Dewey’s Hegel’s spirit

Hegel’s Philosophy of Spirit
John Dewey, University of Chicago, 1897
(in Shook & Good, John Dewey’s Philosophy of Spirit, 2010)

Dewey is one of those authors that I have meant to read for quite a while but somehow never really got into it. Finally, in avoidance of other work, I procrasti-read his lecture on Hegel’s philosophy of spirit and wasn’t disappointed.

The lecture starts with a short biographical note where Dewey emphasises the unremarkable youth of Hegel. No one would have guessed that he is a genius. Dewey repeats the often quoted remark how Hegel had no interest whatsoever in philosophy. This is, however, a mistake a copyist’s error changed “philosophiae multam [a lot, many] operam impendit” into “philosophiae nullam [none] operam impendit” in Hegel’s graduation certificate.

That aside, it is clear that Dewey thinks that Hegel is a genius. In a manner that would warm any pragmatist’s heart, Dewey sees that Hegel’s philosophy stems from life – not from academic and technical meddling like tha of Kant’s. Although Hegel is an idealist, he “is never more hard in his speech, hard as steel is hard, than when dealing with mere ideals, vain opinions and sentiments which have not succeeded in connecting themselves with this actual world” (p.97). This foreshadows what is to come. In other words, what Dewey offers is a so-called materialist (left-Hegelian) reading of Hegel – a line of interpretation that is probably the most prominent right now. It is clear though that in Dewey religion is much more present than in the contemporary interpretations.

For Dewey the Hegelian spirit is active, free, and wants to manifest/reveal itself. The faculties of mind are researched in connection to and as parts of a living organistic whole. The philosophy of spirit “is not the process by which the individual mind knows a reality over against itself, it is the process by which this reality comes to a consciousness of its own basis, meaning and bearings” (p. 117). Dewey gives in his lectures a close reading of the various phases of spirit’s development towards this consciousness.

I will not offer such a close reading of a close reading. Instead, I shall limit myself to a few remarks on the themes that stood out as interesting for me. The first is Hegel’s casual racism. Soul divides itself into race souls and these, in turn, divide into different nationalities. This certainly sounds bad by today’s standards but the interesting point here is that if the soul is “sleeping spirit” (p. 123) that is clinging to nature and determined by it, then the fully developed sprit would probably overcome the racial divides and narrow nationalism that are present in the soul.

Secondly, Dewey sees Hegel as committing to something that could be called an image theory of memory (and language). Memories are images that have the same content as perception. Involuntary memory becomes imagination when we manage to voluntarily bring up the ideas as a matter of will. Imagination forms trains of images and through relating and associating these images with each other, we reach generic ideas. When an image becomes to symbolize a generic idea, we have a sign or a token. Dewey goes on to emphasise the role of speech at this stage. If the next quote does not make you think of Wittgenstein, then nothing will.

We only know of our thoughts when we give to them an objective form, when we get them, as it were, outside our own inner being and get them out into spoken sounds or written words; thus they no longer belong simply to us as individuals, but get a certain universality of their own. The fact, then, that thought is so bound up with the word is not to be regarded as a lack in thought and as something unfortunate for thought; it is not true that the inexpressible is the most valuable thing. The inexpressible thing is only something confused, it is an empty void which gets clearness and content only when it goes over into words. (p. 144-145)

Reading these sections made me really want to research the connections and differences between Hegel, Dewey and Wittgenstein. Then again, I don’t really have time for it and someone has probably done it already. Nevertheless, this all is interesting as the image theory of concepts and imagination makes intelligence in some sense an individualistic property (or at least a property that has ‘atomistic’ origin). This seems to go somewhat against the more or less common interpretation that Hegel’s philosophy is holistic all the way through.

One more thing that struck me was the lack of criticism. In fact, it is really hard to tell whether Dewey is trying to depict and explain Hegel the best he can or if he also agrees with what Hegel is saying. The first – and only? – critical tones come closer to the end where Dewey mentions that Hegel’s discussion on the internal organization of the state is artificial and unsatisfactory.  To me it was a little bit unclear why this is so but one can assume that Dewey is not as big fan of monarchy as Hegel was.

Ultimately, this over hundred-year-old lecture on Hegel is one of the most enjoyable ones I have ever read. I would have loved to see how Dewey actually gave these lectures. I do not like the ‘reading aloud’-method of presentation at all but then again, it is clear that if someone would collect my ramblings and PowerPoints on recognition from this spring, it would not make even nearly as good reading as this. I’ll leave you with the last lines of the lecture that are certainly more grandiose than my own “thanks for attending and remember to give feedback”.

Philosophy is nothing but a full realization of what has been thought and discussed previously. It is simply closing the work with which we have been previously occupied. It is getting that point of view whence we see nature, life and experience as elements in the active process of the self-revelation of spirit to spirit. It is the work of philosophy as such simply to place the dot which ends the sentence, thus for the first time getting the full meaning of that sentence. (p. 174)

We will all die soon

This Changes Everything
Naomi Klein, Simon & Schuster, 2014

Roughly ten years ago I frequented an environmental philosophy discussion group. Although I felt and looked like an outsider amongst the more activist types, I also enjoyed being part of those discussions and certainly learned a lot. Part of that lot was that somehow all the environmentally reasonable options seemed to be always trumped by lack of political will, which, in turn, was directly related to the economic sacrifices one needed to make or the bigger short-term gains that the environmentally disastrous options would offer.

Klein’s book touches all this. I have actually had this book for quite a while but for some reason it has taken ages to read. Starting this blog and reading Holly’s article that mentioned Klein were the last motivators that I needed to finish it. Anyway, Klein claims in the book that capitalism does not include mechanisms that would help us to avoid climate disaster – rather it is the driving force behind climate change – and that science will not save us. She quite convincingly manages to show that we are pretty much screwed and I tend to agree. In the end Klein does find some hope in the form of social movements that challenge the whole capitalist/extractivist form of thinking.

A proof that I have at least seen these books that I’m talking about.

It is here that I would love to agree with Klein but I tend to remain sceptical. In fact, it feels that the world moves exactly the opposite direction. At least in Australia and Finland – yes, this is not very representative but these are the governments that I mostly follow – the recent recession is used as an excuse to look towards mining industry and to forget the presumably costly green options. Climate change is acknowledged but halting it isn’t a priority in political decision-making. It would be wonderful if people would challenge the big corporations and aim for greener and more equal future. However, in societies where political left is more on the right than ever before, where populist nationalism is on the rise [and they don’t really care about the nature as long as there are refugees to be afraid of], and where the greens get at best 10% of the votes, it is hard to see any movement towards limiting exploitation of nature in any meaningful scale. While the underground environmental groups may win battles, they are not winning the war. Of course, this is where I would love to be wrong.

The book ends with a suggestion that to survive the climate change, we should radically change our worldview from the earth-as-a-machine thinking to the earth-as-an-organic-whole thinking. Personally I don’t see these two as opposites. One could easily have an “engineer’s attitude” towards environment and agree that what we have is just a really complex system where tinkering with some parts (e.g. releasing fucktons of CO2 into atmosphere) can and will have bad effects from the point of view of the whole system. In other words, I don’t think that we need to radically change the way we see the world – especially if one talks about scientific point of view.

What might need a change is our values and that can be enourmously difficult. People, me included, tend to like their Western lifestyle and if avoiding disastrous climate change requires radical change to that – even if we hold onto the scientific attitude towards nature -, it should be no surprise that we will act too little and probably too late. But do we really need a total change in lifestyle or merely alternative CO2-free energy sources? I have absolutely no idea. An optimist would say that as we have green energy options with an EROEI value that is high enough to sustain the Western lifestyle, all we need from the nature are the materials for our consumer goods. Is that too much asked? Probably, if we want everyone to be part of the middle class. Anyway, as a pessimist in this matter I am already waiting for the scarred Mad Max world where corporations fight over the dwindling resources with their private armies, just so that the few rich can still cling onto the luxurious lifestyle at the cost of everyone else.

Disinformation and postmodern Russia

“Telekinetic dynamite! Psychic warfare is real!
You better believe me, brother, x-ray vision!”

-Clutch, X-Ray Visions

Infosota [Infowar]
Saara Jantunen, Otava, 2015

Better to make it clear straight away that I have absolutely no expertise in information warfare. Saara Jantunen, on the other hand, has written a quite lengthy book about that. Although Jantunen has a PhD in military science, the book is aimed for a broader audience – which is nice for the likes of me. The book makes somewhat dry but easy reading with a little bit of personal touch in the form of stories and examples from Jantunen’s own life. What one could ask for is more references though. That is, there aren’t any in this book.

References or not, it is clear that Russia has been immensely successful with their propaganda in Ukraine and it is also fairly obvious that armies of trolls are marching in Finland too. Jantunen notes that democratic states are especially vulnerable in information wars as disinformants use demands for freedom of speech and transparency as tools for furthering their own – often less transparent – ends.

The bad boy of the book is, unsurprisingly, Russia. With some imagination, one could see their disinformation programs as an empirical test case in social ontology. If one keeps on lying and pretending that certain things exist, does that eventually make those things to exist? Jantunen says no. I am not totally sure of this but perhaps she has a point in saying that, for example, there needs to be some sort of international recognition for the Donetsk People’s Republic to be an actual state. Russia, on the other hand, seems to take a more postmodern route where there is no one truth or meaning. Thus, they are seemingly free (or obliged) to make one up by themselves.

One thing that left me genuinely puzzled was that why do people (Johan Bäckman and Janus Putkonen at the forefront) so willingly take part in all this? Are they doing it for the money? Maybe. Are they aiming to further some political ideology? Again, maybe. However, the ideas that the disinformants are sharing seem to be so contradictory that one might doubt if there is any holistic system of beliefs behind them. Are they in it just because they do not know any better? There certainly is a group that believes what the ‘alternative media’ says but I am pretty sure that the biggest disinformants know that they are not sharing any facts. Although there are no answers to these questions in the book, it is somehow relieving to see that what I called ‘troll armies’ above are actually quite small groups of people. To be sure, they have a large online presence but it would be interesting to see if they have really managed to shift the public opinion.

If there is only a small number of those who are willingly spreading disinformation, then the solution to the problem seems clear: high level of education, media reading and critical thinking skills, transparency, and upholding democratic ideals. Not surprisingly, these are roughly what Jantunen suggests at the end of her book. (The current Finnish Government, on the other hand, aims to cut funding from education.)

Overall, I find myself agreeing with most of the key points. Jantunen’s positive discussion on Israel is sure to piss someone off. My main issue, instead, was that at points she seems to hold onto a strong distinction of ‘talk is talk but war is war’ that comes combined with a claim of nation states’ absolute sovereignty. Though I agree with her that in Finland’s case we should not overly limit our political options just because we think that Russia might interpret some decisions differently, it still seems naïve to think that states should not care about what other states decide to do with themselves and that speech acts are somehow irrelevant when it comes to matters of war. This is not probably the most charitable reading of what Jantunen is saying but that is how it surely felt in some sections of the book. If you don’t believe me, read it yourself. 😉