Cogito Ergo Blog

The rethinking of Marxism undertaken by the Frankfurt school in the 1920s and 1930s made history one of its central themes. Early works by Horkheimer, Marcuse, and Lukacs all dealt with history in one way or another. See for example:

Horkheimer, The Origins of the Bourgeois Philosophy of History
Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness
Marcuse, Hegel's Ontology and the Foundation of a Theory of Historicity

1 . Nothing is, of course, absolutely independent of anything else. I am powerfully attracted by the Hegelian view of the circle as the best metaphor for the ‘shape’ of the overall ‘structure’ of thought. And of course too, all definitions are based on circumstances; but they are not limited to them. Circumstances are never merely particular, precisely because they are circumstances. My conception of ‘politics’, in the general/abstract sense, is not formulated independently of experience; it is formulated by looking at what is common to all those instances of the phenomenon I have been able to examine. There is a paradox here that one cannot avoid – one cannot identify politics unless one has an idea of what it is one is looking for to start with, but when one has identified it, it will not conform exactly to whatever idea of it one had to begin with. But this paradox is nothing to be alarmed about, because it is just the circle in action.

2. Unless you can tell me exactly which categories you are referring to, we certainly can’t go any further with my reasons to refuse to entertain post-modernist and feminist ideas in the context of this debate. But to try and make some progress on this topic, here are some examples I would give of categorial thought in the Western tradition: in his Categories, Aristotle proposes ten categories conventionally translated into English as substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, state, action, and affection; in the Critique of Pure Reason Kant proposes space and time as well as four groups of three categories (categories (i) of quantity: unity, plurality, totality; (ii) of quality; reality, negation, limitation; (iii) of relation: inherence and subsistence, causality and dependence, community; (iv) of modality: possibility–impossibility; existence–non-existence, necessity–contingency.

Now it is indeed difficult to think outside these categories. Indeed, if Aristotle and Kant are right, it is impossible. I defy anyone, wherever and whenever they find themselves, to think without presupposing some notion, for example, of relation. But what these categories have in common is a lack of content. The category of relation does not specify either the relata or the nature of their connection in even the vaguest terms. And it is in this sense, and no other, that I am interested in developing ‘politics’ as a category because, as I have pointed out, *some* conception of politics must be presupposed in order for you to be able to identify it at all, in China or anywhere else. That is not to say that one’s ideas will not be modified extensively in the course of investigation, as you point out.

Where it seems to me that the post-modernist and feminist critiques have some bite is within what I call the realm of value. Do not think that I am unaware of the history of colonialism or of gender relations. Insofar as (informal) colonialism or chauvinism persist into the present, I am as keen to see them disappear as anyone else; my ideal world is one in which no-one is arbitrarily subjected to the will of another without redress. So, insofar as post-modernism and feminism are highlighting continuing injustices, and demanding remedies, they most certainly have an important role to play in contemporary political debate. But as I have already said, that is not my game. I keep firmly separate the philosophical and the ethical spheres, whereas they tend to mix them up, persistently presenting as conclusions from philosophical arguments positions that do not really logically follow from them.

Thus, from the philosophical point of view, most of what the post-modernists and feminists have to say, however well-intentioned and valuable from a rhetorical or strategic point of view, appears to me as a series of non-sequiturs. From what you say of Chakrabarty, he would fall into this group of people who either deny or are unaware of the fact that there is a point of view from which one can bracket one’s value commitments, but since it is from that very point of view I wish to try and think through categorial issues (and seem to be managing to do so with some degree of success), I am going to hold to this position until I am convinced otherwise. That is not to deny that value commitments are real and important things, because they are; and if there is a piece by DP that you really think I should read, then by all means forward it to me, because the last thing I want to be accused of is being closed-minded.

3. On the issue of the logic of the sciences, one must be very careful to distinguish the logical and sociological-historical questions at issue. Sociologically, and historically, you are of course quite right about the traumatic nature of the export of the sciences which had their origin in Europe. But one cannot literally export a conceptual framework, because ideas are not in space, only time, and they are not material. What was exported were the books, the equipment, etc. So there are two different levels to this question. That said, at the logical level, I have no problem either with the idea that science changes over time; I am already a pluralist when it comes to the existence of types of truth (ethical, historical, scientific, aesthetic, formal, philosophical truths all have a place in my scheme), and the idea of shifts in scientific truth is one I view with equanimity, in the same way that historical and indeed all other forms of truth can be said to change.

In this, incidentally, I find myself in agreement with figures like Nietzsche and Derrida for whom truth is a functional metaphor. I am also, as it happens, something of an admirer of Kuhn, and indeed one way of describing what I am doing is extending his approach from the natural sciences to ‘science’ in general, or indeed, to ‘thought’ in general. It is integral to all the regions of thought I identify in this dialectical system that I am proposing that they undergo something like Kuhnian paradigm shifts as each strives to be more like itself. Without this provision there is no explanation of the reality of intellectual and ethical progress.

I am quite sure you are right about the necessity for deep immersion in a tradition in order to truly master it, and one should always realize that even mastery is always incomplete; learning is never finished, and the greatest masters are the ones who remain humble. Whenever I have achieved something myself, it has only left me with more problems, and I am very aware that there is always more to know.

I am happier now with your remarks about ‘the political’. I like ‘efficacious action taken to transform shared environments’, because so far as I can see it essentially acknowledges my points that (i) to do comparative politics at all, one needs *some* conception of politics that is independent of the things that are being compared, and that (ii) to avoid treating the Western concept of politics as a norm, one had therefore better have a conception of politics which is not based exclusively on Western examples.

‘Efficacious action taken to transform shared environments’ is sufficiently broad to cover not just Chinese examples of politics but ones in other cultures, without being a merely analytic construct. There is nothing in ‘efficacious action taken to transform shared environments’ of the agora, the Westminster parliament, or a declaration of rights, and that is quite in keeping what I am trying to achieve by way of an abstract notion of politics than can account for the phenomena. It also has the virtue of recognizing the conditional nature of political activity – because, for example, if people do not think it is possible to transform their shared environment owing to a background cosmology which presents the human world to them as fixed, they cannot generate anything they would recognize as such (though, de facto, there may still be some unacknowledged politicking alongside the governing).

Thus, my own conception of ‘politics’, in this broad sense, doesn’t look much like what the average student would understand by it either – I don’t know what that might be, assemblies, elections etc I suppose. My point, then, was only that you must have *some* such notion of politics at work, however thin and abstract, that can cross cultures – I will concede it can be simply shared rather than universal, if you don’t like the connotations of universality. But if this particular notion doesn’t work for all Chinese political thought, some other one will have be found for the other cases; on the understanding that there may, at certain times and places, be no or at least very little politics. Indeed, it is my firm conviction that for most of the time the human species has been in existence there was no politics. Power, and government in the loosest sense, are coeval with the species, but ‘efficacious action taken to transform shared environments’, at least as a self-conscious matter, is not. Politics is something that can appear, disappear, and re-appear.

No doubt you are correct that, once politics does begin to exist, the study is an iterative process; one may find politics where one did not initially expect to, and one may decide later that something that one initially had thought was political is not really political after all. But all these judgments must result, in the end, in a modification of one’s broader conception of political activity that is deficient insofar as it cannot be made explicit.

I cannot, however, see any other support for this notion of ‘efficacious action’ than the biological, anthropological, and phenomenological position I have been defending all along. And to this position, which tries to address human experience at large, I regard post-modernist and feminist critiques as irrelevant - though if you review what I have written, I don’t think you could really sustain the claim that I was unaware of them.

So I ask again, who am I dismissing, or oppressing? Or what does my view rule out? And what are the categories within which I am unknowingly gripped? Moreover, am I seriously supposed to entertain the idea that evolution is an irredeemably Western notion? That anthropology is the preserve of Europeans? Or that phenomenology cannot be practiced by anyone not from the Northern hemisphere? Surely this is not what you mean; but until you can show me exactly how I am continuing an undeniably real tradition of colonial and chauvinistic oppression in making such statements, I will continue to discount them, for reasons that are as follows.

Granted, all knowledge is embedded in some way or other – that is my starting point – but it is embedded in importantly different ways. The categories that structure it are neither undiscoverable nor changeless. And all the structures of thought with which I am concerned are, it seems to me, no-one’s possession; that a certain mode of thought arises first in one culture rather than another does not give that culture any permanent ownership of it. Nor does the fact something has been invented in one culture mean that it cannot be independently re-invented in another, as indeed I believe movable type was invented first in China and later in Europe.

In saying all this I would like to underline that it is intended as an attempt to accommodate the possibility of comparative political thought without dictating how it ought to be done. I have no ‘method’ in that sense; and I regard this is a philosophical, not a methodological, conversation.

I am afraid that interpret me as claiming that I have reached an Archimedean point, as you put it, does not take account of either the historicity I am repeatedly stressing in my perspective or the evolutionary, anthropological, and phenomenological roots that I am trying to develop for it. I am all too aware that when one looks at the history of philosophy (in any tradition) it is deeply rooted in its context, and of course I am in that sense no exception. There is no view from nowhere, as it is called - but there is a view from somewhere which is not limited to its geographical or cultural origins, and that is all I need. And I am quite happy, having read them both, that LW and HG would be able to take this sort of thing on board without difficulty.

I would also like to know exactly where these alleged biases are lurking, given that in everything I have said I have been quite happy to welcome ideas from any tradition and in the work of any thinker. It is true, of course, that in the last two hundred years there have been repeated instances in European and American history of universal declarations of rights being found not to apply universally in practice, and so on; but that is not my game. I couldn't care less whether the ideas belong to someone who is male or female, black, white, brown, yellow, or any other colour you please; I only care about the ideas themselves, and I am not interested in giving with one hand only to take back with the other. I will not dismiss anyone on ad hominem grounds, nor does the fact that they might happen to disagree with me make them necessarily less interesting to me. I have, in other words, no interest in imposing anything on anyone.

What I am interested in, for purposes of this conversation at least, is getting an answer to a question I have yet to see you propose your own answer to - how a comparative study of politics is possible if there is not something universal as well as something particular in the notion of politics as an activity? That is, on what grounds are you able to identify what goes on or went on in China at any period as 'politics' at all , if you do not have a conception of the activity which is something other than merely local? Because, once you do identify it as 'politics', you are surely placing it in the same class as other activities which are not Chinese but also 'politics'. Put another way, if there is such a thing as 'Chinese political thought', it is surely not the Chinese-ness of it that makes it political - the adjective only particularizes - so I am curious as to what you think does? It is certainly not the 'Western-ness' of Western political thought that makes it 'political', after all. The Western-ness only makes it different, and at the level at which most political thought takes place, difference strikes the dominant note.

And yet one still needs a concept of logical self-identity, a=a, or one cannot have 'political thought' at all. So where is the source of the identity to be found? It is to be found partly in my contention that one can happily make meta-statements about a language in that language itself. The last sentence is indeed just such a statement. This seems to me clear evidence that thought possesses the reflexive resources required for a degree of self-consciousness sufficient for its own analysis. The very possibility of the act of writing that last sentence, and the fact that it can be meaningful, only underlines my point. Finding oneself engaged in an activity like politics, or observing it to be taking place at various times and places in the world, one can then meditate on its conditions in way that makes it clear it is more than a merely local and temporary happening.

Such a meditation has lead me to the evolutionary-anthropological-phenomenological solution that I have been proposing. But I have yet to see you offer your own way out of this logical dilemma. Just saying that one needs to learn the language, or to adopt the perspective of the tradition in question, the two substantive points you have offered thus far, isn't good enough; of course learning the language helps enormously when it comes to pinning down the differences, as I have repeatedly acknowledged, but as a theorist one simply can't use the same terms one is analysing. Imagine trying to construct a theory of democracy which was pro- or anti-democratic; such a theory would never have left the political arena to begin with, and would be useless for explanatory purposes. Which isn't to say, of course, that there many never begin to get past this error; or, indeed, that defending democracy isn't important. But if I wanted actually to defend democracy I would not waste time theorizing about it; I would pick up my megaphone, or my telephone.

Perhaps I should put it another way - insofar as I am part of the so-called Western tradition I find myself living amidst the rubble; the grand but rigid Platonic-Christian edifice which sustained things for two and a half-millennia has collapsed. But amongst the ruins there are plenty of materials for reconstruction that are made of more flexible stuff. The new foundations, indeed the only possible remaining foundations - and here is just where the metaphor goes wrong, in a way, because 'foundations' of the traditional sort are precisely what I would like to avoid - are radical contingency and historicity. Perhaps this is a castle in the air, but there is nowhere else left to build one, and build one there we must, since there is no longer any ground beneath our feet. It is exactly because one must always occupy some perspective that it is important to be self-conscious about what the range of possible perspectives can include, and I do flatter myself that I wear fewer blinkers than most, having made the study of blinkers, if anything, my profession,

I am not asking you to agree that there is one way of ‘parsing’ reality that is universally generalizable. This is for at least two reasons. First, there is no ‘reality’ independent of the parsing of it, so far as politics (and much else in human life) goes. And second, the generalizability I am interested is at the level of form, not content; and I mean logical form, not the form of an empirical practice. My way of ‘parsing’ is a taxonomy, not a grammar, and it imposes itself only at the highest level of possible abstraction; no values or prescriptions flow from it, as I hope I made clear.

At the risk of some repetition, you clearly believe it possible (because you actually do it) to identify both Western and Chinese forms of activity that you regard as ‘politics’. I do not understand how to make sense of this statement unless these activities are instances of a class of some kind; a class that finds its unity not in a Platonic essence but in an historic response to a universally shared condition.

My view could thus be refuted on at least three grounds. If evolution were false, or if there are really no anthropological universals, then I can’t make the argument I want to. I assume you don’t want to say evolution is false, though I’m not sure about your position on anthropologically bounded cultural universals. Finally, if one disagrees that it is possible to conditionally abstract ‘thought’ from ‘language’ (not separate them absolutely), I can also be refuted. In other words, there are at least three possible refutations of my position – which as I said rested on a combination of biology, anthropology, and phenomenology – and so far as I am concerned, they all fail.

I would also like to insist on the distinction between government and politics. If you admit that the Chinese had government, tout court (however different in historic form from government elsewere), you have already accepted the bulk of my argument. But as for politics (which is not government – government need not be a political matter, for in principle it can be uncontested, whereas politics presupposes disagreement), of course it can be largely consumed by ethical questions. It can, in other words, take place in the guise of what might be called ‘ritual’, never the static category it is fond of representing itself to be.

One can never, I take it, entirely divorce the question of what is right from what one/we/they/you ought to do. This distinction is often fuzzy in practice in the West, never mind China. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that for much of the medieval period in the West, and for much of the history of the Islamic world, ‘politics’ is in practice mixed up an indissoluble way with religious and ethical concerns, just as you say it was in China, and that if we take our own Western understanding of ‘politics’ here and now to inform what was going on then, we go badly wrong.

But that is not what I want to do, and I am well aware that whatever kind of class of phenomena I am concerned with under the heading of ‘politics’, its borders had better be pretty elastic, or it won’t do what I want it to do. But you yourself are similarly unable to escape the logical dilemma of wanting to say that Chinese politics is utterly different, and yet at the same time wanting to call it ‘politics’. Because if you don’t call it politics, you are then forced to say that there was no politics in China before the modern era, a conclusion that it seems to me you would very much like to avoid. My position is intended to offer a way out of precisely this dilemma, by showing how it can be the case that there are phenomena in Chinese culture which are recognizably ‘political’ but which have no analogue elsewhere.

My view, in other words, is most emphatically not one that insists the West, Athens, California, or anywhere else in Europe or North America supplies the yardstick for what goes on elsewhere. So far as I can see, what is interesting is that the Chinese and the Greeks appear to have stumbled on ‘politics’ independently in answer to a common problem, when other societies did not; whereas ‘government’ in some sense is an inevitability in response to the problems of order, power, and persuasion, I do not see ‘politics’ as a necessary existence. But government and politics (as well as much else, including economics) do both belong to what I am calling the sphere of value, which is where cosmology becomes relevant.

I am all for learning languages, and admire what you have achieved in Chinese. To be able to think in it as well as one can do in the language one was brought up with certainly enhances one’s understanding enormously. But what one is doing is still ‘thinking’, whether one does it in Chinese, English, or some other language. Moreover, even if one knows two languages equally well, one also has to come and go between them, and one cannot know every language. So I don’t see how this offers more than a partial solution to the problem of translation. I take seriously here the idea of mathematics as a language as a proof of the possibility that thought can assume a universal form which is only implicit in natural languages. I would never claim that ‘thinking’ is something only Westerners can do, as in the absurd ‘can Asians think’ debate,