Existentialism, politics and post-humanist morality

Existentialism:
 

Existentialism is the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject. That the human subject is not simply characterised by thinking alone but through acting, feeling and living as a human individual.

In doing so they face a sense of confusion in a seemingly meaningless or absurd world. Consequently it is down to the individual to give their own life meaning. 

To summarise; existentialism is concerned with finding the self and the meaning of life through free will, choice and personal responsibility. That is to say personal responsibility of choices made without the guidance of laws, ethics or culture.

Culturally existentialism became prominent in post World War II years as a way to express the importance of the individuality and freedom of the human individual.

Existentialism marked a rejection of teleology which was concerned with the extrinsic and intrinsic finality of actions or things, of ‘becoming’ whilst existentialism focused on ‘being.’ 

Existentialism consequently marked a broad literary, political and philosophical movement.

Politically it served as inspiration for the ongoing fight for feminism, gay rights and civil rights. Further to this it served to inspire the French as they resisted Nazi occupation.

Philosophically the movement would inspire many thinkers such as Friedrich Nietzsche whose ethic focused on self-control and self-determination.

"What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power in man, the will to power, power itself. What is bad? All that is born of weakness. What is happiness? The feeling that power is growing, that resistance is overcome. "

It is worth noting that Neitzsche felt Christian virtues made people weak thus a bad thing. Especially when they follow a religion whose God Nietzsche proclaimed to be dead.

Critical Thinkers:

Edmund Husserl:

Edmund Husserl looked at the notion of intentionality, the idea that what characterises mental phenomena as distinct from the physical is that the mental is directed towards objects.

A thought is made up of two things; content and a possessor.

Content is what the thought is about, specifically what it is about i.e. you are thinking about e.g. a sheep and not a table.

The possessor is the person who is thinking of the content.

Husserl states that a thought is an act with a matter. I.e. that the thought was intentional towards an object, in this example; a sheep.

Husserl is responsible for founding the school of philosophical thought known as phenomenology which is the study of the conscious experience.

The aim of phenomenology was the study of the immediate data of the conscious. 

Husserl wrote in 1901 that: ‘It makes no essential difference to an object presented and given to consciousness whether it exists, or is fictitious, or is perhaps completely absurd. I think of Bismarck, of the tower of Babel as I think of Cologne Cathedral, of a regular thousand-sided polygon as of a regular thousand-faced solid.’

He is stating that the intentionality of thought does not distinguish between reality and constructs of the mind. That is to say that if one were to think about aliens and then think about a bagel, there would be no difference in the intentionality of thought. Furthermore, this means that the intentionality of thought of an object is indistinguishable from that of a hallucination of an object. Thus the experience is the same irrespective of how that experience of the subject is had whether that be in reality, hallucination or dream.

Subsequently Husserl believed that one should suspend their judgement of existence i.e. of the natural world so that a phenomenological analysis can deal with one’s subjective perception of an experience in its purest form.

Martin Heidegger:

Heidegger was a pupil of Husserl who focused on the question of being through his work in extentialism and phenomenology. 

Heidegger felt that phenomenology didn’t go far enough, that before we can study experience we must study the concept of Being which precedes the link between conscious and reality.

Thus whilst Husserl based phenomenology on the study of conscious, Heidegger focused on the study of Being.

To do this, Heidegger had to invent his own terminology including the concept of ‘Dasein.’ Dasein is a being that is capable of asking philosophical questions.

It differs from Descartes’s Cartesian ego in the fact that the Cartesian ego is simply a thinking thng whilst Dasein incorporates thinking as only one of its features of being and only one way of interacting with the world.

Dasein can be defined as caring, as only through caring will a being be interested in the world enough to ask philosophical questions. 

Dasein is temporal in nature, distinct from substance in the fact it represents the continuation of life. Thus in defining Being, Heidegger notes  that the future has priority over past and present, that goals determine the significance of the present. Consequently the view of the past is negative in the fact it brings up guilt and anxiety. This is because one must make the distinction when examining life, between what a person is, and what they might have been. 

Dasein operates within a biological, social and cultural context and according to Heidegger, Dasein has three fundamental aspects:

Attunement: Situations we are in manifest themselves at an emotional level e.g. dangerous or boring and thus we respond to them with a mood of appropriate emotional reaction.

Dasein is discursive: That Dasein operates within which discourse is conveyed through language and culture.

Understanding (in a spatial sense): That activities are directed towards goals, some of which will make sense of a life within its cultural context.

Heidegger claims there is no such thing as human nature which dictates the activities of the individual. Dasein itself is existence.

Ideology and Terror: A novel form of government

Totalitarianism differs from all other forms of political oppression known to us such as despotism tyranny and dictatorship.

Totalitarian governments developed entirely new political institutions and destroyed all social, legal and political traditions of the country.

That no matter what the specifically national tradition or spiritual source of its ideology, tot governments always transformed classes into masses, supplanted the party system, not by one-party dictatorships but by a mass movement, shifted the centre of power from the army to the police and established a foreign policy openly directed towards world domination.

Present totalitarianism governments have developed from one party systems; whenever they became truly tot they began to operate in accordance to a system of values. Values so radically different from all others that none of our traditional legal, moral or common sense utilitarian categories could not help us understand, judge of predict their actions.

Suffice to say totalitarianism governments are not simply an external threat that will disappear with the fall of the present tot regime but something that corrupts from within, without precedent.

Hannah Ardent explains that totalitarian governments are not so much unprecedented but a poorly defined alternative.

That is there are both lawful and lawless governments. Lawful governments are based in legitimate power based upon a political philosophy and the lawless government whilst also based in a political philosophy has arbitrary power. Totalitarianism governments do not fit either definition. Totalitarianism governments defy all laws including that which it itself has established or simply hasn’t bothered to abolish. It is neither guided by law nor is it arbitrary for it claims to obey positive laws that can be found in the laws of nature and/or of history.

In contrast to being lawless it establishes authority to which it is obedient to a far greater degree than any lawful government. It is not arbitrary i.e. it does not simply work to wield power for one man but instead works, obedient to the laws of nature and history even if this goes in defiance of currently existing positive laws.

It is lawful insofar as it obeys its own laws (most of the time), it works towards what it sees as ‘justice’. It removes any legality that would prevent it from establishing its own idea of justice until all positive laws fit this idea of justice. Totalitarianism governments work to establish justice that can be applied to all citizens whereas lawful governments have positive law which is purposefully general so that it can be circumstantial for individual cases. 

This tot idea of justice becomes the essence of lawfulness, defying legality that would prevent it otherwise. Justice based on the laws of History or nature with no regard to whether they are actually appropriate on a case by case basis.

It is expected that with the proper execution of the law of Nature or History that mankind will be the result. It is this expectation that forms the motive to the claim for global rule by a tot gov. Tot policy states it will transform humanity into an ‘active unfailing carrier of a law to which human beings otherwise would only passively and reluctantly be subjected.’

Tot policy does not replace one set of laws with another, doesn’t create a new form of legality. In its defiance of all things including its own positive law it shows that it can do what it pleases and still not become a tyranny of lawlessness and fear. It works because it promises to create a justice on earth through making man the embodiment of law.

‘In the interpretation of totalitarianism, all laws have become laws of movement.’  That is to say that whenever previous totalitarianism governments such as the Nazis talked of the law of nature/history they are using it as the basis of authority for their ideals such as race or class struggle. And subsequently ‘the term "law" itself changed its meaning: from expressing the framework of stability within which human actions and motions can take place, it became the expression of the motion itself.’

The problem being that there is no end to this process, thus laws of killing by which totalitarian movements seize and exercise power would remain a law of the movement even if they did succeed on world domination and the subjugation of the entire human race.

Hannah Ardent and Totalitarianism

‘Everything we know of totalitarianism demonstrates a horrible originality.’ – Hannah Ardent.

Hannah Ardent studied and philosophised about totalitarian movements, she looked into the past at the Nazis and the USSR and speculated of the future. She believed that there was no end to totalitarianism. 

Totalitarian regimes believe that ‘everything is possible’ and so they seek unlimited power – but the inevitable price of total power is destruction and eradication of human plurality.

Because it is our individuality makes us difficult to control and gather up into a collective movement. To destroy this individuality two methods are used: state terror and ideology.

The purpose of the terror is not just to murder vast numbers of people but also to destroy their individuality and ability to act against the government. Not just to act, but even the thought of acting. For example the Anglo-Zanzibar war, credited as the shortest war in history ensured that British rule would never be challenged again.

Thus genocide isn’t part of the movement it is the very manifestation of the movement.

Ideology compliments the policy of terror,it eliminates the capacity for individual thought and experience among the executioners themselves (Orwell: War is Peace, Ignorance is strength, Freedom is Slavery)

The ideology (based in either the Laws of Nature or the Laws of History) gives them ‘the total explanation of the past, the total knowledge of the present, and the reliable prediction of the future.’

Reality as experienced by individuals is insignificant or even irrelevant compared with what must happen. Ideology frees the mind from the constraints of common sense and reality.

They succeed in breaking down of the stable human world. This means a loss of institutional and psychological barriers that normally set limits to what is possible.

She highlights the fragility of civilisation; how quickly groups and whole people can fall through the cracks. For to be civilised human beings we need to inhabit a man-made world of stable structures. She cites the Nazi’s progressive of victimisation of the Jews – natural rights taken, made less than human and forced to where yellow stars.

It is being part of society enables us to be civilised, grants us access to a shared reality.

Controversy: Eichmann in Jersulam 

Israelis captured Eichmann and tried him for war crimes.

Hannah Ardent discovered that rather than this man being the personification of evil of which he helped occur. He was in actual fact a very simple, dull and ordinary person the ‘banality of evil.’

Ardent criticised Eichmann for his obedience, she criticised his inability to think.

Eichmann attempted to use Kant’s Categorical Imperative as a justifiable defence for actions. The Categorical imperative simply states that an imperative is a proposition that demands a response in action or inaction. Thus Eichmann was arguing that because he was working under a higher authority he had an obligation to serve them. However Kant values judgement over obedience so the argument was flawed from its very premise and naturally made a poor defence in a trial where his life stood on the line.

Thinking, for Ardent is the judgement made from the interaction with the internal plurality.

Deciding one option of many within. Thinking is a judgement on these ideas, to choose one of the several.

Ardent’s idea of freedom is not the exercise of the individual but a social enactment. We cannot be individually free but instead we exercise freedom in concert.

Thus she is saying we must look to our own personal judgement (thinking) over obedience of all laws mandated by government or higher authorities.

An example of this in practice is Milgram’s famous study. He examined how easily normal civilians would cooperate with an unjust authority to better understand the mindset of the German people under Hitler’s Third Reich.

Overview and summary of Paul Krugman's introduction to The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money by John Maynard Keynes

Keynes book would prove so controversial that in 2005 it would prove a strong contender for the title ‘most dangerous book of the 19^th and 20^th century.’

Like Freud’s work, Keynes book has shaped the views of people who haven’t heard of him or the book or think they disagree with it.

The message of Keynes:

Keynes’s book was in the context of the time a quite conservative book, despite this he was derided as a socialist and his ideas as ‘evil.’ 

Keynes book was written during the Great Depression, a time of huge unemployment, waste and suffering on an unprecedented scale. 

Many scholars reached the conclusion that Capitalism had failed and turned instead to socialism, believing that perhaps nationalisation of production could restore the economic climate to stability.

However Keynes argued that because (in his view) these failures had narrow technical causes that the solution could also be narrow and technical. I.e. that whilst the machine was broken only one part needs to be fixed rather than replacing the entire machine.  Especially when the new machine (socialism) wouldn’t be able to perfectly fit the place of the original. 

The conclusions of The General Theory can be summarised as four points:

•Economies can and often do suffer from an overall lack of demand, which leads to involuntary unemployment

• The economy’s automatic tendency to correct shortfalls in demand, if it exists at all, operates slowly and painfully

• Government policies to increase demand, by contrast, can reduce unemployment quickly

• Sometimes increasing the money supply won’t be enough to persuade the private sector to spend more, and government spending must step into the breach’

Nowadays none of the above points would be startling or controversial except for perhaps the last one. However in Keyne’s time they were more than radical, unthinkable in fact. And as Krugman explains, it is Keynes’s greatest achievement to make the unthinkable, thinkable. 

How Keynes did it:

Keynes was well versed in the economic theory of his time and thus believed he understood the power, merits and drawbacks of the theories he now challenged.

Because Keynes was developing a whole new way of thinking he had to clarify his thoughts in coherent explanation to others. So that his theory could not be faulted and would be accepted by the reasonable man. It is for this reason he devoted so much time to the specifics ‘the choice of units’ the definitions of income and savings etc. He knew that his new theory would hold no ground if he was not precise from the ground up.

The model that Keynes challenged was what we call today ‘the real classical model.’ 

This model was:

·        The model of a barter economy, in which money and nominal prices don’t matter, with a monetary theory of the price level appended in a non-essential way, like a veneer on a tabletop.’ 

·        A model in which Say’s Law applied: Supply automatically creates its own demand because income must be spent.

·        One in which the interest rate was purely a matter of the supply and demand for funds, with no possible role for money or monetary policy.

As well as breaking free of the classical model, Keynes has to free himself from the times business cycle theory.

Mr Keynes and the moderns:

There is the impression that The General Theory failed to give monetary policy, largely purported by John Hicks in his essay ‘Mr Keynes and the classics.’

Krugman argues The General Theory neither dismisses nor ignores monetary policy, In fact Keynes discusses it at length and his theories are much similar to current theory of monetary policy. 

However The General Theory is largely sceptic about adding to the money supply is enough to restore full employment. This scepticism was not born out of ignorance of the potential role of monetary policy but instead an empirical judgement on his part due to the fact The General Theory was written in an environment where interest rates were already so low that there was little an increase in the money supply could do to push them lower. In the economic climate of the time it is perfectly simple to see why Keynes’s scepticism was so prevalent in the chapter.

Alternate view:

There are those who argue we have lost the true Keynesian path and that modern macroeconomic theory is a betrayal of Keynesian thinking. This is because it reduces Keynes to a static equilibrium model and tries to based largely on rational choice.

On the issue of rational choice, it is true that compared with any modern exposition of macroeconomics, The General Theory contains very little discussion of maximization and a lot of behavioural hypothesizing.

Keynes had an emphasis on the non-rational roots of economic behaviour. It was only after Keynes that macroeconomics attempted to form models of consumption behaviour based on rational choice. Keynes meanwhile focused on psychological observation and felt that there is a strong non-rational element in economic behaviour. However his basis for discussion was not always correct whilst he argued on psychological grounds that the average savings rate would rise with per capita income it turned out not to be the case.

Whether or not modern macroeconomic theory is a betrayal of Keynesian thinking is a debateable one. However Krugman argues that it does not. That whilst Keynes was a keen observer of economic irrationality, the book was not primarily about this. Instead he chose to emphasise stability and ground that in rational choice.

The static equilibrium model Krugman argues is not a betrayal due to the fact much of Keynes work was indeed just that. That ‘employment is determined by the point at which the value of output is equal to the sum of investment and consumer spending.’ 

 What Keynes missed:

The strongest ciriticism levelled at Keynes and The General Theory s that he mistook an episode for a trend. He believed that the monetary environment of the 1930s would continue as the norm from then on.

Why was Keynes wrong:

Part of his misjudgement was due in fact to him underestimating the ability of mature economies to stave off diminishing returns. Keynes’s “euthanasia of the rentier” was predicated on the presumption that as capital accumulates, profitable private investment projects become harder to find, so that the marginal efficiency of capital declines.

In the context of the time his view might have seemed reasonable, however after WW2 with a combination of technological growth and a population boom this opened up many investment opportunities that Keynes did not foresee in his theory.

Monetary policy has however remained effective due to persistent inflation which has resulted in higher interest rates than would be possible with stable prices. Whilst inflation is much lower than it was 20-30 years ago, it still maintains a vital role in keeping interest rates away from zero.

It is persistent inflation which makes The General Theory seem on the surface somewhat less directly relevant to our time than it would in the absence of that inflation. This can be attributed in part to Keynes’s influence, for better or worse.

For worse: The inflationary takeoff of the 1970s was partly caused by expansionary monetary and fiscal policy, adopted by Keynes-influenced governments with unrealistic employment goals.

For better: both the Bank of England, explicitly, and the Federal Reserve, implicitly, have a deliberate strategy of encouraging persistent low but positive inflation, precisely to avoid finding themselves in the trap Keynes diagnosed.

Keynes didn’t forsee a future of persistent inflation but no one else of the time did either.  This tells us he was very pessimistic concerning the future prospects of monetary policy. It also meant he would never address the problems posed by persistent inflation, which instead preoccupied macroeconomists in the 70s and 80s.

Thus a failure to address problems that couldn’t be imagined at the time cannot be held against him. Now that inflation has subsided Keynes looks highly relevant again.

The economist as saviour:

The General Theory retains its importance and place in history due to its influence on the world. It made the idea that mass unemployment is the result of inadequate demand, an idea that had long been unthinkable become comprehensible and obvious. 

The General Theory marked a period whereby economic policy was lead out of ignorance and into intellectual prevalence. This is the greatest strength of The General Theory, it combined intellectual achievement with immediate practical relevance in a time of global economic crisis. Keynes understood the prevailing economic ideas of the time and defied them completely with his radical critique of economic orthodoxy. 

Keynes showed that: mass unemployment had a simple cause, inadequate demand, and an easy solution, expansionary fiscal policy. Whilst he was not always right, his influence continues to this day. As a radical and intellectual who only through intimate knowledge of a flawed system was able to fundamentally criticise and improve upon it.