz erläutert bedeutet dies, daß jede Kultur eine Menge von Strategien des Lernens verkörpert, die eine spezifische Einheit in einer zusammenhängenden Netzstruktur bilden. 5.

Übersetztes Inhaltsverzeichnis Vorwort

0

Einleitung: ‘Kultureller Unterschied’ und Kulturtheorien

1

Reflexion als Verfügbarmachen von Alternativen 1.1

Situieren der Frage: Tradition als Erbe

1.2

Anstelle von Definitionen

1.3

Theoretische Haltung 1.3.1 Reflexion: Entscheidungshilfe vs. explorative Tätigkeit 1.3.2 Theorie: die aufgeschobene Entscheidung? 228

1.4

‘Hilfsarbeit’ für empirische Disziplinen und andere philosophische Aufgaben

1.5

Objektfragen vs. begriffliche Fragen sowie empirische vs. heuristische Theorien

1.5

Die Kategoriengewohnheit

2

Das Modernitätsparadigma

3

Die ‘Humanität’ und die gegebene Welt des ‘Intelligiblen’ 3.1

Das Gute bei Aristoteles und die Humanitas

3.2

Ein methodologisches Problem

3.3

Kultivierung der Humanitas: vom individuellen zum sozialen Ideal der Vollkommenheit 3.3.1 Geschichtsphilosophie und die ‘Kultur des Innenlebens’ 3.3.2 ‘Natürlicher’ contra ‘tierischer’ Ursprung der Sprache

3.4

Aristoteles: die gegebene Welt der Gegenstände und die gemachte Vielfalt der Sitten 3.4.1 Eine Heuristik 3.4.2 Rede und Polis: Ausdrck desselben natürlichen Vermögens

4

Die Naturalisierung der Offenbarung durch Universalisierung der polis: Thomas von Aquin 4.1

Die ‘Veredlung’ des Athener Erbes

4.2

Gott als Gesetzgeber und Hersteller 4.2.1

4.3

Das eherne Gesetz

Der Hersteller und seine ‘Kunst’ 4.3.1 Potentialität und Aktualität: die Form 4.3.2 Agens und Patiens 4.3.3 Zur Definition von Handlungen durch ‘Akkusative’

4.4

Theologie: eine praktische oder eine theoretische Disziplin? 4.4.1 Das Theoria-Ideal 229

4.5

Der Weg von zwei Arten von Wissen zu zwei verschiedenen Arten des Wahr-Seins

4.6

Der Wille: ‘Vernunft’ versus ‘Instinkt’ 4.6.1 Griechische Philosophie versus Cristlicher Glaube 4.6.2 (Menschliche Handlungen und Handlungen des Menschen)

4.7 5

Ein Seitenblick auf die Stoiker

Errichten einer Polis: Gottes Schöpfung nachahmen oder an ihr teilhaben? 5.1

Als Resumee: Gott, die Welt und die Seelen dazwischen

5.2

Wissen als Aussagen und Kulturen als belief-systems

6

5.3

‘Natürliche Vernunft’: zwei Begriffe

5.4

Die Polis herstellen durch Nachahmen von Gottes Schöpfung

Kant: Die Herstellung der Naturgeschichte 6.1

Kants ‘Affaire mit der Metaphysik’

6.2

Der Mensch, der Schöpfer und das soziale Tier

6.3

Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht 6.3.1 Bildung als Teilhabe an der Idee des Menschen 6.3.2 ‘Pragmatisches’ versus ‘theoretisches’ Wissen 6.3.3 Die Idee der Vollkommenheit 6.3.4 Natur als teleologisches System 6.3.5 Naturanlagen

6.4

Naturgeschichte 6.4.1 Drei Erzählweisen über Menschen 6.4.2 Der Haushalt der Natur 6.4.3 Geschichte als Mittel der Erziehung 6.4.4 Weltbürgerliche Ordnung und die Theorie der Etappen

7

Die Schöpfungen des unfertigen Tieres: die Menschen und ihre Welt 230

Mythen, Wissenschaften und andere Wunder des Erdenengels

7.1

Die deutsche Tradition: ‘Humanisierung’ und Grundlegung

7.2

Das Menschentier und sein himmliches Vermögen

7.3

Herder: das ‘instinktlose Tier’ und seine besondere Gabe 7.3.1 Sprache: sowohl Prototyp als auch Kernstück der Institutionen 7.3.2 Eine nicht-sinnengebundene Species und die Besonnenheit 7.3.3 ‘Merkwort’: ‘klares’ versus ‘deutliches’ Denken 7.3.4 ‘Instinkt’ versus Schöpfung des ‘unfertigen Tieres’ 7.3.5 Kritik an der Nützlichkeitstheorie zu Sprache und Gesellschaft 7.3.6 Institutionen: Schöpfungen eines Ausstattungswesens oder eines Mängelwesens? 7.3.7 ‘Individualismus’ versus ‘Kommunitarismus’: eine historische Fußnote

7.4

Cassirer: mythische versus wissenschaftliche symbolische Formen 7.4.1 Kantianismus als ‘Kulturphilosophie’ 7.4.2 ‘Die Logik der Geisteswissenschaften’ als Aufgabe 7.4.3 Logiktradition versus kontrastive Methode

8

Kulturen: Phänomene versus Lernbares 8.1

Der Pilger, der Berg, der Wanderer und der Heide

8.2

Die pragmatische Wende

8.3

Die Erforschung von ‘Kulturen’: Was, Wann und Warum? 8.3.1 Anthropologie, Kontext und ‘Ethnozentrismus’ 8.3.2 Das Beschriebene versus des Beschreibers Kontext 8.3.3 Ethnographische Darstellung und philosophische Hermeneutik 8.3.4 ‘Mutter Indien’: vergeßliche und kinderlose Mutter der Religionen? 231

8.3.5 Abenteuer, heilige Pflichten und Verwaltungen in fernen Heidenländern 8.3.6 Forscherzwecke und Forschungsdomänen 8.3.7 Kulturen: ‘Wann?’ versus ‘Warum?’ 8.4

Wissen versus Phänomene 8.4.1

Begriff versus Gegenstand

8.4.2 Gründe-angeben versus ursächlich erklären 8.4.3 ‘Begreifen einer Situation’: beliefs weder ausreichend noch notwendig 8.4.4 Lernbares versus Manipulierbares 8.5

Sorten des Wissens und ‘Lernkonfiguration’

8.6

Eine Blitztour zur Szenerie der neueren Anthropologie 8.6.1 ‘Dicke Beschreibung’ 8.6.2 Was macht Anthropologie aus? 8.6.3 Humanwissenschaften als Überbringer des ‘lokalen Wissen’

232

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