The Social Construction of Reality

The Social Construction of Reality

“For what comes by nature is harder to cure than what comes by custom for the reason why custom is held to be so strong is that it turns things into nature.” —Aristotle, Magna Moralia, Book II, 4 B.C..

“1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not of things.”—Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

A very brief overview of the philosophical school of thought known as the “Sociology of Knowledge” is needed before further discussing Aristotle’s distinction between first human nature and a second constructed cultural nature. Max Scheler (1874-1928) was known in 1920 as the father of the “Sociology of knowledge” (Wissenssoziologie), which is concerned with the relationship between thought, and the social context it arises. His phenomenological examination focused on how existential determination dialectically influences thought.

The best overview of this area of critical sociology is a small book authored by Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann titled, “The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (Anchor Books, ed. 1967, here after referred to as “SCR”).” This book is particularly indebted to Emile Durkheim as the first French professor of the sociology of knowledge although authors Berger and Luckman give a dialectical interpretation of Karl Marx’s critique of society combined with sociologist Max Weber’s research into how subjective meanings become reality (SCR., p. 17).  I first encountered this book when an excited graduate sociology student hurriedly walked into the philosophy department holding a paperback book saying, “Have you guys heard of this?” I think in some ways the sociology of knowledge presents critical theory more intuitively than critical philosophy since it has a stronger empirical side that people can relate to instead of abstract epistemological questions. [1] For many readers the sociology of knowledge was their first introduction to critical theory.

[1] Footnote: A point of phenomenological interest is Peter L. Luckmann worked with Alfred Schutz on the text, “Structures of the Life-World (1982).” We discussed the concept of the Lifeworld in regard to Husserl. The sociology of knowledge uses the phenomenological method to critique ideology and understand how ideas are formulated in a social context to create a commonsense worldview.

Max Scheler (not to be confused with Karl Schlegel) further developed Husserl’s phenomenological method by researching a new area of study called the phenomenology of ethics. Interestingly, Scheler understood phenomenological observation to be akin to a “spiritual posture.” The later Husserl likely adopted Scheler’s interpretation of the phenomenological method of the Epoche. Scheler viewed Husserl’s phenomenological method as “an attitude of spiritual seeing...something which otherwise remains hidden....”[2] The German word "Geist" means both "Spirit," and "Mind." Ethics and phenomenological description merge in Scheler’s methodology:

“Rather, that which is given in phenomenology ‘is given only in the seeing and experiencing act itself.’ The essences are never given to an 'outside' observer with no direct contact with the thing itself. Phenomenology is an engagement of phenomena, while simultaneously a waiting for its self-givenness; it is not a methodical procedure of observation as if its object is stationary. Thus, the particular attitude (Geisteshaltung, lit. ‘disposition of the spirit’ or ‘spiritual posture’) of the philosopher is crucial for the disclosure, or seeing, of phenomenological facts. This attitude is fundamentally a moral one, where the strength of philosophical inquiry rests upon the basis of love”(Wiki: Max Scheler).

Scheler’s key insight is that human knowledge is given in society as a priori to individual experience giving thought the order of a “relative-natural view”(SCR., p.8). Scheler developed an entire theory of values based on “beings-of-value” (Wertsein). Heidegger had a very high regard for Scheler’s contribution to contemporary philosophy. Scheler was the only prestigious member of the German intelligentsia to warn of rising German Nazism in 1927. Scheler’s entire works where not in English even in 1967. One interesting historical note is Pope John Paul II studied Scheler’s ethics resulting in his dissertation titled "Reevaluation of the possibility of founding a Catholic ethic on the ethical system of Max Scheler.“ [3]

“The world expresses itself in the type of the human spirit, and this type represents itself in the world."—Friedrich Schleiermacher

Another important scholar that inspired the sociology of knowledge is Karl Marx with his critique of human activity as labor (Substructure) and the society (Superstructure) this activity produces. 1.) Marx and Engels had a dialectical view of the interaction between consciousness and a dynamic material world: in history human consciousness re-shapes material existence (Nature), then material existence in return re-shapes consciousness (Society). 2.) Ideology holds the stock of cultural knowledge, which can be manipulated to reflect and advance only the interests of factional groups. 3.) Socially functional false beliefs create a false consciousness in which the thinker is alienated from his own life. 4.) Reification occurs when the subject apprehends human phenomena as “things” which are non-human, or even super human that re-appear as an alien force (Economic Depressions). However, reification also includes “facts,” “cosmic laws,” or the “will of a divine being.” Reification is a kind of forgetting of the past and de-humanization of the world (SCR., p.89). When Wittgenstein said, “The world is a totality of facts, not of things,” he means A.) The concepts of  “world” and of “facts” are linguistic interpretations of existence as appearances. B.) “Things” are appearances (phenomena) of which we cannot go beyond to the thing-in-itself (noumena). The key question for sociology of knowledge is how these subjective meanings are transformed into objective facts.

American sociologist Karl Mannheim combined Marxian critique to Scheler’s work in sociology of knowledge. His main interest was the phenomena of ideology and distinguishing between the “part, whole, and general concepts of ideology” (SCR., p.9). Ideology can dominate a part or the whole of consciousness as in Marx’s false consciousness. Ideology influences both the other’s thinking as well as one’s own thoughts. No one is immune to the influences of ideology. Mannheim most famous book is “Ideology and Utopia” (1936) translated from German by Louis Wirth and Edward Shils, Harvest Books, edition, 1996. For editions published in the US after 1936, Part I, was added especially for English readers. Mannheim’s thesis is “utopianism is like ideology, but unlike ideology it has the dynamism to transform that reality into its own image”(SCR., p.10).

Wilhelm Dilthey’s research focused on countering historical relativism by arguing that a historical situation can be understood only in its own social historical context (SCR., p.7). American sociologist Robert Merton made the very important distinction between “the intended, conscious functions of ideas, and the unintended, unconscious ones” (SCR., p. 11). Merton was the first fully developed sociologist of knowledge. Sociologist Talcott Parsons’ studies were a critique of Mannheim’s research. Neither C. Wight Mills, nor Parsons, nor Merton developed the sociology of knowledge further than Mannheim. And lastly, Werner Stark diverts from Mannheim’s focus on ideology by turning from the “sociology of error” to the sociology of truth.

Construction of Reality by Externalization, Objectivation, and Internalization

Dr. Dennis Hiebert of Providence University College, Canada defines the social construction of reality as “…the process whereby people continuously create, through their actions and interactions, a shared reality that is experienced as objectively factual and subjectively meaningful.” This socially unifying process has at least three other related processes. 1.) Externalization is a process in which the institutions of society and nature appear as external and independent of one’s own existence. Reality is that quality of phenomena recognized as being independent of our own existence and volition. 2.) Objectivation is the “…process by which the externalized products of human activity attain the character of objectivity.” Daily life is viewed as having a pre-arranged ordered reality. The dynamics of human created products act back on the producer appearing as other than a human creation. Money capital moving around causing worker dislocation and unemployment is a good example of the objectivation of human labor as profit returning in money form as an alien force. 3.) Lastly, Heibert defines internalization as “…the process whereby the individual learns the legitimations (explanations and justifications) for society’s order.” These justifications could be cognitive, or moral. Knowledge is the certainty that phenomena are real and have attributes. When we define the world, we define ourselves.

The Social Totality

Adorno is known for his intentionally non-scientific philosophical concept of the “social totality.” Adorno argues that 1.) Society gives facts meaning in a social order. The social totality is not a causal chain matrix, nor a collection of disconnected facts. Rather, the social totality is a driven self-sustaining system that provides a social pre-constructive model of the world. At the same time the social totality act as a constraint on thinking. Adorno’s thesis is “…that society, as a totality, is not an object which can be grasped through any of the scientific methodologies adopted by positivism” (Adorno, by O'Connor, Brian, Pub. Taylor & Francis Books, 2012, p. 27). Positivism misses the dialectical process by which objective facts are formulated. 2.) Society is shaped by fundamental ideological beliefs. Most importantly, 3.) Society is a coercive totality that can force persons into self-destructive circumstances. However, this influence cannot be understood with the category of “causality,” but rather by “integration.” It is within the social totality that “ ‘Damaged life’—our condition—is a life pursued within the space of the social totality in which our beliefs and decisions are directed by institutional norms which seem objective and reasonable”(Ibid., p. 27).

Aristotle postulated two human natures: the first nature humans are born with while the second nature is formed by socialization. This second nature is viewed by the sociology of knowledge as having two key general processes the individual undergoes: Primary socialization, and Secondary socialization. However, I want to change these terms to “Primary paradigm,” and “Secondary paradigm.”

Bitter Sweet Symphony

Can belief in teleology be consistent with realist, or antirealist epistemology?

Can belief in teleology be consistent with realist, or antirealist epistemology?

Making Conceptual Distinctions

I have discussed the topic of teleology in an earlier essay, “The Telos of Absolute Idealism,” and in another subheading on historicism, “The Historicist Nemesis.” And by pure coincidence and good fortune I found Professor Braver’s insightful book, “A Thing of This World,” that provides clear definitions of “realist” and “antirealist” epistemologies. There are other powerful conceptual tools that can be applied to this question of teleology and whether telos could be consistent with empirical realism, or Kantian antirealist epistemology.  An antirealist would in general tend to view teleology as a concept dependent on the active projecting subject: this would be true of the early Kantian Hegel (see chart, Hegel-A5), but later rejects the Kantian transcendental self (Hegel-A2), and the noumenal self altogether (Hegel-A6). 

On the other hand, a realist would typically deny historical telos exists independently of the passive observer, and is not actually an attribute of historical change, but merely a subjective contingent interpretation of natural events. There are arguments of support for both views of historical telos. Every few years my viewpoint shifts from one position to another.

There is certainly a subjective side of telos projected by the active self as a “ethical telos,” such as Kant’s ethical maxim, “So act as to treat humanity whether in the own person or in that of any other, always as an end, and never as a means.”  We might project an ethical ideal alter ego, or a divine double with a utilitarian goal (just an example) of acting to create the greatest intrinsic good such as knowledge, beauty, and virtues for the greatest number possible. Such self-created purposed goals are imposed upon the world and are therefore; extrinsic, whereas the telos of natural entities such as an acorn seed, for example, that develops into an oak tree in referred to as intrinsic teleology. 

Aristotle made even finer distinctions with his scheme of “four causes” that recognize “final cause,” or the purpose of a thing and the agent as “efficient cause,” or “moving cause of a change (Wiki: Four causes).” A farmer who plants a grove of fruit trees in order to sell his crop is the efficient cause (κινοῦν, kinoûn); selling his produce to the market is the final cause (τέλος, télos); material cause (ὕλη, hū́lē) is the planted seed; the formal cause is the type of crop planted (εἶδος, eîdos).

Society as Objective Reality 

“I'm not crazy about reality, but it's still the only place to get a decent meal.”—Groucho Marx

Also, one can argue there is an objective side to historical teleology good enough for any skeptical empirical realist to study. In an earlier essay, “The Social Construction of Reality,” I pointed to the famous book authored by Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann titled, “The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge,” Anchor Books, ed. 1967 (here after “SCR”) for a sociological study of the subjective reality of society: however, the authors also examine the objective reality of socio-cultural structures (as opposed to physical Nature). They begin by making the anthropological distinction between nonhuman animals and human beings. Their thesis states that human relationship to the world is not closed and fixed, but instead we experience the environment as “world-openness” due to how humans are socialized during childhood (the concept “world-openness” is developed by Arnold Gehlen, “Man, His Nature, and Position in the World,” 1940, and Helmuth Plessner “The Stages of the Organic and Human,” 1928, found in SCR, p. 195). Socialization is key to the development of humans as they are in an extended fetal stage of development for at least a year after birth (see, the “first fetal year” thesis by Portmann, Adolf, 1956, in Zoology and the New Image of Man: Biological Fragments to a Doctrine of Man, Hamburg: Rowohlt, SCR, p. 48 ). After a horse is born its brain is completely developed and immediately begins to walk, while an infant human still needs months to learn how to walk as the brain is still developing for years onward.

This means humans are socio-culturally variable having no fixed human nature except for “anthropological constants” which refers to the “plasticity” of human instincts: in short, she produces herself, and with others, create universal cultural norms and structural “socio-cultural formations,” for “…it is impossible for man in isolation to produce a human environment…(SCR, p. 51).” The totality of societies and cultures are the cumulative result of human actions over generations in a process of  “anthropological externalization,” made objectively concrete through creative productive labor (Hegel and Marx). Although human beings produce themselves and their environment, these variable social structures precede the individual. Jean-Paul Sartre wrote that “existence precedes essence,” (Wiki) meaning the world exists prior to individuals, and only post hoc do humans reflectively project meaning and provide interpretations (essence) of existence. 

Trouble in the World-Closedness of Habitude

“…all reification is a form of forgetting.”—Theodor W. Adorno

Human beings have a highly variable relationship to the world thanks to their intrinsic hyper plasticity that allows for world-openness adaptability and enables the creation of stable social orders represented by existing objective institutions as human constructed productions. However, over time these previously constructed institutions create a second order objective reality, or an artificial nature and even artificial needs that  “pre-empt” creative human world-openness even though these social formations have “…no other ontological status…(SCR, p. 52)” other than a product of human effort such as currency, imperialistic conflicts, and state sanctioned corporate entities. These multigenerational institutional social formations become “crystallized” through time as ossified structural “typifications” that take on an independent life of their own while containing sedimented habituated routine patterns of predicable reproducible behavior. Societies also accumulate a massive anonymous “stock of knowledge”-- a concept developed by phenomenologist Alfred Schutz to describe the various aspects of social reality. Berger and Luckmann closely studied his work on the Lifeworld (SCR, p. 53). Professor Schutz most likely developed the concept of “habitue” from Henri Bergson’s study in “Matter and Memory,”(pdf.)(1896) concerning selective perception and how thought applies conceptual classifications.

When multigenerational descendants later engage these social institutions through out their lives, they become less able to distinguish between these socially constructed fixed entities, and physical nature itself. Social institutions appear as natural objects or conditions by undergoing “objectivation,” or “reification” (Hegelian/Marxian Versachlichung) defined as the “…undialectical distortion of social reality…viewing it instead in thing-like categories appropriate only to the world of nature (SCR, p. 60-1).” By the processes of repetitive habituation, socialization, and reification the individual lacks historical memory to interpret the social order as distinguishable from nature’s order that appears to have the same independent persistent meaning as external reality.

Anonymous Knowledge, Sedimented Typifications, and Impersonal Conceptual Schemes

“The subject isn’t in the discursive field like a fish in water, but like salt in water.”

-- Braver on Foucault’s view of the knowing subject (ATTW, p. 370).

We accumulate knowledge about the everyday world by experience, shared recollections, hearsay, and person-to-person relationships starting with our parents, or guardians which then increasingly becomes more random, impersonal, and anonymous moving from trusted relatives to friends, teachers, professors, authors, vocational schools, employers, secular clubs, religious groups, political groups, public media, and government agencies. If a curious student is fortunate enough to study in higher educational institutions, she may discover that much of what is learned from the cultural stock of knowledge is practically useful, even life saving, but are also anonymous reified typifications, which may be obsolete sedimented projections and traditional schema that are incoherent, but appear coherent such as sociological propaganda (Jacques Ellul)(pdf.) designed to unify common public opinion around some issue to enhance social conformity.

Both knowledge and opinion can be presented as Impersonal Conceptual Schemes (ICS) that systematically order a body of knowledge into some theoretical paradigm re-presenting a simulacrum of reality without involvement of the active knowing subject (A5). One of Dr. Braver’s most valuable insights in “A Thing of This World,” (2007) is his formulation of the “Heideggerian Paradigm” as (ICS) meaning the later Heidegger rejected the Kantian thesis of an active subject A5, and instead embraced a “non-subjectivist version of the subject A5 ”(ATTW, p. 285) so that the now reformed “detached” knower is anonymous…”Rather than the subject opening and structuring a field of experience, being maintains us in unconcealment, so we must examine this structure in order to study Being and man, a new form of fundamental ontology…(Ibid., p. 285).” Braver goes on to describe how Foucault and Derrida deal with their versions of the later Heideggerian paradigm shift to the passive subject of (ICS). Braver wrote of the modified new passive knower R5 in Foucault’s thinking that completely integrates the subject with linguistic conceptual systems, “The subject isn’t in the discursive field like a fish in water, but like salt in water (Ibid., p. 370).”  For my argument concerning the subjective/objective character of social institutions as hybrid objects including the cultural stock of knowledge, (ICS) is the perfect example of an anonymous impersonal externalized social creation appearing to us as objectively real, independent of the subject, but having an internal telos because we put it there. 

History Countable and Uncountable

The word “history” can mean both past objective events, or the interpretative story of events: objective events can be counted, but historical narratives determine what is to be counted and their meaning. History is an account, a re-presentation, or the understanding of past events: “…[the German term] ‘Verstehen’ refers to ‘understanding’ the meaning of action from the actor's point of view. It is entering into the shoes of the other, and adopting this research stance requires treating the actor as a subject, rather than an object of your observations…’Verstehen’ can mean either a kind of empathic or participatory understanding of social phenomena…introduced into the practice of sociology in the United States by Talcott Parsons, an American sociologist influenced by Max Weber (Wiki: Verstehen).” The mode that Hegel writes in the Phenomenology of Spirit, can be described as ‘verstehen,” taking into account the meaning and modalities of consciousness in different categories of historical life. “Verstehen” can be contrasted with  “vernunft,” that in some contexts mean, “reason,” suggesting “the faculty of calculative reasoning.”

The Ontological Status of Human Societies and Cultures

Berger and Luckmann tell us “Language provides the fundamental superimposition of logic on the objectivated social world (SCR, p. 64).” Without the relevant conceptual and linguistic distinctions one cannot effectively think, speak, or write about these complex philosophical questions such as historical teleology. Our conceptual tools are the distinctions draw between 1.) subjective/objective objects; 2.) extrinsic/intrinsic telos; 3.) efficient cause/final cause telos; 4.) world-openness/world-closedness; 5.) countable/uncountable history; 6.) abstraction/reification; 7.) and, understanding/calculative reasoning. 

Societal institutions are difficult to categorized since they were originally established from a planned (or unplanned) subjective human consensus (democratic or not) intended to achieve some extrinsic goal over time that become viewed by individuals (consciously, or unconsciously) as historical objects intrinsic to the larger whole of Nature itself. What were before abstractions are now reified objects. Societal cultural artifacts such as art, language, and the stock of knowledge are unique kinds of hybrid-objects (having subjective and objective sides), or pseudo-objects (not intrinsic objects of nature) that at one time had extrinsic purposes that can easily outlast any single generation, but now appear self-sustaining and intrinsic to the natural world of things. 

“Pray and curse”—Hegel

(Documents on Hegel's development, Johannes Hoffmeister,1936, pp. 351, 353 ,360, 370 found in Heiss, p. 38 ).

But can teleology originate from natural history, and not just the history of human civilization? Some would argue the natural world is completely contingent (Wittgenstein) while other philosophers such as Hegel, agree that nature itself unfolds teleologically encompassing human history. Interestingly, the later Hegel would give less emphasis to the historical teleology of “Phenomenology of Spirit” (1807)(pdf.) as the first volume of his system subsequently followed by the second volume, “Science of Logic” (Greater version)(1812-1816), and lastly “Philosophy of Nature “(1817).

However, when Hegel again presented his system in a summary form, the “Science of Logic,” (Lesser version)(pdf.) became the first division as his introduction in “Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences,”(1817)(pdf. final 1830 version). In the Encyclopedia summary, Hegel derives each category of reality from the previous to finish a unified system: The subdivisions are ordered as Science of Logic (Lesser), Science of Nature, and “Science of Geist “(Mind) (pdf.). For a further study see, “Hegel, Kierkegaard, Marx,” by Robert Heiss, trans. E.B. Garside, Delta books, 1975, p. 122-23. So logic is now first in the Hegelian philosophical system, instead of the teleological history of human cognition found in his Phenomenology of Spirit, suggesting there is within the system an ontological foundation for telos in history. Professor Houlgate commented, "Nature, as it emerges in Hegel’s philosophy, is in turn understood to be not just brute contingency or sheer givenness, but actually existing reason (“An Introduction to Hegel, Freedom, Truth and History,” Stephen Houlgate, Blackwell 2005, pp. 106-8 ).”

In Hegel’s system, “What is rational is real; and what is real is rational (“Philosophy of Right,”1897; pdf.) which means that Reason (Logos) expresses itself in a dialectical process of unity, diremption, and re-unification as actuality that encompasses both the natural world (science of nature), and the history of cognitive experience (phenomenology of Mind, or Spirit).  In Hegel’s logic “…pure being proves ultimately to be self-determining reason or what Hegel calls the ‘ldea’ …‘The Idea, ... contracting itself into the immediacy of being, is the totality in this form – nature’ (Hulgate).” Being is nothing but nature; however, Hegel also says that nature is not fully rational and requires time to develop: “Time is the teleology of consciousness” (J. Hyppolite, “Genesis and Structure of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit,” Northwestern University, 1974 p. 579)(pdf.). We can conclude that Hegel believed in a version of ontologism (plus time) whose thesis is “the human intellect has as its proper object the knowledge of God, that this knowledge is immediate and intuitive, and that all other knowledge must be built on this base.” Historical teleology can also be a religious belief. Hegel’s position on historical teleology is ultimately based on the Christian concept of the Logos. Ironically, this very idea of teleology in Marx’s historicist criticism of capitalism is interpreted today as absolutely anti-Christian.

Narratives are inherently teleological, and like Kant’s category of efficient causality, we cannot think of an effect without a cause so we irresistibly think (with habituated reified language) of a final cause for such events.  And yet, teleological historicism is also a useful methodology for researching society and human history as the Italian historicist, Giambattista Vico, once wrote, “What is made is true.” My evolving view now is that historical teleology is not only subjective, but also objective and can be discovered with research and thereby achieve verstehen for both the realist and antirealist epistemologists.  

Husserl: Empiricism, Psychologism, Circularity, and Reification

Husserl: Empiricism, Psychologism, Circularity, and Reification

Phenomenology first emerged as a school of philosophy from German Universities in Gottingen and Munich before World War I. Between 1913 and 1930 a series of articles on phenomenology were published by a group of phenomenologists whose chief editor was mathematician Edmund Husserl. Husserl always referred to himself as a “perpetual beginner.” Phenomenology is a non-empirical science that is descriptive without presuppositions and examines objects as phenomena. In this context the term “intuition” simply means, “seeing.” Essences are the most general, necessary, and invariant characteristics of the object observed. “Bracketing” or “Epoche” (borrowed from skeptics) is the suspending belief in existence.

“Bracketing” has under gone another change in meaning under Husserl. “Bracketing” means the transition from non-reflective thinking to reflective thinking. The purpose of this definitional change is to protect phenomenology from the criticism that its methodology and epistemology is logically circular. Phenomenologists have presented counter arguments claiming non-circularity, but I am unconvinced.

One of the first schools of thought phenomenology had to defeat was Psychologism.

Psychologism was popular at the end of the 1800s. The problem with psychologism is it reduces all knowledge to neuroscience which creates big epistemological problems since necessary truths like "A is not non-A" or "a ÷ b = a × 1⁄b" are not necessarily true at all since these formulas only express the physical structure of our brain which is contingent--that is, our brains could have been organized another way so that these necessary truths could be false! All of mathematics and logic would collapse if their propositions were merely contingently true! Edmund Husserl absolutely destroyed this school of thought in his book, Logical Investigations (1901). Husserl’s arguments against psychologism still stand today. In this famous critique of psychologism, Husserl revealed himself to be a Platonic Realist—numbers exist along with Plato’s Forms. One of Husserl’s phenomenological studies asked, “What is a number?”

Husserl thought of phenomenology as a scientific positivism of essences. Adorno is critical of both phenomenology and positivism because they extract the “immediate data of consciousness” from phenomena in the stream of consciousness. Adorno argues that Husserl and positivistic methodology buy into the idea that thought is Being itself--which is pure idealism. Positivists are actually “subjectivists” except they eliminate the subject from the truth. And yet at the same time positivism is “solipsistic.”

"What Husserlian phenomenology amounts to, therefore, is the ‘transfer of positivism into Platonic realism’" (Adorno: The Recovery of Experience, Roger Foster, Loc. 54-55, p. 132).

The Husserlian phenomenological definition of consciousness is Intentionality, "the distinguishing property of mental phenomena of being necessarily directed upon an object, whether real or imaginary." Consciousness is always directed at an object and has an object before it.  You would think that positivists would be more suspicious of "facts" if consciousness can be directed at objects whether real or imagined. But consciousness can forget its transcendental character (not an object) and view itself only as an constructed “I.”  The subject identifies with objects because they are defined and static. Objectification of the self is the first reduction of the self. This is Sartre’s existentialist theory of consciousness--The Transcendental Ego. In fact, all modern existentialist literature accepts this theory of the Self—that is, consciousness as intentionality.

We also must understand “false consciousness” in which symbolic meaning becomes confused with the thing symbolized. Thought habitually reifies its experiences:

"Reification is the apprehension of human phenomena as if they were things, that is, in non-human or possibly superhuman terms…reification is the apprehension of the products of human activity as if they were something else than human product—such as facts of nature, results of cosmic law, or manifestations of divine will…. The reified world is, by definition, a dehumanized world."(The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. By Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckman, (1966), Double Day, p. 89).

Husserl wrote, "Whereas the philosophy of nature [Science] by contrast, seeks to eliminate the subjective, transcendental philosophy seeks absolutely to elucidate it." This is the, The Crisis of the European Sciences, by Husserl (1911)(Introduction, pdf.). This is our current challenge today--to restore the Subject as Human Being. The elimination of the Subject from science, history, philosophy, logic--and even the science of psychology, of all disciplines--is the hallmark of our historical epoch moving toward greater dehumanization. 

Husserl two major works are Ideas, and Cartesian Meditations.

Ideas, by Edmund Husserl,(1913)(pdf.). This is the best book to start with if you want to read Husserl directly. I would recommend reading secondary material around phenomenology as much as possible before reading Husserl directly.

Cartesian Meditations by Edmund Husserl (1929)(pdf.).

This work is divided into five "Meditations" of varying length, whose contents are as follows:

1. First Meditation: The Way to the Transcendental Ego

2. Second Meditation: The Field of Transcendental Experience

3. Third Meditation: Constitutional Problems

4. Fourth Meditation: Constitutional Problems Pertaining to the Transcendental Ego Itself

5. Fifth Meditation: Transcendental Being as Monadological Intersubjectivity

Part IV: Third Counter-Argument on MacIntyre and Relativistic Historicism

Third Counter-Argument:
MacIntyre leaves the door open for Relativistic Historicism while advocating a particular tradition of ethical thought.

 
 “Hence this kind of historicism, unlike Hegel's, involves a form of fallibilism; it is a kind of historicism which excludes all 

claims to absolute knowledge.”-(AV., p. 270).

 
“I’d Rather Have a Bottle in Front of Me, Than to Have a 

Frontal Lobotomy.”-Rhyme

 

The bottle is Kantian anti-realism, and Hegelian anti-realist historical teleology; these are the two necessary ingredients that After Virtue must have to achieve its goals of defining virtue, and establishing an absolute foundation for MacIntyre’s normative ethics and realist epistemology. However, what if virtue is not an object as assumed by a naturalistic object-oriented ontology while history shows no necessity, but rather is the realm of pure accidental contingency? Unfortunately, the useful concepts of Kantian anti-realism, and Hegelian historical-ontological teleology have been rejected by MacIntyre as not universal (WJWR, p. 11). These occult concepts of the active subject, ought/is, and historical teleology are rebuffed only to be smuggled through the back door again bearing new aliases. In After-Virtue (Chapter 7, Fact, Explanation and Expertise) Kuhnian anti-realism masks Kantian idealism, and Hegelian historicism is introduced under the pseudonyms of “tradition,” “context,” “telos,” and “narrative.” In his book, “Whose Justice? Which Rationality?” the term “tradition” is used 225 times—it means history. In After Virtue the term “telos,” is used 32 times: “context,” 63 times; and, “narrative,” 59 times: all concepts which embody a weak non-universalizable historicism. His version of historicism in After Virtue (“…my historicism,” AV, p. 269) seems to have not developed endogenously (internally), but exogenously as if it fell out of the sky. 

Let’s look at an example of this retranslation of concepts. MacIntyre rejects the ought/is distinction, but he is still able to retain an imperative it in the form of “telos,” meaning “goal,” or “end.” The end “goal” is now the imperative ought; the same Moorean ought/is distinction MacIntyre rejected earlier (AV. p. 57). The concept of teleology also creates a paradigmatic narrative for the moral agent that gives meaning and purpose to beliefs, actions, and worldviews. But what telos should we seek? To answer this question MacIntyre must find ethical necessity in the history of ethical traditions to validate Aristotelian realism; which is why he needed Kuhn’s anti-realist paradigmatic model of scientific progress. 

On the other hand, when it comes to Kuhn’s relative paradigms and the history of scientific progress; MacIntyre, with the help of philosopher of science Imre Laktos, lobotomizes the Kuhnian concept of scientific progress to only mean an “internalist” approach to paradigm shifts. MacIntyre reduces Kuhn’s anti-realist paradigm of science to exactly the kind of science he criticized postmodern empiricist instrumentalism of becoming: just pragmatic manipulation of means and ends. MacIntyre denies there are “transcendental properties as truth or apodictic certainty." And according to critic Dr. R. Stern, MacIntyre believes, 

“…the realist is wrong in thinking that any theory can have validity sub specie aeternitatis, from the standpoint of timeless truth, the progressive (or regressive) character of any conceptual change can only be judged by reference to the historical problematic of which it is part; for the issue as to whether or not it represents an advance on this predecessors requires that we have an understanding of the historical tradition in which it has a place (After MacIntyre: critical perspectives on the work of Alasdair MacIntyre, edited by John Horton and Susan Mendus in “MacIntyre and historicism” by Robert Stern (1994), p.153)(pdf.)(Abbreviated as ‘Stern’).” 

Inconsistently, at the very beginning of After Virtue, the image presented was of realist science with an essence, or sub specie aeternitatis of which we only have fragments of a whole, and only needing re-construction. MacIntyre tells a parable describing the destruction of all scientific knowledge in some catastrophe where laboratories, books, scientific instruments are destroyed and physicists murdered by an anti-science cult (kind of prophetic), then there is a change of heart and people what to recover scientific knowledge: 

"…enlightened people seek to revive science, although they have largely forgotten what it was. But all that they possess are fragments: a knowledge of experiments detached from any knowledge of the theoretical context which gave them significance; parts of theories unrelated either to the other bits and pieces of theory which they possess or to experiment; instruments whose use has been forgotten; half-chapters from books, single pages from articles, not always fully legible because torn and charred. Nonetheless all these fragments are reembodied in a set of practices which go under the revived names of physics, chemistry and biology (AV., p. 1).” 

In the book, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry (1990), MacIntyre breaks down ethics into three versions of morality: Encyclopedical (Enlightenment Instrumental Rationalism), Genealogy (Nietzschean Nihilism), and Traditional (Thomism). His viewpoint is that natural science and the science of morality are commensurable: "The modern contrast between the sphere of morality on the one hand and the sphere of the human sciences on the other is quite alien to Aristotelianism because, as we have already seen, the modern fact-value distinction is also alien to it (AV.,p. 82)." Again, he wrote, “The philosophy of physical science is dependent on the history of physical science. But the case is no different with morality ...(AV., p. 266)." Is the study of normative ethics commensurate to methodological empirical science? Socrates’ experimental test asking Meno’s slave questions of geometry suggests ethical knowledge is not commensurable with science, but with a priori intuition which MacIntyre absolutely rejects (AV., p. 69).” How is the necessity of ethical imperatives to be founded on historical contingency? And again,”...one theory rationally superior to another is no different from our situation in regard to scientific theories or to moralities-and-moral philosophies.(AV, p. 270).” However, there is a reversal that takes place since the publication of After-Virtue: not only is science relative to paradigm, but morality is also relative to history. Critic Dr. R. Stern writes, “...like [Larry] Laudan MacIntyre abandons any talk of such transcendental properties as universal validity or timeless truth for ethical systems, arguing that there is no Archimedean point in practical reason that could give ethical thought the necessary absolute foundation (Stern, p. 152).” This narrative sounds like postmodernism to me! It is not that MacIntyre happily chooses this modernist relativist position, but his own reasoning forces him into pluralist conclusions—and this shift really should not be turned into an Anytus political ad hominem attack against him; rather, it is aporia. And this is my view of MacIntyre’s critique of postmodernist relativism. 

 

The Historicist Nemesis

 

"What is true is precisely what is made"—G. Vico

 

A main argument of postmodern criticism is historicist interpretation of past events undermines traditional beliefs in morality opening the door to epistemological and moral relativism which then leads to a cultural crisis of knowledge, meaning, and normative values. The various schools of historicism are concerned with primarily four issues: 1.) The concept of historical change, 2.) Historicism as a scientific methodology, 3.) Historicism understood as a worldview 4.) Historicism as a moral crisis. My summaries of historicism will take note of each school’s relevant position on these issues. This analysis is based on the scholarly work of Phenomenologist Dr. Maurice Mandelbaum, Professor at Johns Hopkins University, in fact an important original scholar in the United States on this very issue of historicism.

 

The first scholar to know regarding historicism is botanist Carl Prantl (1849-1893) who described the work of historian Giambattista Vico (1663-1744) as “historicism” as he attempted to combine the humanities into a single science to explain the life and death cycles of societies and cultures in his book, “New Science (1725).” Also economist, Carl Menger (1840-1921) was the founder of the Austrian School of Economics who complained that economic theory was becoming too dependent on the study of economic history thereby introducing a negative view of historicism as it was thought to be out of its realm of expertise without a clear understanding of its use in the science of economics (Encycl. Vol. 4, p. 22).  Marx’s first volume of Capital was not published in German until 1867, and in English until 1887 in this timeline.

 

Mandelbaum believes that after World War I the question of historical change became more concerning as a method of evaluating cultural values. Protestant theologian Ernst Troeltsch (1865-1923) was concerned of historicism’s usefulness for understanding the relationship between culture and historical change. Troeltsch defined historicism not methodologically, but as an erroneous presupposition “…to view all knowledge and experience in the context of historical change (Ibid., p. 22).” He thought that natural science and historical science were distinct fields of study and that historicism would cause widespread epistemological and ethical skepticism. Troeltsch died before he could explain his religious views: he thought the crisis was “inevitable,” but there was nothing to fear.

 

Sociologist Karl Mannheim (1893-1947) defined historicism as a “temporalistic view of the world (Ibid., p. 23).” Mannheim did not believe that historicism is a crisis, but instead theorized that the Enlightenment has held over some theological beliefs from the Middle Ages that presuppose an “atemporal character of judgments and reason,” (Platonic Realism concerned with static being), and this worldview (Weltanschauung) is being replaced by a new concept of “temporalistic relativism.” He proposed that modern skepticism does not necessarily have to result from this new view of dynamic temporal change and accepted ethical pluralism positively since all values are grounded in human existence, which could be reconciled with other cultural norms through the study of critical sociology.

 

German historian Friedrich Meinecke (1862-1954) did not view historicism as some crisis, and accepted the new dynamic view of history; but unlike Troeltsch and Mannheim, regarded as more important the concept of human individuality and how persons fared in society during historical development. Meinecke was an early Nazi supporter, and held life long anti-Semitic views.  

 

Benedetto Croce (1866-1952) was an idealistic philosopher critical of both epistemological positivism, and materialist ontology. He defined historicism as the self-development of the human spirit and “the whole of reality as encompassed within history: Life and reality were nothing but the ever changing manifestations of the spirit (Encycl. Vol. 4, p. 23).” Croce argued that materialistic naturalistic science is inadequate as a methodological paradigm to interpret the unique histories created by self-conscious human beings. Modern thought has failed to take seriously Hegel’s philosophy of history. Croce’s anti-naturalism and anti-positivism brings a “religious sense of mystery” to his concept of historicism. Hegel’s secular understanding of history is in part taken from the New Testament Christian notion of the eschatology of end times. Orthodox Marxism is not a non-Christian heresy.

 

Friedrich Hayek and Karl Popper on Historicism

There is some interesting background information about Friedrich August von Hayek (1899-1992) who is difficult to summarize since nearly everything about him is fake; his credentials as an economist are completely fabricated including his sham Nobel Prize in Economics owned and awarded by a Swedish bank and has nothing to do with Alfred Nobel. The famous economist and lifelong professor of the at London School of Economics, Lionel Ribbons, was insanely anti-Keynesian and attempted to mentor von Hayek into the antithesis of Keynesian economic presented in his famous work “The General Theory Of Employment Interest And Money (1938 ).” The problem was no one could understand Hayek’s lectures, nor his writing of “The Pure Theory of Capital “ that even the Neo-liberal monetary economist Milton Friedman complained, “I am an enormous admirer of Hayek, but not for his economics. I think Prices and Production was a very flawed book. I think his capital theory book is unreadable (Wapshott, p. 183).” 

“I’m sure that was wrong, and yet I have done it. It was just an inner need to do it.”
—von Hayek in "Keynes Hayek:The Clash that Defined Modern Economics,"
by Nicholas, 2011 by Wapshott, p. 215

And then one day in 1949, the self professed Catholic, von Hayek, walked out of his house abandoning his wife, Hella, and their two children Christine (17 year old), and Laurence (12) to marry his cousin Helena; then keeping true to his economic and political theories promptly signed up for Social Security benefits after Charles Koch sent him in a letter with a SSI brochure (Charles Koch to Friedrich Hayek: Use Social Security! by Yasha Levine and Mark Ames). Ribbon was so disgusted with von Hayek that he resigned from the Neo-liberal think tank formed in 1947 known as the “Mont Pelerin Society” in which von Hayek decided to impose their Neoliberal revolution covertly wherever they could. Philosopher G.E. Moore was a much better moral person than von Hayek. Nevertheless, von Hayek’s junk economics is taught uncritically in nearly all United States University economic departments that now require two economics departments Professor Michael Hudson has noted: one department teaches Austrian economic hokum that does not describe economic reality, and the other department is called the “business school” of economics to actually teach graduates how to manage a business that is in some cases structured never to earn a profit to avoid tax laws. Hayek’s Austrian Neoliberalism has resulted in a 40-year crime wave emanating all across America from the Wall Street Corporate Socialists. Von Hayek’s economic version of “Theranos-babble” has led to a violent revival of fascist movements all over the globe, and infiltrating every level of American institutions. 

While in Great Britain, before he fled his family and poor academic reputation at the London School of Economics, von Hayek worked with philosopher Karl Popper (1920-1994) to fabricate a boutique custom-made version of historicism that could go along with the era of Cold War sociological propaganda that is still alive and well today in American and British academia in addition to internet social media. Hayek and Popper focused on historicism as a worldview, and not on the radical differences between the physical sciences and social science methodologies. They instead attacked four theses of historicism: 1.) They attacked the concept of the laws of development of social wholes (societies) 2.) They denied these laws of social development could be known 3.) Rejected the belief predictions based on these laws could be made about cultures and societies 4.) They added “holism” to their definition of historicism to include Hegel, Comet, and Marx’s views. Although these three philosophers had different viewpoints, they shared some common beliefs: 1.) The social whole is greater than the parts and not reducible to individuals 2.) These laws of the whole could be known 3.) Predictions could be made on the knowable laws of the whole. Popper and Hayek wrongly interpret Marx’s concept of historical materialism as “fate,” or “destiny.” Neither Marx, nor Engels ever used the term “dialectical materialism” in their writings. (See, “Open Society and its Enemies,” by Karl Popper, 1945)(pdf.). 

Dr. Mandelbaum argues that historicist theses 3 (prediction), and 4 (holism) are not necessary to the concept of historicism: “…there seems to be no necessity for identifying historicism with holistic thought and with a belief in the possibility of prediction, as Popper and Hayek, tend to do…Popper, in his characterization…tends to separate his own use of…’historicism’ from other, more frequent uses (Encycl. Vol. 4, p. 24).” Mandelbaum formulates his own definition of historicism as a methodological principle of explanation and evaluation, and not as a worldview (Weltanschauung): “…the belief that an adequate understanding of the nature of anything and an adequate assessment of its values are to be gained by considering it in terms of the place it occupied and the role it played with in a process of development (Ibid., p. 24).” Mandelbaum’s methodological historicism is analogous to Descartes’ methodological doubt that attempts to establish an epistemology based on absolute certainty; Descartes never doubted the world existed, or that knowledge existed—his methodological doubt is not a world view, nor a Life philosophy. Likewise, Mandelbaum’s historicism is methodological, and not a Weltanschauung, but rather a tool for analysis. 

No Straw men, Please 

One easy way to build a straw man argument is to simply interpret nearly any point of view as reductionist as possible--such as emotivism, logical positivism, materialism, and historicism—and make that the object of attack. All of these historicist theses have an element of truth, but they can easily be falsified by presenting a reductionist version of these insights. Mannheim argues that everything humans do is related, and influenced by our material existence, but it does not follow that material existence determines all that humans do. This is how we learn through deliberately lazy universities the old-saw of the materialist interpretation of Marxism because a reductionist stance is easier to falsify while no other explanations, or evaluations are needed. A second method for building a straw man is to take a viewpoint out of context so as to render it incomprehensible, or inconsistent; Moore’s emotivism is one example, and Kierkegaard’s definition of truth will be another example later in my fourth After Virtue counter-argument.

Deconstructing Kantian Idealism, and Hegelian Historicism

“Hegel sees the history of philosophy as an enormous Socratic dialogue,

with views emerging and engaging in mutual elenchus….”

—L. Braver, p. 64.

Hegel was in a sense the earliest Neo-Kantian: he disagreed with Kant on some issues because he thought Kant did not go far enough with his critical analysis of knowledge. I want to return to using Braver’s cleaver and very useful scheme for comparing Kant to Hegel’s critique of reason with a limited summary of the issues they have in contention. First, Hegel did not like the epistemic distance between phenomenal knowledge and noumenal reality; that is, between appearances and the thing-in-itself of which we can say nothing determinate about since it is out of range of possible human experience. Kantian transcendentalism is an ahistorical philosophy of epistemic limitation that Hegel could not accept seeing it instead as Kant’s arbitrary limitation of knowledge. A second point of contention is why Kant selected the table of categories as the “necessary conditions for the possibility of experience,” and not some other group of categories?  Thirdly, Hegel thought bivalence hindered holistic understanding by disintegrating an otherwise necessary integrated pattern of the mind, or consciousness in human history: “…truth is not a minted coin (Spirit, para. 39).”

Both Kant and Hegel were committed to what Braver termed the Empirical Directive (ED) which he explains as “the strategy of studying transcendental subjectivity—that aspect of ourselves that is responsible for thinking and knowing—vicariously, through its activities in experience (Ibid., p. 60).” By closely observing Geist (meaning both mind or spirit) as it appears in time, Hegel believed the gap could be closed between thought and reality. The ahistorical Kant only sees one unified unchanging transcendental self of the logically a priori “I think…” acting on experience, but Hegel instead discovers a multiplicity of historical selves as “experience-organizers” not fully aware of the meaning of these plurality of worldviews causing a radical shift in the understanding of static selfhood and historical change. "This historical proliferation of conceptual schemes seems to dissolve reality into relativism. Hegel allows multiple schemes without giving up knowledge altogether (Ibid., p. 62)."

In other words, Hegel does his own continuation of Kant’s unfinished transcendental deduction (i.e., to justify the table of 12 categories are the a priori conditions necessary for experience), but instead discovers the categories of historical Life (see Jean Hyppolite’s “Genesis and Structure of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit,”(pdf.) trans. by Samuel Cherniak and John Heckman, 1974, Northwestern Univ. Press, Evanston, p. 170) and describes their empirical manifestations in his work, “The Phenomenology of Spirit,”(pdf.). In this famous book, Hegel writes phenomenological descriptions of these historical forms of life, and demonstrates by reductio ad absurdum arguments how they ultimately end in seemingly irresolvable contradictions, and incoherence. While describing the phenomena of mind in this long “journey of despair” as experienced through multiple cultural-historical eras, Hegel finds patterns of universal necessity within the historical experiences of life, and then begins to speak of them as an absolute idealist of a single reality, and not realities. The phenomenological “we” referred to in the Phenomenology of Spirit are those readers that see this historical pattern: “The Spirit shows itself as so impoverished that, like a wanderer in the desert craving for a mere mouthful of water, it seems to crave for its refreshment only the bare feeling of the divine in general. By the little which now satisfies Spirit, we can measure the extent of its loss (Ibid., para. 8 ).” 

“The introduction of movement into logic, is a sheer confusion of logical science…and to make movement explain logic, when as a matter of fact logic cannot explain movement.”-Kierkegaard (Postscript, p. 99-100).”

If MacIntyre borrows the same historicist solutions as Hegel, he will inherent the same historicist problems.  MacIntyre is searching in a very Hegelian manner for the same kind of necessity (rationality) in history, or historical traditions to justify one normative ethical tradition over another writing “I have sketched in Chapters 14 and 15 the rational case that can be made for a tradition in which the Aristotelian moral and political texts are canonical (AV, p. 257).” MacIntyre’s answer to these questions can be found in an examination of historical traditions, "...a great part of modern morality is intelligible only as a set of fragmented survivals from that tradition (AV, p. 257)."  Another paragraph states, “...it is the central thesis of After Virtue that the Aristotelian moral tradition is the best example we possess of a tradition whose adherents are rationally entitled to a high measure of confidence in its epistemological and moral resources (AV., p. 277).” In another book he writes, “We, whoever we are, can only begin enquiry from the vantage point afforded by our relationship to some specific social and intellectual past through which we have affiliated ourselves to some particular tradition of enquiry, extending the history of that enquiry into the present…(WJWR p. 401).” How can MacIntyre historically derive the imperative “oughts” of ethics from the indicative ‘is’ of contingent histories if they to lack any rationality with the rejection of any progress in the history of philosophy, “And I was to find that, by rejecting the conception of progress in philosophy that I had hitherto taken for granted, I had already taken a first step towards viewing the issues in which I was entangled in a new light (The Tasks of Philosophy: Selected Essays, Vol. 1, Alasdair MacIntyre, University of Notre Dame (p.viii)(pdf.).” MacIntyre rejects the Enlightenment as a failure (AV, p. 276). 

However, MacIntyre is walking into Hegelian historicism backwards; but yet, his historist methodology is still a sound strategy in the search for virtue. MacIntyre deserves no ad hominem for his traditionalist historicism, but he is completely in opposition to the anti-historist postmodern critics of today. Also, I would describe the political stance of After Virtue generally as what Karl Mannheim would call, “Historical Conservatism.” (“Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge,” Karl Mannheim, (1929/1936) Harcourt, Brace & Co. 1954, p. 120)(pdf.).

…next:

Fourth Counter-Argument: Anti-Realism and Relativistic Historicism compound MacIntyre’s Ethical Skepticism