To Grasp the Whole World: Politics and Aesthetics before and after Alexander von Humboldt [1 ed.] 9783428585007, 9783428185009

Citation preview

Beiträge zur Politischen Wissenschaft Band 201

To Grasp the Whole World: Politics and Aesthetics Before and After Alexander von Humboldt Edited by

Soraya Nour Sckell and Damien Ehrhardt

Duncker & Humblot · Berlin

SORAYA NOUR SCKELL / DAMIEN EHRHARDT (Eds.)

To Grasp the Whole World: Politics and Aesthetics Before and After Alexander von Humboldt

Beiträge zur Politischen Wissenschaft

Band 201

To Grasp the Whole World: Politics and Aesthetics Before and After Alexander von Humboldt

Edited by

Soraya Nour Sckell and Damien Ehrhardt

Duncker & Humblot · Berlin

This work was financed by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and by Portuguese funds provided by the FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P. (Foundation for Science and Technology) under the project PTDC/FER-FIL/30686/2017, “Cosmopolitanism: Justice, Democracy and Citizenship without Borders” (Centre of Philosophy of the University of Lisbon and CEDIS, NOVA School of Law, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa).

Bibliographic information of the German national library The German national library registers this publication in the German national bibliography; specified bibliographic data are retrievable on the Internet about http://dnb.d-nb.de

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, translated, or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without the expressed written consent of the publisher. © 2022 Duncker & Humblot GmbH, Berlin Typesetting: 3w+p GmbH, Rimpar Printing: CPI Books GmbH, Leck Printed in Germany ISSN 0935-6053 ISBN 978-3-428-18500-9 (Print) ISBN 978-3-428-58500-7 (E-Book) Printed on no aging resistant (non-acid) paper according to ISO 9706

Internet: http://www.duncker-humblot.de

Table of Contents Soraya Nour Sckell and Damien Ehrhardt Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Part I Alexander von Humboldt’s Legacy Damien Ehrhardt and Hélène Fleury Science and “Transareality” in Humboldt’s Cosmos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Irene Portela and Domingos Vieira Cosmos, Citizenship and Justice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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João Motta Guedes The Aesthetics of the Political Image: Analysing the Paintings of Rugendas After Humboldt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Elena Soboleva From Timor to Brazil with the Support of the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung

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Part II Politics Soraya Nour and Claus Zittel Historiography as Critique of Ideology: The Legacy of Hobbes in International Relations Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Christopher Pollmann “My Home is the Planet”. The Totalizing and Monotonizing Expansion of Individual and Collective Human Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Pedro Tiago Ferreira A Cosmopolitan Approach to Just War Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 Cristina Hermida del Llano The Importance of Non-Governmental Organisations for Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals: Combating Racial Discrimination Against of Roma in Europe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 Paulo de Brito Is Cosmopolitanism at Risk? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153

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Part III Culture and Art Nguyen Quy Dao The Art of Calligraphy in the Far-East . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167 Nuno Miguel Proença Cosmology, Embodiment and Emotions in Arthur Schopenhauer’s Metaphysics of Music . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185 Sara Fernandes On Personal Identity and Neuroenhancement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207 Carlos João Correia Culture and Post-culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227 Biographies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243

Introduction Soraya Nour Sckell and Damien Ehrhardt Alexander von Humboldt aimed “to grasp the whole world”. He searched the unknown to explain that which was close but incomprehensible as a result of being seen in isolation from the network to which it belongs. All natural, cultural and social phenomena are interrelated and should be studied as a whole that can never be abstracted from the singular. Contrary to a hierarchical scientific methodology based on a first principle that supports the whole, Humboldt conceives a complex network in which each element is equally important, despite having unique dimensions and logic. Humboldt’s natural studies, classifications, and measurements, as well as his social, artistic, cultural, political and economic research, make up a theory of the cosmos that connects all of these different spheres. Humboldt conceives of a close connection between the singular case and the scientific law, between the feelings that nature provokes in us and the science of nature, and between history and nature. There is a strict relationship between both Geist and Natur and Geisteswissenschaft and Naturwissenschaft. The difference between Natur and Geist, and between Natur and Kunst, should not lead to the constitution of independent fields that obscures their interconnection. Since science begins with the mind and reason organizing elements of experience, Geisteswissenschaft and Naturwissenschaft are intrinsically related. There is a connection between the scientific description of nature in the natural frameworks of the cosmos (Naturgemälde) and the poetic description of nature expressed in the imagination and in landscape paintings. This book joins researchers from several areas that reflect on the meaning of “the whole world”, not only in keeping with Humboldt’s legacy (Part I), but also according to other political scientists before and after Humboldt (Part II) and from the perspective of culture and the arts (Part III). Part I: Alexander von Humboldt’s legacy In Chapter 1, Science and “transareality” in Humboldt’s Cosmos, Damien Ehrhardt & Hélène Fleury analyse how in spite of being an Enlightenment scientist who was continually observing, measuring, and describing the world while making major discoveries, Alexander von Humboldt is mostly recognized today as the father of biodiversity and a figurehead of interculturality and interdisciplinarity. The Humboldtian vision of the cosmos, characterized by its unity in diversity, is close to our

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contemporary ecological and planetary thought. His philosophy is based on the main currents of thought of his time in the West (the Enlightenment and Naturphilosophie), but also takes into account developments from the American continent. Throughout his journey to the New World, Humboldt was cultivating an in-depth knowledge of the entire cultural and natural field. Furthermore, on his trip to Russia and Central Asia, he became familiar with other regions of the world, although his search for knowledge focused on the sciences over cultural and social phenomena. His dream of travelling to India never came true, so he investigated this region via information disseminated by his brother and other Sanskrit philologists rather than through immediate fieldwork. The situation would certainly have been very different had he had the opportunity to go there. Nonetheless, as a specialist in several natural and cultural areas that he studies through a comparative lens, Humboldt may be considered a representative of “transareality”, a notion that combines Ottmar Ette’s “TransArea”, Glissant’s “mondiality” and Spivak’s “planetarity”. Humboldt’s approach brings together diverse regions of the world, but also different fields of knowledge that generally do not find themselves united: science and aesthetics, cosmopolitics, physical descriptions of the world and geopoetics. As such, Ehrhardt and Fleury show how the actualisation of Humboldt’s vision may prove crucial for our own society as we face the challenges of the planet. This actualisation of Humboldt’s worldview is also proffered in Chapter 2. In their text Cosmos, Citizenship and Justice, Irene Maria Portela & Domingos Vieira analyse how traversing Humboldt’s scientific thought reveals that space, place and cosmos are fundamental to scientific learning. The geography of historical, economic and social facts always appears through local incarnations, so its knowledge production always has epistemological consequences in the construction of theories as it attempts to explain the real and its complexity. In Chapter 3, João Motta Guedes’ text The aesthetics of the political image: analysing the paintings of Rugendas after Humboldt studies some paintings produced by Rugendas during his expeditions through Latin America in the 19th century to explain how his works hold a juridical-political meaning. Furthermore, he analysis the pictorial themes that comprise the object of Rugendas paintings. In particular, he discusses the canvases that illustrate various episodes of the social and colonial history of Latin America, exploring such themes as the confrontation between natives and Europeans and pointing to severe violations of human rights. In Chapter 4, Elena Soboleva’s text From Timor to Brazil with the support of the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung analyses ethnographic collections from different Lusophone countries that appear in several museums around the world. In the late 19th century, Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung supported several scientific expeditions. Some of the travellers (namely Otto Finsch, Karl von Steinen, Georg Thilenius) shared their ethnographic collections with specialised museums, including the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (or MAE) in St. Petersburg. The Timorese collections were discovered in many European and American muse-

Introduction

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ums, with the ones in Moscow dating back to 1862. In 2019, images of some Timorese items from the MAE were on display at the traveling exhibition in Timor Leste. Art products from Portuguese Asia are being identified in many Russian art museums. Elements of Portuguese heritage in South and East Asia were exhibited in the collections of the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, as well as in some other institutions of the Russian Academy of Science. The materials of the First and Second Russian scientific expeditions to Brazil are now spread between many museums and archives. The objects collected by Georg Langsdorff (1821 – 1828) and Heinrich Manizer (1914 – 1915) for Russia are analogous to the ones they donated to the Museu Nacional in Rio de Janeiro, thus making it possible to reconstruct the character of those collections lost in the fire in 2018. The Brazilian Diary of Heinrich Manizer, who stayed with the Indios Botocudos for roughly eight months, has been published in full in Russian by the MAE. Part II: Politics The second part of this book is focused on political questions. In Chapter 5, Claus Zittel and Soraya Nour Sckell’s contribution, Historiography as Critique of Ideology: The Legacy of Hobbes in International Relations Theory, analyses how Hobbes merges theoretical and historical inquiry. It discusses how his approaches have influenced the theory of international relations and the extent to which they solve contemporary problems in this discipline. Firstly, they analyse how Hobbes justifies his method of thinking both historically and theoretically. His historiography, which shows that human psychology is constant and the conquests of civilisation are transient, stands in opposition to evolutionary theory, which sees in the course of history the irreversible progress of humanity. They then analyse the role of this evolutionary conception in the so called “idealism” (or normative approaches) of the inter-war years, before it is called into question in the face of the horrors of the Second World War. Hobbes’ work is later rehabilitated by the revision of “idealism” and the emergence of the doctrine known as “realism”, both of which aim to criticise the evolutionary conception of early idealism. Finally, considering the contemporary debate in international relations, Zittel and Nour Sckell present two analyses: firstly, they discuss how neo-realism, which primarily investigates power technologies, departs from the mode of historical inquiry that was present in classical realism; secondly, they interrogate how normativism, which became prominent in the 1990s and formulates a justified criticism of the lack of ethical reflection in neo-realism, often produces evolutionist accounts of history. In both cases, there is a lack of historical inquiry that results in a lack of analysis regarding the contingency of social relations. If neither the predominantly psychological character of Hobbes’ historiography nor the predominantly institutional character of his state and law theory can continue to be accepted, they ask how his method of simultaneously thinking theoretically and historically can challenge us.

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In Chapter 6, “My home is the planet”: The expansion of individual and collective human life, Christopher Pollmann analyses how the aim of embracing “the whole planet” is not only a quest for knowledge, but also represents the ultimate step towards spatial globalisation. He explains how we ought to grow conscious of the totalizing, if not totalitarian character of this “univocalization of the world” (Thomas Bauer). This durational process has two dimensions: firstly, globalisation is the history of human migration and conquest; secondly, it indicates that human beings extend the spatial setting and the horizon of their individual and collective existence. Such extension means that everyday life and representations, confined in traditional societies to the location of birth for most of their members, are – or have been – progressively broadened into the region, the country, the continent and, for a growing number of people, the whole planet. This “comprehensive absorption of the outside world in a fully calculated interior” – that is, the “world interior of capital” (Peter Sloterdijk) – deserves some critical reflection on an ecological and a psycho-social level. Ecologically speaking, the continuous expansion of each individual’s life space implies an unprecedented surge in transportation, the consumption of resources, the production of pollution, etc. The psycho-social consequences – which include the weakening of human beings’ necessary territorial roots, their mental overburdening by the multiplicity of solicitations and the further homogenisation of language and culture – are more difficult to evaluate. Notwithstanding transhumanist phantasms, the organic dimension of life limits human beings’ capacity to adapt and to avoid something like an individual and collective depression, nervous breakdown or outburst of fury. Subsequently, in Chapter 7, Pedro Tiago Ferreira discusses A cosmopolitan approach to just war theory. John W. Lango regards war as an affair in which the individual, as well as other non-state actors, may legitimately engage. This legitimacy is, for Ferreira, both moral and juridical. The kind of moral right to which Lango refers is a natural right: the right to use force to defend one’s life, liberty and dignity from oppression, in self-defence and in pursuit of a just cause. If this is so, argues Ferreira, then this right is also juridical and must be recognised by law-applying bodies, which further ought to disregard as invalid any positive law that clashes with it. For these reasons, Ferreira believes Lango’s cosmopolitan approach to just war theory goes beyond Morgenthau’s and Rawls’s state-centric views; it can, however, be advanced further, as it can be interpreted not only as a moral and a political theory, but also as a legal theory. In Chapter 8, Cristina Hermida del llano’s contribution, The importance of nongovernmental organisations for achieving the sustainable development goals: Combatting racial discrimination against Roma in Europe, examines the decisive role that non-governmental organisations play in fulfilling the sustainable development goals and, more specifically, in the sphere of combatting racial discrimination against Roma in Europe. She aims to show how, thanks to the close relationship that they have with Roma communities, non-governmental organisations constitute key actors in the fight against discrimination. In fact, due to their ability to work in partnership

Introduction

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with other public and private entities, non-governmental organisations become strategic actors in the development of programs with Roma communities, primarily at the local level, while remaining cognizant of the importance local actions have for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. In Chapter 9, Paulo de Brito’s Is cosmopolitanism at risk? analyses how it is in the context of a dialectic tension between the insecurity of the present and fear of the future (which is more acutely perceptible in times of rapid change and acceleration of history such as the present moment) that the opposition and intellectual confrontation dividing cosmopolitans and nationalists, globalists and populists, both in academia and on the streets, ought to be positioned. Is the vision of a contemporary cosmopolitan society at risk? Is cosmopolitanism itself under threat? While he does not seek to offer an answer, de Brito wishes to contextualize the issues we once again face, and to envision the rational guidelines for solutions leading us out of restrictive paths where we run the risk of becoming trapped and isolated. Part III: Culture and Art The third part of this book is dedicated to the analysis of cosmopolitanism in culture and the arts. It begins with Nguyen Quy Dao’s contribution (Chapter 10), which analyses The Art of Calligraphy in the Far-East. Calligraphy, etymologically speaking, means beautiful handwriting, or the art of producing fine written characters. Almost every civilization where writing exists has developed the art of calligraphy. In the West, it was practised by copyist monks or great calligraphers working in the service of sovereigns and the aristocracy. In the Middle East, it similarly evolved into a decorative art. Fine engraved inscriptions can be found on the pediments of religious and historical buildings. In the context of the Far-East, calligraphy demands not only that the writing be beautiful, but that the artist is completely present in his practice and is personified in the work. It is therefore truly an art because it embodies both the artist and his personality, just like the works of a painter, sculptor, poet or writer. This chapter analyses the calligraphy of the Far-East by scrutinising works from China, Japan and Vietnam. In Chapter 11, Nuno Miguel Proença analyses Cosmology, embodiment and emotions in Arthur Schopenhauer’s metaphysics of music. If it is true, as Leibniz wrote, that music is an unconscious exercise in arithmetic in which the mind does not know it is counting, it is even more true, according to Schopenhauer, to say that music is an unconscious exercise in metaphysics in which the mind does not know it is philosophizing. Although the universality of music has something in common with the universality of concepts, its universality is not one of abstraction, even though melodies, like universal concepts, are an abstraction from reality. Like concepts, melodies assume particular forms in the world of particular things; unlike concepts, which contain only the forms abstracted from perception, music gives us access to the innermost kernel preceding all forms by putting us in immediate contact with the heart

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of things rather than with their stripped-off outer shell. In other words, according to the author of The World as Will and Representation, if concepts are a fruit of the activity of understanding, music comes from an immediate knowledge of the inner nature of the world unknown to the faculty of reason. If we succeeded in giving a perfectly accurate and complete explanation of music, it would be a detailed repetition of concepts that music expresses immediately. By doing so, we would be explaining the whole world, as it is grasped by music, and would hence obtain the true philosophy. Yet, philosophy can only lead to the unity of the plurality via the indirect and sometimes erroneous path of concepts. On the other hand, music offers direct access to the cosmic dimension of the will, and therefore grasps the whole world immediately, evading possible error that may result from the imprecision of words. In his metaphysics, for which music gives universalia ante rem, Schopenhauer establishes a surprising analogy between the relationships within the instruments of the orchestra and the world of phenomena. Through the feelings and the emotions produced by rhythmic and melodic movements, we can grasp the essence of the whole world, as it is embodied by the plurality of the living. Such a realisation should allow us to understand universal interdependence and the continuity spanning from inorganic phenomena to human liberty. In Chapter 12, On Personal Identity and Neuroenhancement, Sara Fernandes firstly argues that science imitates certain forms of art – be they narrative or fictional – since art has the capacity to create and innovate in time, bringing up new horizons for research and technology. In some ways, science seeks to encompass the worlds of artistic creations. Secondly, she emphasizes how the impact and authority of science in contemporary Western societies explains the emergence of new attempts to ground personal identity in two evolving domains: genetics and neuroscience. With a main focus on neurosciences, she highlights its tendency to form a neurobiology of personal identity and to create a neural ground for that philosophical concept by reducing it to cerebral functions. Thirdly, she criticizes this neuro-reductionist attempt, and instead offers philosophical arguments for acknowledging several dimensions of personal identity that are not subsumed by a neurobiological approach. In Chapter 13, Carlo João Correia’s Culture and Post-culture analyses the cultural tension derived from the Enlightenment and Romantic models of civilization and considers the complex effects of this tension on post-cultural human societies. The anthropological concept of “post-culture”, even as a “diminished culture”, does not conclude by corroborating the historical collapse of Western civilization. Instead, it can be regarded in a more neutral and fruitful sense. For reasons that stem from the growing globalisation of problems, the origin of which dates back to the global expositions of the 19th century, the criteria of taste and appreciation have changed profoundly to such an extent that we value ideas and facts from cultures different from ours. To that we live in an age that can be defined as “post-cultural” indicates that the traditional culture in which we were initially integrated no longer determines our critical assessments and judgments. A cultural distance has been created that enables a remote regard for other ancestral cultures while rehearsing osmo-

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sis and eventual acculturation. Japanese, Indian and African art, among many others, became a point of reference for Western societies themselves. As is well known, there are exciting experiences, in various artistic domains, in which the artistic fusion between different cultural aesthetic canons is intentionally sought. Without a doubt, this cultural and artistic symbiosis, which is inherently cosmopolitan, is an essential and thoroughly positive feature of the contemporary world. However, this was not always the case; this means that artistic and cultural creation has taken place, sometimes irritatingly, without concern for external influences and other cultures. Post-culture can thus be thought of as the loss of cultural ties within identity and their replacement by an eclectic horizon of references. The texts gathered in this volume are issued from the Humboldt College (Humboldt Kolleg) To Grasp The Whole World: On the 250th Anniversary of Alexander von Humboldt, a transcultural and transdisciplinary meeting of alumni and friends of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. This colloquium was held at the NOVA School of Law, NOVA University of Lisbon, from the 4th to the 6th of December 2019. We would like to thank the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for funding this colloquium, and for encouraging, through the Humboldt Colleges, its former laureates and scholars to engage in interdisciplinary and international exchanges. We are grateful to Barbara Sheldon (Director of the European Section of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation), to Christof Weil (Ambassador of Germany to Portugal), to Florence Mangin (Ambassador of France to Portugal) and to Vincent Brignol (Institut Français du Portugal) for the support they offered to this meeting. Tamara Caraus assisted in editing this book. Hélène Fleury proofread some texts. We would also like to thank the other partners who offered us their cooperation: Université d’Évry-Val-d’Essonne and the Université Paris-Saclay (laboratoire SLAM, axe Mélanges interculturels); the Association Humboldt France; the Institut Français du Portugal; the Centre for Philosophy of the University of Lisbon and the CEDIS of the NOVA School of Law at the Universidade NOVA de Lisboa. Finally, we would like to thank the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) for having financially supported this publication. Lisbon and Évry, April 2022

Soraya Nour Sckell and Damien Ehrhardt

Part I Alexander von Humboldt’s Legacy

Science and “Transareality” in Humboldt’s Cosmos Damien Ehrhardt and Hélène Fleury

I. About “Transareality” In order to understand the notion of “transareality”, at least two visions of cultural areas can be invoked: the one developed by Mauss and Braudel (aire de civilisation), the other used in area studies. In the first sense of the word, the concept “area” is referring to civilizations generally considered as perennial with a long-term history, likely to survive even revolutions (Braudel 1987). The second meaning applies to area studies as practiced in the USA and other countries in the 1960s and 1970s, which can be understood as a cover term for academic fields joined by a common commitment to language study, field research in local language(s) and other data, grounded theory and multi-disciplinarity (Szanton 2002: 5; Cherfaoui/Pothier 2022). Area Studies scholars deal with large regions of the world through a “multidisciplinary lens”. As shown by David Szanton (2002: 5), the boundaries of the cultural areas are “historically contingent, pragmatic, and highly contestable”. Since critical perspectives of postcolonial studies, the “geographical fluidity” of notions like orientalism can be generalized to many global regions (Hodkinson/Walker 2013: 6). Cultural areas must therefore be considered in relation to each other, with issues of cultural hegemony, implying to take into account transareal interactions. For Ottmar Ette (2016: 37), the field of area studies is affected by its multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary set up that reaches only beyond individual disciplines. The regional research centers shall be supplemented by “transdisciplinary structurings”, crossing various disciplines. With his notion of TransArea, Ette (2016: 46) aims at perspectivizing the planetary relationality in both: an internal and an external interveawing. For example, an approach to the Caribbean should not only take into account its “internal” relationality, but also its “external” relationality in a global panorama, considering not only northern countries, but also south-south relations (Ette 2016: 45 – 46). Area thinking tends towards stability, whereas cultural and scientific phenomena should be considered in the dynamics of their relationality. Despite the cross-disciplinary approach, working on a single region of the world tends to close it within its borders. In a world in which large regions reify their identity through speeches bor-

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rowed from nostalgia for vanished empires, Huntington’s “clash of civilization” is never far away. The situation is similar – with apparently less fatal consequences – between the main areas of knowledge. The object-based approach (f. e. in cultural studies) promotes transdisciplinarity, but the boundaries between natural sciences and humanities are not often crossed. Interdisciplinarity in the broadest sense remains rare in the academic world. Area studies do not take sufficient account of cultural transfers and mutations in the global circulation of ideas. Connecting cultural and disciplinary areas should be necessary in order to compare views on globalization. Beyond “transareal” dynamics, the suffix -ity recalls unifying concepts like Glissant’s “mondiality”, applicable to the state of presence of cultures in the respect of diversity (http:// edouardglissant.fr/mondialite.html, accessed 26 February 2020) or Spivak’s (1999) “planetarity” that understands the planet as a unified natural space, a kind of otherness on which we depend. Alexander von Humboldt seems to be both, a scientist and a figure of transareality. How are science and transareality combined in his vision of cosmos?

II. Humboldt Between Science and Cosmos Humboldt’s commitment to science is constant, from his youth training to his outcome in Kosmos. As an Enlightenment scientist, he was continually observing, measuring, and describing the world. Convinced that all results of observation can be reduced to numerical relations, he was proud of his instrument-based scientific approach. All this accuracy and thirst for knowledge lead him to innovations (Humboldt 2004: 907), notably: - the theory concerning the periodic swarm of meteors and the rain of shooting stars of the Leonid meteor; - the discovery of the fluvial system Amazon/Orinoco in its complexity; - the law of the decrease in mean temperature with the increase in elevation above the sea-level; - the opening of new research fields as geography of plants, scientific orography (wissenschaftliche Gebirgskunde), or pre-Hispanic American studies (Altamerikanistik); - the invention of isotherm lines. However, Humboldt’s work is not reducible to one of these innovations: it is driven by his vision of cosmos, which is also the title of his opus magnum. The use of this notion, with its metaphysic connotations, seems far away from all scientific approach. But Humboldt moved away from speculations, like those of Kepler concerning the analogy between musical interval ratios and distances between planets:

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“Die Analogien der Tonverhältnisse mit den Abständen der Planeten, denen Kepler so lange und so mühsam nachspürte, blieben aber, wie mir scheint, bei dem geistreichen Forscher ganz in dem Bereich der Abstraktionen. Er freut sich, so größerer Verherrlichung des Schöpfers, in den räumlichen Verhältnissen des Kosmos musikalische Zahlenverhältnisse entdeckt zu haben; er läßt, wie in dichterischer Begeisterung, ‘Venus zusammen mit der Erde in der Sonnenferne Dur, in der Sonnennähe Moll spielen: ja der höchste Ton des Jupiter und der der Venus müssen im Moll-Accord zusammentreffen’” (Humboldt 2004: 557).

In line with the Enlightenment reason, he warned against mixing the “ideal cosmos” with the “real cosmos”, the poetic character of the Harmony of the Spheres with the results of scientific observations: “jeder ernsteren Forschung bleibt es geboten den idealen Kosmos nicht mit dem wirklichen, das Mögliche nicht mit dem durch sichere Beobachtung Ergründeten zu vermengen.” (Humboldt 2004: 570).

Humboldt’s cosmos is characterized by unity in diversity of phenomena, as harmony, blending together all created things on a whole animated by the breath of life: “Die Natur ist für die denkende Betrachtung Einheit in der Vielheit, Verbindung des Mannigfaltigen in Form und Mischung. Inbegriff der Naturdinge und Naturkräfte, als ein lebendiges Ganze” (Humboldt 2004: 10)

His program consisted of the cosmological understanding of the world, through an approach guided by the desire to keep world’s diversity in unity. No plant, no animal can be considered as an isolated specimen. Each one belongs to the complex network of life. Humboldt holds together multiple phenomena of different natures and scales. His vision of the world mixes the macro and the micro (Péaud 2011: 29). Each fact, in its unicity and locality, contributes to the global functioning of the whole system. Also similar spatially or temporally distant phenomena are taken into account. In his letter to François Arago of 25 February 1829, he wonders about the “infinitely curious” similarity between the platinum mines in the Urals, Siberia and the Andes (Humboldt 1907: 54). Ernst Haeckel, the founder of ecology as a “science of the relations of an organism with its environment”, borrowed to Humboldt the idea of a coherent whole constituted by complex interactions (Wulf 2017: 414). Linked with ecology, this notion of cosmos remains topical. So Humboldt discovered the idea of the “keystone species” long before Robert Paine forged the concept in 1969. It refers to a species with a large effect on its natural environment. Regarding the Mauritia palm, Humboldt and Bonpland “observed how many things are connected with the existence of a single plant” (Humboldt 1826: 7). This palm symbolizes the nature as a living organism. Furthermore, Humboldt was the first to explain the crucial role of the forest in humidifying the atmosphere, holding the water, and protecting the soil against erosion (Wulf 2017: 95). Already in his day, Humboldt warned of harmful consequences of deforestation caused by human activity on future generations:

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Damien Ehrhardt and Hélène Fleury “En abattant les arbres qui couvrent la cime et le flanc des montagnes, les hommes, sous tous les climats, préparent aux générations futures deux calamités à la fois, un manque de combustible et une disette d’eau” (Humboldt 1819: 72).

This is one more reason to see in Humboldt a precursor of ecology. Thus Humboldt is a scientist, in phase with the rationality of the Enlightenment, but his encompassing vision of the cosmos, beyond sciences, also allows him to be a precursor of ecology and biodiversity.

III. Humboldt Connecting Disciplinary Areas What’s more, Humboldt was aware that social, economic, and political problems are linked to environmental issues (Wulf 2017: 157). For him, all the natural, cultural, and social phenomena are interdependent. He considered them as a whole. Humboldt gradually developed his vision of the cosmos starting from what Laura Péaud (2015) calls a “connective geography”, considering its relationship to the world, based on the interactions between all natural and social facts. This new vision connects fields as different as cosmopolitics, physical description of the world, and geo-poetics. Here we see his willingness to take advantage of the most varied forms of knowledge and disciplinary areas. The physical description of the world (physische Weltbeschreibung) represents a science of the whole, at the interface of humans and nature, shaped by both social and natural facts. Cosmopolitics means for Humboldt the concrete and political application of his project, namely the transmission of knowledge useful to human beings and governments to ensure the progress of humanity. From this point of view, he pursuits one of the Enlightenment ideals, that knowledge to make sense, shall be communicated to the people. Connective geography is linked with geo-poetics, a domain at the crossroads of sciences, arts, and humanities, apparently unusual for a scientist as him. But didn’t he claim to be a “man of letters” in his correspondence with Arago? He wrote to him on 20 August 1827: “Plus je suis rapproché de la Cour et plus il me paroissoit utile de prouver que ma première ambition est celle d’un homme de lettres” (Humboldt 1907: 31). As shown by Soraya Nour (2015: 28), Humboldt was close to the romanticist notion of “prescientific” sympathy: for him, confused feelings, sensible intuition, and reason are linked. Thus, a book on nature must contain its objective as well as subjective sides: our inner world is constructed by the impressions that nature provokes in us. In a passage of the Voyage aux régions équinoxiales du Nouveau Continent, Humboldt accompanies his quantified and precise measurements with a description of the atmosphere in which the scientist is immersed. Expressions reflecting aesthetic emotions and testifying to a contemplation of the sublime are used, f. e.: “Tout d’un coup il se forma, du côté de la lune, 45’ avant son passage au méridien, un grand arc coloré de toutes les couleurs du spectre, mais d’un aspect lugubre (…). Le ciel étoit d’une pureté extraordinaire” (Humboldt 1825: 326).

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IV. Humboldt Connecting Cultural Areas Is this recourse to sensibility and emotion really compatible with the supposed rationality of an Enlightenment man like Humboldt? His opinion had certainly changed after returning from his travel in America, during a time marked by the dissemination of Naturphilosophie. As other romantics, Humboldt was inspired by the elsewhere. His letter to Karl Ludwig Wildenow of 21 February 1801 testifies to his feeling of fullness associated to the tropical world: “Die Tropenwelt ist mein Element u[nd] ich bin nie so ununterbrochen gesund gewesen als in den letzten 2 Jahren. Ich arbeite sehr viel, schlafe wenig, bin oft bei astron.[omischen] Beobachtungen 4 – 5 Stunden lang ohne Huth der Sonne ausgese[t]zt, ich war in Städten (la Guayra, Portocabello) wo das gräßliche gelbe Fieber wüthete u[nd] nie[,] nie hatte ich nur Kopfweh” (https://edition-humboldt.de, accessed 26 February 2020).

As this quote shows, each travel took place as an essential link of his research program. Concerning Humboldt’s trend of though, scholar opinions are divided: some asserting his belonging to Romanticism or enlightenment; some see a balance between both. This is the case of Soraya Nour (2015: 28) for whom Humboldt’s project contributes to giving nature and life their place beside reason without the supremacy of one over the other. So Humboldt realized the synthesis of the main European ideas of his time, while immersing in the experience of long-distant travels and field research. 1. The American Expedition, 1799 – 1804 From his trip to the New Continent, Humboldt brought back a considerable amount of observations concerning natural history, but he was working also as an archaeologist, historian, economist, and observer of the social and cultural situation in Spanish America. In addition, according to Ette (2011: 135), Humboldt studied for decades a Biblioteca Americana, including works of Clavijero or Sigüenza y Góngora. He shares the thoughts of these authors towards the emergence of a New World discourse. As Clavijero, Humboldt defends – in a proto-postmodern way – an equal ranking between European and “Mexican” Antiquities. Even the title of Clavijero’s Historia antigua de México (1780) emphasizes a history of pre-colonial America based on indigenous sources. Following the authors of his Biblioteca Americana, Humboldt attacked a conception of history that traces every ‘civilizing’ development back to European Antiquity. In the field of arts, despite his taste for ancient Greek art, Humboldt was against the generalization of European canon as the criterion of beauty, reducing indigenous art to a handicraft category. This pioneering vision goes hand in hand with the purpose of Humboldt’s fiveyear trip to and across America: Funded mainly by his own resources and with the support of the Bankhaus Mendelssohn, it was one of the first expeditions without

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a colonization purpose. By travelling, he was able to explain the disastrous consequences of colonial exploitation on both environment and human beings. Nevertheless, he perpetually combined his demand for independence with his constrained integration into the political world (Peaud 2011: 30 – 31). 2. The Russian Expedition, 1829 Humboldt’s trip through Russia to the Chinese border shows his willingness to conduct research, discover and familiarize himself with other global regions. Invited by the Czar, the political dimension of this expedition prevented him from taking too close an interest in the social situation of the subjects of the Russian empire, in particular the serfdom. The official purpose of his trip was to study platinum deposits in the Ural mines. But Humboldt took advantage of this opportunity to verify natural laws through comparative observations from plural continents and collect botanical and ethnographic data. As it was a relatively short trip, the information concerning the situation of the local economy was not based on field data, but mostly on travelogues of Germans settled in Russia. Therefore Michel Espagne (2011) points out that Humboldt’s writings actually reproduce a German perception of Russia. 3. The Unrealized Indian Expedition All his life Humboldt dreamed of an expedition to India, which never came true. In 1796, he mentioned the project of a trip to Italy, England and Western India to Willdenow: “Meine Reise ist unerschütterlich gewiss, Ich präparire mich noch einige Jahre und sammle Instrumente, ein bis anderthalb Jahr bleibe ich in Italien, um mich mit Vulkanen genau bekannt zu machen, dann geht es über Paris nach England, wo ich leicht auch wieder ein Jahr bleiben könnte (…), und dann mit englischem Schiffe nach Westindien” (https://edition-hum boldt.de)

Back from his American expedition, he renewed his travel plans to India several times, particularly on 3 October 1805 in his letter to Dietrich Ludwig Gustav Karsten. From 1805 until 1822, hardly a year passes without Humboldt planning a trip to Asia or Central Asia, but in vain. In 1808, the Russian minister Romancov offered him to pay the travel costs through his government. Humboldt refused, preferring to travel at his own expense because he wished to remain free and independent (https://editionhumboldt.de). Furthermore, in 1811, Humboldt was considering the idea of a longterm travel around the world through Russia, Persia, Tibet, India, Ceylon, Oceania, and North America. The expedition was delayed by Napoleon’s invasion of Russia and insurrections in Germany, then by the refusal of British authorities to grant him permission (Gorshenina 2012: 284). Around the same time, Humboldt wrote to Napoleon that he was enthusiastic about undertaking an expedition to the sources of the Ganges and inside Asia. In 1812 he pointed to another correspondent the aim of his

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Asiatic journey: the Himalaya between the sources of the Indus and the ones of the Ganges. He also expressed his desire to spend a year in Benares (Théodoridès 1966: 43). In addition, Humboldt contacted the office of the East India Company many times in order to realize his project, even with the support of the King of Prussia. This opportunity arose in June 1814 when Alexander and Wilhelm von Humboldt accompanied the King of Prussia to London to meet the directors of the East India Company (Garrido 2013: 4). But this meeting didn’t have the expected result. However, Humboldt did not give up his project so easily and always spoke about his forthcoming journey to Persia and India in his letter to Karl vom Stein zum Altenstein on 1st June 1820 (https://edition-humboldt.de). All the period around 1800 that Humboldt described as an “era of indecision” (Epoche der Unschlüssigkeit) in his letter to Carl Freiesleben of 22 April 1798 is characterized by military, diplomatic and geopolitical instabilities, causing discontinuities in his scientific program (Péaud 2011: 33). Unable to realize his own expedition, Humboldt ended up supporting the journey of the Schlagintweit brothers to India and Tibet from 1854 till 1857 (Palla 2019, and correspondence Humboldt/Schlagintweit: https://edition-humboldt.de). As his dream of India could never come true, his approach to this area could not be based on fieldwork, but on knowledge from his brother and other sanskritists and philologists as Christian Lassen. So, rather than defending the Untouchables and the lower castes, he focused on Sanskrit texts of Brahmins and their description of nature in Vedic tales (Humboldt 2004: 207 – 209). But Humboldt developed a historical vision of globalization, aware of longstanding exchanges between Europe, China and India, especially during the eras of Alexander the Great and the Umayyad Caliphate, then the expeditions to the Americas and other parts of the world during the “oceanic discoveries” (Humboldt 2004: 273 – 276, 302, 312 – 353). All these stages of globalization constitute, according to Humboldt, main moments in the gradual development and expansion of the concept of the cosmos as a Whole of Nature. There is also an indirect connection between Humboldt and India, significant through the development of his notion of landscape, forged by his close relationship with British artists as Thomas Daniell and William Hodges. These painters of the Orient, as shown by Garrido (2013: 1 – 2), had travelled to Asia creating a particular imagery, which inspired Humboldt’s desire to travel and his feeling of exotic taste. He met them as soon as the European tour with Forster, still before his trip to America. The artistic view of the painters, as well as Forster’s notion of “views”, contribute to make Humboldt a synthesizer of various knowledge, i. e. the analytical perspective common to scientists and the artistic sense of the sublime in nature.

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V. Humboldt Connecting Languages Humboldt’s works were written in French, German and Latin, but contain annotations in diverse languages of the Western world and other cultural areas. This thinking between languages appears in Humboldt’s travelogue to America, when he emphasizes the richness of indigenous idioms, which are as likely to express abstraction as European languages. Humboldt’s multilingualism comes to light quite clearly in two lists of Nahuatl and Quechua notions with their respective translations in Spanish and French, within a German text. „Außer der mexikanischen Sprache redete man in America nahuat noch die otomitische Sprache, die Matlazinca, Mixteca, Zapoteca, Totonaca, Topoluca usw. Was man von Ideenarmut dieser Sprachen und der südamerikalischen Sprachen sagt, ist tolle Unwissenheit. (…) Clavijero beweist, dass man in mexikanischer Sprache bis 48 Millionen und weiter bequem zählen kann. (…) Die Evangelien, Sprichwörter Salomons, ja Thomas a Kempis De imitation christi sind ins Mexikanische und ohne Einmischung fremder Worte übersetzt. Clavijero gibt eine Liste von abstractis und versichert, dass wenige bekannte Sprachen so reich an abstractis als mexikanische Sprache sind. Tlamontli Cosa. Jeliztli Essenza. Amacicacaconi Incomprensible. Cemicacjeni Eterno. Cahuitl tiempo. Ocnhuelitini Omnipotente. Tejolia anima, Teixtlamatia mens. Tlanemiliztli pensamiento. Ebenso finde ich die Sprache der Inkas oder Quechua sehr reich an abstrakten Worten: Viñay Pacha temps. Oyuyac âme. Yayai pensée.” (Ette 2018).

These observations were also intended for the research conducted by his brother Wilhelm. Ottmar Ette (2011: 131) describes this kind of writing between languages as the “reflected multilingualism” which can be considered as a challenge for the 21st century.

Conclusion Humboldt was involved in various branches of knowledge and transcended them at the same time. Considering himself as a stranger between disciplines, he managed to be recognized in some of them and even created new ones as scientific orography or early American studies. The same can be said about his connections with global regions and languages. He became specialized in different cultural areas and learned to think in different languages. The definition of area studies given by Szanton perfectly matches with Humboldt’s approach. The latter can be considered as a specialist of area studies coming from the natural sciences. But as we have seen, Humboldt was able also to situate the external relationality of these areas into a global panorama. This is the case of his research in the natural sciences, based on a comparative analysis of data from the entire world, but also the contrastive linguistic studies he conducted together with his brother. In the view of Wilhelm von Humboldt (1904: 316), this comparative approach is much more than “une occupation oiseuse, un luxe scientifique”, but even a means of better know-

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ing one’s own language. From a cultural point of view, he was firstly a transatlantic mediator. More than a great scientist of his time, he was a visionary: his notion of cosmos is close to our ecological thought, taking in account the interdependency of natural, cultural, and social phenomena. His large-scale synthesis was based on a mobility of knowledge between cultures, languages, and disciplines, which can be regarded as a nowadays challenge. Yet Humboldt had always been a man of his time. Like his friend and mentor Georg Forster, he embodies the figure of the learned world’s citizen (gelehrter Weltbürger) at the end of the 18th century (Uhlig 2004). The notion of views, borrowed from Forster and connected by Ette (2014: 121) with the current mobility of knowledge, is well adapted to the late 18th century, when the science of the Enlightenment meets the great voyages of the second phase of accelerated globalization. But in the 19th century, Humboldt contributed also to the construction of disciplines. He was a founding member and president of the Société de Géographie, one of the oldest learned societies in France. But Humboldt’s goal remains the construction of geography “as a world science, a place of unity of disciplines and elements of nature” (Péaud 2011: 29). He therefore wanted to build a discipline beyond disciplines, to grasp the world and the cosmos. In addition, he had been also inspired by the holism of Naturphilosophie and his experiences in other cultural areas. Thus, Humboldtian “transareality” is based on a very broad synthesis of the ideas of his time, transcending cultural areas. His work reflects the contradiction of the 19th century, which is revealed in the Hegelian dialectics: the identity of the cultural or disciplinary areas can be opposed to the mobility of knowledge, which represents the moment of difference. Understanding the Humboldtian cosmos therefore requires considering this fundamental contradiction between areas and transareality. Bibliography Braudel, Fernand (1987): Grammaire des civilisations. Paris: Arthaud. Cherfaoui, Arezki/Pothier, Jacques (2022): Visions du monde. Les civilisations à l’heure de la globalisation. Tours: Presses universitaires François-Rabelais. Espagne, Michel (2011): Le voyage en Russie d’Alexandre de Humboldt, in: Études germaniques, 261/1, pp. 93 – 105. Ette, Ottmar (2011): Die Aktualität Alexander von Humboldts. Perspektiven eines Vordenkers für das 21. Jahrhundert, in: Études germaniques, 261/1, pp. 123 – 138. Ette, Ottmar (2014): La pensée nomade. Alexander von Humboldt ou la science vivante, in: Les frères Humboldt et l’Europe de l’Esprit, ed. by Bénédicte Savoy and David Blankenstein. Paris: PSL Research University Jean-Pierre de Monza. Ette, Ottmar (2016): Transarea. A Literary History of Globalization. Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter.

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Ette, Ottmar (2018): Alexander von Humboldt. Das Buch der Begegnungen: Menschen – Kulturen – Geschichten aus den Amerikanischen Reisetagebüchern. Zürich: Manesse. Garrido, Elisa (2013): Alexander von Humboldt and British artists: the Oriental taste, in: Culture & History Digital Journal 2(2), December, e026, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj. 2013.026. Gorshenina, Svetlana (2012): L’Asie centrale d’Alexander von Humboldt: un essai de géométrie naturaliste, in: Cahiers de l’ILSL n8 33, pp. 281 – 300. Hodkinson, James/Walker, John (ed.) (2013): Deploying Orientalism in Culture and History. From Germany to Central and Eastern Europe. Rochester, NY: Camden House. Humboldt, Alexander von (1819): Voyage aux régions équinoxiales du Nouveau Continent, fait en 1799, 1800, 1801, 1802, 1803 et 1804, par Al. de Humboldt et A. Bonpland, vol. 2. Paris: N. Maze. Humboldt, Alexander von (1825): Voyage de Humboldt et Bonpland. Première partie: Relation historique, III, 10. Paris: J. Smith and Gide. Humboldt, Alexander von (1826): Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent during the Years 1999 – 1804 by Alexander de Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland, vol. VI, part 1, translated by Helen Maria Williams. London: Printed for Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green. Humboldt, Alexander von (1907): Correspondance d’Alexandre de Humboldt avec François Arago (1809 – 1853), ed. by E.-T. Hamy. Paris: E. Guilmoto. Humboldt, Alexander von (2004): Kosmos. Entwurf einer physikalischen Weltbeschreibung, ed. by Ottmar Ette and Olivier Lubrich. Frankfurt/M.: Eichborn Verlag. Humboldt, Alexander von (2009): Essay on the Geography of Plants, ed. by Stephen T. Jackson, translated by Sylvie Romanowski. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Humboldt, Wilhelm von (1904): Essai sur les langues du nouveau continent [1812], in: Wilhelm von Humboldts Werke, vol. 3, ed. by Albert Leitzmann. Berlin: B. Behr’s Verlag. Palla, Rudi (2019): In Schnee und Eis. Die Himalaja-Expedition der Brüder Schlagintweit. Berlin: Galiani. Péaud, Laura (2011): Le politique, opérateur de la construction des savoirs géographiques modernes: l’exemple des voyages d’Alexander von Humboldt, in: Alexander von Humboldt im Netz, XII/23, pp. 26 – 40. Péaud, Laura (2012): Le voyage asiatique de Humboldt. Les interactions savoir-pouvoir au prisme de la fabrique géographique moderne, in: Trajectoires. Travaux des jeunes chercheurs du CIERA n8 6: Penser le (non-)travail, https://journals.openedition.org/trajectoires/941, accessed 26 February 2020. Péaud, Laura (2015): La géographie connective ou le miroir du cosmos humboldtien, in: Le Soi et le Cosmos d’Alexander von Humboldt à nos jours, ed. by Soraya Nour Sckell and Damien Ehrhardt. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, pp. 111 – 123. Sckell, Soraya Nour (2015): Le cosmos et le cosmopolitisme d’Alexander von Humboldt, in: Le Soi et le Cosmos d’Alexander von Humboldt à nos jours, ed. by Soraya Nour Sckell and Damien Ehrhardt. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, pp. 17 – 44.

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Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty (1999): Imperatives to Re-Imagine the Planet / Imperative zur Neuerfindung des Planeten. Wien: Passagen Verlag. Szanton, David (ed.) (2002): The Politics of Knowledge. Area Studies and the Disciplines. Berkeley: University of California Press. Théodoridès, Jean (1966): Humboldt and England, in: The British Journal for the History of Science III/1, pp. 39 – 55. Uhlig, Ludwig (2004): Georg Forster. Lebensabenteuer eines gelehrten Weltbürgers (1754 – 1794). Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht. Wulf, Andrea (2017): L’invention de la nature: Les aventures d’Alexander von Humboldt, translated by Florence Hertz. Paris: Les éditions Noir sur Blanc (original version in English: The Invention of Natur. Alexander von Humboldt’s New World. New York: Alfred A. Knopf).

Cosmos, Citizenship and Justice Irene Portela and Domingos Vieira

I. Humboldt Alexander von Humboldt, a polymath man, visionary, was a physicist, naturalist, liberal, and admirer of the American and French revolutions, geographer, and ethnographer, sociologist, traveling through the Europe of Lights and all over the world. 250 years after his birth, to evoke Alexander von Humboldt is to meet a genius figure, a scientist, who embraced the study of the Cosmos, the relationship of men with the Cosmos, with other men and with all phenomena inherent to life. This is how he is described by most part of authors studying his ideas1. Nevertheless, despite this laudatory evocation, the historian of science, physicist and academic José Manuel Sánchez Ron defends that if Humboldt’s legacy “smashes” and he is a man of universal knowledge or, much better, of universal ambitions, as a theorist he is not a Newton, or Darwin, or Maxwell, or Einstein: “I think that he was not aware of what he perceived of his holistic ideas about nature”: “Above all, he was an extraordinary mix of empiric scientific explorer and data collector, but he doesn’t advance science the same way the authors I previously mentioned did. He had a special way of facing life and history, and an incredible ambition of knowledge of the Cosmos” (Ron 2018: 2). After this biographic appointment, Jean-Marie Valentim (2011: 11) considers that in Humboldt’s thinking and work we can discover “a constellation with all the characteristics of a (neo) classicism based on the legacy and anthropology of enlightenment which grows in the utopia of a tense knowledge, asymptotically, towards “an ultimate version of human universalism”. On the other hand, in her thesis on philosophy La Justice Cosmopolite. Histoire des principes et enjeux contemporains, Soraya Nour Sckell places Humboldt’s project in the “romantic” ideal looking for the “unity of knowledge” (Nour Sckell 2012: 106). In spite of this differentiated interpretation in the theoretical rooting of Humboldt’s thought, the truth is that his methodology shows that the knowledge is dialogical, that means, and using Soraya Nour’s expression, “it is not possible to separate the global knowledge: every knowledge is, on the 1

See the conference held on the 22 of November 2019, at the Institut de Physique du Glebe de Paris, Alexander von Humboldt et les sciences du système, organized by J. Gaillardet (IPGP, U.Paris, IUF), G. Fumey (Sorbonne U.), which joined experts of several areas covering different scientific fields to which contributed Humboldt’s work and ideas: https://calenda.org/ 687298.

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contrary, multi and transdisciplinary, the isolation of disciplines is a scientific mistake”. The same conclusion is defended by Laura Péaud (2016) attesting that Humboldt’s scientific program aimed to embrace and understand the organic and inorganic world. In fact, we can find such wish, in a letter written in 1793 to his friend V. J. Sojmonov: “I have few needs, I have only one goal, an ambition, which is work in the development of Natural History. That’s the reason I left towns to live in the deep of the mountains. That’s why I face every opportunity do see the world” (Humboldt 1973: 25).

II. Cosmos The characteristic that best qualifies Humboldt is his persistent effort to understand the irreducible specificity of places and people – both physical and human geographies are intimately linked. Humboldt’s scientific program is outlined in his work Cosmos introduction: seeks to gather in a work everything he had discovered along his travels all over the world and after 20 years in Paris: “What caused me the greatest impulse was my wish to understand the signs of physical phenomena in its global organization, nature conceived as a living and moving whole, moved by internal forces” (Humboldt 1845: VI). To achieve such aim, he implements a method of scientific work based on travels and displacement. From travels and data, he collected, he observes, compares, analyses, quantifies, and evaluates by validating his hypotheses. See what he writes about Examen critique de l’Histoire de la geographie du nouveau Continent: “I was flattered by the hope that a new long stay in the less visited regions of the New World, the learning of local climate, places and uses, the habit of determining the astronomic position of the areas, will be enough to track rivers and mountain ranges (…)” (Humboldt 1836: XI). Humboldt puts into practice an intelligent strategy of comparison and correspondence in the places he visits – America, Africa, Asia – to scientific achievements. The cosmos understanding even presents, according to Nour Sckell’s analyse (2012: 117), “the ethical condition of cosmopolitism, involves nature and human being knowledge, and the respect not only of the universal human rights of natives and black people, but also its particular way of living”. Crossing Humboldt’s scientific thought allows to discover that space, place, cosmos is fundamental to scientific learning. The geography of the historical, economic and social facts always has a local incarnation, so its knowledge always has epistemological consequences in the construction of theories and attempts to explain the real and its complexity.

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III. Citizenship Humboldt considered himself as an inhabitant of Planet Earth. From his travels throughout the Americas, (1799 – 1804) he brought traces of their explorations – left in museums – they were signs of admiration of the places he studied2… We are facing a cosmopolitan. Nevertheless, cosmopolitism is not a completely new idea. Looking at history it is possible to meet Diogenes, 2500 before J.C. “citizen of the world”, in order to criticise those who defended the town as a fidelity area belonging to politics and culture. It was the German philosopher, Emmanuel Kant (1795), who, in the XVIII century, gave the cosmopolitism a more positive meaning. According to Kant, the global or cosmopolite citizenship should be a way to promote a bigger sense of moral responsibility and justice among all actors of the different sovereign states. However, the traditional model of citizenship, the national citizenship, Humboldt well understood, would not be suitable to what humanity is “a living organism”. In his travel to Mexico in 1829, he pointed out: “the well-being of white people is closely bounded to that of the Brown race, and that cannot be long happiness in both Americas while the humiliated, but not worthless race, suffering from long oppression, do not participate on the advantages given by the progress of civilization and by the improvement of social order.” Not only from this excerption, but from his whole work, Humboldt promoted a cosmopolitan citizenship, as it aims, above all, consider citizenship out of the traditional structure; the conception of nation as an association of people homogeneous because of its culture and ethnic doesn’t seem appropriate anymore. To implement a cosmopolitan citizenship may encourage citizens to honour their duties and obligations not only for those who share an immediate geographical area, but also to those of other region and cultures. Here, David Held (2004) identifies eight fundamental principles, which should contribute to guide the bases and ethical values of a cosmopolitan policy. First, equality according to which each person must be treated with dignity; second, each person must be able to act by himself, respecting the available choices and having in consideration the demands of those affected by their choices; third, everyone should be aware of the direct and indirect consequences of their actions and act accordingly and 2 Jakob Vogel, historian, places his action in the time: “Il ne se distinguait pas de ses autres collègues, il montrait aussi bien son côté réformateur politique, mais aussi d’homme ancré profondément dans une vision d’ancien Régime à l’européenne et qui donnait aux scientifiques européens une autre vision du monde que même les gens qu’ils considéraient comme des ‘nobles sauvages’, c’est à dire les différentes populations indiennes en Amérique latine. Mais ce n’est pas le même racisme que celui de la fin du 19ème siècle qui intégrait un darwinisme social et d’autres visions plus biologisantes de la différence entre Européens et les autres”. Humboldt, un modèle pour l’Allemagne (2019): https://www.dw.com/fr/humboldt-un-mod% C3%50414761.

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responsibly; fourth, each person must act according to their consent; fifth, any decision affecting public domain must be democratically considered; sixth, cosmopolitan values should include the principle of inclusion and subsidiarity; seventh, everyone should avoid harm others; finally, eighth, sustainable and viability practices must be applied in order not to compromise the ecological balance. In summary, cosmopolitism has an implicit ethical or moral dimension. This doesn’t mean that cosmopolitism is only a theory of duties and responsibilities. Also includes an identification principle, a legal or juridical dimension (rights) and a political dimension (development of democratic norms). These elements must be beyond the structure of the nation.

IV. Justice During his travels and naturalistic, ethnographic, cultural, political and social research, Humboldt doesn’t hide reality. Through personal contact (visits and travels) he observes and analyses with discernment, studying archives he also analyses colonization and the state of exploitation and slavery of several native and black communities in plantations, factories and hospitals. These elements make holistic and ethical Humboldt’s worldview. Criticize colonialism and cultural domination makes us consider that Humboldt undeniably, not to say infinitely, considers justice cosmopolitan because there are no frontiers in recognizing the value of other ways of being, staying and living. However, we also must point out that if Humboldt is enchanted with native’s way of living, he also is surprised with their habits and cannibalism. In a letter to Wildenow, from Havana, 21st February 1801, he wrote “Mais en revanche, quelle jouissance que de vivre dans ces forêts indiennes, où l’on rencontre tant de peuplades indiennes indépendantes, chez lesquelles on trouve un reste de culture péruvienne ! On y voit des nations qui cultivent bien la terre, qui sont hospitalières, qui paraissent douces et humaines, tout comme les habitants d’Otahiti, mais qui sont comme ceux-ci anthropophages” (Humboldt 1904: 112)3.

Limits or defects on Humboldt’s vision are in the fact of considering Indians underdeveloped: “Ils considèrent tout homme ne parlant pas leur langue comme un être fondamentalement différent, qu’ils chassent comme un gibier”. And adds: “C’est la civilisation qui a fait sentir à l’homme l’unité du genre humain, qui lui a révélé, pour ainsi dire, les liens de consanguinité qui l’attachent à des êtres dont les langues et les mœurs lui sont étrangères”. 3 Attentive and profound reading made by Charles Minguet about Humboldt’s thought, enables him to come to this conclusion: “S’il a affirmé que celles-ci ne pouvaient pas être tenues pour barbares ou sauvages il a bien senti qu’elles étaient cependant des types de sociétés encore dans l’enfance”.

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However, he notes a fundamental fact to the comprehension of civilizations: “… les progrès de la civilisation ne se manifestent pas à la fois dans l’adoucissement des moeurs publiques et privées, dans le sentiment des arts, et dans la forme des institutions. Avant de classer les nations, il faut les étudier d’après leurs caractères spécifiques” (Humboldt 1904: 98 – 99).

This finding allows Humboldt to verify the dimension of inequality in the development of human societies, points out national or ethnic specificities. Societies make their own story, create a specific art. This way, Charles Minguet (1969: 445) writes “the diversity of national cultures is affirmed, but this doesn’t deny Humboldt’s belief in unity of human race. In the history of men, he finds characters he discovered in nature; unity in diversity”. We can affirm that his vision of justice is marked by the feeling of loyalty and belong to human species that develops through exchange, communication and reciprocal considerations. So, we cannot be surprised that, through his methods and conceptions, Humboldt seems to us a disciple of French rationalist and materialist thought of the XVIII century. He shares the same unitary conception of the universe with the encyclopaedic, the belief in the common origin of man, implying a biological equality of principles, the same confidence in reason and intelligence as a mean of progress and development, the evolution of political societies, finally, the same prejudices in relation to religion, seen with great scepticism and, sometimes, hostility.

V. Philosophical Fitting There are in Humboldt a number of characteristics that make him an eclectic thinker: encyclopaedism universalism, intellectual curiosity, lover of science, nature and travel, humanism – all these qualities belonging to the XVIII ideas and feelings (Lise 2003: 105). Humboldt was a thinker where different forms of the reality perception converge. We can find a rationalism imbued with materialism in scientific and philosophical matters. Humboldt, inspired in encyclopaedists, believed in the constant improvement of evolution, in a continuous transition from the simple to the complex. If Humboldt believes in humanity progress, he is conscientious, as Montesquieu and Voltaire, that human history gives more complexity than nature. In affirming his nobility, his privileged position, he is somehow near the encyclopaedists. However, he understands that societies evolution is not always according to a rational principle and that men cannot always entirely explain evolutionary processes. Humboldt is not sure that humanity is continuously moving towards something better, more beautiful and veritable. He wrote:

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Irene Portela and Domingos Vieira “Tout ce qui a trait à des individualités accidentelles, à l’essence variable de la réalité, qu’il s’agisse de la forme des êtres et du groupement des corps, ou qu’il s’agisse de la lutte de l’homme contre les éléments et des peuples contre les peuples, ne peut être uniquement déduit des idées, c’est-à-dire rationnellement construit” (Humboldt 1844: 36).

The German scholar does not believe that history is the fulfilment of a rational idea or a pre-established spiritual or divine principle; this distinguishes him from Kant and Hegel. If he believes in a general progress of humanity, can’t help but invoke “the eternal enigma of the oscillations experienced by the alternating progressive or backward movement of human society”. Humboldt wants, like Voltaire and Goethe, good to be both right, just and true. But, at last, Humboldt is optimistic, because he writes in Cosmo “Par une heureuse connexité de causes et d’effets, souvent même sans que l’homme en ait la prévision, le vrai, le beau, le bon se trouvent liés à l’utile” (Humboldt 1845: 43). Thus, Humboldt was a liberal democratic, passionate about justice and sincerely looking forward to seeing humanity move forward, contributing to its progress through the establishment of political regimes, allowing every citizen to fully develop their faculties.

VI. Denouncing the Exploitation of Indigenous Work On his travel to Mexico, Humboldt could check the negative results of forced labour, the myth. Forced work, the overwork imposed on the Myths caused great mortality. Once the work of the Indians is free, the myth was sometimes used to carry out great works. Is the case of Mexico’s drain. In 1796 and 1798, only a few years before his travel, Humboldt remember that Indians were forced to work drain in poor hygiene. The drain, whose work lasted two centuries, would be the main responsible for the Indian misery in the valley of Mexico City (Humboldt 1811). Related to forced labour, another form of exploitation of indigenous labour arose: the worker’s perpetual debt system. Humboldt observes this in Querétaro and is shocked when he visited the weaving works; the unhealthiness and mistreatment of workers: “Des hommes libres, écrit-il, Indiens et gens de couleur, y sont confondus avec des forçats que la justice distribue dans les fabriques pour les faire travailler à la journée. Les uns et les autres sont à demi nus, couverts de haillons, maigres et défaits. Chaque atelier ressemble à une prison obscure: les portes qui sont doubles, restent constamment fermées, et l’on ne permet pas aux ouvriers de quitter la maison ; ceux qui sont mariés ne peuvent voir leur famille que les dimanches. Tous sont fouettés impitoyablement, s’ils commettent le moindre délit contre l’ordre établi dans la manufacture” (Humboldt 1816: 8 – 10).

Humboldt pointed out the debt system as the procedure employers resorted to explore the workforce of workers.

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“On choisit parmi les indigènes ceux qui sont les plus misérables, mais qui annoncent de l’aptitude au travail ; on leur avance une petite somme d’argent: l’Indien qui aime à s’enivrer la dépense en peu de jours ; devenu le débiteur du maître, il est enfermé dans l’atelier sous prétexte de solder la dette par le travail de ses mains. On ne lui compte la journée qu’à un real et demi ou à vingt sous tournois; au lieu de le payer argent comptant, on a soin de lui fournir la nourriture, l’eau de vie et des hardes, sur le prix desquelles le manufacturier gagne cinquante à soixante pour cent: de cette manière, l’ouvrier le plus laborieux reste toujours endetté, et l’on exerce sur lui les mêmes droits que l’on croit acquérir sur un esclave qu’on achète” (Humboldt 1811: Vol. II, 667).

In this description we recognize that Humboldt understood, in 1803, one of the main aspects of the native economical exploitation: myth could be abolished in the constitutions of free states from Spanish America after independence, but the owners made them employees enslaved by perpetual debts. However, Humboldt notes the existence of certain privileged strata among the Indians: the noble Indians or the chiefs. It’s not easy to differentiate them, by their way of life, from the Indian people. However, these show great respect. But colour solidarity does not occur between these two classes of the same race. Sometimes, the indian chiefs exercise abusive power over their brothers. Having the power to increase capitation, they, sometimes, take advantage of it “… to extort small sums for their benefit” (Humboldt 1911: 386 – 387). He justifies the toughness of Indian chiefs, chiefs or mayors, saying that angry and oppressed by the Spaniards, from whom they cannot take revenge, oppress their own citizens (cf ibidem, 378 – 379). Let us note, the impression of the behaviour of Indian mayors or Alguaciles, which he could see in the Orinoco missions, who performed their duties with zeal and seriousness: “ce sont les grands officiers de l’État qui seuls ont le droit de porter une canne, et dont le choix dépend du supérieur du couvent. Ils attachent beaucoup d’importance à ce droit. Leur gravite pédantesque et silencieuse, leur air froid et mystérieux, leur amour pour la représentation à l’église et dans les assemblées de la commune, font sourire les Européens” (Humboldt 1814: 412)

Humboldt understood the economic and social meaning of the indigenous Cacicazgo and the role played in the subjugation of Americans Cacicazgo also represents another form of forced labour. The Spanish colonizers were able to take advantage of gradual degradation of the indigenous tribal organization to transform the traditional role of the Indian chiefs and officers and take advantage. What are the reasons for the slavery of these Indians? Humboldt gives an explanation when he checked the legal situation of the Indian in the missions. Let’s sign that the German author defined the Indian of the mission as insignificant, unable to be guided by his abilities. The guardianship of the Indians was rooted in the laws of the crown, not in missionary doctrine. What is the lack of this status? Humboldt lists the legal disabilities that affect the Indians (Humboldt 1811: 395 – 403). For instance, they cannot contract securities over a sum of twenty-five francs: “Des milliers d’habitans ne peuvent faire de contrat valable (no pueden tratar g contratar); condamnés à une minorité perpétuelle, ils de-

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Irene Portela and Domingos Vieira

viennent à charge à eux-mêmes et à l’état dans lequel ils Vivent” (Humboldt 1811: 394). This image that Humboldt described is widely real in many countries. Reproducing large extracts from Abad and Queipo’s text, Humboldt also gives an image of the Mexican Indians, whose main aspects are poverty, exploitation, isolation from the rest of the country, subject to the Indian chiefs who cheat them. Then, Abad and Queipo propose the following measures, taken by Humboldt: abolition of taxes; abolition of discriminatory regulations that fix the residence of men of colour; sharing of communal and undivided properties of the natives; possibility of access to all civilian jobs, especially for advanced mestizos, whose colour is almost white; distribution of uncultivated land belonging to the crown (real lands); allocation of fixed salaries to district magistrates and judges. In view of this shady situation of social State, the establishment of justice is now the key to social life. Bibliography Duviols, Jean-Paul (2011): “Alexandre de Humboldt, citoyen mexicain”. Études Germaniques, 2011/1 (n8 261), pp. 59 – 71: https://www.cairn.info/revue-etudes-germaniques-2011-1. Held, David (2004): “Democratic Accountability and Political Effectiveness from a Cosmopolitan Perspective”. Government and Opposition, 39 (2), pp. 364 – 391: https://doi.org/10.1111/ j.1477-7053.2004.00127.x. Humboldt, Alexander von (1811): Essai politique sur le Royaume de la Nouvelle-Espagne. Paris, Schoel. Humboldt, Alexander von (1814): Voyage aux régions équinoxiales du Nouveau Continent. Paris, Schoel. Humboldt, Alexander von (1836): Histoire de la Géographie du Nouveau Continent et des Progrès de l’Astronomie Nautique aux Quinzième et Seizième Siècles. Paris: Gide, vol. 1, 362 p.: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k1073502k.image. Humboldt, Alexander von (1845): Kosmos, Entwurf einer physischen Weltbeschreibung, Tome 1. Stuttgart und Tübingen: Cotta’scher Verlag, Translated to Portuguese (Brasil): https:// www.skoob.com.br/livro/pdf/o-cosmos-de-humboldt/livro:4216/edicao:5263. Humboldt, Alexander von (1904): Lettres américaines d’Alexander von Humboldt (1798 – 1817). Ed. by Ernest-Théodore Hamy. Paris: Guilmoto, 1904. Kant, Emmanuel (2001 [1795]): Projet de paix perpétuelle. Paris: Mille et une nuits. Lise, Andriès (2003): Le Partage des savoirs xviiie-xixe siècles Littérature et idéologies. Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon. Minguet, Charles (1969): Alexandre de Humboldt: Historien et géographe de l’Amérique espagnole, 1799, 1804. Paris: Ed. IHAL.

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Nour Sckell, Soraya (2012): La justice cosmopolite. Histoire des principes et enjeux contemporains (doctoral thesis in philosophy), December 2012: https://bdr.parisnanterre.fr/theses/in ternet/2012PA100194.pdf. Nour Sckell, Soraya/Ehrhardt, Damien (2016): “Préface”. Le Soi et le Cosmos d’Alexander von Humboldt à nos jours. Ed. by Soraya Nour Sckell and Damien Ehrhardt. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot. Beiträge zur Politischen Wissenschaft Band 182, pp. 7 – 10: https://www.dunckerhumblot.de/_files_media/leseproben/9783428544608.pdf. Péaud, Laura (2016): “Le voyage russe d’Alexander von Humboldt (1829). Une lecture à la lumière du tournant spatial. Alexander von Humboldt’s Russian journey (1829). A lecture through the spatial turn”. Geographie et cultures, 99, pp. 239 – 256: https://journals.openedi tion.org/gc/4599. Ron, José Manuel Sánchez/Gabán, Jesús (ilustrações) (2018): El sueño de Humboldt y Sagan: una historia humana de la ciência. Barcelona: Crítica. Valentin, Jean-Marie (2011): “Alexander von humboldt – une icône du monde globalisé ?” Klincksieck. Études Germaniques, 2011/1, n8 261, pp. 11 – 20: https://www.cairn.info/ revue-etudes-germaniques-2011-1-page-11.htm. Sylla, Bernhard (2017): “Será que a linguagem determina a cultura? As posições de Humboldt e Cassirer em torno desta questão”. Porto Alegre: Editor Fi, pp. 2 – 21: http://hdl.handle.net/ 1822/52978.

The Aesthetics of the Political Image: Analysing the Paintings of Rugendas After Humboldt1 João Motta Guedes This essay aims to present some of Rugendas paintings that were made during his expeditions through Latin America, in the begging of the XIX century, explaining how these works hold a juridical-political meaning. Furthermore, in this communication there will be developed the pictorial themes that are object of Rugendas paintings, namely, regarding the object of the canvas that illustrate various episodes of the social and colonial history of Latin America, while redirecting such themes to the confrontation between natives and europeans and explaining how they can invoke Civil and Human Rights.

I. A Force that Images Contain The aesthetics of the political image rests in the eye of the beholder, this is an idea that the works of Rugendas manifest when we consider what is represented in his drawings, engravings and paintings. This essay will focus on trying to understand how the works of Rugendas hold a juridical political meaning, analysing the themes and subjects present in his paintings made during two separate periods of his life: the first when Rugendas first journeyed into Brazil from the years of 1822 to 1825, which lead to the publication of the book, Viagem Pitoresca através do Brasil2 (Picturesque Voyage to Brazil), published between 1827 and 1835; and a second period, after Rugendas met Humboldt and travelled back to the Americas, pursuing the continuation of the representation of the themes of nature and humanity3. Johan Mauritz Rugendas, born in Ausburg in 1802 in a family of artists, was trained classically in drawing and engraving, as his father and his father before him. The first time Rugendas journeyed to the Americas, where he would create the most significant amount of his works, it was the year of 1822, this time he 1

This text is based on the chapter “Rugendas and the landscape of human reality” from the dissertation The Utopia of Human Rights: a theory of the juridical image, NOVA School of Law, 2021. 2 Rugendas (1949). 3 About Rugendas see Roca (2017) and Carneiro (1979).

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was a contracted drawer for the Baron of Langsdorff (1774 – 1852), tasked with depicting the natural life for the scientific expedition funded by the Czar of Russia. However, Rugendas would abandon the expedition very shortly after arriving, due to disagreements with the Baron, who continued this poor fated incursion into Brazil territories, with Aimé-Adrien Taunay (1803 – 1828), as the replacement for Rugendas, who would later drown, and Langsdorff himself who would mad. This move allowed Rugendas to discover much more freely the lands and people he so much desired to portray, even though we do not know the specific itinerary of his journey, the works provide accurate scenes of the depicted regions and populations, so much that these works serve as important documents for understanding the social and natural realities of the time. As such, it was during these three years of travelling that he produced the works that would lead to the later publication of Viagem Pitoresca através do Brasil, a compilation of drawings, engravings, as well as the considerations that Rugendas extensively registered, containing descriptions of what he saw during the time of his travels, writing about the traditions, the customs, and the reality of the natives and slaves alike, providing a powerful narrative on both the social and the natural landscape of Brazil in the beginning of the XIX century. Even though the text is heavily criticised by historians, because of Rugendas imprecise narrative, and often following an idea of a very lyrical tropical romanticism, which in trend during the time, the book he edited and published reveals some astonishing drawings and engravings that were made during the time of his stay in brazil, depicting not only the natural fauna and flora of the region, but more interesting to us, the representation of the people living in these areas, in some cases, giving focus to the tension present in the relations between natives, slaves and europeans in the scenes he depicted4. It is not our task, however, to examine the general likelihood or the historical accuracy of the writings that Rugendas putted out in his book, but rather to try to better understand how the images he created represent an important testimony to human life and how they can invoke civil and human rights. Furthermore, the text that accompanies the publication of these images, is also an important tool to comprehend the line of thought behind the creation of his works, and how the inherit strength of the his works can act in person of the receiver, opening a range of possibilities to the meanings that may be present in his artworks. In this way, it is mandatory to consider the writings of Rugendas on topic of slavery present in his book, Viagem Pitoresca através do Brasil, which portray a position similar to the one of Humboldt himself, who was an abolitionist. These writings do not only tells us about the life in Brazil during the time of his stay, describing the influence of Portuguese and other European powers, including the colonisation and the impact of slave trade, but also provide useful descriptions of native and slave lives, telling the story of the history of the populations, tribes and places Rugendas visited in what can be seen as an embryonic anthropological study. 4

See Slenes (2006).

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Figure 1: Negros in the Cellar of a Slave Boat

Furthermore, from the works present in Viagem Pitoresca através do Brasil we will focus in two specific engravings, directly connected with the theme of how slaves were treated5, which are part of Rugendas choice for the represented subject of his works, and linking it to question of how can a political image manifest itself in the theme of a work of art. As such, it is incontestable that the artworks of Rugendas, accompanied by his text, offer a valuable insight on his thoughts regarding the question of slavery, as we can see in the image above, Navio Negreiro (Negros in the cellar of a slave boat), where it is represented the deplorable life conditions for slaves aboard the ships meant for their transportation. Furthermore, as Rugendas described, the segregation between europeans and noneuropeans was still a deep moat, as both natives and slaves were considered inferior to the colonisers, even if on different levels in the hierarchical pyramid, as it is also to note that slavery in Brazil was kept even though slavery was abolished in most other western countries, such as Great Britain, in 1807, but remaining a reality in Brazil until the year of 1888. Nevertheless, the image of the slaves in the basement of ship holds by its own nature a political content, because it speaks directly on the topic of how life was in a particular community to whom no rights were granted, as they were mere property 5

Rugendas (1949).

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of the owner, which is an idea that is directly linked with the concept of citizenship as a way to consecrate rights, considering that these people were not recognised as citizens, but rather as mere labour instruments, and as Arendt so notably highlighted, it is by being a citizen and by belonging to a state that rights would be granted6, the question is, of course, who could be eligible to become a citizen. Moreover on the image, we can say that in it an inherit force is present that speaks on its own, perhaps due to the violence that redirects to the observer, making us ponder on this scene as representation of reality, because a painting is a way of mimesis of life and of the world, which can be traced back to the idea of the Greek legend of the origins of the painting itself. However, the strength of the lithograph manifests because it depicts a scene that is susceptible to impress, to create a sense of empathy on the observer upon the confrontation with such image. In other words, the force of the image acts through the observer as the receiver of the image, and these eyes could either be sensible, as Rugendas was, to the slaves conditions, or not, which is an issue that directly connects with the idea of empathy7 (and with historical moments of the declarations of Declaration of Independence of United States and Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen). Furthermore, regarding these ideas of the strength of the image and the ability to create empathy on the observer, something similar can be seen in the lithography bellow, named Public Punishment, as the name of the work suggest, the scenes illustrates a moment where slaves are whipped in a public gathering, as we can see the slaves and the settlers in a square, showing us the consequences for those who would dare to disobey. The power of these images is manifested by their latent force, which is present due to the content of what is represented, in this way the force of the images manifest through the observer, as that is part of a perspective of who sees the images. In this way, it is important to consider the historical relativism, and the fact that those of inflicted the punishment were convinced these slaves lives were valuable nothing more that cattle, despite the declarations already mentioned. On the other hand, when we ponder the possibilities of meaning contained in the image, we resort to the ideas of Bredekamp, who highlights the theory of the image act, defending that “the problematic of the image act consist in individualise the strength that enables the image, in their contemplation of touch, to jump from a estate of latency to the external efficiency in the scope of the feeling, of the thoughts and of the action”8. Such force redirects the image not only to a representation of reality, but in the image lies a latent strength that gives focus to the content of what is represented, and if such essence is political it holds an important meaning that is unveiled by 6

Arendt (1951). Hunt (2007). 8 Bredekamp (2016), p. 34. 7

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Figure 2: Public Punishment

the observer. The meaning is of course seen in the eyes of the observer, but that significance may be activated by the latent force of the image, if Rugendas saw this an act of cruelty against the rights of mankind, so many other did not see it in such manner. Furthermore, for a better understanding of Rugendas works, we should consider the texts that accompany the images of his book, as even though Rugendas claims not trying to reconstitute the history of slave trade, we should ponder on his narrative, even as if some parts may be more obscure than others, it becomes clear that Rugendas was aware of many important philosophers and thinkers who sided with the native Americans in defence of their freedom and self-determination, from enlightened thinkers such as Rousseau to the defenders of natural right such as Bartolomeu de las Casas9. Thus, it becomes clear when we analyse the content of the passages of Rugendas, the position, or the lines of thought that is present in the making of his works, as we can read some interesting considerations of his on the question: “But, all these thoughts (of the superiority of white over slaves and natives) are so far of conducting us to a satisfactory result as the ones that are made about the inherit rights of humanity (…) in last analysis, the persuasion of having the right of being free is based in believe above any discussion; and the right of the most powerful to dominate the week is as old as the one of the weak becoming independent of the stronger. Alas, it above that 9

Rugendas (1949), p. 83.

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João Motta Guedes right of the strongest that the legal mechanisms are founded, which make the slave property of the master. If freedom is sacred, so it is property. In a way that the defenders of the rights of humanity have no other option rather than take them by force from his proprietors.”10

And in a later paragraph Rugendas adds: “It doesn’t matter that the emancipation of slaves in America is of natural right or not, or that damages the advantages that the law granted to the proprietors; The law is a direct consequence of the latent forces, and the proprietors can only conserve their advantages by renouncing voluntarily to a part of their rights.”11

The text reveals to us the line of thought behind Rugendas works, indicating that the rights should be taken by force, and in terms of a aesthetics of the producer, we can understand with the reading of this excerpt that Rugendas was well aware of the cruelties inflicted upon natives and slaves, and as such his works strived in their content for ideals such as Justice and Humanity. Furthermore, these latent forces that Rugendas mentions, and that Bredekamp also spoke about, could be the key to understanding the possible meaning that is behind Rugendas work, because this force acts on the person of the receiver, directing him to a possible interpretation which rests in the potency held by the image. Nevertheless, we can never know for sure what Rugendas intended by depicting this kind of scenes, if he was simply depicting what his eyes saw or if there was more of a hidden political agenda in the images that he created, even so, it becomes clear with the reading of excerpts the position he took regarding the theme of slavery, and it becomes also clear that it wasn’t by chance that that he chose to portray these moments, as even thought he depicted many other, his inclination toward the representation of human conflict would start to increase after his journey to Brazil, which would be continued upon his return to the Americas. Moreover, in our view, his choice of portraying these scenes of violence of humans against humans is in itself a political act, but not only the act of portraying these scenes is relevant, but the images he produced are by themselves a political act, which can be of importance in order to convey a particular idea, and in this way the works above contain an important message, in truth regarding the political aspect of life within a particular community, but susceptible to the interpretations of the observer.

II. A Landscape of Human Reality After the successful publication of Viagem Pitoresca através do Brasil, Rugendas was incentivized by Humboldt to return to Latin America and to continue his journey to chart the people and territories of the Americas. Now trained in oil painting, Ru10 11

Rugendas (1949), translation by the author, p. 86 and 87. Rugendas (1949), pp. 87 – 87.

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gendas landed in Acapulco Valparaíso in 1831, in Mexico, with a clear mission, to continue his work and to gather more material for another publication. Rugendas travelled the region, from desert plains to the peaks of mountains, as his paintings in this time focused on representing the natural surroundings, depicting nature in its grandiose, representing costal plains, tropical vegetations, volcanoes, but still engaged with representation of the native cultures of the areas that he visited in what could be considered an artistic and scientific union. As Rugendas travelled to Chile after Mexico, some remarkable changes were starting to crystallise in what is an important moment in every artist life with the reinvention of his own artistic style, as he gradually stepped out of the representation of nature in order to focus more on the people living in these regions. As such, by the time Rugendas got to Chile the object of his paintings had turned completely, instead of depicting the fauna or flora as the main focus for his paintings instead he opted for the representation of human reality, continuing the line set before with artworks of Viagem Pitoresca através do Brasil. Thus, in this second travel in the Americas, now following the same steps as Humboldt, Rugendas rather focused on representing the human being in conflict, highlighting scenes of the social and political realties of the people living in the areas of Chile, where he stayed from 1834 to 1842. It was at this point in Rugendas journey that it became clear another motive for his paintings had appeared, now nature is in the background and human being it put in the front, his mission and fascination was to the people he encountered, as Rugendas moved from depicting nature to the representation of humanity, he no longer depicted the nature around him as the central subject, but rather gave focus to the representation of settlements and the native people and their traditions, in similar lines to what he had done before in Brazil, but now more engaged with the representation of human conflict. Perhaps the change of theme in Rugendas paintings (compared to the natural landscapes he produced in Mexico and in Brazil) was directly connected to what the reality that he saw, as the historical context of the first half of XIX century was a time of turmoil in Latin America, especially in the regions that were affected by the context of war and post and ongoing revolution, such as the one that Rugendas found Chile, a country still recovering from the after-maw of the Revolution of 1818 and of Bolivar and Saint-Martin influence for liberation of the Ex-Spanish Colonies of Latin America. Moreover, when we look to the painting The arrival of president Prieto at la Pampilla – seen bellow – we can observe the historical moment that marks the victory of the conservative leader Joaquín Prieto, who would become the ninth president of Chile, ending the civil war at 1829. The painting that Rugendas created, whose subject invokes the historical moments that preceded arrival of the president, marks a definitive shift in Rugendas work from a representation of natural to social history.

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Furthermore, this kind of theme, reflecting the ideals of self determination, liberation and nationalism, was not only a direct consequence of the ideas of the Enlightenment and Romanticism12 spreading as the result of the Napoleonic wars and of both declarations of independence of the United Sates and the Declaration of the Rights of Men and Citizen, but also a theme recurrent in the Romanticism movement during the XIX century, whose influence largely came from these values.

Figure 3: The Arrival of President Prieto at la Pampilla

In this regard, if we compare Rugendas first works of the periods of Brazil and Mexico that depicted the natural world, to the ones he produced during his stay in Chile and Argentina we can see how the theme of idyllic nature quickly makes its opposition against the conflict present in human reality, as it becomes manifest the shift between the peaceful characteristic of nature against the tension filled canvasses whose subject was humanity’s conflict, as we can see both in The arrival of president Prieto at la Pampilla and in the painting The Rapt (El Malón) – see below – in scene of battle between Indian Natives and Chilean soldiers. In the painting we can observe the strength of red of the woman’s dress contrasting with the pale horse skin ridden by the native American, charging forth in the scene of battle in a moment of what were known as the Arauco raids, we can see a peasant pursuing the horse and the track left behind the charge while in the background there is a village and in the distant horizon the sky is in smoke, maybe due other battles and pillages. The name of the painting – El Malón – refers to a particular tactic used by the native to fight, and consisted in cavalry raids on villages, striking suddenly and killing 12

Lago (1960).

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and pillaging everything in their path, the tension present in the painting suggests the theme that Rugendas pursued in this moment of life, not only the single representation of the natives but the representation human conflict as he encountered it, straying away from representations of nature in its idyllic form, which serves now as the second plan to the true subject of the painting. In this way, the highly dramatic scene highlights not only the representation of human life but the strife within humanity itself, redirecting us to the dramatic love story present in the poem La Cautiva (The Captive – 1837), of Esteban Echeverría, which had direct influence in Rugendas works, and specifically in the painting The Rapt, because it served as a strong source of inspiration for the representation of this imaginary13.

Figure 4: The Rapt

The epic poem tells the story of two lovers who were captured by the native Americans, narrating their struggle to escape the natives which lead only to their tragic deaths and of their son. This idea of Romanticism in Latin America goes against the idea of an idyllic nature but rather gives focus to nature as an aggressive force as the reflex of human struggle, as Echevarría’s poem could be used to criticise uto13

See Roca (2017), pp. 30 – 51; Roca (2010).

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pian views of colonisation while speaking of racial and gender political discourses that are also be present in Rugendas paintings. Following this idea, what is even more interesting is to think in Humboldt’s legacy and how it manifested in Rugendas work, from the representation of nature to the representation of humanity, and to the representation of humanity within nature (a theme tracing back to Classical and Renaissance subjects of painting) but also giving the tension and drama which are characteristic of Romanticism, while it highlights the fervency of emotions as Rugendas continued his efforts to represent humanity in its diversity, giving focus the conflict in humanity in opposition to the nature in its most idyllic and peaceful aspect. Furthermore, the presented works of Rugendas act in a way that its inherent force suggests and provokes our interpretations and makes us reflect upon the themes that are represented, making us reflect upon in what is the of most powerful force in the work of art: its ability to bring ideas of humanity to the observer.

III. The Aesthetics of the Political Image As returning to the starting point, or as the ending of a journey, Rugendas travelled back to Brazil during his last years in Latin America, in this moment he stepped away from what would be the main mission of his life, the representation of the world he encountered manifested in his works through the salient contrast between nature and humanity, as Rugendas return to the Imperial Brazil was marked a grandiose exhibition at the of his works at the Academy’s Salon in 1846 just before his return to Europe. Even so, the works that Rugendas created during his journey are to be considered with the historical time of their creation, and with the ideas were emerging with the Enlightenment and as such, we have to keep in mind that even if declarations such as the United States Declaration of Independence proclaimed the rights of freedom and equality between all citizens, they had the problem of considering only citizens the ones who were males, white and proprietors. In this way, much like in ancient Athens or as demonstrated by Arendt with the stateless Jews whose juridical condition was progressively eliminated through the removal o their German citizenship, the mental and juridical conceptions that only few would be able to become citizens was the prevalent one, making these Universal Declarations contradictory to their great ambitions. Such is true because of the mutable nature of Human Rights, as they are dependent on the perspectives of what the law should be, and therefor what are the limits and extensions of the rights that are granted by a particular state or legislator, making us consider on the relativity of the ideas as they change according to the time of history. Furthermore, the idea of empathy, which is present in the work of Lynn Hunt regarding the origin and reason why Human Rights arose, is as the author suggests, the

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cause that made possible the ascendency of human rights during XVIII century. But even if empathy was not invented in the XVIII and XIX centuries, it is clear for us that the works of Rugendas draw from such emotion and habilitates the spectator to relate himself with what he sees, because when we ponder on the subject that is represented, it is manifests that such themes speak directly to the topics of human dignity, violence and justice, and because of their latent force they are able to provoke us to feel and reflect upon the subjects that are represented in his works. Moreover, when we consider Rugendas writings present in Viagem Pictoresca através do Brasil, it becomes manifest that Rugendas was concerned with the natives and and slaves he encountered along the way, and the choice to portray their lives rather to continue depicting nature is a choice that implicitly is of political nature, as the subject of these paintings reflect life in a most naked and true way. In this way we can say that the works of Rugendas are political not only because of their subject, but also because of its latent force that manifests in the paintings and in the political consequences they provoked14. Nonetheless, we can consider the works of Rugendas as political paintings not only because of its subject but also because of the latent force that manifests in the paintings. In this way, the political image is the one that because of the subject that portrays it redirects our thoughts to a imaginary connected with the functioning of our political and juridical systems, such as the works of Rugendas suggests. Moreover, from the perspective of the aesthetics of producer it is clear that Rugendas intentions rested with his desire to portray the world, and such resulted in his works being a representation of the colonial realities that he encountered in a time which was filled with severe conflict and injustices that Rugendas was not blind to. As such, the aesthetics of the political image rests not only in the subject of what is represented in the work of art, but especially in the eyes of the observer who activates its meanings. Through this idea of potency that is present in the observer who follows the suggestions that the subject of the work of art gives. In this way, the content of the work of art is by its nature a force that leave us to wonder on the possibilities of the image that is presented to us, and if Rugendas desire was to either represent the world or to denouncing the reality that he saw, is a question that will be left to be answered as it rests with the unknown aspect of the aesthetics of the producer. Nevertheless, perhaps Rugendas was fascinated with the Americas and perhaps he was he compelled to portrait of society instead of nature because of the world he encountered and the empathy he felt towards its native people, and in this way, much like our contemporary world, the values of the Anthropocene reflect the same opposition as the idea of nature and the idyllic against the violence of human society. On the other hand, in the panoramic of the aesthetics of receiver, the idea of potency of observer plays a key role in what concerns the interpretation and the impact 14

See Roca (2017) and Roca (2010).

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that his works could have upon the observer. In this way it is possible that influence of the work of art is able to provoke the observer to ponder on the image that he is confronted with and to invoke a possible alteration of mentalities, a theory not very distant from the thesis of empathy given by the historian Lynn Hunt. This idea of a work of art that becomes a form of statement is true, similar to paintings such as Liberty guiding the people (Eugène Delacroix, 1798 – 1863) because it holds a political and historical meaning, relating it with the possibility that a painting can lay the bases for the foundations of human rights, which authors such as Lynn Hunt claim to be connect to the idea of empathy, and in this regard there is a point to be made regarding a certain historical relativism, because empathy or seeking human kindness are concepts that have evolved over the times, as society changed and consequently the law changed too, as the law is or should be the result of the will of its people, and in this way, a work of art can help in the construction of better values and ideas, as they are a form of representing the world and life. Furthermore, as Bredekamp pointed out, images are of form of discourse that result in a manifestation of an idea, therefor the work of art is a form of discourse that by itself is a form of an act. In this way, the aesthetics of the political image, or the force that emanates from the subject of a work of art, acts through the manifestation of a symbolic discourse that contains unwritten messages of what may be present in the image. This is a form of discourse that even if the work of art does not try to convey a particular message, it inevitably opens a range of interpretations that are direct towards the scope of what the images push us to. Consequently, it opens to the observer the representation of our society, making art as form of expressing ideas and a form of experience of what the painting says about life, what does it say about the individual and what it tells about the world. It is true that the power of the image, which contains a latent force and imaginary, may be strong enough to convey a particular ideology or suggestion of an ideal, nevertheless, such meaning, that acts through the eyes of the observer, rests in a state of potency that is held by the discourse of the work of art, and in this regard, it is true that the power of a painting, or of the work of art, only holds its strength because it is activated by the observer, through the potency of the one who sees it, and therefore it is a bold statement to say that Rugendas intentions were to convey a certain group of ideals that sided with the defence of series of rights that at the time were starting to emerge. However we find these ideals of Romanticism, Nature, Justice and Humanity immensely present in his works, and that the aura that these works emanate is atemporal due to the ability they have to provoke us and to make us think on content of the images Rugendas created, as even though different are the times and the interpretations that may be made, the essence of the humanity present in the discourse of his works will forever stay unchanged.

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Bibliography Arendt, Hannah (1951): The origins of totalitarism: anti-semitism, imperialism, totalitarism. New York: Henri Holt. Bredekamp, Horst (2007): Thomas Hobbes’s Visual Strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bredekamp, Horst (2016): Teoria do Acto Icónico. Potyo: Poetria. Carneiro, Newton (1979): Rugendas no Brasil. São Paulo: Livraria Kosmos Editoraa & Rio de Janeiro: UFRJ. Humboldt, Alexander von (2004): Kosmos. Entwurf einer physischen Weltbeschreibung [1845 – 62]. Frankfurt am Main: Eichborn. Hunt, Lynn (2007): A Invenção dos Direitos Humanos: Uma História. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras Editora. Lago, Tomás (1960): Rugendas pintor romántico de Chile. Santiago: Ediciones de la Universidad de Chile. Motta-Guedes, João (2021): The Utopia of Human Rights: a theory of the juridical image, Lisboa: NOVA School of Law. Roca, Andrea (2010): Os sertões e o deserto: imagens da ‘nacionalização’ dos índios no Brasil e na Argentina, na obra de J. M. Rugendas (1802 – 1858). Rio de Janeiro: UFRJ. Roca, Andrea (2017): Imagens construtoras de nação. Rugendas e seus Desenhos sobre indígenas no Brasil e na Argentina. Porto Alegre: Iluminuras, Vol. 18, N. 43. Rugendas (1949): Viagem pitoresca através do Brasil/Biblioteca histórica brasileira, 4a edição. São Paulo: Livraria Martins Editora S.A. Slenes, Robert (2006): Overdrawn from life. Abolitionist argument and ethnographic authority in Brazilian ‘Artistic Travels’ of J. M. Rugendas 1827 – 1835, in: Portuguese Studies,Vol. 22, Issue 1.

From Timor to Brazil with the Support of the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung Elena Soboleva In 1860 the Imperial Saint Petersburg Academy of Science (Russia) contributed 1000 silver Prussian Taler to the just established Humboldt-Stiftung in Berlin (Prussia). In the late XIX century Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung supported scientific expeditions to distant regions. German travelers Otto Finsch, Karl von den Steinen, Georg Thilenius, Leo Frobenius, etc. collected ethnographical exhibits, and several foreign museums, including the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (hereinafter – MAE) in Saint Petersburg (Russia), now keep their collections (Soboleva 2011). As a Humboldt-Stiftung scholar the author visited many ethnographic museums to study collections from different luzophonic countries, met the Portuguese speaking people in many regions of Asia – Timor Leste, India, Sri Lanka, Macau, etc. (Soboleva 2015). It happened so that the first ethnographic items from East Timor arrived to Russia (Moscow) in 1862 (Soboleva 1995: 2003). Reciprocally, in 2019 the MAE provided the traveling photo-exhibition in Timor Leste with the images of Timorese items from the Museum’s early collections. The history of the First (1821 – 1828) and Second (1914 – 1915) Russian scientific expeditions to Brazil are currently in international focus. The results1 of these enterprises can be appreciated later when the full set of archival and museum materials now spread between Russia, Germany, Brazil, Argentina, etc., would be discovered and studied. The idea of Alexander von Humboldt on the universal solidarity of scientists and mutual help has manifested itself in the past. Support has been and is being provided to researchers in the field, especially when the Alexander von Humboldt symbols are available. Several times the brand of A. von Humboldt-Stiftung – a pocket calendar with the logotype – strengthened the relationship on the spot in foreign countries.

1 The research was conducted with the financial support of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR) within the framework of the project No. 19 – 09 – 00233 “Study of the materials of the Second Russian Expedition to South America (1914 – 1915)”.

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I. The Russian Contribution to the Creation of Humboldt Foundation Alexander von Humboldt (1769 – 1859) activities were highly appreciated by the contemporary scientists. Russian academicians, in particular, recognizing his prominent role in the studies of Russia and responded positively to the call of their German colleagues to perpetuate the memory of A. von Humboldt “in the most practical way.” Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander Freiherr von Humboldt died on May 6, 1859 at the 89th year of his life. Berliner Akademie der Wissenschaften expressed a desire to create a fund named after him with the aim of helping young researchers, in order to continue his efforts to support young scientists. A. von Humboldt was elected to the Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin (1800), Prussian (1805) and Bavarian Academies of Sciences, he became a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (1810), the Royal Society and many scientific societies in different countries. On February 11, 1818, he was elected a foreign honorary member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg. In 1829 A. von Humboldt traveled across Russia together with Gustav Rose and Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg, and both scientists in 1829 were elected foreign corresponding members of the Imperial Academy of Sciences. In the 1850 – 1860s the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences (Königlichen Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin) as an authoritative scientific institution had departments of Physics and Mathematics, Philosophy and History. In the mid-XIX century Academies of Sciences of different countries had established fruitful contacts. On December 9, 1859, the Department of Physics and Mathematics of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg (hereinafter – IAS) received the standard letter from the director of the Berlin Observatory Johann Franz Encke, dated November 17, 1859, sent by the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences to the Academies and Scholarly Societies associated with it, on behalf of the Committee for the Establishment of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for Nature Research and Travel (das Comité zur Gründung einer A. von Humboldtstiftung für Naturforschung und Reisen). At the same time, the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences recommended the scientists to support the plans of the named Committee “for benevolent cooperation … for scientific purposes”. J. F. Encke was sure that “the title and the purpose of the Foundation belong to all Academies”, and pointed out that for this Memorial “many more components are still required” (SPB ARAS. F. 1. Inv. 1 – 1859. Unit 14. P. 1.) Attached to the message was another standard letter signed by all members of the Organizing Committee of the prospective Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for Nature Research and Travel, dated November 3, 1859 (§ 379).

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The name of a specific addressee was entered into the text by hand. The appeal said that “Alexander von Humboldt, whose enormous activity spread across the countries of the world and vividly penetrated into the most diverse circles of activity, belongs in an excellent sense to the Academies and scientific societies of all enlightened peoples”. In all the Academies “there are people who have personally assisted him and were closely associated [with him], or who are grateful to him for his assistance in their scientific path. Therefore, all the Academies will have to keep a grateful memory of him and pass on the legacy as a living sign to future generations.”

The organizing committee hoped to “find the approval of all scientific societies” and, in particular, recommended the Imperial Academy of Sciences to create an effective Center for this Foundation in its environment. (SPB ARAS. F. 1. Inv. 1 – 1859. Unit 14. P. 2 – 3.) 21 prominent persons signed the invitation. In Berlin, the Organizing Committee included the initiators of the Foundation Gustav Magnus (1802 – 1870), August Böckh (1785 – 1867), Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg (1802 – 1872), Johann Franz Encke (1791 – 1865), Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg (1795 – 1876), Moriz Haupt (1808 – 1874), Karl Richard Lepsius (1810 – 1884), Heinrich Wilhelm Dove (1803 – 1879), Emil du Bois-Reymond (1818 – 1896), as well as Privy Councilor Heinrich Abecken (official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs), August von Bethmann-Holweg (Prussian Minister of Education, Culture and Medicine in 1858 – 1862), Eduard Heinrich Flottvel (in 1859 – Minister of State of the Interior of Prussia), Heinrich Wilhelm Krausnik (in 1859 – mayor of Berlin), Privy Commercial Councilor Alexander Mendelssohn (banker and philanthropist), Commercial Councilor Leonor Reichenheim (manufacturer, member of the House of Representatives of Prussia), Prince Friedrich Wilhelm Karl Radziwill (commander of the 3rd Army Corps in Berlin), Karl Wilhelm Baron von Willissen (Lieutenant General), Joachim Heinrich Wilhelm Wagener (banker, Swedish and Norwegian consul), and others. A notable experimental scientist, member of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences Gustav Magnus became the Chairman of the Organizing Committee, and Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg, the Secretary of the Academy, became the Secretary of the Organizing Committee. Gustav Magnus, a corresponding member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences (1854), wrote a letter, that the Physics and Mathematics Department of the Imperial Academy of Sciences got on February 16, 1860. His idea found full understanding among Russian elites. On March 15, 1860, the President of the Imperial Academy of Sciences (1855 – 1864) Count Dmitry Nikolaevich Bludov (1785 – 1864) reported to the Minister of Public Education (1858 – 1861) of the Russian Empire Evgraf Petrovich Kovalevski (1790 – 1867) the proposal of the participation of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in the “capital established under the name Humboldt-Stiftung”. E. P. Kovalevsky, also a honorary member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences (1856), in a reply letter on March 31, 1860, informed Count Bludov that

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The Tzar Alexander II ordered the funds to be allocated as soon as possible. How exactly the allocated funds were supposed to be delivered to their destination is known from the letter of the ordinary academician (1859), IAS Perpetual Secretary (1857 – 1890) Konstantin Stepanovich Veselovsky (1819 – 1901), dated April 14, 1860, to the Board Committee of the Imperial Academy of Sciences. Veselovsky asked “from the Academy’s economic sums, one thousand Prussian Taler, at the rate of one thousand forty silver Rubles, for the transfer of these, by means of a bill, to Berlin in the name of the Committee, established to manage the compiled capital in honor of Humboldt”. On April 14, 1860, the IAS Perpetual Secretary K. S. Veselovsky notified G. Magnus that the above-mentioned amount had been transferred to the Committee and asked to “notify the Academy about the receipt of this bill”. The Russian Academy was “convinced that the wonderful work started by the Committee, with the growing participation of all educated [people] and under the careful guidance of such excellent people, will develop further with benefit and will bear fruit, which are worthy of an immortal master” (SPB ARAS. F. 1. Inv. 1 – 1859. Unit 14. P. 10.) Magnus, Dove, Trendelenburg and Haupt on May 4, 1860, asked K. S. Veselovski to express their deep gratitude to the Imperial Academy of Sciences (SPB ARAS. F. 1. Inv. 1 – 1859. Unit 14. P. 12.). Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung was formed 18 months after the death of the scientist, in 1860. At the beginning of 1864, the Foundation collected about 150 thousand German Marks. The London’s Royal Society for the Advancement of Nature Knowledge, for example, donated 50 guineas (over £ 50) (Dunken 1959: 164). A. von Humboldt-Stiftung in 1863 – 1898 supported 20 long-term scientific expeditions abroad. In 1878, Dr. Otto Finsch was sent to Micronesia to collect zoological and ethnographic collections, in 1888 Prof. Dr. Karl von den Steinen went to Brazil, in 1890 – 1898 Dr. Georg Thilenius studied New Zealand, in 1908 Prof. Leo Frobenius traveled to German Inner-Africa (Dunkel 1959: 166, 171). These travelers contributed to the formation of the scientific base of the academic Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography in Saint Petersburg (Soboleva 2011). Participants of these expeditions and their followers donated to German museum their collections, the active international exchange of objects between the museums took place, directors and scientists implemented some joint projects with the MAE. The Russian contribution to the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation has contributed to the development of world science, the formation of its material base and scientific personnel.

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II. Travels in Latin America Descriptions of the countries visited by Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland gave samples of scientific regional studies. A. von Humboldt’s method of geographical research became a model for scientific expeditions in the XIXth century. He theoretically generalized observations in physical geography and successfully established interconnections between various geographical phenomena and their distribution on Earth. A. von Humboldt, an outstanding historian of geographical discoveries, climatologist, oceanographer, cartographer and magnetologist, became one of the founders of modern phytogeography. Humboldt’s thinking did not fit into the usual notions of disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity. The works, ideas and travels of this versatile scientist made a noticeable impact on the studies of Russian scholars (Lukin 1973). At the very beginning of the XIXth century Alexander von Humboldt made significant contributions to the study of South America. Together with the botanist Aimé Jacques Alexander Bonpland (1773 – 1858), he made a journey that lasted five years (1799 – 1804). The results of Humboldt’s research in South America were impressive. He mapped vast parts of the continent, determined the astronomical position of more than 200 points, made many barometric and hypsometric measurements, described the minerals of Peru and Mexico, and summed much more information (Botting 1973). A foreign member and correspondent of the Russian Imperial Academy of Sciences Georg Heinrich Freiherr (in Russia – Grigory Ivanovich) von Langsdorff (1774 – 1852) was born in Germany, studied at the University of Göttingen under Professor J. F. Blumenbach (1752 – 1840), a famous anatomist, physiologist, anthropologist and connoisseur of the history of travel of different eras, the head of the school of naturalists and ethnographers, who had a great influence on the formation of his students (Komissarov 1975: 83; Komissarov 2009: 33). Both Humboldt and Langsdorff dreamed of travel and managed to conduct research in Americas, each passing its own Brazilian route. G. H. von Langsdorff, being an extremely versatile person, made significant contributions to botany, zoology, geography, ethnography and many other branches of science. In 1797, under the direction of J. F. Blumenbach, he defended his dissertation, becoming a Doctor of Medicine. As the personal physician of Christian August, Prince of Waldeck and Pyrmont, commander of the army of the Portuguese kingdom, he ended up in Portugal, where after the death of wounded in battles Christian August von Waldeck-Pyrmont (1798), he turned to private medical practice. He spent almost six years in Portugal, also studying natural science, in particular, ichthyology. While A. von Humboldt traveled to South America (1799 – 1804), G. H. von Langsdorff in 1803 was elected a foreign corresponding member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences. He joined the first Russian circumnavigation expedition (1803 – 1807) under the command of Adam Johann (in Russia – Ivan Fyodorovich)

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von Krusenstern, being accepted as a naturalist and physician on the sloop “Nadezhda”. In 1803 – 1804 he conducted observations on the Brazilian island of Santa Catarina, summarized the results in the work “Remarks on travel around the world in 1803 – 1807”. He conducted ethnographic, anthropological and linguistic studies of the peoples of Brazil, Oceania, North America and Japan, was interested in the origin of the Ainu and other problems (Langsdorff 1813). In 1807 – 1808 Langsdorff returned by land from Okhotsk to Saint Petersburg (Komissarov 1975: 83 – 84). In 1812 he was elected an extraordinary academician of the Russian Imperial Academy of Sciences and was nominated consul general of Russia in Brazil. Langsdorff arrived in Rio de Janeiro in 1813 and spent the next 17 years in Brazil, created a Russian consular network, and contributed to the development of direct Russian-Brazilian trade. In his estate “Mandioca” Langsdorff founded a scientific center, unique for South America at that time, which was visited by both European scientists-travelers and Russian navigators (Komissarov 2009: 36). Of particular interest to him were the “manners, customs and languages” of the population. Langsdorff sent his entomological and zoological collections to academic Zoological Museum in Saint Petersburg and to Moscow Society of Naturalists (1818) (Bogoraz 1928). In 1821 Langsdorff proposed to the Tzar Alexander I and to the Russian Academy of Sciences the project of an expedition inland. Specialists from different fields of knowledge were invited to participate: cartographer and astronomer N. G. Rubtsov, botanist L. Riedel, zoologists É. P. Ménétries and Ch. Hasse, artists J. M. Rugendas, H. Florence and A.-A. Taunay (the scientists joined and left the team). Langsdorff carefully prepared for the expedition and studied the works of his predecessors, trying not to repeat their routes. In 1824 – 1826 the team explored the little-studied areas of the provinces of Minas Gerais and São Paulo. In 1827 they traveled through Mato Grosso, then, divided into two detachments, across the Amazon. During the trip, Langsdorff’s employees carried out the first comprehensive study of the Brazilian Highlands, visited about 300 villages and cities in Brazil. The sorrowful result of the expedition was that in January 1828 the painter and draftsmen Adrien Taunay drowned in the river Guapuré, and at the end of March 1828 Langsdorff himself fell ill with a severe form of tropical fever and fell into unconsciousness. Since 1830 Langsdorff lived in the German city of Freiburg, where he died in 1852 (Komissarov 1965). The uneasy relationship between Langsdorff and the artist of the expedition J. M. Rugendas was overshadowed by the fact that the latter published in 1827 an album of prints belonging to the expedition. Since then, the prints have been reprinted without mention of Langsdorff’s expedition. The nephew of the deceased Adrien Taunay, A. A. Taunay, becoming a historian and writer, considered Langsdorff to be indirectly responsible for the death of his uncle. Since Langsdorff’s legacy was lost in the 1830s, nothing prevented such a statement (Komissarov 2009: 37 – 38). The expedition was almost forgotten. Nevertheless, some Brazilian drawings from H. Florence

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acquired Karl von den Steinen. Ludwig Riedel was sent from Russia back to Rio de Janeiro to found a “pharmaceutical” botanical garden and to study local medicinal plants (Strelnikov 1930: 759). Only at the beginning of the XXth century the archive of the first Russian expedition to Brazil was found out in Russia (Sprintzin 1947). It contains more than 4000 pages of manuscripts, more than 600 drawings, dozens of maps and plans. “This is the last classic collection about Brazil not yet included into science and culture” (Komissarov 1975: 91). Extensive natural science (entomological, herpetological, ichthyological, ornithological, etc.) collections in 1822 – 1830 in batches came to Saint Petersburg academic institutions – the universal museum “Kunstkamera” and the Botanical Garden of the Imperial Academy of Sciences (Russian Academician 2016: 130). March 29, 1914 an album of Langsdorff’s drawings showing the life of the Bororo tribe in South America was transferred from the archive of the Conference (General Assembly) of Imperial Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences to the Department of Images of the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography named after the Emperor Peter the Great (SPB ARAS. F. 2. Inv. 1 – 1914. Unit 8. P. 25.). Head of the Department of Central and South America Karl Hilzen found the objects labeled “Langsdorff”, but no one in the MAE had any idea of their origin. The discovery of the Langsdorff expedition was actually made later by the young scientist Heinrich Manizer, participant of the second Russian (students’) expedition to South America in 1914 – 1915 (Komissarov 1965). Heinrich Manizer (1889 – 1916), the eldest son of the painter H. M. Manizer, was well educated in music (he professionally played violin), drawing and painting. In 1907, he entered simultaneously two faculties of Imperial Saint Petersburg University (Faculty of History and Philology and Faculty of Physics and Mathematics), in the fall of 1912, he passed the state exams in the group of Geography at the Natural Sciences Department (SPB ARAS. F. IV. Inv. 1. Unit 644. P. 1.). Having met the senior ethnographer of the MAE Leo Sternberg, Heinrich Manizer and his fellow student Theodor Fjelstrup decided to complete an internship at the MAE. Later, in 1915, while staying at the Museo Nacional da Universidade Federal in Rio de Janeiro, H. H. Manizer drew attention to Indian ethnographic objects – feather ornaments, similar to those seen in the MAE – and became interested in “some kind of Russian expedition” of the early 19th century to Brazil (Manizer 1948: 15). The plan of a trip to South America for ethnographic and biological work was developed by the members of the “Young Biologists” circle at the P. F. Lesgaft Biological Laboratory. Five students went across the Atlantic Ocean at their own expense: ethnographers Heinrich H. Manizer, Theodor A. Fjelstrup, Sergei V. Geiman, zoologists Ivan D. Strelnikov, Nikolai P. Tanassicˇ uk. Young Russian scientists carefully studied the works of travelers in order to go to the then unexplored regions of the New World. This is evidenced by a set of books (in Russian) they read before the voyage. Nina, the daughter of I. D. Strelnikov, preserved her father’s volumes of the popular

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Russian “Magazine of geography and travel” (T. V, 1858), Élisée Reclus “The Earth and its inhabitants. The universal geography. Volume XVIII. South America. Region of the Andes” (1896), C. F. Appun “Under the tropics. Wandering in Venezuela, Orinoco, British Guiana and the Amazon from 1845 to 1868 by Barl Ferdinand Appun” (1874) and other books about South America. The expedition was supported by equipment and small funds from the Imperial Academy of Science museums (MAE and Zoological), Peter F. Lesgaft Biological Laboratory, St. Petersburg and Moscow Universities, the Pedagogical Museum of Military Training Aids, the Imperial Botanical Gardens in Saint Petersburg and Batumi, as well as patrons (Emanuel L. Nobel and Nikolai V. Meshkov). The students’ budget did not exceed 3000 rubles. But young scientists were welcomed by local colleagues everywhere – in Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay, Chile. The young travelers set off from Saint Petersburg on April 8, 1914 and reached their destination – Corumbá in the state of Mato Grosso (Brazil) – on June 30, 1914. There, the members of the expedition split up. Zoologists I. D. Strelnikov and N. P. Tanassicˇ uk worked in the surrounding areas of Bolivia and for eight months in Paraguay. Ethnographers H. H. Manizer, Th. A. Fjelstrup, S. V. Geiman headed for the southern part of Mato Grosso. After visiting the Indians Cadiuveo and Xavantes, together with his comrades, H. H. Manizer first studied the Kaingang tribe in the Brazilian state of São Paulo, and then studied Botocudos for six months at the Indian Protection Service posts of SPI Pankas in the state of Espiritu Santo and SPI Lajão in the state of Minas Gerais (Soboleva 2016). Only in the fall of 1915, because of the First World War, the students managed to return to Russia one by one and to transfer there the collected items. In November 1915, H. H. Manizer immediately started processing his materials in the MAE, dismantled and exhibited the items obtained by him, Th. A. Fjelstrup and S. V. Geiman to the MAE (SPB ARAS. F. IV. Op. 1. Unit 644. P. 3.). The Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera) of the Russian Academy of Sciences keeps more than 500 items delivered by the expedition members (Korsun 2015). Two articles by H. H. Manizer on the Boruns-Botokudo Indians (Manizer 1916) and about the musical instruments and music of the Indians (Manizer 1918) were published in Russian and translated into French (Manizer 1919) and Portuguese (Manizer 1934) in Brazil. The article on the Kaingang Indians has been completed, but not published in Russian, but luckily, we have translations into French (Manizer 1930) and Portuguese (Manizer 2006). K. K. Hilzen stated that on his return from Brasil, in Petrograd, H. H. Manizer personally came across a rich and extremely rare collection of unknown origin kept in the MAE, which turned out to be a collection brought from Brazil by a “Russian expedition” at the initiative and under the supervision of Academician Langsdorff. H. H. Manizer singled out the early Brazilian objects in the Langsdorff collection from the general South American collection and attributed the items. In the Archives of the IAS Conference (General Assembly), a set of watercolors was found

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pertaining to the same expedition, and H. H. Manizer made the list of these valuable pieces, an inventory number 2599, in French (“South America, Brazil. Drawings by the Langsdorff expedition artists – Rugendas, Hercule Florence and Adrien Taunay, relating to ethnography, as well as expedition items. Registered by H. Manizer”) (SPF ARAS. F. 985. Op. 1. Unit 74). All these discoveries gave a new impetus to further research of data on the Langsdorf expedition. Together with K. K. Hilzen, H. H. Manizer found Langsdorff’s letters, notes and other valuable materials in the Archives of the IAS Conference. Being fluent in Portuguese, Manizer also used Portuguese sources to study the history of the expedition. The result was a compilation in three parts on the life of G. von Langsdorff, incluning the history of the first Russian round-the-world expedition under the command of Ivan F. Kruzenshtern and Yuri F. Lisyansky, under the title “Life and Travels of Academician Grigory Ivanovich Langsdorff”, with a bibliography of his printed works, a description of ethnographic materials, a map of the expedition (SPB ARAS. F. IV. Op. 1. Unit 645). The manuscript was handed over in a completely finished form on the eve of H. H. Manizer’s departure to the Romanian front, where he died of typhus on June 21, 1916. This work was published in Russian in 1948, edited by Noemi G. Sprintzin and supplemented with scientific commentary (Manizer 1948), translated into Portuguese in 1967 (Manizer 1967). K. K. Hilzen wrote in his obituary that “We owe to Manizer that such an outstanding and well-equipped Russian expedition to Brazil at the beginning of the last century under the leadership of our academician Langsdorff, which, literally, was forgotten by all Russians, has now been resurrected, thanks to Manizer’s work (SPB ARAS. F. 46. Op. 1. Unit 84. P. 2 – 2ob.).” Before enlisting for the army Heinrich Manizer gave his field notes to Ivan D. Strelnikov, and some of them were published (Strelnikov 1928). The head of the MAE Department of South America V. G. Bogoraz-Tan reported on the discovery of materials from the Langsdorff expedition at the XXII International Congress of Americanists in Rome 1926 (Bogoraz 1928). Another participant of the expedition I. D. Strelnikov published an article on Langsdorff’s expedition at the XXIII International Congress of Americanists in New York 1928 (Strelnikov 1930). The materials of the First and Second Russian scientific expeditions to Brazil are now spread between many museums and archives in Russia, Germany, Brazil, Argentina, etc. It was found out that the objects collected by Georg Langsdorff (1821 – 1828) and Heinrich Manizer (1914 – 1915) for Russia are analogous to the ones they donated to the Museu Nacional in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), that makes it possible to reconstruct the structure of these collections lost in the fire in 2018 (Soboleva 2020). The same objects were donated by the members of the expedition to the Museo etnográfico de la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras de la Universidad de Buenos Aires (Argentina). “The Brazilian Diary” of Heinrich Manizer who stayed with the Indios Botocudos about eight months is published in full in Russian by the MAE (Soboleva 2016).

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About 100 ethnographic objects from the Langsdorff expedition were found in the MAE. This collection is unique in its composition and is collected among the Brazilian Indians Apiacá, Mundurukú, Bororo, Caripuna and Guató. It consists mainly of Indian feather ornaments with ritual meaning. Similar feather products from the early XIXth century are rarely found in museums around the world. Of particular note is the Mundurukú feather ornaments which represent the whole ceremonial costume of the Indian warrior, which can be considered unique, given the time of its acquisition (Soboleva, Sorokina 2020). In 2020 Dora Tanassicˇ uk donated the family archives to the MAE. They testify that like A. von Humboldt the Russian naturalists accurately filled the diaries. Every day several times they recorded the temperature of water and air, listed the encountered birds, fish, animals. These notes reflect the biodiversity of the regions studied. In Paraguay the naturalists I. D. Strelnikov and N. P. Tanassicˇ uk were accommodated by Moises S. Bertoni at his biological station. They stayed in Puerto Bertoni and surroundings from November 4, 1914, till July 6, 1915. The writings of the travelers of the past are excellent in style and scientific precision. Nikolai P. Tanassicˇ uk confessed in his field diaries how difficult it was for him to find words to express impressions of the surrounding nature every day: “Describing what a virgin forest really is will always be a very difficult task. But if the person who describes turns to people who have never seen this forest, the difficulty turns into an impossibility”, says a subtle connoisseur of the virgin forest, Dr. Bertoni, who has lived under its shade for 30 years. I will try to give only an artless, weak transmission of what I saw and felt during my 8-month life in this forest, and I do not know how I can cope with this task. Even such geniuses of the human mind, colossus of thought, like Humboldt, Chateaubriand – people in whose hearts a divine spark burned – and those, in their brilliant, charming descriptions of the virgin forest, only partially coped with their task – so brightly, so mighty forces of nature colorfully manifest themselves in the primeval tropical forest.

The interdisciplinary method of thinking of Alexander von Humboldt is visible in H. H. Manizer’s field notes. In Brazilian diaries H. H. Manizer recorded his reflections on major philosophical problems. He used his stay in the nature to observe and to contempleate. That can be seen from the following notes: a) “What America Gives to the Question of the “Origin” and “Emergence” of the Human from the Anthropoid Mammalian?” 1. The gap between “man” and animals and the connection between “human” and speech = thought (puzzle). It is impossible to talk about the subhuman and about the human, introducing into the definition of “human” the thought about any species. Monkey societies and the possibility of traditions (in a cage = in a forest?), voice data. 2. American Indians – diversity of languages and unity in other respects – tangible novelty of the language in comparison with other aspects, “unimportance of language”, the role of language in life in the forest and insignificance of this role in comparison with other “blessings”. Therefore, conservatism, but not antiquity?

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A) Race is a very ancient unity – the amplitude of individual fluctuations? (paucity? mixture?) B) Expressive movements, screaming, crying, treating the dead, shaving hair. C) Nutrition and reproduction – ways of feeding, carrying children, etc. Beginning of using bast, stick (tolete), dyeing urukú, genipapo, medical ligatures. D) The initial appearance of the pre-language is the phonetic background. Undifferentiated art (music, dance), laughter, lack of brakes (cf. presence?). E) Languages and confusion of bi-trilingual – and family languages. Syntax – general – position of negation! Addicting! F) Exceptions to prove the rule (Bororo etc. – Melanesia!). Convergence (bags (cf. Australia) – weaving, pottery, sculptures, human sacrifices, etc. among the “civilized” ones – Calchaki, Peru, Mexico City, Marajó.

b) How to fill the gap between the “mind” of man and animals? Anatomy and physiology did not find any difficulty in assigning a certain place to a person in the animal system, and its origin is as clear as the origin of a horse, a bear, and even clear origins, for example, birds or marsupials. In general, it has already been expressed many times that everything that is called “mental manifestations in man” is also of animal origin, but there has never been anything definite and proven in this respect. It was very stubbornly repeated that there can be no transition from the unreasonable to the reasonable – and this is of course absolutely correct, so that only puzzles should and will appear on the path of interpretations in this direction. As soon as “mind”, “thought”, “psyche” are squeezed into the field of research, it becomes metaphysical ranting, not objective study. Refusal from reasoning about intellect and the decision to deal only with immanent objects of experience entails the obligation to determine what exactly will constitute the object of studying the relationship between man and animals not in the field of structure, but in the field of functions of the predominantly nervous system. The new point of view will have to develop new terminology (concepts) in accordance with the new grouping of “human phenomena” according to the requirements of scientific methods. Here is a listing of what needs to be revisited: 1. Behavior of monkeys. Their application to the study of the same methods that were applied to the study of human behavior – for example, phenotype – the study of pathicularia, the physiology of the nervous system – the study of the ability to distinguish, memory, etc. (as in “psychological” laboratories), the study of the history of the formation of conditioned reflexes, as well as – ethnography and sociology of monkeys – monkey society in the wild and in a cage (cf. madhouse), monkey traditions – conditioned sounds and signs in this group, etc. 2) In the study of human behavior, psychological terminology should be abandoned, and this will entail the discovery of a lot of new and probably unexpected, which will facilitate the work that now seems to be an insurmountable difficulty – the exact clarification of the origin of human activities, their roots in the inherited stock, the laws of tradition and succession of generations, etc. The terribly difficult question of the primary and the later must be resolved

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Manizer reinforced his thoughts with practice. He got two monkeys and observed their behavior, these entries in the diary take up a lot of space. Unfortunately, the young promising talented scientist died in the First world war. The task is to introduce his ideas, texts and drawings into scientific circulation. Unlike G. von Langsdorff, A. von Humboldt was never forgotten or disappeared from the sphere of scientific knowledge. His books were among the sources obligatory for self-education of naturalists. The MAE library contained the main modern sources for scientists, among them the Russian edition of A. von Humboldt “Cosmos. The Experience of Physical World Description” (1851). Later were published in Russian his “Journey to the Equinox Regions of the New World” (1963, 1964, 1969) and “The New Discovery of America” (2012). Among the transparencies donated to the MAE by Prof. Nina Strelnikova, there are photographs from two drawings by Adrien Taunay: MAE No. 7703 – 21 (“View of the village of Bororo Indians called Pau-Seco”) and MAE No. 7703 – 22 (“Several Bororo Indians visit Messrs. Riedel and Taunay”). A MAE transparency No. 7703 – 148 was made from a drawing pinned to the wall with buttons: this is H. Florence “Chute du Juruenna dite Salto-Augusto. 2.me feuille”, the place where Langsdorff, afflicted with malaria, made the last entries in his diary. This drawing I. D. Strelnikov discovered somewhere in America during the expedition. Langsdorff’s “return” lasted for more than a century and a half (Komissarov 1965) and it continues to the present. Through the efforts of Prof. Boris N. Komissarov, work on this topic continues in both Russia and Brazil. Materials by H. H. Manizer, Th. A. Fjelstrup, S. V. Geiman, I. D. Strelnikov, N. P. Tanassicˇ uk in its entirety has yet to be introduced into scientific circulation. A. von Humboldt became the founder of ecological and geoecological thinking. He tried to create as many zones of mutual contacts, transitions and exchange of views as possible (Ette 2018: 149). This method was followed by the participants of the First and Second Russian expeditions to South America, realizing their scientific potential in research travels across the continent in the 19th – early 20th centuries. Archival sources Archive of the Russian Geographical Society. F. 120. Inv. 4. Unit 10. St. Petersburg Branch of the Archive of the Russian Academy of Science: F. 2. Inv. 1 – 1859. Unit 14. F. 2. Inv. 1 – 1914. Unit 8. F. 46. Inv. 1. Unit 84.

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F. 985. Inv. 1. Unit 74. F. A-IV. Inv. 1. Unit 644. F. A-IV. Inv. 1. Unit 645.

Bibliography Basargina, E. Y. (ed.) (2016): Russian academician G. I. Langsdorf and his travels to Brazil (1803 – 1829). St. Petersburg: Nestor-History (in Russian). Bogoraz, W. (1928): Le centième anniversaire des expeditions russes à l’Amerique du Sud, in: Atti del XXII Congresso Internaz. Degli Americanisti (Roma, 21 – 30 Settembre 1926). Vol. II. Roma, pp. 607 – 617. Botting, D. (1993): Alexander von Humboldt. München: Prestel Verlag. Dunken, Gerhard von (1959): Die Geschichte der “[Alexander von] Humboldt-Stiftung für Naturforschung und Reisen”, in: Alexander von Humboldt. Gedenkschrift zur 100. Wiederkehr seines Todestages, herausgeben von der Alexander von Humboldt-Kommission der Deutschen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, pp. 161 – 179. Ette, O. (2018): Alexander von Humboldt: nomadic thought and life science, in: Epistemology and philosophy of science, vol. 55, no. 1, pp. 136 – 154. Komissarov, B. N. (1965): On the question of the history of Russian research in Latin America (50 years of the 1914 – 1915 expedition), in: News of the All-Union Geographical Society, t. 97, pp. 70 – 75 (in Russian). Komissarov, B. N. (1975): Ethnographic research of academician G. I. Langsdorff, in: Soviet Ethnography, no. 3, pp. 83 – 97 (in Russian). Komissarov, B. N. (1987): The first Russian expedition to Brazil. L.: Science Leningrad: Nauka (in Russian). Komissarov, B. N. (2009): Alexander Humboldt and Georg Langsdorf, in: Under the constellation Ursa Major and the Southern Cross. Russian-Latin American relations of the 17th – 21st centuries. Materials of the scientific and practical conference St. Petersburg, November 25. St. Petersburg, pp. 31 – 38 (in Russian). Korsun, S. A. (2015): American Studies in the Kunstkamera (1714 – 2014). St. Petersburg: MAE RAS (in Russian). Langsdorff, G. H. (1813): Bemerkungen auf einer Reise um die Welt in den Jahren 1803 bis 1807. Frankfurt am Main: Friedrich Wilmans. 2 vols. Lukin, B. V. (1973): Aus der Geschichte der russisch-lateinamerikanischen wissenschaftlichen Beziehungen, in: Archivalische Fundstücke zu den russisch-deutschen Beziehungen Erik Amburger zum 65. Geburtstag/herausgegeben von Hans-Jürgen Krüger. Berlin: In Kommission bei Duncker & Humblot, pp. 117 – 139. Manizer, G. G. (1967): A expedição do academico G. I. Langsdorff ao Brasil: 1821 – 1828. (Tradução Osvaldo Peralva.) São Paulo: Ed. Nacional [There are two different transliterations of the author’s Russian name: Genrikh Genrikhovich Manizer and Henrich Henrikhovitch Manizer].

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Manizer, H. H. (1916): Botokuds (Boruns) according to observations during their stay among them in 1915, in: Yearbook of the Russian Anthropological Society at Petrograd University, t. 6. Petrograd, pp. 83 – 130 (in Russian). Manizer, H. H. (1918): Music and musical instruments of some tribes of Brazil (1. Cadiuveo. 2. Tereno. 3. Faya. 4. Kaingang. 5. Guarani. 6. Botokudo), in: Collection of MAE. T. 5, no. 1, Petrograd. pp. 319 – 350 (in Russian). Manizer, H. H. (1919): Les botocudos (Boruns) d’aprés les observations recueillies pedant um séjour chez eux en 1915, in: Arquivos do Museu Nacional, vol. 22, sep. Rio de Janeiro: Imprensa Nacional, pp. 243 – 273. Manizer, H. H. (1930): Les Kaingangs de São Paulo, in: Proceedings of the XXIIIth International Congress of Americanistes, held at New York, September 17 – 22, 1928. New York, pp. 760 – 791. Manizer, H. H. (1934): Música e instrumentos de música de algumos tribus do Brasil. Segundo notas e observações pessoaes, e o material do Museu de Anthropologia e Ethnografia, annexo à Academia das Sciencias da Rússia (Traduzido do russo por A. Childe), in: Revista Brasileira de Música, vol. 1, fasc. 4. Rio de Janeiro, pp. 303 – 327. Manizer, H. H. (1948): Expedition of academician G. I. Langsdorf to Brazil (1821 – 1828) [Text]: popular science edition. Ed. by N. G. Sprintzin. Moscow: Ogiz-geogragiz (in Russian). Manizer, H. H. (2006): Os Kaingang de São Paulo. Campinas: Editora Curt Nimuendaju. Soboleva, E. S. (1995): O estudo de Timor na Rússia, in: Atas do III Congresso Internacional de Literaturas Lusófonos. “Nós”, no. 41 – 50. Pontevedra-Braga, pp. 429 – 432. Soboleva, E. S. (2003): A colecção timorense do Museu de Antropologia e Etnografia de S. Petersburgo: breve inventário. The Timorese Collection at the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography in St. Petersburg: a Brief Inventory, in: Oriente, v. 7, Lisboa, pp. 66 – 82. Soboleva, E. S. (2011): Russian contribution to the creation of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in 1859 – 1860, in: Lomonosov and Humboldt: scientific cooperation between Russia and Germany – from the beginnings to the present day. Materials of the international conference at Moscow State University M. V. Lomonosov. Moscow, November 14 – 17, 2011. – Moscow: Institute of Knowledge Energy, pp. 16 – 20 (in Russian). Soboleva, E. S. (2011): Russian-German inter-museum cooperation and the development of ethnographic science in the late 19th – early 20th centuries, in: Why Germany? Prospects for international cooperation in the field of science, education, economics and politics. Warum Deutschland? Perspektiven Internationalen Zusammenarbeit im Bereich Wissenschaft, Ausbildung, Kultur, Wirtschaft und Politik. Collection of reports of the participants of the International Interdisciplinary Conference. – St. Petersburg: Publishing house of St. Petersburg State University of Economics, pp. 282 – 287 (in Russian). Soboleva, E. S. (2016): G.G. Manizer – a member of the Second Russian Expedition to South America 1914 – 1915. Brazilian diary. St. Petersburg: MAE RAS (in Russian). Soboleva, E. S. (2020): Materials of the Second Russian Expedition to South America (1914 – 1915) in Latin American Museums, in: Fourth International Forum “Russia and Iberoamerica in a Globalizing World: History and Modernity. Reports and materials”. SPb: Scythia-print, pp. 2095 – 2103 (in Russian).

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Soboleva, E. S./Sorokina, S. P. (2020): A. von Humboldt’s legacy and Russian expeditions to South America, in: Zum 190. Jahrestag von Alexander von Humboldts Reisen nach Russland. Sammlung von Materialen. Collection of materials for the 190th anniversary of Alexander von Humboldt’s trip to Russia. Moscow: Publishing house “RusDutch Media”, pp. 92 – 98 (in Russian). Soboleva, Elena (2015): On one voyage to East Timor (2009): Myths (old und new) and reality, in: Phänomenologie, Geschichte und Anthropologie des Reisens. Internationales interdisziplinäres Alexander-von-Humboldt-Kolleg in St. Petersburg 16.–19. April 2013/Hrg. L. Polubojarinova, M. Kobelt-Groch, O. Kulishkina. Kiel: Solivagus-Verlag, pp. 233 – 248. Sprintzin, N. G. (1947): Materials of the Russian expedition to South America stored in the Archives of the USSR Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Ethnography, in: Soviet Ethnography, no. 2, pp. 187 – 194 (in Russian). Strelnikov, I. D. (1928): Les Kaa-iwuá du Paraguay, in: Atti del XXII. Congresso Internazionale degli Americanisti, Roma, 1926, vol. II. Roma, pp. 333 – 366. Strelnikov, I. D. (1930): La música y la danza de las tribus indias Kaa-iwua (guarani), Kaingang y Botokudo, in: Proceedings of the XXIIIth International Congress of Americanistes, held at New York, September 17 – 22, 1928. New York, pp. 796 – 802. Strelnikov, I. D. (1930): The Expedition of G. I. Langsdorf to Brazil in 1821 – 1829, in: Proceedings of the XXIIIth International Congress of Americanists, held at New York, September 17 – 22, 1928. New York, pp. 751 – 759.

Part II Politics

Historiography as Critique of Ideology: The Legacy of Hobbes in International Relations Theory1 Soraya Nour and Claus Zittel “What can one learn from Martin Wight’s example?” (Bull 1991: xxiii). In his famous answer to this question, Hedley Bull stresses the importance of associating theoretical (i. e. moral and normative) inquiry with historical inquiry. Professional diplomatic historians have no interest in theoretical questions, he continues, nor the theorists of international relations in historical ones, which they consider mere “data”. “Wight is one of the few to have bridged this gap” (Bull 1991: xxiii). He did see that the great classic in international relations – Thucydides’s Peloponnesian War – is not theoretical, but a historical work, and that central issues in international relations have been better dealt with in historical rather than in theoretical contexts. At the same time, he believed that traditional historical work should be associated with theoretical work, leading to a philosophical reflection on ethical questions (Wight 1966: 33; Bull 1991: xxi). The difficulty of associating theoretical with historical inquiry is a core problem in international relations. If classical realism had a predominantly historical approach, and specifically as one of its main targets is the ahistoricity of utopian-idealism, most contemporary theoretical reflection in international relations lacks historiographical categories. A problematic effect of this absence of historical inquiry is a deficiency in analysing the contingent character of social phenomena. Hence there is a necessity to reintroduce historiography as a fundamental method of analysis in the theory of international relations. A reaction in this sense can be found in recent works on classical realism (Guzzini 2001) as well as in more recent works that consider themselves to be a part of this tradition (Cox 1997). In this context, we ask how Thomas Hobbes (1588 – 1679), as one of the principal sources of classical realism, can contribute to this debate. Authors concerned with historical investigation find in Hobbes the historian and the reader of Thucydides. Normativists find in Hobbes a theory of state and natural law, in which history is reduced to a mere retelling of facts. Between the historian Hobbes and the theorist Hobbes there seems to be no correspondence. Hobbes’ historiography further presents the problem of being above all anthropological, focusing more on the constancy of human nature than on the variability of social formations. The materiality of his theory is thus restricted to a natural and psychological one. His theory of state and natural law is to this day also criticised for its excessive institutionalism. However, the systematic coupling of his historiography with his theory of state and law goes 1

This chapter is a revised version and translation of Nour & Zittel 2003.

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beyond the dualism of opposite approaches such as idealism vs. realism, and normativism vs. materialism, developing a criticism of idealism and ideology, that analyses how ideas configure societies – although primarily addressing theoretical systems others than his own, whose contingency Hobbes will not recognise. Our purpose is to investigate how Hobbes associates theoretical with historical inquiry, and how a reconstruction of Hobbes can solve some of the theoretical problems of today. To begin, in the first part, we study how Hobbes justifies his methodology of thinking both historically and theoretically. Then, in the second part, we analyse how this way of thinking allows Hobbes to develop his critique of ideology and evolutionism, a decisive aspect of the importance of Hobbes in international relations. Finally, in the third part, we can verify how some contemporary theories fall prey to the same difficulties with which Hobbes struggled.

I. Hobbes’ Historiography 1. Readings of Hobbes in International Relations Theory Hobbes is for realists the ultimate reference to a war of all against all (and the myth of Hobbes as a philosopher of war still dominates the public rhetoric, as voiced by American diplomat Robert Kagan) – which occupies only a few lines in Leviathan (Hobbes 1651: chap. 13). Realists attribute to Hobbes a distinction between law and rational ethical precepts as well as the conception of the so called “security dilemma”: the fear of being attacked leads to the search for more security and power than the other, in a vicious cycle of competition for power (Herz 1950), until a common wish for (and aversion to) a sovereign power (Navari 1996: 27 – 31) unifies everyone. This reading no longer finds favour among Hobbes-inspired normativists: Hobbes’ Laws of Nature are rational and ethically genuine obligations of foro interno (they oblige the sovereign), associated with sociability and the good life, providing “a standard beyond desire and aversion for directing behaviour” (Navari 1996: 31 – 33). The association of Hobbes with rational prudence – the cooperation between rational egoists in the context of the “security dilemma”, a vision developed by the games theorists – is also no longer accepted. For Hobbes the cooperation between rational egoists is not sufficient to save them from the state of nature. Prudence, which can always adapt itself, can not produce peace and order (coalitions of states can lead to war). Only the international “Leviathan” can guarantee stability (Navari 1996: 28 – 31). This is also the difficulty with Thomas Johnson’s reading of Hobbes, for whom the value of realism actuality in the post-cold-war world is a result not of its justification of reason of State, but of its “sophistic” structure, which allows criticising every intention of universality. A premise of sophistic epistemology, says Johnson – the subjective nature of truth – can be identified in Hobbes’s nominalism, according to which human beings differ from other animals through speech, by which attribution of names creates what is correct or wrong (Johnson 1996: 194 – 196): “For true and

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false are attributes of speech, not of things. And where speech is not, there is neither truth nor falsehood; error there may be, as when we expect that which shall not be, or suspect what has not been: but in neither case can a man be charged with untruth” (Hobbes 1651: 23). Hobbes still says: “for one man calleth wisdom, what another calleth fear; and one cruelty, what another justice; one prodigality, what another magnanimity; and one gravity, what another stupidity, &c” (Hobbes 1651: 29). It is thus for Johnson, as a human creation, subject to change and personal interpretation. Norms change with modification of the social conditions where they appeared, which is a reflection of a certain arrangement of power at a certain time in history (Johnson 1996: 246). Realism, concludes the author, is still the most appropriate doctrine to identify and analyse power arrangements. But Hobbes would not agree with a reading that ignores the normative concerns of his work and interprets his nominalism in the sense of relativism. It’s still Carr who can rightly be considered the realist most near to Hobbes, for not separating morality and politics, and reconciling in this way two antagonistic traditions – idealism and realism: “any sound political thought must be based on elements of both utopia (i. e. values) and reality (i. e. power). Where utopianism has become a hollow and intolerable sham, which serves merely as a disguise for the interests of the privileged, the realist performs an indispensable service in unmasking it. But pure realism can offer nothing but a power struggle which makes any kind of international society impossible” (Carr 1939: 93)2. David Boucher also emphasises Hobbes’s normative concern, showing the relation between history and theory in Hobbes’s work. Inspired by Forsyth’s reading of Hobbes (Forsyth 1979), Boucher identifies an evolution of three phases in relationships between individuals as well as states: the war state of all against all is the first phase; the second one is the relationship between groups; the third is the establishment of a community through the institution. Boucher’s purpose is to analyse relations between communities in this modified state of nature, presupposing a distinction between on the one hand the state of nature, a mere hypothetical or logical state, and on the other hand the pre-civil historical condition (Boucher 1998: 148 – 149). The state of nature is fiction, which has the function to show the necessity of a strong government and doesn’t have any historical basis3. But the modified state of nature has really existed; it appeared through institution and conquering. Patriarchal authority is the basis of social cohesion, developed through the procreation of its members, conquering, and the gathering of individuals searching for protection. Even though that there is no natural law for these relationships, there is a code of honour. And if there is no historical parallel to the state of nature, the is one for the pre-civil: amazon women, Saxon and German families, in2

Power and value do not exclude themselves: “the utopian who dreams that is possible to eliminate self-assertion from politics and to base a political system on morality alone is just as wide of the mark as the realist who believes that altruism is an illusion and that all political action is self-seeking” (Carr 1939: 97). 3 “There had never been any time, wherein particular men were in a condition of war one against another” (Hobbes 1651: 115).

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digenous Americans and paternal communities in ancient Greece. In history, domination by conquest prevails: hypothetical sovereignty is rare. However, the rights of these both are the same (Boucher 1998: 157)4. Analysing Hobbes’s historiography in the sense of progress, Boucher criticises the classical interpretation of Hedley Bull, who denies in Hobbes any conception of evolutionism: “Hedley Bull has argued the ‘the conception of progress is, of course, entirely absent from Hobbes’s account of the international state of nature’ (Bull 1981: 730). My account of how Hobbes perceived the international sphere, and his advice to sovereigns for the better conduct of their relations (…) indicates that Hobbes believed progress to be both possible and desirable in international affairs” (Hobbes 1651: 115; Boucher 1998: 161). This identification of Hobbes’s historical conception with evolutionism is however not accepted by Hobbes, for whom human nature is constant, and the achievements of civilisation transient. Furthermore, the concept of an intermediary condition between the state of nature and civil society, composed of alliances and confederations of States and quasi-States, is not sufficiently normative: “Even here, however, we have to answer the question from whence the obligations derives and the validity and duration of such contracts” (Navari 1996: 34). Only the natural law can explain why these obligations are imposed. The difficulty consists in understanding which forms the international Leviathan must have, since according to Hobbes it is a legal entity, and not a security system (Navari 1996: 28 – 29). For Navari, the natural laws by Hobbes (general guides to the reason of individuals), can constitute the basis for an international legal and moral order between them. Hobbes can contribute to international relations with his theory of law, whose principal characteristics are: (1) a distinction between precepts of reason and prudence, on the one hand, and civil laws, on the other; (2) the idea that natural law is possible only as civil law; (3) the connection between civil law and sociability. A coherent legal order and respect therefore make social life possible. When people are freed from dominant traditions, they can follow rational imperatives (Navari 1996: 7 – 39). What matters for Navari is more the doctrine of law than the relationship between history and theory. 2. Hobbes’ Historiography5 Hobbes’s view on historiography is rarely a prominent question in the course of research on his work. It is not difficult to understand the reasons for this. According to the traditional and widely accepted reading of Hobbes, his official theory of the division of science accords to historiography the status of knowledge, but not of sci-

4 “In sum the rights and consequences of both paternal and despotical domination, are the very same with those of a sovereign by institution” (Hobbes 1651: 190). 5 See Detel and Zittel 2001.

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ence. Knowledge is for Hobbes the knowledge of facts or the knowledge of causes6, and only the knowledge of causes is science. In other words, science is the knowledge of the consequences of assertions; its object is the connection of causes to effects and it is presented methodologically in the form of arguments. Knowledge of facts is natural history or civil history. Historiography seems to have no other task than the sheer listing of historical facts, and thus is not science (Hobbes 1655: I 1 and 6; Hobbes 1651: chap. 9).7 Furthermore, while natural history plays a crucial role in the natural sciences since the facts of nature constitute its empirical basis, historiography does not seem to play a similar role in the civil sciences, particularly in state philosophy.8 Historiography does not seem to Hobbes to be an interesting field, and this is the reason why Hobbes’s research has dealt little with this topic.9 However, this analysis is difficult to reconcile with the fact that Hobbes has always written as a historiographer. In his early humanistic phase, he provided with his Tacitus Essay10 a historical interpretation of Octavian’s (Augustus) ascension to Emperor of Rome; with his translation and introduction to Thucydides’ work on the Peloponnesian War, he reflected on the study of history and the conditions for an adequate historiography, that accord to Thucydides’ one a highly scientific and moral value. This attitude is generally seen as part of the humanistic phase in Hobbes’ work which was later abandoned after a methodological and epistemological turn. But these interpretations do not explain why the mature Hobbes wrote works like Behemoth and

6

It is frequently accentuated in research on Hobbes that this elementary distinction is also presented by Bacon (1605: 351 – 356) and Descartes (1676: 502 – 503). What is not frequently mentioned is that it is also an Aristotelian distinction, which was already explicitly presented in the Analytica Posteriora (II 1 – 2). Collections of facts can be found among Aristoteles’s writings on biology (principally the Historia Animalium) as well as his etiological writings (such as De Partibus Animalium). Aristotle, in contrast to Hobbes, considers the collection of facts methodologically, see Kullmann 1974 and Detel 1998. 7 “The register of knowledge of fact is called history. Whereof there be two sorts: one called natural history; which is the history of such facts, or effects of nature, as have no dependence on mans will; (…).The other, is civil history; which is the history of the voluntary actions of men in commonwealths.” (Hobbes 1651: 71). Science is characterised in De Corpore (Hobbes 1655: I 1) as knowledge of causes, and in Leviathan (Hobbes 1651: chap. 9) distinguished by Reasoning and the Knowledge of the Consequence of one Affirmation to another. For distinctions in Hobbes’s division of the sciences, see Sorell 1996. Also, according to Sorell, these distinctions do not influence the fundamental role of Hobbes’s historiography. 8 Natural history as a collection of facts is fundamental to the philosophy of nature (Hobbes 1655: I 8), while the study of history is not instructive for morals and even frequently politically dangerous (Hobbes 1651: chapters 19 and 24). 9 An affirmation among others: “Hobbes insists on a geometrical procedural foundation of political order, and attributes less importance to history, reducing it to a historical contingency.” In the dedication in De Cive, he deals with “a procedure of historical and spatial decontextualisation, in order to generate in the field of moral philosophy and political theory universal assumptions” (Münkler 1993: 21). 10 For the new edition of Horae Subsecivae, which was published anonymously by Hobbes in 1620, see Reynolds and Saxonhouse (1995) and also Tuck (2000).

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the Historia Ecclesiastica, two other comprehensive historical works, as well as other, shorter historical writings. Tom Sorell and G.A.J. Roger, two renowned Hobbes researchers, edited a short time ago a volume of essays expressly dedicated to Hobbes’ treatment of history as a field of research (Rogers and Sorell 2000). These essays deal with his historical works, his conceptualisation of history in his systematic works, his reflection on the rhetorical possibilities of historiography and his theoretical and methodological evaluation of historiography. These four aspects of Hobbes’ relationship with history show that there is far more to say about it than has been traditionally suggested. The difficulty is that these essays do not systematically connect these different aspects. This does not allow us to put aside or even diminish the tension between on the one hand Hobbes’ methodological and political view of historiography and on the other his practice of historiography. The essays on Hobbes’ historiography simply echo the traditional reading,11 and the works which accentuate the argumentative value of historical examples in Hobbes’ systematic works do not relate it to his theoretical conception of historiography.12 We aim to investigate this problem. a) Hobbes as a Historian Hobbes put a heavy emphasis in his early works on the practical and theoretical aspects of historiography. The Tacitus Essay, for instance, presents not only historical 11 Schumann indicates that Gerhard Johann Voss in his Ars Historica from 1623 tried to settle the historiography as a specific Ars in the humanistic sense, which should bind the truth of facts with an appropriate moral election and sequence. Schumann sees the early Hobbes works in the framework of this tradition (also in his work as the history tutor of William Cavendish), but he believes, as is usually interpreted, that Hobbes latter broke with this tradition. Schumann (2000) observes that Hobbes considers the historiography as epistemologically insecure. But this is not a sufficient argument, since Hobbes also considers the search for physical causes as epistemologically insecure, without refuting the premise that physics is science (see Dear 1998: 152). According to Sorell (2000: 82), the distinction by Hobbes between philosophy and history remains absolutely deep: philosophy definitively excludes historical writing in Hobbes’s complete work. Also Rogers (2000) affirms the usual distinction by Hobbes that knowledge is divided into philosophy and history, and that philosophy and history are each further divided into a natural and a civil part. 12 Deborah Baumgold (2000) argues that Hobbes’s analysis of the Norman Conquest fulfils an argumentative function in his political philosophy, and Patricia Springborg (2000) affirms that nationalistic propaganda in favour of the formation of an English nation was a central aspect of Hobbes’s political philosophy, and that the appeal to History in this literary framework is indispensable. But both authors do not explain the relationship of this process to the division of sciences in Leviathan and De Corpore. Springborg seems to accept that literature and rhetoric are different from philosophy, and that historiography plays an essential role not in philosophy, but in literature and rhetoric in a humanistic sense. But then the question remains, how literature and rhetoric can play any role in political philosophy, according to the division of sciences of the later writings. According to John Rogers (2000), historiography is by Hobbes an important additional element to the science of causality, near the causal sciences, in order to acquire better insights into the world and our place in it. He sees here no connection, but only a supplementation.

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facts, but complex explanations of action (including a lot of general social rules), of how Octavian step by step attained dominance of the Roman Empire. This is exactly what we today call action rationalisation, which is not an attempt to explain why people necessarily act in such a way, but why it is reasonable to act in this way. However, seventeenth century authors – including Hobbes – consider good reasons for action (why it is reasonable to act like that) to be causes of action (why it is necessary to act like that). There is for these authors no relevant difference between causal explanations of action and action rationalisation. If we compare Hobbes’ Tacitus Essay with the work of Tacitus itself (whose first four paragraphs are commented on in Hobbes’ essay), the explanatory claim of Hobbes’ essay becomes even stronger. Hobbes adds to Tacitus’s brief economical explanations much more detailed explanations, but not more facts. Hobbes admires Thucydides for his love of truth and his vivid narrative, which make his readers into spectators (one of the most important rhetorical virtues for Hobbes); but it does not mean that Hobbes fails to recognise Thucydides’ explanatory claim. What Hobbes most admires is that Thucydides describes historical facts in a way that enables his readers to easily see his point.13 Just as Hobbes’ introduction to Thucydides’ work (much before 1640) is an analysis of the causes of war, Hobbes sees Thucydides as an analyst of the causes of war. Thucydides explains how outof-control political emotions led to the Peloponnesian War and the ruin of Athens (Scott 2000). His explanatory historiography shows the problems that can be solved only in a systematic state philosophy (Scott 2000). Hobbes also in no way abandons this explanatory claim of historiography in his late historical works. Behemoth shows Oliver Cromwell’s ascension to power methodologically in the same way that Tacitus’ essay shows Octavian’s, namely in the form of explanations of action in the context of general social rules. Divided into four dialogues, Behemoth presents not only the horrible account of a civil war but seeks above all to make clear how it came to happen that the English people rebelled against their legitimate sovereign Charles I and in this way brought about that civil war. Evidence for the causes of war is not only to be found only in English history; Hobbes looks back to ancient times and the birth of Christianity to discover the deep roots of rebellion and civil war (Borot 2000). The Historia Ecclesiastica, the last great work written by Hobbes, is generally seen as a predominantly narrative history that offers not simply a history of the church, but illustrations and historical confirmations of the role of religion, which is systematically analysed in Leviathan (Lessay 2000). It cannot however be contested that the Historia Ecclesiastica emphasises these aspects and its poetical form as a 13 Hobbes says about Thucydides “he filled his narrations with that choice of matter, and ordereth them with that judgement, and with such perspicuity and efficacy expresseth himself that, as Plutarch saith, he maketh his auditor a spectator” (Hobbes 1629: VIII), and “these things, I say, are so described and so evidently set before our eyes, that the mind of the reader is no less affected therewith than if he had been present in the actions. There is for his perspicuity” (Hobbes 1629: XXII).

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dialogue between Primus and Secundus is neither for Hobbes himself a scientific work in the fullest sense. But here also he offers a lot of explanations. The gullibility and weakness of most people as well as their tendency to be superstitious about life’s dangers and secrets, are mentioned to explain why and how in many moments in history astrologers and charlatans have gained so much power over kings and whole peoples. He explains methodologically in a way similar to the case of Octavian and Cromwell how the Papal power developed following the fall of the Roman Empire and could finally be solidly established in the sixteenth century. He investigates which methods and political means Popes have employed to gain and strengthen their absolute control over the hearts and minds of the European people. And finally he analyses the reasons for the weakening and division of Church institutions since the thirteenth century. Also, in this last historical work, he reveals his ambition to interpret history – in this case, holy history – in such a way that human behaviour is explained through general social or mental structures. Among the causes and consequences of the behaviour of a Chaldean astrologer, a Roman priest or an Anglican or Presbyterian spiritual guide there is no difference to be found.14 The mature Hobbes remains essentially faithful to the historiography practices of his humanistic phase. Historiography has explanatory ambitions; it is an attempt to understand the ordinary causes of behaviour and human actions, particularly about political issues. Thus the question now is how Hobbes in his official theory of science describes civil historiography as a mere register of social and political facts, and for this reason does not recognise its scientific stature, while at the same time (in a way similar to other prominent, and much better, historiographers of his time, for instance Selden) he constantly practised historiography with explanatory claims (research of causes). For a thinker like him, who cares about the consistency of his assertions, this would be an insupportable contradiction. b) Historiography and Science Leviathan presents a highly differentiated division of sciences (Hobbes 1651: chap. 9). But it is not enough just to distinguish philosophy from historical writing, and to define historical writing as a mere register of social and political facts, as research on Hobbes frequently does. It is necessary to analyse how Hobbes situates ethics, poetry, rhetoric, logic, and the science of the just and unjust in the schema of Leviathan (Hobbes 1651: chap. 9). These sciences investigate the consequences (and thus also the causes) of the qualities of persons through successive investigations of the consequences of the qualities of animals, generally of bodies terrestrial, more generally of bodies permanent, even more generally of the qualities (physics), and most generally of bodies natural (natural philosophy). What then does Hobbes consider to be the aim of specific explanations of these sciences? Ethics deals with 14 In a paradoxical way, Lessay characterises the Historia Ecclesiastica methodologically as plain narrative (Lessay 2000: 157). This shows how worthless a lot of Hobbes researchers find the explanatory aspects of Hobbes’s historical work.

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the causes and consequences of human passions, while the other four sciences with the causes and consequences of language (linguistic expressions), namely in the form of magnifying and vilifying (poetry), persuasion (rhetoric), reasoning (logic) or contracting (the science of the just and unjust). This division is an expression of the explicit naturalism that Hobbes, since his inter-mediate period of creation, vehemently defends. They show above all exactly how based on a decisive naturalism (that eliminates the difference between mind and nature, act and behaviour, foundation and cause) human behaviour can be explained and scientifically treated. Regarding ethics, Hobbes also puts forth this idea in Leviathan (Hobbes 1651: chap. 8) and in a general way, it is clear that Hobbes applies this explanatory way to both his early and later historical works. Constant and regular causes and consequences about passions, convictions, manipulation (based on thought acts) and the establishment of contracts and rights (as shown in the way that Octavian, Cromwell or the Popes could step-by-step increase their domination), are repeatedly used by Hobbes to explain historical events. It is this same level of universality of explanations (found equally often in the other physic branches) that deal with the causes and the consequences of the qualities of bodies devoid of life or sensibility. From the terminological perspective of this division of sciences, the human sciences of ethics, law and contract assume the explanatory tasks of the historiography practised by Hobbes and the most important historiographers of his time. What can therefore conclude that Hobbes, in his late writings, makes an important conceptual distinction. According to the Aristotelian tradition, he defines history (in the sense of historical writing, that is, history in the ancient sense) as a mere listing of facts. And this listing of facts is for Hobbes completely scientifically useful, since it provides the empirical foundation and the factual explanation for the scientific investigation of causes, providing for physics a natural history, and for the science of state and of morals a history of states (Hobbes 1658: chap. 11) (the historical emergence of states still belongs to natural science, since it is the state of human nature). History, in the sense of a deterministic kind of historiography, in no way makes obsolete the conception of scientific explanatory historiography. Two kinds of historiography can be defined: factual historiography (civil) has only the goal of describing historical facts; explanatory historiography has, on the contrary, the goal of explaining these facts and has for this reason a scientific character. Hobbes reserves the term history in the sense of historical writing for factual historiography. What he himself in his early and late historical works practised can therefore be called explanatory historiography, which investigates the causes and consequences of qualities of the human being (as explained by ethics, rhetoric, poetry, logic and the science of the just and unjust). So it is understandable that Hobbes can always refer to historical examples in his systematic works, without the danger of a methodological self-contradiction. It is not only the quotation of historical facts, but the historical explanations that confirm the assumptions of the systematic philosophy

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of the state. It must also be noted that Hobbes is not alone in such a conception: Bacon also propounded a similar thesis.15 From this perspective, the apparent contradiction between theory and historical writing disappears. c) Fictitious History It was shown that the traditional interpretation of Hobbes accords to him a very limited conception of historiography that does not correspond to his writings on history. One of the most important aspects of Hobbes’ explanatory historiography is the refutation of the Aristotelian idea that in a causal explanation, all considered facts must be established and certain. Historical facts are often not sufficiently reliable: “Letters are also good, especially languages and histories: for they are pleasing. They are useful, too, especially histories; for these supply in abundance the evidence on which rests the science of causes: in truth, natural history for physic and also civil histories for civil and moral science: and this is so whether they be true or false, provided that they are not impossible. For in the sciences causes are sought not only of those things that were, but also of those things that can be” (Hobbes 1658: 50).16 15

Bacon criticises the traditional moral philosophers because they act “as if a man that professeth to teach to write did only exhibit fair copies of alphabets and letters joined, without giving any precepts or directions for the carriage of the hand and framing of the letters. So have they made good and fair exemplars and copies, carrying the draughts and portraitures of good, Virtue, Duty, Felicity; propounding them well described as the true objects and scopes of man’s will and desires: but how to attain these excellent marks, and how to frame and subdue the will of man to become true and conformable to these pursuits, they pass it over altogether, or slightly and unprofitably” (Bacon 1605: 418; see Hirschmann 1987: 28 f.). According to Bacon, poets and historians, as opposed to philosophers, are able to describe their emotions so realistically, that is possible to recognise their way of functioning: “(…) the poets and writers of histories are the best doctors of this knowledge: where we may find painted forth with great life, how affections are kindled and incited: and how pacified and refrained; and how again contained from act and further degree; how they disclose themselves, how they work, how they vary, how they gather and fortify, how they are inwrapped one within another, and how they do fight and encounter one with another, and other the like particularities: amongst the which this last is of special use in moral and civil matters: how (I say) to set affection against affection, and to master one by another; even as we use to hunt beast with beast and fly bird with bird, which otherwise percase we could not so easily recover: upon which foundation is erected that excellent use of praemium and poena, whereby civil states consist; employing the predominant affections of fear and hope, for the suppressing and bridling the rest. For as in the government of states it is sometimes necessary to bridle one faction with another, so it is in the government within” (Bacon 1605: 438). Hobbes formulates a similar criticism of the tradition moral philosophy in De Cive (Hobbes 1642: V) and in Behemoth (Hobbes 1668: 43 ff.). 16 In Part 1 of Elements of Law, Hobbes uses a double concept of experience. In the strictest sense, experience is a memory of events that repetitively follow one another, and for this reason permits a prognosis (Hobbes 1640: 32). This experience is more secure depending on the frequency of the repetition, “but never full and evident”. Experience, so understood, provides no universal conclusion, but only prudence, that is, “conjecture from experience” (Hobbes 1640: 33). Science, on the contrary, is an experience that is at the same time “knowledge of the truth of propositions” and the correct naming of objects, and for this reason

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The constructive sciences for Hobbes are epistemologically more certain: “Finally, politics and ethics (that is, the sciences of just and unjust, of equity and inequity) can be demonstrated a priori; because we ourselves make the principles – that is, the causes of justice (namely laws and covenants) – whereby it is known what justice and equity, and their opposites injustice and inequity are” (Hobbes 1658: 42 – 43).17

In his practical historical work, Hobbes often begins with a mere listing of facts that he considers reliable. But most explanations of the motivations and actions that these facts provide contradict other known facts and can even be fiction. The Tacitus Essay for instance begins with an enumeration of the facts presented in the four first paragraphs of Tacitus’ work, but the detailed explanations that Hobbes adds remain a constructive explanation (fallible and hypothetical). Hobbes considers his favourite historiographer, Thucydides, to be a master of this illustrative speculation. To mention one of the most well-known examples, Thucydides begins with the facts that the Athenians occupied Melos, that they were militarily superior, that the inhabitants knew that the surrender of Melos was being negotiated and that they refused to surrender and so had to submit to the foreseen terrible sanctions. That the inhabitants of Melos in such a situation did not surrender needs an explanation. The Melian dialogue, explicitly a fiction18, provides an explanation that is well adapted to the given facts19. Similarly, Hobbes begins in his Tacitus Essay and in Behemoth with the fact that individuals like Octavian and Cromwell achieved dominance against is derived from understanding (Hobbes 1640: 40). “Both of these sorts are but experience: the former being the experience of the effects of things that work upon us from without: and the latter the experience men have of the proper use of names in language. And all experience being (as I have said) but remembrance, all knowledge is remembrance: and of the former, the register we keep in books, is called history: but the registers of the latter are called the sciences” (Hobbes 1640: 40). 17 Hobbes says in Six Lessons: “Of arts, some are demonstrable, others indemonstrable; and demonstrable are those the construction of the subject whereof is in the power of the artist himself, who, in his demonstration, does no more but deduce the consequences of his own operation”. And also: “Geometry therefore is demonstrable, for the lines and figures from which we reason are drawn and described by ourselves: and civil philosophy is demonstrable, because we make the commonwealth ourselves” (Hobbes 1656: 183 – 184 and Hobbes 1658: 42). 18 Hobbes refers indirectly to Melian dialogue in his introduction (Hobbes 1629: XXVIII). 19 Hobbes describes Tucyidides’ methodology in this way: Thucydides “declared the causes, both real and pretended, of the war he was write of. (…) The grounds and motives of every action he setteth down before the action itself, either narratively, or else contriveth them into the form of deliberative orations in the persons of such as from time to time bare sway in the commonwealth. After the actions, when there is just occasion, he giveth his judgement of them; showing by what means the success came either to be furthered or hindered” (Hobbes 1629: XXI). See also: “In a word, the image of the method used by Thucydides in this point, is this: ‘The quarrel about Corcyra passed on this manner; and the quarrel about Potidea on this manner’: relating both at large: ‘and in both the Athenians were accused to have done the injury’. Nevertheless, the Lacedaemonians had not upon this injury entered into a war a against them, but that envied the greatness of their power, and feared the consequences of their ambitions” (Hobbes 1629: XXVII).

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considerable opposition – an admirable fact, which must be explained in part speculatively. But this historical speculation is necessarily limited by the known facts.20 For each fact there are certainly many possible explanations – and this is especially the case with historical facts. But this is the case with any theory. This procedure, as the quotation from De Homine above shows, makes sense even when the facts are not certain, but only plausible. Only from this perspective is it understandable why Hobbes in Leviathan (Hobbes 1651: chap. 9) considers rhetoric and poetry to be explanatory natural sciences that are useful for historical explanations. What Hobbes himself wins from this weak knowledge of historical causes are insights into human affects and motivation – insights that even lead to a topology of human affects and their effects (Hobbes 1651: chaps. 6 – 8). What we learn, according to Hobbes, from Octavian’s ascension are specific rules of prudence21 as well as more general ones22 : for instance, that power often relies on knowledge, and not on physical power23 ; that those seeking to dominate assure their power not only over bodies but also over emotions and understanding24 ; and that not only reason but also irrationality drives human action.25 In this way we can, according to Hobbes, learn 20 Here an example: “But this war against the Germans, was to defend the reputation of the Roman Empire, and was necessary, not for the curiosity alone, and niceness, that great Personages have always had, in point of honour, much more great States, and most of all that of Rome, but also for a real and substantial damage (for some man might account the other but a shadow) that might ensue upon neglecting o such shadows. For oftentimes Kingdoms are better strengthened and defended by military reputation, than they are by the power of their Armies” (Hobbes 1620: 59). 21 In relation to the skilful choice of the title: “therefore he would not at the first take any offensive title, as that of King or Dictator” (Hobbes 1620: 38), and: “He had three reasons to leave that title; (…) but the chief cause was this that the name carried with it a remembrance and relish of civil wars, proscriptions, which were hateful to the people.” (Hobbes 1620: 43). 22 “Soldiers are commonly greedy” (Hobbes 1620: 44). 23 “Honours sometimes be of great power, to change a man’s manners and behaviour into the worse, because men commonly measure their own virtues, rather by the acceptance that their persons find in the world, than by the judgement which their own conscience makes of them, and never do, or think they never need to examine those things in themselves, which have once found approbation abroad, and for which they have received honour” (Hobbes 1620: 64). See Hobbes’s theory of power as recognition, developed later in Leviathan (Hobbes 1651: chaps. 10/11). 24 “And now having power over the bodies of the people, he goes about to obtain it over their minds, and wills, which is both the noblest and surest command of all other” (Hobbes,1620: 42). “He gets up by little and little. For it is not wisdom for one to take away all the show of their liberty at one blow, and on a sudden make them feel servitude, without first introducing into their minds some previae dispositiones, or preparetives, whereby the may the better endure it” (Hobbes 1620: 45). 25 Here relations to Macchiavelli are revealed. Arlene Saxonhouse observes that Tacitus was used by Hobbes as a substitute for Machiavelli, who could not be quoted (Saxonhouse 1995: 129). She observes that Tacitus is rarely quoted by Macchiavelli, but offers no explanation of the contents. Macchiavelli quotes Thucydides much more frequently Thucydides. It can be shown that there are communalities between the way that Macchiavelli quotes

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from history, and history can claim to offer truth and explanation26, even when we know that one or more of the historical “facts” mentioned are only suppositions and mere constructions.27 So it’s possible to describe more precisely the relationship between the mere listing of historical facts and their explanation – and also between the determination of history in a strictly classical sense and the explanatory historiography, presented by rhetoric, poetry, logic and the science of just and unjust, as special variants of natural philosophy.

Thucydides and that Hobbes uses Tacitus. For Macchiavelli’s reading of Thucydides, see Reinhardt (1960). For Machiavelli’s realistic concept of power, see Mittelstrass (1990). 26 Against Dionysion von Harlikarnass, Hobbes says in his Thucydides-introduction: “A historian must wrote not as a lover of his country, but of truth”. It is also said there that we become informed through knowledge of past instructed and are then able to understand present and future actions (Hobbes 1629: p. VII f.) And so observes Hobbes in the dedication to Henry Bennet in the beginning of Behemoth: „There can be nothing more instructive towards loyalty and justice than will be the memory, while it lasts, of that war” (Hobbes 1668: V). And the dialogue opens with the following observation: “If in time, as in place, there were degrees of high and low, I verily believe that the highest of time would be that which passed between the years 1640 and 1660. For he that hence, as from Devil’s Mountain, should have looked upon the world and observed the actions of men, especially in England, might have had a prospect of all kinds of injustice, and of all kinds of folly, that the world could afford, and how they were produced by their dams hypocrisy and self-conceit, whereof the one is double iniquity, and the other double folly” (Hobbes 1668: 1). 27 It is here in no way the only moral example of history, as it is repeatedly again affirmed (see for instance Beverly Southgate for Thucydides (also referring to Melian Dialogue) and Hobbes: “Hobbes is similar convinced of history’s moral value. In the Preface of his translation of Thucydides, he writes of ‘the principal and proper Work of History being to instruct, and enable men by the knowledge of Actions Past, to bear themselves prudently in the Present, and providently towards the Future’. Again the moral dimension is clear: history is to be not only delightful, but also useful and instructive” (Southgate 1995: 30 f.)). Hobbes warns in Leviathan not only against the reading of ancient historians, but also of the old philosophers: “(…) by reading of these Greek, and Latin authors, men from their childhood have gotten a habit, under a false show of liberty, of favouring tumults, and of licentious controlling the actions of their sovereigns, and again of controlling those controllers; with the effusion of so much blood, as I think I may truly say, there was never any thing so dearly bought, as these western parts have bought the learning of the Greek and Latin tongues” (Hobbes 1651: 203. See Hobbes 1651: 315). But Hobbes only warns against the adoption of these books at universities and schools, because they can provoke rebellion. He notes that previously great damage has been done have been arisen due to the reading of old writers. Firstly, this is an historical argument, and secondly, Hobbes doesn’t contest that useful insights on affects and their possibilities of manipulation could be won for readers and for himself, but this knowledge may not be general. Hobbes’s sentence that young people should not read historians is frequently incorrectly interpreted (Münkler 1993: 23) in the sense that Hobbes in general gives no theoretical value to history.

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II. Historiography as Criticism of Ideology and Idealism 1. Ideology History, according to Hobbes, can only be understood through the realisation that the dominant set of convictions of a certain time in a certain society is what configures that society28. This is for Horkheimer the formulation of the problem that in postHegelian times would be called “ideology” – even when Hobbes himself does not use this expression (Horkheimer 1930: 228)29. It does not mean that all ideas are ideological, but only those which contradict “correct reason” as identified with science and natural law (Horkheimer 1930: 229). In his doctrine of State and Natural Law30, Hobbes opposes the conviction common in the Middle Ages that the regent’s authority was granted by God. He advances the idea that only the will of the people legitimates the State, whose aim must be to promote wellness. As Horkheimer observed, “when professors and students of Oxford University condemned Hobbes’s doctrine and burnt his books, they have very well recognised the danger of the social contract theory of natural law” (Horkheimer 1930: 216 – 217). Hobbes’ question is how moral, metaphysical and religious representations, although not a part of natural law, can dominate people for centuries. He answers that all ideas differing from theories of nature and natural law were invented to subjugate people. Their origin is the will of domination on the one side and the lack of instruction on the other. Their aim is the preservation of power for those who would propagate such ideas (Horkheimer 1930: 222). All social groups that influenced government in the past are attacked with this criticism (Horkheimer 1930: 222). 28 Thus Hobbes analyses the ideological resources that guaranteed the power of nobles and ecclesiastics during the Middle Ages (Horkheimer 1930: 228). 29 The foundation of Hobbes’s criticism is his concept of liberty. Reform and counterreform stressed the opposition between liberty of the will and natural science: human action is not explained through natural causes, but through its free will, or the choosing of one action from all possible ones. This doctrine is not only of religious interest, but also of social, since it assigns the responsibility for actions (Horkheimer 1930: 211). Hobbes, on the contrary, has no concept of liberty of the will in this idealistic sense, but deals only with liberty of action (Horkheimer 1930: 212). Liberty of the will unifies all people without distinction – for theologians, since all are sons of God; for the Enlightenment, for political reasons. This liberty of the action makes social differences into a problem. Liberty of the will does not differentiate between master and slave: both for example have the liberty of will to enjoy luxuries. Hobbes, on the contrary, considers through the liberty of action that the master can enjoy luxuries, but the slave would lose his life for this. This difference of liberty is what matters in social reality (Horkheimer 1930: 213). 30 There is a difference between Hobbes and the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment conceives history as progress: history is the process through which humanity becomes rational. For Hobbes, the reason is already given, but is distorted by the church. Both have in common the concept that reason and truth are eternal (Horkheimer 1930: 230). Modern philosophy considers its doctrine of nature and society as definitive; in the same way, religious thought separates other views of the world from their contexts to align them with stated dogma, instead of analysing their historical role. The believers divided the world into sinners and saints; the “rational” philosopher, into fools and the wise (Horkheimer 1930: 231).

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In Leviathan, Hobbes analyses how scientific doctrines are evaluated in the context of their conformity to the dominant ideology: “For I doubt not, but if it had been a thing contrary to any man’s right of domination, or to the interest of men that have dominion, that the three angles of a triangle should be equal to two angles of a square; that doctrine should have been, if not disputed, yet by the burning of all books of geometry, suppressed, as far as he whom it concerned was able” (Hobbes 1651: 91; Horkheimer 1930: 222 – 223).

And Behemoth verifies how philosophical doctrines – for example, the Aristotelian one – are used to justify interests: “They have made more use of his obscurity than of his doctrine. For none of the ancient philosophers’ writings are comparable to those of Aristotle, for their aptness to puzzle and entangle men with words (…)” (Hobbes 1668: 41 – 42; Horkheimer 1930: 223 – 224).

It is particularly in Universities, through the instruction of those who would pass judgement on crucial social questions, that this effect is produced. These individuals learn to confound understanding with meaningless distinctions, useful only to impress uncultivated people and to render them obedient. (Hobbes 1668: 41; Horkheimer 1930: 225). Horkheimer sees in Hobbes’ reflection an “explosive historical dialectic”, since individual thought can have a public effect when it becomes criticism of the dominant ideas (Horkheimer 1930: 229). But Hobbes, just like Machiavelli, thinks that the new state also has to make use of ideological means of power to affirm itself – the cause of much of the criticism levelled against him (Horkheimer 1930: 222 e 225). Hobbes has thus formulated the problem of ideology (even without using this expression) while observing the relationship between false dominant ideas and social situations. But instead of considering historical ideas in the context of social life, he attributed them to human nature (Horkheimer 1930: 234). To understand history though, argues Horkheimer, it is not enough simply to recognise that religious and metaphysical representations are in error, just like fallacious hypotheses in natural sciences, but it is necessary to see what has provoked these false ideas: “The significant representations that dominate an epoch have a more profound origin than the bad will of some individuals. They themselves have already been born inside a social structure” (Horkheimer 1930: 233). The dependence of representations on their historical condition dictates no relativism. Hobbes’s fault was not to consider as illusory the doctrines diverging from the science of his time but to consider this science as the eternal one, and not as a part of the historical process itself, subject to transformation (Horkheimer 1930: 235). 2. Idealism Hobbes’ historiography stands in opposition to evolutionary theories supposing moral development – a very fundamental aspect of his reception by classical realists

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in theories of international relations. The idealism of the between-the-wars era saw social conflicts to be a result of a lack of social and personal development. More developed social orders had the task of bringing enlightenment and social progress to the less developed, encouraging political initiatives like the League of Nations (Navari 1996: 24). Moral progress could be attained particularly through education, which could inculcate a sense of social responsibility. The perfectibility of human beings would bring them to wish for more perfect social orders. This concept results in idealism’s belief in the power of public opinion. Idealists believed that international juridical institutions, as fora of international public opinion, could pacify relations between states. The League of Nations, thought trouble-plagued and disrespected, sought to represent humanity’s opinion, the “voice of reason” (Fried 1910: 174) governing what is true and false (Claude 1965: 11 – 12). Negotiations and secret accords between states would be replaced by the League’s public diplomacy, personified by the image of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson – although he had practised secret diplomacy in Paris and did not consider private discussions on “delicate” subjects incompatible with a prohibition of secret accords, he appealed in his Fourteen Points for open diplomacy, conceiving the League as the “ventilator” of “smoky diplomatic rooms” (Claude 1965: 11 – 12). Material sanctions would not be necessary, since the rational force of public opinion would be always more powerful than any economic or military force: “The moral disarmament is the only way to secure peace” (Richet 1927: 431 – 432). Idealists believed that there was already a “universal moral conscious”, manifested in the movement of public opinion (Zimmern 1934: 38), and able to subjugate the material forces (Dubois-Richard 1927: 393 – 394). This belief was linked to the idea that the development of means of communication and transportation – telegraphy, telephone, trains, automobiles, and particularly the new discoveries: aeroplane and radiophone – would favour interactions between people: “In 1950, each of us will be practically some hours away of Berlin and even New York and will receive at home, through radio, all the news of the world, and all great moral ideas will come into our home, invading our heart and mind”. The defeat of Imperial Germany was attributed to reactions of universal conscience against violations of human morals (Dubois-Richard 1927: 397 – 398). Additionally, the idea that the defence of one’s own country is unjustifiable without first appealing to the arbitration of the League of Nations was widespread. In this case it would be possible through an “objection of conscience”, officially recognised or not by the state, to refuse military service (Soltau 1927: 121)31. Moral disarmament would be promoted through the education of children (Richet 1927: 432). Schools would have the task to turn the abstract thesis “peace through law” into reality (Périé 1927: 145 – 149). Campaigns 31 In England in 1927, in a famous protest great English manifestation, more than 100,000 persons signed a solemn declaration, pledging not to take up arms in a conflict if their government had not previously sought the arbitration of the League of Nations. The coordinator of this campaign, Ponsonby, said: “It is necessary to choose between conscience or blind obedience to government, between living for the homeland or dying for opportunists and exploiters, between freeing the world from the evil of war or to leave civilisation to consume itself” (Prudhommeaux and Rousseau 1927: 38).

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against bellicose songs and manuals, as well as the promotion of pacifist education manuals, aimed to replace in children the admiration for heroes of the war with the admiration for scientists and artists, the heroes of peace (Bovet 1927: 240). These ideas, funded on the liberal legacy of the eighteenth century, became problematic when connected to some evolutionist social theories dominant at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century: Hegelian Idealism, social Darwinism, evolutionism (particularly progressive Spencerionism), and Durkheim’s functionalism. In Spencer’s schema, societies were in an irreversible progressive process of simultaneously differentiating and integrating, unifying always in more complex levels, including international ones. English Hegelians, like T. H. Green, Bosanquet, Bradley and Ritchie, absorbing evolutionist theories, saw a progressive process of unifying individuals in organised associations – which could even supersede the State (Navari 1996: 24). Durkheim’s functional sociology, distinguishing between mechanical social forms and organic (more advanced) social forms, influenced Hegelian as well as non-Hegelian Utilitarians, such as Angell and Hobson, who became functionalists. It is against this ideology of progress that Hobbes is rehabilitated in the revision of the idealist program as well as in the realist one. Although Hobbes is most often associated with realism, he became relevant to the theory of international relations in the revision of the idealist program. To reform idealism, Collingwoods’s The New Leviathan (1942) aims to give a picture of the human condition without presupposing that an irreversible level of moral progress has already taken place. The idealistic vision of the first half of the twentieth century postulated to be in a historical evolutionism, where civilisation had decisively succeeded in barbarism. For Hobbes, on the contrary, civilisation is fragile and conditional: the enlightened community can revert to the kingdom of darkness; civilisation can revert to barbarism32. Realists, contrary to Collingwood, used Hobbes not to review, but to destroy idealism. The use of Hobbes was not so obvious, since other social theories could also have been used. There was a parallel between Hobbes’s intentions and the efforts of the realists in the 1930s and 1940s (Navari 1996: 23). Hobbes was living in a period of intense ideological conflict. His method was to attack ideological views through their historicisation33. Carr would do the same with Mannheim’s sociology: the historicisation of deep beliefs provokes scepticism of their validity. In the final part of Leviathan, “The Kingdom of Darkness”, Hobbes attacks the Roman Catholic Church for advocating its suzerainty over sovereign states, what he calls the “kingdom of fairies”. Carr, in a parallel way, criticises the League of Nations, which would be giving continuity to 32

“It was as appeal to the consciousness of the subject to understand the factors making for civilisation, and not to take them for granted” (Navari 1996: 21 – 22). 33 “He asked his audience not to listen to received wisdom and to see all claims of this sort as simple aspects of desire, inducing a moral scepticism” (Navari 1996: 26).

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the Pax Britannica (Wight 1991: 17). His interest in 1939, when he wrote The Twenty Years Crisis, like Thucydides and Hobbes, was not to find those responsible for the imminent war, but “to analyse the underlying and significant, rather than the immediate and personal causes of the disaster” (Carr 1939: IX). His book is an attempt to understand “the more profound causes of the contemporary international crisis” (Carr 1939: IX). Inspired by Machiavelli and Hobbes, Carr thinks that “the exercise of power always appears to beget the appetite for more power (…). War, begun for motives of security, quickly becomes war of aggression and self-seeking” (Carr 1939: 112). As Thucydides, as Hobbes would later learn from him, saw Athenians proclaiming “self-defence”, that would soon turn into aggressive power, so too observed Carr about the first world war: “Nearly every country participating … regarded it initially as a war of self-defence; and this belief war particularly strong on the Allied side. Yet during the course of the war, every Allied government in Europe announced war aims which included the acquisition of territory from the enemy powers. In modern conditions, wars of limited objective have become almost as impossible as wars of limited liability” (Carr 1939: 112 – 113).

III. The Role of Hobbes in Contemporary Discussion Hobbes’ historical approach continues to present a challenge to contemporary international relations theorists. As has been seen, one of the central motivations of the rehabilitation of Hobbes by classical realism was a reaction against idealism. But classical realism’s historical approach was discarded by neo-realism (whose principal advocate was Kenneth Waltz). If classical realists thought in historical terms, neorealism, on the contrary, claimed to be an atemporal science. Each state – the central unit of analysis – would have a calculable power and a specific interest. Relations between states would be governed by a “balance of power”. Neo-realists “aspired to a technology of power. They thought in universalistic ahistorical terms. … History was just a store of data illustrating an unchanging game” (Cox 1997: XV)34. Normativism today, in a legitimate opposition to neo-realism, reconsiders crucial problems of idealism – including the absence of historiography and evolutionism. The normative approach of international relations is characterised by the discussion of ethical questions, defined in the framework of the “return of great theory” – political and social philosophy. It refutes the epistemological postulation of different logical statutes for empirical (or explicative) theory and normative (or ethical) theory. According to this division, political science has to deal with political facts, law with juridical-political norms and institutions, and political philosophy with political val34

Cox’s “new realism” differs from classical realism in analysing determinant forces beyond the power of states. It differs from neo-realism in analysing structural changes understood in historical terms: “The new realism develops the old realism, using its historical approach, so as to understand the realities of power in the present and emerging world” (Cox 1997: XVI). Moreover, its view of international relations contains a great normative concern.

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ues and ideals (Giesen 1992: 5 – 7). Normativism doesn’t accept, however, that a theory can be ethically neutral in international relations, as the theories that consider themselves purely explicative claim to be (Braillard 1992: XII). An ethical reflection in international relations consists of an investigation into ethical problems of empirical cases and a metatheoretical interpretation of ethical suppositions of theories of international relations (Hoffmann 1994: 27). Normativism seeks to present a juridical analysis of international politics and ethical analysis of law that doesn’t fall into a “moralisation”, in such a way that conflicts between states and infractions of international law aren’t judged by moral criteria, but by political and juridical procedures (Habermas 1996: 192). Its intention is the establishment of a foundation of emancipatory universal ethics through criticism of the epistemological basis of positivism, often blamed for the lack of a universal ethics in international relations. It claims to recuperate the classical concept that politics is part of ethics, establishing a view of history that aims to explain the development of universal moral norms (Jahn 1998: 622). One of the authors that inspire normativism particularly in the so-called “critical theory”, is the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas. Trying to escape the “pessimistic” historical conception of Max Horkheimer (rooted in Max Weber’s diagnosis of modernity), Habermas developed a historical conception which contains some evolutionary traces. (Habermas 1988), Habermas finds in Weber a diagnostic view of cultural modernity characterised by a division of substantial reason into three cultural spheres (expressed in religious and metaphysical world visions): science/technique, law/moral and art/literature. The cultural transmission of each one of these cultural spheres occurs in institutions. Cultural spheres are also differentiated through an abstract measure of value, a claim to universal validity: truth, normative rightness and authenticity (or beauty), which Weber comprehends as enhancement of value (Wertsteigerung). Habermas comprehends “enhancement of value” in the sense of progress. It is communication that makes possible the “objective progress”. Science/technique, law/moral and art/literature are understood as “cognitive potential” constantly progressing. Weber (Weber 1920), on the other hand, doesn’t have this concept of progress. He uses the concept of enhancement of value only to evaluate historical development. He doesn’t differentiate the level of cultural transmission from the system of institutionalised action. According to Habermas, it is exactly the institutionalisation of cognitive potential of science, law, morals and art that makes their use possible. What he considers problematic is when the cultural transmission is not sufficiently institutionalised, and thus without a structural effect on the whole society35. If Weber explains social rationalisation exclusively from the aspect 35 The differentiation of value spheres, according to Weber, shows the internal tension between them. Habermas, on the contrary, with his concept of cognitive potential, sees science, law/moral and art similarly oriented by universal values. This implies a “harmony” between these spheres. Weber’s empirical investigation, according to Habermas, concentrates itself directly on the problem of appearance of capitalism and institutionalisation of action with rational instrumental aims. But the universal “claims of validity” are not further consi-

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of instrumental rationalisation, as in his analysis of law rationalisation, Habermas considers also in the modern moral consciousness the fundamental criticisability and the necessity of justification of norms – and so the possibility of a moral theory that asks for a discursive explanation of the validity of moral norms, what is progress in the domain of practical rationality. Weber perceives the loss of substantial unity of reason as “polytheism”, with irreconcilable claims of validity. Habermas, on the contrary, considers that the unity of rationality in the plurality of spheres of value is assured by the formal level of argumentation with a claim of validity. Weber sees the tendency that social rationalisation loses freedom as a necessary consequence of capitalist development. Modern law in the positivist sense results from decisions without foundation. For Habermas, Weber doesn’t consider the “principle of the necessity of foundation” and the exigency that legal power is legitimated, the “legitimisation of legality”: modern juridical order asks for validity in the sense of rational comprehension, even when participants accept that, if necessary, only specialists can present good reasons. The end of the Cold War, the resulting acceleration of globalisation and the expansion of interdependence among states represent for several authors the possibility of a resurgence of normative theory and its conceptualisation of history. Realists presented history during the Cold War as a struggle for power between great powers. Andrew Linklater, on the contrary, presents a history which aims to explain the development of universal moral norms (Jahn 1998: 622) with a lot of similarities with Habermas, but losing the latter’s critical potentiality (since Habermas’s aim is to contest the persistency of Carl Schmitt’s thought in political and legal philosophy). For Jahn, “this is not an engagement with history as such, rather it is an exercise in the construction of history. In Men and Citizens, he mobilises ‘principles of historical periodisation in order to place different social formations upon a scale of ascending types in accordance with the extent to which each approximates the conditions of realised human freedom’. In already familiar fashion the normative yardstick – human freedom – has been set first and now he proceeds to develop a three-stage model” (Jahn 1988: 622).

Linklater explains that it represents “ideal types” to show that in some kinds of international relations there is more understanding than in others and that it doesn’t represent a historical scale. Each level is a “construct”, an “ideal type”, to which nothing that has occurred corresponds (Linklater 1982: XII – XIII). But an ideal type for dered. Each sphere of value is analysed as a discipline. The special values supposed by each discipline determine its validity. Weber conceives labour in systems of cultural action as production of means to ends with relative validity. So he doesn’t differentiate sufficiently between particular contents and universal values, with which cognitive, normative and expressive parts of cultures become spheres of value. The concept of claim of validity comprehends several significant dimensions: reality, under differentiated measures of values, is reflected, becoming objective, social and subjective realities. The objective progress of knowledge, founded on argumentative comprehension and centred on these intentions of validity, becomes possible.

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Weber is an image to which reality is compared, not an end in itself, and is constructed with certain traces of reality. However, observes Jahn, if the ideal type contains ideas in the sense of values, as theorised by Linklater, it is not an auxiliary logic to comprehend reality, but a means by which to judge it.36 The result is thus an evolutionism, in which “time, in the sense of real historical time defining particular concrete social orders, has ended” (Jahn 1998: 622). Normativism identifies Hobbesian Realism with Waltz’s neo-realism (in international relations) or with Carl Schmitt’s decisionism (in political philosophy). But Waltz’s neo-realism presents a “Machiavellian” vision of prudence in international relations that Hobbes, as has been shown above, doesn’t accept. Habermas’s justifiable criticism of Schmitt cannot also be extended to Hobbes. Schmitt combines decisionism (sovereignty) and institutionalism (objective socio-political order: not normativism as Balibar observed, but normality) (Schmitt 1938). The possibility that Schmitt doesn’t explore, says Balibar, is exactly the combination of institutionalism and normativism, expressed in the equation of civil law and natural law, as in Leviathan.37 This is the meaning of “artifice” or institutional construction: the foundation of law on contract (liberty of individuals) and the exclusive expression of contract in the form of law. This institutionalism is a product of the human creation: “it needs no natural, supernatural, traditional or customary foundation” (Balibar, 2002: 50). We may not agree with Hobbes anymore. We would emphasise in history social formations instead of psychological historiography, we would not put the priority on the institutional solutions for political problems and we would see the science of the day as fallible. But we would learn from him that politics presupposes, besides the foundation of the normative principles, also the historicisation of ideas as opposed to their naturalisation.

Bibliography Aulard, Alphonse (1927): “La propagande pour la Société des Nations”. La paix par le droit 37: 238. Bacon, Francis (1605): The Advancement of Learning, in: James Spedding and Robert L. Ellis (eds.), The Works of Francis Bacon. London, 1857, vol. 03. 36

“Linklater wants to demonstrate that (European) political thought has developed progressively toward higher stage, that is, more universality” (Jahn 1988: 628). The first level, the lowest one, is the nature state – which Linklater calls the tribal societies. The second level is the State. There is also a third level, in which the progressive moral development of domestic politics must be projected onto the international scene: “(…) with Francisco de Vitoria this becomes ‘the basis for a comprehensive theory of the legitimate principles of world organisation’” (Jahn 1988: 629). 37 Chap. 22 and 26: “The law of nature, and the civil law, contain each other, and are of equal extent” (Hobbes 1651: 253; Balibar 2002: 50).

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Guzzini, Stefano (2001): “The Different Worlds of Realism in International Relations”. Millennium: Journal of International Studies 30 (1): 111 – 121. Habermas, Jürgen (1988): Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Habermas, Jürgen (1996): “Kants Idee des ewigen Friedens – aus dem historischen Abstand von 200 Jahren”, in: Jürgen Habermas, Die Einbeziehung des Anderen: Studien zur politischen Theorie. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, pp. 192 – 236. Herz, John (1950): “Idealist Internationalism and the Security Dilemma”. World Politics 2 (2): 158 – 180. Hirschmann, Albert O. (1987): Leidenschaften und Interessen. Politische Begründungen des Kapitalismus vor seinem Sieg. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Hobbes, Thomas (1620): Discourse upon Tacitus, in: Noel B. Reynolds and Arlene Saxonhouse (eds.), Thomas Hobbes: Three Discourses, A Critical Modern Edition of Newly Identified Work of the Young Hobbes. Chicago, 1995. Hobbes, Thomas (1629): Introduction to Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War (trad. Hobbes), in: William Molesworth (ed.), The English Works of Thomas Hobbes. London: John Bohn, 1839 – 1945, vol. VIII. Hobbes, Thomas (1640): The Elements of Law. Human Nature and De Corpore Politico. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Hobbes, Thomas (1642): De Cive, in: William Molesworth (ed.), The English Works of Thomas Hobbes. London: John Bohn, 1839 – 1845, vol. II. Hobbes, Thomas (1651): Leviathan, in: William Molesworth (ed.), The English Works of Thomas Hobbes. London: John Bohn, 1839 – 1845, vol. III. Hobbes, Thomas (1655): De Corpore: in: William Molesworth (ed.), The English Works of Thomas Hobbes. London: John Bohn, 1839 – 1845. Hobbes, Thomas (1656): Six Lessons to the professors of the mathematics, in: William Molesworth (ed.), The English Works of Thomas Hobbes. London: John Bohn, 1839 – 1845, vol. VII. Hobbes, Thomas (1658): De Homine, in: Bernard Gert (ed.), Man and Citizen. New York: Anchor Books, 1972 Hobbes, Thomas (1668): Behemoth or The Long Parliament, ed. Ferdinand Tönnies. Chicago/ London: The University of Chicago Press, 1990. Hoffmann, Mark (1994): “Normative International Theory: Approaches and Issues”, in: A.J.R. Groom and Margot Light. Contemporary International Relations: a Guide to Theory. London/New York: Pinter Publishers, pp. 27 – 44. Horkheimer, Max (1. ed. 1930): Anfänge der bürgerlichen Geschichtsphilosophie, in: Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. 2: Philosophische Frühschriften, ed. Gunzelin Schmid Noerr. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1987. Jahn, Beate (1998): “One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: Critical Theory as the Latest Edition of Liberal Idealism”. Millennium: Journal of International Studies 27 (3): 613 – 641. Johnson, Thomas J. (1996): “The Idea of Power Politics: The Sophistic Foundations of Realism”, in: Benjamin Frankel (ed.), Roots of Realism. London: Franklass, pp. 194 – 247.

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Kullmann, Wolfgang (1974): Wissenschaft und Methode. Interpretationen zur Aristotelischen Theorie der Naturwissenschaft. Berlin. Lessay, Franck (2000): “Hobbes and Sacred History”, in: G. A. J. Rogers and Tom Sorell (eds.). Hobbes and History. London/New York: Routledge, pp. 147 – 159. Linklater, Andrew (1982): Men and Citizens in the Theory of International Relations. Palgrave Macmillan. Mittelstrass, Jürgen (1990): “Politik und praktische Vernunft bei Machiavelli“, in: Otfried Höffe (ed.), Der Mensch ein politisches Tier? Stuttgart: Reclam. Münkler, Herfried (1993): Thomas Hobbes. Frankfurt am Main: Campus. Navari, Cornelia (1996): “Hobbes, the State of Nature and the Laws of Nature”, in: Ian Clark and Iver B. Neumann (eds.), Classical Theories of International Relations. London: Macmillan Press, pp. 20 – 41. Nour, Soraya/Zittel, Claus (2003): “O historiador e o teórico: a historiografia de Hobbes na teoria das relações internacionais”. Contexto Internacional, v. 25, n. 2, pp. 229 – 272. Périé, R. (1927): “La paix par l’éducation”. La paix par le droit 37 (4 – 5): 145 – 149. Prudhommeaux, J./Rousseau, Charles (1927): “L’actualité”. La paix par le droit 37: 38. Reinhardt, Karl (1960): “Thukydides und Macchiavelli”, in: Karl Reinhardt. Vermächtnis der Antike. Göttingen: Vandehoek und Ruprecht, pp. 184 – 218. Reynolds, Noel B./Saxonhouse, Arlene W. (eds.) (1995): Thomas Hobbes: Three Discourses, A Critical Modern Edition of Newly Identified Work of the Young Hobbes. Chicago. Richet, Charles (1927): “Pourquoi et comment désarmer”. La paix par le droit 37: 429 – 433. Rogers, G. A. J. (2000): “Hobbes, History and Wisdom”, in: G. A. J. Rogers and Tom Sorell (eds.), Hobbes and History. London/New York: Routledge, pp. 73 – 81. Rogers, G. A. J./Sorell, Tom (eds.) (2000): Hobbes and History. London/New York: Routledge. Saxonhouse, Arlene W. (1995): Postface, in: Noel B. Reynolds and Arlene Saxonhouse (eds.), Thomas Hobbes: Three Discourses, A Critical Modern Edition of Newly Identified Work of the Young Hobbes. Chicago. Schmitt, Carl (1938): Der Leviathan in der Staatslehre des Thomas Hobbes. Sinn und Fehlschlag eines politischen Symbols. Hamburg-Wandsbek: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt. Schumann, Karl Schumann (2000): “Hobbes’ Concept of History”, in: G. A. J. Rogers and Tom Sorell (eds.), Hobbes and History. London/New York: Routledge, pp. 3 – 24. Scott, Jonathan Scott (2000): “The Peace of Silence: Thucydides and the English Civil War”, in: G. A. J. Rogers and Tom Sorell (eds.), Hobbes and History. London/New York: Routledge, pp. 112 – 136. Soltau, Roger (1927): “A propos de l’objection de conscience”. La paix par le droit 37: 121. Sorell, Tom (1996): “Hobbes’ Scheme of the Sciences”, in: Tom Sorell (ed.), The Cambridge Companion of Thomas Hobbes. Cambridge University Press, pp. 45 – 61. Sorell, Tom (2000): “Hobbes’ Uses of the History of Philosophy”, in: G. A. J. Rogers and Tom Sorell (eds.), Hobbes and History. London/New York: Routledge, pp. 82 – 95.

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Southgate, Beverly (1995): History: What and Why. Ancient, Modern and Postmodern Perspectives. London/New York: Routledge. Springborg, Patricia (2000): “Hobbes and historiography: Why the future, he says, does not exist”, in: G. A. J. Rogers and Tom Sorell (eds.), Hobbes and History. London/New York: Routledge, pp. 44 – 72. Tuck, Richard (2000): “Hobbes and Tacitus”, in: G. A. J. Rogers and Tom Sorell (eds.), Hobbes and History. London/New York: Routledge, pp. 99 – 111. Weber, Max. (1. ed. 1920): “Zwischenbetrachtung: Theorie der Stufen und Richtungen religiöser Weltablehnung”, in: Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie I. Tübingen: Mohr, 1988, pp. 536 – 573. Zimmern, Alfred Eckhard (1934): Quo vadimus? A public lecture delivered on 5 February 1934. London: Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press.

“My Home is the Planet”. The Totalizing and Monotonizing Expansion of Individual and Collective Human Life* Christopher Pollmann “[A]ny decrease of terrestrial distance can be won only at the price of putting a decisive distance between man and earth, of alienating man from his immediate earthly surroundings.”1

The aim of this paper is to question and expand on the motto of the congress honoring the 250th anniversary of Alexander von Humboldt, namely To grasp the whole world. This maxim condenses the global ambitions of the Prussian explorer, which are well expressed in his major work Cosmos2, as shown in an article by the main organizer of the congress, Soraya Nour3. We shall first try to show that this saying represents a dual expansion of human life (part I.). Secondly, we will uncover the unforeseen consequences of this process, i. e. that the increasingly technical dimension of human life necessary to ensure its expansion probably leads to growing monotony and less ambiguity (II.).

I. The Double Expansion of Human Life To grasp the whole world refers to a program to raise the scope of human existence in two interrelated ways: first spatially (1.) and then intellectually and conceptually (2.). This increase may come about in order to compensate for the loss of meaning (3.).

* If not indicated otherwise, all translations from French or German to English are ours whereas italics in quotations come from the respective authors. Internet pages have been visited on April 30, 2022. 1 Arendt (2018), p. 251. 2 Humboldt (2010). 3 Sckell (2022). I am grateful to Soraya Nour Sckell for inviting me to this stimulating encounter!

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1. Spatial Extension It is first and foremost the program’s ecological and sanitary impact that draws our attention to the internationalization of human activities. However, we will not study this dimension here, as it has already been widely documented and analyzed. To begin, we prefer to explore the spatial significance of the motto. In relation to space, the idea of grasping the whole world does indeed indicate the intention to embrace and take hold of the planet Earth as a whole. Reaching around the entire globe is the ultimate step in spatial globalization, which takes place over the long term and has two aspects, a material one (a)) and an ideal, representational one (b)). The distinction between the material and ideal elements, borrowed from Maurice Godelier4, is somewhat blurred, though, in the context of ever broadening human relations (c)). a) The History of Human Migration and Conquest of the Earth The concept of globalization has become widespread, even popular, since the 1980s. However, the process of extending control ever further spatially is as old as humanity. It starts with the imaginary ‘first’ movements of hominids and ends provisionally in the current capitalist exploration and occupation of the last savage or glaciated territories, the deep sea, the atmosphere and outer space. This spatial extension seems to be due to a gradual fluidification or liquefaction of movement5: after the conceptual globalization of Antiquity, there has been, Peter Sloterdijk tells us, a material, i. e. terrestrial (in fact mainly maritime) globalization since the Middle-Ages6 and an electric and electronic globalization since the late 19th century.7 The last two waves of globalization have probably been steered by “the most effective totalization, the unification of the Earth through money”8. b) The Broadening of the Spatial Setting and Horizon of Individual and Collective Existence In traditional societies, human everyday life and representations were limited, for most of their members, to the location of their birth.9 In the course of spatial extension, they have been and are still progressively widening to the region, the country, the continent and nowadays, for a growing number of people, to the whole planet, perhaps because “man, in distinction from other living things, desires to be at home in a ‘territory’ as large as possible”10. The consequences are profound: “The 4

Godelier (2012). Bauman (2000), p. 2. 6 Sloterdijk (2013), pp. 40 – 46. 7 Sloterdijk (2013), pp. 8 – 10. 8 Sloterdijk (2013), p. 7 (translation modified); see also Simmel (2011). 9 Bauman (1991), p. 61. 10 Arendt (1977), pp. 265 – 280 (278). 5

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orb consisting only of a surface is not a house for all, but rather an epitome of markets on which no one can be ‘at home’; no one is meant to settle where money, commodities and fictions are changing hands.”11 “The[…] new entrepreneurs of expansion are no longer rooted in their homeland. […] The poetics of their native place are no longer determinant for them.”12 On the contrary, they live under the “primacy of the exterior”13 and the future14, primacy which corresponds since Hobbes to prioritizing movement over inertia15. Their location will be abstractly considered on and by the map. Abstraction means that “[t]he map absorbs the land”; “for representational thinking of space, the image of the terrestrial globe [and of the map] gradually makes the real extensions disappear”16. To sum up, modern globalization temporally means the “futurization” of collective action17; spatially, it achieves the “comprehensive absorption of the outside world into a fully calculated interior”, the “world interior of capital”18, “a hothouse that has drawn inwards everything that was once on the outside”19. c) The Contemporary Multiplication and Acceleration in the Development of Worldwide Groups, Networks and Relations The spatial extension of human existence is characterized not by linear, but by exponential progression. It resembles the “spiral of acceleration” studied by Hartmut Rosa20: each journey, each visit or stay in a foreign place implies material and personal links and contacts, possibly including friendship, marriage, the founding of a family, and thus generates much further transportation of goods and persons (but also of pathogens such as the latest coronavirus) and an inflated enlargement of life for more and more individuals. This dynamic is not recent, but since the end of the Second world war it has increased massively. We all know people who go abroad, sometimes to the other side of the Earth: pensioners for their holidays, students for a semester or a year, young professionals for foreign experience, individuals going out working on farms (“wwoofing” derived from the abbreviation of “worldwide opportunities on organic farms”), etc., not to mention refugees, diplomats or military officers, and sometimes members of our family or friends who move far away from their original home, much like the author 11

Sloterdijk (2013), p. 148 (we emphasize). Sloterdijk (2013), pp. 27 and following pages (ff.) (quote p. 27, transl. mod.). 13 Sloterdijk (2013), p. 32. 14 Sloterdijk (2013), pp. 50 f., 69. 15 Rosa (2015), p. 339 note 103. 16 Sloterdijk (2013), p. 28; see also Arendt (2018), pp. 250 f. 17 Sloterdijk (2013), p. 51. 18 Sloterdijk (2013), pp. 175, 196 – 198. 19 Sloterdijk (2013), p. 12. 20 Rosa (2015), pp. 185 (“social acceleration”) and 151 – 159 (“circle of acceleration”). 12

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of this paper. These journeys and expatriations of course go hand in hand with an amplified movement of goods and services, first because people keep the same consumption habits when abroad, but also because the native inhabitants may wish to imitate them. It would be instructive to represent the current situation, i. e. the spatial range of individual lives on various points of the Earth’s surface (synchronic approach) and the evolution leading up to it over the last centuries (diachronic approach) in a simple mathematical way (amounts and percentages) as well as in graph form. 2. The Intellectual Increase in Human Life and its Limits The desire to grasp the whole world also contains, besides the spatial, an ideal, intellectual dimension. It resides in a growing knowledge and control over natural and social phenomena and processes, possibly including the human psychic life itself. As techniques are extensions of the human body and mind,21 the rise of intellectual capacities can materialize in technical realizations. However, the growing scope of scientific explanation and machine working may go beyond the realm of human understanding (a)) without satisfying emotional and metaphysical needs (b)). a) Scientific and Technical Progress, Beyond Human Understanding? The scientific exploration of the world creates numerous zones of knowledge, which may be too complex, too difficult for the human mind to grasp.22 This is particularly true for the theories and models representing and analyzing the infinitely large and the infinitely small. Thus, most human beings find it hard to imagine and comprehend the Universe which has no edge and no center23 and is now assumed to be continually expanding. Although its total size is unknown, its observable dimensions of about 93 billion light-years in diameter24 are already far beyond human comprehension. As space and time are related, the endlessness of the temporal dimension corresponds to the boundlessness of the spatial extent. This double “opening into infinity” results in human beings getting lost25 and Pascal (as he himself wrote) being “frightened”, adding that man “is infinitely removed from comprehending the extremes, the end of things and their beginning are hopelessly hidden from him in an impenetrable secret”26. 21

Simmel (2011), pp. 348 f. Weinstein (2015), pp. 139 f.; Arendt (1977). 23 Pascal (2015), p. 29. 24 See the entry “Universe” on Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universe. 25 Sloterdijk (2013), p. 23. 26 Pascal (2015), nos. 205 f., p. 74, and no. 72, p. 30. 22

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The infinitely small may be just as challenging for the human mind. Among numerous other mysteries, the position and speed of an electron cannot be determined at the same time, as shown by Werner Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. Another vast area where phenomena defy human reason are the technically multiplied risks of mass destruction, possibly encompassing large territories, if not the whole globe, but also extending across long periods of time. Their spatially and temporally unbounded, and therefore immeasurable, character makes the relevant technologies, such as nuclear power plants and their cooling pools, genetic engineering and the industrial use of nanoparticles, uninsurable.27 The problem can be formulated mathematically: even the slightest possibility of destruction of an entire society cannot be quantified by the traditional insurance-based calculation, which multiplies the probability and the extent of damages, because the latter would be practically infinite (1). Without developing here a critical account of these and other modern technologies and of the corresponding military weapons28, we can say that their essence resides in these immeasurable risks, giving them the force of an overwhelming and unintelligible surge (“déferlement” in French).29 Furthermore, contemporary technologies, especially those related to computers and the Internet, possibly overburden the human mind. The reason lies in the fact that under the imperative of capital valorization, hardware and software are often different according to the spatial location and renewed at a rhythm unprecedented in human history. Whereas till the recent past, human capacities such as reading, writing and counting were learned once for the whole lifetime, electronic devices and applications nowadays change continually in space and in time, forcing users to adapt constantly. We shall come back to this disciplinary effect in section II. 2. b). The techno-scientific subversion of understanding and feeling – conceptualized by Günther Anders as a “Promethean gap” between making and imagining30 – can be extended to many aspects of life in the capitalist framework, especially economic, where people doubt the meaning of their work, their products, their organizations. For instance, they are dazzled by programs of “planned obsolescence of commodities”.31 On a very general level, the problem is brilliantly formulated by Anders. He notices that the traditional vision of reasoning, whereby the end may justify the means, has been inverted: “The means justify the end”, because “[t]he production of means has become the purpose of our existence”.32 In many cases and due to gen27

Beck (2008), chapter 8 on “The insurance principle, pp. 129 ff. Anders (1956) and Anders (1980); Jünger (1949); Ellul (1977); Beck (1992). 29 Tibon-Cornillot (2003), pp. 52 – 63. 30 Anders (1956), pp. 16 f. 31 This has existed at least since the Phoebus cartel to limit the lifespan of incandescent light bulbs in 1925 and was promoted in 1932 by American real estate broker Bernard London: “Ending the depression through planned obsolescence”, see London (1932), p. 20. 32 Anders (1956), pp. 251 – 254; Simmel (2011) develops the same idea with respect to money as the principal mean in capitalist society. 28

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eralized competition, the sheer existence of technical possibilities requires us to use them. This supremacy and the multiplication of means tend to suppress independent or higher ends.33 b) Emotional and Metaphysical Needs Possibly Unsatisfied Capitalist globalization means, among other things, the extension of market logic, which goes hand in hand with a new organizing principle of social life: belonging and membership are replaced by a system of revocable options34. This implies two related processes: the growing distance and indifference among human beings and “the liberation of egotism”35. Distances have been increasing in space (although people live crammed together in cities) and especially in the mind. The result is remoteness between individuals but also between the single person on the one hand and things such as agricultural activities, craftsmanship and their products or the stars in the night sky, on the other. It is as if the objects of the material world have “cooled down”, as if this “global system favors persons without overly fixed qualities”.36 Norbert Elias explains the ensuing “basic conflict of the we-less I”: “the habit of circumspection in forming relationships has not stifled the desire to give and receive emotional warmth and for commitment in relations to others, but it has stifled the ability to give or receive them oneself.”37 This drive towards indifference is reflected and fostered by various means of abstraction, in particular money, time, law and intellect, to which we shall return in section II. 1. d). The release of egotism – the word is inappropriate for scientific and critical investigation because of its pejorative connotation but difficult to replace38 – means that the individualization of society has come with a culture of subjective rights. These culminate in human rights and imply a “primacy of prerogatives” over duties39. More bluntly, “human rights are the legal soul of [individual] life that takes [what it believes to be] its own wherever it can”40. Both this freeing of egotism and the grow-

33

Ellul (1990), p. 169. Sloterdijk (2013), pp. 206 – 210 with translation errors. 35 Sloterdijk (2013), p. 209 (transl. mod.). 36 Sloterdijk (2013), pp. 207, 210. On the erosion of personal attributes see Sennett (1998), an analysis eagerly anticipated and personalized by Musil (1995). 37 Elias (2001), p. 205. 38 See Pollmann (2011), pp. 261 – 280, https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr, especially pp. 263 – 266, quoting Nietzsche and Simmel (2011), pp. 357 f., to suggest that human behavior is necessarily egoistic. 39 Habermas (1999), pp. 386 – 403 (387; also p. 397). See our analysis in Pollmann (2008c), pp. 369 – 442 (402 – 408). 40 Sloterdijk (2013), p. 118. 34

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ing spatial and affective estrangement already mentioned signify that the basic emotional and relational needs of the human being may remain unsatisfied.41 Scientific and technical progress can also leave religious, spiritual and other forms of metaphysical desire unfulfilled. This possibility can be unfolded in two ways. First, the rise in the natural and social sciences in modern times has restricted the realm of god(s), religion and various tales of mystery, either by greater evidence and explanatory force42 or by military or cultural superiority. The latter eventuality is illustrated by Alexander von Humboldt’s digging up American Indians’ skeletons and sending them to Europe to be studied, in spite of their sacred character and the explicit opposition on the part of the Indians43. Second, contemporary techno-science is considered as or operates like a platform of the sacred, if not as a new religion44 : “Today, our new cathedrals are those of science”45. Sometimes, scientific discourse sets itself up as a supreme, god-like authority46 and people are summoned to “believe” in it47. However, it does not – and cannot48 – give any explanations of the great mysteries of existence, because possible, always provisional answers are founded in individual subjectivity. They are not objective, not scientific or technical, but poetic, artistic, creative, religious, emotional, relational. We have the impression that techno-science takes the place of religion without playing its role, thus being “a religion … that does not connect”49. Since those unresolvable mysteries and those tentative answers seem to be equally neces-

41 On the frequent neglecting of the emotional and relational dimensions of human existence, see Pollmann, “Diminuer le refoulement éducatif pour éviter le défoulement meurtrier. Après Auschwitz, reconnaître la dimension affective de notre existence et apprendre la vie relationnelle”, forthcoming in: F. Lemarchand and P. Vassort (eds.), Théorie critique des crises contemporaines. 42 Elias (2007), particularly pp. 70 – 90. 43 Sckell (2022). 44 Carnino (2015); Musso (2017). 45 Bréchignac (2009), p. 57, also back cover. She is a physicist and in 2009 was president of the French Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS, National research center). 46 Particularly arrogant and ignorant in face of the temporal uncertainties due to climate change and many other factors, the famous French paleontologist Yves Coppens, formerly at Collège de France: “Homo sapiens, who today composes the calendar for the future of the Earth and the sky, (…) manages to predict billions, if not tens of billions of years to come. Progress is everywhere, bursting out in its irresistible ascent”. Coppens (1996). 47 “I ask our fellow citizens to believe in the strength of the scientific potential (…) of our country (…). We, we believe in the power of science”, former French Prime minister François Fillon at Cadarache, May 3, 2010, www.vie-publique.fr. 48 Strauss (1989), p. 32 f. 49 Rouzet (2019), pp. 6 – 7 (6). The original French formulation with the verb relier – “une religion … qui ne relie pas” – is more meaningful than our translation, because one possible etymological origin of latin religio could be religare = (re)connect, see Émile Benveniste (2016), pp. 525 ff.

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sary for human life, there is reason to fear that “once a human society is desacralized, it tends to become totalitarian”50. 3. Grasping the Whole World in Order to Compensate for the Loss of Meaning Intellectual and technical developments do not necessarily improve understanding of emotional and relational realities and problems. On the contrary, there is some reason to believe that they can restrict the extent of human consciousness.51 This seems to be the case in particular with modern transportation and communication technologies which give their users the impression, indeed the illusion, of being almighty. The quest for omnipotence may be driven by the practical experience of powerlessness of the contemporary individual who has never been so (inter)dependent on anonymous structures and mechanisms while being legally independent.52 This hypothesis can be broadened by saying that powerlessness is a particular type or cause of lack of sense or meaning. Sense appears or is given in various forms such as reason, explanation, justification, belief, obedience. We would assert a loss of meaning of and for human life because of four factors. Three of them have been mentioned in the preceding section 2: capitalism has weakened the rational, the metaphysical and the emotional/relational dimensions of our existence. A fourth cause could be the decreasing anchorage in a spatial location for many human beings: ultimately, being at home everywhere possibly means having no home at all! The most common, but not necessarily conscious, reaction to this intellectually, economically and technically induced loss of sense is to escape into a vicious spiral. More mental and spatial control, more technical devices, accumulation of wealth, objects and experiences, as well as more acceleration of movement and of communication53 promise sensations and satisfaction, but hardly bring sense. On the contrary, they seem to encourage a feeling of senselessness, thus calling for more of the same. In this respect, Alexander von Humboldt’s ambition to grasp the whole world was an early success “to present this metaphysical loss as cultural benefit54. This vicious dynamic is well illustrated by the contemporary mass addictions to mobile phones and other screens, portable music and sweet or salty food. We can speak of non-sexual (and therefore easy to obtain) “orificial pleasures” (Charles Melman) which have partly replaced the traditional culture of desire. The addictive character is particularly manifest in the widespread compulsive and obsessional use of the 50

Weinstein (2015), p. 7. Pollmann (2008b), pp. 140 – 142. 52 Jappe (2017), pp. 120 f. 53 On this complex dynamic see our seminar “Accumulations and accelerations” at the Fondation Maison des sciences de l’homme in Paris: fmsh.fr/fr/projets-soutenus/accumulations-et-accelerations. 54 Sloterdijk (2013), p. 22 (transl. mod.). 51

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smartphone55, due not only to the “persuasive design” of the device and its dopamine release-triggering applications56, but also to the aforementioned feeling of omnipotence. Transhumanism and other futurist theories believe that human beings can and will adjust to their increasingly technicized environment. We would contend on the contrary that the organic, psychic and relational dimensions of human life – which have proved to be more or less stable over thousands of years – limit our capacity to adapt and to avoid something like an epidemic, an individual and collective depression, nervous breakdown or outburst of fury … Apart from these, the expansion of human life around the globe may also have many other, unexpected consequences.

II. The Loss of Variety and Ambiguity, Human Beings Becoming Superfluous The program to grasp the whole world requires increasing scientific and technical means to ensure the spatial and mental expansion of human life. This technicization of the world probably implies growing monotony all over the planet (1.) and less ambiguity for individual phenomena (2.). It also tends to make human beings superfluous and society totalitarian (3.). 1. The Spatial “Monotonization of the World” (Stefan Zweig) Under this title, the famous Austrian writer observed and deplored, almost a century ago, a worldwide drive towards the mechanization and uniformization of individual and social life.57 We shall consider the ideas in his short paper, highlighting the loss of diversity that accompanies massification (a)), the standardization of architecture and design (b)), the supremacy of functionality and technicity (c)) and the rule of indifference by abstraction (d)). a) The Loss of Biological and Cultural Diversity and the Tendency Towards Massification Since the Industrial revolution, the numbers of plant and animal species have declined at an ever-increasing pace, in particular insects and birds, but also livestock breeds and crops. For instance, from 30,000 maize varieties and 20,000 apple varieties in former times, these have diminished in number to a very few that are still cultivated today.58 At the same time, for many living species the number of individual 55

Twenge (2018); Spitzer (2019); Desmurget (2019). Freed (2018). 57 Zweig (1993), pp. 397 – 400. 58 Bauer (2018), pp. 7 f.

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specimens is decreasing. These two reductions combined contribute to the current sixth mass extinction in the known history of the Earth. A similar evolution affects the cultural diversity of the human species. Zweig shows this by briefly analyzing dancing, fashion, cinema, radio and clothing. Several decades before him, Alexis de Tocqueville had already shown that “[v]ariety is disappearing from the human race; the same ways of acting, thinking and feeling are to be met with all over the world.”59 From today’s perspective, we can add the concern that one third of the 6,500 languages spoken at present are predicted to disappear over the next decades.60 As Zweig already suggests in his article, loss of variety is linked to the massification of modern society, which is probably due to its atomization.61 In the Western world, populations are split up into their smallest components, individuals who etymologically62 resemble the atoms of matter. Two processes contribute to this fragmentation, which can be considered a major source of modernity’s strength: “The world that falls apart into plethora of problems is a manageable world.”63 Primo, people lose their land-based self-sufficiency by being expelled or by liberating themselves from their bondage to the soil; craftsmanship is replaced by industrial products and services. Secundo, the equalization and leveling of human beings as individuals dissolve the old ties of legal dependency. The result is a situation where “all men [rich or poor] are alike and do things pretty nearly alike”64. Subjected to market logic, they become de facto interdependent on each other, possibly far more than they were before de jure. Paradoxically, the disappearance of all qualitative differences is accompanied by a disproportionate increase in quantitative (wealth) differences. People thus aggregate into homogeneous and uniform masses. The homogenization of the world is probably also due to the numerous classifications of its elements. In order to classify, it is indeed necessary to conceive the material which is going to be ordered according to a single criterion. It has to be perceived in a unique dimension. Therefore, classifying phenomena which are fundamentally different necessitates the suppression of their radical strangeness. That is why the multiple classifications operated all over the world in the process of globalization progressively eliminate exoticism and replace it by mere quantitative differ59

Tocqueville (1990), p. 229. Bauer (2018), p. 9. 61 For this section, see Tocqueville (1990) as reread by Vioulac (2013), chapter “La massification. Tocqueville et le totalitarisme démocratique”, pp. 161 – 225. Also Ortega y Gasset (1994) (sociologically and politically superficial and declinist). 62 The Greek atomos and the Latin individuum mean “that which is indivisible”. However, the etymological similarity covers an essential difference: Whereas a mass of iron is only an aggregation of iron atoms that can be separated from each other without altering them, society is much more than the sum of the individuals who nevertheless constitute it and these are not simply its identical fragments. 63 Bauman (1991), p. 12. 64 Tocqueville (1990), p. 228. 60

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ences.65 As we shall see below in section 3, this massification may be accompanied by a totalitarian organization of society. b) Unified Architecture and Design, Especially of Public Spaces The French anthropologist Marc Augé has examined a great variety of places, vehicles and devices, such as shopping malls, motorways, airplanes, cash machines and street furniture. They can be found everywhere and are similar throughout the industrialized world without belonging specifically to any particular country or region.66 These curious “non-places” as he calls them are related to the flow and movement of people, goods or services in a capitalist society.67 Sloterdijk speaks of “transit spaces” and “alternately overrun or empty no man’s lands”, marked by a “place without a self” “with which people do not usually develop any cultivating relationship, let alone attempt any identification.”68 Globalization thus appears to be the “indifferentiation of space”69. Before Augé, Alfred Lorenzer considered that “the expulsion of human expectations of experience from the current design of our cities is only a small, though noticeable part of the all-embracing process of dehumanization of the lifeworld”70. This homogenization and devitalization of public spaces and facilities can also be seen in many other areas and aspects of human existence in a capitalist society. We may indeed assume that its factories, habitations, household appliances as well as patterns and methods of working, learning and living become standardized under the imperatives of performance and efficiency. c) The Reign of Functionality and Technicity The tendencies just mentioned imply that modern objects and activities are generally conceived in order to serve specific concrete and practical needs in the most straightforward and economical way. The satisfaction of other, additional desires or motives among people involved in their production, handling or use, for instance aesthetic values or emotional pleasure, is not taken into account. Furthermore, even the material or immaterial, for instance decorative or behavioral elements which could provide such complementary satisfaction tend to be suppressed. This functionalist orientation was radically pronounced in a famous conference given by the Austrian architect Adolf Loos (1870 – 1933) who claimed to “have dis65

Pollmann (2008a), pp. 65 – 72 (69 – 71). Augé (2009). 67 For a complementary analysis, especially of shopping spaces, see Bauman (1991), pp. 98 – 104. 68 Sloterdijk (2013), pp. 151 f. 69 Sloterdijk (2013), p. 120 (transl. mod.). 70 Lorenzer (1981), p. 19. 66

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covered the following truth and offered it to the world: cultural evolution is equivalent to the removal of ornament from articles in daily use”. He thus considers “a plain piece of furniture more beautiful than all the inlaid and carved museum pieces”. On the economic level, he adds that “ornament is wasted manpower and hence wasted health. […] today it also means wasted material, […] wasted capital”.71 Looking far beyond mere architecture, urban planning and design, here we find a worldview that consists of rationalizing human life by obeying “instrumental reason”72. This means a thinking that “degrades reason to a capacity to execute, more concerned with the how than with the what”73. Declared unable to examine the purposes of life, reason is thus reduced to a simple tool.74 In this “world of means rather than of ends” (which we have already explored in section I. 2. a)), “recognition of means as such becomes increasingly difficult, since they assume the appearance of autonomous entities”, giving rise to “civilization as a rationalized irrationality”75 and growing “conscious or unconscious resentment against civilization”76. The rationalization of human life not only transforms and impoverishes reason, it also restricts the place of feelings in individual and collective affairs, as shown by the abovementioned removal of ornaments (but Loos hardly reflects on this emotional consequence). The organization of indifference plays a major role in this process. d) The Rule of Indifference by Abstraction The monotonization of the world also results from abstract patterns and mechanisms that curtail individuality and subjectivity. At least four or five essential features of modern life can be mentioned here77: the map and its selective representation of space, the clock and its creation of uniform time, money as the most “general equivalent” (Karl Marx), law as the impersonal system of social bordering and measuring and possibly also “intellectuality as the subjective [but at the same time “indifferent” and “absolutely characterless”78] representative of the objective world order”79 and of instrumental reason. All these devices serve as systems of equivalence and commensurability. They thus contribute, either directly or indirectly, to homogenizing human life and fostering interactions and exchange. They do so mainly by abstracting80, i. e. 71

Loos (2002), pp. 29 – 36. Horkheimer (2012). For a more elaborate analysis, see his Eclipse of reason (2013). 73 Horkheimer (2012), p. 55. 74 Horkheimer (2012), p. 92. 75 Horkheimer (2012), p. 102 and 94. 76 Horkheimer (2012), p. 109. 77 For the following elements, see Pollmann (2010), pp. 175 – 196, using Simmel (2011) and Postone (1996). 78 Simmel (2011), p. 468. 79 Simmel (2011), p. 466. 80 For space, time and money see Sloterdijk (2013), p. 13. 72

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extracting certain economically or socially important aspects from concrete situations or circumstances. The creation and handling of these tools of abstraction require authorities, means and procedures of which the setting up and the work can be called bureaucratization. We do not use this term in its habitual pejorative sense but in its etymological signification, bureaucracy meaning office power. The power exerted in or from an office is neither military nor sacred or charismatic – it is the power of the written sign! Astonishingly, the flattening of the world into two-dimensional inscriptions of words, numerals and graphic representations succeeds, by spatial, temporal and personal abstractions and classifications, in managing the complexification of social life.81 The increase in written representation and communication attests to two simultaneous multi-secular evolutions: the extension of market logic over the entire planet and to more and more products and services and the growth of public authorities, especially of State power. It thus suggests that market and State are two sides of the same coin82, a coin that we can call abstract social domination83. 2. The “Univocalization” of Individual Phenomena (Thomas Bauer) The technicization necessary to grasp the whole world not only creates monotony between phenomena in different places, but also makes each of these phenomena lose its wealth of meanings. This univocalization suggests that they tend to be restricted to a single meaning or, more commonly, to a couple of unequal meanings (a)). Such a dichotomy corresponds to – and is therefore fostered by – the functional logic of technical devices and thus precedes and prepares the creation of Homo machinalis (b)). a) The Growing Intolerance Towards Ambiguity The German Islamologist Thomas Bauer observes a modern tendency to see everything in a dichotomous84 if not a Manichean (black or white) way. We can hypothesize that it is the loss of sense, studied above, in association with growing capitalist pressures, which pushes human beings and societies to look for evidence and clear meanings and to reject ambiguity or indeterminacy by political, religious, alimentary and other fundamentalisms. According to Bauer, since the early 20th century we have witnessed a decreasing ambiguity in music, visual arts and architec81 See Sloterdijk (2013), pp. 94 – 101: “Only that which can successfully be stripped of one dimension can be conquered” (p. 101); Hibou (2015), especially “Neoliberal bureaucratization as abstraction”, pp. 24 – 32. 82 To this duality, we may add law (which Kelsen (1982) views as identical with the State generating a trinity of market, public authority and law) see Pollmann (2009), pp. 885 – 901. 83 Postone (1996), p. 149; Jappe (2017), pp. 14 – 25, 231 – 236. 84 On the asymmetrical interdependence of the two members of a dichotomy see Bauman (1991), pp. 14, 53 f.

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ture85 as well as in literature (where the popular thriller generally promises the resolution of uncertainty86). To support his point, he adds the contemporary trend towards realism and authenticity87, the weakening of politeness often defamed as political correctness88, the boom of racial, ethnic, sexual, religious and other clear identities (which are part of the problem and not a solution against discrimination)89 and overall the generalized obsession to explain, understand and control everything90. b) From Homo Sapiens to Homo Machinalis? It is surprising to realize that the loss of ambiguity and the tendency towards dichotomy correspond to the logic of technical devices (working or not working) and in particular to the nature of electric current (flowing or not flowing)! With the development of various technologies and machine ‘languages’, this binary scheme probably affects social interactions and communications. Would past prophecies of future society functioning like an anthill, a beehive or a termitary91 thus be fulfilled? Mechanized action would succeed individual and collective deliberation. Language would be reduced to “the mere exchange of requests and counter-requests which is the most primitive function of speech.”92 In the extreme case, linguistic signs would be replaced by electric signals devoid of interpretation93, corresponding to the chemical signals used by these creatures. The result would be “a hive society where each individual will only be a bee, a wheel in a machine, an atom in organized matter” (François-René de Chateaubriand in 183494). Written communication via e-mail and mobile phone illustrates this tendency towards stereotypical behavior without reflection. The overwhelming majority of emails responding to an initial mail are obtained using the Reply button and contain the original mail(s), despite the increased consumption of electricity. Even more significant is the case where the Reply button does not produce the desired result: from early January 2020 onwards, the author witnessed a strange avalanche of e-mails via a mailing list of more than 15,000 participants. After a few of them had tried to unsubscribe by sending a mail to the whole list, many recipients reminded them of the 85

Bauer (2018), pp. 41 – 61. Bauer (2018), p. 90. 87 Bauer (2018), pp. 62 – 70, 83 – 86. 88 Bauer (2018), pp. 68 f. 89 Bauer (2018), pp. 80 f. 90 Bauer (2018), pp. 88 f. 91 Chateaubriand, quoted by Vioulac (2013), p. 202; Valéry (1919), pp. 182 – 184 (184); Leroi-Gourhan (1993), pp. 357 – 362; Stiegler (2014), pp. 45 ff. 92 Safouan (2018), p. 38. 93 Breuer (1992), p. 152. 94 Chateaubriand, quoted by Vioulac (2013), p. 202. 86

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correct, indeed the only proper procedure, which was to send a mail to an automatic unsubscription device, as specified on the list web-site95. Nevertheless, he continued to receive hundreds of mails asking for the respective senders to be unsubscribed. The initial requests for unsubscription had probably provoked considerable displeasure, understandably, and thus triggered a vicious spiral of inoperative mails. Their ineffectiveness indicates our central point: senders did not read or understand the instructions but sent a reply automatically, as if they were themselves transformed into robots. Without elaborating on the similarities and differences between the two aforementioned metaphors of a beehive and a machine, we can sum up by suggesting that currently human life approaches the instinctive functioning of animals or the working of a machine. This tendency does not only imply that man is gradually being replaced by automated devices or that technological progress produces increasingly autonomous mechanisms. Above all, it means that, first, the individual is both summoned and tempted to be and act like a machine, while maintaining the ambition of mastery that distinguishes him or her from the machine. Computers and similar devices perform an “automatization of discipline”96. They organize their users’ “submission under their principle: pure functionality”, requiring them to “remove all individual characteristics and idiosyncrasies resulting from their bio-psychic nature”.97 Second, it suggests that society as a whole is seen, treated and working more and more as a piece of machinery, possibly making human beings as living entities superfluous. 3. Human Beings Becoming Superfluous and Society Turning Totalitarian During the 20th century, political philosophy coined the concept of totalitarianism. For a long time and under the influence of Hannah Arendt’s The origins of totalitarianism, this word has mainly designated a political regime based on terror such as Nazism and Stalinism.98 However, Arendt herself opened a second strand of analysis and definition, as in the same book she declares: “Totalitarianism strives not toward despotic rule over men, but toward a system in which men are superfluous. Total power can be achieved and safeguarded only in a world of conditioned reflexes, of marionettes without the slightest trace of spontaneity. Precisely because man’s resources are so great, he can be fully dominated only when he becomes a specimen of the animal-species man.”99

95

www.facebook.com/auberge.solidarite. Breuer (1992), p. 57 with references. 97 Breuer (1992), p. 109, on the basis of Jünger (1949). 98 Arendt (1958), p. 464. 99 Arendt (1958), p. 457. 96

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In her later reflection on modern ‘liberal’ society, Arendt elaborates on this world deprived of spontaneity: “The last stage of the laboring society, the society of jobholders, demands of its members a sheer automatic functioning, as though individual life had actually been submerged in the over-all life process of the species and the only active decision still required of the individual were to let go, so to speak, to abandon his individuality, the still individually sensed pain and trouble of living, and acquiesce in a dazed, ‘tranquilized’, functional type of behavior.”100 Without using the term totalitarianism, she makes it clear, a few lines later, that the result could be just as terrifying: “It is quite conceivable that the modern age – which began with such an unprecedented and promising outburst of human activity – may end in the deadliest, most sterile passivity history has ever known.”101 We do not know whether Arendt herself further developed the economic and technical dimensions of superfluity and “sheer automatic functioning” (which are accumulation of value, division of labor and automatization). While her contemporary Anders had already widely expounded this predicament in his analysis of the outdatedness of the human species102, recent research has shown in much greater detail how the progression of capitalism renders human beings more and more superfluous.103 This is so for three types of reason, the first being the loss of sense indicated above in sections I. 2. and 3. The other two reasons are linked to technological progress, which, on the one hand, strips workers of their jobs without providing sufficient new sources of income because of economic and ecological limits to growth. On the other hand, starting with the railway network as early as the 19th century and continuing with the car, elevator, escalator, airplane, scooter, trottinette, etc., motorized transportation replaces human muscle work while many recent electronic devices externalize human brain work. Two of human beings’ essential capacities thus tend to become superfluous. Digital virtualization seems to render lived reality and its spacetime worthless.104 The summit of externalization may be attained by so-called “artificial intelligence” (AI). In fact, this term105 is a public relations forgery, since purely electronic and mechanical AI has none of the non-quantifiable characteristics of intelligence such as spontaneity, unpredictability, creativity, empathy and emotionality.106 Nevertheless, its generalized adoption all over the world is doubly betraying. It reveals the fascination that automatized procedures, with their promises of omnipotence, exert over contemporary human beings and their feeling of powerlessness (see section I. 3. 100

Arendt (2018), p. 322. Arendt (2018), p. 322. 102 Anders (1956), vol. 1: on particular figures of superfluity, pp. 114 – 116 (experience), 195 f. (ideology, summed up in Anders (1980), vol. 2, pp. 188 – 192). 103 See Weinstein (2015); Vioulac (2013); Vassort (2012). 104 Weinstein (2015), pp. 7 f. 105 Coined in 1956 by John McCarthy (1996 ff.). 106 Landier (2017), pp. 85 – 90; Vidal (2019), pp. 58 – 66. 101

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above). It also foreshadows the regression of human intelligence and imagination to a series of mechanical operations. In other words, while AI cannot match intelligence, intelligence and concrete human thinking and behavior can easily be reduced to machine logic and in particular to the quantitative structure of AI. This “reductionism” with regard to life107 means a bodily, cerebral, imaginary and social involution, i. e. a return to the condition of a baby. We would become “diminished humans” rather than the promised “augmented man”.108 And on the political level, we can observe a “convergence of the systems that goes into the “direction: totalitarianism of appliances”.109 The superfluity of human beings is not the only cause of totalitarianism. Another is the rise of mass society. Once again, Arendt shows this connection, including elements already studied above (section II. 1.): “Totalitarian movements are possible wherever there are masses who for one reason or another have acquired the appetite for political organization. Masses are not held together by a consciousness of common interest and they lack that specific class articulateness which is expressed in determined, limited and obtainable goals. The term masses applies only where we deal with people who either because of sheer numbers, or indifference, or a combination of both, cannot be integrated into any organization based on common interest, into political parties or municipal governments or professional organizations or trade unions.”110 In order to explain the origins of masses, we have to come back to the link between massification and atomization briefly suggested above in section II. 1. a). Atomization is the result of industrialization, which consists in tearing human communities away from the soil and other livelihoods, producing individuals similar to and isolated from each other, therefore dependent on an anonymous system of production. There are indeed no masses without individuals. Thus, “[t]otalitarianism appeals to the very dangerous emotional needs of people who live in complete isolation and in fear of one another”111. Contrary to a widespread legend, this is not at all an individualistic, but a “herdsociety”112. In spite of their related etymology and as indicated earlier,113 atomization and individualization can be sharply distinguished: “The emancipation of the individual is not an emancipation from society, but the deliverance of society from atomization, an atomization that may reach its peak in periods of collectivization and mass culture.”114 The agglomeration of the gregarious individuals into an amorphous and 107

Tibon-Cornillot (2011). See the question put by Landier (2017), p. 89. 109 Anders(1980), vol. 2, pp. 108 f. 110 Arendt (1958), p. 311. 111 Arendt (1978). 112 Stiegler (2009), pp. 37 – 89 (48 mentioning Nietzsche). 113 See above note 62. 114 Horkheimer (2013), p. 135. 108

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malleable herd tends to monopolize the totality of powers. The social mass can be seen as a pure quantity of passive might only the State will be able to dispose of.

Concluding Remarks This brings us back to the question of the relationship between the two conditions of totalitarianism: terror and superfluity. If superfluity is taken in the wide sense of denial or anxiety regarding human existence, terror appears as a possible consequence of superfluity, which therefore seems to be the more fundamental problem115. In order to avoid or limit superfluity, but also to relativize the power of atomized and unified masses, ambiguity is a sort of loophole, an escape, presumably “the only force able to contain and defuse modernity’s destructive, genocidal potential.”116 At the same time, this is precisely the reason why the State is regularly called upon to combat ambiguity (or ambivalence, considered here as equivalent). Thus emerges one of the vicious circles or spirals, which seem to characterize and feed the dynamics of modernity, since “the modern struggle against ambivalence […] turns into the main source of the phenomenon it is meant to extinguish”117. By trying to grasp – to know, to possess and to order – the whole world while simultaneously agitating it under the imperative of capital valorization, modernity indeed (re)creates ambiguity permanently. It is therefore necessary to ask whether Alexander von Humboldt’s program can and should be modified, if not abandoned. Is this desirable? Now that the Earth has been largely conquered and studied, traditional spatial and scientific expansion is no longer useful (if it ever was). Further exploration of outer space and other planets requires disproportionate efforts and costs without providing any substantial benefit for human societies, except that it satisfies the yearning of some individuals or groups for omnipotence. The desire to extend the hold that humanity has over the world could look into areas that have been increasingly neglected during the last centuries: the psychic and spiritual life, the emotional dimension of human existence, relational problems between individuals and groups, the persistence of war, etc. This could be the way to develop the unified human science that Norbert Elias has aspired to118. However, the shift to these areas would have to refrain from or overcome the imperial stance Sigmund Freud took with his psychological enterprise when claiming that “[p]sychoanalysis is an instrument to enable the ego to achieve a progressive conquest of the id”119. In order to canalize our appetite for power and control, which seems to be the basis of the increasingly suicidal success of Western civilization, it is possibly 115

Similarly, but without a clear answer Weinstein (2015), p. 379 f. Bauman (1991), p. 51 f. 117 Weinstein (2015), p. 15. 118 Elias (2001), p. 36. 119 Freud (1974), pp. 12 – 59 (56, we emphasize). 116

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necessary to regain some ‘vertical’ authority, exterior and anterior to present human beings120 and therefore metaphysically grounded. This would allow us to further deploy our capacities to listen, to be touched, to respond and to empathize.121 Is such a reorientation possible? We do not know, but our ignorance is tempered by the conviction that competition and atomized masses render such a project difficult to realize. In other words, in order to avoid the vicious spiral of more domination, accumulation, acceleration and desolation, it may be vital to disentangle countries and societies from each other, to demonetize and relocalize economic activities along with many others and to revalorize the human body and its sensorial possibilities and experiences.122 Bibliography Anders, Günther (1956 and 1980): Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen, vol. 1: Über die Seele im Zeitalter der zweiten industriellen Revolution, and vol. 2: Über die Zerstörung des Lebens im Zeitalter der dritten industriellen Revolution. München: C. H. Beck. Arendt, Hannah (1958): The origins of totalitarianism (1951). Cleveland/Ohio/New York: World Publishing Co. Arendt, Hannah (1977): “The conquest of space and the stature of man” (1963), Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought. Harmondsworth/UK/New York: Penguin, pp. 265 – 280. Arendt, Hannah (1978): “From an Interview”, The New York Review of Books, Oct. 26, 1978, www.nybooks.com. Arendt, Hannah (2018): The human condition (1958), new foreword D. Allen, introduction M. Canovan. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2nd ed. Augé, Marc (2009): Non-places: An introduction to supermodernity (1992). London: Verso, 2nd ed. Bauer, Thomas (2018): Die Vereindeutigung der Welt. Über den Verlust an Mehrdeutigkeit und Vielfalt. Ditzingen: Reclam. Bauman, Zygmunt (1991): Modernity and ambivalence. Cambridge/UK: Polity. Bauman, Zygmunt (2000): Liquid modernity. Cambridge/UK: Polity. Beck, Ulrich (1992): Risk society: Towards a new modernity. London: SAGE. Beck, Ulrich (2009): World at risk. Cambridge/UK: Polity. Benveniste, Émile (2016): Dictionary of Indo-European concepts and society (1969). Chicago: HAU Books. Bréchignac, Catherine (2009): N’ayons pas peur de la science. Raison et déraison (57 p.). Paris: Éd. CNRS. 120

Lebrun (2020). Rosa (2019). 122 See Lamberts/Schutter (2020). 121

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Breuer, Stefan (1992): Die Gesellschaft des Verschwindens. Von der Selbstzerstörung der technischen Zivilisation. Hamburg: Junius. Carnino, Guillaume (2015): L’invention de la science. La nouvelle religion de l’âge industriel. Paris: Seuil. Coppens, Yves (1996): “Une réalité bien vivante”, Le Monde, Sept. 3, 1996. Desmurget, Michel (2019): La fabrique du crétin digital. Les dangers des écrans pour nos enfants. Paris: Seuil. Elias, Norbert (2001): The society of individuals (1939 – 1987). New York: Continuum. Elias, Norbert (2007): Involvement and detachment [Contributions to the sociology of knowledge, 1983]. Dublin: Univ. College Dublin Press. Ellul, Jacques (1977): The technological system. Eugene/OR: Wipf and Stock. Ellul, Jacques (1990): The technological bluff. Grand Rapids/Mich.: W. B. Eerdmans. Freed, Richard (2018): “The tech industry’s war on kids. How psychology is being used as a weapon against children”, March 2018, https://medium.com/@richardnfreed/the-tech-indus trys-psychological-war-on-kids-c452870464ce. Freud, Sigmund (1974): “The Ego and the Id” (1923), The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud. London: Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-analysis 1953 – 1974, vol. 19, pp. 12 – 59. Godelier, Maurice (2012): The mental and the material: thought, economy and society (1984). London: Verso. Habermas, Jürgen (1999): “Zur Legitimation durch Menschenrechte”, in: H. Brunkhorst and P. Niesen (eds.), Das Recht der Republik. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp. Hibou, Béatrice (2015): The bureaucratization of the world in the neoliberal era: international and comparative perspective. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Horkheimer, Max (2012): Critique of instrumental reason (collection of German papers 1954 – 1967), transl. by M. J. O’Connell et al. London: Verso. Horkheimer, Max (2013): Eclipse of reason. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press 1947. Eastford/CT: Martino Fine Books (page-identical). Humboldt, Alexander von (2010): Cosmos. A sketch of the physical description of the Universe (1845 – 1862), transl. by E. Sabine. Cambridge/UK: Cambridge Univ. Press. Jappe, Anselm (2017): La société autophage: capitalisme, démesure et autodestruction. Paris: La Découverte. Jünger, Friedrich Georg (1949): The failure of technology: perfection without purpose (1939 – 1953). Hinsdale/Ill.: Henry Regnery. Kelsen, Hans (1982): Der soziologische und der juristische Staatsbegriff: kritische Untersuchung des Verhältnisses von Staat und Recht (2nd ed. 1928). Aalen: Scientia. Lamberts, Philippe/de Schutter, Olivier (2020): “Comment le coronavirus pointe la fragilité de nos sociétés néolibérales”, La Libre [Belgique], Feb. 18, 2020, www.lalibre.be. Landier, Hubert (2017): “L’intelligence artificielle est-elle intelligente?”, Futuribles. L’anticipation au service de l’action no. 421, Nov. 2017, pp. 85 – 90.

Totalizing and Monotonizing Expansion of Individual and Collective Human Life 117 Lebrun, Jean-Pierre (2020): Un immonde sans limite. 25 ans après Un monde sans limite [Érès 1997]. Toulouse: Érès. Leroi-Gourhan, André (1993): Gesture and speech (1964). Cambridge/Mass.: MIT Press. London, Bernard (1932): “Ending the depression through planned obsolescence” (20 p.). Madison: University of Wisconsin, https://commons.wikimedia.org. Loos, Adolf (2002): “Ornament and crime” (1908), in: B. Miller and M. Ward (eds.), Crime and ornament, the arts and popular culture in the shadow of Adolf Loos. Toronto: XYZ Books. Lorenzer, Alfred (1981): Das Konzil der Buchhalter: Die Zerstörung der Sinnlichkeit. Eine Religionskritik. Köln: Europäische Verlagsanstalt. McCarthy, John (1996 ff.): Defending AI research: A collection of essays and reviews, Stanford: Center for the study of language and information publications. Musil, Robert (1995): The man without qualities (1930 – 1943). New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Musso, Pierre (2017): La Religion industrielle: Monastère, manufacture, usine. Une généalogie de l’entreprise. Paris: Fayard. Ortega y Gasset, José (1994): The revolt of the masses (1930). New York: W. W. Norton & Co. Pascal, Blaise (2015): Pensées: Thoughts on Religion (posthumous 1669), transl. by W. F. Trotter. Brookfield/Ill.: Letcetera. Pollmann, Christopher (2005): “La subjectivité au service des connaissances?”, review of Robert M. Strozier, Foucault, subjectivity and identity. Historical constructions of subject and self. Detroit: Wayne State Univ. Press 2002, Le Portique [online], no. 1/2005, http://jour nals.openedition.org/leportique/515. Pollmann, Christopher (2008a): “Borders and boundaries, a modern form of power”, Vox juris. Revista de derecho (Univ. of San Martín de Porres Law School, Lima, Peru), no. 16, pp. 65 – 72, www.derecho.usmp.edu.pe. Pollmann, Christopher (2008b): “L’intellect – source de connaissance ou d’ignorance de soi?”, paper on Irvin D. Yalom, Et Nietzsche a pleuré [original: When Nietzsche wept]. Paris: Galaade 2007, Raison présente no. 168, Oct. 2008, pp. 140 – 142, http://web.nietzsche.free.fr/ roman.htm. Pollmann, Christopher (2008c): “Accumulation, accélération et individualisme juridique. Droit, société et politique dans l’emballement du monde”, Mélanges Michel Miaille: Le droit figure du politique, Univ. of Montpellier I, 2008, vol. I, pp. 369–442 (402–408), https://halshs.ar chives-ouvertes.fr. Pollmann, Christopher (2009): “Entre (im)puissance divine et énergie marchande: De l’Étatpropriétaire à l’État-gérant”, review essay on H. Rabault, L’État entre théologie et technologie. Origine, sens et fonction du concept d’État. Paris: L’Harmattan 2007, Revue de la recherche juridique no. 2/2009, pp. 885 – 901, https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr. Pollmann, Christopher (2010): “Globalisation et atomisation. Des confins ancestraux aux frontières individualisées: le droit, le temps et l’argent”, in : J.-L. Deshayes and D. Francfort (eds.), Du barbelé au pointillé: les frontières au regard des sciences humaines et sociales, Nancy: Presses univ. de Nancy, pp. 175 – 196, http://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr.

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Pollmann, Christopher (2011): “L’étendue de l’inconscient individuel, facteur de conflit collectif. Pour un matérialisme psychologique”, in : M.-Cl. Caloz-Tschopp (ed.), Colère, courage et création politique (7 vol.), vol. 3: La colère, une passion politique? Paris: L’Harmattan, pp. 261 – 280, https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr. Pollmann, Christopher: “Diminuer le refoulement éducatif pour éviter le défoulement meurtrier. Après Auschwitz, reconnaître la dimension affective de notre existence et apprendre la vie relationnelle”, forthcoming in: F. Lemarchand and P. Vassort (eds.), Théorie critique des crises contemporaines. Postone, Moishe (1996): Time, labor and social domination: A reinterpretation of Marx’s critical theory. Cambridge/UK: Cambridge Univ. Press. Rosa, Hartmut (2015): Social acceleration: A new theory of modernity. New York: Columbia Univ. Press. Rosa, Hartmut (2019): Resonance. A sociology of our relationship to the world. Cambridge/ UK: Polity. Rouzet, Olivier (2019): “On n’arrête pas le progrès, on l’accélère”, Kairos no. 42, pp. 6 – 7. Safouan, Moustapha (2018): La civilisation post-œdipienne. Paris: Hermann. Sckell, Soraya Nour (2022): “The cosmos of Alexander von Humboldt from a cosmopolitan perspective”, forthcoming in: P. König and O. Schlaudt, Kosmos. Vom Umgang mit der Welt zwischen Ausdruck und Ordnung, Heidelberg: Heidelberg Univ. Publishing. Sennett, Richard (1998): The corrosion of character. The personal consequences of work in the new capitalism. New York/London: Norton. Simmel, Georg (2011): The philosophy of money (2nd ed. 1920). London: Routledge. Sloterdijk, Peter (2013): In the world interior of capital. For a philosophical theory of globalization. Cambridge/UK: Polity. Spitzer, Manfred (2019): Die Smartphone-Epidemie: Gefahren für Gesundheit, Bildung und Gesellschaft. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta. Stiegler, Bernard (2009): “To love, to love me, to love us: From September 11 to April 21”, Acting out. Standford: Stanford Univ. Press, pp. 37 – 89. Stiegler, Bernard (2014): Symbolic misery, vol. 1: The hyperindustrial epoch. Cambridge/UK: Polity. Strauss, Leo (1989): The rebirth of classical political rationalism. An introduction to the thought of Leo Strauss: essays and lectures. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press. Tibon-Cornillot, Michel (2003): “En route vers la planète radieuse – déferlement des techniques, insolence philosophique”, Rue Descartes no. 41, 2003/3, pp. 52 – 63. Tibon-Cornillot, Michel (2011): Les corps transfigurés. Mécanisation du vivant et imaginaire de la biologie, new ed. Paris: Éditions MF. Tocqueville, Alexis de (2018): Democracy in America (1835), transl. by H. Reeve as revised by F. Bowen. New York: Vintage. Twenge, Jean M. (2018): iGen: Why today’s super-connected kids are growing up less rebellious, more tolerant, less happy – and completely unprepared for adulthood – and what that means for the rest of us. New York: Atria.

Totalizing and Monotonizing Expansion of Individual and Collective Human Life 119 Valéry, Paul (1919): “Letter from France: the spiritual crisis”, The Athenaeum no. 4641, April 11, 1919, pp. 182 – 184. Vassort, Patrick (2012): L’homme superflu. Théorie politique de la crise en cours. Paris: Le passager clandestin. Vidal, Catherine (2019): Nos cerveaux resteront-il humains? (83 p.). Paris: Le Pommier. Vioulac, Jean (2013): La logique totalitaire. Essai sur la crise de l’Occident. Paris: Presses univ. de France. Weinstein, Marc (2015): L’évolution totalitaire de l’Occident. Sacralité politique I. Paris: Hermann. Zweig, Stefan (1993): “The Monotonization of the World” (1925), in: A. Kaes et al. (eds.), The Weimar Republic sourcebook. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, pp. 397 – 400, http://ger manhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/docpage.cfm?docpage_id=4722.

A Cosmopolitan Approach to Just War Theory Pedro Tiago Ferreira The concept of justice is one of the most elusive concepts of the history of philosophical thought; nevertheless, it can be surmised from the various conceptions of justice advanced throughout the history of ideas that there are three values and one principle that no theory of justice can ignore; the values to which I allude here are human life, liberty and dignity, which must be protected, if not at all costs, at least to the highest degree possible, and the principle is equality between human beings. These values and this principle form the core of justice;1 this means that actions that breach one of these values or disrespect this principle ought, prima facie, to be considered unjust. Thus, even if one is unable to define positively and precisely what justice is, one can still inductively identify specific instances of injustice by appeal to the core of justice. Since an adequate protection of the core of justice is only possible in times of peace, war is prima facie an unjust institution. It is, however, manifest that under certain circumstances the protection of human life, liberty and dignity may be restricted or outright removed. It is patently not unjust to kill a human being in self-defence if that human being, as an aggressor, acts with a view to kill or inflict serious bodily harm (potentially lethal) on another human being. Moreover, if someone commits a crime, it is not unjust to deprive the agent temporarily of their liberty with a view to their rehabilitation. These examples indicate that no theory of justice may provide arguments that result in unwarranted restrictions to the protection of every human being’s life, liberty and dignity, and remain a theory of justice. Such arguments must always be justified, and the justification has, in some way, to be grounded on the fact that the restriction or removal of the protection of these values is only permissible in order to protect other people’s life, liberty and dignity. Besides, deviations from the principle of equality are only admissible if the persons whose lives, liberty or dignity is to be restricted or forfeited have for some reason become liable to it, and, as Jeff McMahan points out, “a person is liable to be harmed only if harming him will serve some further purpose – for example, if it will prevent him from unjustly harming someone, deter him (or perhaps others) from further wrongdoing, or compensate a victim of his prior wrongdoing” (McMahan 2009: 8).

1

I have developed the idea of the core of justice at some length in Ferreira (2015).

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Just war theory provides principles that add to the reasons that may make it admissible to breach the values and disregard the principle that form the core of justice. Since just war theories are, however, theories of justice, the restriction to, or the removal of, the protection of the values and principle that constitute the core of justice within the context of war must be justified along the same lines that have been mentioned here. There are two principal views on just war theory, which I shall label, following John W. Lango, “state-centric” and “cosmopolitan”: “many just war theories are, or tend largely to be, state-centric. Roughly, a state-centric just war theory understands just war principles as primarily applicable to wars between states. More explicitly, according to a state-centric just war theory, the primary agents that apply just war principles are states (or rulers of states), and the primary targets to which those agents apply just war principles are states (or the military actions of states)” (Lango 2014: 6).

By contrast, there are “many varieties of cosmopolitanism” (Dower 2007: 81), and for this reason “[d]ifferent cosmopolitan just war theories might accept different cosmopolitan just war principles.” (Lango 2014: 7) I shall pay particular attention to Lango’s cosmopolitan just war theory later in this essay, but for now I would like to point out that most, if not all, cosmopolitan just war theories agree on the principles of just cause, last resort, proportionality and non-combatant immunity. Moreover, they share this agreement with most state-centric just war theories. There is, however, an important difference between state-centric and cosmopolitan just war theories. State-centric views on just war theory include the principle of legal authority among just war principles, whereas cosmopolitan views normally reject this principle. There is therefore a wedge between authors who hold that states are the only legitimate subjects of war, that is, are the only entities that may both morally and legally initiate war, suspend it, terminate it, be the direct object of hostilities and do everything else related to war, and authors who argue that everyone, from individuals to organized or ad hoc groups, including terrorist networks, may legitimately engage in warfare from a moral point of view, even if it is illegal for them to do so. Two of the most important thinkers of the 20th century, Hans Morgenthau and John Rawls, have contributed to just war theory thought by advocating a state-centric view of international relations and conflict. Morgenthau’s positions stem from his life-long battle against rationalism. In the early 1950s, Morgenthau considered that “[t]he history of modern political thought is the story of a contest between two schools which differ fundamentally in their conception of the nature of man, society, and politics. One believes that a rational and moral political order, derived from universally valid abstract principles, can be achieved here and now. It assumes the essential goodness and infinite malleability of human nature and attributes the failure of the social order to measure up to the rational standards to lack of knowledge and understanding, obsolescent social institutions, or the depravity of certain isolated individuals or groups. It trusts in education, reform, and the sporadic use of force to remedy these deficiencies. The other school believes that the world, imperfect as it is from the rational point of view, is the result of forces which are in-

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herent in human nature. To improve the world one must work with those forces, not against them. This being inherently a world of opposing interests and of conflict among them, moral principles can never be fully realized, but at best approximated through the ever temporary balancing of interests and the ever precarious settlement of conflicts. This school, then, sees in a system of checks and balances a universal principle for all pluralist societies. It appeals to historic precedent rather than to abstract principles, and aims at achievement of the lesser evil rather than of the absolute good” (Morgenthau 1952: 961 – 962).

The first school of thought to which Morgenthau alludes is rationalism, whereas the second is realism. As is well-known, Morgenthau was a stout realist. He believed that “the political and military catastrophes of the thirties and early forties [of the twentieth century] and the political crises of the mid-forties bear too uniform a pattern to be attributed to accidents or to the shortcomings of individuals alone. They are but the outward manifestations of an intellectual, moral, and political disease which has its roots in the basic philosophic assumptions of the age” (Morgenthau 1947: 12).

In other words, blame for then recent political and military crises should not be placed on the hypothetical lack of knowledge and sophistication of the individual or on the putative decadent institutions of the era, but on rationalism, the philosophical doctrine that, as Morgenthau observes, underlined the basic philosophical assumptions that existed at the time: “When speaking of philosophy [throughout Scientific Man vs Power Politics] we are referring to the largely unconscious intellectual assumptions by which the age lives, its basic convictions as to the nature of man and society, which give meaning to thought and action. The main characteristic of this philosophy is the reliance on reason to find through a series of logical deductions from either postulated or empirical premises the truths of philosophy, ethics, and politics alike and through its own inner force to re-create reality in the image of these truths. This philosophy has found its classical realization in the rationalism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Yet its influence extends beyond these centuries and, as a mode of thought apart from any particular school of philosophy, dominates the modern mind” (idem: 10).

According to Morgenthau, the problem with rationalism is that, “[a]s rationalism sees it, the world is governed by laws which are accessible to human reason. In the last analysis, there exists a fundamental identity between the human mind and the laws which govern the world; one and the same reason reigns over both.” (idem: 17) Morgenthau goes on to argue that, “[f]rom the fundamental concept that man and world are governed by rational laws which human reason is able to understand and apply, rationalistic philosophy draws four conclusions. First, that the rationally right and the ethically good are identical. Second, that the rationally right action is of necessity the successful one. Third, that education leads man to the rationally right, hence, good and successful, action. Fourth, that the laws of reason, as applied to the social sphere, are universal in their application” (idem: 19).

This means that rationalism embodies an attempt to model the social sciences on the natural sciences. “Since reason in the form of causality reveals itself most plainly

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in nature, nature became the model of the social world and the natural sciences the image of what the social sciences one day will be.” (idem: 111) Followers of this idea justify it by claiming that, through the reason employed in scientific enquiry, truth, in whatever domain, would be obtainable. Morgenthau puts this notion thus: “There is only one truth, the truth of science, and by knowing it man would know all.” (idem) This is certainly an alluring prospect but, of course, the adequacy of applying the method of the natural sciences to the social sciences does not depend on mere assertion. In true scientific fashion, it would have to be verified by trial and error experiments. Such experiments have been made for several decades, and for Morgenthau they not only yielded unfortunate results but also revealed that the inadequacy of reasoning in the field of the social sciences using the paradigm of the natural sciences is rooted in the fact that “[t]he analogy between natural and social world is mistaken for two reasons which lie in the domain of practical control and theoretical structure.” (idem) The first of those reasons has to do with human action, as it is “unable to mould the natural and social world with the same degree of technical perfection.” (idem) The second lies in the acknowledgment that “the very concept of physical nature as the paradigm of reason, from which the analogy between natural and social world derives, is invalidated by modern scientific thought itself; and it is only in rationalistic philosophy and science that it still leads a ghostlike existence.” (idem) In the political arena, the “universal acceptance [of rationalism] initiated an intellectual movement and a political technique which retarded, rather than furthered, man’s mastery over the social world.” (idem) Furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, “[p]olitics is an art and not a science, and what is required for its mastery is not the rationality of the engineer but the wisdom and the moral strength of the statesman.” (idem: 17) For all these reasons, “the interpretation of a political situation in terms of the immutable postulates of reason was no less powerful an ideological weapon than the invocation of religion, tradition, and custom by which the feudal order justified its existence.” (idem: 24) In other words, Morgenthau warns us that the “immutable postulates of reason” are a handy tool to advance the pretentions of those who invoke them and, because of this, their “immutableness” is totally rhetorical. For Morgenthau, then, international relations, and the conflicts inherent to it, cannot be regulated purely from a normative standpoint, that is, by reason. For this reason, it is a mistake, according to Morgenthau, to assume that lasting peace may be built simply out of normative ideas because certain conditions that would enable their implementation in the world are lacking. The most important of such conditions is world public opinion, that is, “a public opinion which transcends national boundaries and which unites members of different nations in a consensus with regard to at least certain fundamental international issues,” (Morgenthau 1948: 198) whose function would be, along with international ethics and international law, to “delimit, regulate, and civilize the struggle for power among nations in the same way as the domestic normative orders fulfill this function for the struggle for power among individuals belonging to the same domestic society,” (idem: 173) and which, as Morgenthau observes, does not exist: “Modern history has not recorded

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one instance of a government having been deterred from a certain international policy by the spontaneous reaction of a supranational public opinion.” (idem: 198). The consequences of Morgenthau’s thought for just war theory are that it is not sufficient to argue that waging war is unjust based solely on rationalistic principles. As Carl von Clausewitz, a precursor of Morgenthau’s in the realist school of thought, remarks, “war is not merely an act of policy but a true political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, carried on with other means.” (Clausewitz 1989: 87) For the realists, war is a recourse of political action. As Clausewitz equally observes, “[t]he political object is the goal, war is the means of reaching it, and means can never be considered in isolation from their purpose.” (idem) This proviso is important because it shows that neither Clausewitz nor his realist followers suggest that it is permissible to engage in war, especially of an offensive kind, without good reason. But good reason is not the same as just cause; the standards of the former take actual political conditions under consideration, whereas the latter is formulated purely from rationalistic principles that purport to show what is the right action in moral and abstract terms, and this is why, unlike the view propounded by authors who follow closely traditional just war theory based on rationalistic principles, the realists do not think it is unjust to use war as a means to satisfy a country’s raison d’État, which may include imperialist purposes. Imperialism, according to Morgenthau, is “a policy which aims at the overthrow of the status quo, at a reversal of the power relations between two or more nations.” (Morgenthau 1948: 27) In order to achieve such a reversal, a state may need to resort to an offensive war, since it is precluded from altering the status quo by legal means, as “[w]henever the issue is one of determination of rights or of accommodation of interests within the generally accepted framework of the status quo, the courts will find for the plaintiff or the defendant, as the case may be,” but “[w]henever the issue is one of preservation or fundamental change of the status quo, the answer of the courts is ready before a question is even asked: they must decide in favor of the existing status quo and refute the demand for change,” (idem: 343) which means, in the field of international relations, that “[a] court, the product and the mouthpiece of the law as it is, has no way of deciding the real issue of a dispute whose subject matter is also the subject matter of a tension.2 A court is, in a sense, a party to such a dispute. A court, identified as it is with the status quo and the law representing it, has no standard of judgment transcending the conflict between the defense of the status quo and the demand for change. It cannot settle that conflict. It can only take sides. In the guise of an impartial settlement of the real issue, a court is almost bound to decide the apparent issue in favor of the status quo. In this inability of a court to transcend the limita2

Morgenthau distinguishes conflicts of power in international relations by grouping them under “tensions” and “disputes”: “At the bottom of disputes which entail the risk of war, there is a tension between the desire to preserve the existing distribution of power and the desire to overthrow it. These conflicting desires (…) are rarely expressed in their own terms – terms of power – but in moral or legal terms. What the representatives of nations talk about are moral principles and legal claims. What their talk refers to are conflicts of power. We propose to refer to the unformulated conflicts of power as ‘tensions’ and call the conflicts which are formulated in legal terms ‘disputes.’” (Morgenthau, 1948: 344)

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tions of its origin and functions lies the real cause of its inability to decide between the relative merits of the status quo and a new distribution of power” (idem: 345).

In other words, even if international law had a coercive court system akin to the court systems institutionalized within states, it would not be possible to change the existing status quo through legal battles because the law, being a product of the existing status quo, inevitably and invariably sides with it. Thus, changing the status quo as the result of the prosecution of an imperialist policy is only possible by extra-legal means. Since, in international relations, “extra-legal means” amounts to political means that have no bearing on international law,3 war, as an instrument of policy, may be used along with embargoes, alliances and other purely political means at the disposal of states to shape the international status quo. The position assumed by realists such as Morgenthau is outdated because nowadays imperialist policies are always deemed unjust. Therefore, even if one grants to realism that the admissibility of war is somehow dependent on the political conditions that obtain in the real world, and not only on postulates derivable from reason, to attempt to change the status quo in order to enhance the state’s power is unjust because, among other things, imperialist policies do not offer a sound moral justification for breaching the core of justice by restricting or removing the protection of the life, liberty and dignity of certain people (those who are on the receiving end of acts of war), as those people do not become liable to suffer acts of war simply because they are in the way of a given imperialist policy. Morgenthau, however, calls our attention to the fact that “[n]ot every foreign policy aiming at an increase in the power of a nation is necessarily a manifestation of imperialism,” as a “policy seeking only adjustment, leaving the essence of [the] power relations [between two or more nations] intact, still operates within the general framework of a policy of the status quo.” (idem: 27) An example of such an adjustment would be the expulsion of an invader who has occupied part of the territory of a state by means of force. Such an undertaking, if successful, would increase the power of the state, which has recovered its previously occupied territory without upsetting the power relations between itself and its invader. Rationalists would actually find such an action permissible because it falls under the principles of just cause and self-defense. The difference between rationalists and realists is that the latter take just war principles under consideration along with the national interest, whereas the former argue that the national interest is morally irrelevant. Realism is bound, however, to go too far because its own postulates allow states to confuse the national interest with a just cause, and thus to wage offensive wars which, from the imperialist nation’s perspective, are just, and this is important because it helps to legitimize the war effort in the eyes of its citizens. The possibility of confusion between national interest and just cause, however, is one of 3

Politics is, of course, an instrument to create and change the law; this is so both within states and in international relations. The field of politics is, however, much broader, as not all political action is concerned with affecting the law. Hence, the distinction between political action aimed at changing the law and political action whose goal is to achieve a certain result regardless of what the law says, or of the possibility of changing it.

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the main reasons why realism lost much of its philosophical ground in the last sixty years, and is currently seen as an outdated political philosophy. Still, as Ellen Rafshoon observes, Morgenthau’s “examination of the ethics of the Vietnam war led him to revise his notion of how national interests should be determined in making foreign policy, from a calculation based on purely strategic factors to one that also takes moral factors into account.” (Rafshoon 2002: 55) Nevertheless, before his writings on Vietnam, Morgenthau already took moral factors into account: “Morgenthau adopts an Augustinian, rather than Hobbesian-Machiavellian, moral framework, reconciling cosmopolitan principles with a recalcitrant reality by representing their relationship as a dialectical tension. This leads him to develop a practical morality which emphasizes the continued application of cosmopolitan imperatives to action, mitigated by a consequentialist orientation which demands that they be applied cautiously and always adapted to circumstances. This generates a political morality which reconciles the imperatives of morality and national survival by asserting that, while the national interest must be protected, it must always be subjected to strict moral limitations” (Murray 1996: 81).

For my part, I think it is more correct to say that, on building his system of practical morality, Morgenthau shifted his emphasis from a focus on pure strategic factors, characteristic of his earlier writings, into moral considerations after he started to write on the Vietnam war, but both have always been present in his thought. There is no denying, however, the existence of a marked change on his conception of the national interest as a result of this shift, so much so that it is not out of place to note that Morgenthau’s later writings are amongst the early steps in displacing realism from the dominant position it enjoyed in political philosophy up until the end of the Second World War. In any case, I disagree with Murray in his observation that Morgenthau’s practical morality emphasized “the continued application of cosmopolitan imperatives to action,” as Morgenthau’s writings clearly show that he considers the nation-state as the only subject of international relations and international law. I acknowledge some cosmopolitan features in Morgenthau’s thought due to his concern with the individual, especially at the later stage of his career, but this does not seem to be sufficient to argue that Morgenthau’s view on just war is cosmopolitan, and not state-centric. Morgenthau clearly has in view the state when he writes on international relations and conflict, and this preoccupation with the state, characteristic of his era, downplays whatever cosmopolitan features may be dispersed throughout his work. The emphasis of realists is on war as an instrument of political action whose utility lies in changing the status quo, something that must always be done by extralegal means; the actors on the international scene, that is, the subjects of international relations, are states, not individuals or other organizations. Since the state is the only entity with legal authority to engage in war, it follows that realism, especially Morgenthau’s variety, is state-centric as far as just war theory is concerned. Rawls’s state-centric view on just war theory is neither realist nor rationalistic in essence, but it employs some features characteristic of both rationalism and realism. Through his “Law of Peoples” doctrine, Rawls applies one of his most important philosophical ideas, justice as fairness, originally developed having in view formally

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organized societies, (Rawls 1999) to a society of nations. (Rawls 2002) In the Law of Peoples, representatives of peoples are placed behind a veil of ignorance in what Rawls calls “the original position.” In reality, there are two original positions. The first “models what we regard – you and I, here and now – as fair and reasonable conditions for the parties, who are rational representatives of free and equal, reasonable and rational citizens, to specify fair terms of cooperation for regulating the basic structure of this society.” (idem: 30) This is the original position as developed in A Theory of Justice, to be applied within formally organized societies. The second original position “extend[s] a liberal conception of the Law of Peoples. As in the first instance, it is a model of representation, since it models what we would regard – you and I, here and now – as fair conditions under which the parties, this time the rational representatives of liberal peoples, are to specify the Law of Peoples, guided by appropriate reasons.” (idem: 32) Much of the same procedural steps taken when agreeing to principles of justice for a single society are repeated when determining principles of justice to regulate the relations between different societies, albeit with important modifications, since those who are now subject to the principles of justice are peoples, not persons.4 There is a manifestation of rationalism in Rawls’s thought by presenting eight principles without which the Law of Peoples cannot do. Rawls calls these “familiar and traditional principles of justice among free and democratic peoples.” (idem: 37) They are the following: “1. Peoples are free and independent, and their freedom and independence are to be respected by other peoples. 2. Peoples are to observe treaties and undertakings. 3. Peoples are equal and are parties to the agreements that bind them. 4. Peoples are to observe a duty of non-intervention. 5. Peoples have the right of self-defense but no right to instigate war for reasons other than self-defense. 6. Peoples are to honor human rights. 7. Peoples are to observe certain specified restrictions in the conduct of war. 8. Peoples have a duty to assist other peoples living under unfavorable conditions that prevent their having a just or decent political and social regime” (idem).

The most striking feature of the Law of Peoples, however, is its extension to a certain kind of non-liberal society. As Rawls says, the challenge is “to specify a second kind of society – a decent, though not a liberal society – to be recognized as a bona fide member of a politically reasonable Society of Peoples and in this sense ‘tolerated.’ We must try to formulate the criteria for a decent society. Our aim is to extend the Law of Peoples to decent societies and to show that they accept the same Law of Peoples that liberal societies do. This shared law describes the kind of Society of Peoples that all liberal and decent societies want, and it expresses the regulative end of their foreign policies” (idem: 63). 4

For an analysis of these procedural steps cf. Ferreira (2017).

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At first glance, this is surprising considering the importance Rawls attaches to principles of justice conducive to liberal societies. The existence of illiberal societies is, however, a fact that no amount of ideal theory can erase. Rawls argues that liberal societies ought to share the Law of Peoples with societies that, albeit non-liberal, are decent, as their leaders respect, among other things, their citizens’ human rights, do not make arbitrary decisions, and allow their citizens some intervention in political affairs, notwithstanding the fact that such societies are, at best, only nominal democracies. (idem: 64 – 67) Unlike other illiberal societies, that is to say, “certain regimes [which] refuse to comply with a reasonable Law of Peoples,” which “think a sufficient reason to engage in war is that war advances, or might advance, the regime’s rational (not reasonable) interests,” called by Rawls “outlaw states,” (idem: 90) decent societies are to be trusted in foreign relations: “judged by the principles of a liberal democratic society, a decent hierarchical society clearly does not treat its members equally. A decent society does, however, have a common good political conception of justice, and this conception is honored in its decent consultation hierarchy. Moreover, it honors a reasonable and just Law of Peoples, the same law that liberal peoples do. That law applies to how peoples treat each other as peoples. How peoples treat each other and how they treat their own members are, it is important to recognize, two different things. A decent hierarchical society honors a reasonable and just Law of Peoples even though it does not treat its own members reasonably or justly as free and equal citizens, since it lacks the liberal idea of citizenship” (idem: 83).

Moreover, since “[n]o state has a right to war in the pursuit of its rational, as opposed to its reasonable, interests” (idem: 91), in a clear refutation of the realist doctrine that allows war to be waged in pursuit of the national interest even when that interest is of an imperialistic kind, the Law of Peoples precludes all nations that are regulated by it to ever waging war on one another. Only wars in self-defence are permitted (idem), and since both liberal and decent societies have no rational or reasonable reasons to conduct offensive wars, as the Law of Peoples is apt to peacefully resolve all types of conflict that are bound to appear between nations, the only wars that are possible within the Rawlsian system of thought involve outlaw states, those states that fall outside the scope of the Law of Peoples, either amongst themselves or in offensive wars against liberal or decent societies. It is interesting to note that if Rawls’s ideas were to be enacted in the world, it would be completely composed of liberal states, and thus the state of war would become a normative impossibility since all conflicts between states would be peacefully resolved by the Law of Peoples, which would be followed by every state without exception. The normative impossibility of waging war would thus result from the prohibition of waging offensive wars and the inapplicability of self-defence doctrines to concrete instances, since no offensive wars would ever be initiated by a liberal society. This normative impossibility would become, in time, a factual impossibility, as predictably the institution of war would fall, in time, in disuse. This is an example of what Rawls calls “realistically utopian political philosophy”:

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“political philosophy is realistically Utopian when it extends what are ordinarily thought to be the limits of practicable political possibility and, in so doing, reconciles us to our political and social condition. Our hope for the future of our society rests on the belief that the social world allows a reasonably just constitutional democracy existing as a member of a reasonably just Society of Peoples” (idem: 11).

By arguing that the Law of Peoples is a realistically utopian political philosophy, Rawls takes a page out of realism. Just like the realists, Rawls is concerned with proposing a normative political theory capable of application in the world as we know it. Unlike the realists, however, Rawls does not take into consideration the political factors of the moment, but this is because justice as fairness, whether applied to a national society or to the Society of Nations, is of timeless application: “The veil of ignorance, to mention one prominent feature of [the original] position, has no specific metaphysical implications concerning the nature of the self; it does not imply that the self is ontologically prior to the facts about persons that the parties are excluded from knowing. We can, as it were, enter this position at any time simply by reasoning for principles of justice in accordance with […] restrictions on information” (Rawls 2005: 27).

As I stated above, Rawls borrows both from rationalism and realism without endorsing, in essence, one or the other school of thought. The Law of Peoples has rationalistic features because its principles are derivable from reason, but it at the same time encompasses realist concerns because it strives for implementation not in a purely ideal world, but in the world as we know it, notwithstanding the fact that the conditions for such implementation are not available at the present moment. One can assume that Rawls’s state-centric just war theory stems from his view, which one can garner from his several writings, that justice is only possible through the medium of institutions, and not in the a-institutional setting typical of what has been termed, in political philosophy, the “state of nature.” Perhaps this is so for social, commutative, distributive and other forms of justice which are, indeed, administered by community institutions, and indeed only make sense, as ideas, within an institutional setting, as in the state of nature there is nothing members of a community owe to each other because there is no community. Armed conflict, however, is not something whose existence is dependent on institutions; it is part and parcel of the state of nature, as Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, among others, have clearly demonstrated; just war principles are principles that regulate the admissibility of engaging in armed conflict (jus ad bellum), the conduct of actors during that conflict (jus in bello), and the behaviour of the victorious individual or party after the conflict has ended (jus post bellum), regardless of there being institutions or not. In other words, armed conflict can happen both in the state of nature and in the social state created by the social contract. I believe it is in part for this reason Lango argues that “in contemporary theorising about just war principles, there ought to be a paradigm shift from a state-centric approach to a cosmopolitan approach. Just war principles are moral principles. But the idea of cosmopolitanism should not be simply a moral idea. It should also be a

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political idea. Indeed, it should involve a conception of moral universalism, but it should also involve political conceptions of global governance and global citizenship” (Lango 2014: 7).

This means that “received just war principles should be generalised, not only so that they are applicable to all forms of armed conflict, but also so that they are applicable by all sorts of responsible agents. In addition to the Security Council [of the United Nations], they should be applicable by regional organisations (e. g. NATO), individual states, terrorist networks, revolutionary groups and so forth,” (idem: 13) including the individual (idem: 21 – 22) because, “in contrast to state-centric just war principles, the legitimacy criteria are applicable to all forms of armed conflict: interstate wars, civil wars, armed humanitarian interventions, counterinsurgency operations, counterterrorism operations, military operations by UN peacekeeping missions and so forth.” (idem: 20) In other words, Lango’s cosmopolitan position opposes the traditional, state-centric view whereby states are, as we have seen, the sole subjects of war. If, however, war affects both natural and juridical persons, that is to say, the individual, the state and other organizations created by human beings, there seems to be no reason to adhere to the state-centric vision of just war theory denounced by Lango, and endorsed, among others, by Morgenthau and Rawls. A cosmopolitan view of just war theory such as the one advocated by Lango has the advantage, over state-centric views like the ones advanced by Morgenthau and Rawls, of placing individuals, qua individuals or organized in groups, formal or informal, ad hoc or systematic, short-lived or long-lasting, as possible subjects of war alongside states; this means that, just like states, individuals or the organizations created by them may initiate war, suspend it, terminate it, be the direct object of hostilities and do everything else states do related to war, and are therefore bound by just war theory. However, as a matter of positive international law war remains, and probably will remain for some time, the exclusive province of states, in flagrant breach of what, as a matter of justice according to the cosmopolitan view of just war theory, ought to be the case. Lango apparently has no problem with this, since he states that “the idea of moral authority is different from the idea of legal authority,” and then asks “[s]hould the set of core just war principles contain a principle of ‘legal authority’?” (idem: 194) In answering his own question, he notes that “a particular use of armed force is not just because the Security Council decides that it is just. Instead, the Security Council ought to decide that it is just because it truly is just. To decide that it is just, the Security Council has the burden of proving that it has a just cause, that it is a last resort, that it would be proportionate and that it would not grievously harm noncombatants intentionally. To decide that it is just, there is not the additional burden of proving that the Security Council has the legal authority to decide whether it is just. If it is just, it would still be just, even if the Security Council did not have the legal authority to decide whether it is just” (idem).

Lango sees the legal authority principle as superfluous to a cosmopolitan view of just war theory because anyone can judge, in particular instances, whether there is

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just cause to engage in a given armed conflict, regardless of the putative judge having or not legal authority to decide if a particular conflict is just. Thus, “the set of core just war principles does not contain a legal authority principle. Core just war principles are applicable to all forms of armed conflict – for example, armed revolutions. And they are applicable by all sorts of responsible agents – for example, leaders of armed revolutions. A core legal authority principle is rejected, because (among other reasons) an armed revolution could not satisfy it” (idem).

However, even if one does not need legal authority to decide whether a specific armed conflict is just, one does need legal authority to act within the bounds of the law. Lango’s argument is not circumscribed to contemplative moral positions; “the idea of cosmopolitanism,” as the author says, “should not be simply a moral idea. It should also be a political idea.” Now, political ideas are ideas intended to produce effects in the world. If just war theory binds the individual and other groups besides the state, that means those agents have moral legitimacy to engage in warfare, and not only to merely contemplate whether it is just to use physical force in a given situation. This means that, if the individual, either alone or in groups formed with other individuals, has moral legitimacy to engage in armed conflict but lacks the legal authority to do so, the states affected by such conduct will deal with such individuals or groups according to their own internal legal system, and not under the rules of international law. In other words, states will perceive such individuals and groups not as belligerents, but as criminals, which means that the internal legal systems of those states will not consider just war theory in dealing with agents that are, from their own perspective, criminals. Therefore, without a legal authority principle built-in in the set of core cosmopolitan just war principles it does not seem to be possible to consider the individual, as well as other groups besides the state, as belligerents, that is, as subjects of war. The individual, as well as those groups, shall be confined, without a principal of legal authority, to judge whether a particular war is just. This negates Lango’s assertion that just war theory is applicable to all forms of armed conflict, at least if one sees cosmopolitan just war theory as also a theory of action, and not merely as a theory of judgement. Since Lango’s own position is that cosmopolitan just war theory is both a moral theory and a political theory, I fail to see how it can escape being understood as both a theory of judgement and of action. The solution for the contradiction in which Lango falls by rejecting the inclusion of the principle of legal authority in his set of core just war principles is, of course, to admit it into it. Since, however, legal authority, so far as positive international law understands it, lies solely with the state, its inclusion in cosmopolitan just war theory necessitates its modification so that it may be legally admissible for individuals and other groups besides the state to engage in war as direct subjects, which is what cosmopolitan just war theory requires. Absent the political will of states to recognise such a modification of the principle of legal authority either by express treaty provisions or by starting a practice eventually leading to a rule of customary international law, the only way to effect it is by

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making a point of legal theory and legal philosophy which cannot be fully developed here, but can be traced in broad terms. This point has to do with the demarcation between morality and law. For the school of thought known as “legal positivism,” that had its heyday in the 19th century, and was still very much influential deep into the 20th, morality and law are two distinct normative systems that do not overlap. As H.L.A. Hart observes, “[a]t the close of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth the most earnest thinkers in England about legal and social problems and the architects of great reforms were the great Utilitarians. Two of them, Bentham and Austin, constantly insisted on the need to distinguish, firmly and with the maximum of clarity, law as it is from law as it ought to be. This theme haunts their work, and they condemned the natural-law thinkers precisely because they had blurred this apparently simple but vital distinction” (Hart 1983: 50).

This means, among other things, that, for the positivists, the validity of law does not depend on its being just. Legal positivists are, of course, right in maintaining that morality and law are not the same thing, especially because each is a different type of normative system that aims at regulating different aspects of human life, but they are wrong when they argue that law and morality do not overlap, or when they maintain that the validity of law is never dependent on moral precepts. Hans Kelsen makes precisely this mistake when he presupposes that only relative moral values exist, which leads him to argue that “the validity of a positive legal order is independent of the validity of this one, solely valid, absolute moral order, ‘the’ moral order, the moral order par excellence. If only relative moral values are presupposed, then the postulate that the law ought to be moral, that is, just, can only mean that the formation of positive law ought to conform to one specific moral system among the many possible systems. […] The postulate, made under the supposition of a relativistic theory of value, to separate law and morals and therefore law and justice, merely means this: (1) If a legal order is judged to be moral or immoral, just or unjust, these evaluations express the relation of the legal order to one of many possible moral systems but not to ‘the’ moral system and therefore constitute only a relative, not an absolute, value judgment; and (2) the validity of a positive legal order does not depend on its conformity with some moral system” (Kelsen 2009: 66 – 67).

Such a view on the validity of law drives an unwarranted wedge between natural law, which has been, to a great extent, created and developed by the moral convictions of human beings, and positive law, making the former non-juridical and therefore unusable when discussing legal issues. This conception of what law is, and what its sources may be, actually impoverishes legal discourse because it puts too much strain on the decisions of legislators and judges, or on the customs of a given community, and this leads to the rather dismal consequence of non liquet situations as the result of lacunae in the positive law. As Ronald Dworkin notes, one of the “key tenets” of legal positivism is that “[t]he law of a community is a set of special rules used by the community directly or indirectly for the purpose of determining which behavior will be punished or coerced by the public power. […] The set of these valid legal rules is exhaustive of ‘the law’, so that if some-

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one’s case is not clearly covered by such a rule (because there is none that seems appropriate, or those that seem appropriate are vague, or for some other reason) then that case cannot be decided by ‘applying the law.’ It must be decided by some official, like a judge, ‘exercising his discretion,’ which means reaching beyond the law for some other sort of standard to guide him in manufacturing a fresh legal rule or supplementing an old one” (Dworkin 1978: 17).

In other words, legal positivists, according to Dworkin, have to reach “beyond the law” when solving concrete disputes that find no answer in positive legal rules. If, however, one acknowledges that law is a normative system teleologically designed to serve justice, then it follows that precepts of justice, such as the ones that make up just war theory, may be directly used in legal discourse in order to solve disputes. This means that natural law and positive law are two different, but interrelated, halves of law; both of them are juridical and may be used in legal discourse; admittedly, this displeases legal positivists as it allows some overlap between morality and law, but I believe the main point behind legal positivism, i. e. that there is a difference between law and other normative systems, namely morality, remains intact, as it is possible to differentiate law from morality while recognizing, at the same time, that some features of morality are legal as well. This position, or at least certain variants of it, has been labelled “post-positivism,” and is followed by most legal theorists who no longer adhere to the traditional tenets of legal positivism, and who acknowledge there is room, in law, for morality via secular natural law, that is, for a “viewpoint or world view unaided by faith, that is properly called natural law,” (Weinreb 2004: 2288) based essentially on “responsibility as the difference between persons and things” (idem: 2292) and on the circumstance that “[n]atural rights, or human rights, are asserted as a matter of fact, to which the proper response is not, ‘I think – don’t think – that would be a good idea,’ or ‘I agree’ or ‘I don’t agree,’ but simply ‘True’ or ‘False.’” (idem: 2291). This is largely the position advanced by Neil MacCormick’s “institutional theory of law,” according to which “autonomous morality makes certain demands of law, and commends the withholding of the appellation ‘law’ from any positive enactments that absolutely violate any reasonable conception of justice. […] On this analysis, laws are not necessarily just, or good in other ways. They may be grounded in grave misconceptions about the common good, and yet fulfil the law’s own internal tests for legal validity. But there is some moral minimum without which purported law becomes un-law. ‘No longer legal but rather a corruption of law.’ Then the duty of a decent human being is to evade, disobey, even resist to the extent that this is feasible. In this situation, ‘Obey punctually, but censure freely’ is then wrong on both its legs – the opportunity for free criticism (‘censure’) of the practices of government is unavailable, and the grounds for voluntary obedience do not exist. The school of thought known as ‘legal positivism’, at any rate in its more austere and rigorous forms, absolutely excludes the possibility that there is any moral minimum that is necessary to the existence of law as such. The positive character of law is all there is to it. Conversely, the question of the moral value of obedience to law is always an open one. According to that conception of legal positivism, the present version of institutional theory is nonpositivist, or, if you wish, ‘post-positivist’” (MacCormick 2007: 278).

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If MacCormick and the post-positivists are right, then positive law not only may be invalidated when it breaches morality, but it is equally apt to be deemed invalid by omission if such omissions result in injustices. As far as just war theory is concerned, if Lango is correct in his views that just war principles are applicable to all kinds of agents, and not merely to states, it follows that the positive law on war is invalid so far as it adheres to a state-centric view of just war theory. It is important to realize that the fact that most subjects of international law, namely states, only consider themselves bound by positive law is immaterial when discussing the nature of law, or what counts as law. The positivistic stance that international law assumed from the 19th century onwards reflects the ascendancy of the school of legal positivism in legal theory; the displacement made by post-positivism of legal positivism affects all branches of jurisprudence, and international law is no exception. Such a shift in legal theory is, however, reluctantly seen by states, since it removes from their sphere a measure of control of what international law is, as it stops being exclusively a law made by and for nation-states, and becomes a law in which the state is but a subject of international law alongside other subjects of international law, such as organizations or the individual. As positive international law disavows moral cosmopolitanism’s thought pertaining to war, and considers itself a closed autopoietic system which, for now, is controlled by states, it is no wonder that states want to maintain the legal status quo created by the legal positivist school of thought and identify international law with positive international law. Concessions have been made to several political philosophies, namely to liberalism and cosmopolitanism, which resulted in the incorporation, in international positive law, of the recognition of other subjects of international law besides the state; the appearance of non-governmental organizations and of the individual in the international scene as subjects of international law are two good examples of this. Such concessions, however, have so far been controlled by states, either directly or via the United Nations through declarations, covenants and treaties. International law is thus still shaped exclusively by states through instruments that are sources of positive law, and states are naturally disinclined to relinquish control of international law by acknowledging that positive international law is not all there is to international law, that the rules of international law may be created or changed by circumstances or factors outside of the control of states. Such a stance, openly opposed to certain currents of contemporary moral, political and legal thought is, however, to be seen as a manifestation of power politics, and not as a philosophical contribution to the nature of law, or to how international law may be affected by moral philosophy, cosmopolitan or of any other kind. One can thus conclude, following Roberto Ago, that “[w]ith the intention of isolating the sphere of law and distinguishing it from that of other orders of knowledge which was its great merit, and with the ambition of making only that which really can be called law the object of legal science, separating it clearly from everything that is only aspiration, subjective expression of ideal needs of justice, or no less subjective deductions from principles which are said to be rationalistic, legal positivism made

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one mistake: that of following an a priori concept of law which led it to be too restrictive in tracing the boundary line. And so only ‘jus positum’ remained in the field of law – and sometimes not even that – while all law which, because it had not been positum and had been easily confused with non-legal elements in the past, but is still no less law than law which has been ‘laid down,’ and contains all the essential norms of every legal system, without which even law which had been ‘laid down’ would not be law, was excluded from it. […] This return to the field of law of the part which seems to be the product of spontaneous germination and not of will or of a ‘laying down,’ must be carried out with the full knowledge that this law, although differently expressed, actually appears no less clearly and really existing and operating than that which was laid down by special productive organs, and that it is therefore perfectly capable of being specified and known by legal science which is not a science for nothing. However, […] in order for this full acceptance of the reality and legality of spontaneous law to be reached, it is absolutely essential to overcome the false idea, which gained ground owing to legal positivism, that legality is a kind of mark stamped on certain norms because they come from certain sources, because they were created by a given body whatever body that may have been. It is essential to recognize that legality is a qualification which legal science attributes to definite opinions, to given norms according to certain specific characteristics of their functioning in social life, and not because these opinions and these norms are propositions desired by certain bodies or produced by certain processes. Having recognized this, it is therefore a question of applying to that part of law which we have called spontaneous methods which correspond to its specific nature, and not to employ means which at best can only be used for law which has been laid down by special law-creating organs, or to hold that this law cannot be recognized by legal science only because these same limited methods cannot be applied to it. This law must be recognized for what it is: as a law which was formed spontaneously, following various causes and motives which have nothing to do with a formal process of production” (Ago 1957: 728 – 729).

The “spontaneously formed law” to which Ago refers is natural law; being “present and essential in every legal order, [it] takes on much greater importance in the international order, since, because of the equalizing structure of international society, all common international law is exclusively law of this nature.” (idem: 730) In other words, natural law pervades international law. In fact, it is “common international law,” which means that positive international law, the kind of law that is “laid down,” is the exception, not the rule. This in no way diminishes the importance of positive international law on the international scene, but it demonstrates clearly that international law is far from corresponding in its entirety with the will of sovereign states. Common international law, being equated with natural law, the kind of law that is spontaneously formed by human thought and practice, and not so much by institutional (state) practice, is juridical and expounds precepts of justice which are of a legal nature. I believe Lango’s arguments convincingly show that his view on cosmopolitan just war theory is correct, that war is an affair in which the individual, as well as other groups besides states, may legitimately engage in. This legitimacy is moral and juridical because it does not make sense to talk of individuals having a moral right to judge whether a specific instance of armed conflict is just and to engage in it without having the corresponding legal right to do so. The kind of moral right to

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which Lango refers is a natural right, the right to use force to defend one’s life, liberty and dignity from oppression, in self-defence and in pursuit of a just cause. If this is so, then this right is simultaneously juridical and must be recognised by law-applying organs, which ought to disregard, as being invalid, positive law that clashes with it. For these reasons, I believe Lango’s cosmopolitan view on just war theory is superior to Morgenthau’s and Rawls’s state-centric views; it can, however, be advanced further, as it can be seen not only as a moral and a political theory, but also as a legal theory. And this is very important because it is the only way to confer on belligerents who are not states the status of subjects of war. Bibliography Ago, Roberto (1957): Positive Law and International Law, in: The American Journal of International Law, 51(4), pp. 691 – 733. Clausewitz, Carl von (1989): On War. M. Howard/P. Paret (eds.), M. Howard/P. Paret (Trans.), Princeton/New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Dower, Nigel (2007): World Ethics: The New Agenda (2nd ed.). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Ferreira, Pedro Tiago (2015): Os direitos fundamentais como garante da ideia de Direito, in: Data Venia, 4, pp. 288 – 343. Retrieved from http://www.datavenia.pt/ficheiros/edicao04/data venia04_287-344.pdf. Ferreira, Pedro Tiago (2017): John Rawls, in: Forma de Vida (Recensões). Retrieved from https://formadevida.org/recensoes/127-john-rawls. Hart, H. L. A. (1983): Positivism and the separation of law and morals, in: Essays in jurisprudence and philosophy. Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 49 – 87. Kelsen, Hans (2009): Pure theory of law. (M. Knight, Trans.) New Jersey: The Lawbook Exchange. Lango, John W. (2014): The Ethics of Armed Conflict: A Cosmopolitan Just War Theory. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. MacCormick, Neil (2007): Institutions of law – An essay in legal theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McMahan, Jeff (2009): Killing in War. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Morgenthau, Hans (1947): Scientific man versus power politics. London: University of Chicago Press. Morgenthau, Hans (1948): Politics among nations: the struggle for power and peace. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Morgenthau, Hans (1952): Another “Great Debate”: The National Interest of the United States, in: The American Political Science Review, 46(4), pp. 961 – 988, doi:10.2307/1952108. Murray, A. J. (1996): The Moral Politics of Hans Morgenthau, in: The Review of Politics, 58(1), pp. 81 – 107.

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Rafshoon, Ellen Glaser (2002): A realist’s moral opposition to war: Hans J. Morgenthau and Vietnam, in: Peace & Change, 26(1), pp. 55 – 77, doi: 10.1111/0149 – 0508.00178. Rawls, John (1999): A Theory of Justice (2nd ed.). Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap. Rawls, John (2002): The Law of Peoples. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Rawls, John (2005): Political Liberalism (Expanded ed.). New York: Columbia University Press. Weinreb, Lloyd L. (2004): A Secular Theory of Natural Law, in: Fordham Law Review, 72(6), pp. 2286 – 2300.

The Importance of Non-Governmental Organisations for Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals: Combating Racial Discrimination Against of Roma in Europe1 Cristina Hermida del Llano Here we examine the decisive role that non-governmental organizations play in fulfilling goals of sustainable development, especially with regard to minorities, such as the Roma in Europe. I will show how non-governmental organizations, thanks to the close relationship that they have with Roma communities, constitute key actors in the fight against discrimination of these groups. In fact, by being able to work as partners with other public and private entities, non-governmental organizations become strategic organizations in the development of programmes with Roma communities, above all at the local level, cognizant of the importance local actions have for achieving the sustainable development goals. The 17 global goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development were promulgated on January 1st, 2016. By 2030, we will see which of these goals of this ambitious international agenda will have been achieved, which center on the eradication of poverty, the reduction of inequalities, and sustainable development as parts of an indivisible whole, for which human rights form an essential pillar (Ferrajoli 1999). The steps for the universal application of the 17 goals (SDG) must necessarily be adopted “locally”, that is, each country, region, or city must incorporate the agenda goals to its own reality and its own development.2 Citizens play a decisive role in 1

This contribution was presented at the Humboldt Kolleg “To grasp the whole world. On the 250th Anniversary of Alexander von Humboldt”, organized by Soraya Nour Sckell (FDUNL), held at the Faculdade de Direito da Universidade Nova, Lisboa, 4 – 6 December 2019, as the result of several research projects: “The prohibition of racial discrimination in the European Union” (587051-EPP-1-2017-1-ES-EPPJMO-CHAIR), European Commission. Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency and Universidad Rey Juan Carlos; Proyecto Puente de investigación at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos “Inmigración y gestión de la diversidad cultural” (INGESDICUL) 2020; UNESCO Chair on Culture of Peace and Human Rights (ED/PLS/HED/17/111). Parts of this contribution were published in an anthology edited by Paloma Durán y Lalaguna, Sagrario Morán Blanco, Castor M. Díaz Barrado and Carlos Fernández Liesa. Verdiales López, D. M. (coord.), Public-Private Partnerships and sustainable development goals: proposals for the implementation of the 2030 Agenda. Madrid: Instituto de Estudios Internacionales y Europeos “Francisco de Vitoria”, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, pp. 17 – 32. 2 In the words of the former Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki Moon: “The implementation is proof of the new agenda”.

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defining the development that each country, region, or city seeks to follow, without forgetting the indispensable participation of those persons who are more disadvantaged but should not be left behind (Goycoolea Prado – Megías Rosa 2017). This is the case for the Roma population, which is not only the largest ethnic minority in Europe – between 10 and 12 million people –,3 but also constitutes one of its most vulnerable groups, victimized by poverty, social exclusion, and discrimination as an ethnic minority.4 Unfortunately, despite the programs used to date to combat racial discrimination of Roma in Europe, the data show that the measures adopted have not been effective and call for ever more fervent efforts of prevention of discrimination. raising social awareness, and improving the care Roma victims receive who have suffered discrimination, in many cases on multiple fronts (Cortes 2019). In view of the desolate panorama that Roma face, here I will try to show how NGOs,5 thanks to the close relationship that they have with Roma communities, constitute “key actors in the fight against discrimination of these groups” and are able to work as partners with other public and private entities, by converting them into “strategic organizations in the development of programs with Roma communities, above 3 Of these, around 6.2 million reside in the European Union (EU), the majority in central and eastern member states. See COM (2011) 173 final, of April 5, 2011, “A European framework of national strategies for the inclusion of the Roma until 2020”. See also the special report n814 of the European Court of Auditors of 2016: “Initiatives and financial aid of the EU for the integration of Roma: despite significant advances in the last decade, nonetheless additional efforts are required in the field”, which was presented in concert with Article 287, section 4, second paragraph of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. According to this report, about four fifths of the estimated Roma population of the EU live in 8 member states: Romania, Bulgaria, Spain, Hungary, Slovakia, France, Czech Republic, and Greece. 4 In member States with the highest concentrations of Roma (Bulgaria, Slovakia, Romania and Hungary), the Roma represent between 15 to 20 % of students enrolled in school and of those recently entering the work force. Ibidem. 5 According to the NET-KARD Project “Practical Guide for NGOs to prevent discrimination against the Roma Community”, edited by Berill Baranyai (ACIDI, I.P.), Maria Helena Torres (ACIDI, I.P.), Maria José Vicente (EAPN Portugal), Paula Cruz (EAPN Portugal), Vasco Malta (ACIDI, I.P.), in July 2014, with financial support by the Programme for Fundamental Rights and Citizenship of the European JUST/2012/FRAC/AG/2848: “The term ‘non-governmental organizations’ generally refer to any organization that does not belong nor is related to any government institution. NGOs are social groups with a social and political role within the community and society; they have a formal legal structure; they are related and tied to society or community through acts of solidarity; are not for profit; and enjoy a considerable degree of autonomy. In this sector, a small number of entities is economically independent, while the majority depends on public aid” (p. 34). To understand the role of NGOs in this area, please see https://www.coe.int/es/web/compass/human-rights-activism-and-the-roleof-ngos. As highlighted here, the NGOs, “in a very direct sense, tools that are available for use by persons and groups around the world. They are administered and coordinated – like many organizations – by individuals, but a large part of their effectiveness derives as well from other community members that volunteer their support for the cause. This fact confers a great importance for persons who wish to contribute to the improvement of human rights in the world”.

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all at the local level”, cognizant of the importance local actions have for fulfilling the SDGs (Díaz Barrado – Fernández Liesa 2018). The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR) has for decades highlighted the importance of NGOs as guarantors of human rights throughout the world. It is worth recalling here that the UN Declaration concerning the defenders of human rights began to be elaborated in 1984 and was approved by the General Assembly in 1998, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, stating in article 1 that “everyone has the right, individually and in association with others, to promote and to strive for the protection and realization of human rights and fundamental freedoms at the national and international levels”.6 The collective efforts of numerous NGOs on human rights and the delegations from some States contributed to the final result of a declaration that is a coherent, useful, and pragmatic text. This text is directed not only at States and the defenders of human rights but addressed all citizens. Everyone, without exception, has a role to fulfill in defence of these rights, given that we are ineluctably stakeholders in global affairs. A few years before, in 1993, 841 NGOs attended the World Conference of human rights, known as the Vienna Conference, all of which declared a willingness to work on a mission in defense of human rights.7 Here we will concern ourselves with the decisive role that NGOs play in fulfilling the goals of the SDG and, more specifically, to combat racial discrimination of the Roma in Europe.8 To support this thesis, it is enormously relevant to return to the “Practical guide for NGOs to prevent discrimination against the Roma Community”9 6

Declaration on the Right and Responsibility of Individuals, Groups and Organs of Society to Promote and Protect Universally Recognized Human Rights and Fundamental Freedom. A/ RES/53/144 8 March 1999. Resolution A/RES/53/144 of the General Assembly by which the Declaration concerning the defenders of human rights was approved. 7 Although it might come as a surprise, this number is only a small fraction of all NGOs dedicated to human rights in the world. The majority of “human rights organizations” tend to be dedicated to the protection of civil and political rights. Organizations of this kind best known, at least internationally, are Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, The International Federation for human rights, Human Rights First and Interrights, https://www.coe.int/ es/web/compass/human-rights-activism-and-the-role-of-ngos. 8 In Spain, for example, the following NGOs, among others, play a notable role: SOS Racismo or the Fundación Secretariado Gitano. Specifically, the Fundación Secretariado Gitano (FSG) writes annual reports. These reports have a central mission to expose the day-today existence of ethnic discrimination with respect to the Roma community using confirmed data, selected from practical experience from the more than 70 centers of the FSG throughout Spain. 9 https://www.gitanos.org/upload/72/18/Guia_NetKard_ONG_y_com._gitana.pdf. This guide was edited by Berill Baranyai (ACIDI, I.P.), María Helena Torres (ACIDI, I.P.), María José Vicente (EAPN Portugal), Paula Cruz (EAPN Portugal), Vasco Malta (ACIDI, I.P.). This Guide addresses NGOs and Roma associations with the aim to provide resources for the representatives of these organizations with the goal to prevent discrimination against Roma communities and provide practical tools to promote the creation of networks among other interested parties. The content of the Guide is the result of a constellation of discussion groups and interviews carried out by partners of the Project in Portugal, Spain, Romania, and Italy.

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of 2014, which resulted from the project NET-KARD,10 part of the Programme for Fundamental Rights and Citizenship of the European Union involving the following partners: The Fundación Secretariado Gitano (principal partner, Spain); the European Anti-Poverty Network (EAPN Portugal); the High Commission for Immigration and Intercultural Dialogue (ACIDI, IP) (Portugal); Centrul de Resourse Juridice (CRJ) (Romania); Fundatia Secretariatul Romilor (Romania); Ufficio Nazionale Antidiscriminazioni Razziali (Italy); and the Istituto Internazionale Scienze Mediche Antropologiche e Sociali (Italy). As this Guide details, when one asks what the fundamental tasks for NGOs are in this context, certainly the priority is to raise awareness in the majority of society, including amongst the key professionals.11 We should keep in mind that the NGOs take on a key role in actions to raise social awareness at both the national as well as local levels, and, in collaboration with other public and private organizations, through the dissemination of information about the fight against ethnic discrimination, the promotion of equal treatment and different awareness campaigns, including respect for diversity and the promotion of intercultural dialogue (Hermida 2018). From a methodological and practical perspective, one of the key figures is that of the Roma mediator/facilitator, as this figure is responsible for conveying information to Roma communities, not only about their rights and privileges but also about the procedures that need to be followed in reporting incidences of discrimination. Indeed, the Roma mediators/facilitators play an important role in the schools of some European nations.12 I concur with the Council of Europe in pointing out that raising social awareness in this regard goes hand in hand with education,13 to the The participants are NGOs and representatives of associations/communities of Roma who provided their testimony and experience acquired in the fight against discrimination of Roma communities and tackling their principal difficulties. Moreover, they proposed solutions and recommendations concerning how to improve this work. In addition, the knowledge of the partners of Net-Kard have regarding these topics to generate a help manual for the NGOs and Roma associations, thereby not only having a merely informative character, but also acting as a working tool for planning actions in the field, above all strategic actions to combat discrimination against Roma communities. 10 The project had the following goal: “Cooperation and networking between the key actors for preventing the discrimination of Roma communities, improving the support for victims through the promotion of cooperation and networking between the principal actors involved in the defense of the right to equality and improve and transfer the methodological experience to different countries that are part of the project.” See ibidem. 11 This means that these actions should not only be directed at Roma citizens, but also at non-Roma, including here all citizens and not just key professionals. See ibidem. 12 One should offer specific training to teachers to prevent and combat any prejudice these professionals may have concerning the Roma population. 13 Activism in favor of Human Rights and the role of Non-Governmental Organizations, Council of Europe, Compass: Education Manual for Young People on Human Rights https:// www.coe.int/es/web/compass/human-rights-activism-and-the-role-of-ngos. Indeed, many NGOs on human rights include, at least as part of their activities, some type of information directed towards the public, or educational work. Conscious of the fact that the essence of their

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point that this support, or possibilities of support, is where one can find the foundation for the success of the NGO community in improving the human rights situation.14 In conjunction with this important role in raising social awareness, the NGOs also fulfill equally important roles: (1) The NGOs play a principal role in monitoring social policies to the extent that they are often intimately involved in their formulation. In some countries this role has been formalized through structures such as “National Strategies for the Integration of the Roma Community” as well as other national and local structures. This participation is important, as social action groups lobby and thus influence decision-making. It is interesting to note that the Council of Europe15 recognizes that if there is a common fundamental thread underlying the different forms of activism by NGOs, it may lie in trying to demonstrate who the perpetrators of injustice are, as it is very often the governments that try to evade the contractual obligations under international treaties and other rules of law.16 Among other relevant activities of the NGOs in fulfilling this function, we cite the following: 1) letter campaigns designed to pressure civil servants; 2) protest marches and demonstrations, with media coverage, with the aim of gaining the support of the public and shedding light on specific topics;17 3) concerted actions through communication, electronic mail, blogs, social networks and Internet;18 4) Shadow reports presented to the United Nations organizations that monitor human rights to give the perspective of the NGOs concerning the true human rights situation in a specific country. A good example of this last activity is the platform Futuro en Común,19 support is to be found in the public, the NGOs often try to achieve a better understanding of human rights with the aim of generating more respect, and, in turn, increase the probability of being able to call on support in case the rights are violated. 14 See ibidem. 15 See ibidem. 16 Two of the best-known examples of organizations that produce and present monitoring reports are Amnesty International and the International Committee of the Red Cross. As is well known, these two organizations exude authority not only among the general public, but also at the UN level, since their reports are taken into account as part of the official monitoring process of governments that have accepted the terms of the international treaties. https://www. coe.int/es/web/compass/human-rights-activism-and-the-role-of-ngos. 17 In addition to demonstrations of support or outrage from the public, NGOs can also participate in meetings or private meetings with civil servants. Sometimes, the simple threat of publicly airing issues getting something out of public view may be enough to change a policy or a practice. https://www.coe.int/es/web/compass/human-rights-activism-and-the-role-of-ngos. 18 NGOs can cooperate with the media to counteract the negative stereotypes of Roma communities that have a disastrous effect on the image of the community and constitute a violation of the principle of equality. The growth of anti-Roma sentiment on the Internet and on social networks is increasingly worrying and fighting against these stereotypes is very complicated. 19 Common Future is a meeting ground between organizations, movements, networks and social platforms that is active both in Spain and in other countries of the world, with the aim to

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which has recently developed an analysis and plan of action to achieve the SDG, in parallel and distinct from the plan developed by the Government of Spain,20 in which is highlighted the fact that Spain is the European Union country with the third-highest rate of students not completing school (18,3 % en 2017), with a specially high dropout rate among non-native students, students of ethnic Roma background and students from low-income households.21 (2) Educational actions are decisive when it comes to acquiring knowledge about equality, human rights, and discrimination as they contribute to the development of professional knowledge and improve the personal skills of the subjects (Kyuchukov 2014). This training should be directed to the Roma community as it needs to understand better the law (both the rights and duties) not just concerning discrimination, end poverty and inequalities, and respect the environmental limits of the planet. See futuroencomun.net/. For the goals of sustainable development, see also the INFORME DE ESPAÑA PARA EL EXAMEN NACIONAL VOLUNTARIO 2018: https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/ documents/20113Spain_VNR_Report_Spain_29_de_junio_2018.pdf. 20 Take into account that Spain presented to the UN on July 18, 2018 a voluntary report on the status of the SDGs in the country: https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/index.php?page= view&type=30022&nr=893&menu=3170. This should be set in context to the Report of the Government of Spain for the 2018 voluntary national review of the SDGs of June 29, 2018. It states: “Regarding civil society and knowledge, the first steps in relation to the Agenda were taken by the organizations most linked to international cooperation for development; from here there emerged platforms for dialogue and joint work with all sectors, such as the joint Oxfam Intermón-Unicef SpanishWWF Committee and the Future in Common platform. All of the social action networks and platforms and the unions soon adopted the 2030 Agenda as a frame of reference and began a very dynamic process of interlocution and contributions, publications and public events of all kinds, and a position paper began to be developed, as well as a great event was planned in which Spanish civil society could express its feelings”. In an outstanding exercise of common effort, the most important action of this process, took place on April 9 at the Congress of Deputies, organized by thirteen networks and platforms, three national unions, twenty-five civil society organizations and four institutes university development and study centers. Prominent among them is the Third Sector Platform, which integrates the Volunteer Platform of Spain, the European Network for Combating Poverty and Social Exclusion in Spain, the Social Action NGO Platform, the Spanish Committee of People Representatives with Disability, the Coordinator of Non-Governmental Development Organizations, the Childhood Platform, the Spanish Red Cross, Caritas and the National Organization of the Blind of Spain. To this we should add the contributions made by civil society organizations. In the report on the Common Future’s “A transforming agenda 2030 for the people and the planet”, a series of proposals were launched to address the four major challenges that, in their view, Spain faces. One of them is precisely “Do not leave anyone behind”, addressing the problems of poverty, social exclusion and discrimination. The organization Common Future believes that other key public policies to leave no one behind are quality education, universal health care and an actual right to decent housing. 21 They add that some residents in the country still do not have access to health services, or have to pay for part of these services. And the right to housing “is not guaranteed”. See , published in the newspaper El País on 11. 07. 2018, https://elpais.com/elpais/2018/07/11/planeta_futuro/1531308710_807870.html.

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but also with respect to institutional norms and work procedures, in addition to familiarizing themselves with the implications of intercultural dialogue. This training should also be tailored to other groups, such as the NGOs,22 those who work in communication media and public services, that is, teachers and school administrators, prison wardens, police, judges, lawyers, and human resource managers, etc. The participation of Roma interlocutors in this process plays a vital role as they are members of the community and serve as points of reference for both Roma and non-Roma. Educational actions are complemented by technical assistance, as “the NGOs can offer technical assistance and training to the key actors in the fight against discrimination: primarily the technical staff and heads of administrations and social organizations, legal professionals, lawyers, police, and reporters, as well as Roma associations. We should not underestimate the value of the legal counsel offered by NGOs to Roma who are victims of discrimination to the point of aiding them in courts of law to defend their right to equal treatment.” The general goal of these actions is to show the Roma population and other citizens the importance of reporting all cases of discrimination.23 In fact, successful litigation can contribute to encouraging other victims to report discrimination, by showing that it is possible to achieve justice, and, above all, not to feel that they are alone in this fight. Emblematic in this sense is the decision of the European Court of Human Rights in the “Muñoz Díaz versus Spain”, of December 9th, 2009 (Rey 2007).24 The plaintiff, María Luisa, was a Spanish woman, of Roma ethnicity, widowed with six children, whom the national authorities had denied a widow’s pension because she had not contracted marriage according to the legal form valid in Spain in the year 1971 (according to the Roman Catholic rite), but instead according to the traditions of the Roma 22 According to the practical Guide for NGOs to prevent discrimination against the Roma Community of 2014, resulting from the project NET-KARD: “Regarding NGOs, training should focus on the following aspects: Roma culture and history in the national and European context; the politics of integration at the national and European level; funding and fundraising policies; creation of networks; human rights; strategic planning; strategic monitoring; strategic litigation; defending rights. Participatory and interactive training methodologies related to practical situations (including personal experiences) should be used, and when possible, be combined with field visits. Lastly, it should be stressed that training by itself is not sufficient to achieve change, and is but a support mechanism to put the policies and missions of the NGO into practice”, https://www.gitanos.org/upload/72/18/Guia_NetKard_ONG_y_com._gitana.pdf. 23 See ibidem. Thus, for example, drawing attention to the phenomenon of discrimination that is often associated with hate crimes will serve to set the justice system in motion and will sensitize all relevant actors (policy makers, the police, the media, lawyers, etc.) to take it seriously and combat this problem. 24 In this particular case, the plaintiff used the counsel and legal help of the Fundación Secretariado Gitano, which proved decisive for showing that the prohibition of racial discrimination had been violated (art. 14 CEDH), in conjunction with the right to the respect for property rights of the First Additional Protocol. The Spanish government had acted erroneously and the courts, first the Superior Court of Madrid and later the Constitutional Court, had not acted to redress the failings. The Spanish State had to reimburse María Luisa 70.000 E to resolve its obligations as determined by the ECHR.

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community. It was argued not only that a marriage according to Roma rites had no civil effects as would a canonical marriage have, which was true, but that, in addition, it was also not equivalent to a civil union, at least by analogy, which was somewhat more doubtful,25 as evidenced by the final decision,26 given that the European Court of Human Rights found that a right recognized in Article 14 in conjunction with Article 1 of Protocol n8 1 had been violated, it being understood that receiving a pension lies indeed within the future assets that enter into property rights according to its own jurisprudence (par. 44). More recent is the decision of the Spanish Supreme Court 58/ 2018 of January 25th, 2018, in which the NGO support to the plaintiff - Luz - was decisive, even though in this case she did not achieve the same success as María Luisa, at least not up to now.27 These two paradigmatic cases show how NGOs can act as intermediaries to transfer complaints to the bureaus of equality or the police and give aid and comfort to victims. The majority of Roma are not accustomed to making reports to governmental agencies or the Courts. The Roma NGOs, as intermediaries, are transformed into organizations of trust, so that Roma feel more comfortable and ready to speak about the situations of discrimination that they suffer, in light of the fact that there is much permissiveness, lack of action, and impunity with respect to racism and discrimination of the Roma community. 25 Specifically, the decision of the Constitutional Court 69/2007, of April 16th, had dismissed the complaint of the plaintiff, refusing to consider the truly particular circumstances of the case in regard to the ethnic aspects, which, on the other hand, certainly had played a role. 26 In fact, the Court addressed, among other arguments, the ethnic argument in the case, emphasizing, first of all, the belief held by the plaintiff that her marriage was valid was demonstrable also by her belonging to the Roma community, “which has its own value system within Spanish society”. The Court returns to the idea of a new “international consensus” within the Council of Europe “to recognize the particular needs of minorities and the obligation to protect their security, identity, and way of life, not only to protect the interests of members of said minorities, but to preserve the cultural diversity that benefits all of a society in its totality.” It seems clear that it is not a question of applying laws in a manner more favorable to the Roma, which would, moreover, be highly questionable, but, rather, that they should not be treated worse than other persons in comparable situations. 27 This case also involves a Roma woman (Doña Luz) who married a person named Nicanor according to Roma rites in 1974. Luz asked the Instituto Nacional de la Seguridad Social (INSS) for a widow’s pension when Nicanor died in 2014. The INSS denied her application, deeming her marriage to be invalid for not being recorded in the Civil Registry. Luz appealed this decision to the Supreme Court of Andalusia, alleging discrimination for ethnic reasons and citing the ECHR ruling on María Luisa Díaz Muñoz vs. Spain. The Court agreed and obliged the INSS to pay said pension. But the INSS disagreed and appealed to the Supreme Court of Spain. This court upheld the appeal of the INSS, deeming the arguments given by the INSS to deny the widow’s pension to be valid. Although there were similarities to the case of María Luisa Muñoz Díaz, the contracting parties in this case were held not to have acted in good faith. Doña Luz and her husband did not have any official documentary evidence to the effect that they were “married”, unlike the official documents presented in the case of María Luisa. Due to this lack of documentary evidence, the Supreme Court decided to follow previous constitutional Jurisprudence, since it did not consider it contrary to the ECHR ruling.

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If NGOs are of great relevance, it is because, in addition to engaging in measures that promote the recognition of discriminatory practices, they also play a decisive role in holding the government accountable for its implementation of the Directive on racial equality (EU Directive 2000/43/CE)28 by remaining vigilant. In accordance with article 7(2) of this Directive, NGOs with a legitimate interest are legally authorized to act in the name of or in support of Roma victims in proceedings. (3) NGOs are an important source of data and knowledge about racial discrimination of Roma, and, for this reason, it is important that they interchange information and technical resources with other organizations, above all with State agencies that have the capacity to incorporate the knowledge base of the NGOs in the system. For this purpose, the annual reports that they publish for the public authorities charged with fighting discrimination are an invaluable resource for legal professionals, communication media, the police,29 etc. These documents can be used as proof of discrimination and contain specific and useful information for lobbying and support groups. A good example of this can be found in the Fundación Secretariado Gitano,30 which publishes annual reports with the aim of informing the Spanish government and society in general of the daily discrimination faced by the Roma community by presenting cases testifying to the violation of the fundamental right to equality. This publication is also a means to give voice to the victims of discrimination that need to be defended and supported with the goal to seek solutions to the problems of discrimination that they suffer, thereby contributing to the creation of a more just society. (4) It is essential that NGOs actively collaborate with Roma associations to eradicate racial discrimination, taking into account that the latter provide one of the best means of promoting the social participation of Roma communities, because “1) The associations are often ahead of others in addressing the problems of the Roma people; and 2) they have the capacity to make Roma communities aware of their own needs and ability to resolve problems and promote their own development”.31 (5) One should encourage the participation of Roma communities and give them a voice. As specified in the practical Guide for NGOs to prevent discrimination of the Roma Community of 2014, a result of the Project NET-KARD: Working “with” and 28 According to this Directive, a new independent organization should be created to promote equal treatment and non-discrimination. 29 According to the practical Guide for NGOs to prevent discrimination against the Roma Community of 2014, resulting from the project NET-KARD: “NGOs can help security forces to improve the communication channels with Roma citizens, taking into account that the police play a fundamental role in guaranteeing the right to equality”: https://www.gitanos.org/ upload/72/18/Guia_NetKard_ONG_y_com._gitana.pdf. 30 Annual report on Discrimination and the Roma Community (Spain): http://www.gitanos. org/centro_documentacion/publicaciones/fichas/100777.html. 31 See the practical Guide for NGOs to prevent discrimination against the Roma Community of 2014, resulting from the project NET-KARD: https://www.gitanos.org/upload/72/18/ Guia_NetKard_ONG_y_com._gitana.pdf.

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not “for” is essential for n effective social intervention, because the Roma need to be active participants in their own process of social inclusion (Schneeweis 2015). The participation of these citizens in defining the measures and social actions, and their posterior application, is a right, ensures that their “voice” is heard, and that “their true interests are protected”.32 (6) The NGOs are key actors in breaking down barriers that Roma communities are still facing regarding access to general services, such as education, health, etc. For this reason, it is important for NGOs to become aware of the need to work jointly and in collaboration with these services during the realization of a project or activity. One example of this type of cooperation is that of the Roma mediator (a post that exists in various member states of the European Union), given that this person is tasked with improving the access of Roma communities to a series of public services, and given this person’s role as an intercultural mediator who creates a direct link between Roma communities and the majority of society. Having said that, one should not lose sight of the fact that the mediators are a temporary solution, as the final goal is for Roma communities to gain direct access to services without the need of the mediator’s intervention.33 In summary, the aim is to avoid a paternalistic situation that will wind up strangling the capacity for autonomy and personal initiative. (7) The NGOs should attach great importance to the creation of networks in which different interest groups participate (political officials, professionals, and the communities and associations of Roma) to obtain a better understanding of the needs of these communities, achieve a better and more efficient use of resources, and find adequate solutions to promote the respect for difference and diversity. The cooperation between Roma NGOs and the public administration in the intervention with victims of racial discrimination, for example, in the case of Spain is carried out through the creation of a Network of Assistance Centers for Victims of discrimination34 through the equality organization called Council for the promotion of equal treatment and non-discrimination of persons for reasons of racial or ethnic origin.35 One of the most important tasks of the Council is to provide independent as32

See ibidem. See ibidem. 34 In June 2010, the Network of Assistance Centers for Victims of Discrimination based on Racial or Ethnic Origin was created in Spain. This network is made up of different nongovernmental organizations, including Roma NGOs, all of which work to achieve equal treatment for vulnerable groups of the population. The network is made up of the Cepaim Foundation, Fundación Secretariado Gitano, Accem, Spanish Red Cross, Red Acoge, CEAR, Movement against Intolerance, and Movement for Peace. The Network of Assistance Centers for Victims of Discrimination on Grounds of Racial or Ethnic Origin was configured to allow its members to develop a common action protocol, based on a service manual, http://cepaim. org/que-hacemos-convivencia-social/igualdad-de-oportunidades/servicio-de-asistencia-a-victi mas-de-discriminacion-racial-o-etnica/. 35 https://asistenciavictimasdiscriminacion.org/consejo-para-la-promocion-de-la-igualdadde-trato-y-no-discriminacion-de-las-personas-por-origen-racial-o-etnico/. 33

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sistance in the filing of complaints on behalf of victims of direct or indirect discrimination for reasons of racial or ethnic origin. Working within a network thus becomes an effective strategy when it comes to multidimensional phenomena such as discrimination and is also an important intervention tool to promote the participation of the different interest groups, sharing of responsibilities and resources, and defining clearer solutions to a problem shared by all partners. (8) The cooperation of the NGOs with the communication media plays a key role in projecting an accurate image of Roma communities, eliminating stereotypes and myths that are still prevalent in society, and increasing respect for diversity and intercultural dialogue. One should try to convey a more positive image of Roma communities, by generally highlighting their traditions, practices, activities, etc., giving the Roma communities to express and share the richness of their culture with the rest of society (Kyuchukov 2013). The Roma NGOs serve as a good intermediary between journalists and the community, as the journalists already tend to go to the NGOs when they report on problems that affect the Roma people.36 A good example of activism through a Roma NGO, which fulfills all the functions we have highlighted, is certainly the European Roma Rights – ERRC –,37 which works to ensure that questions related to human rights faced by Roma communities are taken into account in the political agenda of Europe and other locations. The ERRC carries out a meticulous investigation, yielding detailed information about the state of human rights of Roma, specifically concerning acts of violence that they face, the forms of discrimination against them, and the negation of access to economic and social rights.38 Moreover, the ERRC tries to contribute to improving the state of human rights of Roma communities through campaigns to raise awareness, the development of policies, and through strategic legal processes. Their intensive campaigns have revealed the violence and hate against this collective, the segregation in school, the forced evictions, and the coerced sterilizations of their members. Through their intensive educational work on human rights, the ERRC has set its principal goal to help Roma activists in the fight for equality.39

36 See the practical Guide for NGOs to prevent discrimination against the Roma Community of 2014, resulting from the project NET-KARD: https://www.gitanos.org/upload/72/18/ Guia_NetKard_ONG_y_com._gitana.pdf. 37 http://www.errc.org. 38 “The investigations of the ERRC in Bulgaria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Romania during the early part of 2010, together with the Police, the NGOs, and experts, found that Roma represent 50 – 80 % of the victims of human trafficking in Bulgaria, 40 – 80 % in Hungary, 70 % in Slovakia, and up to 70 % in some parts of the Czech Republic”. See Rights of Roma, a Fact Sheet, EHRR: https://www.coe.int/es/web/compass/human-rights-activismand-the-role-of-ngos. 39 This is achieved through internships, scholarships, seminars, and publication of educational texts, such as, for example, Knowing your rights and fighting for them: a guide for

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By way of conclusion, it should be reaffirmed that the NGOs should investigate the root causes of the current barriers Roma communities face and propose how to eliminate them in a manner applicable to all of Europe. The obstacles could be summarized as follows: 1) The stereotyped image held by the majority society and the media have of Roma communities; 2) the lack of political priority given to Roma communities; 3) the lack of economic sustainability;40 4) The paternalistic attitude some NGOs adopt;41 5) the failure in applying national and European legislation against discrimination; 6) the ignorance of the procedures for reporting cases of discrimination.42 But alongside these obstacles are other barriers related to global quesRoma activists: https://www.coe.int/es/web/compass/human-rights-activism-and-the-role-ofngos. 40 In June 2018 Roma NGOs were charged with embezzlement and misappropriation of hundreds of millions of Euros of public funds. Fundación Secretariado Gitano, Unión Romaní, Federación Andaluza de Asociaciones de Mujeres Gitanas-Fakali Amuradi, Fagex (Federación de Asociaciones Gitanas de Extremadura) and the Federación Nacional de Asociaciones de Mujeres Gitanas-Kamira collect 90 % of the public funding allocated for development of the Roma community. According to the report Function and Organization of the so-called Roma NGOs, the Office of Management of Public Funds and the Socio-Economic Situation of the Roma, from the Observatory of the Citizens against Corruption – in which other organizations participate such as the Observatory of Subsidies of Andalusia, the Platform for Democracy and Transparency, Andalusia for Public Education, and the Citizens’ Forum for Democratic Participation in Sevilla –, “the NGOs that are active in the Roma population not only do not meet the legal prerequisites to receive subsidies, but the offices of the various administrations charged with distributing these scandalously fail to comply with the requirements imposed by Law to grant such aid and subsidies.” Since the period 1989 – 2000 the Fundación Secretariado Gitano has managed “around 200 million Euros of European funds” destined solely for employment plans, programs of school workshops, offices, the program Acceder and the Formación e Inserción Profesional (FIP) plan…Nevertheless, the EU estimates that 90 % of Roma youth neither work nor study. On the other hand, they charge the NGO that authored the report, namely the Fundación Secretariado Gitano, owns vast holdings of real estate in Spain and in other countries even though it is a non-profit organization. The principal culprits named in the report by the Observatory of the Citizens against Corruption are Pedro Puente, a priest and president of the Institute for Roma Culture, and Diego Fernández, its director; Isidro Rodríguez, director of the Fundación Secretariado Gitano; Juan de Dios Ramírez Heredia, president of the Unión Romaní; Beatriz Carrillo de los Reyes, president of the Fakali-Amuradi, and Antonio Vázquez, president of Fagex. 41 According to the Guide, “In some countries (Portugal, for example), non-governmental organizations sometimes take a protective position towards Roma communities, thus provoking a paternalistic attitude that limits the participation of these communities.” See the practical Guide for NGOs to prevent discrimination against the Roma Community of 2014, resulting from the project NET-KARD, https://www.gitanos.org/upload/72/18/Guia_NetKard_ ONG_y_com._gitana.pdf. 42 The NGOs and governmental authorities are in a position to provide more information about legislation and procedures to combat discrimination of Roma communities. Moreover, in accordance with article 13(2) of the Directive on racial equality, the agencies governing equality measures should offer independent aid to the victims of discrimination when discrimination proceedings begin. The webpage Equinet (European Network of Organizations of Equality) lists all organizations at the European level where the victim can report a case of racial discrimination: http://www.equineteurope.org.

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tions, such as the long history of exclusion faced by Roma communities as well as the strategies and political measures directed at these communities.43 Within the last decades, the projects and actions of NGOs in this area have been carried out in a haphazard manner without a view to encompassing a more integrated and wider-ranging strategy. In any event, we should place our trust in NGOs as key actors in civil society in the fight against discrimination of the Roma communities in Europe in order to advance the 17 global sustainable development goals without forgetting the existing challenges.44 It is true that a long road remains before the Agenda 2030 is achieved, but, as the Vicente Ferrer Foundation has pointed out, the organizations of the Third Sector should not only be present but also be active participants in the decision-making about our joint future.45 Bibliography Cortes, Ismael (2019): Ensayo sobre el antigitanismo, in: Viento Sur, March 15. Díaz Barrado, C./Fernández Liesa, C. R. (Dirs.)/Verdiales López, Diana Marcela (Coord.) (2018): Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible y Derechos Humanos: Paz, Justicia e Instituciones Sólidas/Derechos Humanos y Empresas. Madrid: Instituto de Estudios Internacionales y Europeos Francisco de Vitoria de la Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Ferrajoli, Luigi (1999): Derechos y garantías. La ley del más débil. Madrid: Trotta. Goycoolea Prado, Roberto/Megías Rosa, Manuel (2017): Objetivos del desarrollo sostenible. Una mirada crítica desde la Universidad y la cooperación al desarrollo. Madrid: Universidad de Alcalá de Henares. 43 The efforts realized by member States of the EU to define and put into practice national strategies for the inclusion of Roma communities are very recent and of little quantifiable impact. 44 The Vicente Ferrer Foundation lists the following nine challenges that NGOs should take on in 2018 to achieve the SDGs: 1) participate at all levels in the definition of the goals and markers for the government strategies to achieve the SDGs; 2) to reinforce the role of the citizens as protagonists for development, accompanying and supporting the most vulnerable, and for transferring their proposals and demands for their own plans and those of the public authorities; 3) collaborate in defining the baseline information that will enter into the volunteers’ report of the SDGs that will be presented at the UN High Level Political Forum this year; 4) monitor and demand compliance with the commitments and obligations of the public authorities with the SDGs, especially those that the reports indicate are more far from being achieved; 5) maintain a productive network in line with SDG 17, for example between NGOs from different sectors, entrepreneurs, the media, public authorities … seeking “unlikely alliances”; 6) denounce situations of exclusion before the public authorities, leaving aside the discourse of needs and guaranteeing human rights; 7) make the development cooperation policy relevant again; 8) communicate, raise awareness and educate about the SDGs; 9) enhance the role of citizens and organizations in their implementation and follow-up. See 2018: The NGOs facing the Challenge of the SDG: http://fundacionvicenteferrerodsmadrid.org/2018las-ong-frente-al-reto-de-los-ods/. 45 See ibidem.

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Hermida del Llano, Cristina (2018): The importance of non-governmental organizations of achieving the sustainable development goals: The fight against racial discrimination of Roma in Europe, in: Coordinado por Paloma Durán y Lalaguna, Sagrario Morán Blanco, Castor M. Díaz Barrado and Carlos Fernández Liesa. Verdiales López, D. M. (coord.), Public-Private Partnerships and sustainable development goals: proposals for the implementation of the 2030 Agenda. Madrid: Instituto de Estudios Internacionales y Europeos “Francisco de Vitoria”, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, pp. 17 – 32. Kyuchukov, Hristo (2013): Roma Identity and Antigypsyism in Europe. Munich: Lincom. Kyuchukov, Hristo/Kaleja, Martin/Samko, Milan (eds.) (2014): Linguistic, Cultural, and Educational Issues of Roma. Munich: Lincom. Rey Martínez, Fernando (2007): La discriminación racial en la jurisprudencia del Tribunal Europeo de Derechos Humanos, in: Revista Española de Derecho Constitucional, n8 79), pp. 279 – 307. Schneeweis, Adina (2015): Communicating the Victim: Nongovernmental Organizations Advocacy Discourses for Roma Rights, in: Communication, Culture and Critique, Volume 8, Issue 2, pp. 235 – 253.

Is Cosmopolitanism at Risk? Paulo de Brito

I. Introduction Having come to an end the cycle of the Industrial Revolution, colonization, and the growth and clash of the powers that spearheaded them, which in the twentieth century led to the rise of nationalism, two world wars and the ensuing cold war, with the fall of the Berlin wall we arrive at the close of a period in time, of which the most evident signs are possibly the conflict in the Balkans and the Twin Tower attack in New York, along with the subsequent crisis of sovereignty in the Middle East. As is usual at the end of any period in time, we are tempted to believe that what is approaching is not just the end of that period, but the end of all Time. Just as with the fall of Rome in the mid fifth century, as with the Middle Ages, which in the fifteenth century opened and shut its doors to modernity, today, yet again, we are split into multiple and infinite avenues of contradictory debate and prospection in regard to the future. Pessimists hankering for a bygone Golden Age, to which they wish to return by resisting change and holding onto the dominant values of the last epoch before the end, take on optimists of a future they already foresee through veils opening up the portals of radiant tomorrows where mankind finds eternal happiness and the return to Eden and the end of history (Fukuyama 1992). It is in the context of this eternal dialectic tension between the insecurity of the present and the fear of the future – more particularly perceptible in times of rapid change and acceleration of history, such as the times we currently live in – that, in my view, the opposition and intellectual confrontation dividing cosmopolitans and nationalists, globalists and populists, both in academia and on the streets, ought to be positioned. After the general optimism generated at the beginning of this century, the economic downturn of the first decade, the end of the illusion of perpetual peace brought about by the fall of the Berlin wall, the renewed explosion of dormant Islamic religious fanatism aroused by the military intervention perpetrated by the West brought to the fore the paradigm of nationalisms and xenophobia, of societies and countries closing in on themselves, the exaltation of that which is our own versus despising and alienating the other, in a process that found its most significant popular expression with the election of Trump to the presidency of the USA, with the promise of building

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a wall to stem the flow of immigrants on the Mexican border and to Make America Great Again. Is the vision of a contemporary cosmopolitan society at risk? Is cosmopolitanism at risk? Despite the ambitious question raised in my title, I do not seek to offer an answer. I merely wish to contextualize the issues we once again face, and to envision the rational guidelines for solutions leading us out of restrictive paths where we run the risk of becoming trapped and isolated.

II. Cosmopolitanism vs. Populism 1. General Considerations According to the generic and comprehensive model put forward by Kleingeld and Brown, we may define cosmopolitan doctrine as “the idea that all human beings, regardless of their political affiliation, are (or can and should be) citizens in a single community” (Kleingeld and Brown 2019). This is by no means new. We can trace it back to Diogenes when, from a distance and in keeping with his own philosophy of life, he proclaimed “I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world” (Kleingeld and Brown 2019). This, therefore, was the negation of any responsibility or bond of the individual to the obligations and duties that are implicit in a close relationship with a city or State. A citizen of the world was not a citizen of his or her city and, consequently, was not obligated to it (Kleingeld and Brown 2019). Later, however, this statement would come to be seen in a more positive light by the Stoics within the framework of their assertion of the rights and obligations of a citizen of the Kosmos as a universal and supra-State polis, encompassing all of mankind in a global community. It is with this latter meaning that the idea would progress in time, and the one selected for the purpose of this presentation. Although grouped together under the generic term “cosmopolitanism”, we do, however, find doctrines that are very diverse and oftentimes contradictory, and which require a preliminary, albeit succinct, explanation. Broadly speaking – and setting aside for now the historical evolution of the concept, the analysis of which I have little or no time or space for in this presentation – cosmopolitanist doctrines can be divided into those that envision the universal State as a regulatory utopia, an aspiration to the City of God, which guides normative conduct specific to the City of Man, but does not seek to be edified on this earth; and others that see the universal State as the ultimate existential goal the global community strives to attain, of which the League of Nations and the United Nations are the first but very limited approximations. Still within the context of this latter concept, we have to distinguish between two possible interpretations: the radical, which perceives the universal State to be, ultimately, the overriding of individual States, pos-

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tulating their elimination and the establishing of direct links between the individual citizen and a single and absolute State, which presides over the whole earth without the mediating intervention of other individual State units; the moderate, which sees the universal State as a superior and inclusive entity that safeguards the universality of its citizens, but which complements minor regional and local State communities without excluding or eliminating them. As such, in theory, cosmopolitanism presents itself essentially as a moral issue. Is the individual, considered as a social being that merely finds and defines him or herself with or in relation to another, obligated above all to the community closest to him or herself, or to the human race? In the event of conflict, to whom do you owe allegiance above all others? To your homeland, to your fellow citizen, or is it to the human being, to the person, bearer of a universal dignity which universally identifies everyone in the Christian concept as being made in the image and likeness of God? With the advent of modernity, and reflecting upon the Discoveries, the New World, the Industrial Revolution and the implicit search for raw materials, the issue of cosmopolitanism took on an economic dimension, with its defence becoming an expression of the globalization of world trade. Affiliated in the tradition of Ricardian thought (David Ricardo), economic cosmopolitans see globalization as the means to assert the comparative advantages of each region, thereby attaining maximum optimization of resource allocation and maximum efficiency in world production, a process from which all the “citizens of the world” benefit. The emergence from poverty at the beginning of the 21st century of millions of people in the BRICS member States was seen as real proof of this benefit and the ultimate good of cosmopolitan doctrine. Yet this ideal is referred to and countered by others – namely, those with Marxist and environmentalist affiliation – as the maximum expression of capitalist imperialism that ignores borders and seeks to place capital wherever production costs and obstacles to greed and the exploitation of natural resources are at their lowest, thus destroying the planet, doing away with the hard-won workers’ rights in the western world and reducing the world’s poorest to continuous oppression and exploitation. 2. Legal Cosmopolitanism It is from this economic conflict that the heightened vigour arises with which the aspect of cosmopolitanism I wish to discuss in this brief presentation, namely legal cosmopolitanism, asserts itself nowadays. The current relevance and incisiveness of legal cosmopolitanism stems, precisely, from the economic implications of globalization. In fact, the action of companies and economic actors today brings about effects that are not restricted by traditional State borders. Rather, they surpass them and demand supra-State solutions.

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Let us examine a number of examples: - The accident at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in 1986 brought about a risk to public health and safety that went far beyond the borders of the then USSR. At the time, the whole of Europe was confronted with the need to be in the know as to the causes of the accident and which responses to the disaster were the most appropriate. - The indiscriminate culling of trees in the Amazon rainforest – considered to be the lungs of the planet – raises the issue of its possible effects on climate change, which is a matter that surpasses the national economic interests of the countries that integrate the Amazonian region. - The humanitarian crisis brought about by the wars in the Middle East and famine in sub-Saharan Africa has generated a wave of refugees that places demands on Europe as they seek safety and a better life for themselves (simultaneously, bringing in their wake the infiltration of terrorist agents set on destroying the values of western civilization). The solutions to this drama are not viable when applied only to individual countries. Presently, the debate around cosmopolitanism is generated from the standpoint of these issues that have a supra-national or supra-State dimension. Traditional theory of International Law – Law that is Inter-National, among independent and sovereign nations (a Law of Nations) – is in opposition to modern Global Justice supra-State theory, in which the individual person is acknowledged as being the direct bearer of rights and obligations before the universal community, without the regulatory mediation of an individual State. According to the accurate synthesis by Brock (Brock 2017), “[a] distinction is often drawn between global and international justice. The key point of difference between these two notions involves clarifying the entities among which justice is sought. In international justice the nation or state is taken as the central entity of concern and justice among nations or states is the focus. In the domain of global justice, by contrast, theorists do not seek primarily to define justice between states or nations. Rather they drill down through the state shell and inquire about what justice among human beings consists in. Global justice inquiries take individual human beings as of primary concern and seek to give an account of what fairness among such agents involves. There are a range of actions that cut across states or involve different agents, relationships, and structures that might be invisible in an inquiry seeking justice among states exclusively” (Brock 2017).

Debate has been wide and varied, and the positions taken, firm and determined. On one hand, we have those who tend towards the idea of a World State, of a Global Justice system that supersedes the Law of Nations. On the other, those who defend maintaining International Law as an expression of the acknowledgement of plurality and the close relationship of States to their citizens as the condition that guarantees their very identity, and without which the law would not even exist. An international liberal theorist such as Tesón claimed: “The end of states and governments is to benefit, serve, and protect its components, human beings; the

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end of international law must also be to benefit, serve, and protect human beings, and not its components, states and governments” (Tesón 1998: 1).This represents a shift from the State-centric perspective to a liberal theory which solely focuses on the individual and other non-state actors. For a long time, States have been the classical paradigm of international law and their mutual relationship has been the object of study of important theories of international relations. However, this traditional view has now been questioned by some authors such as Tesón, Pogge and Kuper who put the emphasis on the individual, other non-state actors and on a vertical distribution of the sovereignty. In a world without nations could we refer to inter-national law at all? In the last century, Cabral de Moncada, a Portuguese legal philosopher, wrote the following on the subject: “if by inter-national law we mean, as the noun says, a law of nations, that is, between States, it follows that once these disappear as a result of the reduction of their sovereignty one day beyond certain limit (it does not matter which day and which limit) it will cease, after all, to deserve that designation. In other words: that law would stop being inter-national, inter-States, or, as Duguit says, inter-social. In any circumstance, along with its name the corresponding concept would also have disappeared. In Zitelmann’s words international law would have committed suicide” (Moncada 1959: 166 – 167). I will first deal with the idea of a world State followed by the cosmopolitan conception. If individuals, rather than States, are the ultimate elements of concern to international law why is there any need for nations at all? Would it not be better to conceive a civitas maxima or an imperium mundi in which the several multiples, the individuals, would be part of a sole unity, a world State which would embrace them all? In answering these questions, because of their importance and nature as being representative of cosmopolitan viewpoints that have taken on his doctrine, Thomas Pogge merits particular mention. In his opinion, “three elements are shared by all cosmopolitan positions. First, individualism: the ultimate units of concern are human beings … Second, universality: the status of ultimate unit of concern attaches to every living human being equally … Third, generality: this special status has global force” (Pogge 1992: 48 – 49). Let us leave behind the discussion of whether universality and generality are mutually convertible and that, therefore, we would be facing a tautology. Pogge goes on to distinguish between a “Legal cosmopolitanism … committed to a concrete political ideal of a global order” and a “Moral cosmopolitanism [which] holds that all persons stand in certain moral relations to one another” (Pogge 1992: 49). It seems beyond dispute that moral cosmopolitanism is of foremost importance and that it should be carried to the political level, that is, be given political importance. In the domain of the moral there comes another distinction, that between institutional and interactional cosmopolitanism. Institutional cosmopolitanism applies to “institutional schemes … for assessing the ground rules and practices that regulate human interactions” whereas “Interactional cosmopolitanism assigns direct responsibility for the fulfilment of human rights to other agents” (Pogge 1992: 50). This distinction is not, again, of such vital importance as the “Institutional and inter-

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actional conceptions are again compatible and thus may be combined” (Pogge 1992: 50). Most interesting is, however, “how we should think about sovereignty in light of … institutional cosmopolitanism” (Pogge 1992: 57). Pogge starts by introducing a concept of sovereignty which he regards as “unsupervised and irrevocable authority” (Pogge 1992: 57) of A over B. In this sense, he mentions an absolute sovereignty and ends by refuting this notion. Nevertheless, we should not forget that he identifies sovereignty with “preeminent authority” (Pogge 1992: 58). In my viewpoint, sovereignty cannot in fact be regarded as absolute. As a quality of the States, these, being several, cannot be absolutes since the idea of several absolutes is, in itself, contradictory. That which is plural is limited and, therefore, that which is limited cannot be absolute. However, one thing is to refute the concept of sovereignty as something absolute and something else is to equate preeminent authority to something absolute and unsupervised. One authority can very well be preeminent and still admit something which supervises it. Let us admit there are nations. These have preeminence over smaller groups and individuals but, except in an unacceptable supra-personalist/totalitarian nationalism, above these nations there is international law. Let us turn back to Pogge. He says that “From the standpoint of a cosmopolitan morality … this concentration of sovereignty at one level is no longer defensible … the proposal is that government authority – or sovereignty – be widely dispersed in the vertical dimension. What we need is both centralization and decentralization, a kind of second-order decentralization away from the now dominant level of the state. Thus, persons should be citizens of, and govern themselves through, a number of political units of various sizes, without any one political unit being dominant and thus occupying the traditional role of state. And their political allegiance and loyalties should be widely dispersed over these units: neighborhood, town, county, province, state, region, and world at large. People should be politically at home in all of them, without converging upon any one of them as the lodestar of their political identity” (Pogge 1992: 58).

We would be facing a serial of equivalent societies in which political links and allegiances are dispersed and thus also become arbitrary. Accordingly, the individuals may allocate themselves to any of these units at will unless we assume they may be simultaneously faithful to all of them in the same degree. In one case or the other, we would be in the face of pluralities abandoned to themselves (without the corresponding unity), that is, we could be facing anarchy. Anarchy, however, does not seem to be a way to guarantee respect for the individuals since it may ultimately lead to conflict between them and to the power of the strongest. The mere plurality or multiplicity abandoned to itself ends by extinction. A multiplicity can only subsist if integrated in sub-unities hierarchically positioned with a view to the ultimate unity which protects and safeguards the various kinds of multiples. Having made this critical comment on Pogge, let us see how he answers other possible objections that can be addressed in his theses. A first type of objections would

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argue that sovereignty cannot be divided at all. Pogge replies that this is a dogma of absolute sovereignty, which would lead to the already refuted thesis of an “absolute world sovereign” (Pogge 1992: 59). Furthermore, a “genuine division of powers” (Pogge 1992: 59) has long been in existence. In my viewpoint, however, the traditional balance of power (the legislative, executive and judiciary) does not correspond to a division of authority, but rather to three ways of exercising the preeminent authority. A second type of objections would deal with “certain vertically indivisible governmental functions” (Pogge 1992: 60). Since it is unfeasible for Pogge to “discuss all possible type 2 objections” (Pogge 1992: 60) he chooses the paradigmatic case presented by Walzer. For Walzer “the authority to fix membership, to admit and exclude, is at least part of an indivisible core of sovereignty” (Pogge 1992: 60). Pogge replies that “since a neighborhood culture can be as effectively destroyed by the influx of fellow nationals as by immigrants, neighborhoods would do even better, if they had some authority to select from among prospective domestic newcomers … neighborhoods may often want to bring in new members from abroad … and they would therefore benefit from a role in the national immigration control process” (Pogge 1992: 61). In light of this, a neighborhood would be regarded as an isolated group, a sort of ghetto, within a national State which is at first contrary to the right of free circulation within the latter. Furthermore, to grant such a small and isolated group a decisive role in the immigration policy would mean that in practice one neighborhood could receive as many immigrants as it pleased, whereas another one could not, leading to anarchy and to a violation of the principle of equality before the law. If we were to find a general criterion, then the role of the national State would be decisive in defining it. Let us now examine Pogge’s main reasons for a vertical dispersal of sovereignty. He first deals with “peace/security” (Pogge 1992: 61). According to Pogge “[u]nder the current regime, interstate rivalries are settled ultimately through military competition” (Pogge 1992: 61). It is obvious that when States will lose their prominent position interstate wars will diminish considerably. However, they might well be replaced by other bloody rivalries among small groups in which the sovereignty was dispersed. Conflicts can very well be shifted from the State level to neighborhoods, towns, counties and provinces. Historically it is easy to recall what happened during feudalism.

III. Final Considerations Nevertheless, the traditional solutions put forward by international law and the new cosmopolitan solutions to the problems of globalization have one commonality: their permanent appeal for a rational, rhetorical and topic-focused discourse with substantiated arguments which consistently rejects the appeal of an emotional and

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irrational discourse that characterizes the current populist movement, and which has been gaining ground in the west. Let us now return to the universe of the more concrete problems faced by the individual. These days, the decisions and acts of economic and political agents have a global, cross-border dimension capable of challenging the interests and legal positions of citizens of individual States that have not been consulted or heard when these were instituted. Forbidding the fishing of a particular endangered species, for example, may result in the unemployment of an entire population of a small fishing village, without them feeling that their artisanal activity is indeed a threat to this species and understanding the sense of a decision that condemns them to immediate poverty. The opening up of borders of rich countries to immigrants from the Third World is seen as a risk to security and to the stability of life and traditional values, now under threat by a foreign invader who comes to covet, share and, perhaps, to steal the jobs of nationals, thereby destroying their values. Solidarity postulated by economic integration in a wider area determines tax increases levied with a view to supporting development in less developed States within that same area and which citizens do neither understand nor accept. These problems are very real and cause legitimate concerns that warrant solutions. These, however, cannot be restricted to an irrational appeal for the negation of the humanity of others, perceived here as alien, inferior and non-human not us beings. Such is the populist temptation. We have seen where it led to in the twentieth century. But it is in the easy answers, facilitated today by easy access to the public forum through social media, where this populist temptation finds the ecosystem most suited to its propagation. The problem with it, however, is the immediacy of the solutions it presents, the simplicity of which gain the support of victims of change in the world, but at the expense of simplistically hiding the contradictions implicit in the paths they outline. Condorcet (1785) highlighted the fatal paradox found in the irrationality of collective preferences (paradox of voting) a long time ago. If a group of three people organizes their preferences as options A, B and C in the following order, - Subject 1: ABC; - Subject 2: BCA; - Subject 3: CAB; there is no way of rationally determining that the collective preference represented in any of the options – A, B or C – is better than the other. In fact, one could think that if subject 1 prefers option A to B and B to C, then, logically, he or she would prefer option A to option C. And as only subject 2 prefers B to A, then the rational collective preference would be option A. But closer analysis

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will reveal that subject 3 prefers C to A, which is the same preference manifested by subject 2, and that only subject 1 is in disagreement. By the same logical principle, the appropriate collective preference would be option C. Thus, it is logically impossible to determine one collective preference as being more rational than another in as far as representing the common will. The problem with populism is that, in some way, it transfers this paradox to the context of individual preference. In the emotionally driven isolation of his or her own thought, populistically and irrationally conditioned, today the individual chooses A and B, which are mutually exclusive. An individual takes part in a demonstration against the exploitation of a lithium mine and divulges his or her participation on social media by using a lithium batterypowered mobile phone. In the morning, the individual signs a petition against a hike in the price of petrol, and in the afternoon is out protesting against CO2 emissions by vehicles powered by fossil fuels. The individual is also calling for a raise in old age pensions and is upset by the fact that young immigrants, indispensable in securing the sustainability of the social security system of the country due to an aging population, are being allowed in. Note that the problem of paradoxical individual preferences such as these is not something new. It has always existed. What is novel, though, is the modern ability to impose them, irrationally and without criterion, thereby jeopardizing the future. The problem, the real problem, is to be found in the loss of influence and power of the elites. Traditionally, even in the most democratic of societies, the ordinary citizen, poorly educated and ignorant, did not have access to the public forum and the power of its influence. Access to the media, from newspapers, radio to television, was previously filtered by an elitist system of control, established from the top down. The people received the messages of those in power and was not the author of the discourse of power. The democratic manifestation of the people’s preferences by exercising the vote consisted in choosing from a set of options established by the elite, thus guaranteeing that collective preferences would always be mediated by the rational reflection of the rhetorical and topic-focused discourse and argumentation typical of the enlightened elites, which are rooted in academia and are the only ones with access to power. With the explosive appearance of private-sector television and social media, this model came crashing down. The ordinary citizen now had direct access to the public forum and discourse, becoming its author. Television – initially conceived (at least European public television) as universities of the people, with programmes made by the elites for the working classes – became a media outlet of the people made by the people. In turn, social media became the amplifier of the irrational voice (more often than not manipulated) of emotional masses with little or no interest in the coherence and rationality of their own discourse.

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The voice of the crowd has gathered strength. It sits alongside the old voice of the elites. It is the voice that cries out the loudest and is no longer mediated or controlled by the conditioning filter of reason. The opinion of an ignorant person on Facebook is today no longer just the opinion of an ignorant person. It is an irrational outcry that holds the same value as the calm and serene opinion of a scholar. “It’s my opinion against yours” – he would say to the academic, who has spent his life studying the subject, in a debate on climate change, domestic violence, public health, justice, social security, or whatever given subject. And, based on the strength of his convictions, the reasoning thereof he believes to be substantiated by the simplistic support he gets from the masses, this ignorant individual will compete for power. And he will get it, in much the same way as have clowns, TV presenters, soap opera stars and former reality show contestants, who nowadays have become relevant political actors with increasing expression in the democratic societies of the western world. And all the more dangerous when it is with their unsubstantiated strength that obscure factual powers of unmentionable private interests count on in order to better pursue those same private interests, which are made out to be for the common good. This is the essence of populism. To fight it, I believe in the idea of returning to moderate cosmopolitan theses that do not substitute nor eliminate communities or the intermediary units that mediate between the individual and global society, but rather integrate them in a rational quest for the common good of mankind that is inclusive of and complements the common good of the specific identity of each people and each nation, in what is a return to the Kantian theory which I have had occasion to expound upon elsewhere (Brito 2022: 172): “[t]he Kantian theory, defending an alliance of the various liberal States as a better foundation for international law, also implies the refusal of the idea of a world State. The right to self-determination plays an important role within liberal principles and it would be seriously compromised under a world State system. Even an important critic of statism such as Pogge (Pogge 1992: 2) recognises that ‘a world state … poses significant risks of oppression’ and ‘involving, as it does, the annihilation of existing states – would seem reachable only through revolution or in the wake of some global catastrophe’ (Pogge 1992: 63). Analysing Rawls’ thoughts on that subject, Kuper (Kuper 2000: 653) says ‘a world state … would have even greater drawbacks (i. e., cause even more injustice) than a law-governed Society of Peoples’ (Kuper 2000: 653), concluding that ‘the centralisation and cumulation of power in a world state would encourage administrative abuse, laxity, or ineffectuality’ (Kuper 2000: 653)”. I claim that States are multiples needing a unity that embraces them all, respecting one another. This unity is international law, which also makes incumbent upon the States to respect the several multiplicities, which they comprise, e. g. individuals and minority groups, and their respective fundamental rights. It is, therefore, important to point out that States or nations represent sub-units, which are ultimately inserted in a higher unity – international law. In the absence of nations, the several mul-

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tiples, such as the individuals, would be directly incorporated in a world State. However, the multiplicity within unity is not a static reality, but rather a dialectic process which means that the multiples cannot pass directly into the ultimate unity. They are rather integrated in other sub-units, which, in turn, are part of a greater unity. A direct incorporation, without existing nations playing the important role of sub-units, would lead to the destruction of the multiples as such since they would be simply absorbed in a world State and would also lose their freedom of association in other political bodies such as nations. Individuals (multiples) need nations (sub-units) to protect their fundamental rights as nations need international law (ultimate unity) to promote a peaceful coexistence among one another. In a world State this dialectic is distorted which will lead to a restriction of fundamental liberties and ultimately to oppression. Such a distortion is in opposition to the multiplicity-unity dialectics and accordingly to justice. An individual may choose to live directly under the global order, but in so doing will disrespect justice since this represents a balance, an equilibrium between multiplicity and unity. Whenever justice becomes posited such behaviour of the individual should thereby be sanctioned by the State. Are we capable of following these guidelines? Are they viable? Is a cosmopolitan vision of contemporary society at risk? It is impossible, for now, to come up with an answer. Of all the human arts, prophecy has always been the most fallible. Bibliography Brito, Paulo de (2022): Reflections on MacCormick’s ‘civic conception of nation’, the idea of a world State and Pogge’s cosmopolitan approach, in: Cosmos, Cosmopolitanism, and Cosmopolitics throughout History, Soraya Nour Sckell and Damien Ehrhardt (eds.). Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, p. 169 – 176. Brock, Gillian (2017): Global Justice, in: The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy (Spring 2017 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL: https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2017/en tries/justice-global/. Condorcet, Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat de (1785): Essai sur l’application de l’analyse à la probabilité des décisions rendues à la pluralité des voix. Paris: Imprimerie Royale. Fukuyama, Francis (1992): The End of History and the Last Man. New York: Free Press. Kleingeld, Pauline/Brown, Eric (2019): Cosmopolitanism, in: The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2019 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = https://plato.stanford. edu/archives/win2019/entries/cosmopolitanism/. Kuper, Andrew (2000): Rawlsian Global Justice, in: Political Theory (28). Moncada, Luis Cabral de (1959): Será possível um verdadeiro Direito Internacional?, in: Estudos Filosóficos e Históricos (II). Coimbra: Universidade de Coimbra. Pogge, Thomas W. (1992): Cosmopolitanism and Sovereignty, in: Ethics (103). Tesón, Fernando (1998): A Philosophy of International Law. Boulder: Westview Press.

Part III Culture and Art

The Art of Calligraphy in the Far-East Nguyen Quy Dao* Calligraphy, etymologically speaking, means beautiful handwriting, the art of producing fine written characters. Almost every civilization where writing exists has developed the art of calligraphy. In the West, it was realized by copyist monks or great calligraphers working in the service of sovereigns and the aristocracy. In the Middle-East, it is also evolved into a decorative art. Fine engraved inscriptions can be found on the pediments of religious and historical buildings. As for the Far-East, there, along with the beauty of the writing, calligraphy also demands the complete presence of the artist, and personifies him. Thus, it is truly an art because it embodies both the artist and his personality, just like the works of a painter, a sculptor, a poet or a writer. Chinese calligraphy is the foundation of Chinese art in the modern sense of the word, thanks to the visual beauty of the ideograms. The technique it is founded on, as well as the plastic challenges linked with it, exemplify the metaphysical precepts of Chinese culture. It is a major art, as it also is in other countries of Far-East-Asia. In China and Vietnam, it is considered as a discipline, called Thu’ Pháp, the Art of Characters. In Japan it is called Thu’ Ðy´o, the Religion of letters, (it is pronounced Toudo in Japanese, the same Do as in Judo, the martial art) and Ðy´o, the Religion or ¨ ng (Confucianism) and the Way, is to be found with the same meaning in Ðy´o Khô Ðy´o Phâ. t (Bouddhism) … When I was still at primary school, there was a subject considered just as important as other subjects like “Moral lesson” and “Natural science”, it was “Writing lesson”. I can remember writing in violet ink over whole page of stick and hook shapes to make “I” and “T” letters already written before in pencil by the teacher. These exercises were the first preparatory lessons in writing and in calligraphy. In this talk, we shall just be looking at the calligraphy of Far-East and at works from China, Japan and Vietnam. And it is Vietnam which has the particularity that the others do not: It has not only a writing system of ideograms imposed by the Chinese who colonized Vietnam for ten centuries, from the beginning of the Christian era till the early tenth century, and which was used until the beginning of the twentieth century, but Vietnam has also a roman alphabet inherited from its time as a French protectorate. * NB: All the pictures in the text, except some signed with NQD, are excerpts from Wikipedia; with all my thanks.

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I. Origins and Characteristics of Chinese Characters According to legend, Chinese characters were invented by Cang Jie in around 2650 BC (fig. 1). He was described as having two pairs of eyes, a sign of extreme perspicacity and intelligence.

Figure 1: Portrait of Cang Jie

The earliest known Chinese texts were written on tortoise shells or animal bones (fig. 2). Later on they were engraved on stone, then on metal. Calligraphy is at present mostly written on so-called silk-paper.

Figure 2: Ancient Writing on Tortoise Shell

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˜ ’” Chinese characters are monosyllabic and figurative. For example, the word “NU which means “YOUNG GIRL” and which is shown in fig. 3 left. However, when other figurative characters are associated with it, an abstract meaning can be then expressed. Thus the word “AN” which means “TRANQUIL” or “PEACEFUL” (fig. 3 right) is formed by combining the character “GIRL” seated beneath the protection of a roof.

˜ ’ and AN are on Top of the Two Pictures. Figure 3: The Two Chinese Characters NU The Lower Parts of the Figures Represent the Evolution and the Various Style of the Characters1

Chinese characters are thus figurative and well-suited to calligraphy. There are about 60.000 Chinese characters in all, but you need 3 – 4,000 characters to read a newspaper correctly, while 6 – 800 are sufficient for a spoken language.

II. The Tools of Calligraphy The calligrapher is a scholar with a deep knowledge of the literary and spiritual texts of his culture and he uses what are known by tradition as the four treasures of the scholar: the inkstick, the inkwell, the brush and silk-paper (fig. 4). These are not neutral “objects” but the prolongation of the body and mind of the master or of the artist who follow the “ÐA. O”, the way. 1 Excerpts from “In Search of the Origins of Chinese Characters Relevant to Vietnamese”, by Ly Lac Nghi and Jim Waters. Hanoi (Vietnam): Nha Xuat Ban The Gioi, 1997.

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Chinese ink is extremely carefully made. Very dark black coloured inksticks are made and often signed by the craftsman. The black coloured inks are not without nuances but instead have a purple reflection. The scholar prepares his own ink by dissolving the inkstick in an inkwell. Inkwells are beautiful artistically carved stones slightly hollowed in the centre to contain the ink. The inkbrush is made from a wooden or bamboo stick with wolf hairs or other vegetal fibres fixed at one end to form a point for writing. More pressure on the brush gives a wider stroke whereas raising the brush gives fine strokes. Thus, many nuances are created without the necessity of colour. It is a work of art in black and white. Beautiful writing contains at least several different tones which go to underline both the delicacy and the richness of the character written. And finally, the special paper is made from the bark of a special tree and much care is needed in its production. It must absorb ink without any bleeding and should last a very long time without any wear.

Figure 4: The Four Treasures of the Scholar and the Way of Holding the Pen (Photo: thehluk)

III. Some Characteristic Features of Calligraphy There are several basic features of calligraphy.

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Figure 5: The Upright and Horizontal Stroke

Figure 6: Oblique and Round Stroke

Figure 7: Hook Shaped Strokes and Lining Strokes

Figure 8: Curves

Variations of strokes: the upper line is obtained using the middle of the brush and the second using the tip of the brush (fig. 9):

Figure 9: Variations of Strokes

When a calligrapher is writing, each stroke and character is an expression of his state of mind. If he is not feeling sufficiently calm, it will show in his writing. Some strokes must be made quickly, while others must be made more firmly and slowly. In

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the mandarin recruitment exams, a specific mark was awarded for beauty of the written characters. Writing involved lifelong practice.

IV. The Art of Calligraphy Each character is written in a perfect square. With pictograms or ideograms, each character becomes an image and as such represents a real artistic painting (fig. 10).

Figure 10: Silk Painting During the Duong Dynasty (Tang Dynasty, 618 – 907) (Photo Pinterest)

While coded graphic language has existed for more than 4000 years, Chinese language ideograms have existed for almost 3000 years (VI century BC) as mentioned and it was around 210 BC that this art was precisely defined by Li Seu: “When a character is written, it is not only its composition which is important but also the strength of the brush stroke. Your line should dance like a cloud in the sky, sometimes heavy, sometimes light. It is only then that your spirit will be filled by what you are doing and that you will really achieve truth.”

Chinese history records that some famous calligraphers spent years on one single character as they strove for perfection in the art of writing. They are still recognized now as very great artists. This is true for Wang Hsi-chih (303 – 361), who was recognized as the “Saint of calligraphy” during the East Jin dynasty in the South of China. He practised writing the word ( ) VI˜NH (Eternity) for 15 years (fig. 11).

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Figure 11: Wang Hsi-chih

Later on, these two lines were dedicated to him:

This can be translated as: “To use his heart for fifteen years, (just) to learn how to write one single word ‘ETERNITY’”. Here below is an example of a detail from a copy of the “Orchid pavilion” (fig. 3) showing writing by Wang Hsi-chih:

Figure 12: Hand-writing and Seal, Ink on Paper, Horizontal Roll, 24 × 88,5 cm. Palace Museum, Beijing

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V. Japanese Calligraphy There is no great difference to be found between Japanese and Chinese calligraphy. Here are some examples on show at the Guimet museum in Paris at the present time (fig. 13).

Figure 13: Japanese Calligraphies

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Figure 14: Some Japanese Masterpieces as Exposed in Musée Guimet in Paris

Figure 15: A Contemporary Japanese Calligrapher

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VI. Vietnamese Calligraphy Vietnamese writing has its beginnings in Chinese writing. In fact, from the beginning of the Christian era until the twentieth century, it was composed of Chinese characters. Since Vietnam was colonized for one thousand years from the first to the tenth century AD, Chinese characters were imposed for writing. But from the twelfth century, Sino-Vietnamese characters based on Chinese characters and so-called NÔM characters began to be used for writing purely Vietnamese words, but Vietnam still kept Chinese characters for official documents. Starting from the beginning of the twentieth century only, the phonetic roman alphabet is used. While Nôm characters were written as Chinese characters, they were modified to adapt them to the Vietnamese language. A non-specialist would find it difficult to distinguish between Nôm and Chinese writing unless he knows the characters. Here is an example of the words NGUYÊN the first is Chinese and NGUYÊN, the second is Vietnamese. In the early seventeenth century, trading sailors arrived with Portuguese and Spanish missionaries who were hoping to preach Christianity in Vietnam. They created the Vietnamese alphabet, including various accents. It is necessary to name the Italian Francesco Buzomi, and Gaspar do Amaral, Antonio Barbosa and Francisco de Pina, the Portuguese priests. They translated the Bible into the Vietnamese language for it to be read by the local population and wrote it in a phonetic roman alphabet. This form of writing the Vietnamese language has existed since then and even if it has slightly evolved, its essence remains the same. Alexandre de Rhodes (1591– 1660), a French polyglot jesuit priest, born in Avignon into a Jewish family converted to catholicism, has the honour of having established the definitive Vietnamese alphabet. Here is an example of a page of the Vietnamese-Portuguese-Latin dictionary edited in 1651 (fig. 16). You may recognise in this alphabet diacritic signs typical of Portuguese writing and not to be found in the Latin alphabet (ê˜ , d¯, o’…).

Figure 16: A Vietnamese, Portuguese and Latin Dictionary Published in 1651

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At the beginning of the 20th century, the French colonial administration insisted all official texts be written in the Latin characters now known as the National writing called “Quô´ c Ngu˜’”, and it has continued to be used ever since. But the tradition of calligraphy endures. Vietnamese scholars who wrote with Chinese or Sino-Vietnamese characters (fig. 17) gradually disappeared leaving in their place modern calligraphers writing with the National writing “Quô´ c Ngu˜’”. Since the early twentieth century, when the Latin alphabet was introduced, the Vietnamese have continued to practice both forms of calligraphy.

Figure 17: An Ancient Vietnamese Scholar

Nowadays in Vietnam, the two styles can still be seen: the traditional Chinese or Sino-Vietnamese characters to be found on temples and ancient monuments and everywhere else the Latin characters (fig. 18).

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Figure 18: Sino-Vietnamese and Vietnamese Calligraphy

Usually, beautiful written single characters such as “Happiness”, “Prosperity”, “Joy”, “Abundance”, “Long life” or also fine lines of poetry, are bought as a gift for oneself or for friends during the New year festival (fig. 19).

Figure 19: “Prosperity”

And very often, double sentences are also written in calligraphy (fig. 20). The double sentences are still to be found on pagodas, and temple facades decorating the entrances. If the sentences are written in traditional Chinese characters, the first

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Figure 20: Calligraphy of Double Sentences

sentences are placed on the right. It is to be read vertically from the top to the bottom. The second sentence which answers it, is to be found in the left-hand column and they are perfectly symmetrical. These sentences are usually written by scholars but there is also a very popular tradition that they can be created by two people replying to one another as a test of the intelligence and the lively mind of the second person. One declaims the first sentence and the other must find the second sentence which is fitting response. There are very strict rules concerning the construction of

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the parallel sentences including three essential ones: the gender and the meaning of the word and its tonic accent. Each word of the first sentence must have its exact grammatical equivalence in the second sentence. If the word is a noun, its opposite must be a noun, if an adjective, another adjective, a verb, a verb … It is the same with the meaning of the word. A colour must if possible be answered by another colour. As for the tones, the first sentence must finish with an acute tonic accent and the second must finish with a grave accent. There are six tones in all in Vietnamese: “unmarked or level” (không dâ´ u), “grave or lowering” (dâ´ u huyê` n), “acute or smooth rising” (dâ´ u sa˘´ c), “tilde or high-raising” (dâ´ u ngã), “hook above or midlow dropping” (dâ´ u ho ¨ i), “underdot or low-dropping” (dâ´ u na˘. ng). Among these six tones, two are grave (không dâ´ u and dâ´ u huyê` n) and the other four are acute (Sa´˘ c, Ho ¨ i, Ngã, Na˘. ng). For the double sentence to be perfect, all the words which compose it need to obey all these rules. For example, here is a beautiful double sentence for the New Year Vietnamese festival: Thi.t mõ’, du’a hành, câu d¯ô´i d¯o ¨ Nêu cao, pháo no ¨ , bánh chu’ng xanh

which means: Rich meat, fermented shallots, red double sentence Tall festival pole, noisy fireworks, green New Year cake.

These are all the traditional elements of the Vietnamese New Year festival. Each word in the first line is answered by the same kind of word in the second line. Thi.t vs Nêu. They are both nouns. They are both grammatically Objects. And we have an acute accent vs a grave accent. Then we have second word in each line: Mõ’ vs Cao. They are both adjectives. And we have an acute accent vs a grave accent. Third words are Ðo ¨ and Xanh meaning Red and Green. They are Adjectives and colours. And they are acute vs grave. All the words of both lines follow the rules and these parallel sentences are very well known in Vietnam. And here are some examples of new present-day calligraphy. The last one, painted on a porcelain vase is on show at present in an exhibition in Hanoi. The inscription in Latin characters gives the work of art its undeniable beauty.

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Figure 21: Vietnamese Calligraphy on a Porcelain Vase

Conclusion As a conclusion, I would like to show you a few slides I took in the Paris Guimet museum. The objects in the photos are on show in the Far-East calligraphy department. They concern the work of Victor Segalen (1878 – 1919), who was a French poet, medical doctor, and also sinologist. In his book of poems called Stèles, in its original edition privately produced in 1912, he comments on the calligraphy written on Chinese memorial stones as follows: Characters, enchained by laws as clear as ancient thought and simple as musical numbers hang down from one to the next, cling to one to another and are engaged in an irreversible web, resistant even to their creator. No sooner are they incrusted in the stone – and have imbued their creators with intelligence – they strip moving human intelligence from the shapes, to become the very thought of the stone itself … No need to be read, no use for voice or music … They do not express: they have meaning; they are.

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Figure 22: Painting by George-Daniel de Montfreid (1909). At the Museum Guimet in Paris (Photo NQD)

Figure 23: Calligraphy on a Panel (Photo NQD)

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Figure 24: At the Museum Guimet in Paris (Photo NQD)

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Cosmology, Embodiment and Emotions in Arthur Schopenhauer’s Metaphysics of Music Nuno Miguel Proença What is the cosmos? According to Heraclitus, it can be understood as all there is, ever was and ever will be. The contemplation of the whole spatial and temporal possibilities of being, interweaved with our existence, but transcending it, infinitely, stirs, leaving a tingling in the spine and lets us know “we are approaching the grandest of mysteries”, to put it like a contemporary astronomer1. The physiological reaction of our emotion is provoked by the unfathomable vastness of what surrounds us, but also by our own and inescapable living being. We are a part of the infinite vastness that we contemplate, not just like a drop in the ocean, but also like the ocean in one drop: although we might think we just find ourselves in the universe, the universe is also in us, as Rilke put it in one of his Letters to a Young Poet. In a way that is both strange and familiar, Heimlich and Uneimlich, we are the same otherness that is at the source of our utmost existential awe, of our strongest stir and of our greatest dread. The contemplation of the cosmos thus leads us to the ever-surprising fact that we exist, are made of the same stuff of whatever is, was or ever will be, and do not exist from our own initiative … Although the dynamics of our being resumes the cosmos’ permanent becoming, such intimate and infinite otherness produces astonishment and humility. “The size and age of the Cosmos, says Carl Sagan, are beyond ordinary human understanding. [O]ur tiny planetary home is lost somewhere between immensity and eternity. In a cosmic perspective most human concerns seem insignificant, even petty”. But how are we to attain a cosmic perspective if our emotions, even if they could signal our grasping of the totality of what is, ever was and ever will be, are permanently weaved with a finite spatial and temporal contemplation? Can they transform our perception and give our perspectives a cosmic dimension? What part do they play in the constitution of the cosmos as a whole that can be grasped? If our inextricable emotions have the power to erase the limits of our perception, the arts must play a significant role in this transformation. Of course, the question concerning the role of emotions in the arts has been asked times and times again, from Aristotle to our contemporaries, and many philosophical and psychological answers have been given, not only in the field of aesthetics and in the theory of the arts, but also in the artists’ reflections themselves. Let us, nonetheless, consider the emotional ground of any form of art, arisen through its contemplation: is the unity of the perceptual 1

Sagan (2003), p. 20.

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realms given to us by the plurality of our senses (namely by sight and hearing) and arisen by the arts anything else than the invisible unity of our body and of all its powers? In this non-objectified realm of potentiality, our embodied affects, from which emotions stem, can be considered as forces that give form to representations and which, in this sense, give shape to the world as we perceive it and as that in which we live. The world is different when lived through fear than when it is lived through serenity and joy, it also changes while suffering becomes enjoyment. Its aspect is not the same in boredom or in awe! The human possibilities that compose the world, its vectors and its meaning change according to the qualities of our emotions, with the subtlety of their vibrating movement, with their immediate valuing of what is, was or will be. The non-intentional life, considered as energy and potentiality, and whose locus are our body and our flesh, is a self-affection in which any knowledge and any practice find their origin. Art, and in particular music, has a cosmological dimension in this sense that, in the most direct way, it expresses the possibilities of such auto-affection of life in which all that is, ever was and ever will be can manifest itself. Such non-intentional life, which is the essence of an absolute subjectivity, is precisely what Arthur Schopenhauer called ‘will’ in his 1818 work entitled The World as Will and Representation. To understand the cosmological dimension of art in this perspective, we have to understand the meaning given by Schopenhauer to the notion of will, as the innermost essence of any phenomenon and also to grasp the articulations the author establishes between such will, the body and the emotions on the one hand, and, on the other, between the unity of the will and music’s specificity among the arts. That shall lead us to consider, furthermore, a gradation of the phenomenal world, a hierarchy of being which composes the cosmos and expresses its unique essence in diverse degrees, as well as the universality of music, which is not conceptual, nor linguistic, but requires embodied emotions and feelings that lead us to forms of meaning stemming from the essence of the cosmos2. “Men have attempted in various ways to bring the immeasurable greatness of the universe nearer to the power of comprehension of each one of us, and have then seized the opportunity to make edifying observations. They have referred perhaps to the relative smallness of the earth, and indeed of man; then again, in contrast to this, they have spoken of the greatness of the mind of this man who is so small, a mind that can decipher, comprehend, and even measure the greatness of this universe, and so on. Now, this is all very well, yet to me, when I consider the vastness of the world, the most important thing is that the essence in itself […] is present whole and undivided in everything in nature, in every living being”3.

2

We will also take into consideration Ernst Bloch’s comments and critiques of Schopenhauer’s text. Although less known than Nietzsche’s, they will help us identify some of the limits and possible flaws of the author of The World as Will and Representation’s theses. Vladimir Jankélévitch’s concise but acute critique will also be taken into consideration at the end of our text, after some remarks on Schopenhauer’s decisive importance to Wagner. 3 Schopenhauer (1966), vol. I, p. 129.

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In other words, if we resume our initial reflections, the admiration provoked by the cosmos can be found in anything, from the tiniest grain of sand to the farthest galaxies, because any phenomenon of this infinite continuum is a manifestation of such essence. “True wisdom is not to be acquired by our measuring the boundless world, or, what would be more appropriate, by our personally floating through endless space. On the contrary, it is acquired by thoroughly investigating any individual thing, in that we try thus to know and understand perfectly its true and peculiar nature”4. The kind of knowledge needed to achieve that cosmological understanding cannot be merely scientific. Instead of guiding us to the inner being of the phenomena, that makes it significant to us, science takes us into a never-ending path that goes from representation to representation. Whether morphological or etiological, that is to say, whether observing the forms or explaining the changes, natural sciences, likewise mathematics, are incapable of reaching the precise determinations thanks to which the representations of the world acquire real significance and speak to us directly, are understood and have an interest that engrosses our whole nature. Without this significance, the content of intuitions can only become a series of pictures, images and names marching past us strange and meaningless. If we want to grasp the inner nature of things, thanks to which the representations of the world acquire real significance and speak to us directly, we need to go from the representations of the merely phenomenal world to something else that would entirely escape the formal conditions of knowledge, as they have been identified by Kant. The meaning of the infinite series of the phenomena that compose the world can only be given if we take our body into consideration, as the body belongs to the phenomenal world but is also something else, from which we can derive an understanding of the essence of the manifest universe. As an object among objects, liable to their common laws, the body is given in intelligent perception as representation. Yet, “[t]o the subject of knowing, who appears as an individual only through his identity with the body, this body is given in two entirely different ways. It is given in intelligent perception as representation and as object among objects, liable to the laws of these objects. But it is also given in quite a different way, namely as what is known immediately to everyone, and is denoted by the word will. Every true act of his will is also at once and inevitably a movement of his body; he cannot actually will the act without at the same time being aware that it appears as a movement of the body”5. The action of the body is nothing but the act of will objectified, that is to say, the act of will translated into perception. Such act and the action of the body do not stand in the relation of cause and effect, they are not two different states objectively known, they are just one and the same thing given in two different ways. Therefore, the affections of the body, which are the medium through which knowledge is given for a subject as individual, are the starting-points for the understanding of the perception of the world. If every true, genuine and im4 5

Schopenhauer (1966), vol. I, p. 129. Schopenhauer (1966), p. 100.

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mediate act of the will is a manifest act of the body, reversely, every impression of the body is at once and directly an act of the will. When such impression is contrary to the will, it is called pain, if it is in accordance with will, we call it gratification or pleasure. None of them are representations, they are all immediate affections of the will in its phenomenon, “enforced, instantaneous wiling or not willing of the impression undergone by the body”6. The identity of the body and of the will also shows itself “in the fact that every vehement and excessive movement of the will, in other words, every emotion, agitates the body and its inner workings directly and immediately”7. Such movements are present in any perceived phenomenon. As the knowing subject is rooted in the world and finds himself in the world, as her body is the conditional supporter of the whole world as representation, the knowing subject is an individual. The key to his own phenomenon, that which reveals him the significance of the world and shows him the inner mechanism of his being, of his actions and of his movements, is called Will. And the will, thus understood, is also the key to understand the inner being of any phenomenon in the universe. All objects can be judged according to the double knowledge we have of our body. We shall assume that, on the one hand, they are representations homogeneous to our body and, on the other, if we set aside their existence as representations conditioned by subjectivity, what still remains must be of the same nature of what we call will when we talk about ourselves. “What other kind of existence or reality could we attribute to the rest of the material world? From what source could we take the elements out of which we construct such a world?”8, asks Schopenhauer. According to the author of The World as Will and Representation, the concept of will (previously presented in The Will in Nature) stems from within, and proceeds from the most immediate consciousness of everyone. Of all possible concepts, its origin is neither in the phenomenon nor in the mere representation of perception. In this consciousness each one knows “for here knower and known coincide”9. Each one of us is herself her own individuality immediately without the form of subject and object. The notion of will thus becomes the key to the knowledge of the innermost being of the whole nature, as we transfer it to all those phenomena that are given to us in indirect knowledge as representation alone. All objects, all representations are the phenomena, the visibility, the objectivity of Will, which is the essence, the kernel, of every particular thing and also of the whole. Its unity is something to which the condition of possibility of plurality, that is, the principium individuationis, is foreign. According to Schopenhauer’s main metaphysical thesis, the same will can be recognized, not only as the innermost nature of those phenomena that are quite similar to our own, like other human and animals, but also as the force that shoots and vegetates in the plant, or by which the crystal is formed. We can likewise recognize a series of 6

Schopenhauer (1966), p. 101. Schopenhauer (1966), p. 101. 8 Schopenhauer (1966), vol. I, p. 105. 9 Schopenhauer (1966), vol. I, p. 101. 7

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fundamental forces in nature as the objectification10 of that which is immediately known to us. The universe is full of forces that traverse all levels of the cosmos. Birds and insects reflect the activity of the will, although they are not guided by knowledge. Do birds have any idea of the eggs for which they build their nest? Do young spiders have a notion of the prey for which they spin their web? Does the ant-lion have a notion of the ant for which it digs a cavity for the first time? Likewise, many non-intentional systems of our body are objectifications of the will, which acts “blindly”11, as in all the functions of our body that knowledge does not guide: vital and vegetative processes, digestion, circulation, secretion, growth or reproduction. Will is objectified by a range of forces that goes from the one which turns the magnet to the North Pole or another whose shock we encounter from the contact of metals of different kinds, to the force that appears in the elective affinities of matter as repulsion and attraction, separation and union, and finally even in gravitation, which acts so powerfully in all matter, pulling the stone to the earth and the earth to the sun. All these, although different in the phenomenon, are the same according to their inner nature. They express will. “Will is manifested in every blindly acting force of nature, and also in the deliberate conduct of man. Between the two there is only a difference in the degree of the manifestation, there is no difference in what concerns their inner nature”12. As the will’s passage into visibility, its objectification, has gradations as endless as those between the feeblest twilight and the brightest sunlight, the loudest tone and the softest echo. What kind of immediate knowledge could consider what exists independently of the principles that guide science and experience, independently of the principium individuationis resulting from the subjective forms of space and time and also independently of the principle of sufficient reason? That kind of knowledge is art. According to Schopenhauer, art is an immediate knowledge of that which is essential to the world, which is the true content of the phenomena and which is not subject to change. By repeating what is true for all time through a depiction of the transient individuals, art apprehends the Ideas that are an objectification of the will. Sculpture, painting or poetry are capable of extracting the object of contemplation from the spatio-temporal stream of the world and to hold it, isolated in its perennial character. Through art, any infinitesimal part of the universe becomes a representative of the totality, of its essence, it becomes “an equivalent of the infinitely many in space and time”13. Amongst all the arts, music has a particularity shared with no other. 10

The most recent English translation of The World as Will and Representation (by Judith Norman, Alistair Welchman and Christopher Janaway, published as the first volume of The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Schopenhauer, in 2014) gives “objectivation” instead of “objectification”. We decided to stick to the former translation, as it makes the word “object” (instead of “objective”) and the process of becoming an individual objet in the world of phenomena sound stronger. 11 Schopenhauer (1966), vol. I, p. 115. 12 Schopenhauer (1966), vol. I, p. 128. 13 Schopenhauer (1966), vol. I, p. 185.

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It expresses, in an exceedingly universal language, “in mere tones, and with the greatest distinctness and truth, the inner being, the in-itself, of the world, which we think under the concept of will, according to its most distinct manifestation”14. And the distinctiveness with which music expresses the will surpasses even that of the world of perception itself, which is also a manifestation of the will. Like other artistic forms, music is an objectification of the will, but unlike architecture, painting, sculpture, poetry or drama, it objectifies the will directly, not indirectly. Other arts depict individual things to stimulate the knowledge of Ideas, which themselves are perennial and adequate objectifications of the will. The world as representation is nothing but the phenomenon or appearance of the Ideas entering the forms of knowledge possible to the individual as such, and becoming pluralities of beings that may be the theme of art. Music, on the contrary, ignores the world resulting from the embodiment of Ideas according to the principium individuationis. Instead of being a copy of the individuations of Ideas, music is a copy of the whole will itself, just like the world. By passing over the Ideas and by objectifying immediately the will, this singular form of art positively ignores the world as representation and shows it as something else. It shows it as an expression of Life, we could say. That is why, to a certain extent, in the words of Schopenhauer, “music could still exist even if there were no world at all”15, as it expresses not the appearance of the will as world, but the innermost being of the appearing world, its inner nature, the thingin-itself that we, as embodied subjects, can feel and be affected by, that which moves us. This is also the reason why the language of music – which dispenses words – is universal, is immediately understood by all and expresses the quintessence of life. According to Schopenhauer, music is thus “a paradise quite familiar and yet […] inexplicable”. Why is music capable of pulling us straight into the harmonic turmoil of the will without needing us to undergo its manifestation in the world? According to this metaphysics of music, the human nature consists in the fact that our will strives, is satisfied, strives anew, is satisfied, strives, and so on and so forth. Our wellbeing and happiness consist only in the transition from desire to satisfaction, and from satisfaction to a fresher desire, in a very rapid and permanent way. Suffering is the non-appearance of satisfaction. Boredom and languor are the empty longing for a new desire. Correspondingly, (in a tonal system, should we add) the nature of melody is a constant digression and deviation from the keynote in a thousand ways, to all inter14

Schopenhauer (1966), vol. I, p. 264. Schopenhauer (1966), vol. I, p. 257. At first sight, therefore, a critique, according to which music’s privilege in what concerns the access to noumenon is arbitrary does not seem to hold. When formulating such argument, as we will see more in detail, Jankélévitch seems to bypass the very center of Schopenhauer’s anti-kantian argument, which concerns the inextricable relation between embodiment, the nature of emotions and will. Through emotions as motions of something which is not phenomenal (but concerns us as knowing individuals) we can have an immediate access to the-thing-in-itself that does not require a depiction or any other form of representation. 15

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vals, whether harmonious (like the third and the fifth) or dissonant (like the seventh), or even extreme. Yet a final return to the keynote always follows these melodic courses. The many different forms of the will’s efforts and permanent transformation are thus expressed in all these digressions, but also its satisfaction in the ultimate finding of a harmonious interval, and still more of the keynote. The discord becomes a consoling or satisfying concord. Every agitation, every effort, every movement of the will, everything which is summarized by the faculty of reason under the wide and negative concept of feeling, and which cannot be further taken up into the abstractions of reason is portrayed by melody. Melody relates the most secret history of the intellectually enlightened will. Hence, it has always been said that music is the language of feeling and passion, just as words are the language of reason16. Although it has something in common with the universality of concepts, the universality of music is, however, different from the former. The first is not just a universality of abstraction, which Schopenhauer calls “empty”, even though melodies are an abstraction from reality, like universal concepts. Likewise concepts, they also find particular cases in the world of particular things, but, unlike concepts, which contain only the forms abstracted from perception, music gives us access to the innermost kernel preceding all forms, it puts us in immediate contact with the heart of things, not with their stripped-off outer shell. In other words, says Schopenhauer, if concepts are universalia post rem, music gives universalia ante rem and reality yields universalia in re. If concepts are a fruit of the activity of understanding, music comes from an immediate knowledge of the inner nature of the world unknown to the faculty of reason to such a point that, if we succeeded in giving a detailed explanation of music that would be at the same time perfectly accurate and complete, this explanation would be a detailed repetition in concepts of what music expresses immediately. By doing so, we would be explaining the world and would hence obtain the true philosophy, because philosophy is nothing but “a complete and accurate repetition and expression of the inner nature of the world in very general concepts, for only in these is it possible to obtain a view of that entire inner nature which is everywhere adequate and applicable”17. Philosophy leads to the universality of the in-itself of things, to the unity of the plurality by the indirect and sometimes erroneous path of 16

Galloppe (2017, pp. 36 – 37) rightly remarks that “things get complicated from here, because this thought is teeming with paradoxes. What does it mean to say that music is a language of feeling, when language by definition is made of words, and thus entails representations? And what does it mean to say that its history ‘of the intellectually enlightened will’ is a secret, rather than something that is manifestly obvious? Finally, if melody ‘portrays’ or ‘paints’ every tiny ‘movement of the will’, in a way that is inassimilable to reason, how can we say and understand this thought in language without corrupting it?” Minimally, to return to the central thesis: we know that for Schopenhauer music speaks in a way that language cannot. It speaks a language of feeling and passion; it speaks about things that do not get said in ordinary language. In a particularly provocative (and prescient turn of phrase, Schopenhauer even claims that “music’s secretive character emanates from the nocturnal depths of the unconscious, (…) delivered to us without the aid of any concepts”. We will return to these aspects further on. 17 Schopenhauer (1966), vol. I, p. 264.

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concepts, while music is a direct access to the cosmic dimension of the will, without any possible error resulting from the imprecision of words, which are forms of representation. Before getting back to the universality of music and its non-conceptual and non-linguistic means of immediate knowledge, it is important to recall Schopenhauer’s hierarchy of natural beings as expressions of the will and their analogy with the harmony and melody of an orchestra. Based on the equivalence between music and the world in terms of expression of the will, Schopenhauer establishes an analogy between musical harmony and the whole world of nature in which the highest degree of will and the higher voices of melody find their place. If there is, indeed, no resemblance between the productions of music and the world as representation, between music and nature, there is, on the contrary, a parallelism. Such parallelism, or analogy, gives us a conceptual understanding of the inter-dependence within the living community and it allows us to glimpse at the Earth’s ecological environment that, just as Alexander von Humbolt did, in his Cosmos, some have identified as a unique living being18. It also calls our attention to the fact that human life and freedom are inseparable from the infinity of the phenomena of the natural world. In turn, although arguably, such analogy could also lead us not only to listen to music, and in particular, to orchestral music, being aware of its existential and cosmological dimension, but also to understand the importance of emotions (and of its secret relations to arithmetical proportions) in our effort, or at least in our journey to grasp the whole world. According to this analogy, as we may bluntly express it, “the four voices or parts of all harmony, that is, bass, tenor, alto, and soprano, or fundamental note, third, fifth, and octave [of the scale of C] correspond to the four grades in the series of existences, hence to the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms, and to mankind”19. To produce its full impression, music is perfect only in complete harmony and the high leading voice of melody depends on the accompaniment of all the other voices. The expression of the soprano thus requires the full-toned orchestral whole going down to the lowest bass, regarded here as the origin of all music. Likewise, mankind, which, according to this metaphysics, is the highest grade of the will’s objectification, could not appear alone and isolated. Its existence “presupposes the grades under it, and these again presupposed lower and lower grades”20. The complexity of human motives and reason require necessarily all the range of living forms that go down to the inorganic matter regarded as the origin of all forms of complex life. The fact that the high voice, singing the melody, is connected even with the deepest ground-bass may be regarded as the analogue of the fact that the same matter than in a human organism is the supporter of the Idea of man must nevertheless at the same time manifest and support the Ideas of gravity and of chemical properties, hence the Ideas of the lowest grades of the will’s objectification. In other words, our humanity is not possible with18

Lovelock (2000). Schopenhauer (1966), vol. I, p. 258. 20 Schopenhauer (1966), vol. I, p. 259.

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out the whole natural world required by our material body, which includes the planet and (even if Schopenhauer does not say it explicitly) the solar system and the whole universe’s other stars and planets. The orchestral range that goes from bass to soprano and which ensures the intertwining of harmony and melody, is respectively described in its parallel with the continuous strata encompassing the expression of the whole of the will in the natural world: firstly, in the deepest tones of harmony, in the ground-bass, we can recognize the lowest grades of the will’s objectification, inorganic nature, the mass of the planet. Secondly, between the bass and the leading voice singing the melody, in the body of instruments that produce the harmony, in the whole ripieno, we can recognize the whole gradation of the Ideas in which the will objectifies itself, that is to say, the whole world of all natural beings. Finally, in the melody, in the high, singing, principal voice, leading the whole and progressing with unrestrained freedom, in the uninterrupted significant connexion of one thought from beginning to end, and expressing a whole, we can recognized the highest grade of the will’s objectification, the intellectual life and endeavour of humanity, as we have already referred previously21. By summarizing the four points of this analogy, we can say that the ground bass is put in parallel with the inorganic nature in the world, with the crudest mass in which everything rests and from which everything originates and develops. As a representative of such mass, the bass moves most ponderously, rising and falling in large intervals, in a movement whose slowness is also physically essential to the inorganic mass. Both their frequencies are as similar to each other as the human ear and our body’s sensitivity to deep vibrations can grasp. In second place, the instruments whose range is nearer to the bass are analogous to the lower grades of natural beings, to the still inorganic bodies. In third place, those of the higher instruments represent the plant and animal worlds. In both cases, the definite intervals of the scale are parallel to the definite grades of the will’s objectification, that is to say to the definite species in nature. The higher ripienos, as they move more rapidly, run parallel to the animal world, yet without melodious connexion and significant progress. According to Schopenhauer, “their disconnected course and their determination by laws are analogous to the fact that in the whole irrational world, from the crystal to the most perfect animal, no being has a really connected consciousness that would make its life into a significant whole”22. It exists according to its nature uniformly and is determined by a fixed law. Lastly, in the forth place, the upper voice that sings the melody has a sequence and a continuity of progress which is absent from all these bass notes and ripienos that constitute the harmony. It expresses humanity alone, as “being endowed with the faculty of reason and as always looking before and after on the path of her actual life and of her innumerable possibilities, so achieving a course of life that is intellectual, and is thus connected as a whole”23. In keeping 21

Schopenhauer (1966), vol. I, p. 258. Schopenhauer (1966), vol. I, p. 259. 23 Schopenhauer (1966), vol. I, p. 259.

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with this, as we have already mentioned before, melody alone has significant and intentional connexion from beginning to end. Consequently, it relates the story of the intellectually enlightened will, the copy or impression of what in actual life is the series of his deeds. The inexhaustibleness of possible melodies corresponds to the inexhaustibleness of nature in the difference of individuals, physiognomies, and courses of life. No music can grasp it entirely, of course, but no other art will ever be closer to do so … To this point, we could recall the similarity between Schopenhauer’s hierarchy of beings and other cosmologies of music, as Ernst Bloch does in the chapters concerning the philosophy of music in his work on The Spirit of Utopia, when he addresses his critiques to the former’s metaphysics of music. It is important to stress, nonetheless, that one of the original aspects of the philosophical understanding of music by the author of The World as Will and Representation is the fact that it intertwines what resembles a hierarchy of the different strata of being in nature and the inner feelings centred in the human individual, thus maintaining cosmology inseparable from individuality, and lived through the ineffable reality of embodied emotions, that direct it to the innermost of human subjective selfhood and not just to the cosmos, unlike what Ernst Bloch seems to point critically, when he contends that “in Schopenhauer the ponderous bass […] mirrors stones, the tenor plants, the alto animals, and the soprano who carries the melody of the human realm, and thus the orchestra becomes a crosssection of the world; even in this most Christian of philosophers, then, music’s transcending objective correlation is still directed towards the cosmos: for here again man is not the point of nature, but rather just the strongest, most diurnal, clearest objectification of the Will, and as such appointed precisely to destroy the illusion of individuation in the face of Universal nature”24. We could also say that Schopenhauer merely operates a graphic and spatial transposition of the audio succession. It is true 24

“Nevertheless, one has not shrunk from letting sound land only completely outside us. It was not so long ago that one equated do, re, mi, fa to the four elements and the seven notes of the octave to the planets. Not only the Vedas wail their mysterious monsoon ragas, not only the intervals of the Chinese stringed instruments are tuned to the intervals between the planets, but even Dietrich Buxtehude took it upon himself “to charmingly depict the nature and character of the planets” in his seven keyboards suites (…) Here the true, the inner night has been forsaken; a false, purely astronomical theory of music dominates, as Kepler above all finally conceptualized it. Here even the particular registers are supposed to correspond to particular planets, the minor key coincides with the perihelion, the major with the aphelion, in fact the entire tonal system with all its harmonies is described as the pale reflection of the solar system, or in Pythagorean terms, as the sevenfold refraction of the primordial solar note, as the lyra Apollinis, and is only legitimate within this system. (…) For Schelling, the musical gold nevertheless lies entirely embedded in the number 7, and Kepler’s Pythagoreanism triumphs in such an aesthetics where it applies to music, so totally that in Schelling not even Schopenhauer’s at least still seething and twitching Hindu automatisms, but Pythagoras, in fact Egypt itself, becomes music’s most direct deductive locus. From Schelling comes the proper conceptualization of the principle that music is nothing but a suggestion of architecture, and the latter frozen music; thereafter it becomes an easy matter for this philosopher to destroy music with forced structural and mega spatial systems of obsolete astral correlations”, Bloch (2006), pp. 147 – 148.

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that the melodic line goes up and down … but just on the scored paper, not in a sounding world which has no ups or downs! When presenting this argument, in turn, Jankélévitch adds that the score thus projects into the space the distinction between the bass line and the high pitch, from basses to soprano; the simultaneous voices of polyphony seem “superior” or “inferior” to the image of the superposed strata of the geologist, – and the same is true about the “stratifications” of consciousness, giving a naive topographic meaning to music and bestowing to what is temporal the three dimensions of what is optical and kinesthetic, when there is no symmetry between space and time. Therefore, any architectonic philosophy built upon musical temporality can only be a castle of clouds and illusions, and not a cosmology25 ! Nevertheless, as Michael Galloppe signals when reflecting about the originality of Schopenhauer’s metaphysics, “if we take a step back, it would appear that we have at least two somewhat distinct conceptions of the will in play, both of which Schopenhauer understands to be central to the powers of music. On the one hand we have a Neo-platonic chain of being, a metaphysical hierarchy of energetic life that stretches from heavy matter up through plants, animals, and humans; and on the other, a Romantic stratum of inner feelings that is centred in human experience. For Schopenhauer, it is crucial to understand the intimacy with which the two are intertwined: the Platonic forms structure metaphysical access to the noumenal secrets of life. It is for this reason that Schopenhauer can claim that music’s language of feelings – a profound wisdom in musical sound alone – has a certain exactitude that claimed to be more precise than language”26. Both Bloch and Jankélévitch thus seem to miss the central point of emotions and of the embodied hearing (and playing!) of music, which render meaningful the grasping of the whole phenomenal cosmos. According to the author of The World as Will and Representation, in a metaphysical speculation that was of the greatest importance to Wagner, there is a special kind of universality in music, which gives it the highest value among human artistic endeavours, makes it capable of disclosing to us the most secret meaning of any scene, of any action and of any event of the human life. Despite what it has in common with the universality of concepts, the universality of Music’s way of grasping the world is different from the universality of concepts. In music, as everywhere in art, the concept is unproductive. Music gives us immediate access to the innermost kernel from which all forms stem, it puts us in contact with the heart of things, not with their strip ped-off outer shell. Through harmony and melody, it discloses all the deepest secrets of human willing and feelings and unveils their inseparability from the whole world. “Composers reveal the innermost nature of the world, and express the profoundest wisdom in a language that their reasoning faculty does not understand, just as a magnetic somnambulist gives information about things of which she has no conception when she is awake”27. In this sense, we can understand why, when we give ourselves 25

Jankélévitch (1983), p. 20. Galloppe (2017), p. 36. 27 Schopenhauer (1966), p. 260.

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entirely to the impression of a whole piece of music, to a whole symphony, it is as if we went through all the possible events of life and of the world within ourselves. It is as if we travelled within the entire cosmos, and grasped the whole world, not because we have access to the physical infinity of what is, ever was or ever will be, to put it like Heraclitus, but because, in ourselves, we are brought to the most intimate metaphysical heart of whatever may be. Consequently, according to Schopenhauer, if it is true that music is an unconscious exercise in arithmetic in which the mind does not know it is counting, as Leibniz wrote, it is even more true to say that music is an unconscious exercise in metaphysics in which the mind does not know it is philosophizing28. According to Leibniz, “music is the hidden arithmetical exercise of a soul unconscious that it is calculating. If therefore the soul does not notice that it calculates, it yet senses the effect of its unconscious reckoning, be this as joy over harmony or oppression over discord”29. The author of The World as Will and Representation clearly acknowledges that thesis. Yet, as he understands it, music is also the copy of an unsurpassable movement of the will, which is emotional, because of which satisfaction and dissatisfaction are not only the result of a calculus of the senses, a consequence of the proportion existing between the combined tones and of their vibration, particularly in what concerns harmonic forms, but also an expression of the movements of human emotions. “As that rational and irrational element in the numerical relations of the vibrations admits of innumerable degrees, nuances, sequences, and variations, music, by means of it becomes the material in which all movements of the heart, i. e., of the will […] can be faithfully portrayed and reproduced in all their finest shades and modifications, and this takes place by the invention of melody”30. Considered in the metaphysical aspect, that is to say regarding the inner significance of its achievements, music can be related with its physical aspects, with which it has a connexion. Music’s exactitude thus engenders a sense of universal assent: “Music creates such a powerful reaction in man’s inmost

28 Schopenhauer (1966), § 52, p. 264: “Musica est exercitium metaphisices occultum nescientis se philosophari animi”. While profoundly influenced by Schopenhauer’s and Wagner’s conceptions of music, Nietzsche considered Tristan und Isolde as “the opus metaphysicum of every art”! (Nietzsche, Richard Wagner in Bayreuth) as Dufour (2005) reminds us. 29 Leibniz, “Letter to Chr. Goldbach”, 17/04/1712, repeated in Table des intervales musicaux simples and also in Extrait du dictionnaire de M. Bayle, quoted in its English translation by James (1994), pp. 180 – 181. An extended analysis of Leibniz’s understanding of music can be found in Bailache (1992), where we find all of Leibniz’s texts concerning music (the letter to Christian Goldbach can be found in pages 151 – 153), and in particular this remark, that can be added to the former, and to which Schopenhauer’s developments can be compared: “J’ai montré ailleurs que la perception confuse de l’agrément ou des agréments ‘pour désagrément’ qui se trouve dans les consonances ou dissonances consiste dans une Arithmétique occulte. L’âme compte les battements du corps sonnant qui est en vibration, et quand ces battements se rencontrent régulièrement à des intervalles courts, elle y trouve du plaisir. Ainsi, elle fait des comptes sans le savoir”. 30 Schopenhauer (1966), vol. II, p. 451.

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depths, it is so thoroughly and profoundly understood by him as uniquely universal language, even exceeding in clarity that of the phenomenal world itself”31. Likewise Leibniz, Schopenhauer agrees that the harmony of the tones rests on the coincidence of the tonal vibrations and that, so long as the vibrations of two tones have a rational relation to one another, they can be taken together in our apprehension through their constantly recurring coincidence. The tones, thus blended, are in a pleasant harmony. On the other hand, the tones are dissonant if the relation existing between them is irrational or if it is expressible only in large numbers. It that case, no intelligible coincidence of the vibration occurs and they resist being taken together in our apprehension. Music makes intelligible rational and irrational numerical relations by bringing them to a knowledge that is quite direct and simultaneously affects the senses, whereas arithmetic makes such relations intelligible with the aid of concepts. Both conceptions, Leibniz’s and Schopenhauer’s, are doubtlessly rooted, at least in part, in the Pythagorean tradition according to which there is a co-extension between the physical properties of whole number ratios and metaphysical principles of cosmic harmony, that we also find in Plato’s Timaeus or in Augustine’s De Musica. Let us remind, en passant, that the mystical abstractions linking music and number have persisted into the modern day and that, beforehand, they could be found in Cicero’s and Ptolemy’s writings, in Boetius’ Musica Mundana or in Thomas Aquinas’ Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, where music is said to be “subalternated to arithmetic”32. As for Boetius, he places music in the quadrivium alongside mathematics, geometry and astronomy, because it is exceptionally close to the eternity of truth33. Yet, Schopenhauer’s conceptions, although stressing the universality of music, do not insist on its capacity to express the harmony of the cosmos, but rather on its unique capacity to give access to the essence of the manifest cosmos through its direct copy of the will as affects and emotions. Although metaphysically original in its effort to synthesise the Pythagorean tradition and a cosmological unity derived from Kantianism, the Veda and early trends of Buddhism, Schopenhauer’s understanding of music is not entirely stranger to the developments in the theory of music occurred from the period of the Renaissance onward, and particularly to the Doctrine of Affects or to some reflections of his romantic contemporaries. The Affektenlhere, widely accepted by late Baroque theorists and composers, embraced the idea that music is capable of arousing a variety of specific emotions within the listener. According to this Doctrine, the composer could create a piece of music capable of producing a particular involuntary response in his audience, by making use of the proper standard musical procedure or device. In his Der Vollkommene Capellmeister34, Johann Mattheson, one of the theorists that rigorously catalogued and described such devices and their affective counterparts (others were Athanasius Kircher, Andreas Werkmeister and Johann 31

Schopenhauer (1966), vol. I, p. 185. Aquinas (1963), p. 12 (184 b15 – 185 a19) and also p. 80 (193 b22 – 194 a11). 33 On the prevalence of Pythagoreanism in the western musical tradition, we can read Godwin (1992), Rehding and Clarke (2001), and James (1994). 34 Mattheson (1739). 32

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David Heinichen), notes, for instance, that joy is elicited by large intervals, while sadness is produced by small intervals, whereas fury may be aroused by a roughness of harmony coupled with rapid melody wherears obstinacy is produced by the contrapuntal combination of highly independent melodies. Moreover, Schopenhauer’s insistence on a musical non-conceptual universality and on its ineffable language of feelings (which raises some interesting paradoxes …) does not go without strong similarities with the writings of Forkel, Lessing, Wakenroder or Herder. According to Forkel, indeed, music is an infinitely graded ineffability beyond the limits of a language of emotions and only becomes the real language of the infinite gradations of the feelings at the point where other languages can no longer reach, and when their ability to express ends35. Lessing draws our attention to music’s non-specificity of emotions and, according to Wakenroder, the inconsistent multiplicity of music resisted the reasoned containers of language, its power reflects a secret language of the soul36. The numerical coordinates of cosmic harmonics are re-imagined by Herder as an inner sensuous particularity tightly intertwined with emotions and affects. As for other Romantics, like Herder, music harnesses interior and invisible forces of feeling that befuddle and transfix. According to his view, the Greeks’ recourse to Pythagorean metaphysics and its immaterial science was mainly due to the impact produced by the impossibility of expressing the effects of music through any other means. No other poetic language can imply the inwardness of music37. Herder understood that the non-linguistic dimension of music was interwoven with a concrete knowledge of the world, unfolded in excess, as a sense of depth and idealized absolute. Music is non conceptual and articulates an affective intensity and a spiritual depth beyond any capacity to represent. Its non-representable status gave it the higher range in the hierarchy of the arts. Other German Romantics tended to cast music’s ineffability as an aesthetic abstraction exemplified not by number, but by a metaphorical sense of depth and an exceptional feeling of emotional intensity that we can find in Schopenhauer’s metaphysics of music alongside Pythagorean 35

Quoted by Galloppe (2017), p. 24. Wilhelm Heinrich Wakenroder in “The Characteristic Inner Nature of the Musical Art and the Psychology of Today’s Instrumental Music” from 1779, writes: “Language can only inadequately count and name the changes, not visibly portray for us the interdependent transformations of the drops (of a rushing river). And so it is also with the secret rivers of the human soul. Language counts and names and describes its transformations, in a foreign medium; – the musical art causes it to flow past ourselves. It reaches spiritedly into the mysterious harp, it strikes certain obscure, marvelous signals in the dark world in a definite succession, – and the strings of our hearts resound and we understand their ringing”. See, Wakenroder (1971), p. 191. Notice that Schopenhauer uses the same image of the stretched and plucked “vibrating strings that we ourselves are” when in real life our will itself is what is roused and tormented (WWR, op. cit, vol. II, p. 451)! 37 “The inner shudder, the all powerful feeling that seized (the Greek) they were unable to explain; they knew of nothing in all of visible Nature that could affect them so inwardly and profoundly. So, they believed that spirits, spirits of heaven and earth, had been drawn toward them by the chains of music had descended from celestial spheres and risen from tombs, and floated all about them, invisibly to be sure, yet all the more sensibly”, Herder (2006), p. 251. 36

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remnants and a Neo-platonic hierarchy of beings. Although close to Herder’s, Schopenhauer’s conception of music can be said to break with all the Romantic tradition by giving the ineffability of music the form of an unmediated copy, instead of venerating the sole depth understood as transcendent tones, nature, essence of life, affective longing or even the thing-in-itself. It places us in the immanence of a universal process, whereas other conceptions, however similar, rather introduce separation and a distance that eventually lead to forms of Sehnsucht. According to the author of The World as Will and Representation, all music has an inexpressible depth precisely because it reproduces all the emotions of our innermost being. Its object is directly and essentially that on which anything depends and which, consequently, is the most serious of all things! All efforts, all stirrings, all manifestation of the will, all events occurring within man himself, all that can be felt can also be expressed by the infinite number of possible melodies, but always in the form of universality, before the singularity and the individuality of the events, without reality and remote from its pain: “Music does not express this or that particular and definite pleasure, this or that affliction, pain, sorrow, horror, gaiety, merriment or peace of mind, says Schopenhauer, it expresses joy, pain, sorrow, horror, gaiety, merriment, peace of mind themselves […], their essential nature, without accessories, and also without the motives for them”38. Through music, we have access to the quintessence of emotions, to the affectivity that gives shape to our being-in-the world. This kind of universality, which gives music the highest value among human endeavours, makes it capable of disclosing to us the most secret meaning of any scene, of any action, of any event or of any environment. When it is suitable to them, it is also their most distinct and accurate commentary. In this sense, we can understand why, when we give ourselves entirely to the impression of a whole piece of music, to a whole symphony, it is as if we went through all the possible events of life and of the world within ourselves. We do not only catch the essence of cosmos, being brought to the most intimate metaphysical heart of whatever may be, but also grasp its meaning as a whole. We thus understand why “we could just as well call the world embodied music as embodied will […]”39 and maybe why the thoughtful contemplation of its mystery and of its harmony brings stirring enchantment and a tingling awe. Commenting the author of The World as Will and Representation’s metaphysics of music, and particularly the thesis that music could exist without the world, or that the world could just be understood as embodied music, Ernst Bloch suggests that Schopenhauer (likewise Hegel and Marx) is a victim of a kind of totalizing metaphysics. Such metaphysical understanding of immanence seems to leave no place for individual expressivity or social potentiality, and to leave no room for significant transfor38 Schopenhauer (1966), vol. I, p. 261. It is not surprising, therefore, that Bloch, criticizing this metaphysics, wrote that the expression of individual motives is absent in Schopenhauer’s metaphysics of music, in which humanity seems to appear as a simple instrument of universal forces … We will come back to this issue at the very end of our chapter. 39 Schopenhauer (1966), vol. 1, p. 263.

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mations. If we are brought to the most intimate metaphysical heart of whatever may be, if, through musical emotions, we can have a copy of any possible event of our lives in the world, the surprising appearing of what was not predictable or the progressive flourishing of what is latent and not fathomable in our being, individually or collectively, is put aside. “For Schopenhauer is still quite far from understanding music’s true correlation to the apeiron, to the extent that he anchors it only passively, cosmically, and not in the individual, heroic, Christian element: in other words, to the extent that he indeed concedes to music the power to supplement appearance with the thingin-itself, but nonetheless defines this thing-in-itself only as something metaphysical, of an indeterminate, de-individuated, a-processual, indeed of the already empirically most real kind”40. A totalitarian control over life is thus enacted by the notion of will, unveiling a hopeless rather than an ever-changing and in-finite cosmos, despite what Schopenhauer clearly states when refereeing to the infinite possibilities of melodies and to their expression of human freedom. Yet, we have to recognize that the “possible” is not the “potential”, that the first can be identified to the world as it can presently be grasped and the latter to what is not even fathomable. Bloch thus contends that Schopenhauer’s Platonism, expressed in his metaphysics of the cosmos as a total objectification of the will, as it disavows the potentiality and “true inwardness” which is a starting point for an utopian aspiration towards what is not yet, makes music complicit with fatalism (and hence with pessimism). According to the deepest conclusions of his philosophy, Schopenhauer seems to affirm that all music is at its destination41, since its object really remains always just the Will. In other words, the expression of the unchanging essence of the whole world is the only (and always guaranteed) aspiration of any musical endeavour. Bloch also stresses the fact that, consequently, such conclusion is vain, as music can never really entirely remove human suffering and human drama, derived from our freedom. The schopenhauerian conception rather presents humanity as the mere scene of the action, as the cheated and ironized puppets in the hand of the solitary false idol and in his ever-circular movement leading from suffering to boredom and from there to a profound aspiration to nothingness. Human life is in fact the mere expression of an invisible and uncon40

Bloch (2006), p. 149. “Here one desires to rise no higher, then one enjoys the music and is at the goal; the sound expresses life completely. Although it may not actually paint and imitate appearance, the Will’s gradation certainly project into music: such that here the entire world is mirrored from its deepest registers up to the human voice above, all the way to the leading melody, which most purely and at the same time most mindfully expresses the mutably restless essence of Will. But Schopenhauer ultimately places no decisive emphasis on the particular correspondence between music and the mundane gradation of Ideas; what remains important is rather just this: Everything that happens relates to music as just an arbitrary example; to any clothing of flesh and bone, to any operatic or mundane scenario, music has always just a mediate relationship; music expresses the essence of the Will in abstracto, so to speak, without any accessories, and therefore without motives; music is the extracted quintessence of the feelings, the passions; in short, music is the melody to which the world as a whole is ultimately the text, so that one can as well call the world “embodied music” as “embodied Will”. Bloch (2006), p. 152. 41

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scious flow whose dynamics cannot be escaped without renouncement to the very source of our inner disturbance and turmoil. However much they are part of the illusion, human beings are consequently even less able than such expressions of the will to act independently 42. Far from being a panacea for all our suffering, music rather confirms and affirms than averts the universal Will whose cries it lets ring … Is it true that Schopenhauer insists on harmony and on the emotional capacity of music to overcome suffering (or at least to transform it into a form of enjoyment) rather than in its capacity to bring forth latent possibilities of our being-together-in-the-world, that is to say, rather than arising communal aspirations of possible human futures, as Bloch would like it to? Music soothes, by freeing from the pains of desire, but it does not liberate us from life and its sufferings, because it does not lead to any renouncement to desire (which would be a renouncement to life …). It might lead to compassion for the living, but never to utopia nor to what transcends existence. Its consolation stems from the necessity of what is inescapable, through harmony and concord with the dynamics of cosmic life, in the cosmos, deeply rooted in the embodied movement that traverses the whole world from the most profound and non-representative aspects of existence to its highest ethical and moral purposes. Furthermore, we could contend, as Vladimir Jankélévitch does, that music cannot edify the correspondences between musical speech and subjective life, between the supposed structures of Being and musical speech, or even the correspondences supposedly existing between the structures of Being and subjective life, through musical speech, without a great deal of analogies and metaphorical transpositions. If the polarity between major and minor, for example, corresponds to the one existing between serenity and depression (as the two great ethos of subjective humor) or if, moreover, human disquiet and the human desire oscillating infinitely between longing and languor are allegorized by the dissonance bent towards consonance through cadences and appoggiaturas or by the consonance troubled anew by dissonance, the philosophy of music is reduced to a metaphorical psychology of desire. On the other hand, music also becomes psychology as the overlapping of singing and basses, of melody and harmony correspond to the cosmological scale of beings with consciousness on the top and inorganic matter on the bottom. Nevertheless, and this certainly is one of the good intuitions Jankélévitch recognizes in Schopenhauer’s texts43, their author does not go into psychologism as music becomes metaphysical as much as metaphysics becomes somehow musical. Nevertheless, according to the author of Music and the Ineffable, such romanticized metaphysics is above all arbitrary, as we have previously noted, because the privilege of the acoustic realm in terms of access to the-things-in-themselves is hard to understand: how can it transgress the limits of our finitude? Why is there a kind of privileged relation between noumena and hearing? According to Jankélévitch, it is paramount to note that “music is not above the laws, nor is it exempt 42

Bloch (2006), pp. 151 – 152. “On a souvent critiqué la ‘métaphysique de la musique’ de Schopenhauer, au risque parfois d’en méconnaître les intuitions originales et profondes”. Jankélévitch (1983), p. 19. 43

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from the limitations and servitudes inherent to the human condition”44. It is therefore difficult to justify the kind of musical realism we find in Schopenhauer’s metaphysics: would music be more-than-phenomenal, as it is the immediate objectification of the “will”? But we could answer that, indeed, music is more than phenomenal. Likewise the body, it is also something else because it relies in the emotional, that is to say the vibrating and proportional aspects of the audible, which, in turn, are already forms of the will, immediate objectivations which do not require representation. Music does not depict, contrary to other arts. What does a pitch depict? What does a chord stand for? Every emotional transformation is a motion of the will, of the essence of any phenomena given to us in a non-phenomenal way, unless we considered emotions as phenomena. But if we did, they would have to share a spatio-temporal continuum with other perceptive objects … Furthermore, according to Jankélévitch, if the psychological drama of the individual recapitulates the odyssey of the specific will, it is because the metaphysical odyssey is itself the enlarging of a psychological drama and of a series of privileged states of mind (states of the “soul”): it is just Tchaikovsky’s pessimism and not the ontological existential discontentment that is expressed, for example, in the E minor pitch. Musical speech can only “play” the vicissitudes of the Will, if these correspondences are bestowed with magical value … Finally, the “metaphysics of music” loses sight of the function of metaphors and of the symbolic relativity of symbols. If, according to Schopenhauer, the Sonata is just as a shortcut resume of the human adventure limited between birth and death, Jankélévitch stresses the fact that it is not itself such an adventure. Likewise the Symphony and the string Quartet, the Sonata is just as the thirty-minute resume of the metaphysical and noumenal destiny of the will, but it is not itself such destiny. For all these reasons, we have to keep in mind that “only the awareness that a way of speaking is a simple way of speaking can keep us in the truth [and that,] if the ethics of music are a verbal mirage, the metaphysics of music is close to being a figure of rhetoric”45. We have to understand “the meaning of the verb ‘Being’ and of the adverb ‘As’ and just like sophisms and play on words are slippery without warning, that is to say by concealing discontinuity, from unilateral attribution to ontological identity, thus the metaphysical-metaphorical analogies furtively slip from figured sense to proper and literal sense; thus the anthropomorphic and anthroposophic generalizations neglect impudently the restrictive clause of images and take comparisons for granted: it is the being-in-itself itself that goes up and down the five lines of the score”46! Despite these harsh critiques, which precede – and are somehow very close to a linguistic turn in philosophy, while ignoring the need to take into account affectivity, music can make the whole of the cosmos meaningful for each listener (and player), as it leads her embodied and emotional self to a concord with its own being: accepting it 44

Jankélévitch (1983), p. 24. Jankélévitch (1983), p. 24. 46 Jankélévitch (1983), p. 24. 45

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could not be otherwise. Its revolutionary dimension thus resides more in its capacity to unleash hidden forces of the soul, which vehemently express its unconscious dimensions, as well as the fragility of our existence qua expressions of the inextricable human and cosmic will that also make its greatness, than in its capacity to inspire transformations stemming from a deep anthropologic potentiality. With the schopenhauerian understanding, music does not lead us to any aspiration. This seems to be, precisely, one of the reasons for Bloch’s critical reading of the flaws of such metaphysics: “Rather […] there is another truth than the truth of what exists now, a truth that pertains only to us, to the compass of the world that we experience in our coloration of it, comprehend as we accelerate it, and consummate in religion, to an absolutely ‘subjective’ and yet highly substantial world – beyond the merely empiricalcomparative inventory of the present situation and its easily achieved logic of Being – directed not at the elucidation of things, nor of humans, but at a first adequacy of longing to itself, at the interiority and the unknown self-perception beyond this world”47. That would be the true power of music, derived from what is not present and fathomable, allowing truth to persist in more than in the simple inductive logic of facts, and in more than the Greeks’ definitive totality-logic of the greatest universality, otherwise than being. Yet, despite his adroit critique, is not Bloch’s concept of potentiality designating what Schopenhauer names “the will”, as being, precisely, deducible from something other that the phenomenal being? As one of the greatest disciples of Schopenhauer, and perhaps the greatest of his declared followers among successful and recognized composers, Wagner48 and his revolutionary operatic music precisely confirm and affirm the will in a way that, according to the author of The Spirit of Utopia, risks passing into a dark, non subjective automatism. The unique status it gives to music among the arts, as a direct expression of the metaphysical will, is certainly not the only reason why Schopenhauer’s conceptions were so important to Wagner. According to Bryan Magee49, Schopenhauer’s ontology, ethics and aesthetics were deeply metabolized into the composer’s own tissue. Schopenhauer’s ontological distinction between the noumenal and the phenomenal, alongside “notions as the independent nothingness of the phenomenal world, 47

Bloch (2006), p. 149. Concerning the importance of the author of The World as Will and Representation to the composer of The Ring, Thomas Mann wrote that ‘His acquaintance with the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer was the great event in Wagner’s life. No earlier intellectual contact, such as that with Feuerbach, approaches it in personal and historical significance. It meant to him the deepest consolation, the highest self-confirmation; it meant release of mind and spirit, it was utterly and entirely the right thing. There is no doubt that it freed his music from bondage and gave it courage to be itself’ (Mann, 1947: p. 330). According to Ernest Newman, known for being the doyen of the composer’s scholars, Schopenhauer’s intellectual impact on Wagner ‘was the most powerful thing of the kind that his mind had never known or was ever afterwards to know’ (Newman, 1976: p. 431). According to John Chancellor, Schopenhauer was ‘the greatest single influence in Wagner’s creative life’ (Chancellor, 1978: p. 132), and Ronald Taylor accordingly contends that ‘the most profound intellectual experience of Wagner’s whole life (was) – his encounter with the philosophy of Schopenhauer’ (Taylor, 1984: p. 111). 49 Magee (1983). 48

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the inevitability within it of frustration, suffering and death, the ultimate reality of the metaphysical will, the noumenal identity of everything, the tragedy of individuation and the desire to return to an all-embracing oneness, death as our redemption from the nullity of the phenomenal world, and therefore a denial of the will to live as the supreme achievement of individual consciousness”50 became of the greatest importance to Wagner’s music and for his understanding of life. Furthermore, Schopenhauer’s ethical contentions on “compassion as the basis of all morality, the noumenal significance – above all other things of our life in this phenomenal world – of the arts, of sex, and the unique status among the arts of music as the direct expression of the metaphysical will” played a decisive role in Wagner’s dramas. Lastly, Schopenhauer’s views, which Wagner often proffered as his own, also included “explicit rejection of belief in God, hostility to historical Christianity, skepticism about science, contempt for the Idealist philosophers, and some special views about the nature of genius (not to mention a voracious sense of being one)”51 which can also be found in the composer’s writings. With their flaws and their limits, with their transgression and their illicit metaphors, Schopenhauer’s conceptions of the cosmology of music seem nonetheless to have been of great importance, and not only for philosophy, as they had an immense influence on Nietzsche and were taken into high consideration by two great philosophers of music (Bloch and Jankélévitch), but also for major artists themselves. After Wagner, Schopenhauer’s considerations inspired the renewal of painting through the works of Kandinsky and were decisive in the abstractionism turn of the twentieth century. Furthermore, the problems it poses (and of which we just gave an incomplete account, as they are not limited to cosmological issues and, thus, exceed the scope of our brief inquiry) enter in a profound dialogue with the philosophy of music, which started with Plato and continues to extend ever since through the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. What is more, it gives a pivotal role to our embodied life in the immediate intelligence, both affective, emotional and kinaesthetic, of the inter-relatedness of the phenomena composing the world as a whole.

Bibliography Aquinas, Thomas (1963): Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, translated by Richard Blackwell. New Haven: Yale University Press. Bailache, Patrice (1992): Leibniz et la théorie de la musique. Paris: Klinksieck. Bloch, Ernst (2006): The Spirit of Utopia, translated by Anthony A. Nassar. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Chancellor, John (1978): Wagner. Boston: Little Brown & Co. 50 51

Magee (1983). p. 363. Magee (1983), p. 363.

Cosmology, Embodiment and Emotions in Schopenhauer’s Metaphysics of Music 205 Dufour, Éric (2005): L’esthétique musicale de Nietzsche. Lille: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion. Galloppe, Michael (2017): Deep Refrains. Music, Philosophy and the Ineffable. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Godwin, Josclyn (1992): The Harmony of the Spheres. Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions. Herder, Johann Gottfried (2006): Selected Writings on Aesthetics, translated and edited by Gregory Moore. Princeton: Princeton University Press. James, Jamie (1994): The Music of the Spheres. Music, Science and the Natural Order of the Universe. London: Little Brown and Company. Jankélévitch, Vladimir (1983): La musique et l’ineffable. Paris: Seuil. Lovelock, James (2000): Gaia: A New Look of Life on Earth. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Magee, Bryan (1983): The Philosophy of Schopenhauer. Oxford/New York: Clarendon Press/ Oxford University Press. Mann, Thomas (1947): ‘Suffering and Greatness of Richard Wagner’, in: Essays of Three Decades. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Mattheson, Johann (1739): Der Vollkommene Capellmeister. Hamburg: Christian Herold. Newman, Ernest (1976): The Life of Richard Wagner, vol. II [1946]. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rehding, Alexander/Clarke, Suzanne (2001): Music Theory and Natural Order. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sagan, Carl (2003): Cosmos [1981]. London: Abacus. Schopenhauer, Arthur (1966): The World as Will and Representation, translated by Eric F.J. Payne. New York: Dover Press. Schopenhauer, Arthur (2014): The World as Will and Representation, translated by Judith Norman, Alistair Welchman and Christopher Janaway, The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Schopenhauer, volume I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Taylor, Ronald (1984): Richard Wagner: his Life, Art and Thought. Chicago: Academy of Chicago Publishing. Wakenroder, Wilhelm Heinrich (1971): “The Characteristic Inner Nature of the Musical Art and the Psychology of Today’s Instrumental Music”, 1779, in: Confessions and Fantasies, translated by Mary Hurst Schubert. Pennsylvania: Penn State University Press.

On Personal Identity and Neuroenhancement Sara Fernandes

I. Introduction New developments in neuroscience, especially since the Decade of the Brain (Jones and Mendell 1999) have made neuroenhancement an important domain of philosophical reflection. Neuroenhancement is usually understood as any intervention on the brain that aims to improve its capabilities beyond clinical therapy and good health, like better intellectual performance, abler minds, and even happier persons. It is the ability to use certain resources (natural, social or technological), not for a clear or objective therapeutic purpose, to treat a disease in human brain or to rehabilitate a dysfunctional brain, but to improve human capacities of healthy individuals, such as mood, cognitive, and moral functions. Despite the recent scientific and biotechnological advances in human enhancement, I believe that the desire for human improvement is not new, as it characterizes human nature and it has its western cultural roots traced back to, at least, the Greek civilization. In this article, I discuss selected works of fiction (Greek myths, literature and films), spanning different centuries, that show how this wish of human improvement is a constant over time, as well as the important anthropological dilemmas that it necessarily raises. Science and technology seek to realize the desire of improvement, of overcoming the biological limits that is very present in the western cultural imagination. “Life imitates art, more than art imitates life” is a famous and inspirational Oscar Wilde’s quote (1905: 35).1 In this paper, I first argue that science imitates certain forms of Art – narrative or fictional –, since Art has the capacity to create and innovate in time, to bring up new horizons for research and technology. In some ways, science seeks to accomplish the worlds of artistic creations. Secondly, I emphasize how the impact of science in contemporary western societies, its emerging authority, explains the emergence of a new attempt to ground personal identity in two domains in increasing evolution, genetics and neurosciences. I mainly focus on neurosciences, highlighting its’ tendency to form a neurobiology of personal identity and to create a neural ground of that philosophical concept by reducing it to brain functions. Thirdly, I criticize this neurore1 “(…) Life holds the mirror up to Art, and either reproduces some strange type imagined by painter or sculptor, or realizes in fact what has been dreamed in fiction.” “Literature always antecipates life. It does not copy it, but moulds it to its purposes” (Wilde, 1905: 39).

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ductionist attempt, and offer philosophical arguments for acknowledging several dimensions of personal identity that are not subsumed in a neurobiological approach.

II. Rethinking Personal Identity In the end of the 20th century, the problem of personal identity was raised again, when the psychiatrist Peter D. Kramer, in his book Listening to Prozac, thought about the influence of this psychiatric drug on the creation, duration and change of personal identity. The author intended to address the effective power that a psychopharmaceutical, such as prozac, would have to “create and recreate personal identity.” (Kramer 1997: 60). He thus launched the debate on the influence of neurobiology in the process of self-creation and established the basis for a new perspective of personal identity, a neuroreductionist one. The typical philosophical question of personal identity – Who am I? – makes us think about what makes each individual unique and irreplaceable through all life, also what differentiates each person from the rest (Correia 2012: 25). With Kramer, the problem of personal identity became the problem to know whether identity could, after all, be artificially induced, and if so, radically created and modified by medication or biotechnology. The cases reported by Kramer show how the simple taking of a psychotropic drug, carefully and selectively constructed,2 and administered according to clinical guidelines, causes very profound changes in personality. It changes the way each person self-identifies and self-understands, her relationship with the environment and the way others also see and understand her. These changes should make us seriously consider the proposal of biological determinism as an answer to the question of personal identity, since it raises the possibility of radical manipulation and alteration of crucial traits of ourselves with the direct use of biotechnology.3 The title of the book – Listening to Prozac – immediately suggests this biological belief in personal identity, by highlighting the ability of drugs “to speak for themselves”, to tell us something about human interiority and nature, through their direct action on the brain. In turn, it also should make us think how doctors and patients can become mere observers or passive subjects of this chemical intervention, respectively.

2

In the history of clinical therapy, prozac belongs to a new phase. Unlike the other antidepressants, this drug was not discovered occasionally from its side effects, but it was carefully manufactured with very specific and selective objectives of action in the brain. Hence it is called ‘clean medication’. While knowledge of all of its side effects, its effectiveness and impact on patients’ personality over time, involves a ‘history of chance’ (Kramer, 1997: 60). The effectiveness of thisantidepressant, its results in clinical tests, as well as the report of its side effects, can be verified and consulted here: Rossi et al., 2004; Gibbons et al., 2012. 3 As the author questions: “Who are we, if we can be so altered by medication?” (Kramer, 1997: 332).

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We know how the use of drugs that induce new mental states, that are able to change cognitive and mood traits, is part of the history of human species (opium, marijuana, Lsd, among many others, as well as natural substances, like hallucinogenic plants and mushrooms used in traditional societies). Also, it is also well reported their serious side effects, such as addiction, illusion or unreality. With the invention of prozac, a new chapter in clinical history and biotechnology began. Prozac had significantly less side effects. It was also powerfully able to change the person, as a whole, even the most striking psychological traits. Moreover, these changes were more quickly and effectively produced compared to traditional psychotherapy (Kramer 1997: 60, 267 – 268). It is important to notice that other drugs, also described by Kramer and publicly known, such as Ritalin (attention and concentration) and Propanonol, (anxiety and improvement of musical performance), also improve certain mental skills. However, what is amazing about prozac is the fact that, for the first time, the most profound and comprehensive changes would start to take place in personality, from mood and cognition to sociability and morality (DeGrazia 2000: 36). It is true that Kramer’s research was limited to patients in a mild or medium depressive state, people who suffered from moderate chronic dissatisfaction or obsessive-compulsive behaviors and did not include people with psychotic and severe depressions. Kramer targeted cases of borderline personality, cases that did not fit the objective standards of mental illness. However, the significant and wide-ranging transformations in these people were clear. Prozac modified their personality in a direct, profound and lasting way. All Kramer’s patients who took this medication became more energetic, confident, productive and socially attractive. Significant improvements were verified in their personality, ranging from an increase in their levels of concentration, motivation, productivity, assertiveness, joy for life, as well as the capacity to cultivate human feelings, such as friendship and love, and even moral attitudes, like tolerance and respect, responsibility and dedication (Kramer 1997: x – xv, 17, 134 – 135). While it is true that significant advances in neuroscience and technology have been crucial in the treatment of neurological and psychiatric diseases that reach, according to the World Health Organization,4 close to 450 million of the world population, it is also true that Kramer’s research has made possible to manipulate, using biotechnology, the most striking psychological traits of people. These changes were so profound, that it is important to ask the question if they interfere with the deeper sense of self, with what is central of each being and its intimacy. Kramer’s research shows how the use of a drug can change not only the subject’s cognitive functions, such as concentration and memory, but also some traits normally associated with healthy people, making them, for example, less shy, more honest, more intellectually stimulating or even with a better sense of humor. Thus, it is important to ask what is the impact of these (artificial) brain manipulations and neuropsychological changes 4

https://www.who.int/whr/2001/media_centre/press_release/en/, consulted in 4. 12. 2018.

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on personal Identity. Furthermore, the changes that have been produced so profoundly and permanently in the personality of most patients with the simple use of psychopharmacology, makes us ask two questions: (1) to what extent does biology creates personal identity? (2) can biotechnology change or even radically remake each other’s identity? In Kramer’s work we found that neurotechnology already allows us to measure, classify, manipulate behavior and personality, something which inevitably challenges our conception of identity, of who we are and who we plan to be in the future. If the phenomenological experience of personal identity shows us that the perception of who we are is, above all, the experience of the unity of all our mental states, it is very likely that brain manipulation may affect the nature and the content of the mind, and consequently our identity. As Patricia Churchland points out, if we think of personal identity from a neurological point of view, perhaps we should understand it not as a static and immutable entity, something like a substance, but as a set of multidimensional capacities, since it includes from the “representation of the body itself [to] representation of the brain’s own mental life”, encompassing experiences as diverse as our biography, our bodily experience, space and time, our role and status in relation to society (Churchland 2002: 20). Now, Kramer tells us that this most intimate domain of each one of us, the self beyond our physical appearance, may be changed by neurosciences in multiple ways. It seems that neurosciences have now the power to reestablish or even to radically transform us, to the point where we can become other people. In order to answer to these philosophical questions, this paper relates the domains of arts and science, in order to highlight some cultural roots of the ideal of human enhancement. Second, it tries to clarify what reductionism is and what it might mean in the biological sense, especially in the fields of genetics and neurosciences. Third, it argues that personal identity allows to ensure the continuity of each person as the same in time, even in situations of personality change using biotechnology (Ricœur 1990: VI). To Ricœur, personal identity is built on a permanent dialectic between selfhood and sameness and expressed in a narrative identity. This means that biology will establish the necessary conditions for the emergence of identity, from the feeling of self and self-awareness to the full development of mental faculties. However, personal identity can only emerge in time and historically, if the subject opens itself to the world, and experiences intersubjective and social relations. Thus, it will be sustained that, although this self-creation has a biological basis and may be aided by biotechnology, it shouldn’t be reduced or explained only in these terms. This means that personal identity cannot be totally induced and manipulated in any artificial way.

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III. The Cultural Roots of Neuroenhancement Art is a rich source of inspiration to philosophical thinking on neuroenhancement. Following Paul Ricœur and Martha Nussbaum (Ricœur 1990: V e VI; Nussbaum 1990: 23 – 24, 26), who conceive literature, both ancient and contemporary, as a privileged way of creation that also reflects on philosophical problems,the paper will apply this deep relationship between philosophy and art to narrative activity as a whole. It is also important to take into account other forms of art, such as cinema, for the analysis of the philosophical problem of neuroenhancement. Narrative art, in its different artistic expressions, does not bring the definitive answer or the solution to this philosophical question. Yet it does bring enough fullness, and open horizons of understanding, which are deeply valuable for a more complete philosophical understanding of neuroenhancement. Thus, referring especially to literary fiction (mainly Greek mythology and romance) and film, I will try to show how the philosophical problem of human neuroenhancement, and its anthropological and ethical challenges, are already present in the Western imagination. Therefore, I will sustain that this philosophical problem firstly arises in the artistic domain. It was the narrative art that inspired later scientific and philosophical research on neuroenhancement. Long before medicine opened the way to biotechnology and the possibility of neuroenhancement, we find in Western culture many examples which highlight the creative power of Man, the ambition for perfection, but also the danger of becoming a victim of excessive ambition, of wanting to take on the role of God and of being able to extinguish personal identity and human condition. The desire for enhancement, for self-improvement shapes human nature, the desire to be better than well in all domains. Yet, at the same time, the fear of playing with our unknown power, the ‘fear of playing God’ or to interpose in the nature course, the fear of the future and the unknown, also shapes us (Safire 2002: 4 – 5). This view of human nature, founded and expressed in these everlasting conflictual feelings, crosses Western culture, from Greek Mythology (the Myths of Prometheus and Pandora, Icarus and Daedalus, just to mention some examples), passing through the Gothicism (as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein show) to contemporary literature, (for example, Aldous Huxley, Brave New World and Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids dream of electric sheep?). Let us remember that Prometheus was condemned to suffer forever because he challenged the gods, who had just endowed Man with all the necessary talents and knowledge to survive as a species. Among them was fire, with which Man could control other beings and dominate nature (Bulfinch 1985: 10 – 17). As a punishment by Zeus, Pandora descends to Earth and opens her box to disclose the pains and harms of human condition: greed, envy, hatred, pain, disease, hunger, poverty, war and death. After showing all the evils, there was still hope in the box, which Pandora let fly to show also to Mankind that it is possible, with human talents, to touch the wounds created by the evils and heal them. Pandora has freed the pain and suffering in the world, but also allowed hope to arise in Mankind (Jordan 1993: 210).

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In the same way, the Myth of Icarus and Daedalus symbolizes the excess of courage, the arrogance of all men who do not recognize the limits of their power. Nevertheless, this fiction is also one of the first incitements to overcome the limits and constraints of the human condition. I do not consider it to be a simple teaching on the harmful consequences of the unlimited ambition of mankind. Daedalus, father of Icarus, succeeds in this challenge, since he escapes from the labyrinth and survives, symbolizing the good use of knowledge and technology, the accomplishment of a dream, although at the cost of an immeasurable loss, the death of his son, Icarus. However, as Walter Otto sustains, this eternal duplicity is the “delight and torment” of human nature (Otto 1979: 24). In the late 19th century, when Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein and The Modern Prometheus, it made us reflect again about the unlimited desire of Man to seek new knowledge, the human fascination with controlling Nature and technologically manipulate it, but also about the ethical and anthropological danger of creating artificial life. (Shelley 2015; Safire 2002: 4 – 5) The ideal was to create an enhanced, perfect being, exclusively due to human knowledge and power. However, the original Greek optimism and hope on human talents, well noticed in the myths, were lost with Shelley’s Frankenstein. The lesson is clear: it is impossible to absolutely predict and control Nature; more crucially, there will always exist some domains beyond human understanding that should not be pursued. For Shelley, artificial manipulation, including the brain, even if only for the sake of knowledge and individual improvement, is wrong, not only because of its unpredictable and possible terrible effects, but also because it shows the darker and shameful side of human nature (coldness, pure calculus, neglect and abandonment, shame, violence and crime). The creature, in many moments of the novel, seems to be more human than his maker, Victor, showing the need for love and care, the need to create affective and social bonds, and also personal and social pain when experiencing loneliness and lack of social relationships. Contemporary literature and films carry on Shelley’s perspective and emphasize much more the dark and cold side of Man, trapped in his technological creation, which will lead to the extinction of the human species and the transition to a posthuman state of life. In The Brave New World, Aldous Huxley’s goal is to raise awareness of the ethical, social and political dangers of biotechnology: in the future, people will use drugs to calm themselves, improve their self-esteem, increase their attention and concentration, their cognitive abilities, and adapt to social standard. In the future, children will be raised to live up to the expectations of their parents, women will give birth to other species, hybrid beings and human life will be very long, but the last 50 years of their lives will be lived alone, without family and with poor health. For Huxley, this great change due to biotechnology will be imposed by governments without the conscience and consent of citizens, in order to create an obedient society, the dictatorship of technology. Quoting Leon Kass, the great threat posed by the widespread use of biotechnology is that

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“Contrary to man degraded by disease or slavery, dehumanized beings in the manner of Brave New World are not miserable, they do not know that they have been deprived of their humanity, and what is worse, if they knew they would not care with that. They are, in fact, happy slaves, enjoying servile happiness” (Kass 1985: 35).

Similarly, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968), by Philip K. Dick, which inspired films, like Blade Runner, offers a projection of the future, exploring science and technological progress, making us think about our ‘human’ nature, our existence in relation to other beings, and also to feel some fear about its impact on the world we live in. It is the drive to mastery and to change nature, to remake and create artificial beings according to human purposes (‘replicants’ in Blade Runner), that should concern us. This novel shows us that a pure mechanistic perspective of life is false. Replicants, beings manufactured by humans and made to satisfy human desires, also start to look for a life with freedom and meaning. Also, it shows what we can do to other human beings in a technological future, as we already know from our past: a new apartheid, a world divided in two types of beings, where one group is considered a simple workforce available to humans, with no rights (Lapointe 2017: 24). Therefore, although physically very similar, there is a difference between the two types of beings, defined by their mode of conception, one generated in the laboratory, the other born naturally. This difference establishes a qualitative difference and a hierarchy between them. The novel and the Blade Runner films also show that what makes us unique and human is deeply based on this capacity to think creatively, to act and live autonomously, to make decisions. It isn’t human to live in a deterministic and unfree manner, without conscience, as if we were predestined robots. In this regard, as the diversity of life shows us, there are “more human than human” replicants, there are enhanced and dangerous replicants, as there are human beings with all these good and bad traits. As Shelley’s Frankenstein, Philip’s Dick novel and Blade Runner films explore the idea, from the replicants side, of living in a world where some groups do not have rights and a recognized identity. Yet, just like human beings, replicants feel their sense of self, and also value the gift of their lives, regardless of their artificial origin. These last examples from literature suggest that advances in science and technology can have a profoundly negative side, a massive dehumanization. Still, we have to ask if neuroethically this is possible. What can this dehumanization mean? As Gazzaniga lucidly suggests: “we are talking about a practice that exists only because of the very nature of being human: to discover, to think, to figure out new ways to do things. How, then, can using this very human skill, using the brain, the thing that makes us human, be acused of ‘dehumanizing’?” (Gazzaniga 2006: 53).

Surely, the dehumanization portrayed in the previously discussed narratives is related with a lack of positive affective bonds, and artificial alienation based on an excessive human will to power. But there is still more dehumanization in The Brave new world: people reject their freedom, their critical spirit and authenticity, in the name of

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permanent well-being, not caring about being enslaved. In fact, we can imagine a future where most people lack the most important traits that define humans, and this is really dehumanizing. The fascination with knowledge and curiosity of the unknown should not be stop ped or redirected in its objectives unless it is clearly recognized that its effects are not beneficial, or in a deeper level, if it is not good for Mankind. Facing science with fear and mistrust may limit scientific research and progress, rather than promoting it, especially when people frequently believe that scientists are interested in doing pure science without ethical concerns. The simple fear of change or more complex fears, as the creation of the recipe for immortality or the creation of artificial machines more perfect than human being and therefore dominating and enslaving humanity, are just a few some examples of this. As Gazanniga proposes, one of the main goals of the Neuroethics debate is to try to ‘eliminate the slippery slope’ argument, do not fall into extremisms, and be guided by reason (Gazzaniga 2006: XVII). It is certainly important to reflect on the social implications of this power and the possibility of neuroenhancement for personal identity and humanity in the short and long term. Yet, we should first distinguish between what seems to be scientifically possible and what seems to be definitely fiction; secondly, as we can never foresee with absolute certainty how far scientific knowledge can go, precisely because science is always making new things possible, we should also ask what would be the anthropological impact of neurorenhancement if it would be possible one day. We should not ignore the warnings and lessons of the works previously mentioned, but we should not also be dominated by its symbolic discourse and emphasis on the emotions. The domain of philosophy is reason, and one of the features that distinguishes philosophy from art is its ability to analyze human emotions rationally. The answer to the challenge of neuroenhancement should be done with good sense, guided by ethical standards, and a rational analysis should prevail in the argumentation. The desire for research, the fascination for discovery, is part of the human condition, and with science we are effectively discovering new things; but as soon as new discoveries are achieved, the scientific community also reflects on their importance and the negative and positive consequences they may have. Certainly, there are risks associated with genetic engineering, or psychotic drugs, and we cannot say that there will ever be no abuses and socially wrong uses of this knowledge, but history has taught us that we are able to re-evaluate scientific and technological findings, to realize what is genuinely good for the human species and make an ethical and reasonable use of technological knowledge (Gazzaniga 2006: 54). With regard to neuroenhancement, it is expected that neuroenhancers will be developed in the laboratory for three fundamental reasons: firstly, precisely because they fall within the conception of humanity that we have started to outline; secondly, because they fit in the medical research line and its current definition of health; thirdly, natural resources (like coffee and tea) and social (education and meditation) have

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always been used for this purpose over time. Thus, the anthropological and medical path is traced so that artificial neuroenhancers are developed, and maybe will allow us to be faster and more effective in what we want. Although Gazzaniga warns us that “they will be used and misused” (2006: 69), it is our responsibility to philosophically reflect on their anthropological effects.

IV. What Is Neuroreductionism? It was shown how fiction and art has functioned as a source of inspiration and guidance for (neuro) scientific activity, providing us with symbolic ways of understanding the human world. Today, the social prestige that science enjoys, including neurosciences, makes it an almost unquestionable authority. Hence, it is important to analyze the neuroscientific approach to personal identity philosophically, starting with the results of Peter D. Kramer’s research presented in Listening to Prozac and outlined above. Kramer raises two hypotheses: a necessarily biological dimension of identity and the possibility of its total artificialization using biotechnology. These ideas, if they are true, strongly express a reductionist thesis, as they explain and substantiate all the assertions related to the phenomenon of personal identity in biological terms. This is what Kramer seems to think when he raises the possibility that the experience of identity can be fully expressed by a single factor of biological discourse: the level of serotonin produced in the brain. In this way, altered levels of serotonin would produce changes in personality, while its balance would result in the maintenance of a stable temperament and way of being, a way of being that each person recognizes and is recognized externally over time. This seems to develop a reductionist belief and methodology in addressing the phenomenon of personal identity. For two main reasons. First, because it seeks to reduce, in anthropological terms, the complex phenomenon of identity in a single decisive and sufficiently explanatory biological aspect. In this sense, personal identity would only be the dimension that biology would be able to apprehend and the reality of any aspect of personal identity that could not be subsumed in biology would be denied. Second, reductionism would also be epistemic, because it would deny the existence of other explanatory frameworks for understanding personal identity beyond the biological one. In other words, it would be to assume that there would be no distinct aspects or facts of this phenomenon that could be captured by other fields of knowledge.

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V. Deterministic Perspectives of Personal Identity: Genetics and Neurosciences As a reductionist, Kramer’s perspective can also be understood as a kind of biological determinism, insofar as it intends to explain the emergence, maintenance and alteration of personal identity in a causal and mechanistic way. Kramer conceives it as the result of a dynamic balance between different brain functions that can be induced, changed or even dissipated exclusively with medication. Furthermore, it would be a kind of monocausal determinism, as it subsumes in a single explanatory cause (the levels of serotonin acting in the brain) the entire complex process of personal identity in the course of a lifetime. Genetics is the most accepted and well-known form of biological determinism, supporting the belief that its heritage determines us as people, in a set of fundamental characteristics (Blackburn 1996: 103). It is not surprising that the philosophical question of contemporary genetics is common to neuroethics and is directly related to the problem of personal identity. Both domains study the biological foundations of identity. It is known that the traits of the genotype and phenotype that distinguish us as people, the unique and differentiated genetic code in all people (with the exception of homozygous twins), is what constitutes our biological identity (unity, differentiation and singularity) (Glannon 2001: 21 – 24). It is true that genetics has, for a long time, provided a fertile field for reflection on subjectivity and has promoted an academic and public debate since the beginning of its research on DNA. Yet Martha Farah is also right when she says that “the relationship between the self and the brain is more direct than with the genome” and that “brain interventions are more easily accomplished than genetics.” (Farah 2002: 1128) Nowadays it is already possible to manipulate brain chemistry and, therefore, certain behaviors and personality traits. This means that everything we imagined about the potential of genetic engineering is already becoming possible with neurotechnology. It is no longer fiction. And this debate has already taken place with the “generation of psychotropic substances”, its initial use in clinical practice and its extent (not medically controlled) in certain social groups, such as academics, military and pilots.5 Nowadays, neuroscience is a more attractive experimental field than genetics. For two main reasons. First, the scientific community is aware of the unpredictable short, medium and long-term effects of genetic manipulation on the individual and on future generations. Second, there is a strict legislation regulating existing genetic engineering procedures. Neurosciences, unlike genetics, lacks such rigorous legislation, and taking into account its enormous knowledge and technological progress 5 As Fukuyama also sustains “So we don’t have to await the arrival of human genetic engineeringto foresee a time when we will be able to enhance intelligence, memory, emotional sensitivity, and sexuality, as well as reduce aggressiveness and manipulate behavior in a host of other ways. The issue has already been joined with the current generation of psychotropic drugs, and will be put into much sharper relief with those shortly to come” (Fukuyama, 2002: 52).

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of the last decades and its ability to understand and control the brain, it currently has two advantages. First, neurosciences have the power to produce direct and profound changes in personality, with immediate effects on the individual, such as those reported by Kramer. Second, these individual effects apparently have no consequences on future generations (Fukuyama 2002). Kramer and Fukuyama notice that prozac allows to manipulate self-esteem, an important feeling in human beings, and in this way, to change important personality traits, such as the sense of personal value, the very personal notion of dignity and the need for recognition. (Kramer 1993: 9 – 11; Fukuyama 2002: 44) Thus, the effects of prozac on patients show how the desire for personal and social recognition may also have a biological origin and this may be specifically related to the levels of serotonin in the brain. In Our post-human future, Fukuyama disregards other factors that can affect selfesteem and, consequently, the production of adequate levels of serotonin in the brain, such as the social context and psychological therapy. Comparing with Kramer, Fukuyama prefers to highlight the harmful side effects of prozac on human nature. However, both authors recognize the power of these psychotropic drugs, raising the future hypotheses of creating one without negative effects, and suitable (selected) for each person’s profile. As Fukuyama sustains: “Stolid people can become vivacious; introspective ones extroverted; you can adopt one personality on Wednesday and another for the weekend. There is no longer any excuse for anyone to be depressed or unhappy; even ‘normally’ happy people can make themselves happier without worries of addiction, hangovers, or long-term brain damage.” (2002: 8)

Therefore, it is important to understand to what extent the neuroreductionist discourse on personal identity is a complete one, whether personal identity can be reduced to a neurobiological domain and whether technological manipulation of the brain effectively affects identity. These questions are different. For example, even if people could agree that personal identity is a biological process, that means, being nothing more than neuronal, this would not necessarily mean that it would be totally manipulable and changeable now.

VI. Is the Self Changeable? The need to understand oneself is part of human nature, nobody can avoid the question “who am I?” As Paul Ricœur maintains, in certain moments of life, especially in moments of extreme deprivation, of total emptiness and which may lead someone to paradoxically say “Now, I am nothing”, the sense of oneself is never lost. Even in those moments of deep existential crisis, when the answer to the question “who am I?” is an empty one, the self does not disappear. The feeling of selfdissipation consists in the inability to identify with what one was, or with one’s per-

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sonality, but it does not mean the actual loss of oneself, or the total dissolution of one’s identity. That feeling of oneself persists over time. I believe biotechnology can function, at these times, not as a means of manipulation and of total alteration of personal identity, but as a means of appropriating oneself, as a reinforcement in the reconstruction of its personality and thus consolidating the permanence of the self in time. Biotechnology can contribute to the recreation of the personality and, with it, to the creation of a more balanced personal identity, with greater self-esteem, as it promotes a better correspondence of the self and the set of new psychological traits in which each subject best recognizes himself. Thus, it is possible to change personality by keeping personal identity. Take two clinical cases, Tess and Hilary, reported by Peter D. Kramer in Listening to Prozac (Kramer 1996: 18 – 20). Tess, despite her life full of negative events and suffering, was a strong and resilient woman. There were no marks of these bad experiences on her adult personality. She was not aggressive at all or even provocative. She was a sweet woman. However, around the age of 30, she was diagnosed with depression. A feeling of unhappiness came over her, and became permanent in herself. It was not possible to overcome it only with psychotherapy. With the help of psychotropic drugs to the therapy, Kramer recognized that this combination allowed not only the treatment and overcoming the depression (the symptoms disappeared forever), but also allowed her to reappropriate her interiority, to the point of saying “it’s me again.” However, Tess did not become a happy person. She remained somehow sad, vulnerable, even a little sickly; after all, Tess had always been like that, it was her way of being (Kramer 1996: 4). It will only be with prozac that the changes desired by Tess and Kramer will take place. The psychological traits she did not identified with will disappear. A new attitude, a positive one, towards life will appear and will allow her to free herself from her negative profile. Now she was able to build healthy affective relationships and to assert herself in her workplace, becoming very competent and functional, with good self-esteem. Just as it seems that this woman’s biological condition predisposed her to her long-term failures, but also to her resilience in life, it seems equally true that biotechnology has enabled Tess to succeed for the first time in all aspects of your social life (Kramer 1996: 7 – 9). The psychiatric drug changed her personality and consciously transformed her into what she wanted to be. After a year of treatment interruption, Tess confessed to her therapist, Kramer, that she felt unbalanced, collapsing in the face of emerging stress, in the fear of dealing again with difficulties in her professional life. She even said: “It’s not me” (Kramer 1996: 10). What was Tess trying to say? “So who was she all these years, if not herself?” How should we philosophically understand these words? (Kramer 1996: 19) Tess never identified herself with her personality, that way of being more lasting and stable, which allows both self-recognition and recognition by others, that psychological disposition built and consolidated throughout life. Tess had a set of psychological traits that she wanted to get rid of. And I think that one of the reasons for this

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refusal is that it is associated with a state and an existence very close to the disease, too vulnerable, with low self-esteem, a burden of responsibility and without enthusiasm for life. Here again, it is clear the effect of biological imbalance on herself, resulting in an excessively fragile personality. This means that the disease, can also act as an obstacle to the construction of a personality with which someone self identifies with, to a harmonious and stable relation to himself, to a personal identity that should reveal self-esteem. And it is this refusal to accept the impoverished image she had created about herself that drives Tess to seek medical help. It is this subjective, yet strong belief in the ability to emerge a balanced and ‘alive’ personality, that leads her to seek therapeutic help. Tess never wanted to be like that, and after taking prozac, she was even more certain of that set of psychological traits that were deviating from her sense of self. These were an expression of illness. Tess, being ill or in a state that was always too close to depression, still retained a crucial feeling in her interiority. It was the ability to feel and see herself with strangeness, in the present, when compared with the person she was in the past and the fear to become that personality again. The fear of reemerging of her former personality lead her explicitly to state that she did not want to regress and did not mind taking medication again, even with greater risks, just to ensure that she would not return to her previous psychological state (Kramer 1996: 19). What is the function of this psychiatric drug for these cases? The purpose is to redefine personality, so it is a therapeutic resource necessary for this aim. When Kramer states that Tess felt the need to take it again to restore her ‘identity’, it means that she was holding off from a pathological self. She did not recognize it as hers and she intended to create a way of being with which she really could self-identify (“true, normal and complete”). Kramer is not referring here to personal identity in the sense of persistence in time, of continuous and lasting reference from oneself throughout life, in short, to the temporal awareness of oneself. The psychiatrist is referring to the set of stable psychological traits that constitute each one’s character (personality), not in the strictly moral sense, but in the sense of acquired psychological traits that mostly last over time, and become specific, individual, defining and more representative of oneself. In philosophical terms, Tess’s case shows that, with respect to the problem of personal identity, biotechnology already has the power to change one of its dimensions, the personality, the most typical psychological traits of each one. Until Tess started prozac therapy, these characteristics were very difficult to change by her own will or even with the help of psychotherapy. Hence the common expression: you cannot learn from mistakes. Now, neuropharmacology marks a turning point in the access and modification of the subject’s mental traits, representing, therefore, an advance compared to traditional psychotherapy. Neuropharmacology promotes profound changes in patients’ personalities, something that is desired by them, their families and therapists but often fails, because of their own incapacity or even therapeutic failure. We know how these changes are important. In Tess’s case, it consisted of “re-

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storing the ability to play that was stolen from her as a child”; was to endow her with “charisma, courage and sociality” (Kramer 1996: 21). Tess’s case also seems to show that biotechnology does not have yet the capacity to manipulate a more fundamental dimension of personal identity: that sense of self, which is deeper than personality, that sense that permanently accompanies an individual throughout life, the sense of self that is a condition of possibility or underlies the formation of personality. The latter, personality or character (in the sense defined above), is manipulable and perhaps nowadays artificial, while the persistent awareness of oneself in time is not, I think, yet changeable by technology. Paul Ricœur’s philosophy opens this way of answering the question about the impact of biotechnology on personal identity. In the ricœurian sense, personal identity is the result of the permanent intersection of two levels of oneself, on the one hand, the stability of personality or character (the same), on the other hand, the historical and temporal sense of oneself, the continuous process of dynamic construction of the self, which underlies the first and any redefinition of personality (selfhood) (Ricœur 1985: 442 – 444). It seems that biotechnology does not have the power to manipulate, restore, create or dissipate, in an absolute and definitive way, personal identity, precisely because only the dimension of personality seems changeable, but not its temporal and historical dynamics. Think, now, on Hilary’s clinical case, also reported by Kramer. A woman who sought psychiatric help because she was unable to experience pleasure in life. Hilary did not complain about anything else, except that life was of no interest, “that the salt lost its […] flavor” (Kramer 1996: 223); a sensation that, if too prolonged in time or permanent, can lead to depression and produce continuous suffering. It was as if, throughout her life, “[…] nothing had ever really touched that person.” Hilary’s disposition lacked passion, motivation or enthusiasm for something in life. She was characterized by a “lazy passivity”, with repercussions at all levels of her life, from affective isolation to lack of concentration and sleep disturbances. So, as Kramer says, “without enthusiasm, it is difficult to maintain projects and relationships.” (Kramer 1996: 223 – 227) Although Hilary did not fit into any objectively recognized illness, she began to combine psychotherapy with the administration of the psychotropic drug, prozac. Her reaction was immediate, but unusual: Hilary entered an opposite state of euphoria and great enthusiasm for life. She started to idealize a lot, her plans and projects were now immense; however, this effect quickly disappeared and did not return, not even after the subsequent consumption of higher doses. Hilary revolted against medicine, for having given her the opportunity to experience, for a moment, the taste of a normal life. Now her emptiness was like poison, as if her own ability to experience life was being taken away, disappeared and did not return, not even after the subsequent consumption of higher doses. After several subsequent attempts, the psychiatric drug finally had the desired effect, to restore or even “provide [those who have never experienced it] access to a vital capacity”, the ability to feel pleasure (Kramer

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1996: 227). It is a vital capacity, because it has a profound and global impact on the individual. The inability to experience pleasure, not only interferes with the degree of motivation for everything in life, with the individual commitment required for any activity, of a personal nature or that involves cooperation and association (building emotional bonds, idealizing and carrying out personal and collective projects), as it leaves the person unable to understand social behavior and isolated. The psychotropic drug, prozac, does not cause pleasure, but “restores the ability to have pleasure”,6 and this huge power of biotechnology is crucial to personal identity, because it opens the possibility of experiencing an open relationship with the world, it reduces the internal obstacles of social life. The ability to be hedonistic, to feel pleasure is fundamental in life, and so in creation of identity. Now is clear how psychotropic drugs, such as prozac, can really provide this possibility. A psychiatric drug can, in fact, alter this personal predisposition: there are people who do not need anything else, except medication, in order to become effectively hedonists, not needing outside recognition, nor more interior stimuli. Here it is a very important dimension of personal identity that the biological perspective seems to explain, and that biotechnology creates: the pure hedonistic capacity. We say pure, because, from Hilary’s case, hedonism does not seem to be as dependent on empathy and interaction with others as it is on biology and technology. The example described seems to show that patients with medication, acquire it, but without medication, lose it, even when accompanied by psychotherapy. Here again, the view that each one has of himself, of his personality, seems to be dependent on what (bio) technology provides him. We would not say that “emerges from nothing”, as Kramer maintains, but rather that it does not depend on others. factors beyond the biological and what technology allows in its place, in its replacement, that is, in these situations of clinical assistance. Under the effect of medication, the personality, in this case, the trait of being hedonistic is one, but without medication it can become another. (Kramer 1996: 203) It is surprising, therefore, the power of neuropharmacology to help patients to acquire psychological characteristics, mental dispositions desired by them, giving them inner balance, greater pleasure and harmony in life. The cases of Tess and Hilary support this thesis. However, only the confusion between personal identity and personality justifies Peter D. Kramer’s concern about the dangerous power of biotechnology to radically change who we are. As it turned out, the use of psychotropic drugs does not create and recreate personal identity at all with the use of biotechnology. Personality can thus be manipulable and changeable, but the sense of persistence or maintenance of oneself over time, which accompanies each person’s life, does not seem to be artificially changeable until now. 6 Psychotropic drugs, like prozac, are opposed to drugs and alcohol. Prozac does not directly cause pleasure, it is not an arousal, like a cocaine or a satiator, like a heroine. The patient, when taking a psychopharmac, does not feel the need for it, does not plead for it, as if it caused addiction, nor does he feel relief when is ingested (Kramer, 1996: 223).

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VII. Some Problems with Neuronal Reductionism The neuroreductionist perspective of personal identity has two main drawbacks. First, the neuroscientific explanation and manipulation of personal identity, only contemplates the personality, one of its components, leaving out the consciousness and the continuous sense of self, its temporal and historical dimension. Now, this dimension of personal identity is also crucial. However appealing reductionism may be, due to its explanatory capacity, objectivity and speech simplicity, the truth is that those examples of the changes produced in patients and described by Kramer, are exclusively personality changes, which can lead us to misunderstand personal identity, as if it were something static and passive (DeGrazia 2000: 35) by assuming that it can be defined and modified in absolute terms. The self-creating dimension of the Self, dynamic and temporal, is not included in this reductionist approach. Note that it is always someone, a self, who says “this is my personality”, “my way of being” or “this is not me”. These speech examples, which we all recognize as capable of being spoken by us, show that the personal identity is always irreducible to any objective and stratified vision that one has of himself or that others form as well. Second, even with the clear advances on the neuroscientific explanation of personal identity, as António Damásio proposes in his works The Feeling of What Happens and Self comes to Mind, this will not fully explain what it really is. Again, as Paul Ricœur points out, we can identify a set of questions that each subject asks himself, during life, and whose answer is decisive for the formation and maintenance of personal identity. They are: “Who am I? How should I live? What is the meaning of my life?” Neurosciences cannot answer these questions. Maybe, one day, they will be able to elucidate the neuronal processes underlying the thinking on these universal questions, and they may even be able to explain the neuronal processes of each individual in placing and forming the answer to these existential questions. Yet it will always be a delimited, objective, neutral and external explanation. The neurobiological explanation can never account the inner richness of the lived experience, as it will always reduce it to an empirical fact. Hence the exclusive neuroreductionist approach to personal identity is not enough. It is when each subject asks the previous questions and answers them, in different ways over time, even if only in a practical and existential way, that the complex phenomenon of personal identity accomplishes (Correia 2012: 27). It is true that each individual will only be able to answer them based on a regular functioning of the brain. Yet it is also true that only the existential and symbolic dimension gives him meaning, and this surpasses the neurobiological approach. The spiritual dimension of human life, the internal and crucial experiences of each one, such as the internal experience of thoughts, emotions, decision-making power and the exercise of their freedom, their link to the world, transcend neuroscientific research. It is private.

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VIII. Conclusion This article argued some of the roots of human desire for enhancement that reside in the western cultural tradition. It also sought to philosophically assess the impact on personal identity of the scientific and technological advances in brain intervention. Prozac, a psychotropic drug was used as a reference point, because it constitutes a landmark in the history of psychiatry. It was argued that, at the present moment, neurotechnological manipulation does not affect the sense of the Self, which seems to mean that there is no change in personal identity. Selfhood, although historical and temporal, persists throughout a person’s life. The reported cases show that neurotechnology only seems to affect the personality. Therefore, even if the personality drastically changes with brain interventions, and if the same sense of self is maintained, this means that personal identity does not change. Peter Kramer feared the total dissipation of personal identity with artificial mood manipulation. Again, although the patient’s psychological changes were quite surprising, it seems that Kramer’s fear was unfounded, because the same sense of self was maintained. We developed a line of argumentation that goes back to Paul Ricœur’s work, especially in his thought developed in Soi-même comme un autre, where he established the difference between sameness and selfhood. We sustain that this thesis should be extended to any intervention in the human brain (pharmacology, electrical and deep stimulation) provided, until now, by biotechnology. At the same time, current advances in brain manipulation and its psychological effects, such as those provided by prozac, and analyzed in this article, also allow us to critically rethink Paul Ricœur’s theory of personal identity. After all, Ricœur conceived character (sameness), here identified with personality, as something ‘stable and fixed’. It was the set of psychological traits more durable in each one of us, and after a certain stage in life, it would no longer be changeable. Character was the expression of our finitude. According to Ricœur, character objectified the most striking psychological traits of each one of us. In this sense, character established the internal limits to openness to the other and to the world. This means that neurotechnological progress and brain intervention, as prozac shows in this paper, are a good challenge to Ricœur’s view of personal identity, since technology seems to provide a way to deeply change character, although Ricœur believed it was not possible to change it. The article also intended to show the fragility of neuroreductionism. A close look at neuroscientific research shows us the inconsistency of someone’s reduction to its own brain and mind. On the one hand, the possibility of creating ‘robotic prostheses’ confirms the importance of the body for brain activity and personal identity. In fact, the whole work of the neuroscientist António Damásio justifies, from a scientific point of view, the philosophical thesis, according to which, personal identity should not be reduced to the brain-mind dynamics, since it necessarily includes the body. On the other hand, this paper also tried to show how personal identity is socially built and linked to the world. Personal identity is temporal and historical. Therefore, as Alva Noë sustains in Out of our heads, “Human experience is a dance that unfolds in the

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world and with others. You are not your brain” (Noë 2009: xiii). This is a second real problem with neuroreductionism: it ignores life and surrounding reality. Certainly, it is impossible to understand personal identity if we only take into account the neural processes that happen inside our brain. According to Thomas Nagel, reductionism fails as a belief and philosophical methodology, because it is based on the idea that a certain dimension of objective reality is “[…] exhaustive of everything that exists” (Nagel 1986: 16). Now, we have presented reasons that make impossible to reduce the complex phenomenon of personal identity to a neurobiological speech. However, denying the principle of psychophysiological reductionism does not solve the problem, as it remains the question of how we are going to reconcile the perspectives of the first and the third person, about ourselves and about any fact in the world. How “are we going to include subjective mental processes in the world as it is” (Nagel 1986: 16) and create a global and complete speech about personal identity? In the future, it will be equally important to reflect, as the neuroscientist Vivienne Ming suggests, on the neurotechnological advances in computer science. It will be important to assess the impact on personal identity the possibility of digitally copying someone’s mental states, extending them online, placing them in a network and being able to be digitally manipulated. It will be important to understand whether, in a hybrid world (natural, digital and virtual), as already it is the human world today, with the possibility of virtually extending, and even altering parts of ‘us’, whether this will affect personal identity or not. Bibliography Blackburn, Simon (1996): The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bulfinch, Thomas (1985): Myths of Greece and Rome. London: Penguin Books. Correia, Carlos João (2012): Sentimento de Si e Identidade Pessoal. Lisboa: Centro de Filosofia da Universidade de Lisboa. Damásio, António Rosa (2000): The feeling of what happens. Body, Emotion and the making of Consciousness. New York: Vintage. Damásio, António Rosa (2012): Self comes to Mind. Constructing the Conscious Brain. New York: Vintage. DeGrazia, David (2000): Prozac, Enhancement and Self-Creation, in: The Hastings Center Report, 30 (2), pp. 34 – 40. Dick, Philip Kindred (2004): Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. London: Orion Publishing Group. Farah, Martha Julia (2002): Emerging ethical issues in neuroscience, in: Nature Neuroscience, 5 (11), pp. 1123 – 1129.

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Farah, Martha Julia (2012): Neuroethics: The Ethical, Legal, and Societal Impact of Neuroscience, in: Annual Review of Psychology, 63, pp. 571 – 91. Fukuyama, Yoshihiro Francis (2002): Our Posthuman Future. Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution. NewYork: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Gazzaniga, Michael (2006): The Ethical Brain. The Science of Our Moral Dilemmas. New York et al.: Harper Perennial. Gibbons, R. D./Hur, K./Brown, C. H./Davis, J. M./Mann, J. J. (2012). “Benefits from antidepressants: synthesis of 6-week patient-level outcomes from double-blind placebo-controlled randomized trials of fluoxetine and venlafaxine.”, in: Arch Gen Psychiatry, 69 (6), pp. 572 – 9. DOI: 10.1001/archgenpsychiatry.2011.2044. Glannon, Walter (2001): Genes and the Future People. Philosophical Issues, in: Human Genetics. Cambridge: Westview Press. Glannon, Walter (2007): Bioethics and The Brain. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Glannon, Walter (2011): Brain, Body and Mind. Neuroethics with a Human Face. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hall, Zach W. (2002): Welcome, in: Neuroethics. Mapping the Field – Conference Proceedings, (ed.) Steven J. Marcus, San Francisco: The Dana Press, pp. 1 – 2. Huxley, Aldous (2006): Brave New World. New York: Harper Collins Publishers. Jonnes, Edward G./Mendell, Lorne M. (1999): Assessing the Decade of the Brain, in: Science, 284 (5415), p. 739. DOI: 10.1126/science.284.5415.739. Jordan, Michael (1993): Myths of the World – A Thematic Encyclopedia. London: Cambridge University Press. Nagel, Thomas (1986): The View From Nowhere. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Noe, Alva (2009): Out of our Heads. New York: Hill and Wang. Nussbaum, Martha. (1990): The starting point: how should one live?, in: Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 23 – 29. Otto, Walter Friedrich (1979): The Homeric Gods – The Spiritual Significance of Greek Religion. London: Thames and Hudson. Rossi, Andrea/Barraco, Alessandra/Donta, Pietro (2004): “Fluoxetine: a review on evidencebased medicine”, in: Ann Gen Hosp Psychiatry. 3, 2, Feb 12. DOI: 10.1186/1475 – 2832 – 3 – 2. Ricœur, Paul (1985): Temps et récit 3. Le temps raconté. Paris: Éditions du Seuil. Ricœur, Paul (1990): Soi-même comme un autre. Paris: Éditions du Seuil. Sandel, Michael (2007): The Case against Perfection. Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering. Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London: Harvard University Press. Safire, William (2002): Visions for a New Field of “Neuroethics”, in: Neuroethics. Mapping the Field – Conference Proceedings, (ed.) Steven J. Marcus, San Francisco: The Dana Press, pp. 1 – 2. Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft (2015): Frankenstein. New York et al.: Penguin Classics.

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Wilde, Oscar (1905): Intentions. The Decay of Lying, Pen Pencil, and Poison, The Critic as Artist, The truth of Masks. New York: Brentano’s.

Culture and Post-culture Carlos João Correia

I. The statement by George Steiner, in his book In Bluebeard’s Castle (1971), that today we no longer live in a specific culture, but, instead, in a post-culture became consensual. Sometimes, instead of using the term “post-culture”, other denominations are used such as “multicultural” society, “globalized world”, “post-modernist” ideas. Although they are not synonymous expressions, they all indicate that the term “culture” has become too short to reflect today’s societies’ pace and sensitivity. Steiner characterizes “post-culture” as a “diminished culture”. The chosen adjective naturally reflects the pessimistic view that the author has regarding Western culture’s fate and the collapse of humanistic and literary culture. “The great majority of us can no longer identify, let alone quote, even the central biblical or classical passages which not only are the underlying script of western literature […] but have been the alphabet of our laws and public institutions. The most elementary allusions to Greek mythology, to the Old and the New Testament, to the classics, to ancient and to European history, have become hermetic. Short bits of text now lead precarious lives on great stilts of footnotes. The identification of fauna and flora, of principal constellations, of the liturgical hours and seasons on which, as CS Lewis showed, the barest understanding of western poetry, drama and romance from Boccaccio to Tennyson intimately depends, is now specialized knowledge. We no longer learn by heart. The inner spaces are mute or jammed with raucous trivia” (1996: 14/15).

Steiner does nothing more than express in a darker tone Hannah Arendt’s intuition, formulated at the end of the first volume of Life of the Mind: “What has been lost is the continuity of the past as it seemed to be handed down from generation to generation, developing in the process its own consistency. The dismantling process has its own technique, and I did not go into that here except peripherally. What you then are left with is still the past, but a fragmented past, which has lost its certainty of evaluation. About this, for brevity’s sake, I shall quote a few lines which say it better and more densely than I could: “Full fathom five thy father lies, / Of his bones are coral made, / Those are pearls that were his eyes. / Nothing of him that doth fade / But doth suffer a sea-change / Into something rich and strange. (The Tempest, Act I, Scene 2)” (1978: 212).

This Shakespearean text resonates, clearly and ironically, in T. S. Eliot’s poem, The Waste Land. In the poetic section entitled “The Game Chess” – which, mainly,

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consists of a deaf dialogue between a couple – the following passage is heard: “Do / You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember / Nothing?” And the answer: “I remember / Those are pearls that were his eyes.” (vv. 121 – 125) The reference here to Eliot is not episodic. After all, Steiner’s referred essay constitutes a response to a philosophical essay by T. S. Eliot on culture – Notes towards the definition of culture (1948) –, in which the author seeks to analyze the meaning of civilization after the catastrophe of the second world war. Hence, Steiner’s book’s subtitle is, Some Notes towards a re-definition of Culture and enroll it in the T. S. Eliot Memorial Lectures. In turn, Eliot’s poem, The Waste Land, can be read as a portrait of the Western culture’s collapse. The desolate or devastated Earth is the poetic expression of a civilization that suddenly finds itself barren and lifeless. Steiner’s work on post-culture does not end with just a bleak picture of the consequences of the crisis in Western civilization. It is also a word of hope based on the new virtuosities that both music and mathematics open to the human spirit. In turn, the nostalgic look at the literary and humanistic sensitivity of our culture does not imply a desire for historical regression. “We cannot turn back. We cannot choose the dreams of unknowing. We shall, I expect, open the last door in the castle [Bluerbeard’s] even if it leads, perhaps because it leads, on to realities which are beyond the reach of human We shall do so with that desolate clairvoyance, so marvelously rendered in Bartok’s music, because opening doors is the tragic merit of our identity” (1971: 106).

Steiner’s references to biotechnological and computer revolutions show how well he was aware of the risks, but also of the future based both on the transhumanist project – dubbed with some irony, by Fukuyama, as “our future post-human” (2002) – as the technological “singularity” mentioned by Von Neumann in the 50s. “The everaccelerating progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue” (Ulam 1958: 5). The anthropological concept of “post-culture”, even as a “diminished culture”, does not end, however, in corroborating the historical collapse of Western civilization. It can be seen in a more neutral and fruitful sense. For reasons that stem from the growing globalization of problems, the origin of which dates back to the global expositions of the 19th century, the criteria of taste and appreciation have changed profoundly to such an extent that we value ideas and facts from cultures different from ours. When we say that we live in an age that we can define as “post-cultural”, this means that the traditional culture in which we were integrated is no longer the determining factor in our critical assessments and judgments. A cultural distance was created that allows a distant, distant look at other ancestral cultures while rehearsing osmosis and eventual acculturation. Japanese, Indian, African art, among many others, became a point of reference for Western societies themselves. As is well known, there are exciting experiences, in various artistic domains, in which the artistic fusion be-

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tween different cultural aesthetic canons is intentionally sought. See, for example, some musical productions in which creative communication between different cultural values is intentionally sought; it was the case of the musical dialogue between Ravi Shankar and Philip Glass, between the same Ravi Shankar and Menuhin, or even the case of the musical works of “Dead Can Dance” that combine elements of Celtic, Arabic, Greek music, among many others. It can be said, without any doubts, that this cultural and artistic symbiosis, cosmopolitan, is an essential and very positive feature of the contemporary world. However, this was not always the case, which means that artistic and cultural creation took place from deafness, sometimes irritating, concerning other influences and other cultures. Post-culture can thus be thought of as the loss of cultural ties of identity and its replacement by an eclectic horizon of references.

II. If it is true that “post-culture” implies a distant look concerning the cultural values previously in force, this does not mean that it ceases to be a “culture”. Post-culture is still “culture”, but at a “higher” level, of second order. How to understand this situation? It is important to think about what we mean when we talk about “culture”. The first notion that we should keep in mind is that the concept of culture has several legitimate meanings as if there were different layers, as in a cake, that can genuinely be called “culture”. It does not mean that each cannot be defined, but it isn’t easy to find a single meaning that can fully encompass them. The definition must always be appropriate to the plan we are considering. The primaeval vision of culture sees it as humanitas, as the world of humanities, as the world of human things. When George Steiner refers to the crisis of culture and the emergence of post-culture, he is precisely thinking in this direction. In European languages, we find similar terms to humanitas, for example, Paide_a in classical culture or, in German, terms like Bildung (formation) and Kultur (civilization as an expression of human spiritual activity). The reference to the German language is not episodic. It can be said, without exaggeration, that contemporary anthropology, as a discipline of the humanities or humanities, is directly heir to the cultural movements of Germany, of the period between Aufklärung and the Romantic movement. The pioneering names of anthropology as science have a more or less direct connection with this tradition: Franz Boas, a German who emigrated to the United States at the age of thirty, is still one of the great points of reference of anthropological studies today; in turn, Edward Burnett Tylor, the great 19th century English anthropologist, the father of British anthropology, is clearly marked by Germanist studies. Nevertheless, the author in whom it is possible to surprise the living presence of this humanist tradition is Matthew Arnold, an English poet and essayist from the Victorian era. I am referring naturally to his work, Culture and Anarchy (1867). In it, we find a classic definition of culture. Thus, in the first pages of the work, we can read: “Culture being a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all the

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matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world, and through this knowledge, turning a stream of fresh and free thought upon our stock notions and habits, which we now follow staunchly but mechanically, vainly imagining that there is a virtue in following them staunchly which makes up for the mischief of following them mechanically.” (1960: 6). Arnold’s conception of culture is indebted to a notion that shapes knowledge, allowing the constitution of a society in which, in the author’s characteristic expression, “sweetness and light” (1960: 11) can be established. More than resuming the values of what Lévi-Strauss calls aristocratic or bourgeois humanism, the first aimed at a restricted group of people and the second, marked by the cult of the exotic (Lévi-Strauss, 2011), Matthew Arnold recovers the essential meaning of classical humanities, for example, that which is formulated by the 2nd century Roman grammarian, Aulus Gellius: “Those who have spoken Latin and have used the language correctly do not give to the word humanitas the meaning which it is commonly thought to have, namely, what the Greeks call vikamhqyp_a, meaning a kind of friendly spirit and good-feeling towards all men without distinction; but they gave to humanitas about the force of the Greek paide_a; that is, what we call erudition in institutionemque in bonas artes [education and training in the liberal arts]” (1927: XIII.17).

As we have seen, post-culture represents the collapse of this model that marked the history of the West until the tragic outbreak of war conflicts in the 20th century.

III. The concept of culture is not limited to the ideas of training and humanities, i. e., the idea of integral improvement of the human being. Culture is also –, and here we are facing one of its essential meanings – a system of categorization. As Joy Hendry points out: “[…] a basic principle underlying the whole subject of anthropology, namely that different people see things – or, in anthropological terms, classify things – in different ways. […] Classification in an anthropological sense is concerned with the way different people see the world. This is because people divide up the world into categories of objects and categories of people in ways that differ from other people. […] A system of classification is something which is shared by members of a particular society. It is among the most fundamental characteristics of that society, and it is acquired by children growing up to be members of that society. It is, indeed, the basis of the socialization of a child, the conversion of a biological being into a social one who shares a system of communication with those who surround it” (1999: 18 – 20).

Culture, in this sense, is the expression of the differentiated categorization of the world around us. At issue here are not taxonomies of the natural world, but rather classifications of both the natural and human world based on value judgments. For example, judgments about what is useful and what is useless, about what is beautiful and sublime as opposed to what is horrible and ugly, judgments about what

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makes an action excellent and adequate – from food to moral judgments. The examples would be almost infinite, since “culture” is a categorizing structure of the world. When we realize this reality, it is difficult not to ask ourselves about the often arbitrary and artificial character of the choices. The comparison made by Ruth Benedict can help us: “It is in cultural life as it is in speech; selection is the prime necessity. The numbers of sounds that can be produced by our vocal cords and our oral and nasal cavities are practically unlimited. […] But each language must make its selection and abide by it on pain of not being intelligible at all.” (1946: 23) In the same way that a natural language selects – certainly in an unconscious way – the privileged sounds of its expression, a selection that is not limited to the choice of an alphabet, each culture selects the ideas and objects that it considers relevant, while at the same time removing what is considered superfluous and uninteresting from his gaze. Let us quote Ruth Benedict again: “Every human society everywhere has made such selection in its cultural institutions. Each from the point of view of another ignores fundamentals and exploits irrelevancies. One culture hardly recognizes monetary values; another has made them fundamental in every field of behavior. In one society, technology is unbelievably slighted even in those aspects of life which seem necessary to ensure survival; in another, equally simple, technological achievements are complex and fitted with admirable nicety to the situation. One builds an enormous cultural superstructure upon adolescence, one upon death, one upon after-life” (1946: 24).

Indeed, categorization, intrinsic to culture, affects multiple aspects of our daily life. However, it has a particular focus on the most dilemmatic issues of human existence, such as death, birth, the sacred, corporeality, family, sexual identity, ages of life, relationship with animals, aesthetic sensitivity and artistic creation, among many others. This set of activities is part of what anthropology calls a symbolic function. As Lévi-Strauss says, “Any culture can be considered as a combination of symbolic systems headed by language, the matrimonial rules, the economic relations, art, science and religion.” (1950: xix) According to this thinker’s thesis, these symbolic systems reflect the fundamental structure of the human spirit. This thesis introduces a Copernican revolution in the way culture is conceived, insofar as the structures that embody the different symbolic systems are the reflection of the unconscious modus operandi of the human spirit itself understood in its logical and cognitive feature. And not so much the other way around, as it is sometimes naively supported. For example, language is not the mirror of society, but rather social structures obey the fundamental structure of language and the human mind. Nevertheless, whatever the way of understanding the relationship between culture and spirit, we can support the thesis that culture is nothing more than the system of symbols – understood as the standardized model of knowledge, action and sensitivity – that transits from generation to generation through learning in the context of a social structure. This last point is crucial and constitutes the nerve for the discussion between what is innate and what is acquired. Ruth Benedict supports a radical thesis that we know today – or at least suspect – is not an entirely true thesis, but that guides us in the identification of cultural objects.

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“There are societies where Nature perpetuates the slightest mode of behavior by biological mechanisms, but these are societies not of men but of the social insects. […] The social insects represent Nature in a mood when she was taking no chances. The pattern of the entire social structure she committed to the ant’s instinctive behavior. […] For better or for worse, man’s solution lies at the opposite pole. Not one item of his tribal social organization, of his language, of his local religion, is carried in his germ-cell” (1946: 12).

We do not yet know how this occurs, but the symbolic function’s fundamental core is probably inherited. The Chomskian idea of “mentalism” implies an inherited structure that allows us not so much any prior knowledge, but, rather, a function of sense and intelligibility.

IV. What implications does post-culture have for this system of cultural categorization in the world? It is a fact that culture is not a static block of values and appraisals. On the one hand, each culture is a dynamic bundle of forces, values, or even “memes” as a replicating principle of beliefs and actions – the behavioral equivalent of a gene, to use the terminology of young Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (1976) that clash with each other to become dominant. In this context, the processes of acculturation are decisive. In turn, it makes sense to talk about cultural evolution. In essence, it remains open, as the anthropologist Tim Ingold points out, in Evolution and Social Life (1986), to know which model is appropriate for this same evolution, if the Darwinist, in which there is no sense to speak of progress, if the Spencerian, for whom evolution corresponds to greater complexity, in the sense of more significant adaptation to situations. Check, in this regard, this quote by Herbert Spencer (First Principles § 57) by Ingold: “Evolution is a change from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity, to a definite, coherent heterogeneity; through continuous differentiations and integrations.” (1986: 4). In simple terms, it could be said that the anthropological models of Lewis H. Morgan and Edward B. Turner are part of the latter model, by distinguishing various stages in the constitution of a civilization: in the triple development that goes from said life wild – hunter-gatherers –, of life grounded on “barbarism”, understood as a cultural stage involving agriculture, the domestication of animals and the use of metals (the ages of bronze, iron, and so on), to Civilization. The last one crowned this development with the symbolic emergence of civilized life, such as writing, urbanism, institutions, etc. This Spencerian model of culture is opposed by anthropologists such as Franz Boas and Lévi-Strauss, for whom each culture is in itself the full expression of human life; the Darwinian plural model of intelligibility is dominant here, since each species is as well-adapted as any other if naturally survive and reproduce. Any idea of progress, in this case, cultural, is an illusion and the idea of a universal civilization the expression of ethnocentrism.

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The roots of this distinction, as underlined by Kenan Malik (2013), a British biologist and anthropologist, lies in the confrontation between two visions of the world, which are in some way antagonistic, but which decisively marked the globalized world where we live today, namely, the Enlightenment and Romanticism. In our view, post-culture is the expression of this crossing of values and reflects the contemporary vision of multiculturalism. According to Malik, romantics favour “the concrete over the abstract; the unique over the universal; nature over culture; the organic over the mechanical; emotion over reason; intuition over intellect; particular communities over abstract humanity.” (2013: 10) As is evident, the values contradicted by the romantics are those that are underlined by the Enlightenment. “Enlightenment philosophes saw progress as civilization overcoming the resistance of traditional cultures with their peculiar superstitions, irrational prejudices and outmoded institutions whereas the steamroller of progress and modernity was precisely what the Romantics feared. Enlightenment philosophes tended to see civilization in the singular [as Tylor] Romantics understood culture in the plural [as Franz Boas”]. (2013: 11)

It can be said that the dominant paradigm in anthropological studies is Romantic as long as respect for the principle of the unique value of each specific culture, namely, the “spirit of the people” (Volksgeist) in Herder’s well-known expression. As Wade Davis recently stated, the different cultures that exist in the world are not failed attempts to be like us. Instead, they should be seen as unique answers to a fundamental question: what does it mean to be human and alive? Currently, humanity responds with seven thousand different voices (2007: 10). The seven thousand voices are naturally the distinct cultures that exist in the contemporary world. Post-culture is associated with the loss of ties of cultural identity derived from globalization. The response of Western societies has been unfortunate, based on so-called multicultural policies. Instead of assuming its cosmopolitan dimension, already prefigured by Kant, communities are split into micro-communities that have torn the western world apart. This was the result of the unresolved tension between Enlightenment and Romantic values. Instead of the cosmopolitan universal respect for the natural diversity of values within a society, the answer has been creating of authentic cultural ghettos with all the disastrous implications of segregation, whose logical corollary has been violence and the institutionalization of a false and artificial cultural identity. The attacks by Anders Breivik in Norway and Islamic fundamentalists across Europe are the expression of this same problem. In my view, this is one of the main societal challenges that contemporary societies face and whose resolution does not bode for anything easygoing.

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Bibliography Arendt, Hannah (1978): The Life of the Mind. San Diego/New York/London: Harcourt. Arnold, Matthew (1986): Culture and Anarchy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Benedict, Ruth (1946): Patterns of Culture. Boston/New York: Houghton Mifflin. Boas, Franz (1922): The Mind of Primitive Man. New York: Macmillan. Davis, Wade (2007): Book of the People of the World. Washington DC: National Geographic. Dawkins, Richard (1976): The Selfish Gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Eliot, Thomas S. (1948): Notes towards the definition of culture. London: Faber and Faber. Eliot, Thomas S. (1954): “The Waste Land” (1922), in: Selected Poems. London: Faber & Faber. Fukuyama, Francis (2002): Our Posthuman Future. Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution. New York: Picador. Gellius, Aulus (1927): Noctium Atticarum. Cambridge, MA: Loeb Classical Library. Hendry, Joy (1999): An Introduction to Social Anthropology. New York: Macmillan. Ingold, Tim (1986): Evolution and Social Life. London/New York: Routledge. Lévi-Strauss, Claude (1950): “Introduction à l’oeuvre de Marcel Mauss”, in: Marcel Mauss. Sociologie et Anthropologie. Paris: PUF. Lévi-Strauss, Claude (2011): L’Anthropologie face aux problèmes du monde modern. Paris: Seuil. Malik, Kenan (2013): Multiculturalism and its Discontents. London et al.: Seagull Books. Steiner, George (1971): In Bluebeard’s Castle. Some notes towards the Re-definiton of Culture. London/Boston: Faber and Faber. Steiner, George (1996): No Passion Spent. Essays 1978 – 1996. London/Boston: Faber and Faber. Taylor, Charles (1992): Multiculturalism and ‘The Politics of Recognition’. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Tylor, Edward Burnett (1874): Primitive Culture. Researches into the development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Language, Art and Custom. New York: Henry Holt and Company. Ulam, Stan (1958): “John Von Neumann 1903 – 1957”. Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society 64, no. 3, part 2, 1 – 49.

Biographies Carlos João Correia graduated (PhD) from the University of Lisbon in 1993 with a thesis on the philosophical thought of Paul Ricœur. He is currently an Associate Professor at the University of Lisbon, where he has been teaching since 1980. His research areas include: Philosophy of Art, Philosophy of Religion, Personal Identity (Metaphysics), German Idealism and Classical Indian Thought. He has authored or edited 21 books and more than 100 scientific essays. He presides over two cultural associations, “AIEM, Interdisciplinary Association of the Human Mind” and “Association ‘What is it?’”. He is a member of the Mind-Brain College of the University of Lisbon and director of the journal Philosophy@Lisbon.

*** Paulo de Brito is an Associate Professor of Law at Universidade Lusófona do Porto and Director of its Legal Research Institute. From December 2014 until July 2018, he was the Dean of the Law School at this university while also lecturing International Law at graduate and ADR (Alternative Dispute Resolution) at postgraduate levels (Master’s degree in corporate legal studies). He holds a post-doctorate in Public Law from the Universidad Santiago de Compostela, a Ph.D. in International Law from the University of Bristol (Faculty of Social Sciences and Law), UK, a J.D. from Universidade Católica Portuguesa, a B.B.A. from the Helsinki School of Economics and a M.A. in International Relations. He is also judge arbitrator at an Insurance Arbitration Tribunal, and Observer at the Working Group on mediation of the European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice (Council of Europe). Prior to being a full-time academic, he was a Small Claims judge for nearly six years. Before that, he served as a probation officer with the Portuguese Ministry of Justice for eight years. In addition to those domestic posts, he has made several other presentations abroad, namely at the Palace of Justice in Turin (2006), KIMEP University (Kazakhstan Institute of Management, Economics and Strategic Research) in Almaty, Kazakhstan (2011), KTH (Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan) in Stockholm (2012), Queen’s University in Belfast (2013), University of Sussex, UK (2014), Universidad Santiago de Compostela (April 2019), Université du Luxembourg (July 2019), and Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid (December 2019).

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Cristina Hermida del Llano is a Full Professor of Philosophy of Law at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Jean Monnet Chair and expert in integration and fundamental rights in the European Union (2013). She is President of the Asociación De Hispanismo Filosófico (Spanish Philosophical Society, since 2017), Chief Editor of the Revista de Pensamiento Filosófico Español e Iberoamericano (Journal of Spanish and Ibero-american Philosophical Thinking), Member of the UNESCO Chair on Culture of Peace and Human Rights (2017 – 2020) and Corresponding Academic of the Royal Academy of Jurisprudence and Legislation of Madrid since 2006. Cristina Hermida del Llano holds a Doctorate in Law (1996), Cum Laude by unanimous vote, and received a postdoctoral scholarship from the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung (1998 – 2000). She has collaborated in the teaching of seminars, conferences and masters’ courses in numerous Spanish and foreign universities, including in the United States, Germany, France, Austria, Italy, United Kingdom, Holland, Ukraine, Poland, Romania, Chile, Peru, Cuba, Taiwan and Mexico. She has taken part in numerous R&D Projects funded by public agencies (national and international), also as a principal investigator, and has completed seven research stays in foreign universities: three in the Free University of Berlin, Law School (Germany) and five at the Georgetown University Law Center in Washington D.C., United States.

*** Damien Ehrhardt obtained his doctorate from the Paris-Sorbonne University (1997) and his habilitation from the University of Strasbourg (2004). He is currently a tenured associate professor (maître de conferences hors classe) and member of the academic Council at the University of Évry-Val-d’Essonne (UEVE), where he also heads the “Mélanges Interculturels” branch within the Synergie Langues Arts Musique (SLAM) research lab at the University of Paris-Saclay. Among his numerous publications in musicology and cultural studies (listed on HAL and Academia.edu) is the volume of the New Edition of the Complete Works of Robert Schumann that he co-edited. He has been involved in the cultural life of the University of Évry-Val-d’Essonne (UEVE), as manager of the cultural project (2008 – 2010) and vice-president for culture (2011 – 2015). He was also co-facilitator of the working group ‘School of Humanities’ of the University of Paris Saclay (2014 – 16). He has held the positions of DAAD scholar at Saarland University (1991 – 92) and Alexander-von-Humboldt scholar at University of Regensburg, University of Music Franz Liszt Weimar, and Friedrich Schiller University Jena (1999 – 2001). He has received the Award for Franco-German Friendship and is president of the Association Humboldt France, the alumni association of the Humboldt Foundation in France, where he (co)organizes ten Humboldt Kollegs – two in collaboration with Soraya Nour Sckell – on various topics such as emotions, fascinating planet, unity in diversity or uncertainty.

***

Biographies

237

Sara Fernandes (PhD University of Lisbon 2022) is a researcher of the Center of Philosophy at the University of Lisbon. Her main research interests are the relation between philosophy and neurosciences, in particular neuroenhancement and its impact on personal identity, human nature, and neuroethics. She also works on hermeneutics, philosophy of literature and political philosophy, with a specialization on Virginia Woolf, Paul Ricœur and John Rawls. She holds a research degree from the doctoral program on Bioethics of the Portuguese Catholic University (2009) and a MPhil in Philosophy from the University of Lisbon (2006) with a dissertation on Paul Ricoeur and the problem of personal identity.

*** Pedro Tiago Ferreira is an independent scholar with a background in Literary Theory and Legal Theory. He is currently earning his PhD in Political Philosophy with a thesis on the need for a cosmopolitan constitution to resolve international conflicts exclusively through law, thereby securing justice and perpetual peace. Pedro is also a professional trainer and a translator by trade.

*** Hélène Fleury is lecturer in visual and heritage studies at the University of Évry-Val-d’Essonne (UEVE) and PhD candidate at Paris-Saclay University in cooperation with the Center for South Asian Studies (CEIAS) at the School of Advanced Studies (EHESS). Over several years, she was working as project leader in the fields of culture and youth politics. She obtained two master’s degrees, one in history (Pantheon-Sorbonne University) and one in anthropology (EHESS), after a two-year Grandes Écoles preparatory classes program in Paris (hypokhâgne – khâgne) Her research concerns the globalised reception of Mithila paintings, mediations in a transnational cultural field, interculturality and transfer studies. She has conducted four fieldwork expeditions in Mithila (India and Nepal) in 2002 and 2017 – 19. She served as PhD representative of the CEIAS (2015/16), jury member of an interuniversity poetry competition (2014 – 16) and is presently elected member of the Academic Council at UEVE and of the SLAM (Synergy Languages-Arts-Music) laboratory board at Paris-Saclay University. Having authored 15 scientific publications (book chapters and articles in English and French, of which 8 have been published and 7 in press), she was invited to present her work at 19 international conferences and seminars in Algeria (Tlemcen University), Australia (University of Western Australia), Finland (Humboldt Kolleg 2017, Helsinki), France (Royaumont Abbey, EHESS, Singer-Polignac Foundation, Quai Branly Museum, UEVE), Germany (University of Regensburg), India (Asian Development Research Institute, Bihar Museum, Upendra Maharathi Design and Craft Research Institute, Bihar Government, Mithila Art Institute in cooperation with the Ethnic Arts Foundation, Berkeley) and Portugal (Humboldt Kolleg 2019, Lisbon). She co-edited Les émotions créatives (with Damien Ehrhardt and Soraya Nour Sckell, Ber-

238

Biographies

lin: Duncker & Humblot 2022) and organized a doctoral conference at EHESS (2016). Salso several publications listed on HAL and Academia.edu.

*** João Motta Guedes was born in 1995. He holds a Law degree from the University of Lisbon and a Master in International and European Law from the NOVA University of Lisbon. He attended an art and painting course, as well as an artistic residency at the Mart school. He is a member of the Pousio Association of Art and Culture. He has participated in various international conferences, including Identity, Culture and Law (2019) and To Grasp the whole world (2019). He has been exhibiting regularly since 2019, participating in various group exhibitions such as Coexistência e Negociação (Museu Condes de Castro Guimarães, 2019), Tendas (Escola Manuel da Maia, 2020) and Como bebe uma flor (Jardim das Amoreiras, 2020). In September 2020 he received the Alunos da FBAUL na Ermida painting award (Travessa da Ermida, 2020). He is currently undertaking a master’s degree in painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Lisbon.

*** Quy Dao Nguyen is Emeritus Research Director of the CNRS-France. He is a former Humboldt fellow and British Council fellow, and Honorary Professor at CentraleSupelec, a High Technical University in France. He graduated from “Centrale-Paris” as a “Doctor of Science” at the “Pierre and Marie Curie University” of Paris. He is a Physical-Chemist, working in the fields of Inorganic Chemistry and Instrumental Physics and has received several scientific awards in these disciplines. Since his retirement, he has become interested by the History of science, literature, and other aspects of culture in Far-Eastern countries. In the framework of the “Humboldt Kollegs”, he has presented several lectures in this field, one of which is included in this volume.

*** Christopher Pollmann is a Professor at the Faculté de Droit, Metz, France. He obtained a PhD in law, humanities and philosophy under the direction of Michel Miaille in 1991 and received the habilitation in 1993. He has held positions of Professor at the University of Lorraine, Visiting Fellow at Harvard Law School (2001 – 02), Visiting Research Associate with Immanuel Wallerstein in Binghamton (NY, Sept, 2002), Visiting Professor at the Universities of Bern, Fribourg (Switzerland) and Hamburg, and honorary professor at the University of San Martín de Porres in Lima. He has directed the following seminars: “Borders, Boundaries and Law” at EHESS (Paris, 2005 – 2007); “The Liquefaction of Borders” at the Collège international de philosophie (Paris, 2011 – 2014); “Cosmopolitanism and its agents” with Frauke A. Kurbacher and Soraya Nour Sckel at the Collège international

Biographies

239

de philosophie (2017); and “Accumulations and accelerations” at the Fondation Maison des sciences de l‘homme, Paris (2015 to 2022).

*** Irene Portela holds a PhD in Constitutional Law from the Department of Public Law and Theory of the State at the University of Santiago de Compostela, a Master’s in Public Administration from the University of Minho and a post-graduate degree in Communication Law from the Legal Communication Institute, Faculty of Law, University of Coimbra. She holds several positions at the IPCA Superior School of Management, having until now been the teacher responsible for the Constitutional Law and Fundamental Rights Curricular Unit within the Solicitors and Taxation courses. She has published works and articles in the area of law, the humanities and the social sciences.

*** Nuno Miguel Proença is a Researcher in the CHAM (Centre for the Humanities) at the NOVA University of Lisbon. He holds a PhD in Philosophy from the Parisian Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales and has participated in several international projects funded by the Portuguese research agency and ministry of higher education (Poetics of Selfhood: Memory, Imagination and Narrative; Medicine and Narrative: (con)texts and interdisciplinary practices; SHARE – Health and Humanities Acting Together and also Cosmopolitanism: Justice, Democracy and Citizenship without Borders). As an author he has published, among other books, articles and book chapters: Qu’est-ce que l’objectivation en psychanalyse? (Paris, L’Harmattan, 2008); Wittgenstein, a prova e a actividade matemática: uma introdução [Wittgenstein, proof and mathematical activity: an introduction] (Lisboa, Cadernos de Filosofia das Ciências, 2009); and Vida, afectividade e sentido (Vila Nova de Famalicão, Húmus, 2020). He co-edited the book Dor, sofrimento e saúde mental na Arquipatologia de Filipe Montalto [Pain, suffering and mental health in Filipe Montalto’s Achipathologia] (Vila Nova de Famalicão/ Lisboa, Húmus/Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 2018) and the file Evidência, afectividade e inconsciente [Self-evidence, affectivity and the unconscious] for the 35th volume of the Journal CULTURA.

*** Soraya Nour Sckell is an Associate Professor at NOVA School of Law. She is researcher at CEDIS (NOVA School of Law) and at the Center of Philosophy of the University of Lisbon. She is the Principal Investigator of the Project “Cosmopolitanism: Justice, Democracy and Citizenship without Borders”. She received the Wolfgang Kaupen-Preis (German Society for Sociology, section Sociology of Law, 2018) and the German-French Friendship Prize (Ambassy of Germany in Paris, 2012). She has obtained a PhD in Phi-

240

Biographies

losophy from the University Paris Nanterre and the Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main (thesis in cotutela, 2012) and a PhD in Law from the University of Sao Paulo (1999). She has undertaken post-doctoral research at the Universities of Saint Louis (SLU), Nanterre, Frankfurt a. M. and Berlin (Humboldt University), and taught at the Universities of Sao Paulo, Munich, Metz, Lille, and Lisbon, as well as at the University Portucalense. She has served as director of the research program on cosmopolitanism at the Collège International de Philosophie in Paris (2013 – 2019) and is vice-president of the Association Humboldt France.

*** Elena S. Soboleva graduated from the Faculty of History, University of St. Petersburg in 1978, specializing in ethnography. In 1990, she defended her thesis on the ethnic structure of the Portuguese Timor, which was later published as a book in 1991. She is the author of over 400 articles devoted to Timor, Macau, Goa, Ceylon, Brazil, Portugal, etc. Elena S. Soboleva continues to research the materials of the Second Russian Expedition to South America (1914 – 1915), starting with the Brazilian diary of Heinrich H. Manizer (MAE RAS, 2016. 605 p.). Since 1995, she has been an active partner of CELB (Center for Portuguese-Brazilian Studies) in St. Petersburg, has participated in the formation of the conception of ideals of Lusophonia in the scope of the common work and in the strengthening of the relations and the scientific exchange between the CELB and the Lusophone Association Galicia-Portugal (Braga). At the same time, she was a constant member contributing to the minutes of the congress. She has published several articles in the Lusophone magazines “Nós” and “Oriente”, among others. Since 1978, she has worked at the “Peter the Great” Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera) and has been a Senior Research Fellow at the Russian Academy of Sciences since 1993. She is spreading Lusophone ideas and guiding a group of people who are interested in them.

*** Domingos Vieira holds a Doctorate in Modern and Contemporary History from SorbonneParis IV, a Doctorate in Theology /Ethics from the Catholic University of Paris – ICP Paris and a Post-Doctorate in History and ethics of international relations from the Catholic University of Portugal. He was a Fellow of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the Foundation for Science and Technology. He has published works and articles in the areas of humanities and the social sciences. He is an invited adjunct professor at the Polytechnic Institute of Cávado and Ave.

***

Biographies

241

Claus Zittel is a professor of German literature at the University of Stuttgart and, since 2019, at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. He is Deputy Director of the Stuttgart Research Center for Text Studies and Co-Director of the Ca’ Foscari Bembo-Lab. Before coming to Stuttgart in 2014, he was a professor of German Literature at the University of Warmia-Mazury (Olsztyn, Poland) and a research fellow at the Max Planck Institut/ Kunsthistorisches Institut Florence (Italy) and at the SFB Cultures of Knowledge at the Goethe-University Frankfurt. His Visiting Professorships include Freie Universität Berlin (Germany), TU Darmstadt (Germany), Beida University (Beijing), Tongji University Shanghai, Chongqing University, University of Trento, University of Verona, University of Padova (Italy), and the University of Zagreb (Croatia). He is inter alia the author of Das ästhetische Kalkül von Friedrich Nietzsches ‘Also sprach Zarathustra’ (2000, 2012) and Theatrum philosophicum. Descartes und die Rolle ästhetischer Formen in der Wissenschaft (2009), and editor of René Descartes, Les Météores/Die Meteore (2006), Paul Adler, Absolute Prosa (2018); Max Brod/Felix Weltsch: Anschauung und Begriff (2018). He has co-edited some 30 volumes, including (with Tom Balfe and Joanna Woodall) Ad vivum? Visual Materials and the Vocabulary of Life-Likeness in Europe before 1800, “Intersections” (2019); (with Chr. Lüthy, Cl. Swan, P. Bakker) Image, Imagination, and Cognition. Medieval and Early Modern Theory and Practice, “Intersections” (2018); (with Thomas Rahn and Wolfgang Neuber) The Making of Copernicus. Transformations of a Scientist and His Science (2014); (with Karl Enenkel) Die ,Vita‘ als Vermittlerin von Wissenschaft und Werk (2013); (with Michael Thimann and Heiko Damm) The Artist as Reader “Intersections” (2013); (with Helen King and Manfred Horstmannshoff) Blood, Sweat and tears. The Changing Concepts of Physiology from Antiquity into Early Modern Europe, “Intersections” (2012); (with Sylwia Werner) Ludwik Fleck. Denkstile und Tatsachen (2011); (with Moritz Epple) Science as Cultural Practice Vol. 1: Cultures and Politics of Research from the Early Modern Period to the Age of Extremes (2010); (with Gisela Engel and Romano Nanni) Philosophies of Technology. Francis Bacon and his Contemporaries, “Intersections” (2008); and (with Wolfgang Detel) Ideals and Cultures of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe (2002).

Index acceleration 11, 153 aesthetics 8, 39, 44, 49 f., 194 anarchy 158 f. Anders 113, 233 anthropology 29, 229 – 231, 237 Aquinas 197 Arendt 42, 48, 111, 113227 Arnold 229 art 9, 11 – 13, 33, 41, 48 – 50, 63, 89, 124, 145, 196, 198, 228, 231, 238 Augé 107 authority 12, 109, 122, 127, 131 f., 143, 158 f. Bacon 75, 80, 241 Bailache 196 Balibar 91 Baumgold 76 Being 61 Benedict 231 Benveniste 103 biodiversity 7, 62 Bloch 186, 194, 199 – 201, 203 Boas 229, 232 f. Bogoraz 58, 61 Botting 57 Bréchignac 103 Bredekamp 42, 44, 50 Breuer 110 f. Brock 156 Brown 31, 154, 197, 203 calligraphy 11 capitalism 89 Carneiro 39, 103 Carr 73 Chancellor 203 citizenship 29, 31, 42, 48, 129, 131 civil society 144 civilization 11 f., 31, 156, 228 f., 232 f. Clarke 197

Clausewitz 125 colonization 32, 153 community 41, 44, 130, 133, 140 f., 143, 146, 150, 154 – 156 conflict 44 – 49, 86, 122 f., 125, 127, 129 – 132, 136, 153, 155, 158 constitution 7, 230, 232, 237 Correia 235 cosmopolitanism 11, 122, 130, 132, 135, 153 – 158, 240 cosmopolitics 8 cosmos 7 f., 30 Cox 88 criticism 9, 80, 84, 134 cultural studies 236 culture 7, 10 – 12, 31 f., 59, 145, 159, 227 – 233, 236, 238 Davis 233 Dawkins 232 Dear 76 Descartes 241 Detel 75, 241 development 10, 30, 32 f., 56, 58, 91, 139, 144, 150 f., 160, 232 dialectic 11, 153, 163 discrimination 10, 139 – 142, 144 – 147, 149 f. Dower 122 Dufour 196 Dunken 56 Earth 31, 57, 60, 103, 228 Ehrhardt 236 Eliot 227 Ellul 101 emotions 11, 48, 80, 190, 236 Enlightenment 7, 12, 46, 48, 84, 233 environment 55 ethics 123 f., 127, 240 ethnography 57, 61, 63, 240

244

Index

Ette 64 Europe 10, 29, 48, 146, 156, 233, 235, 241 evolution 33, 154, 232 experience 7, 50, 63, 80, 112, 141 f., 203 exploitation 32, 34 – 36, 155, 161 Fernandes 12, 237 Ferreira 10, 121, 128, 237 Fleury 7, 13, 237 Freed 105 freedom 43 f., 48, 128, 163 Freud 114 Fukuyama 153, 216, 228 future 11, 55, 83, 103, 130, 153, 161, 228 Galloppe 191, 195, 198 Gellius 230 geography 8, 30, 57, 60 global justice 156 globalisation 10, 12, 237 globalization 155, 159, 228, 233 Godwin 197 Habermas 89, 102 Hart 133 Held 31 Hendry 230 Herder 198, 233 Hibou 109 Hirschmann 80 historiography 9, 75 f. history 7 – 11, 29, 31, 33 f., 39 f., 43, 45, 48, 53, 57, 61, 63, 75 f., 81, 83 f., 121 f., 124, 145, 153, 191, 208, 227 f., 230, 237 Hobbes 73 – 78, 80 – 84, 91, 130 Horkheimer 84, 108, 113 human rights 8, 30, 40, 49 f., 128 f., 134, 140 f., 145, 151, 157 humanism 33, 230 humanities 229 f., 238 – 240 humanity 9, 31, 33 f., 39, 43, 45 – 48, 50, 84, 160, 199, 233 Humboldt 29, 31, 33, 45, 55, 57, 62, 97 Hunt 42, 48, 50 idealism 9 identity 12 f., 123, 146, 156, 158, 162, 228 f., 231, 233

ideology 50, 112 imaginary 47, 49 f. imagination 7 imperialism 126, 155 interdisciplinarity 7, 57 international relations 9, 88, 122, 124 – 127, 157, 240 Jahn 91 James 196 f. Jankélévitch 186, 190, 195, 201 f. Jünger 101, 111 just war theory 10, 122, 125, 127, 130 – 132, 134 – 136 justice 31 – 34, 36, 49, 83, 121 f., 126 f., 129 – 131, 133 – 136, 145, 156, 162 f., 237 Kant 31, 34, 233 Kelsen 133 Kleingeld 154 knowledge 8, 10, 12, 29 f., 58, 64, 75 f., 80, 83, 90, 122 f., 135 f., 142, 144, 208, 227, 230 – 232 Komissarov 57 – 59, 64 Korsun 60 Kullmann 75 Kuper 157, 162 Lago 46 Lango 122, 130 – 132, 135 f. Langsdorf 61 law 7, 9 f., 44, 48, 50, 89, 91, 109, 124 – 129, 131 – 136, 156 – 159, 162, 237 – 239 League of Nations 86, 154 legitimacy 10, 131 f., 136 Leroi-Gourhan 110 Lessay 78 Leviathan 75 f., 82 f. liberty 10, 12, 82 – 84, 121, 126, 137 Linklater 91 Lise 33 Little 197 London 56, 101, 185 Loos 108 Lorenzer 107 Lovelock 192 Lukin 57

Index MacCormick 134 f. Machiavelli 82 Magee 203 f. Manizer 59 – 62, 64, 240 mankind 43, 153 f., 162 Mann 203 materialism 33 Mattheson 197 McCarthy 112 McMahan 121 metaphysics 11, 199 migration 10 Minguet 32 f. Mittelstrass 83 modernity 153, 155, 233 Moncada 157 morality 73, 127, 133 – 135, 158 Morgenthau 122 – 127, 131, 137 Münkler 75, 83 Murray 127 music 11, 59 f., 63, 190 f., 194, 196, 198 – 200, 203, 228 f. Musil 102 Musso 103

245

Pollmann 10, 102 – 104, 107 – 109, 238 Portela 8, 239 positivism 133 – 136 post-culture 12, 227 – 230, 232 f. Postone 108 power 9, 35, 42, 50, 81 – 84, 88, 103, 124 – 126, 133, 135, 158 f., 161 f. Proença 11, 239 progress 9, 31, 33 f., 84, 90, 154, 228, 232 f. Prudhommeaux 86 psychology 9 public opinion 124 Quy Dao

11, 238

106

rationalism 33, 122 f., 127, 130 rationality 124, 161 Rawls 122, 127 – 131, 137, 162 realism 9, 88, 123, 126 f., 130 reality 11, 32 f., 39 – 42, 44 – 46, 49, 84, 90, 123, 127 f., 136, 162 f., 231 reason 7, 12, 30, 33, 48, 80 f., 84, 108, 121 – 126, 129 – 131, 134, 162, 191, 233 recognition 82, 135 Rehding 197 Reinhardt 83 religion 33, 103, 124, 231 f. Renaissance 48 representation 39 f., 42, 44 f., 47 – 50, 128, 190 revolution 45, 132, 162, 231 Reynolds 75 Roca 39, 47, 49 Rogers 76 Roma 10, 140 – 143, 145 – 151 Roma communities 10, 141 – 143, 150 f. Romanticism 46 – 48, 50, 233 Rousseau 43, 86 Rugendas 39 – 50, 58, 61

Pascal 100 Péaud 30 planet 8, 10, 144, 155 f., 236 planetarity 8 Pogge 157 – 159, 162 politics 31, 73, 91, 122 f., 126, 135, 145

Safouan 110 Sagan 185 Saxonhouse 75, 82 Schopenhauer 186 – 191, 193 – 201, 203 Schumann 76, 236 science 7 f., 12, 29, 33, 56 f., 59, 76, 84, 89, 103, 124, 135 f., 229, 231, 238

narrative 12, 40, 43, 78 nationalism 46, 153, 158 natural law 133 f., 136 nature 7, 12, 29 f., 33, 39, 41, 45 – 49, 62, 75, 84, 91, 122 – 124, 130, 135 f., 157, 190, 194, 233 Navari 87 neurosciences 12 Newman 203 Newton 29, 39 Nietzsche 102, 113, 186, 196 normativism 9 Nour 29, 139, 236, 238 f. Ortega y Gasset Otto 53, 56

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Index

self 10, 43, 46, 64, 73, 83, 121, 126, 128 – 130, 137, 162, 203 Simmel 102, 108 slavery 32, 35, 40 f., 44 Slenes 40 Sloterdijk 10, 98 – 100, 102, 104, 107 – 109 Soboleva 8, 53, 56, 60 – 62, 240 social contract 130 society 8, 11, 34, 49 f., 63, 84, 101, 106, 122 – 124, 128 – 130, 136, 140, 144, 146, 154, 162 f., 227, 230 f., 233 Sorell 75 f. Southgate 83 sovereignty 153, 157 – 159 space 8, 10, 30, 64, 108, 154 Spitzer 105 Springborg 76 Sprintzin 59, 61 state 9 f., 32, 42, 48, 50, 59 f., 91, 122, 125 – 127, 129 – 132, 135 f., 156 – 158, 162 Steiner 227 – 229 Stiegler 110, 113 Strauss 103, 230 – 232 Strelnikov 59 – 62, 64 Sustainable Development Goals 11 Taylor 203 technology 12, 228, 231 Thucydides 77, 81 – 83 Tibon-Cornillot 101, 113 Tocqueville 106

totality 146 tradition 63, 76, 80, 124, 155, 197, 229 transareality 7 Tuck 75 Tylor 229, 233 Ulam 228 uncertainty 236 United Nations 131, 135, 139, 154 universalism 29, 33, 131 universality 11, 91, 155, 157 utopia 29, 154 Valéry 110 Vieira 8, 240 Wagner 186, 196, 203 Wakenroder 198 Weber 89 Weinreb 134 Weinstein 112 Wilde 207 world 7 f., 10 f., 13, 29 – 31, 42, 46, 48 – 50, 55 f., 58, 61 f., 64, 76, 82 – 84, 86, 88, 91, 122 – 124, 126, 129 f., 132, 134, 139 – 141, 143, 153 – 155, 157 – 160, 162 f., 189, 198, 200, 227 – 230, 232 f., 238 Zittel 9, 241 Zweig 105