What Soren Kierkegard Might Think of Americans

In his book Two Ages, which is superficially a review of a Thomasine Gyllembourg novel with the same name, Kierkegaard examines the political and social dissimilarities between the Romantic period and the modern period. 

‘‘The present age is essentially reasoning, reflective, passionless, fickly flaring up in enthusiasm and shrewdly resting in indolence’’ (Kierkegaard, 1846/1978, p. 64).

In particular, Kierkegaard critiques such communicative activities as chatter, everyday talk, the press, and the commodification of discourse. Each of these activities is involved in the process Kierkegaard calls leveling. Kierkegaard presents an understanding of how communication activities can create—and individuals can put on—a culturally accepted, but objective, socially constructed definition of self. According to Kierkegaard, this process of leveling leads to objectivity and personal irresponsibility.

Leveling takes individuals out of themselves and makes them part of the public, which for Kierkegaard is an abstraction. Through the continual comparison of selves to others, we create and develop secondhand needs, desires, and definitions of selfhood—of who and what we are to be (Kierkegaard, 1847/1993). 

‘‘The trend today is in the direction of mathematical equality, so that in all classes about so-and-so many uniformly make one individual’’ (Kierkegaard, 1846/1978, p. 85). 

Kierkegaard is charging that unreflective communicative processes create a homogeneous abstraction—the public—where all socialized persons become interchangeable and where no one lives as an individual. Thus, one becomes a mere representation of a type, or a follower of an ideology, a part of the crowd.

Through leveling, the individual accepts society’s monological definitions of one’s self. Kierkegaard claims that rather than enabling people to take personal responsibility for their lives, the modern way of life makes it difficult to be anything other than conformists. The individual: 

‘‘forgets himself, forgets his name (in the divine understanding of it), does not dare to believe in himself, finds it too venture- some a thing to be himself, far easier and safer to be like the others, to become an imitation, a number in a crowd’’ (Kierkegaard, 1849/1980, pp. 166–167). 

According to Kierkegaard, most people in modernity merely reflect the norms and attitudes of the social world into which they happen to be thrown. In the modern age, individual feelings of self-worth and personal identity are based upon the socially accepted criteria of comparative worth. One distinctive modern day dilemma, the constant comparison with our neighbor’s material goods called ‘‘keeping up with the Joneses,’’ can be viewed as one example of leveling.

Looking at the Joneses is merely an expression of what our culture tells us we are supposed to have. When we don’t “have” what our culture determines what we are supposed to have the discourses become the discourses of lack. Rather than finding fulfillment, these discourses press upon us. “I should have…” “I want…” I need…” 

We find ourselves frustrated, incomplete, unsatisfied. We are looking not at inner growth, or inner strength, but outside of ourselves. Again we find lack.  Rather than questioning the concept of conspicuous consumption and the critically looking at the entire operation of these discourses imposed upon us by society, we turn inward and against ourselves. 

As Kierkegaard wrote, 

"The human being compares himself with others; the one generation compares itself with the other and thus the heaped-up pile of comparisons overwhelms a person. As the ingenuity and busyness increase, there comes to be more and more in each generation who slavishly work a whole lifetime far down in the low underground regions of comparison" (Kierkegaard, 1847/1993, p. 189)

What would Kierkegaard think? I’m not certain, but I think he’d be shocked that we spend so much time and effort and resources and money on things that don’t really matter. Remember the person who dies with the most toys is still – in the end – dead.

10 Philosophy Books 4 Your Perusal (Pt 10): Heidegger's Being and Time

Martin Heidegger: Being and Time

M.H.

People have problems with Martin Heidegger. And with good reason. Of course he was a member of the Nazi Party, which is the culmination of his ass-headedness. Martin had proven himself to be an asshole however, long before this. 

Hanna Arendt

For example, after praising his mentor Edmund Husserl's work, he completely contradicted it and abused it, turning Husserl's phenomenological project on its head. Of course for someone so smart, Husserl wasn't too bright. He's the one who published Being and Time without realizing Heidegger was lambasting his ideas. He had a number of affairs including with Hanna Arendt, a Jew...yeah...like I said...he was a real jerk. Not for sexing it up with a Jewess, but doing so while becoming a Nazi. 

Hitler und M. H.

He was elected the Rector of the University of Freiburg and his first act as Rector was to eliminate all democratic structures, including those that had elected him Rector. (Sounds like a good Nazi, yes?) 


And yet, very few philosophers have influenced  so many branches of philosophy: existentialism, hermeneutics, deconstructionism, postmodernism, phenomenology. And there is little doubt that of the 20th century philosophical tomes, none is as deep and as rich (or as difficult) as Heidegger's Being and Time. (Sartre & Foucault not withstanding.) So lets look at some of Being and Time. 

While I am not going to explicitly examine the following, it is important to recognize that for Heidegger (1962) as he elucidated in Being and Time, Dasein (the human being) is always in the world. Dasein exists in, along with and is a natural part of it and cannot be separated from it. Dasein is always there, thrown into an existing in the world. Dasein always exists in this context of ‘worldliness.’ This is important, because Dasein therefore cannot get behind, or go beyond his temporal existence in the world and this placement in the world means that Dasein must determine how to exist in, alongside and with it. Dasein relates to the world through care (Sorge), through a defining relation, through the realization that this Being is its own Being, as therefore it has direct concern and responsibility for this Being. This is one of the major breaks between Heidegger and Husserl, the latter wanting to bracket the existence of the world (and hence care) through the epoché.


In Being and Time, there is a tension set up almost from the start between two possible, mutually exclusive modes of Being in which Dasein might exist. These modes are authenticity (eigentlich sein) and inauthenticity (uneigentlich sein). In the ontology of Being and Time, these two possible modes of existence belong to the essential constitution of Dasein. Dasein must choose these modes of existence. In choosing to be authentic, Dasein chooses itself and wins itself. In inauthenticity, Dasein chooses the public interpretations of the self, takes on the conceptions of the ‘they’ and hence loses itself. It is important to note, however, that these two modes of existence are not directly dichotomous, nor oppositional (p. 67-69). They are not an either/or. Dasein does not choose to be authentic once, and then will forever be authentic. Rather, Dasein must choose again and again whether to be authentic or inauthentic, because these possibilities belong to its essential constitution. The need to choose is constant.

Kierkegaard

{Let me clarify with an example from Christianity. Strict Calvinists believe in the doctrine of “once saved, always saved,” that is, once you have made the decision for Christ, you are sealed and cannot ever not be saved. On the other hand, the Armenians conception of salvation is that salvation is worked out through ‘fear and trembling,’ and in order to be saved, one must make the choice to ‘be’ a Christian at each instant. Of course Heidegger was not discussing salvation in Being and Time, but the allegory helps to illuminate Dasein’s need to choose the authentic or inauthentic constantly. By the way, in case you did not notice - Fear and Trembling - is the title of one of Kierkegaard's books. Heidegger stole a lot of ideas from Kierkegaard, btw.}

It is important to recognize the constant need to choose because the possibility of authenticity and inauthenticity are constitutions of Dasein, living inauthentically in no way makes Dasein less Dasein. There is no lower degree of being. However, there are distinctions between living the authentic life and living inauthentically, and like Kierkegaard, Heidegger’s conception includes the ‘they.’ What is the ‘they?’ As Heidegger notes, “The ‘they’ is an existentiale; and as a primordial phenomenon, it belongs to Dasein’s positive consititution…” (p. 167). The ‘they’ and ‘they-self’ comprise Dasein in its everydayness. Because Dasein is always in the world, this being-in necessarily signifies being-with others. This being-with is a necessary component of Dasein’s existential everydayness. While Dasein cannot escape this everydayness, it is in this being-with-others where the possibility of inauthenticity lies.

In this being-with-others, Dasein can live in fallenness (Verfallen), which connotes deterioration or a crumbling (Golumb, 1995). Rather than existing on our own terms, with our own defining relation, we accept and incorporate the meanings, which are given to us from the outside. “The Self of everyday Dasein is the they-self, which we distinguish from the authentic Self – that is from the self which has been taken hold of in its own way” (p. 167). We accept the definitions and the responsibilities of the ‘they.’ From this description of the they-self, Dasein has the possibility of laying aside its care, its defining relation and accepting conventional wisdom as its own.


To Dasein’s state of being belongs falling. Proximally and for the most part Dasein is lost in its “world.” Its understanding, as a projection of possibilities of Being, has diverted itself thither. Its absorption in the “they” signifies that it is dominated by the way things are publicly interpreted (p. 264).


Dasein comes to believe given unexamined meanings as important and significant to it, when they in actuality are not. This acceptance of the inauthenticity of the “they-self,” and the laying aside of Dasein’s care is to live in falleness.


In Being and Time, Heidegger examines communication as it relates to inauthenticity and fallenness. In particular, he examines idle talk. Futher in the same passage where he describes falleness, Heidegger continues, “That which has been uncovered and disclosed stands in a mode in which it is disguised and closed off by idle talk, curiosity, and ambiguity” (p. 264). No longer is Dasein concerned with care, its own-most being, nor its defining relation. Rather, in fallenness those are to some extent hidden, as the face of a friend at a masquerade ball – you know who it is, even if you cannot see his face.


In everydayness, Dasein is confronted with the possibility of maintaining authenticity or losing it through discourse, because,


this discoursing has lost its primary relationship-of-Being towards the entity talked about, or has never achieved such a relationship, it does not communicate in such a way as to let this entity be appropriated in a primordial manner, but communicates rather by following the route of gossiping and passing the word along. What is said-in-the-talk as such, spreads in wider circles and takes on an authoritative character (p. 212).


In everydayness the pre-conceived and uncritically accepted conventional wisdom, Dasein loses itself. Dasien, by accepting the rules and roles of society’s conventionality, is a leveling down of one’s defining relation. “Every kind of priority gets noiselessly suppressed. Overnight, everything that is primordial gets glossed over as something that has been well known” (p. 165).


The “they” however, as an existentiale, is not some amorphous third person, the herd, or the crowd. In fact, despite the term’s third-person implication, the “they” is in fact intricate to being Dasein. Rather, the “they-self” is an act, a way of being Dasein, accomplished by Dasein’s accommodation of the interpretations of the self and the world, through idle talk, curiosity, novelty and ambiguity. “If Dasein is familiar with itself as they-self, this means that at the same time the “they” itself prescribes that way of interpreting the world and Being-in-the-world which lies closest” (p. 167). Living in the “they” then, is not the fault of some third party, but is Dasein’s responsibility. If Dasein projects itself into the future based upon the internalized categories supplied by the “they,” it is by default self-limiting – Verfallen. 
The trick is for Dasein to live as an individual and in the everydayness of Verfallen (Guignon, 1984).  


Of course given all this great thinking...how was he able to join the most malevolent political party ever? Perhaps Martin had the most pronounced version of cognitive dissonance ever.  


And since this is the last of the philosophy books series, here are the links to the previous nine for your perusal.




Number 9: Ion by Aristotle
Number 8: Care of the Self by Foucault
Number 7: The Ethics of Authenticity by Charles Taylor
Number 6: I & Thou by Martin Buber
Number 5: The Communist Manifesto by Marx & Engels
Number 4: The Reasons of Love by Henry Frankfurt
Number 3: Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing by Soren Kierkegaard
Number 2: The Rebel - Albert Camus
Number 1: The Theory of Moral Sentiments - Adam Smith

10 Philosophy Books 4 Your Perusal (Pt 9): Ion

“Socrates Is an Ass!”

As Represented by Plato (ARP) in Ion

Yeah. We are going old school this time. Very old school. While most people choose things like The Republic, or Artistotle's Ethics when talking about the ancient Greeks, I chose Ion. Why? Because its funny, rude, obnoxious, and delightful. 

This little dialogue seems a simple conversation between Socrates (ARP) the philosopher and Ion the rhapsodic performer. As usual, Socrates (ARP) uses lots of sarcasm and irony in this dialogue, which he quickly expresses. Although this may seem a rather insipid conversation, to the initiated it is chock full of interesting little tidbits.

What’s the General Gist?

Ion suggests not only is he a good reciter of poetry but is also an exegete who can interpret and explain what a poem is about. The central question in the Ion is one of privilege and qualification. Who is qualified to be an interpreter of the privileged language of the past? Who can correctly interpret Homer or any of the other poets? For example, when the performer recites Homer’s description of being a general, how is it that Ion can know what it is to be a good or bad general. Can he judge good “doctoring?”

Ion is denied this role, because he relies on inspiration, rather than knowledge (episteme) and practical skill (tekhne). If one possesses a particular skill, one can judge and critique it, because, one understands and can explain all aspects of that skill, including good and/or bad manifestation of it. Doctors can critique doctors. Generals can critique generals. Socrates (ARP) says that Ion cannot even judge poetry, for he has no poetic skill himself.

Dear God,

Go Get an Exorcist

Socrates (ARP) proposes that since Ion’s rhapsodic performances are not based on knowledge or skill, then he must be possessed or inspired. Then Socrates (ARP) goes off on the magnetic ring example. Despite its silliness, the magnetic ring example helps sharpen how audiences are affected by poetry/performance. As the last link on this chain of inspiration, we are capable of being deeply affected by poetry. We “spectators” at the recital also lose our minds, to some degree, weeping or laughing as we enter into the narrated scene, seemingly forgetting our real selves and lives. Socrates (ARP) has a divide in mind between reason and inspiration. This philosopher v. artist fight has been going on ever since.

Oh, yes!

“Let’s Get Ready to Rumble!!!”

“Go to Your Respective Corners…and Come Out Swinging"

Reason

Nous - sound mind/faculty of reason

Phren - wit

Episteme - knowledge

Tekne - skill (including communicative)

Inspiration

Ho nous meketi en autoi - out of one's mind

Ekphron - witless

Entheos - possessed/inspired

Theia dunamis - divine power

Associated with reason are philosophers, doctors, generals, painters, and those who can show critical communicative abilities of explanation, examination and judgment. Associated with inspiration are poets, rhapsodes, and anyone else who cannot give an account of how they do what they do. Reason, skill, intellect and understanding are pitted against “unreflective,” inspired activity. These are mutually exclusive territories.

“Making Your Republic Safe”

Erase the Word

Persecute the Performers

Banish the Poets

A couple of interesting connections for fodder:

As laid out in Phaedrus,

Socrates (ARP) regards the written word as inferior to the spoken 
– so why is he so anti-performer?

Poets are banished from The Republic.

In Protagoras poets are considered the original sophists.
In Phaedrus poets are “sacred, but mad.”
Remember, Socrates (ARP) likely wanted some “divine” Ionic nookie too.

He was always on a booty call.

Your Bank Hates You: From Banks to Credit Unions

My First Experience with a Big Bank

What’s going on with the big banks today reminds me of what happened in the early 1990s. When I went to work for Leadership Directories, Inc. (Back then it was called Monitor Publishing, but eventually changed its name because Monitor is the name of the paper the Christian Scientists publish – which we had nothing to do with)… oh that was a heck of a digression.

Anywho, when I went to work in NYC in 1991, I opened an account at Manufacturer’s Hanover. “Manny Hanny” was a pretty big bank, but it was regional to New York City. Plus, being based in NYC as it was, I could get money out of a MAC anywhere in the city. 

For those who don’t know MAC stands for “Money Access Center,” the old northeast version of ATM. By the way, never call an ATM an “ATM Machine.” ATM stands for Automated Teller Machine, so if you say ATM Machine you are really saying Automated Teller Machine Machine. And that’s idiodic. Like saying PDF File. PDF stands for Portable Document File, so really you are saying Portable Document File File. You are using an RAS. Please stop. Try not to sound like a mentally-challenged platypus. But again, I digress…

So I could get money once I got to the city via the PATH train, or on the way home via a MAC machine. (“MAC machine” is, by the way, allowable since there is no redundancy.) Checking was free as long as there was a direct deposit from my place of work. Not a problem at all and I had that Manny Hanny account for about a year. I actually used to walk through this door to do my banking.

The Manny Hanny Golden Door on 34th St.

Then they merged with Chemical bank. Chemical was having trouble with bad real estate loans (sound familiar?) and Manny Hanny was having problems with international loans (Argentina and Mexico, in particular), so they decided to join forces. At the time it was the largest bank merger in American History.

At first it was no big deal. Until Chemical – as the new bank was called – decided to close 70 locations. That put a damper on where I could get money, when I could get money, and how I could get money. No big deal, just a little bit more planning and walking and waiting in lines. Until…

Chemical decided that they did not want to deal with piss ants like myself. They decided to up the amount you had to have in your account to about $1,500 or they were going to start charging. People who were living paycheck to paycheck, people just starting out, or just starting over, or just making ends meet…people like my friends and I, didn’t have that money just laying in a bank. And they wanted rid of us. We were a PITA to them. They didn’t make any money off our piddly little checking account balances. We cost them money, so they put up barriers that basically forced us all to move. I went to Pamrapo Savings & Loan in Hoboken. Right across from the PATH, so again easy to get money going in or out of the city. My friends also changed banks. 

My 2nd Experience with a Big Bank

Eventually, however, I found my way back to a big bank. The big bank: Bank of America. I was fairly happy with them. Until... first they wanted to charge me $40 just to have one of their credit cards. Say what? A $40 fee on a $2K card. Please. Then they started to take away the free checking. That was that. Buh-bye.

Does this sound familiar? It should.  Bank of America is jacking up debit card rates and Citi is changing all sorts of requirements for depositors. Its not just the nationals. Regions, First Tennessee, and Suntrust all jerking around their customers with fees. It appears that the banks have decided that we aren’t worth it. They don’t want to deal with the “loser” working class anymore. Fine. Or they want us to move to credit cards so they can make even more money off of us. Fine. Piss on them.

Take your money out. Find a credit union. You can start here. And here. And here too. Forget the big banks. We bailed them out. They took our money. Now they are using the money that we saved them with to charge us to use our own money. Eastman Credit Union is my new financial institution.


And the colonists thought King George was a nonrepresentative taxer! If Thomas Paine and Sam Adams, etc. could see what was going on now, they’d be right in the thick of #occupywallstreet, in their white powdered wigs, getting ready to burn down some buildings and start another revolution!

What ever happened to my old Manny Hanny? Chemical....


was bought by Chase...

...which merged with JPMorgan...

...and is now JPMorganChase. 

JPMorganChase is one of the biggest banks in the world, like BoA, Wells Fargo, and Citi. We bailed them all out. They are all  charging people to use their own money. Leave them. They don't love you. In fact, they are abusive, not only to you as a customer, but to our country as well. Leave them. GTFO.

10 Philosophy Books 4 Your Perusal (Pt 8): The Care of the Self

Michelle Foucault

The History of Sexuality, Vol. 3: The Care of the Self 

Ethics. Identity. Selfhood. Self-Discipline. Discourse. That’s how you could sum up the latter part of Foucault’s project, if of course you could sum up Foucault's opus. However, like any good philosopher's works, you just can't sum it up. It is always being put to new and different uses. (Which reminds me of the old quote: "The history of philosophy is just one long footnote to Plato.")

Plus, reading Foucault can sometimes make your head do this.

Anyway, once interested in the genealogy of society, madness, and order, Foucault moved on to the development of the subject, a.k.a. the person, a.k.a. the human individual. It is in The History of Sexuality, Vol. 3: The Care of the Self that Foucault seriously delves into how discourses make us and how we use discourses to make our “selves.” 

Foucault contended that technologies of the self must be comprehended as inextricably connected to his notion of governmentality: the guiding rationales individuals and social structures use to regulate and police norms of thought and behavior. Foucault endeavored to show how the modern sovereign state and the modern autonomous individual co-determine each other’s emergence.

While Foucault was particularly interested in sexuality and the discourses surrounding sexuality and sexual identity his work has been influential in psychology, theology, gender studies, organizational communication. We will talk about some of those later. First, however, some of Michel.

“As a context, we must understand that there are four major types of these "technologies," each a matrix of practical reason: (1) technologies of production, which permit us to produce, transform, or manipulate things; (2) technologies of sign systems, which permit us to use signs, meanings, symbols, or signification; (3) technologies of power, which determine the conduct of individuals and submit them to certain ends or domination, an objectivizing of the subject; (4) technologies of the self, which permit individuals to effect by their own means or with the help of others a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being, so as to transform I themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or immortality.” (1988)

Foucault’s opus indicates the importance of, and interrelationships between, identity, power and knowledge. For Foucault power does not reside is a particular person or institution, but is engendered instead in discourses, practices, and procedures of everyday life and becomes apparent when it is exercised. Power is everywhere in social relations, and is exercised at all levels of an organization and society through various discourses and processes. Human beings are made subjects – or socially constructed – through various disciplinary discourses. The control of the self is a form of control through the discourses of power/knowledge.

As Foucault (1993) noted, in order to study power and the individual one must examine governmentality, the contact points of the “techniques of domination and techniques of the self” (p. 203). Governing people…is not a way to force people to do what the governor wants; it is always a versatile equilibrium, with complementarity and conflicts between techniques which assure coercion and processes through which the self is constructed or modified by himself (p. 203-204). Discipline therefore is not simply imposed from the outside, nor is it always complete, otherwise there would be no place for reflexivity. For Foucault, governmentality is not negative, but productive. It socially constructs subjects, reality, objects and rituals of truth.

While subjects are constructed through discursive processes, they are never powerless, but are active participants in creating the identities they desire by relying on various discourses. They can rebel and resist. (Remember Camus?) Individuals have the ability through these technologies of the self to reflect upon, shape, govern, and be responsible for their selves within these discourses and resources of power, to transfigure themselves to achieve a condition “of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or immortality."

I am an organizational communication scholar and I've been heartily influenced by Foucault. Given the dynamic complexity of interrelated power relations, organizational scholars turned to the concept of struggle, an ongoing, interactive, unpredictable, definition-creating activity that moves beyond the static power/resistance model of domination. Similarly, because power resides in networks of relationships, subjects freely call upon differing discourses in order to enact strategic games, and therefore, play games of identity. In organizations these issues of identity transcend personal, organizational and occupational lines. 

Here are some of my favorite Foucault works and those who have made use of Foucault: 

Ashcraft, K. L., & Mumby, D. K. (2004). Reworking gender: A feminist communicology of organization. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. 

Deacon, R. A. (2003). Fabricating Foucault: Rationalizing the management of individuals. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press.

Martin, L. H., Gutman, H., & Hutton, P. H. (Eds.) (1988). Technologies of the self: A seminar with Michel Foucault. London: Tavistock.

Herrmann, A. F. (2008). Narratives and sensemaking in the new corporate university: the socialization of first year communication faculty. Unpublished dissertation, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL.

    

Michel Foucault's "History of Madness" in English, is the complete version of the English translation called "Madness and Civilization", which since it was abridged, produced some serious misinterpretations. Foucault shows how the idea of "madness" from the Middle Ages through the Renaissance and the Enlightenment to the present, has undergone several transformations of meaning.  It is excellent...

....and it might make your head do this.