Abraham's faith

This section in Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling starts out with a critique of the Hegelian system. Using the pseudonym of Johannes de silentio, Kierkegaard states that faith cannot be understood as a "concept" because it is unknown. This is seen when Johannes writes that "Even if one were able to convert the whole content of faith into conceptual form, it does not follow that one has comprehended faith, comprehended how one entered into it or how it entered into one" (p. 5).

Johannes continues to question the role of faith in the life of human beings by analyzing Abraham's biblical story; God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son Issac on Mount Moriah, Abraham does not question God's command and sets out to kill his son. When Abraham is about to commit the act an angel appears and tells him that his fear and thus his faith to God has been proven and that he does not need to kill his son anymore (Genesis 22:1-19). Johannes states that this story is hard to comprehend and that he wished he could had been there at the moment it occurred, to see it at first hand. Therefore, the author presents four alternative scenarios to the story of Abraham. Each has a more comprehensible reason for the outcome. By this the author sets out to question why Abraham's acts are so hard to comprehend. Why do alternative stories make more sense than a story of man who undoubtedly followed God's command? By examining in detail the biblical story Johannes concludes that Abraham was the greatest of all man because of his undoubtful faith to God. Johannes highlights that Abraham did not tremble when God asked him to sacrifice his son and he did not beg. Abraham did not doubt God's command, he just followed it with faith in God and the purposes of his command.

This section of the book was quite an interesting one. Knowing the story of Abraham from my religious upbringing, whenever I have thought of it, I have also found myself trying to understand if complete faith is possible, and if so why should it be the representation of goodness? In my perspective Religion is a very complicated topic, sometimes leading us to leave behind what we consider ethical in order to accept the religious beliefs that tell us what it is right. For example, is it ethical for a father to kill his own son? I don't think so, regardless of a the reason a son is a son something that is so valuable for a human being. Also, the idea of a supreme being is something that goes beyond our experience and yet we are qualified as "good" if we accept our relationship to the unknown without questioning. This ideas represent a quarrel between Faith and Reason. To what extent can we accept that which mandates our existence if we do not understand what it is? In order to behave like Abraham we have to shut down our faculty of reason and simply believe that the unknown is right for us.

Marx, Human Activity, and Consciousness

Continuing his barrage on the Hegelian “speculative impulse” which Marx stated becomes rubbish, once the history of human activity is taken into account. Marx adds, it is “[w]here speculation ends-in real life- there real, positive science begins: the representation of the practical activity, of the practical process of development of men” (p.48).

Initially man, in his initial state in history was conscious, but mentally, not far more equipped than the animal that reacts immediately off instinct. As time went on nevertheless, man, became more conditioned by the circumstances brought upon him by history. These conditions or circumstances prompted his activity, in order to fulfill means, such as to hunt in order to eat. Through human activity, the consciousness of man evolved, along with the circumstances of which man himself had influence on.

For example, it would have been very difficult for a primitive man, to take down a giant mammoth all by himself. Through the development and employment of language to communicate strategies, along with the co-operation of other men e.g. “productive force,” it made the hunting of the mammoth more feasible. Thus, the hunting of a mammoth, would have achieved the mean of feeding the community. As man evolved, the population grew, and small game could not feed the population. Therefore, new methods had to be applied to new circumstances, both evolving with human activity. In this example, the hunt for bigger game could have been prompted by population growth, caused by human activity (sexual intercourse).

In sum through human activity, new modes of production developed in order to achieve new means, brought upon by new circumstances that man influenced. For example, language which is as “old as consciousness, and is practical consciousness,” (p.51) along with other developments of “moments” or stages in time, and human activity. Was man able to rise out of simple consciousness, aware only to its “immediate sensuous environment” (p. 51)

Competing Notions of Freedom in Marx

In the section titled “Individuals, Class, and Community” (p. 82-86), Marx discusses competing conceptions of freedom and the relation of individuals to larger interactive groups / constructs. Marx points out that the right to, “the undisturbed enjoyment, within certain conditions, of fortuity and chance has up till now been called personal freedom,” (86) but argues that true personal freedom cannot exist until the competitive (i.e. Capitalist) class State is overthrown for a more equal structure. As Marx says, “only in community is personal freedom possible” (83). Marx believes that because we are given our identity through class, and we compete as members of that class against the other classes, especially the ruling class, we are not in a state of true personal freedom. We will always be driven by and held to the struggle of our class against the other classes. As Marx explains, “the class.. achieves existence over against the individuals, so that the latter find their conditions of existence predestined, and hence have their position in life and their personal development assigned to them by their class” (82) . Marx believes that, just as the serfs overthrow the feudal structure to progress towards freedom, so too does the proletariat have to make a drastic organizational change to continue this progress towards true freedom. As Marx puts it, “to assert themselves as individuals, they must overthrow the State” (85). Although we might think of ourselves as individuals acting freely in the current political and socioeconomic structure, we are actually slaves to the class of which we are a member. The eternal conflict between the separate classes keeps us from being free, and from this conflict is where the notion of community evolves as the inevitable solution. Is as long as the classes exist in conflict, competing with each other for more and more property and status, we cannot be free, then the only logical solution to this problem is a structure in which the classes are all equal (or there is only one class of which we are all members, which in the end has the same effect). As Marx puts it, “this subsuming of individuals under definite classes cannot be abolished until a new class has taken shape, which has no long any particular class interest to assert against the ruling class” (83).

It is interesting to think that it might be the case that only when we are all working together for the same collective goal are we truly free. Most conceptions of freedom today are something like the ability to do what one wants when one wants, under no constrictions to anything external. Marx, however, is arguing that it is only through the creation of the ultimate external force, community, that we can achieve true freedom. He says that, “the condition of their existence, labour, and with it all the conditions of existence governing modern society, have become something accidental, something over which they, as separate individuals, have no control, and over which no social organization can give them control” (85), but this seems to be exactly opposed to our notion of government. American society (perhaps the strongest example of a capitalist society in modernity) seems to hold that individuals can come together to create change in our society. Marx seems to believe in a one-way relationship from class / society to the individuals, but we seems to believe in a more reciprocal relationship. I wonder, then, if given a reciprocal relationship between individuals and class, we might be allowed to consider ourselves “free”?

Town to Country

Marx discusses further the division of labor, but with respect to the concepts of town and country. It is precisely through the existing “antagonism” between them that defines human activity and the fact that it precedes and is the basis of human reason or consciousness of any sort. It seems that Marx supposes a relationship between town and country that is inseparable, insofar as there is a transition back and forth between them, and that each knows the other through some type of opposition. The town is equated with landed property, community, and barbarism, which suggests unification amongst the people and labor that is subject to the actual means of production (i.e. the land). The country is merely the opposite; it is characterized by private property, individualism, and civilization, suggesting a separation that on the one hand appreciates and encompasses the implications of the town, and on the other hand transcends that of the town by allowing for a more complex and sophisticated system. The town gradually makes its way through improvement towards industry and ultimately to the phase of country by way of manufacturing and trade. This movement can also be seen as the division of material and mental labor, in which Marx considers exactly the separation of town and country, and to me exactly demonstrates their relationship. I will propose that Marx means mental labor as the rise of intellect or rationality in correspondence to material labor. As material labor is advancing, mental labor is becoming an increasing necessity. Each one serves to mediate the other. Similarly, the town is transforming more into the country. Hence, both parties are striving for agreement.

The idea of the country seems to overpower that of the town, even as the town becomes closer to the ideal of country. The town anew mirrors the country, but remains a part of a larger concept of country. On a very literal sense, I will mention that Marx uses England as an example where trade and manufacture were centralized and created for them a world market (Marx 77), while the town (in some cases, not all) reveres England and attempts to follow their lead. This developing relationship between town and country is, as we move through history, a basic element that is built upon. There is not much, though, to inquire about this aspect of Marx’s account as I have condensed Marx's elaborate relationship between town and country, in which serve to facilitate the manifest of ideas such as property, as well as, in the end revolution.

Is it really a thing? Or is it an illusion?

He begins this section that the private property was once the movable property (ex. Slaves). Property also evolves along the way as our economy grows and our practice changes ("feudal landed property, corporative movable property, capital invested in manufacture, and the modern capital in big industry and universal competition" p.79). With this in mind, if we link these kinds of property in connection to the state, we would find that the "the state has become a separate entity, beside and outside civil society" (p.80). From Marx's POV, the state has gradually become the ruled by the bourgeois ("the individuals of a ruling class assert their common interests" p.80).Marx also seems to be arguing that within the state, law has become a tool for the ruling class, and that it only has "just as little as an independent history as religion" (p.81). The most typical Marxist point he draws here is that THE POWERFUL RULES, and that they set the rules of the game (according to their interest) for the less powerful to follow. The evidence he finds is the illusion created where law is based on the free will.

As the result of the will, jus abutendi explains the relationship between people and civil law; it is "the right of using and consuming (also abusing)" (81), a kind of private property where people have the right to (even) dispose it at will. Within this illusion, it "reduces law to mere will" and only becomes a “true property” when it is in transition from one owner to another (81). Because one does not gain any economic values from these “true property”, one has the option to abuse it (and not let others have it), or dispose it (which would then pass the ownership of a “thing” to another).

Moreover, Marx notes that “this juridical illusion… leads… to the position that a man may have a legal title to a thing without really having the thing” (81). Even though the new owner has the jus abutendi after the transition, if the new owner does not have enough capital to cultivate this new “thing” that they gain, it would be useless. One of the obvious examples we can see in US history is when African-Americans were first liberated from being slaves, but then later found themselves being segregated within the society. First, they were liberated (from the Emancipation Proclamation) as if they have legal title to freedom, but the question is, were they really free? Do they really have the thing, namely freedom? Did they really have enough “capital” to “cultivate” this freedom they have (note that some even remain with their owner in the field because they realize they have no capital at all)? Even after Civil Rights, many often blame African-Americans that they do not work hard enough to “cultivate” this freedom they have gain throughout history. Perhaps this juridical illusion still exists today in many aspects in our life, but many might think differently about this nowadays.

Ideologies, Past and Present

After struggling through the readings for Kant and Hegel, I was relieved to come across this quote: “… the ‘liberation’ of ‘man’ is not advanced a single step by reducing philosophy, theology, substance and all the trash to ‘self-consciousness’ and by liberating man from the domination of these phrases, which have never held him in thrall” (p 61). Marx views the philosophical contribution of his predecessors as “dogmatic dreamings and distortions … explained perfectly easily from their practical position in life, their job, and the division of labour” (p 68). That is, the works of Hegel and of Kant stem from their particular role in the division of labor in society. The role of a philosopher, “the thinkers of a class,” presupposes the division of mental and material labor. Implicit in this division is the hegemony of the ruling class’ ideas, and in the case of Hegel, “the hegemony of the spirit in history” (p 67). By grounding the abstractions of consciousness as originating from society’s mode of production, Marx provides an interdisciplinary critique of human history and modern societies.

In Marx’s time period, the production and consumption of a product was readily apparent in a single country. Today, as Marx anticipated, production and consumption activities extend beyond what were once national, geographical, and cultural barriers. This globalization of capitalism is due to the increasing intensification of the division of labor whereby the specialization of labor leads to increased efficiencies in the form of technological advancements to allow for the further accumulation of capital via the expansion of the production, distribution, exchange, and consumer relations (p 43). The shift from an industrial to a service economy in the U.S. is part of a continual process of capital accumulation. The cheap labor of previously colonized countries is now further exploited to produce the assorted manufactured goods we consume in the U.S. The dominance of capitalism is owed to the capital accumulated from colonized countries via the extraction of natural resources as well as the unpaid labor of slaves. Today’s dominance of capitalism is owed to capital accumulation via the credit market, through loans used to pay for housing and education. Therefore the capitalist mode of production has not changed; however, the means of production, the “stages of development in the division of labor,” continuously change to allow for further capital accumulation and expansion.

Any social grievances (social issues of poverty, racism, sexism, healthcare, etc.), ultimately derive from the capitalist mode of production, namely a class based mode of production. And the solution must involve the transformation of the mode of production. The transformation process is described in materialist terms, “to overthrow the existing state of society by a … revolution” (p 55). A transformation of the capitalist mode of production, according to Marx, must disrupt the flow of capital accumulation. The disruption is not achieved by the rallies and protests against austerity measures held at Hunter, for example, which are safely confined to the sidewalk and do not even disrupt the flow of traffic. Collective bargaining rights, by comparison, restricts the exploitation of labor thereby disrupting capital accumulation.

The transformation of the mode of production and the form in which such a transformation should take is difficult for me to grasp. I was born in the Reagan era of neoliberalization, the globalization of capitalism, so it seems impossible to even conceive the communism Marx hints at throughout this section. Still, the critique he offers is invaluable, especially when the capitalist mode of production is assumed to be the best alternative. Therefore I do not mean to contradict Marx’s assertion that “not criticism but revolution is the driving force of history, also of … philosophy and all other types of theory” (p 59). This criticism seems to refer more to idealism, not the dialectical materialism Marx describes.

Marx's Materialism

The reading for today focused almost exclusively Marx's definition of production. Marx explains his conception of production and its aspects – consumption, distribution, exchange – and their relation to society and history. What I found most interesting, especially in light of previous class readings, was his view of, and gripes with, materialism.

In the Theses on Feuerbach, Marx outlines explicitly some of the limitations of all prior materialism – first and foremost being the separation of sensuous object from human activity or practice. For Marx, truth in contemplation alone is inconsequential; our truth is determined by practice. Feuerbach, among others, seems to have a tendency toward abstraction – in attempts to find the truth of a situation, or of society, the materialists have contemplated isolated aspects of the world (e.g. the individual, 'religious sentiment') abstractly, or outside of their relation to the larger whole. Marx argues that it makes no sense to consider the individual, or an other aspect of society, outside of the historical epoch or particular form of society.

In light of these complaints, then, one can see why Marx seems to bolster the traditional 'materialist doctrine' by grounding it historically, economically, socially etc. For him everything is determined historically and socially. Even abstracted concepts cannot be outside of historical parameters. As he explains, using labor as an example, the abstract categories of society (or of any institution) can only be valid for the specific historical conditions to which they belong.

The necessary relation of part to whole comes up throughout the reading in various forms. Particularly in explaining material production, Marx talks about distribution, consumption, and exchange as aspects of the larger whole of production. While each part may be distinguished from the whole, they are all still initiated and determined by production. Furthermore, the problems which arise in generalized abstraction are solved when they are explained with increasing specificity (from Marx's explanation of the uneven development of material production, using Greek art as an example – p. 150). In other words, the whole cannot be understood apart from its relation to its parts.

With Marx, our focus has shifted from the traditional realm of metaphysics, beyond experience, to the totality of human action (i.e “the ensemble of the social relations” [p.122]). The forces that determine history and its phases are the modes of production, political economy, class, etc. - the sum of the relations of society and economy. Marx mentions Hegel by name several times in the reading, and given our reading schedule, the influence of one on the other seems obvious (For instance, the whole-part relationship and historical determinism are large themes in Hegel's writing as well). When Marx writes that “active side [of contemplation?] was developed abstractly by idealism,” (p. 121) I took him to be referring, possibly, to Hegel, but I'm not sure what he's talking about specifically. As mentioned above, we can see general notions in Hegel that seem to have contributed to Marx's thought, but what other ideas might have been developed by idealism that we see in Marx's materialism? It seems like an idealism “which...does not know real, sensuous activity” would be fundamentally unable to contribute a kind of materialism that takes into account activity/practice.