Phelan: What is Complexity Science, Really?

Phelan, SE. 2001. What is complexity science, really? Emergence 3, no. 1: 120-136.

"It is my contention that much of the work in complexity theory has indeed been pseudo-science, that is, many writers in this field have used the symbols and methods of complexity science...to give the illusion of science even though they lack supporting evidence and plausibility" (120).

"The purpose of this article is twofold: to provide a working definition of complexity science; and to use this definition to differentiate complexity science from complexity pseudo-science" (120).

The author then explores arguments in philosophy of science, moving from empiricism, to positivism, to historicism, to constructivism. The author argues that complexity theory offers a new way of studying regularities that is methodologically different from previous science. Science has always been about reducing complexity.

"Complexity science posits simple causes for complex effects. At the core of complexity science is the assumption that complexity in the world arises from simple rules. However, these rules...are unlike rules...of traditional science. Generative rules typically determine how a set of artificial agents will behave in their virtual environment over time, including their interaction with other agents. Unlike traditional science, generative rules do not predict an outcome for every state of the world. Instead, generative rules use feedback and learning algorithms to enable the agent to adapt to its environment over time" (130-1).

Three things that complexity science is not: general systems theory, a postmodern science and a set of "metaphores or analogies based on resemblance thinking" (132).

"Complexity science, defined earlier as the search for generative rules, does not embrace the radical holism of systems theory. Complexity scientists are seeking simple rules that underpin complexity...In contrast, systems theory almost seems to surrender to complexity because it is not particularly interested in the identification of regularities. Regularities do not exist in open systems, almost by definition.

Baylis: The Philosophic Functions of Emergence

Baylis, Charles. A. , & Goldstein, Jeffry. A. (2006). "Classic Paper: The Philosophic Functions of Emergence". Emergence, 8(1), 67-83.

(from Goldstein’s introduction) Baylis offered that emergence could be explained causal mechanisms. He put forth four ways in which this change could occur: integrative emergence , integrative subemergence, disintragrative emergence and disintegrative subemergence. This type of change is characteristic of a+b where the sum is not reducible to either a or b. Baylis also offers that the way that scholars of emergence were looking at the subject was too narrow and that not just any change could be seen as being emergent. “…emergence is not ordinary change in general but is instead consonant with a special kind of change, i.e., one that generates the outcomes which are unpredictable, non-deducible, irreducible, and capable of daunting (not violating) traditional notions of causality and determinism” (69).

Baylis begins by noting the current (1929) importance surrounding the issue of emergence. “The aim of this paper is to point out that, ins spite of the fact that emergence is more widespread than even its most ardent advocates have claimed, for it si indeed ubiquitous, nevertheless it solves none of these problems, supports no one Weltanshauung [worldview] rather than any other, and does not even imply evolution” (71)

Baylis defines emergence: “…are those characters of a complex which are not also characters of a proper part of that complex, and emergence or creative synthesis is that event which occurs when a complex having emergent characters is formed” (72). His example is water, with neither the character of hydrogen or oxygen.

“The attempt to solve some of the traditional problems of philosophy by means of the concept of emergence is no more successful than the attempt to make it imply evolution or value [two things he claims it does not support earlier in the paper]” (78). Emergence gives a name and thus calls attention to a commonly overlooked but nevertheless ubiquitous fact of the universe, the fact, namely, that some of the characters of every complex are different from the characters of any of the elements of that complex” (79). “The concept of emergence, then, has philosophic value in pointing out a fact which no theory may deny and in making possible new and suggestive answers to many of the standard philosophical problems…The concept of emergence is a key which opens new doors to philosophic inquiry, some of which may lead to treasure, but it is not a master key which of itself unlocks the many doors of that seemingly impregnable castle where lie concealed the answers to the various problems of philosophy” (83).

Žižek : Welcome to the Desert of the Real!

Žižek, Slavoj. (2002). Welcome to the desert of the real! : five essays on 11 September and related dates. London ; New York: Verso.

As with many books that I would attempt to summarize, this contains much too much content to do justice in such an abbreviated space. However, because I find this quite helpful, I plod on.

“We ‘feel free’ because we lack the very language to articulate our unfreedom…our ‘freedoms’ themselves serve to mask and sustain our deeper unfreedom” (2). We are asked, in our enlightened societies, to understand that we are free, but this freedom is also masked by an unfreedom, a requirement to obey, to conform, etc. The same is for the choice of democracy or fundamentalism: you are free to choose whatever you would like, as long as it is liberal democracy. See Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, etc.

This book reads like another Zizek book that I read, Iraq: Borrowed Kettle. It is full of striking insights that challenge the reader on each turn, but it bounces from one to another with such speed and seeming haste that it is less simple to string together a coherent theme. That may just be the point.

He talks about the passion for the real that has engulfed our society, and it can be seen everywhere. We want the real so much that it has become unreal. We drink coffee without caffeine, we have beer without alcohol, we have wars without (our) deaths. In fact, the title of the book comes from the scene in the Matrix when Neo is first confronted with real reality (i.e., outside the scope of the computer’s overt control).

This passion for the real is identified as having a core, and this is, “this identification with—this heroic gesture of fully assuming—the dirty obscene underside of Power: the heroic attitude of ‘Somebody has to do the dirty work, so let’s do it!’, a kind of mirror-reversal of the Beautiful Soul which refuses to recognize itself in its result. We find this stance also in the properly Rightist admiration for the celebration of heroes who are ready to do the necessary dirty work: it is easy to do a noble thing for one’s country, up to sacrificing one’s life for it-it is much more difficult to commit a crime for one’s country…” (30).

This helps to transition to Agamben’s Homo Sacer, the person who can be killed but not sacrificed, the living dead. The passion for the real leads some to be treated differently, as existing entirely outside of the law.

He then looks at the “clash of civilization” thesis that has been punted around since Huntington. He rejects this in favor of a clash within civilizations: The anthrax scare was more than likely the cause of Rightist fundamentalists, for example. It isn’t Bush verses Bin Laden, it is all of us against them. Also, there are those who operate between the civilizations, who take up an almost National Homo Sacer position, like Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

Zizek then examines happiness, claiming that it is the betrayal of desire, and giving three ways in which the Czechoslovakian population of the 70s and 80s was happy: their material needs were satisfied, there was the Party to blame for things that didn’t go well and there was the “Other Place…which one was allowed to dream about, and even visit sometimes” (59). This was all disturbed by desire.

We then are taken on a general critique of liberal democracies and tolerance. One must understand that tolerance is not an absolute, and that a society doesn’t need both strong and weak, rich and poor, victim and torturer. He then goes on to introduce a contemporary version of Homo Sacer: Homo Sucker.

“In the good old German Democratic Republic, it was impossible for the same person to combine three features: conviction ()belief in the official ideology), intelligence, and honesty. If you believed and were intelligent, you were not honest; if you were intelligenta dn honest, you were not a believer; if you were a believer and honest, you were not intelligent. Does not the same also hold for the ideology of liberal democracy? If you (pretend to) take the hegemonic liberal ideology seriously, you cannot be both intelligent and honest: you are either stupid or a corrupted cynic. So, if I may indulge in a rather tasteless allusion to Agamben’s Homo sacer, I can risk the claim that the predominant liberal mode of subjectivity today is Homo sucker: while he tries to exploit and manipulate others, he ends up being the ultimate sucker himself. When we think we are making fun of the ruling ideology, we are merely strengthening its hold over us” (71).

There is a continued critique of liberal democracy, with the final section of the 3^rd chapter making an interesting argument. Regarding the murder of Pim Fortuyn, the Dutch politician who was a blend of Rightist populism and political correctness could not be allowed to live. He was, at the same time, gay, friendly with immigrants, and yet held a Le Pen attitude towards further immigration. “…perhaps he had to die because he was living proof that the opposition between Rightist populism and liberal tolerance is a false one, that we are dealing with two sides of the same coin. Should we not, therefore, be striving for the exact opposite of the unfortunate Fortuyn: not the Fascist with a human face, but the freedom fighter with an inhuman face?” (82).

He continues on to skewer the US and their position on torture, how future wars are not to be fought between nations, but between armies and groups of Homo Sacer, how liberals worked to open the discussion to torture (I’m against it, but…), how we all may be Homo Sacer at the end of the day, etc.

How to break out of this? He highlights the case of IDF forces who refused to fight. This represented an ethical act, an act that ruptured the hegemonic discourse of Israel enjoining the Palestinian armed forces to keep their people under control, then attacking when they can not, then blaming the armed forces for not keeping control and attacking IDF forces. “The point is simply that the IDF reservists’ refusal revealed an aspect of the situation which totally undermines the simple opposition of civilized liberal Israelis fighting Islamic fanatics: the aspect precisely, of reducing a whole nation to the status of Homo sacer, submitting them to a network of written and unwritten regulations which deprive them of their autonomy as members of a political community” (126-7).

The attacks of 9/11 did not represent an evil that was any greater than any other major global tragedy, as they have been made out to represent. They were an attempt to awake the Nietzscian Last Man from his eternal “bliss”.

And much more…

Agamben: Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life

Agamben, Giorgio. (1998). Homo sacer: soverign power and bare life (D. Heller-Roazen, Trans.). Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.

This is an incredibly dense text, and I hesitate to even attempt to create an abstract for it. I continue only through the faith that it will help me return to the text in the future to further my understanding.

The book begins, as many do, on the cover. There is a picture of the architectural plans for the Auschwitz camp made so famous for brutally killing so many. This is what Agamben refers to as the camp. For him, the camp has replaced the city as the totalizing, “fundamental biopolitical paradigm of the West” (181).

Agamben’s text is delineated into three sections, each of which is separated by a movement that he calls “Threshold”. The first is an examination of Sovereignty, relying, at least in part on Schmitt’s definition of Sovereignty as being the one who decides on the exception. The second section is an exploration of the idea of Homo Sacer, the person who can not be sacrificed, but who can be killed. The third section highlights the role of the camp in the biopolitical matrix of the West.

He begins his first section by examining the difference between the two Greek meanings of the word “life”. The first is zoe, or life that is common to all living beings. The second is bios, which is a way of living, life tinted with custom. Our zoe has been replaced by a bios; it has been subsumed through the process of biopolitics.

“In particular, the development and triumph of capitalism would not have been possible, from this perspective, without the disciplinary control achieved by the new bio-power, which, through a series of appropriate technologies, so to speak created the “docile bodies” that it needed” (3).

He goes on to say that the, “fundamental categorical pair of Western politics is not that of friend/enemy but that of bare life/political existence, zoe/bios, exclusion/inclusion” (8). This is clearly a response to the Schmittian notion of politics written in The Concept of the Political. This “categorical pair” can be seen in many places, which will be explored later in the book.

The “Paradox of Sovereignty” is then explored. This inconsistency takes place in the nature of sovereignty to be both inside and outside of the juridical order. Agamben then returns to a Schmitt concept and discusses the sovereign’s ability to decide upon the exception. The exception is discussed as being the ban that the sovereign can inflict upon subjects. This ban is, in Agamben’s analysis, evident in a relational form and it highlights the paradox of sovereignty: it can be stated that there is nothing outside of the law, while at the same time the sovereign can place things outside of that law.

This brings us to Home Sacer. This is the person who is the living dead of Agamben’s philosophy. These people have been relegated by the sovereign to be outside of the law, they are people who can not be sacrificed (i.e., they can’t have the privilege of being sacrificed to something greater), but who can be killed. These are the inmates of Guantanamo Bay. These are the undocumented workers who have no legal standing in a society.

Agamben also examines the idea of constituting power and constituted power and eventually relates them to the violence that posits law and the violence that preserves law. Constituted power is power that exists in a structure, i.e., the three branches of government. Constituting power is the potentiality, the power “of the people”. Constituted power is in the state, constituting power is outside of the state.

Homo Sacer and the Sovereign are juxtaposed as representing two sides of the same object: “At the two extreme limits of the order, the sovereign and homo sacer present two symmetrical figures that have the same structure and are correlative: the sovereign is the one with respect to whom all men are potentially hominess sacri, and homo sacer is the one with respect to whom all men act as sovereigns” (84).

The ban is examined in relation to the wolf (lupus, wargus). The ban is broken down etymologically to mean both “at the mercy of” and additionally “out of free will” (110). This duality is also juxtaposed with the idea of bare life, bare existence and how that is compared with ideas of human nature. This is where the grey area between being human and being animal appears.

Life is where the political takes place. This is the elevating of the Foucadian concept of biopolitics to its logical conclusion. The body becomes the template for the acting out of discipline by the sovereign. See: habeas corpus. The entire concept of life has been called into question. Agamben highlights suicide, euthanasia and issues of the beginning and ending of life. The idea of “neomorts” is touched on: those people who have, “the legal status of corpses but would maintain some of the characteristics of life for the sake of future transplants” (164). Eventually, we move into a discussion of eugenics and advances in genetic studies.

“If today there is no longer any one clear figure of the sacred man, it is perhaps because we are all virtually hominess sacri” (115).

There is much to this book that I was not able to cover here. It is excellent and deserves another reading.

Schmitt: Political Theology

Schmitt, C. (2005). Political theology : four chapters on the concept of sovereignty. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.

“Sovereign is he who decides on the exception” (5).

The footnote to the above quote highlights the context in which “the exception” is decided upon. It is specifically economic and political situations in which the application of “extraordinary measures” takes place. The sovereign is one who is not constrained by legal structures or mores. This is no Kantian leader.

“...every legal order is based on a decision, and also the concept of the legal order, which is applied as something self-evident, contains within it the contrast of the two distinct elements of the juristic—norm and decision. Like every other order, the legal order rests on a decision and not on a norm” (10). The norm is what creates the milieu in which the law can be achieved, but it takes a decision to institute that law. Decisions are what move history.

In reference to Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution: “This provision corresponds to the development and practice of the liberal constitutional state, which attempts to repress the question of sovereignty by a division and mutual control of competences” (11).

“The exception is more interesting than the rule. The rule proves nothing; the exception proves everything: It confirms not only the rule but also its existence, which derives only from the exception. In the exception the power of real life breaks through the crust of a mechanism that has become torpid by repetition” (15).

Politics as Old Theology: “All significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts not only because of their historical development—in which they were transferred from theology to the theory of the state, whereby, for example, the omnipotent God became the omnipotent lawgiver—but also because of their systematic structure, the recognition of which is necessary for a sociological consideration of these concepts” (36).

Badiou: Ethics

Badiou, Alain. (2001). Ethics : an essay on the understanding of evil. London ; New York: Verso.

Ethics are everywhere in modern society. Nearly every profession has an ethic that their professionals must uphold. Institutions, be them small county legislative boards or international and monstrous, like the IMF, have codes of conduct. “With respect to today’s socially inflated recourse to ethics, the purpose of this essay is twofold:”

“-To begin with, I will examine the precise nature of this phenomenon, which is the major ‘philosophical’ tendency of the day, as much in public opinion as for official institutions. I will try to establish that in reality it amounts to a genuine nihilism, a threatening denial of thought as such.

-I will then argue against this meaning of the term ‘ethics’, and propose a very different one. Rather than link the word to abstract categories (Man or Human, Right or Law, the Other…), it should be referred back to particular situations. Rather than reduce it to an aspect of pity for victims, it should become the enduring maxim of singular processes. Rather than make of it merely the province of conservatism with a good conscience, it should concern the destiny of truths, in the plural (3)”

The structure of the book proceeds from the subject (Does Man Exist?) to the object (Does the Other Exist?). It then explains how our current discourse of ethics edges towards nihilism (Ethics as a Figure of Nihilism). The final two chapters represent an argument for a different construction of ethics (The Ethic of Truths) and the sorting out of one of the problems with this argument (The Problem of Evil).

In the section that deals with the subject, Badiou begins by examining three thinkers who rejected the universal in favor of the particular. Foucault, Althusser and Lacan are all highlighted as people who looked towards the construction of language, towards processes, and contingency for their clues as to the formulation of theory. Badiou is clear that these thinkers are not indifferent to suffering, as some would claim because of their lack of focus on objectivity. No, “the truth is exactly the opposite: all were—each in his own way, and far more than those who uphold the cause of ‘ethics’ and ‘human rights’ today—the attentive and courageous militants of a cause” (6).

The current, modern construction of ethical is then examined. It is understood to be a priori, negative determinations of evil. He then highlights some of the themes of this project of ethics: a general human subject is posited, politics is subordinate to ethics, Evil is that from which Good is derived and that ‘Human Rights’ are rights to non-Evil (9).

This ethic has become unethical. It is characterized by universal self-interest, a lack of (truly) emancipatory politics and competition. It calls into question what man is, or whether s/he exists. This ethical project identifies people as victims. It reduces man to the level of an animal. It identifies man as the source of evil. It prevents itself from thinking singularly through its negative determination of Evil.

This is not the way to be faithful to ethics or to a situation. To be faithful means, “to treat it right to the limit of possibility. Or, if you prefer: to draw from this situation, to the greatest possible extent, the affirmative humanity that it contains. Or again: to try to be the immortal of the situation” (15).

Badiou rejects this negative and victimizing view of humanity. However, he ends the section with a play-critique from an ethicist: the ethic doesn’t begin with the subject, it begins with the other.

Does the Other Exist?

Badiou begins by looking at Lévinas’ view of the other and determines that a strictly Western, Greek origin of the term will not suffice and that rather a Jewish origin will be more helpful. “The Law, indeed, does not tell me what is, but what is imposed by the existence of others” (19).

This “other”, however, should not be seen as a simple “not-self”, but rather a radical Absolute Other, or, according to Badiou, the ethical name for God. “This means that in order to be intelligible, ethics requires that the Other be in some sense carried by a principle of alterity which transcends mere finite experience” (22). The ethical obligation stems from this radical alterity which is not bound by space and time, i.e. God.

But, since God does not exist (25), what are we left with? We are left with an infinite alterity which is what is there. The differences that we experience between distinct groups of people exist, but that is not what brings together. What brings together is truth, or rather, what deposes difference: in my terms, common experience.

“The only genuine ethics is of truths in the plural—or, more precisely, the only ethics is of processes of truth, of the labour that brings some truths into the world” (28).

Ethics as a Figure of Nihilism

“Ethics is nihilist because its underlying conviction is that the only thing that can really happen to someone is death” (35). Badiou then proceeds into the realm of bio-ethics, biopolitics, etc.

“Considered as a figure of nihilism, reinforced by the fact that our societies are without a figure that can be represented as universal, ethics oscillates between two complementary desires: a conservative desire, seeking global recognition for the legitimacy of the order peculiar to our “Western’ position—the interweaving of an unbridled and impassive economy with a discourse of law; and a murderous desire that promotes and shrouds, in one and the same gesture, an integral mastery of life—or again, that dooms what is to the ‘Western’ mastery of death” (38).

The Ethic of Truths

“If there is no ethics ‘in general’, that is because there is no abstract Subject, who would adopt it as his shield. There is only a particular kind of animal, convoked by certain circumstances to become a subject—or rather, to enter into the composing of a subject” (40). Ethics is a process whereby the subject needs something to have happened, the subject needs an event that goes beyond the universal and identifies the subject in the particular. The subject has to be honest with the event, and respond faithfully to it. “I shall call ‘truth’ (a truth) the real process of a fidelity to an event: that which this fidelity produces in the situation” (42).

The Problem of Evil

Badiou has already explained how an a priori justification of the concept of Evil is problematic. He then goes on to explain where we must begin to examine the existence of Evil. “If Evil exists, we must conceive it from the starting point of the Good. Without consideration of the Good, and thus of truths, there remains only the cruel innocence of life, which is beneath Good and beneath Evil” (60).

He goes on to claim that, of course there is Evil (look at the Nazi’s), but that the Evil only exists because of truths, and that these truths, though they create Evil, do their best to wipe it out. The process works like this: there is an event, a realization, cognitive disequilibrium, which brings about the seed of truth. Then, there is fidelity and exploration of this event. Finally, there is the truth that is created through a process, that is always in a state of yet-to-be. This allows for the three terrors of Badiou: terror (through simulacrum of truth), betrayal (of fidelity), and disaster (the identification of a truth with total power).

Conclusion

“This maxim [an acceptable concept of ethics] proclaims, in its general version, ‘Keep going!’ Continue to be this ‘someone’, a human animal among others, which nevertheless finds itself seized and displaced by the eventual process of a truth. Continue to be the active part of that subject of a truth that you have happened to become” (90-1).

Also:

“The ethics combines, then, under the imperative to ‘Keep going!’, resources of discernment (do not fall for simulacra), of courage (do not give up), and of moderation (do not get carried away to the extremes of Totality)” (91).

Fun Quote:

“Our century has been a graveyard of positivist ideas and progress” (84)

Nietzsche: Genealogy of Morals

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. (1956). The birth of tragedy and The genealogy of morals ([1st ed.). Garden City, N.Y.,: Doubleday.


The Genealogy of Morals is broken down into four sections: 1.) Preface; 2.) “Good and Evil,” “Good and Bad”; 3.) “Guilt,” “Bad Consciousness,” and Related Matters; and 4.) What do Ascetic Ideals Mean?

He begins the preface by deriding those who continuously are looking for more and more knowledge to solve their problems because they do not spend time to examine themselves. “Our treasure lies in the beehives of our knowledge” (149). He then goes on to snidely make the claim, “As for the rest of life—so=-called “experience—who among us is serious enough for that? Or has time enough?” (149).

This book is a snide, rude and polemical attack (both polemic and attack are different translations for its subtitle) that attempts to use a distinct methodology to write history. As opposed to other authors who focus on the fact of history, be it material or ideational, this account focuses on cultural symbols as the starting ground for building and telling a historical story. Etymology plays an important role in explaining concepts. Symbols, mostly religious in nature, help Nietzsche tell his story about the trajectory that morality has taken throughout history.

In the first essay, Nietzsche examines the roots of good/bad and good/evil. He uses etymology to derive the base of good as being noble and the base of bad as being common, plebian. Good is synonymous with activity, health, strength, etc. Bad is a synonymous with the antonyms of the terms in the previous sentence.

Nietzsche also uses the priestly class as a tool for the development of his history. The priestly class derived from the noble class and stood above the slave class. However, because of their natural constraints, they were never able to engage in the “good” that the noble class so enjoyed. They were impotent in battle, constrained by moral law, and thus lashed out against the nobility.

He writes that the Jews created the slave revolt in morality, which is a revolt that begins by saying, “no” to the other, the one who stands in opposition. All of the action on the part of the slave is reactionary; they require an object to stand against themselves (171).

The weak are weak, but they claim superiority because they do not act as vengefully as the strong. However, the strong act as they do because they must, just like the bird of prey attacks, kills and eats the lamb. The bird of prey is not castigated because it is naturally inclined to eat lamb, no, it is understood that this is a natural expression of the circle of life.

In the second essay, Nietzsche addresses guilt and bad consciousness. He claims that humans are distinct from other animals in that they are able to make promises to one another. This is the beginnings of a system of credit and debt. Those who owe others and who can not pay are punished.

Additionally, because we have an understanding of those who came before us, our ancestors, we feel like we owe them for our existence, though it is impossible to pay them for this. This is one reason that we construct a god that we can worship and to whom we can offer gifts. Gods were also invented so that the spectacle of punishment did not go unobserved. It’s all much more complicated than that, but that’s all I’ll say for now.

In the third essay, Nietzsche explains that it is human nature to avoid a void and to search move towards a goal. Will eventually becomes to be represented by the ascetic ideal, which is represented by poverty, humility and chastity. The Ascetic ideal is the way forward, the remaining essence left over from the classical period for the philosopher.

The book, as stated earlier, is written as a polemic, or an attack and does provoke the reader in many places. Nietzsche looks as if he embraces cruelty, misogyny, anti-Semitic thought, war, etc. However, it may be more helpful to read him as providing a descriptive reading of history using a genealogical methodology, with hyperbole thrown in for show. If he is read from this perspective, he provides an account of history that is critical of modernity and liberalism in the sense that they attempt to obscure realities of the interaction of beings operating within nature. They search for knowledge and have forgotten about experience.

Hegel: Reason in History

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. (1953). Reason in history, a general introduction to the philosophy of history. New York,: Liberal Arts Press.

Reason in History is a compilation of notes taken by some of Hegels students. It is an attempt to understand Hegel’s approach and method through his teaching, filtered by students, as opposed to through his other works, like Phenomenology of Spirit. That being said, it is occasionally a difficult read, as the notes from different students are roughly spliced together.

Firstly, the Robert Hartman introduction is very thorough, dense and may want to be approached after you read Hegel’s text. Hartman explains the dialectic process of Hegel, how the thesis leads to the antithesis, how that then leads to a synthesis, or something new, and then how that synthesis negates something in itself and thus becomes the new thesis.

The key for Hegel’s thought is that sense certainly leads to consciousness, and then that this consciousness leads to an acknowledgement of the other, and thus a negation of the self. This then leads to the interpretation and acknowledgement of the is and the ought, which causes the tension which eventually leads to a synthesis. This is all much more thoroughly fleshed out in Phenomenology of Spirit.

Hegel begins by identifying three types of writing history, and eventually makes a case for him using the Philosophical History as the method for his writings. The first two types of writing history are the Original History and the Reflective History.

Original History was practiced by historians who, “transferred what was externally present into the realm of mental representation and thus translated the external appearances into inner conception—much as does the poet, who transforms perceptual material into mental images” (3). These historians, “transform the events, actions and situations present to them into a work of representative thought” (4).

Reflective History is broken down into four parts: 1.) Universal History: present the totality of a country’s history; 2.) Pragmatic History: make this historic narrative practically important; 3.) Critical History: evaluation of historic narratives and examination of their trustworthiness; and 4.) Fragmentary History: refer to the whole of a people’s history.

This brings us to the Philosophical History method: the thoughtful contemplation of history (10).

He then moves on to describe the structure of the dialectical process of history and he sets history in motion. Firstly, the thesis is the Idea, the a priori estimations that are made sans empirical evidence. This is the thesis, the ought, the noumenal. The Idea, operating through Thought, produces Reason, or, in Hegel’s words, “Reason is Thought determining itself in absolute freedom” (15). Then there is the State, or Nature, resting squarely on an empirical foundation, on a posteriori adjudications. These two stand in contrast to one another, and they bring about the synthesis of Spirit, which is the, “substance of history” (20).

“World history in general is the development of Spirit in Time, just as nature is the development of the Idea in Space” (87). Understanding this is vital to understanding Hegel more generally. The Idea develops in Space, which is actually what we would think about as space/time. It is a specific development at a specific time and space. However, this gets translated and begins to move through history when the Spirit develops in Time. However, according to Hartman (xxii), this Time is Time of Consciousness, or a universal Time that operates above and beyond our specific Space/Time.

Thus the Spirit emerges from the synthesis of Idea interacting with Nature, what is interacting with what ought. Then Spirit, like the Phoenix, arises from its own ashes refreshed and renewed and becomes the Thesis. Spirit also contains within it all of its previous iterations, and thus learns from the past and progresses into the future towards greater absolute freedom.

Baudrillard: The Spirit of Terrorism

Baudrillard, Jean, & Baudrillard, Jean. (2003). The spirit of terrorism ; and, Other essays (New ed.). London ; New York: Verso.

This is a short book, a glorified pamphlet, if you will, of four essays: The Spirit of Terrorism, Requiem for the Twin Towers, Hypotheses on Terrorism and The Violence of the Global. I will look briefly at what he says, will take part of my analysis from a professor of mine (who probably wouldn’t want to be named) and then make a brief conclusion.

Baudrillard looks at 9/11 as an event; as something that is meaningless and shatters the globalizing, totalizing violence of our current international system. 9/11 partially becomes an event because it does rupture the homogenizing violence of globalization.

“We may dismiss from the outset the hypothesis that September 11 constituted merely an accident or incident on the path to irreversible globalization. An ultimately despairing hypothesis, since something very extraordinary occurred there, and to deny it is to admit that henceforth nothing can even constitute an event, that we are doomed to play out the flawless logic of global power capable of absorbing any resistance, any antagonism, and even strengthening itself by so doing—the terrorist act merely hastening the planetary ascendancy of a single power and a single way of thinking” (51).

It is also an event because it invokes the spirit of terrorism. The “Spirit of Terrorism” is “a death which is symbolic and sacrificial—that is to say, the absolute, irrevocable event” (17). The terrorist, “have assimilated everything of modernity and globalism, without changing their goal, which is to destroy that power. They have even—and this is the height of cunning—used the banality of American every day life as cover and camouflage” (19).

He then looks at how this event ruptured our construction of images. “The role of images is highly ambiguous. For, at the same time as they exalt the event, they also take it hostage” (27). The image was ruptured, partially because the material was brought back to the image. The video of people jumping from buildings, the smoke billowing down the streets channeled by buildings, these made a Manhattan Horror Film real.

Since the modern image was ruptured and brought to face reality, the question of how to respond to such an event becomes problematic. How can you have a meaningful response when the very idea of meaning is problematized? For Baudrillard, it seems as if 9/11 brought about a sense of relief that the singular event could still rupture the ever-growing influence of hegemonic cultural ideals.

Another interesting note is a quote that allows Baudrillard to be snarlingly reviewed by the NY Times. The review says this (on the back of the book):

“First prize for cerebral coldbloodedness goes to French philosopher Jean Baudrillard… It takes a rare, demonic genius to brush off the slaughter of thousands on the grounds that they were suffering from severe ennui brought about by boring modern architecture.”

The quote that they are referring to is this:

“The violence of globalization also involves architecture, and hence the violent protest against it also involves the destruction of that architecture. In terms of collective drama, we can say that the horror for the 4,000 victims of dying in those towers was inseparable from the horror of living in them—the horror of living and working in sarcophagi of concrete and steel” (41)

No one would discount the coldbloodedness of this statement, though the NY Times may have taken it out of context. Baudrillard is pointing to the violence of the global, specifically through looking at how that violence can be portrayed in architecture. He certainly does not feel like the WTC was destroyed, in fact, he believes that, since it has moved from material space to the ideation space, it has transformed. “By the grace of terrorism, the World Trace Center has become the world’s most beautiful building—the eighth wonder of the world!” (48).