The greatest danger

Could it be that the greatest danger for humankind is the victory of empiricist-positivist thinking over philosophical thinking? Since there are many brands of philosophical thinking today, the relevant one here has to be specified. I call it phenomenology, linking it especially to three names: Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger. Hegel's phenomenology was developed before the shutdown of the ontological difference by positivism (Comte et al.) in the mid-19th century, when the physical sciences were celebrating one breakthrough after another, setting up an envious model for emulation by any other kind of science, whereas both Husserl's and Heidegger's phenomenology are valiant attempts to salvage a kind of thinking that passes through the ontological difference into the realm of genuine philosophy, the realm of ideas, of εἴδη.*

Hence, for instance, Husserl advocates eidetic science (eidetische Wissenschaft), distinguishing it strictly from empirical science (empirische Wissenschaft). Fact (Tatsache) and essence (Wesen) should not be confused with one another (cf. Ideen Chap. 1). And yet today, insight into the essential difference between factual correctness (with which all modern science operates aided by hypothetical, empirically 'verifiable', theoretical models) and the truth of the phenomena themselves has been lost. This circumstance renders modern 'evidence-based' science a con, insofar as it is not aware of its baked-in preconceptions, its limitations, and posits itself as absolute. Such prejudiced cluelessness is an indispensable part of the job description for any modern (natural or social) scientist.

Today's academic philosophy is so shot through with analytic philosophy that, apart from rare, oddball exceptions, it is incapable of appreciating the ontological difference. Indeed, it is concerned with actively denying and suppressing it with its adversarial, debating-club style. The institutional filters to ensure that ontological thinking (or more radically: temporalogical thinking) does not gain a foothold are highly effective.

Some steps removed from the academy, there is also that renegade student of Hegel's: Karl Marx, whose phenomenological lessons from Aristotle and Hegel flowed into his thinking, culminating in the socio-ontological concept of thingified value as the load-bearing concept of his main work, Das Kapital. Unfortunately, Marx also compromised with empirical-positivist thinking that enabled his thinking to be taken up enthusiastically by good ol' British empiricism. This has resulted in the highly reputable social science of Historical Materialism, in which residues of any socio-ontological concept have been expunged so as to remain on the empirical surface of historical fact. This purging has also made Marxist theory more accessible to the working class. Marxists themselves were immunized at the outset against any danger of being 'infected' by genuine philosophical thinking by declaring the latter to be thoroughly 'idealist', as opposed to down-to-earth materialist. Marx himself, and Engels, are not free of blame for ditching philosophy, but the baby was thereby thrown out with the bath water. 

What capitalism is as an historical mode of material economic reproduction, i.e. its essence or whatness, namely, cannot come to light through empiricist concepts. All the many varieties of empiricist economics must miss the essence, for it is out of bounds. The key to gaining insight into what capitalism is is the concept of thingified value. Its various interlocking forms and mode of movement cycling through its forms as endless, ruthless, life-negating valorization, all depend upon a phenomenological, eidetic way of thinking that only can be practised by the mind's first passing through the ontological difference. 

Who today knows that the global law of movement is the pernicious principle of endless valorization of the Medium, whose deceptive form of appearance on the surface is seemingly innocuous, or even highly desirable, economic growth? To continually enhance our material well-being, ostensibly dragging untold millions out of poverty? The Medium's sweet, irresistable cocaine also seeps into every crevice of modern life in countless, often subtle and surprising ways, addicting mind and soul, inducing wilful blindness. Nobody really knows why endless economic growth is necessary, as if it were a matter of endless human greed as an 'anthropological constant' and of (the failure of) our collective, democratic, political will to suppress and bridle, if not stop, (the will to) economic growth. Well-meaning people talk naïvely today of the need for a 'circular economy' while the vociferous loyal defenders of the so-called Free World and its values (including, above all, unknowingly and covertly, the free movement of thingified value's Medium) do their darnedest to fortify the status quo against any attack.

Isn't the historical trajectory toward sustainability upon which we are apparently moving, with an Herculean effort of collective will, a half-measure that we kid ourselves is the solution to keeping the world ticking over for another century or so? Is our cluelessness, our seemingly imperturbable, complacent adherence to factual correctness as substitute for phenomenal truth, the greatest danger?

* It can be said that Heidegger's revising of traditional philosophy is more radical than Husserl's, for it goes beyond the ideas as the eidetic 'looks' of beings to question the very meaning of being itself.

Further reading: Edmund Husserl Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie Buch I (Text nach Husserliana III/1 and V) Felix Meiner Verlag, Hamburg 1992.

'Husserls Krisis: Fragen an die transzendentale Phänomenologie' 2017.

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

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.

Seminal: Critique of Competitive Freedom and the Bourgeois-Democratic State: Outline of a Form-Analytic Extension of Marx's Uncompleted System Kurasje, Copenhagen 1984, reprinted 2015.

Verdingt und trotzdem frei?

Ein Hauptbegriff des späten Marx und vielleicht sogar der Kernbegriff seiner Kritik der politischen Ökonomie in Das Kapital ist bekanntlich der verdinglichte Wert. Warum von so etwas wie einer Verdingung von Mensch und Natur beim sich verwertenden Wert überhaupt die Rede sein soll, wird weiter unten erläutert. Marxens Kritik lese ich nicht lediglich auf konventionelle Weise als eine Kritik der bestehenden, praktischen, politischen, gesellschaftlichen Verhältnisse (die politisch umgewälzt werden sollten), sondern schon zuvor als Kritik an der Denkweise, in der wir alle gefangen sind, und in der wir im sogenannten Kapitalismus bzw. Spätkapitalismus leben. So gelesen ist die Kritik eine phänomenologische Ideologiekritik — nicht unverwandt mit der Hegelschen Phänomenologies des Geistes —, die darauf zielt, die Wahrheit über unsere kapitalistische Gesellschaft bloßzulegen. 

Dies ist um so schwerer, als nicht nur die Klasseninteressen der verschiedenen Sorten von Kapitalisten (grob gesagt die Bezieher von den verschiedenen Anteilen von Bruttoprofit, der in Zinsen, Grundrente und Unternehmergewinn aufgeteilt ist) im Wege stehen, sondern bereits vorgängig unsere nicht ganz unbegründete Überzeugung, daß unsere persönliche, individuelle Freiheit von diesen 'bestehenden Verhältnissen' abhängt. Denn die Parole der 'Freien Welt' ist nicht bloß Augenwischerei, sondern hat auch einen gewissen Wahrheitskern, der freilich die häßliche Seite dieser Wahrheit verdeckt. (Das Bewegungsprinzip dieser Freien Welt ist nämlich zutiefst lebensfeindlich.) Marxens Rede von den modernen Subjekten als bloßen Trägern von gesellschaftlichen Verhältnissen und als possenhaften Charaktermasken ist keine billige Polemik.

Ich habe versucht, der täuschenden Ambiguität in der Wahrheit über den Kapitalismus zu begegnen und begrifflich zu fassen mit der Unterscheidung zwischen dem Gewinnspiel auf der Oberfläche der Gesellschaft einerseits und der darunterliegenden unendlichen Verwertung des verdinglichten Werts andererseits. Der Liberalismus kann verstanden werden als die Denkart bzw. Ideologie, die versucht, die moderne Gesellschaftsform als von dem freien und fairen Spiel der individuellen Subjekte getragen zu denken. Jedes versucht allein oder mit anderen zusammen Schmied seines eigenen Glücks zu werden. Da das Spiel oft und vielleicht sogar in der Regel hart und unfair gespielt wird, bemüht sich die liberale Gesellschaft durch ihren demokratischen Staat vor allem darum, das Interplay im Gewinnspiel in den Bahnen der Fairneß zu halten. Vor allem der Machtkampf über die Aufteilung des gesamtgesellschaftlichen Einkommens muß durch Kompromisse geschlichtet werden. Diese Aufteilung soll mehr oder weniger fair sein, hängt aber davon ab, wer im Gewinnspiel momentan die Oberhand hat. Die darunterliegende Verwertungsbewegung des Mediums des verdinglichten Werts, die sich hinter den Rücken der Spieler als eisernes Gesetz durchsetzt, wird dabei gar nicht gesehen. Daß es ein solch globales Bewegungsgesetz gibt, wird als blanke Ideologie abgetan. Man hält sich an die harten Fakten, um die globale ökonomische Bewegung wirtschaftswissenschaftlich zu erklären, und kann seit dem Sieg der positivistisch-empirischen Wissenschaften über den philosophischen Geist seit der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts auch nichts anderes tun.

Insofern ist davon auszugehen, daß das Interesse an der Frage, ob der Marxsche Begriff des verdinglichten Werts in verdingenden Wert umbenannt werden soll, gering ist. Vielleicht haben beide Bezeichnungen jeweils ihre Berechtigung. Marxens große Leistung in Das Kapital ist es, den Wertbegriff als tragenden Begriff des Ganzen zu setzen. Alle Hauptbegriffe von Ware und Geld über Kapital und Arbeitskraft und (absoluten und relativen) Mehrwert bis hin zu Zinsen und Grundrente sind Wertbegriffe, die es zusammen erlauben, das ganze kapitalistische Wirtschaftsgeschehen als eine antagonistische Bewegung von sich transformierenden verdinglichten Wertformen zu begreifen. Denn Ware, Geld, Arbeitslohn, Kapital, Profit, Zinsen, Grundrente, Unternehmergewinn u.v.m. sind alle Wertdinge. Die ganze Bewegung findet statt um der endlosen Vermehrung des sich verwertenden Mediums willen, wobei das Verwertungsmedium selbst seine verdinglichten Erscheinungsformen wie Proteus ständig verwandelt, aber das Medium selbst 'flüssig' bleibt. Insofern wäre es angemessen, von dem Medium selbst als (die verschiedenen Wertformen) verdinglichend eher als verdinglicht zu reden. Dementsprechend wäre die Wendung 'Medium des verdinglichten Werts' sowohl als genitivus subjectivus zu lesen wie auch als genitivus objectivus, während die Wendung 'Medium des verdinglichenden Werts' nur als genitivus objectivus zu lesen ist.

Die deutsche Sprache besitzt auch die Verben 'verdingen' und 'dingen'. Man könnte sagen, daß das Medium des verdingenden Werts die verschiedenen verdinglichten Wertformen 'in den Dienst nimmt' (und somit dingt) um seiner eigenen Verwertung willen. Umgekehrt durch die verdinglichte Einkommensform des Arbeitslohns verdingen wir uns Menschen selbst beim sich verwertenden Vergesellschaftungsmedium. Zudem könnte man sagen, daß das Medium des verdinglichenden Werts die neuzeitlichen Wissenschaften und die darauf basierende moderne Technik gedungen (gedingt) hat um der Verstärkung und Vergrößerung seiner eigenen Verwertungsbewegung willen. Oder anders herum: die Wissenschaft und die Technik hat sich beim Medium des verdinglichenden Werts um der Verwertungsbewegung des Mediums willen verdingt; sie sind in seinen Dienst vor allem als Produktivitätssteigerer und Umschlagsbeschleuniger getreten. Auf der Oberfläche der Gesellschaft jedoch erscheint diese Steigerung und Beschleunigung lediglich als notwendige Folge des harten Konkurrenzkampfes im Gewinnspiel. Im Grunde weiß 'man' überhaupt nicht, warum die Zeiten immer hektischer werden, sondern 'man' redet etwa bloß vom 'Preis des Fortschritts' und dergleichen.

Wir modernen individualisierten Subjekte leugnen die tieferliegende, beunruhigende Wahrheit des 'Spätkapitalismus' und wähnen uns als frei, obwohl wir schon längst zu bloßen Spielern im Gewinnspiel mit sehr verschiedenen Erfolgschancen degradiert worden sind. Wir haben keine Einsicht darein, daß das verdinglichende Medium uns sowohl assoziiert als auch dissoziiert. Dieses Assoziieren ist eine spezifische geschichtliche Weise der Vergesellschaftung, zumal das Medium uns auch (vermittelt) als individuelle Privateigentümer dissoziiert, die ihre individuelle Freiheit vor allem als Verbraucher von Zahnpasta bis hin zu Immobilien genießen. Somit sind wir nicht nur gedungen (gedingt) sondern auch verführt vom süßen Gift des Mediums.

Wir bleiben — zumindest so lange das Einkommen genügt — selbstzufrieden und -gefällig und sehen überhaupt keine Notwendigkeit, uns über unser geschichtliches Schicksal als Bewußtseinssubjekte Gedanken zu machen. Alles bleibt beim Alten. Wir machen uns nicht auf den Weg zurückzugehen, um uns zu fragen, wer wir eigentlich in einem anderen geschlichtlichen Entwurf künftig sein könnten. Wer möchte heute überhaupt kontemplieren, daß, statt eines inneren Bewußtseins zu 'haben', wir in Wahrheit ursprünglich der Offenheit der dreidimensionalen Zeit gehören?

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

Devastation of the Earth. 

Sustainability? Of what?. 

CO2 and The Medium.

Thingified value begets individualized freedom.

Democracy's highest (hidden, thingified) value.

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

Hegemony of The Medium?.

Capitalocene & The global law of movement.

Laws of movement & Energy.

The time has come

" 'The time has come,' the Walrus said,
'To talk of many things,...' "

Lewis Carrol Through the Looking-Glass 1871.

"Gedanken, die mit Taubenfüßen kommen, lenken die Welt."
"Thoughts that come on doves' feet steer the world."

Friedrich Nietzsche Also sprach Zarathustra 2. Teil; Die stillste Stunde 1883.

εἶς ἐμοι μύριοι, ἐαν ἄριστος ἤι.
"One is tens of thousands to me, if the best."

Herakleitos, Diels/Kranz Fragment 49
Motto for On Human Temporality: Recasting Whoness Da Capo De Gruyter, Berlin 2024.

Non-commutativity of time and movement

Down the rabbit hole

To continue on from my preceding post to view the antinomies in the conception of quantum indeterminacy from another angle. Whereas in quantum physics, one has the non-commutativity of position and momentum of quantum entities that vitiates any attempt to mathematically control them precisely in the one-dimensional time of linear causality, thus forcing a fallback position of calculating with probability distributions, pondering the non-commutativity of time itself with movement shifts back a gear to more elementary, more originary considerations entirely outside the purview of the modern physicist's mind. The gear-shift also challenges the misconceived non-commutativity of time and energy in quantum physics.

Understandably, and by definition, the physicist's mind is trained upon physical movement, i.e. the movement of physical things that are characterized as having extension and matter, and occupying a place in space. All three of these essential properties of physical entities can be and have been mathematized since the 17th century as measurable size, mass, and position in a vector space, respectively, and as such enter into equations as algebraic variables that can be determined by solving the equations in order, ultimately, to precalculate their movement, or rather their (loco)motion. For it turns out that a specific kind of physical movement, viz. motion, or change of place, is most amenable to mathematization. Whereas Aristotle investigated four kinds of physical change (μεταβολή, change-over): of what (progeneration), how (quality), how much (quantity), and where (locomotion), the former three can be conceptually reduced to change of position in a vector space, and thus grasped mathematically. Hence, for example, in modern science, specifically chemistry, qualitative change of physical entities, i.e. chemical reactions, is conceived as the reconfiguration of material molecules in space.

This is all a consequence of modern physics' having disappeared down the rabbit hole of mathematization of the phenomena, whereby the phenomena are substituted by algebraic symbols that can be deployed and solved for real numbers in equations.

Because physical entities with a view toward predicting, i.e. precalculating, their movement have precedence, the conception of time that gains sway, and seems natural, is that it is itself counted off physical movement and in particular off physical motion, in the first place, the motion of celestial bodies. Time is thus conceived as a circular linearity causally linking physical events. For, without a cause-effect nexus, there would be no way to predict, pre-calculate, effectively control the motion. Causality and linear time are more or less synonymous, similar to how, in general relativity, space-time curvature is synonymous with gravitation. Giving precedence to physical movement dictates a conformable conception of linear time in which causality becomes mathematically calculable.

It could nevertheless, even at this late stage, give the rare, intellectually unsettled physicist pause for thought to consider that it is questionable whether the first quantum entity — apparently experimentally 'discovered' by Einstein in 1905, viz. the photon, lacking as it does mass, extension and determinate position — is a proper physical entity at all. Strictly speaking, the photon is immaterial, pure motion.

Turning the tables

My claim, however, is that the phenomena of time and movement do not commute, with the consequence that giving precedence to the phenomenon of time affects also the pertinent kinds of movement that come into consideration. To the dyed-in-the-wool physicist's dismay, there are kinds of movement that are not physical at all, but rather pre-physical, immaterial. Consider, for instance, a change of mind or a change of heart or a change of mood. None of these kinds of movement is predictable, masterable, let alone mathematizable. Nevertheless, modern science is bent upon bringing also these kinds of movement into the grasp of calculability, preferably by reducing them conceptually to physical movements of matter but, if not, at least quantifying all aspects of them. This is the dogma of modern science that scientists complacently accept; it holds sway throughout the scientific world, i.e. throughout the scientific mind. 

Violence is done to the phenomenon of mental movement when the attempt is made to reduce it ('lead back' conceptually) to ostensibly underlying material processes in the brain, as neuroscience attempts to do. It is then inevitable that free will is declared to be an illusion. Likewise, violence is done to the phenomenon of interplay as the kind of movement through which we humans sociate with each other when the attempt is undertaken to linearize it temporally under some kind of reciprocal causality.

Once the phenomenon of time is give precedence over movement, the former shows itself phenomenally as an interleaved unity of three familiar, 'empty', immaterial, temporal dimensions which we humans inhabit as long as we live. The kinds of movement enabled by the openness of three-dimensional time are not constricted to any kind of sequential linearity, but are unconstrained and free, even to the extent of seeming unruly and chaotic. Nevertheless, that is what our situation is as mortals exposed to and belonging to three-dimensional time. Within this temporal openness encompassing all kinds of movement, it is foolhardy to set out with a program to master all kinds of movement. By fixating on physical movement from the outset with the Greeks, to the neglect of other kinds of movement, Western science put itself on an historical trajectory that is aptly described as the unbridled will to power over all kinds of movement, under which those kinds of movement that are not physical suffer and even become invisible, since modern mathematized physics approaches the phenomena only quantitatively. They end up as variables, i.e. algebraic symbols, in equations and pseudo-equations, and that only for the sake of precalculating motion. Truth itself becomes degraded to the correctness of empirical predictions. Theorizing degenerates into constructing hypothetical models waiting for experimental verification. Foundational questions are shunned and eschewed. The truth of elementary phenomena themselves is no longer sought, and therefore does not come to any conceptual understanding. Philosophers and scientists no longer know what it means to conceptualize elementary phenomena.

Einstein, a loyal physicist to the end, was most upset by the apparently empirical discovery of quantum indeterminacy and its corollary of the breakdown of efficient causality, but it is only physics' narrow-minded conception of time in the first place that results in such a dilemma, which Einstein proposed to resolve by postulating as yet hidden causal variables. From a conception of three-dimensional time, by contrast, indeterminacy is the phenomenal truth for most kinds of movement, with the linear causality of physical motion being a limited exception.

One could be forgiven for thinking that it is time to turn the tables and give precedence to time over movement, perhaps initially just as a Gedankenexperiment. Due to their essential, phenomenal non-commutativity, the commuting of linear time with movement ends up surprisingly as three-dimensional rather than one-dimensional time, with a concomitant loss of control. Other kinds of (non-physical) movement come into view to be understood rather than explained. From the viewpoint of modern science, that is a calamity. For others it amounts to the liberation of time from its constricted linearity to a three-dimensional temporal openness. In such a three-dimensional time we are then confronted with other phenomena to be thought through that remain invisible in the older paradigm. These include our mental freedom and other quandaries about how we mutually estimate who we are in dealing with our shared temporally three-dimensional, mortal freedom.

Further reading: Quantum indeterminacy a thorough misconception.

On Human Temporality: Recasting Whoness Da Capo (4.7, 4.8) De Gruyter, Berlin 2024.