This blog is a summary of Rorty’s salient points in his essay, The Historiography of Philosophy.

There are several ways to reconstruct the writings of philosophers: the rational, the historical, and the holistic. The paradigmatic examples are, respectively; P. F. Strawson of Kant, John Dunn’s of Locke, and Heidegger’s Question of Being.

Rational: analytic thinkers distill the Great Works of philosophy into propositions. This seems helpful for modern philosophers to analyze their problems, especially when the great philosopher’s sayings are rewritten because they require restatement or purification or precise refutation. A good rational reconstructionist like Strawson shows how Kant could have rewritten the Transcendental Analytic without using now-defunct terms like “in the mind” or “created by the mind” (post-Wittgenstein and post-Ryle). However, how much of this risk an anachronistic imposition of contemporary vocabulary and problems?

Historical: historians rebuild the philosopher’s works within an intellectual background: the context of their times, their culture, their own terms. In other words, what Great Philosopher meant is essentially describing how the writings fit into his general pattern of linguistic behavior. This reinterpretation helps to remind us the historical nature of philosophical problems. How much of this is merely inconsequential doxography?

Holistic, or Geistesgeschichte: by identifying which writers are the “great dead philosophers” the Geisteshistoriker is both parasistic upon and synthesizes the first 2 classes, aiming at self-justification much like rational reconstruction but on the level of problematics instead of solutions to problems, which seems to aim for the self-awareness of the historical reconstructionist. However, anachronism and past vocabulary are both verboten. The Geisteshistoriker assembles a cast of historical characters and a dramatic narrative that is still en route, to be continued by our descendants. This reconstruction seems required in order to confirm the belief that we are better than the ancestors by being aware of this narrative. However, does this reflexive self-awareness also necessarily require the narrative itself be part of the narrative as well?

Man is an animal whose primary function is to strive for the affirmation of its life. Not only is the principle of this teleological nature biological, it is also psychological. In this context, the principle of affirmation is codified or reified as desire. The biological nature of desire is indoctrinated, reordered, constituted, or amplified by the preexisting conditions of the social structure of the culture. If the biological desire is considered to be an essence, where the content is libido, or carnal desire, and the form is constituted by society, language, or even the orthodoxy of the day, any conceptual framework, then the arrow of this intentional desire is directed on a goal as object: power, control, pleasure, pain, contentment, or any other teleological formations.

In matters of libidal desire the goal is often a sexual one - and when the goal is not satisfied, the energy of the desire builds up, intensifies, and engorges the subject, until it is either rechanneled or surpressed.

Giving in to the desire’s demands is to satisfy it. However this satisfaction is almost never immediate; it is usually repressed, largely due to the social conditioning of a culture. The habit of repressing desires tend to an overall temperament of resentment, a puritanical diisgust of the vivid impression of pleasure as something carnal. Resentment, disenchantment, disillusion, a failed idealist, all these behaviors come from the function of a repressed disposition. The meaning of life is to make it, and the severe resentment of the repressed subject constitutes a “backworld” that is superior to this one. The impulse of religion emanates from a metaphysical fault, which is in sartrean terms, the impossibility of human desire to be God.

Neverthless, sublimation, the ability to rechannel the nature of desire by altering the objective of the desire, and the surplus of energy empowers creativity, the ability to recreate values or art is a rare achievement, a talent that is limited to the gifted.

What is impressive about sublimation is the not only the energy boost, but the creative output also constitutes the subject as well.

Then the subject as a social construct is arranged by the forms of discourse. The language of social construction is the archaeology of knowledge….

I will discuss Kirilov’s dilemma within the context of Albert Camus’ attempt to solve the problem of suicide.

The Myth of Sisyphus was Camus’ philosophical attempt at a solution for suicide. We all already know the unphilosophical refutation of suicide – that is to keep on living, keep on kickin’ n breathin.’ Death will come for us all, eventually. Well, like a good existentialist, Camus notes that people get in the habit of living before they acquire the habit of thinking.

There are two aspects of suicide: one is the realization that life is absurd and the other is the destruction of the attachment to life. Camus notes that the body shrinks from annihilation. In order to destroy the attachment to life, there has to be a powerful rationale strong enough to blot out self-preservation, and they can number from humiliation, debilitating disease or despondency.

But Camus isn’t interested in these types of suicide, for he finds the metaphysical or virgin suicide far more fascinating: “rarely is suicide committed … through reflection.” A suicide that lacks the aforementioned rationales is a “logically disposed” suicide because it is not motivated by some kind of emotional depression or even the fear of death. Since Camus couldn’t find a better example, he chose Dostoyevski’s character, Kirilov, from his book the Possessed. Kirilov became disenchanted with the immortality of the soul and was researching on why people did not kill themselves.

Kirilov said he wanted to take his life because that was his idea. Having an idea, indeed, implies a motivation. Kirilov arrived at his idea with absurd reasoning by maintaining two contradictory beliefs:

“I know God is necessary and must exist. I also know that he does not and cannot exist.”

Apparently, the paradoxical existence of God entails a logical suicide. For Kirilov, this realization was enough to kill himself, because he inferred that he was God: “If God does not exist, I am God.” However, Kirilov didn’t just think he was God, for that was insufficient. To be God required Kirilov to kill himself. Absurd, indeed, but wait for the pop: Kirilov realized the divine freedom by bringing it down to earth. For several years he had sought the attribute of his divinity and he found it. The attribute is freedom. Drawing the final consequences of his divine freedom ended his servitude to immortality. He refused to maintain the universal delusion that everyone up to him in history, all men and women, had invented God in order not to kill themselves. Kirilov thought that was the summary of the entire history up to the moment of his metaphysical suicide.

In short, Kirilov wanted to demonstrate his suicide to show others the yellow brick road. Not only was it a metaphysical suicide, it was also pedagogical. Since Dostoyevski was a Christian whose Christian beliefs forbid suicide, because it is sinful, then Kirilov’s act was intended as a lesson. But Camus forbids suicide for different reasons and gave us a solution: by maintaining absurdity, never denying it or adopting metaphysical delusions.

Suicide confirms the absurd by agreeing to it. To live is to experience the absurd at all times, but never reconcile yourself with it. Camus insists that if you never reconcile with the absurd, you will never be free of it, but that will rule out suicide as the genuine experience of living an absurd life. If the absurd is not conceded, it is meaningful. Life has no meaning, it is inescapably absurd. The only thing is whether you can live with it or die with it.

In order to set the mood properly for this blog, I have decided to include several quotes by Fritz:

“What I understand by ‘philosopher:’ a terrible explosive in the presence of which everything is in danger.”

“…. all company is bad company except the company of ones equals - this constitutes a necessary part of the life story of every philosopher, perhaps the most unpleasant n malodorous part and the part most full of disappointment…”

“Our supreme insights must - and should - sound like follies, and in certain cases like crimes, when they come impermissibly to the ears of those who are not predisposed and predestined for them.”

Since the philosopher is never the average Joe or Jane, or the majority of the population is composed of nonphilosophers, he or she is a distinct individual, a person whose characteristic of intellectual versatility separates him/her from all the others. This is not a simple or fatuous logical assertion that the distinction between x and non-x is the property y which is the essence of x.

As a standout member of the species, the philosopher is automatically a social pariah. While a philosopher is only human - they are bound to be passionate, oddly emotional even, cursed with entrenched ideological beliefs or a particular psychological configuration… The philosopher, as a thinker, sees past the individual’s personal prejudices and petty thoughts onto the superstructure of thoughts themselves. to philosophize out of their philosophy the philosopher challenges the established beliefs of the day - the standard cache of social knowledge termed as common sense….

The art of philosophy is a pastime best suited for those whose mental faculties are not altogether too quick to settle for practical solutions that pays off immediate gratification, but instead at reflection, a luxury of society. Whether it is contemplating on the nature of things, the essence of something, the necessity of an act, even the very act of reflection itself, and the philosopher is the anti-practical person.

Gasche pointed out that reflectivity is what defines the act of philosophizing, a “founding principle” that has become central and systematic since Descartes. For gasche, reflection occurs the very moment where the mind turns itself outward toward an object as well as the moment when this very activity also becomes the object of reflection. To reflect is to bend backwards, and within reflection, a philosophical disposition emerges.

The philosopher is some sort of inconstant black sheep looking down from the mountain he/she has scaled, and is frolicking with the other mountain goats. The philosopher cannot be a public intellectual, for his very existence is already an insult to the masses. In a nutshell he/she is saying they’re too stupid, not philosophical enough, for their values are not their own but uncritically inherited from tradition, custom, animal nature, society, the mob, their beliefs to be little more than delusions, their truths a mere compilation of empty bromides, reasoning mere standard establishment, the average person typically cannot help themselves in their own mediocrity.

The general public naturally prefers those who embody their virtues, champion their purpose or represent their ideals. The person who embodies their virtues is already a buffoon or a comedian, and he alleviates their station in life with comedy that inspires laughter. Laughter disguises their discontent. The man who champions their purposes does not challenge them but rather elevates them indirectly by condemning the deviants who stray from their commonality, to be considered as ‘abnormal,’ bizarre, even. Whosoever violates the law of normalcy deserves the contempt of the herd. The person who represents their ideal is a typical icon of a virtue of mediocrity - ethereal beauty, solves their spiritual suffering, promises and practices their safety, etc - but the philosopher sees through all these sacred cows of the herd.

None of them have anything to do with a thinker who claims the herd’s knowledge to be laughably inadequate, naive, or utterly false even.

The intellectual who sides with the herd or defends their sacred cows is a cowardly sophist who does not believe in his duty to change their current station of life. He who engages in public apologetics has lost faith in his intellectual faculties and has sold out for the sake of herd values.

The only way a philosopher can assist others is to kill their sacred cows. However, in doing so, the herd will establish him or her method of execution to be venerated and consequently, worship at his/her altar as the new sacred cow. Mark Twain was right: since sacred cows make the best hamburgers they must be recycled often for a consumerist society…..

Some comments on Sartre’s stance on God (or lack of). Sartre never meets the problem of God’s existence. Nowhere does he discuss the traditional arguments from religious epistemology. Interestingly, Sartre does not arrive at atheism after undergoing a philosophical expedition, in the rationalist fashion of the thinker who presumes every position he holds must be the solution to a philosophical problem. Fr. Magin Borrajo says “it is rather a postulate or in the words of Merleau Ponty, an ‘état d’âme’ or as Sartre himself says, an ‘accident,’ the result of the circumstances of his education and the spiritual indigence of the environment in which he lived.”

The fundamental reason why Sartre claims that God does not exist is the very concept of God is a self-contradiction. In his phenomenological description of ontology, there are two modes of being: pour-soi (being-for-itself) and en-soi (being-in-itself). God, in the philosophy of Being and Nothingness, entails both modes of being: pour-soi and en-soi, a ‘being-in-itself-for-itself.’ Yes, quite a mouthful! As an ‘in-itself’ God is the concept of the perfect being, a complete existing entity that is whole in himself and independent. God is also a ‘for-itself’ that He must be absolutely free and not subservient to anything, not reason or ethics. This synthesis is logically contradictory and Sartre ingeniously concludes that such a being must be impossible, having ruled it out of court even before either party can plead their case.

The extreme philosophy of Sartrean existentialism also contributes to his atheism; were God to exist, then that would entail an automatic limitation of man’s freedom, or transform it to a fiction, reduced to a self-delusion. Since the belief of God has been prevalent all over the world and in the past, Sartre cannot simply wave his hand and wish God away. He asserts further that that mankind invents God in order to posit a meaning in the world. Man is forever defining himself, his place in the world, in order to account for a pervasive cosmic meaninglessness. Thus, Man invents a big-brother figure concept that takes care of the unknown mysteries- that includes the origin of the universe and the assurance that everything is under control, that there’s somebody taking care of the major problems and issues.

In the end of his book Being and Nothingness Sartre concludes on a pessimistic note that man is a “useless passion” since he desires to achieve for himself the impossible “being-for-itself-in-itself” synthesis. Man is essentially a desire to be God. In addition, the beauty of it is he fails gloriously, each and every time, at a one hundred percent failure rate.

What follows are relevant excerpts from my exhaustive exposition on Sartre’s phenomenological method: Being-in-itself has a character of an “incomplete inactivity,” lacking all and any relationship to itself. In Sartre’s evocative language, being-in-itself is “opaque” and “coincides exactly with itself.” It is self-contained, on the account that being is in itself. If reality is characterized as such, then atheism follows, since nothing causes being-in-itself, a brute fact of existence. A brute fact is simply IS, without a sufficient reason for its existence or a cause, or any other distorting anthropomorphic terms we project ourselves in order to interpret experience.
‘… matter can provide the foundation of existence of pour-soi through consciousness since reasons and justifications themselves are acts of consciousness.’

The attempt to move from the notion of necessity to the existence of necessity is mistaken for the source of being.

• One- the very notion of a necessary being entails a contradiction: having the total awareness of perfection and being the very essence of that perfection at the same time.
• Two- it is impossible to move from the logical to the ontological (ontological argument of God). This alludes to Leibniz’s effort to reason that the idea of a necessary being entails its existence (a necessary being, in its possibility and description as necessary, must absolutely exist). Sartre objects to the idea of a necessary being by restricting the level of understanding to the level of knowledge. In other words, the very possibility as an ideal is not the possibility of being or existence. Ontological or real possibility exists only to the extent being maintains the possibilities in existence. Possibility follows existence, not vice versa! However it is important to acknowledge that Sartre’s atheism is specifically addressed to a particular theism (that we can have a clear and distinct concept about the a priori possibility of God. Conceiving the impossibility of God is similar to having a clear concept of the nature of God. This is somewhat similar to the conception that a circle-triangle is impossible because we have a clear idea of a triangle and a circle.)

On another thread about Sartre I thought it was best to explain his philosophy before attempting a criticism. Moreover, I will not assume my audience is naïve enough to require spoon feeding from the popular work, so I will start with several summaries from the actual work of philosophy, Being and Nothingness. (BN hereafter)

In many ways, BN is similar to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (PS) in its imposing size, forbidding difficulty and density, analyses of human consciousness and insights into human life. However, the PS is superior in employing rational concepts that entail a dynamic truth for metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and supplies a philosophy of nature, history and society. Since Sartre rejected Hegelian philosophy as a failed byproduct of abstract rationalism and essentialism, he undertook a much more modest project that begins with phenomenology, instituted by Edmund Husserl. Phenomenology is not metaphysics for it doesn’t analyze the nature of reality, or attempt a Hegelian ideal of a unified view of reality based on a conglomerate of epistemology, physical and human sciences, history, politics, religion and art. Instead, phenomenology is merely the study of phenomena or appearances with relation to the structure of human consciousness. Therefore, Sartre’s project is a study of being as it appears to the consciousness.

In the introduction, Sartre echoes Descartes by making “consciousness” the foundation of philosophy, but at the same time he revises the Cartesian project. For Descartes, consciousness is the consciousness of a thinking substance examining its own ideas, while for Sartre, after Husserl, one’s being conscious of thinking does not prove that one exist as a substance whose essence is to think. Rather, consciousness, pace Husserl, is intentional, or intending to an object. Consciousness is always of something, of an object, always a pointing towards something other than itself. Consciousness in itself is empty, a nothing, a transparency, and exists only as consciousness of some other object. Yet Sartre is careful enough to agree with Descartes to the extent that consciousness is always conscious of itself, given that to be aware of something is to be aware of being aware. Otherwise one would be unconscious of being aware, and that path leads directly to Freudian determinism.

Regions of Being: Being-in-itself and Being-for-itself
After establishing the foundation, Sartre moves on to the phenomenological study of being and identifies two distinct kinds of being, “regions of being” that appear to the consciousness. One is the being of oneself as consciousness and the being of that which is the other than oneself, separate from oneself, the objects of which one is conscious.

Being-in-itself
These objects of consciousness that are regarded as independent of consciousness, independently real or ‘things-in-themselves’ are subject to causal laws and are determined to be what they are. Since there is no consciousness, no awareness of anything other than themselves, they simply exist solidly, “massively,” like the root of chestnut from the book, Nausea. Sartre calls this the en-soi.

1. Being-for-itself (conscious being)
What Sartre calls the pour-soi is to be a conscious being, a being which is conscious of objects and of itself as conscious of them. However, the for-itself is not a pure consciousness, because it is always consciousness of an object, a transparency through which objects are known. At the same time, the for-itself is always self-conscious, for it is always aware of being conscious of the object. Sartre limits self-consciousness to this description, given that there is no inner realm of thoughts/beliefs/feelings within consciousness because it is empty.

To be conscious is to be aware of a gap between one’s consciousness and its objects; to be in the world and yet to be aware of not being a causally determined object of the world; to be aware of a distance an emptiness…

2. Consciousness brings nothingness (or negation) into the world
There is such a thing as nothingness in the world and it emerges only within the relation to conscious being. Only through conscious being nothingness enters the world. To be a conscious being is to consistently and perpetually bring nothingness into the world. Nothingness highlights the distinction between the pour-soi and the en-soi. In the realm of being in itself, objects are what they are causally determined to be, they exist as they are, without consciousness or awareness of gaps or lack of possibilities or possibility of question or doubts, whereas in the realm of being for itself, conscious being has the ability to separate itself from its objects and distinguish itself from the realm of things by questioning, doubting, thinking, entertaining possibilities, being aware of lack. This separation introduces a negative element in the world, a nothingness. Nothingness is the basis of all questioning and of all “philosophical or scientific inquiry.” “Man secretes his own nothingness.” In order to ask questions about the world the questioner is detaching, disassociating him/herself from the causal world.

The understanding of BN requires the ability to explain the fundamental concept of nothingness.

3. Conscious being has freedom from objects and from causally determined world, has the power of negation
This nothingness, this negation the conscious being introduces to the world is also human freedom. To be a conscious being is to be free. Free from the causally determined world, free to negate (to say no, to doubt, to imagine something that is not present, to reduce to nothingness/negate/nihilate the region of things). A conscious being has the power of negation, which is similar to the principle of negation in Hegel, the power to break up, negate, nihilate and annihilate. With one’s freedom, the power to negate, the conscious being thinks what is absent or what is not the case, and what one’s future possibility is.

4. Conscious being has total freedom in its own existence
One’s freedom as a conscious being enters one’s own existence. Since Consciousness is free and undetermined, one’s past does not determine what one is now. Between the self right now and one’s past, there is a gap, a nothingness. One is free from the past as well.

A chronic gambler decides he will no longer gamble. However, once he is at a casino, his past decisions will not determine what he does, for he is totally free and unpredictable. He is confronted with his temptation, and despite his resolution, he must choose again. To gamble or not to gamble?

Sartre calls this experience of freedom anguish because the discovery that one’s freedom destroys or nihilates the determining force of one’s past decisions and promises for the future results in anguish.

5. Conscious being has total responsibility for own world
As a free conscious being one is also responsible for the meaning of the situation one lives in because he/she alone gives meaning to his/her world. However, the question of the meaning of one’s world arises only when reflecting on one’s activities, not during engagement with daily activities. Upon reflection one discovers there is no source of truth. Conscious beings lack immutable platonic essence to establish a scheme for their lives. Ergo conscious being determine their own essence by their temporary and transient choices of what they would like to become. (therefore, existence precedes essence) God is no help, for he is dead. Since there is no God, no source of truth and virtue, no substitute in philosophy or science, one is the source of meaning. Henceforth one is responsible for the meaning of one’s own life.

6. conscious being experiences anguish
The shattering awareness of being free, being totally responsible of one’s choices, responsible for what one is and what one is to do – induces dizziness, vertigo, anguish. Anguish is the understanding that one’s total freedom is also total responsibility to define one’s life. “In anguish I apprehend myself at once as totally free and as not being able to derive the meaning of the world except as coming from myself.”

Since to be free is to be in anguish, the attempt to escape and avoid the anxiety of facing one’s freedom is permanent. Total responsibility, condemnation of being free is difficult to endure, so the desire to be simply a thing or a being-in-itself arises.

7. conscious being escapes into bad faith
The desire to escape from freedom or responsibility is self-deception or what Sartre calls bad faith. this attempt at escape is simply the pretense that human actions are necessary and causal. “we flee from dread by pretending to look at ourselves as a thing.” BF is a lie one tells oneself with the delusion that one is not free or conscious or responsible.

I will attempt to analyze the possibility of good faith in my next blog.

An in-depth analysis may be found here at my boards.