Roderick focuses his fourth lecture on
Herbert Marcuse, who according to him is the philosopher of the 1960s. One
important aspect of Marcuse’s philosophy is his emphasize on a contradiction
that has been always a key part of modernity, understanding of which is vital
to the topic of self under siege. Enlightenment is the familiar word that marks
out the start of modernity, which sets out to free human being from dogma,
superstition, and adherence to prejudice. This is what Kant in his essay titled
“What is enlightenment” argues, that enlightenment is the era in which human
beings are dared to use their own reason. The process of enlightenment is
fuelled by both the rise of capitalism and the considerable increase in the
power of science which in turn has given rise to technological advancement.
However, enlightenment’s attempt to
demystify the world, to see the world as if it were transparent to reason,
carried with itself a strange dark side. As the enlightenment project has been
successful to “clear the field” of religious beliefs, and although human beings
increasingly cling to instrumental reason and science to “progress”, it has not
been the case that we are less afraid in the face of the unknown, if anything
the unknown has appeared to be more terrifying than ever. You can clearly notice
this today for example as you watch TV, or when you listen to the kind of
fear mongering ideas driving the public, political campaigns, racial conflicts,
etc. The rise of enlightenment, Marcuse argues, has not made us less dogmatic.
As a matter of fact, the sciences have now branched out into so many areas and
sub-disciplines that the only way anyone can believe in any of them is to be
dogmatic because we cannot possibly acquire enough time or mental capacity to
learn even a few of them. Mainstream economics is perhaps a good example of
this predicament, when a good majority of economists sit in their ivory towers
judging and insulting other disciplines such as sociology, philosophy, and
psychology without knowing virtually anything about these disciplines, or use
economic models to explain virtually everything using sometimes a very crude
and naïve understanding of fundamental concepts involved.
Enlightenment, in a paradoxical way, has
built up a kind of intellect intelligent enough to see through this
demystification, but any intellect that powerful has the tendency to become
totalitarian. Enlightenment while clearing the field of religious beliefs has
created another type of obedience, perhaps through overpowering forces of
technology, that is quite salient in human being’s abject surrender to
technology today, which in some cases is even more pronounced than it was the
case with religious beliefs. Just take a look around you: all the zambi-esque individuals
you see on the subway everyday or in your fun friendly get-togethers,
frantically sweeping their fingers up and down the shiny screen of their
smartphones looking for “fun” or “facts”; the hysteric tourists on a trip with
their eyes wide shut, unable to take in and digest the beauty of the moment,
but cameras, cellphones and tablets pointing at every direction, often their
own narcissistic being, trying to capture happiness and memory into digital
files; Self-claimed religious critiques and social theorists who have read a
couple of books from Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris and now are under the
illusion that they are capable to analyze and criticize the entire history of
religion and religious beliefs and unearth the ignorance buried deep within; the
stronger-than-religious-faith belief in a secular system that has produced
misery, violence,
and despotism on par with tyrannic religious institutions; the current state of
power of technology that far surpasses the characteristics we associate with
God (the apocalypse, a magnificent myth in the book of revelation, has now
become a technologically-achievable reality in our society, abundant as a
popular theme in Hollywood movies).
Roderick argues that because the
enlightenment project focused upon reason as individuated and atomic, it failed
to understand that the overall outcome in many situations could defy rationality
even
when individual agents engage in completely rational behaviour (John Nash teaches us that the
equilibrium outcome of an strategic interaction does not necessarily achieve the
socially optimal outcome as Adam Smith suggests, in fact in many cases it could
lead us to the worst outcome possible, the 2008 financial crisis and the driving
forces behind it would be a good example of this situation). The enlightenment,
despite its nobel focus on reason, in its process of demystifying religion
itself became a source of mystification. This take us back to the main theme of this
course: the self under siege could never find meaning in such denuded form of
thinking and living where we are only focused on instrumental reason and
individuated rational decision making. This is certainly not a rich-enough
notion of experience for human life which would take us down the path of an
examined life that is worth living. The enlightenment project, Marcuse argues,
carried myth right along with it and did not succeed to eliminate it. The entwinement between enlightenment and mythology is perhaps one of the key
elements to understand our situation today, the era of quasi-mythological
technologies, the era of virtual reality and scientology, the era of “I Fucking
Love Science” crowds whose depth of knowledge is as shallow and their faith is
as strong and as blind as an average religious man in medieval times. Here lies
Marcuse’s fundamental criticism of our modern technological society. Needless to
say that Marcuse does not suggest that we should through out instrumental
reason altogether, he argues that if we don’t find a more balanced approach to
ourselves, our world, and other people, and our relation to instrumental reason,
then we are all lost.
Marcuse, in his critique of modern life and enlightenment mainly focuses on issues of social world, which is contrast to inner-world
issues discussed in previous posts/lectures. Therefore, in a way his critique
follows the tradition of Marx which highlights issues like alienation, or that
of Weber which explores rationalization (Franz Kafka elegantly depicts the latter
in Trial and Castle). Roderick adds a third issue to the list, which he calls
banalization. One good example of banalization is the ideological treatment
you get from TV or movies, which turn complicated social, personal or political
issues such as violence, corruption, racism, terrorism, homosexuality, religion,
love, or sex into banality, turns everything that is a threat to the system and
its structures of power into banality as a form of social control. This also
applies to our current education system and its outputs.
In exploring these issues of social world, Marcuse
raises the following question: how does a way of life break down? The answer to
this question is not the simple one offered by Marx, which is to point the
finger at economic conditions. The are many factors in our modern life today,
Roderick argues, that could break down our way of life. One general theme that
he highlights is the refusal and fear of dealing with complexity and ambiguity.
This is a familiar theme in the light of recent events in the US and the
election of Donald Trump, which in many respects was the result of turning complex
social and political issues into caricatures that could be easily digested in a
culture of amnesia that is provoked and stimulated by empty talking points and
shallow commentary, a culture blocked by structures of cynical and skeptical
reason that wants to go back to golden years that never existed the way they
are depicted today, a society where individuals believe nothing, expect
nothing, hope nothing, dream nothing, and desire nothing (things that “matter”
in relation to the “self”). The interesting thing, as Marcuse emphasizes, is
that this is not the result of lack of rationality in our society today as many
would suggest, but rather due to alienation, rationalization, and the
banalization propagated in the structures of our modern life and society.
It is perhaps important to note that Marcuse’s
criticism of enlightenment, capitalism, and rationality is that of “imminent
critique”, which takes historic accumulated concepts and confronts them with
historically existent realities to measure the gap between the practice and
promise, to measure the society within those concepts that were developed within
it. In other words, Marcuse does not draw on some external norms from a utopian
situation to articulate his criticism, but rather uses our current terms and
conditions, which makes his approach utterly fair and reasonable. However, it
seems that in the 21st century we have now outlived the responses
that Marcuse would have given to our current predicament. Marcuse believes in
truth while we live in a post-truth time, he believes in human being’s happy destiny as we get closer and closer to the verge of environmental disaster.
The irony is that while Marcuse was considered a radical thinker of the 60s,
he is not radical at all by the standards of the world we have slipped in.
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