Braucht Demokratie Philosophie?

Hier einige Notizen zu einem Gespräch im Kölner Philosophischen Forum am 06. Juni 2025.

Ich greife nur eine Frage auf, nämlich Achims Gegenthese zu Hartmut Rosas 'Demokratie braucht Religion': 'Demokratie braucht Philosophie'. 

Die Demokratie bezeichnet heute — sehr kurz und skizzenhaft gefaßt — eine politische Verfassung (eine geregelte Weise des gesellschaftlichen Miteinanders), wodurch das Volk selbst die Quelle bzw. Arche der über es ausgeübten Macht sein soll, und zwar dadurch, daß die einzelnen Bürger i) ihre Meinungsfreiheit bezüglich der öffentlichen politischen Angelegenheiten ausüben dürfen wie auch ii) ihre Stimme zur Wahl von Abgeordneten in der gesetzgebenden Institution abgeben können. Die Gesetze wiederum werden letztendlich durch Staatsgewalt durchgesetzt und aufrechterhalten. In der demokratischen Politik geht es um einen Streit der vielen Meinungen darüber, wie die überlegene Staatsmacht ausgeübt werden soll — ein durch die Meinungsfreiheit vermittelter Machtkampf der Bürgermeinungen also, in dem sowohl das Eigeninteresse als auch das Gemeinwohl eine Rolle spielt oder spielen sollte. 

In der Philosophie hingegen geht es nicht um Meinungen, sondern um Wahrheit und zuvor schon um die Frage, was überhaupt Wahrheit ist, d.h. die Frage nach dem Wesen der Wahrheit. Bei solchem Fragen wird bereits in Frage gestellt, ob Meinungen wahr sein können, und wenn ja, unter welchen Umständen. Z.B. ist eine Meinung schon wahr, wenn sie richtig ist? Ist eine richtige Meinung wahr, wenn sie begründet werden kann? Ist überhaupt die Wahrheit mit der Richtigkeit von Tatsachen gleichzusetzen? Schon mit solchen Fragen ist ersichtlich, daß die Philosophie vor der Politik mit ihrem Machtkampf der Meinungen liegt. Die Philosophie ist überhaupt vorpolitisch, politische Fragen müssen ausgeklammert bleiben, eben weil wesentliche Fragen vorher geklärt werden müssen, worauf die Politik oder politische Meinungen keine Antworten geben können. Umgekehrt versteht nicht einmal die Politik, ob demokratisch oder nicht , genuin philosophische Fragestellungen. Wenn einer seine 'politische Philosophie' hat, ist zu hinterfragen, ob diese Philosophie auf bloße Meinung und feste Überzeugung hinausläuft oder eher durch ihre Wahrheit eine wohl begründete politische Haltung erst ermöglicht. 

Mitten in Platons berühmtem Werk über die Verfaßtheit der Polis — in seiner Politeia bzw. (lateinisch) Res publica VII 514a2-517a7— finden wir das berühmte Höhlengleichnis, in dem gleichnishaft gesagt wird, worum es in der Philosophie geht, nämlich um eine "Umlenkung der ganzen Seele" (περιαγωγὴ ὅλης τῆς ψυχῆς), und zwar vom gefesselten Blick auf die bloßen Tatsachen zum wahren Blick auf die Idee des Guten (ἰδέα τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ). Das Wort 'Idee' kommt vom Griechischen ἰδεῖν, 'sehen'. Eine Idee ist also ein Anblick, den ein Seiendes von sich aus einem Anblickenden bietet, der ihn so oder so versteht bzw. deutet. Welche Seele ist bei dieser totalen Umdrehung gemeint — die Einzelseele oder die Gesamtseele eines Volks bzw. der gesamten Menschheit? Wenn jene, dann ist die Bemühung um die Philosophie eine Bemühung um die Selbstverwandlung, durch die ich lerne, ganz anders zu sehen bzw. zu verstehen, nämlich die Wahrheit der Ideen selbst, die mit der Richtigkeit der Tatsachen nicht verwechselt werden darf. Ich bin dadurch verwandelt, daß ich die Welt durch ein Gefüge von zusammenhängenden Ideen verstehe. Die Welt selbst ist eine andere geworden, eben weil sie von Grund auf anders ausgelegt wird.

Die Bemühung des Philosophierens, diese Differenz und damit die Ideen selbst sehen zu lernen, bestünde demnach in einer Auseinandersetzung mit sich selbst oder, wie Platon sagt, in einem Dialog der Seele mit sich selbst. Die Idee des Guten als höchster Idee sehen zu lernen, ist nicht die Bemühung, eine Vorstellung davon zu bilden, was gut für mich ist, denn dies wäre eine bloße Meinung, bloß meine gegenüber anderen Meinungen. Die Frage nach der Idee des Guten ist zunächst keine inhaltliche, sondern danach, was Gutsein überhaupt heißt. Dasselbe gilt auch für die Idee der Gerechtigkeit, die der Freiheit, die Idee des Menschen, die des Lebens, die der Bewegung, die Idee des Kapitals usw. 

Solche Einsichten zu erlangen, ist in erster Linie eine Sache der Selbstauseinandersetzung bzw. des Dialogs mit sich selbst in der 1. Person, gleichsam eins zu eins. Ich muß lernen, alle Vor-Urteile, alle Vor-Begriffe, die den Blick auf die Ideen selber verstellen, wegzuräumen. Es geht nicht um bloß individuelle Ideen bzw. Vorstellungen, sondern um die Seinsweisen von Seiendem. Die Anblicke sind gemeinsame, über deren Deutung wir auch miteinander in einem philosophischen Gespräch reden können, in dem es nicht bloß um Wissenserwerb geht, sondern jeweils auch um Selbst-und-Welt-Verwandlung. Die gemeinsamen bzw. allgemeinen Ideen, wovon gesprochen wird, gehen uns als Einzelne an, und es gibt keine Garantie, daß wir in diesem Gespräch zu einer gemeinsamen Ansicht der Sache selbst kommen. 

Nichtsdestoweniger setzen sich in der Geschichte entscheidende Leitideen, wie z.B. die Idee der Gerechtigkeit oder die Idee der Energie, durch. Diese Leitideen sind keine ewigen, unveränderlichen, wie die griechische Philosophie dachte, sondern selbst in einem tiefen Sinn geschichtlich-schicksalhaft.

Ein philosophierender Dialog mit sich selbst oder anderen ist also zu unterscheiden von irgendwelchen Analysen einer faktischen, sachlichen Lage, wie sie z.B. politische Analysten, Soziologen oder Historiker bieten, denn solche können und müssen in der sog. 'objektiven' — etwa auf dokumentierten Fakten basierenden — 3. Person angeboten werden und haben zumeist den narrativen Charakter eines Geschehens. Solche 'Geschichten' können sehr wohl in den demokratischen Medien hin und her diskutiert werden. 

Die Differenz zwischen den Tatsachen und den Ideen kann als ontologische Differenz bezeichnet werden, womit auch der wesentliche Unterschied zwischen den modernen Wissenschaften und der Philosophie bestimmt ist. Denn die Ideen bringen das Sein des Seienden auf den ontologischen Begriff, während die modernen Wissenschaften — diese stillschweigend und ahnungslos voraussetzend — von den festgestellten experimentellen bzw. empirisch-gegebenen, ontischen Daten ausgehen, um ihre theoretischen Modelle zu 'verifizieren' oder ihre empirischen Studien durchzuführen, um festzustellen, wie die Lage zur Zeit faktisch ist. Auch dies sind Bemühungen in der 3. Person, die keine Selbstauseinandersetzung bzw. -verwandlung erfordern. Ich bleibe nach wie vor unverändert, wer ich bin, wenngleich etwas kenntnisreicher. Die Welt bleibt im Grunde dieselbe. Hingegen in der Philosophie mache ich eine Bewegung durch, in der, wer ich bin und wie die Welt in Ganzen verstanden wird, sich wandelt. 

Insofern braucht die Demokratie, wie sie in modernen (noch) liberalen Gesellschaften gelebt und praktiziert wird, keine Philosophie; als solche kann sie damit nichts anfangen. Denn sie geht (und muß gehen) von den Menschen, wie sie sind, und ihrem Dafürhalten aus. Es können höchsten ihre Ansichten in politischen Machtkämpfen — z.B. Wahlkämpfen — durch demokratische Debatten und rhetorische Mittel beeinflußt werden. Die Frage nach der Idee des Menschen, d.h. nach dem, was bzw. wer der Mensch ist, kann in der Demokratie oder gar in den Medien als Orten der freien Meinungsäußerung nicht einmal gestellt werden, sondern ist zuvor schon stillschweigend geschichtlich beantwortet und steht fest. 

In unserem Zeitalter (der Neuzeit) und schon seit langem, d.h. seit dem ersten Anfang mit dem griechischen Denken, ist die Frage nach dem Wesen des Menschen mit einer Was-Antwort beantwortet. Wir sind entworfen und somit geschichtlich-schicksalhaft geworfen als eine Art Tier, d.h. als eine Spezies (um deren Überleben es angeblich evolutionär geht), auch wenn die nach-Cartesische europäische Philosophie noch gern vom 'Bewußtseinssubjekt' redet. Mit unserer materialistisch vorausgesetzten Basis im Tiersein sind wir heute auf dem besten Weg das, was die Philosophie als νοῦς bzw. Geist bezeichnet, auf die neuronale Tätigkeit des Gehirns zu reduzieren. Bereits heute 'denkt' man so von sich. Die Philosophie hat schon längst ausgedient, während die Neurowissenschaft in Begleitung der rasant aufkommenden KI in der immer weiter um sich greifenden Cyberwelt ihren Siegeszug antritt. Trotzdem ruft die Demokratie heute ohnmächtig nach sog. ethischen Maßstäben bzw. 'Leitplanken'. 

Gibt es, gibt Es heute noch die Möglichkeit eines Denkens mit der Kraft, die Frage danach, wer wir als Menschen sind, von einem anderen Anfang aus zu stellen, um damit unser Menschsein geschichtlich anders zu entwerfen? Sind einige von uns in einem Schritt zurück vom festgefahrenen Weltentwurf für ein solches Infragestellen überhaupt empfangsbereit?

Soviel für heute. 

Weitere Lektüre: Platon Politeia VII. Buch.

Harmut Rosa Demokratie braucht Religion Kösel Verlag München 2022.

On Human Temporality: Recasting Whoness Da Capo De Gruyter, Berlin 2024.

Energy-hungry, surrogate Cyberworld

It seems we have fast adapted to life in the cyberworld, that used to be called cyberspace, a misleading term because the cyberworld is more than a space. This is indicated already by the 'cyber' in its name that derives from Greek κυβερνᾶν (_kybernan_) 'to steer, guide, govern'. The cyberworld has everything to do with governing all sorts of movement via algorithmic control. It is also a world because it is all-encompassing, enabling near-total immersion in it as a surrogate alternative to the familiar physical and social worlds. As a surrogate, it is also dangerous, especially for the youth, by offering an escape from problems in the interplay with others when growing up. It seems you have more control playing algorithmically steered games than interplaying with flesh-and-blood others. The algorithms exercise a mesmerizing attraction especially on young minds through the seemingly endless and easy existential possibilities they offer.

The basic unit of the cyberworld is the Universal Turing Machine, a mathematical construct thought up by Alan Turing in the 1930s to model what he regarded to be human thinking. In his 1936 paper on Computable Numbers, he casts human thinking as computation, a hermeneutic recasting of what has long been conceived as reason (νοῦς _nous_, ratio, rationality), with enormous ramifications that, more often than not, are sold to a naïve and misled public as 'human progress' in 'improving lives'. This ambivalent progress consists in enhancing power over kinds of movement even beyond the 'classic' case of physical movement, especially to the kinds of movement through which we humans sociate with one another. Such enhancement includes increasing immersion in and dependence upon the cyberworld with its media platforms and communication apps, and ever-increasing subjugation to and dependence upon what the algorithms steering the cyberworld allow or disallow.

But what is an algorithm and what does it have to do with the Universal Turing Machine? The 'Universal' refers to Turing's ideal construction that can accept any computable algorithm at all to control it via instructions. Although such an ideal machine will never be built, it nevertheless theorizes what any computer at all does, namely, work step-by-step through the digital data input to the algorithm employing purely if-then rules encoded in the algorithm. Both the algorithm and the data are nothing other than strings of digital bits, 0 and 1, or bit-strings. The algorithmic bit-string steers how the data bit-string is to be acted upon by the algorithm's logical if-then rules to generate step-by-step, along the one-dimensional time-line of successive now-steps, a third bit-string as output. The algorithm is hence a set of encoded if-then instructions. The output bit-string controls some kind of movement either within or outside the cyberworld. The cyberworld thus consists of countless trillions of algorithmic bit-strings copulating with data bit-strings, whose output bit-strings may merely be fed into other algorithms or used directly to control a movement, e.g. whether you can access your online bank account or whether a rocket launches.

Since any computer, even if it be a super-computer or a quantum computer, works according to if-then rules, in principle, any computation can be carried out by a Turing machine with the appropriate algorithm. In turn, any algorithm at all, even those driving multi-level artificial neurons employed in Artificial Intelligence, can be broken down, in principle, into the Turing simplicity of a bit-string. It is also easy to see that, since the Turing machine only computes according to if-then rules, computing already existing data bit-strings, it acts with blind necessity from the past, i.e. it does not 'see' into the temporal dimension of the future at all. Such imaginative seeing into the future, envisaging a possibility, however, is the hallmark of human freedom that a Turing machine cannot simulate.

In truth, a Turing machine is not in time at all. It is only we humans who are exposed to the openness of three-dimensional time and are able, for instance, to insert logical if-then rules into an algorithmic bit-string with a particular end or τέλος (_telos_) in mind. A corollary of this is that the Artificial Intelligence employing multi-level, so-called 'deep-learning', artificial neurons, no matter how mind-bogglingly complex these become, only works by detecting patterns in already existing data and extrapolating them into the future. Predicting what is coming from the future thus becomes a statistical matter relying on the so-called Law of Large Numbers: in the long run, in a significant number of instances, the A.I. algorithm will generate correct predictions. When deployed e.g. as advertising in the cyberworld's mass markets, A.I. will 'predict' consumers' behaviour sufficiently well, based on the personal data collected on their previous consumer behaviour. 'Sufficiently well' here means merely that the advertising will generate enough hits (actual purchases) to be worth the trouble, and especially the cost, of doing the market research, i.e. gathering the personal data of unsuspecting prospective customers, and writing the appropriate A.I. algorithm to nudge their purchasing behaviour.

The cyberworld conceived as countless algorithmic bit-strings copulating with countless input-data bit-strings to generate countless output bit-strings controlling movements of all kinds (physical, mental, social, ...) is, of course, a theoretical idea that nevertheless provides an answer to the ontological question: What is the cyberworld? The idea of the Universal Turing Machine is the key to grasping its essence, its whatness. However, the cyberworld as we know it is actually physically constructed by deploying the suitable technologies from the material sciences through electromagnetic engineering (esp. constructing fast digital networks) to computer programming. Actually carrying out computations in this artificial, engineered world is a kind of physical movement that, in turn, requires physical energy to drive it. To change a bit in a material electromagnetic medium from 0 to 1 or vice versa requires electrical energy that has to be generated in some way. Electrons must be made to move in a controlled way.

This contrasts with the movement of the human mind itself, that can only be crudely modelled by conceiving it as computation or as physical movement at all. The mind moves freely and effortlessly, pre-spatially and pre-materially, through the openness of three-dimensional time, hip-hopping from one temporal dimension to another and understanding what comes into its focus one way or another. The mind is hermeneutic, interpretive in nature, not computational, employing the brain as its organ in an extremely energy-efficient way. Today's A.I. experts and neuroscientists marvel over how energy-efficient the brain is, after having misguidedly conceptually reduced mental movement to physical brain movement, imagining that  consciousness is an immaterial epiphenomenon generated by the physical movement of material neurons. How does the brain manage such energy-efficiency? they ask in their perplexity, imagining themselves to be committed materialists. 

This acknowledgement of perplexing energy-efficiency does not stop them from continuing to physically construct and extend the energy-inefficient, artificial, surrogate cyberworld. That is their mission. In so doing, they notice that the physical energy requirements to perform digital calculations explode exponentially. Already today, data centres, especially those carrying out A.I. computations, are consuming immense amounts of electrical energy surpassing the electricity consumption of entire small cities. The need for algorithmic control of all kinds of movement through the digitized, electromagnetic medium of the cyberworld, however, is insatiable, since it has proved itself to be highly effective. 

The cyberworld has turned out to be invaluable as the medium of choice for algorithmically disseminating disinformation on a mass scale, in particular, to influence voting behaviour in elections. The state has discovered that it is indispensable for controlling the movements of its citizenry, e.g. through surveillance as well as for tax collection. Digital technologies are today indispensable for increasing productivity and accelerating the turnover of deployed capital, thus enhancing the endless valorization of thingified value (The Medium). The cyberworld is also the domain of a global mass market for both capitalist enterprises and consumers where produced goods and services are sold to realize revenues for capitalist enterprises both large and small. The opening-up of the internet for commercial purposes in the 1990s was a boon for endless profit-making, starting with the giant U.S. tech corporations that were the first to see its capitalist potential.

In other posts I have discussed what lies behind this insatiable striving for power over movement of all kinds that dovetails so seamlessly with the striving for endless valorization. These are two ambivalent 'devilishly divine' ideas that have possessed our mortal mind and are personified by two hitherto unknown gods (or demons) whom I have named Willy P. and Pleon Exia. The cyberworld represents perhaps the consummate realization of the two gods' collaboration.

Further reading: 'Turing's cyberworld of timelessly copulating bit-strings' 2012.

'Turing's Cyberworld' in Information Cultures in the Digital Age: A Festschrift in Honour of Rafael Capurro Matthew Kelly & Jared Bielby (eds.) Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2016 pp. 65-81.

'Algorithmic Control of Movement in Time: Abolishing even our selves ourselves' in Kinder und Jugendliche in der Krise: Gegenwärtige Herausforderungen und neue Perspektiven Rainer J. Kaus, Hartmut Günther (eds.), transcript Verlag, Bielefeld 2025 pp. 219-233.

Movement and Time in the Cyberworld: Questioning the Digital Cast of Being De Gruyter, Berlin 2019.

On Human Temporality: Recasting Whoness Da Capo De Gruyter, Berlin 2024. 

Tale of the Qua: A Philosophical Comedy KDP 2024.

The Good & other gods.

The Good & other gods

It is general knowledge to those conversant with philosophy that the highest idea in Plato's thinking is called the Good, τἀγαθόν (_t'agathon_). The corresponding highest idea or εἶδος (_eidos_ 'sight', 'look') in Aristotle's Metaphysics, which he names "the god"(ὁ θεός), is the Fair, τὁ καλόν (_to kalon_). The two words are very often used synonymously in ancient Greek, and even combined into one word: καλοκἀγαθός (_kalokagathos_, 'fair and good'), the 'fair and good', the 'excellent'. 'Fair', καλόν, can be taken in the sense of 'beautiful', but also in the senses of 'noble', 'excellent', 'useful', 'fair in dealings', 'justly good', just as ἀγαθόν, can. 

Beings in their being, i.e. in their partaking of being conceived as presencing, offer to mortals the sight of their goodness and fairness in the multiple senses noted. Insofar as beings are deficient, lacking goodness and fairness, they offer instead the sight of their badness, ugliness, unfairness. For Aristotle, the highest, divine 'sight' of the fair is the "unmoving mover" that motivates movement toward the end or τέλος (_telos_) of fairness. The bad or τὁ κακόν (_to kakon_), as the lack of the good and fair, detracts from this end, drawing all into an opposite movement.

In Aristotle's thinking, along with the εἶδος or sight, the end or τέλος is still conceived as a motivating cause of movement. In the modern sciences, both eidetic and teleological causes of movement have been eliminated in favour of the two remaining Aristotelean causes: the efficient and the material. It must be noted, however, that in evolution theory and biology, the teleological cause of movement and change is implicitly present and ubiquitously deployed. How so? Because all life strives to live; evolution theorists as well as biologists invariably talk and think in terms of how mutations and certain features of organisms enhance their chances of survival. The telos of the living is life itself.

Be that as it may, the (remaining) efficient cause is the scientific know-how itself that knows how to efficiently move and manipulate the material cause, which is physical matter in one or other of its 'sights'. The core modern science of mathematized physics focuses intensely on matter as putatively the ultimate cause of all, and the modern mind seems to be more or less entirely taken in by these hubristic scientific pretensions. "We are stardust" (Joni Mitchell), sings one popular song.

Plato's and Aristotle's idealistic gods have been pushed aside and pooh-poohed by modern science in favour of what is called a scientific worldview of objective reality that, in turn, boils down to what the empiricist scientific method wrings out of empirical, material facts as 'verifiable'. Modern science is said to be (objectively) evidenced-based, whereas all other thinking is regarded as tinged more or less by (subjective) ideology. Such secular thinking is apparently godless, without any connection to the divine. For this reason, even in this secular age (at least in the West), modern scientists often seek compensation and solace in religious belief. Religions have an afterlife even after having suffered the onslaught of the materialist scientific worldview that crystallized in the 17th century and triumphed (apparently once and for all?) in the latter half of the 19th century. Even philosophy capitulated, adapting for survival as an ancillary. After the rise of empiricist positivism in the mid-19th century, the analytic philosophy that emerged at the turn of the 20th century achieved its apogee of self-denial and surrender to positive, i.e. fact-based, modern science in the guise of logical positivism, from which it has scarcely recovered. Nonetheless, this impoverished philosophy maintains its hegemony among the philosophies via the corrupted political and economic hegemony of the Anglo-American world.

Which brings us back to ideas as gods. Are there ideas that reign surreptitiously as gods in these apparently godless times whilst remaining unseen as such? This is a paradoxical thought, because the essence of an idea or εἶδος is to be seen as a sight by the mortal mind. Perhaps these ideas have just been overlooked or shoved aside and repressed by our shared mind that is and has been preoccupied by two related, apparently eminently secular ideas for centuries, or even millennia, namely, i) the idea of progress in effective human knowledge and ii) the idea of the betterment of the material conditions of human life known today as the 'standard of living'. The two ideas are easily linked in what can be called materialist ideology by pointing out that progress in scientific knowledge has enabled improvements in human living conditions through myriads of technological innovations. They both seem to be good, and both are propagated incessantly today as such, but is this unmitigatedly so? Is there another side of the coin? An essential ambivalence? A darker underbelly?

From the very beginning of Western thinking with the Greeks, knowledge (ἐπιστήμη) has always been concerned with what was coming from the temporal dimension of the future, either by predicting it or, better, by positively shaping it. The former could be had via signs from the gods or through knowledge of the causes, whereas the latter was realized by means of the sedimentation of knowledge into the various arts of making (τέχναι ποιητικαί), which always involved also a knowledge of and skill with materials in order to bring forth what was envisaged as the telos. Here there is a will to power over movement and change at work that seems to be unadulteratedly good, beneficial for humankind and, moreover, has no in-built or inherent limit (there is always room for improvement, as they say). As unadulterated, unmitigated, untempered, unlimited, infinite (ἄπειρον), this Western will to shape the future may be called the absolute will to power over all kinds of movement and change. The bridling of the excesses of this will to power has been assigned to ethics which, in both Platonic and Aristotelean variants, have an appreciation of the dangers of the limitless. Unfortunately, traditional ethics as handed down from the Greeks, even to the present day, has no ontology of the specific kind of movement pertaining to sociative interplay* through which mortals could consider limits to their actions. The only kind of movement for which Greek thinking explicitly worked out an ontology is that of physical movement.

Greek thinking also concentrated upon the art of physically making things, to the exclusion of other arts, notably the art of acquisition (τέχνη κτητική) and the art of wealth-getting (τέχνη χρηματιστική). Aristotle does treat the latter briefly, pointing out its dangerous nature that resides in its inherent limitlessness; there is never an end to wealth-getting, whereas the art of acquisition may find an end in acquiring the desired use-value. Only millennia later, in the 19th century, was a Western philosopher, a meticulous student of Aristotle, able to convert Aristotle's insight into the limitless of wealth-getting into the famous formula for the essence of capital: M->C->M+ΔM, or money-capital advanced in order to get more money, a surplus value. This formula turns the formula for exchanging one use-value for another, i.e. C1->M->C2 upside down. With this inversion, as it turns out in our age, the world is also turned topsy-turvy. In the latter formula, money serves only as a means to an end, namely, that of acquiring a good on the market with another use-value, whereas in the formula for wealth-getting, the beginning and end of a circuit differ only quantitatively in amounts of money-capital. The circuit has no definite end-point, but can be repeated endlessly.

Marx deciphers these circuits. especially the former, as circuits of transformation of forms or 'sights' of thingified value. In my formulation, that takes Marx's thinking a step further, what capital is, i.e. its essence, is a limitlessly augmentative circuit of the Medium of thingified value. Limitless valorization of the Medium of thingified value is the law or principle of movement of what is commonly called capitalism. One could say that today's global capitalist economy is driven by the absolute will to valorize the Medium of thingified value. As absolute, the will is limitless, never coming to an end (τέλος) where it could be finally satiated.

The absolute will to power over all kinds of movement and change and the absolute will to valorize the Medium are interlinked and intimately intermeshed through the circumstance that improvements in the productivity of production and circulation processes, including the acceleration of turnover, enhance the valorization of the Medium. These two insatiable wills are personified by two hitherto unknown gods that subterraneanly inhabit our historically shared mortal mind. I name them Willy P. and Pleon Exia (lit.: more-having). Together, in a pernicious partnership, they exercise hidden hegemony over our mind, that is all the more effective for being hidden. For it seems superficially, through the fog of implicitness, that the principles of movement for which these unbridled gods stand are unreservedly good: improvement of the human condition through mastery of movement and change, coupled with enhanced material standards of living. In their ambivalence, they are impostors impersonating the Good and the Fair. And if they do not stand unqualifiedly for the Good (there are downsides), then — even without insight into the depth of our infection by these divinities, amounting to unabashed cluelessness — it appears (or rather: we kid ourselves) that their 'excesses' can be contained and regulated, say, through liberal-democratic government and a system of international organizations institutionalizing 'universal' human values. In this way, 'our Western' system of values, including above all individual freedom, may be preserved.

The adoration of Pleon Exia and Willy P. is performed unknowingly, but — under this veil of ignorance — all the more fervently. Among the rich and political elites, the fervour intensifies to a feverish frenzy masked by arrogant complacency.

* Cf. Social Ontology of Whoness Chapter 5 'Ontology of Exchange'.

Further reading: Tale of the Qua: A Philosophical Comedy. 

Social Ontology of Whoness: Rethinking Core Phenomena of Political Philosophy De Gruyter, Berlin 2018.

On Human Temporality: Recasting Whoness Da Capo De Gruyter, Berlin 2024.

Aristotle's purely energetic god of the fair. 

Capitalocene & The global law of movement.

Mind over matter

In the physics of relativity theory, time is conceived as quantitative, being measured by the path taken by light through space, whether it be straight (special relativity) or curved (general relativity with gravitational curvature). Any physical event is then specified by four-dimensional space-time co-ordinates (x,y,z,ct) with the fourth spatialized time co-ordinate measuring the time taken for light (i.e. electromagnetic radiation) to travel from the event to an observer's signal receiver. Hence, for example, we on Earth are approximately 8 light-minutes from the Sun and 1 light-second from the Moon. This entails in particular that everything we perceive sensuously on Earth with our eyes is bathed in and made visible by light that is at least eight minutes old. It was emitted from fusion reactions in the Sun itself and made its way to Earth.

This is the way Einstein tailored his relativity theory to suit the needs of cosmological theory, whose empirical input consists of electromagnetic data received on Earth by any sort of receiver, including optical, radio or other kind of telescope. Cosmologists readily accept that they are, as they say, 'looking back in time' along the path of light taken by a cosmological event to the receiver.  Hence registered (clock-) time is relative to the observer-receiver.

For our mind, however, there is no (linear) time delay in thinking of the Sun as there is in receiving physical light from the Sun. We only ever see the Sun by eyesight with a delay of eight minutes, whereas we can think of the Sun instantaneously at any time, even at night when the Sun is sensuously invisible, and without employing any apparatus. Similarly, anything physical we perceive visually on Earth by daylight is perceived only in the present moment with the aid of eight-minute-old light from the Sun illuminating what is perceived. 

By contrast, my mind and your mind can think of and understand not only its sensuously perceptible environment, but also anything at all, both physical and non-physical, passed through to it from any of the temporal dimensions of past, present and future. The mind can move and switch freely from one imagined situation to another, skipping from one temporal dimension to another. Even the present, sensuously perceived situation is only understood by being interpreted by the mind with the help of the power of imagination. The openness of the three temporal dimensions for such mental skipping and interleaving of situations, both physically material and non-material, is entirely different from the measured, linear time not only of relativity physics, but of all physical science. Throughout modern science one is content with measuring time along the so-called time-line to pin-point events of all kinds, including  non-physical ones such as the handing down of a verdict by a court.

As I said, relativistic physics is dependent upon light to see anything at all, to register the data of anything physically material. The science of physics in general investigates the movement of anything physical that can be moved, with physical beings themselves being characterized as having extension and being composed of matter, matter itself having measurable mass. This is the way it has been with physics since its inception with the ancient Greeks, although the mathematization of physics only sets in with a vengeance much later, in the 17th century, thus turning extension (μέγεθος _megethos_) and mass (ὄγκος _onkos_) into quantitative mathematical variables.

The detection of physical events of extended, massive things by light, however, has the quirk that, according to both relativity theory and quantum theory, the light signal upon which such detection depends is composed of a stream of massless photons. Even more quirky is that in principle, according to Einstein's famous equation of mass-energy equivalence, E=m.c^2, physical mass can be converted entirely into the pure motion of massless light. The speed of light c is only attainable when all mass dissolves into pure motion. Light is therefore on the cusp of dissolution into the non-material altogether.

Modern science, however, is highly sceptical about there being anything at all non-material, and this prejudice is reinforced by modern physics, which claims to be the foundational science for all natural and social science. It has an intense focus (in particle physics) on the investigation of matter down to its smallest building blocks in quantum entities which are conceived as the fundamental particles from which all entities at all are 'made'. Quantum entities (including the Higgs boson) are then supposed to 'explain' the 'creation' of the entire universe, along linear time, of course, linking cause and effect. The beginning of all is then located at the beginning of the time-line called the Big Bang (or some other imagined mathematized theoretical construct).

Is that which truly exists, the famous ὄντως ὄν (_ontos on_) of Plato and the Platonists, in the end nothing ideal, but thoroughly material? Is it only matter that truly exists? Only material causes count throughout modern science because they enable material manipulation and hence the mastery of all kinds of movement and change of at least materially based entities. This mastery starts with being able to predict movement, to precalculate it. Taken literally and etymologically, the ὄντος ὄν can be translated as the 'beingly being' or the 'essentially essencing', with both 'being' and 'essencing' being understood participially as a kind of ongoing, continuous movement. Such essencing has to be entirely incomprehensible and foreign to modern science.

Again, is it the case — as it seems to be under the hegemony of modern science and its lead science, physics — that it is only matter that truly exists? Every phenomenon modern science attempts to grasp is led back to putative material causes, even the movement of the mind itself (in neuroscience). But what is matter? Matter is already an interpretation, i.e. an accomplishment of the mind. In today's modern physics, matter is a certain interpretation within our own historical epoch that differs from its interpretation in another historical age. In this sense, matter itself is an idea! This idea is an historical, hermeneutic cast of what matter is conceived to be in our age. One could object that this is circular thinking, and indeed it is. What matter itself 'truly is' can only be thought within an hermeneutic circle that is inextricably linked with the interpretations other primitive phenomena, notably, movement and time itself.

I have already pointed out that the physical movement of material beings is a special kind of movement amenable to being conceived along linear time, which itself is a specific, historical interpretation of time initiated by the Greeks, and Aristotle in particular. Such physical movement has been at the heart of Western science since its beginnings. Today, physical, material beings can be modelled by mathematized, or at least quantified, physical theories with an eye to mastering, i.e. predicting, their movement and change. 

As indicated above however, the movement of the non-physical mind is not subject to such physical restrictions. The mind moves freely through an entirely different kind of time that is no longer one-dimensional, but three-, or even four-dimensional (the fourth dimension allowing the passing-through of unified three-dimensional time to the psyche with its mental power of understanding; cf. On Human Temporality esp. Sections 1.2 and 2.2). The purest, freest kind of movement, that of the mind, is non-material*, although nothing prevents the mind from thinking of things material, without being affected by them. The mind can indeed follow physical movements along linear time as a special case, as it does in modern physics. But to interpret the movement of the mind itself, an alternative historical hermeneutic of time is required. Moreover, mental movement and physical movement do not exhaust the kinds of movement readily accessible and observable in familiar phenomena. Both social, sociating movement and economic movement, for instance, demand their own investigations of what these kinds of movement are.

* The embodied mind of us mortal humans does require the material brain as its organ, its tool, and mental movement can be impeded by dysfunctional bodily organs, but thinking itself is a non-material kind of movement.

Further reading:  On Human Temporality: Recasting Whoness Da Capo De Gruyter, Berlin 2024.

Three laws of movement (again).

Liquid trees

It is hardly contentious that all modern science is materialist, including even psychology, that seems compelled to prove its scientific credentials by referring and reducing to neuronal processes. The social sciences, too, investigate the positive 'reality' of materially anchored, social practices and structures. But what is matter? Is it what can be perceived by the bodily senses and measured by various techniques and apparatuses to provide data for analysis? Is it what extended, physical beings are made of?

Already with the ancient Greeks, science (ἐπιστήμη _epistaemae_) focused on physical beings with size (μέγεθος _megethos_), extension (ἔκτασις _ektasis_)  and mass (ὄνκος _onkos_). Their word for matter is ὕλη (_hulae_), which in its everyday usage covers all sorts of wood: a forest of trees, timber for building, firewood fuel. For the Greeks, the paradigmatic kind of matter is tree, from which the philosophical concept of matter is abstracted, or 'pulled off'.

Modern physics and chemistry would seem to have come a long way from this primitive Greek conception of matter, but is this truly the case? Modern physics has broken down matter into sub-atomic entities including protons, neutrons, electrons, and even stranger entities such as quarks and gluons holding them together like glue, and light itself, composed of streams of massless quantum entities called photons (from Greek φῶς, _phos_ for 'light'). Light is the purest form of energy, consisting of massless photons travelling at maximum physical speed c, the speed of light, thus representing the purest form of transformation of matter into movement, as expressed in Einstein's famous equation E=m.c^2.

In the present globalized world, energy is of vital importance not just physically by powering the movement of all sorts of technological things in production processes, but prior to that, and even more so, in powering such technological things for the sake of keeping valorization of the Medium going, i.e. the endless circular movement of thingified value going through its various value-form transformations to generate surplus-value. The hidden global imperative is that thingified value endlessly augment.

Although the valorization movement of thingified value is purely formal and infinite, it also requires the physical movements of production and circulation, including the activity of human labour, for its endless augmentation. Only by virtue of valorization of the Medium being endless does it have also an endless need for physical energy to drive all the necessary physical movements, enhanced by various technologies for the sake of cost-cutting productivity increases that, in turn, enhance the generation of surplus value.

These technologies have long since liberated themselves from a reliance on matter in the Greek sense, i.e. on wood. Technological devices and buildings are no longer made merely of wood, and energy is no longer provided by burning firewood. We moderns flatter ourselves that we have long since surpassed what a Greek carpenter can do with timber or a Greek blacksmith can achieve with a hammer, anvil and a charcoal fire. We have moved on to more sophisticated fuels as energy sources such as coal, oil and natural gas. All these so-called fossil fuels, however, derive from decomposed trees extracted from the Earth's crust. Trees decompose over geological æons into solid coal, liquid oil and gaseous natural gas, and all three fossil fuels can be burnt to generate electric current that is today the preferred power source for any physical movement, especially as required by valorization of the Medium.

It is even the case that liquid trees, i.e. mineral oil, is the material employed to make myriad kinds of plastics that are ubiquitous in today's world. Without the discovery of polymers, many modern technologies would be impossible, and our lives as players in the gainful game would not be so convenient, environmental pollution by plastics be damned.

The depletion of the Earth's huge deposits of fossil fuels by digging them up or otherwise extracting them, then burning them, has led inevitably, over frighteningly few centuries, to devastation of the Earth for the sake of endless valorization. Climate change, with devastating ramifications, including geopolitically, is upon us. Political efforts are being undertaken to accomplish the momentous shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources for the sake of sustainability. But who is seriously asking: sustainability of what?

Further reading: Laws of movement & Energy.

'An Invisible Global Social Value' TT&S Vol. 5 no. 2, 2024.

Capitalocene & The global law of movement.

Sustainability? Of what?.

Three laws of movement (again).

Three laws of movement (again)

Let us take another look at three laws of movement already addressed in other posts (see links below):

i) the second Newtonian law of physical motion 

f = m.a (or force is equal to mass times acceleration),

ii) Einstein's astounding law of mass-energy equivalence 

E = m.c^2
(energy is equal to mass times the speed of light squared), 

and

iii) Marx's basic formula for the valorization of thingified value as capital 

M -> C -> M+ΔM
(value-form transformation of advanced money-capital into commodities required for a production process and the further value-transformation of the product via the circulation process into money-capital returned with a surplus value).

Re i): Newton's classical second law of motion is a most elegant example of how the physical motion of a physical body, regarded as a point mass, can be encapsulated in a surprisingly simple mathematical equation. The scope of its application seemed for centuries to be unlimited, albeit that its first realm of application, in the 17th century, was that of planetary motion, which was at the focus of attention for great names such as Kepler, Galileo and Newton. Along with the law of inertia and of equal and opposite reaction between interacting physical bodies, the law was cast as applying throughout the universe in an homogeneous mathematized (real vector) space ticking uniformly with an absolute, continuous, real time variable t.

Galileo's famous dictum of 1623 in his Il Saggiatore — that the laws of nature are written in the language of mathematics — nevertheless turns the truth upside down. Rather, it is the absolute will to power over all kinds of movement that dictates, in particular, that the physical (loco)motion of (celestial) bodies be made precalculable through an appropriate kind of mathematics, namely, the infiinitesimal calculus. Mathematical precalculable predictability of movement satisfies the will to power over movement by reducing physical motion to solvable equations. 

Already a century earlier, in 1543, with his book De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, Copernicus had ostensibly empirically proved that the Sun does not revolve around the Earth, but conversely the Earth around the Sun. This is nonsense, of course, because motion is relative and reciprocal: if, from A's standpoint, B revolves around it, then conversely, from B's standpoint, A revolves around B. The point of Copernicus' discovery is that the motion of the planets becomes mathematically more elegantly describable from the perspective of the Sun's reference frame as revolutions around the Sun. The complications of Ptolemaic epicycles of planets revolving around the Earth are done away with, paving the way for a more uniform, elegant Newtonian theory of gravitational motion in an homogeneous space.

Re ii): Einstein's mind-boggling equation E = m.c^2 pronounces the equivalence of mass and energy as a postulate of special relativity theory. It was derived not by considering the equivalent of Newton's second law, but by considering and postulating the equivalent of the classical principle of conservation of momentum. Whereas in Newtonian mechanics, a) (counted clock-) time is taken to be uniform throughout the universe and b) the mass of a physical body is taken to be a non-transformable constant in physical interactions, in Einsteinian special relativity, a) (counted clock-) time is relative to the observer's inertial frame of reference and b) mass depends on the body's speed in a given reference frame. The momentum of a physical particle no longer depends solely on its velocity, but also upon its relativistically variable mass. This circumstance links mass with physical movement and thus with kinetic energy. Time itself becomes the one-dimensional path of light, that is linked to the three spatial dimensions via the Lorentz transformation. Henceforth, physical events are conceived as happening in the universe at space-time co-ordinates (x,y,z.ct) in an observer's frame of reference. (The observer here may be simply an apparatus set up somewhere to gather physical data.)

As a body (particle) approaches the speed of light in a given inertial reference frame, its mass tends toward infinity, at least according to the equation expressing the relativistic mass in terms of a particle's rest mass. In other words, the greater the momentum and kinetic energy of a particle, the greater its mass and, in the limit, the threatened, physically impossible infinitude of mass is averted by the conversion of all the mass into the motion of pure light composed of a stream of massless, quantized photons. Matter dissolves into (divine?) light. Einstein's equation expresses nothing other than this possibility of the transformation of matter into pure, energetic movement (including the thermal energy of atoms and molecules in motion) — the physical law for developing nuclear energy and atomic bombs. Anything physical moving at the speed of light cannot have any mass, which is the case for electromagnetic radiation. Note that, whereas the absolute speed limit for anything physical is equal to c, this speed limit does not apply to the movement of the mind, which is non-spatial and hence both nowhere and everywhere.

Note also that, whereas Newtonian gravitational force only acts upon physical bodies with mass, in general relativity theory massless light is subject to gravitational force by dint of its being equivalent to the curvature of space-time itself. The straight path of light in special relativity becomes its curved path in general relativity.

Re iii): Marx's formula for the valorization movement of (the Medium of) thingified value has hitherto not been called a law of movement. Unlike Newton's and Einstein's laws, it is non-predicative but instead enunciates an inexorable principle that the transformational circuiting of advanced capital through its value-forms must fulfil if the circuit is to be sustainable. If a circuit of valorization does not generate a surplus, but instead a loss diminishing the originally advanced money-capital, this endangers the movement altogether, because eventually the capital will consume itself and end up as nothing. 

The law of movement usually associated with Marx's Das Kapital read in the orthodox way is the so-called labour theory of value that Marx adopted in a modified form from Adam Smith. But this 'law of labour-value' is untenable; equal amounts of embodied "socially necessary labour-time" do not change hands in the exchange of commodity goods and services (nor even a regulated modification of such labour-time quantities as investigated in the so-called 'transformation problem'). Rather, quite the opposite: it is the exchange itself in the Medium of thingified value that determines the magnitude of a commodity's value. The commodity's embodied labour is thus evaluated on the market itself.

The deeper insight offered by Marx's main work is that a capitalist economy, and especially a global capitalist economy, must satisfy the principle of valorization if it is to remain viable. This is the law that rules the global economy. Hence economic growth must be unlimited, the finiteness of the Earth and all that lives on it be damned. This law of movement remains invisible and unknown to the modern science of economics because this social science is lacking its foundational concepts. They can only be uncovered by thinking socio-ontologically. The Medium of thingified value, namely, is an ontological form (εἶδος or 'look') of sociated labour that remains invisible to empiricist thinking.

The valorization of thingified value is plainly not a physical movement as such, but a principle governing the sociation in a capitalist economy. It does require, however, also kinds of physical movement associated with the production and circulation processes. Commodity goods and services have to be produced by many different kinds of labour employing many different kinds of physical means of production. Similarly, such produced commodity goods and services have to be actually sold to realize sales revenues for the capitalist enterprise, and this requires labour, including that of transportation and marketing, again employing the appropriate physical means. This entails in particular that the productivity of a production process can be measured via appropriate physical quantities such as hourly physical output which, in turn, can be converted into a measure of labour productivity if wage-costs are known. Each unit output then costs x cents in labour costs, but what the product can be sold for on the market is a brute fact that may have little connection with the labour costs.

As I said, the movement of valorization cannot be seen as such without the appropriate socio-ontological concepts. What capitalism is essentially, i.e. its ontological whatness, remains today an unposed and unanswered question. The social science of economics therefore cannot come to grips with the truth of this kind of sociating movement and instead fudges the questions, engaging wilfully in obfuscation. In remaining blind to the truth, economic movements are then (merely) explained by empirically based theoretical models. Economists look at empirical regularities and patterns from the past and try to extrapolate them more or less successfully. They tend to use sentences starting with 'History tells us that ...'. There is no unified economic theory at all, but only various bits and pieces of theoretical explanation for various scenarios based on unending empirical research. Empiricist modern social science does not even notice the deficit.

Further reading: Newton mathematizes Aristotelean ontology.

Laws of movement & Energy.

'An Invisible Global Social Value' TT&S Vol. 5 no. 2, 2024.

Capitalocene & The global law of movement.

Sustainability? Of what?. 

Appendix: 'A demathematizing phenomenological interpretation of quantum-mechanical indeterminacy' in Movement and Time in the Cyberworld De Gruyter, Berlin 2019.

Social Ontology of Whoness: Rethinking Core Phenomena of Political Philosophy De Gruyter, Berlin 2018.

On Human Temporality: Recasting Whoness Da Capo De Gruyter, Berlin 2024.

Why I am not an atheist

Why I am not an atheist. And also: Why I am not a believer.

An atheist does not believe in the existence of God; s/he denies His existence.

A believer believes in the existence of God; it is a matter of faith.

Both beliefs (or convictions) presuppose somehow the meaning of existence itself. 'To exist' is synonymous with 'to be', but what does 'being' itself mean? Does 'being' have several or even many meanings? And if God were to be, which mode of being would pertain to His being? For a believer or a non-believer, such questions have no weight for pondering because it is only a matter of believing or negating a certain belief. For a philosopher, the search and struggle for the truth of the phenomena themselves trump any concern with belief.

What modern science ascertains as true, in the sense of its hypothetical models being verified as correct, so far, by empirical scientific methodology, is contraposed to belief in God. For modern science there is no convincing empirical evidence for God's existence, and it also claims to have better, scientifically tested explanations for how the world came about (it seems always to be a question of origins in linear time). This amounts to a tacit assertion that the mode of being with which the modern sciences, starting with physics, deal is the one pertinent also to the question whether God exists. But the modern sciences apply, either directly or indirectly, only to physical kinds of movement of physical, material beings. They are unaware of the ontology of productive-efficient movement on which they are implicitly founded.

In eschewing the philosophical psychology of an Aristotle in his De Anima, even the psyche of modern psychology has had to be broken down to consciousness, and this consciousness somehow, without further investigation as to what it is (its essence), reduced (literally: led back) to a material base for it to be taken seriously from a modern scientific viewpoint. In this way, since it lacks 'material substance' in itself, the reduced psyche's movements becomes materially manipulable, which is what all modern science is about, culminating in psycho-pharmaceutics, neuroscience and artificial intelligence. Something called the 'psyche' or 'soul' in the traditional sense is useless for scientific purposes; its study an unprofitable line of research amounting, seemingly, to mere speculation. It is tacitly (or not so tacitly) assumed that the human psyche is an epiphenomenon of some kind of physical — say, neuronal-cerebral — movement, as we read in the OED on one of the significations of 'epiphenomenon': "Applied to consciousness regarded as a by-product of the material activities of the brain and nerve-system."

This way of thinking, however, skips over and suppresses the question concerning what the psyche is as a phenomenon in its own right, i.e. without material reduction to the status of an epiphenomenon. How is the human psyche itself to be conceived, not as a kind of being, but as a mode of being? And if it turns out, employing phenomenological methodology (cf. On Human Temporality), that the meaning of being itself is temporal and, in turn, time itself a three-dimensionally temporal openness, then the question concerning the mode of being of any entity at all becomes one concerning its mode of presencing and absencing in three-dimensional time, to which the psyche belongs. The psyche's openness to the world is precisely its 3D-temporality (and not solely its temporally one-dimensional sense-perception, as it has been traditionally). Both three-dimensional time and the psyche are pre-spatial and pre-material, and as such not amenable to treatment by modern science with its narrow-minded, empiricist methodology. For us mortal humans, who are the ones prone to asking whether God exists, and prior to any debates between modern science and religious belief, the question becomes one concerning a mode of 3D-temporal essencing. As what/who does God essence in the three-dimensional temporal psyche?

The more fundamental, encompassing and liberating question, however, is that concerning three-dimensional time itself and how this temporal openness is passed through a fourth dimension to reach the human psyche. We belong to time. From this alternative starting-point, further crucial phenomena such as human freedom can be rethought.

Further reading: On Human Temporality: Recasting Whoness Da Capo De Gruyter, Berlin 2024.

Aristotle's purely energetic god of the fair.