R R Williams, "Fichte and Husserl: Life-world, the Other, and Philosophi...

Kant's philosophy of reason is marked by a unique fate, as it is burdened with questions that it cannot ignore but cannot answer. These questions, such as freedom, immortality, and God, arise in human experience and reflection but exceed the capacity of reason to determine cognitively. Kant believes that cognition is restricted to mundane phenomena and the necessary laws governing their operation. However, Kant opens another door to the metaphysical issues of God, freedom, and immortality through practical reason, freedom, and faith.

Kant's critical philosophy denies knowledge to make room for faith, practical faith, and freedom. Practical faith and freedom are important, but this access is for practical purposes only and is not theoretical knowledge of any supersensible object(s). In determining the bounds of cognition and proscribing any cognitive transcendence of such boundaries, Kant raises a paradox: if one knows they are free, they must know themselves as a conditioned phenomenal object subject to causal mechanical necessity. This paradox leads to Kant applying his doctrine of denial of knowledge to make room for faith and distinguishing between appearances (phenomena) and things in themselves (noumena).

In terms of self-consciousness of freedom, Kant argues that there is no cognitive access of the self to its freedom. Instead, the consciousness of freedom is mediated by the moral law, which is the ratio cognoscendi of freedom and freedom is the ratio essendi of the moral law. This means that only a being who is free is capable of apprehending a moral imperative and the moral law.

Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, a student and translator of David Hume, was a prominent critic of Kant and German idealism. He believed that reason and philosophical cognition are self-subverting, leading to a disastrous choice between false reason and no reason at all. Jacobi's doctrine of immediate knowing or Gefühlsphilosophie offers a mixture of Humean impressions and Kant's practical faith, conceiving faith as an immediate certainty that excludes all proofs absolutely and is simply the representation agreeing with the thing being represented.

Friedrich Heinrich Fichte, a German philosopher, argued that the mediation of the self to itself by the other becomes a major problem in the development and transformation of idealism into a philosophy of spirit. He proposed an alternative explanation to the problem of knowing that one is free: freedom is intersubjectively mediated. Fichte insists that the human being (and so all finite beings generally) becomes human only among others. The relation of free beings to each other is therefore a relation of reciprocity through intelligence and freedom.

Husserl's transcendental phenomenology is a science of the life-world, not to be confused with the mundane natural science of empirical psychology. His transcendental method focuses on subjective meaning-bestowal and the ontological sense of the primordial life-world, which he critiques in his critique of science. Husserl's transcendental idealism asserts that the transcendental subject takes priority over the sense(s) it constitutes, while ordinary consciousness asserts that relations of self and world are inherently two-sided and reciprocal.

Husserl's account of intersubjectivity in the fourth Cartesian Meditation generates two opposing requirements: (i) all sense is constituted by the transcendental ego as part of its self-explication, and (ii) the other must be constituted as other. In ordinary life-world experience, one person is just as "real" as another; each is self-presence and presenting and not reducible to a representation.

The reflective turn of transcendental phenomenology commits Husserl to a firstperson account, with only one being the "primordial I" and all the rest being "others." This implies a fundamental asymmetry between the primordial I and the other, as the other as constituted is not self-presenting or self-manifesting. Husserl accounts for intersubjectivity through the concepts of pairing and appresentation, which is an analogical transfer of sense.

Husserl denies that appresentation is an inference or argument from analogy, blurring the distinction between the human ego and transcendental ego by equivocation. The problem in Husserl's account is that only one ego, the primordial ego, is presented, and all others are appresented, which appears to mean a derivative mode of presence.

The asymmetry between primordial ego and alter ego seems to undermine the reciprocity insisted on by ordinary consciousness. Interpreters like Paul Ricoeur argue that one must renounce the asymmetry of the relationship me-other required by Husserl's monadic idealism to account for the reciprocity and equalization required by empirical and sociological realism.

Fichte's work aims to provide a comprehensive and systematic presentation of the relationship between ordinary consciousness and transcendental philosophy. He posits that transcendental philosophy does not create anything but observes an actual I, which embodies this system of thinking described by transcendental philosophy. Fichte's reformulation of the transcendental viewpoint posits that there is nothing outside of reason, which is compatible with the ordinary consciousness thesis that there are persons. However, the question of what the spatial term "outside" means and whether it is appropriate in transcendental philosophy remains an ambiguity.

Fichte's phenomenological descriptions of ordinary consciousness and the experience of being summoned to freedom are discussed in his Lectures Concerning the Vocation of the Scholar and the face of the other, which anticipates Levinas's discussion in Totality and Infinitity. Both agree that the face has broad ethically obligating significance, summoning the individual to responsible freedom.

In his Grundlage des Naturrechts, Fichte addresses the issue of intersubjectivity in philosophy, focusing on how consciousness transcends itself. He proposes the concept of the Auff orderung by other, which contrasts the transcendental-speculative perspective and the ordinary consciousness perspective. The Auff orderung is based on the idea that the other person, the summoner, takes priority over the one summoned.

From the transcendental perspective, freedom is described negatively as not being determined, but as transcendental, pure freedom is radically indeterminate and has the power to determine itself out of this radical indeterminacy. Transcendental analysis emphasizes the importance of self-generating responses to others, even if they refuse the summons.

In Naturrecht, Fichte claims that freedom has a divided ground, partly external to the subject (the "real ground") and partly internal to the subject (the "ideal ground), implying an intersubjective mediation of freedom. In conclusion, Fichte's approach to the issue of intersubjectivity in philosophy is based on the idea that freedom is mediated, with the ground of action lying immediately in the being outside of it and in the subject itself.

Fichte's philosophical work rejects the notion of correlation between ideal and real grounds, arguing that it implies an inadequate conception of the unity of the I. Instead, he believes that the I must be grasped as the unity of synthesis and analysis, rather than a given. He emphasizes that separation occurs in and through the unification, and unity occurs through the separation.

Fichte maintains the primacy of the will over the apparent "externality" of the Auff orderung, demoting it to the status of a phenomenon. This obscures his own important discovery of the Auff orderung, which is that autonomy is mediated and achieved in union with other. The unity of the I, supposed to be a unity of self and other, of synthesis and analysis, turns out to be a subjective unity.

Fichte acknowledges a problem at this crucial step of his argument: the concept of a summons is not the concept of the summons, but rather an act of willing. From the transcendental standpoint, the move from willing oneself as a moral agent to the summons implies that the real ground of freedom collapses into the ideal, short-circuiting mediation. The I summons itself.

Fichte asserts that there is nothing outside of me, no alleged thing in itself can be the object of my consciousness. For reason, there is no limitation by others; all limitation is self-limitation, otherwise we have dogmatism. The original limitation of the will, or practical reason, is expressed by the categorical imperative, which sets for the will a moral task. According to Fichte, the categorical imperative or self- summons is only a first step in self-limitation, as it lacks determinacy and a determinate goal.

Fichte's compromise term, "community-mass," is grounded in transcendental intersubjectivity and reciprocity. He argues that rational beings are thought of and projected into the world of appearances to explain them to oneself, contradicting his earlier claim that there is a community of rational beings conditioning self-individuation.

Fichte maintains that individuation through the categorical imperative is only a first step toward individuation, as the self-imposed categorical imperative remains indeterminate. The transcendental analysis of moral individuation as indeterminate points to the necessity of a complementary Auff orderung for its determinacy and actualization in the sensible world.

 

Raymond Williams, 10. Hegemony (Marxism and Literature)

The traditional definition of 'hegemony' is political rule or domination, especially in relations between states. Marxism extended this definition to relations between social classes and definitions of a ruling class. Antonio Gramsci's work on the concept of 'hegemony' gained significant meaning in his work, which distinguishes between 'rule' (dominia) and 'hegemony'. He differentiates between 'rule' as directly political forms and 'hegemony' as the complex interlocking of political, social, and cultural forces.

The concept of 'hegemony' goes beyond 'culture' in its insistence on relating the 'whole social process' to specific distributions of power and influence. In any actual society, there are specific inequalities in means and capacity to realize this process, primarily between classes. Gramsci introduced the necessary recognition of dominance and subordination in what has still to be recognized as a whole process.

The concept of 'hegemony' goes beyond 'ideology', as it is decisive not only the conscious system of ideas and beliefs but also the whole lived social process as practically organized by specific and dominant meanings and values. Ideology, in its normal senses, is a relatively formal and articulated system of meanings, values, and beliefs that can be abstracted as a 'worldview' or a 'class outlook'. This explains its popularity as a concept in retrospective analysis (in base-superstructure models or homology), since a system of ideas can be abstracted from that once living social process and represented as the decisive form in which consciousness was at once expressed and controlled.

Ideology is recognizable as fully articulate and systematic forms, and there is a tendency in the analysis of art to look only for similarly fully articulated and systematic expressions of this ideology in the content (base-superstructure) or form (homology) of actual works. In less selective procedures, less dependent on the inherent classicism of the definition of form as fully articulate and systematic, the tendency is to consider works as variants of, or as variably affected by, the decisive abstracted ideology.

The concept of 'hegemony' often resembles these definitions but is distinct in its refusal to equate consciousness with the articulate formal system which can be and ordinarily be abstracted as 'ideology'. It does not exclude the articulate and formal meanings, values, and beliefs that a dominant class develops and propagates but does not equate them with consciousness. Instead, it sees the relations of domination and subordination as a saturation of the whole process of living, not only of political and economic activity but also of the whole substance of lived identities and relationships.

Hegemony is not only the articulate upper level of 'ideology', nor are its forms of control only those ordinarily seen as'manipulation' or 'indoctrination'. It is a whole body of practices and expectations over the whole of living, including our senses, assignments of energy, shaping perceptions of ourselves and the world. It constitutes a sense of reality for most people in society, a sense of absolute because experienced reality beyond which it is very difficult for most members of society to move in most areas of their lives.

The concept of hegemony offers two immediate advantages: first, its forms of domination and subordination correspond more closely to the normal processes of social organization and control in developed societies than the more familiar projections from the idea of a ruling class. This can speak to the realities of electoral democracy, leisure, and private life more specifically and actively than older ideas of domination. If the pressures and limits of a given form of domination are experienced and internalized, the whole question of class rule and opposition to it is transformed. Gramsci's emphasis on the creation of an alternative hegemony leads to a much more profound and active sense of revolutionary activity in a highly developed society than the persistently abstract models derived from very different historical situations.

Second, there is a whole different way of seeing cultural activity, both as tradition and practice. Cultural work and activity are not in any ordinary sense a superstructure but are seen as more than superstructural expressions of a formed social and economic structure. They are among the basic processes of the formation itself and related to a much wider area of reality than the abstractions of'social' and 'economic' experience. People see themselves and each other in directly personal relationships, seeing the natural world and themselves in it, and using their physical and material resources for what one kind of society specializes to 'leisure', 'entertainment', and 'art'.

Many difficulties arise, both theoretically and practically, but it is important to recognize how many blind alleys we may now be saved from entering. If any lived culture is necessarily so extensive, the problems of domination and subordination on the one hand and the extraordinary complexity of any actual cultural tradition and practice on the other can at last be directly approached. However, there is a closely related problem within the concept of 'hegemony' itself. In some uses, the totalizing tendency of the concept is converted into an abstract totalization, which is readily compatible with sophisticated senses of 'the superstructure' or even 'ideology'. The hegemony can be seen as more uniform, more static, and more abstract than in practice, if it is really understood.

The concept of hegemony is a complex and dynamic concept that encompasses both the active and passive aspects of political and cultural processes. It is not just a form of dominance, but a system or structure with specific and changing pressures and limits. Hegemony is not just passively existing as a form of dominance, but it is continually renewed, recreated, defended, and modified. It is also constantly resisted by pressures not at all its own.

One way to express the distinction between practical and abstract senses within the concept is to speak of 'the hegemonic' rather than 'hegemony' and 'the dominant' rather than simple 'domination'. The reality of any hegemony is that it is never either total or exclusive. At any time, forms of alternative or directly oppositional politics and culture exist as significant elements in society. Their active presence is decisive, not only because they have to be included in any historical analysis but as forms which have had significant effect on the hegemonic process itself.

A static hegemony, indicated by abstract totalizing definitions of a dominant ideology or world-view, can ignore or isolate such alternatives and opposition. However, the decisive hegemonic function is to control, transform, or even incorporate them. In this active process, the hegemonic has to be seen as more than the simple transmission of an (unchanging) dominance. Any hegemonic process must be especially alert and responsive to the alternatives and opposition which question or threaten its dominance.

Works of art, by their substantial and general character, are often especially important as sources of this complex evidence. The major theoretical problem with immediate effect on methods of analysis is to distinguish between alternative and oppositional initiatives and contributions made within or against a specific hegemony (which then sets certain limits to them or can succeed in neutralizing, changing, or actually incorporating them) and other kinds of initiative and contribution which are irreducible to the terms of the original or adaptive hegemony and are in that sense independent.

Cultural process must not be assumed to be merely adaptive, extensive, and incorporative. Authentic breaks within and beyond it, in specific social conditions, have often occurred. By developing modes of analysis that can discern the finite but significant openness of many actual initiatives and contributions, we can better understand the persistent pressures and limits of the hegemonic.

 

Thomas Nenon, "Immanuel Kant’s Turn to Transcendental Philosophy" (Summary)

Kant's work in 1781 marked a significant turning point in the history of philosophy. His first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason introduced a "critical" philosophy with a radical new approach to traditional questions in epistemology and metaphysics, completely reshaping the philosophical landscape. He would produce significant and original contributions to philosophical ethics in his Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785), Critique of Practical Reason (1788), and the second part of his Metaphysics of Morals (1797).

Kant's early works are commonly referred to as "precritical writings," which give little hint of the scope, originality, and significance of the work that followed. Born into a modest atmosphere influenced by Pietism, Kant was strongly influenced by theology professor Franz Albert Schultz and philosophy professor Martin Knutzen, who took seriously the work of Leibnizian Christian Wolff. Other prominent influences included Aristotelian philosophy and Christian Thomasius's eclecticism.

Kant's earliest publications deal with questions at the intersection of natural science and philosophy and on methodological issues in philosophy and theology. His first book, Th oughts on the True Estimation of Living Force, written in 1746 and published in 1749 when Kant was still a young student, and his dissertation Succinct Exposition of Some Meditations on Fire and his General History of Nature and Theory of the Heavens from the same year are examples of the former. Prime examples of the latter include his 1755 essay A New Exposition of the First Principles of Metaphysical Knowledge, his essay on The Only Possible Basis of a Demonstration of the Existence of God, his Investigations of the Clarity of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morals, and the inaugural dissertation On the Form and Principles of the Sensible and the Intelligible World, which he defended in conjunction with his appointment to the rank of professor in 1770.

Much of the Critique hinges on Kant's analysis of the notion of "experience" itself. He tries to show that experience involves more than just having sense impressions, and that positive knowledge is possible only on the basis of experience, which necessarily involves both sense experience (intuitions) and the operations of the intellect (concepts). Kant distinguishes between those functions of the mind involved in the organization and unification of intuitions into knowledge from the functions that involve the higher-order unifying operations of seeking overarching unities or ultimate grounds for knowledge in objects that lie outside the realm of sense experience.

Kant's primary focus is on reason only in its theoretical function, that is, in its claims to knowledge. He concludes that the intellect in conjunction with the senses can provide us with more or less reliable, empirical knowledge of sense objects, but that reason alone cannot yield theoretical knowledge.

Kant's philosophy emphasizes the importance of understanding the categories of thought and the role of concepts in recognizing and organizing the material provided by intuition. He presents twelve categories of thinking that correspond to the forms of judgment: quantity (universal, particular, or individual), quality (reality, negation, limitation), relation (inherence and substance, cause and effect, mutual interaction), and modality (possibility, actuality, necessity). These categories are called the "metaphysical deduction" of the categories and are necessary conditions for the possibilities of experience and any object of experience for us.

Kant argues that experience, objects of experience, and even the consciousness of the subjects who experience objects are unities, not just aggregates of data that come and go over time. Each of these categories has a fundamental unity across time in spite of the specific changes in the state of experience, in objects, and in the subjects of experience over time. Knowledge involves recognition of patterns and the assumption that there are patterns within experience. The fact that we must assume that we can and do organize our intuitions according to these patterns for knowledge to be possible is the core insight that Kant advances in these sections.

However, the general arguments about the nature and necessity of the categories leave open the question of how specific they apply to objects. Kant's philosophy and approach to understanding nature involve identifying three categories of relation: substance, causality, and modality. The categories of relation have temporal schemata, such as simultaneity according to substance and succession according to causality. Modality is characterized by its relationship to the conditions of experience, such as possibility, actuality, and necessity.

Attaining knowledge involves organizing the material provided by the senses according to the general rules of what things are "always" given together or "always" succeed each other. Intuition provides not only the raw material for knowledge but also a guide for how to arrange them in terms of their formal temporal relationships and the measure and corrective of empirical knowledge through what Kant calls the "further course of experience." Empirical knowledge is always open to revision because the rules that we are attempting to discern through the course of specific experiences given to us are intended as holding "always."

Kant's philosophy has been criticized for its close tie to modern natural science, its focus on "objectivity," and its narrow notion of human cognition. Subsequent developments in mathematics and natural science raise the question whether Kant's orientation on Euclidean geometry and Newtonian physics as paradigms of knowledge is evidence that his universal and unchangeable a priori principles are actually assumptions that hold only relative to these specific systems.

The Critique of Pure Reason by Augustus Kant is a philosophical treatise that argues that philosophy can identify a priori, nonempirical, or "metaphysical" principles for practical reason. Kant's moral theory begins with an analysis of common intuitions about the nature of moral obligation, asserting that there is nothing in the world that could be considered good without any qualification except for a good will. He defines "duty" as the necessity of an action done out of respect for the law.

Kant's answer to everyday common sense is that all of us experience cases where our inclinations conflict with what we know we ought to do (our duty). We become aware of our moral obligations when we ask what any reasonable person must admit is the right thing to do in this situation. Pure practical rationality distinguishes itself from pure practical rationality by its general principles or maxims being traced back not to some specific inclination or desire but rather to one's own rational awareness of one's duty as such. The will of the moral individual is therefore "autonomous," since the good will is not determined by anything outside itself, making it in the fullest sense "free."

Kant's theory of morality is based on the concept of "imperatives," which are commands that dictate what we must do to achieve certain ends. He formulates the categorical imperative as follows: "Act only according to that maxim that you can at the same time thereby will that it become a universal law." He emphasizes the need for a single categorical imperative, but offers four alternative formulations. The first formulation states that one should act as if the maximum of their action should become through their will a natural law, expresses the lawfulness and universality of the good will as pure practical reason. The second formulation states that one should treat humanity, both in one's own person and in the person of every other, as an end and never merely as a means. The third formulation explicitly draws on this notion of autonomy: "Act in such a way that the will can view itself in its maxim as at the same making a universal law." Finally, the fourth formulation brings together the notions of universality and the notion of human beings as ends in themselves.

Kant's critique of practical reason addresses the ontological implications of his new theory, focusing on the question of freedom and how it can be reconciled with the idea of natural causality. He asserts that freedom is the cornerstone of a system of pure, even speculative reason, and that all other concepts, such as God and immortality, follow from freedom and receive content and objective reality through it.

Kant believes that the Stoics fail to appreciate actual human psychology if they believe that we can (or should) extinguish any hopes for material happiness and well-being in this life. He believes that the only thing that can be said to be good without qualification is a good will, but we can envisage a more comprehensive good that would entail a coincidence between happiness and moral worth.

Kant's metaphysical grounds of a doctrine of virtue focus on things we cannot know or count on, but that a moral person must hope for when acting in conformity with the moral law. He emphasizes that this resolve is always in danger and must be constantly and consistently renewed because human motivation never eliminates heteronomous inclinations that even the smallest moral resolve cannot completely extinguish.

Kant's philosophical reflections on judgments of taste have significant implications for theories of art, artistic creativity, and philosophical determinations of concepts such as beauty and sublimity. His Critique of Judgment from 1790 examines the nature of these judgments and the validity of various teleological claims. Aesthetic judgments are subjective and dependent on individual sensibilities and preferences, while moral claims are based on pure practical reason and absolute obligation.

Judgments of taste, specifically judgments about what is and is not beautiful, resemble moral claims and theoretical claims about truth in that they claim universal assent even without an objective basis. They share the characteristic that they seem to be made from the standpoint of an impartial observer, as one can judge an object beautiful without necessarily having an interest in possessing that object. The feeling of pleasure (lust) awakens in the person who experiences the object, and Kant concludes that it must be something about the experiencing of the object that gives rise to the judgment.

In his analysis of the beautiful, Kant focuses on the concept of the sublime, which he believes is a transcendent object beyond our grasp. Experiences of the sublime serve as symbols of transcendent objects that lie beyond our intellect, helping to foster an appropriate sensitivity to nonnatural objects such as duty and human beings as persons. Prime examples of the sublime are overwhelming natural phenomena like the vastness of the sea, the majesty of mountains, or the ferocity of a storm.

Kant develops a theory of genius in the Critique of Judgment, which has been influential not only in philosophical aesthetics but also in the self-understanding of many artists in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Beauty is not simply a matter of the intellect, and there are no rules for what makes an article beautiful or not.

Kant's philosophy of right has been a subject of significant debate and analysis, with his metaphysics of morals receiving more attention. He posits that "persons" are entities who possess practical reason that makes them morally accountable and endows them with rights. In a state of nature, only physical goods, including one's own bodily well-being, can be reliably secured only if there is an enforcement mechanism that makes it in everyone's self-interest to observe the rights of others, namely a civil society with recognized laws and institutions that enforce them.

 

Aquinas and Ethics

Aquinas acknowledges that humans have only one ultimate end, which is something that satisfies one's desires. He maintains that there are objective truths about the nature of happiness and that there are nearly an infinite number of ways to manifest virtues in various professions. He also considers the expression "ultimate end" or "happiness" to be ambiguous, distinguishing between the happiness humans can possess in this life, which he calls "imperfect human happiness," and the happiness possessed by God, angels, and the blessed, which he considers perfect.

Aquinas' philosophy focuses on the nature of human happiness, which is the pursuit of good or happiness through virtuous actions. He agrees with Aristotle that the attainment of happiness involves the soul's activity expressing virtue, particularly the best virtue of contemplation, where the object of such contemplation is the best possible object, God. Aquinas believes that human beings in this life, even those who possess the infused virtues, at best attain happiness only imperfectly since their contemplation and love of God are, at best, imperfect.

Aquinas is a moral perfectionist, meaning that the means to human happiness come not by way of merely good human actions but by way of perfect or virtuous moral actions. Morally virtuous human actions are actions that perfect the human agent that performs them, leading to happiness for the agent that performs them. He rejects the view that all bodily pleasures are evil, as it is natural for human beings to experience bodily and sensitive pleasures in this life.


Mortally virtuous action is more than just morally good action; it is a combination of the kind of action, circumstances surrounding an action, and motivation for action. It arises from a good moral habit or virtue that makes it possible to act with moral excellence. However, one morally good action is not necessarily a morally virtuous act, as virtuous actions arise from a habit such that one wills to do what is virtuous with ease.

Aquinas' account of the means to happiness as moral virtues reveals two different kinds of virtue: natural virtues, which are attainable through reason and will, and supernatural virtues, which come only by grace. Aquinas believes that humans can acquire virtues that perfect human beings according to their natural end by repeatedly performing the kinds of acts a virtuous person performs, or habituation. He calls these virtues human virtues, distinguishing them from "infused" virtues, which are virtues we have only by way of a gift from God, not by habituation.

Infused virtues are perfections of our natural powers that enable us to do something well and easily. They differ from human virtues in several ways. First, unlike human virtues, infused virtues enable us to perfect our powers so that we can perform acts in this life commensurate with or as a means to eternal life in heaven. Second, infused virtues are wholly gifts from God, unlike human virtues.

Aquinas thinks that neither infused nor human virtue makes a human being impervious to committing mortal sin. Mortal sins kill supernatural life in the soul, making one fit for the supernatural reward of heaven. However, since infused virtues are not acquired through habituation but are a function of being in a state of grace as a free gift from God, just one mortal sin eliminates the infused virtues in the soul. However, such mortal sins can be forgiven by God's grace through the sacrament of penance, restoring a soul to the state of grace.

Aquinas posits that human virtues are perfections of the characteristically human powers. He distinguishes between the rational powers of intellect and will, which enable humans to think about actions in universal terms, and the apprehensive powers of the soul, such as sense and intellect, and the appetitive powers of the soul, which incline creatures towards a certain goal or end based on how objects are apprehended by the senses and intellect.

Aquinas discusses five intellectual virtues: wisdom, understanding, science, art, and prudence. Understanding involves the consideration of first principles, while science is the intellectual ability to draw correct conclusions from first principles within a particular subject domain. Art and prudence are two intellectual virtues that bring about some practical effect.

Aquinas, a virtue ethicist, posits that there are two types of human virtues: intellectual and moral. He distinguishes between perfect and imperfect human moral virtues, where imperfect virtues are dispositions that one desires to do good deeds well. In contrast, perfect virtues cannot be possessed apart from one another, as they are dispositions that one is inclined to do good deeds in the right way, at the right time, and for the proper motive.

Aquinas accepts the "unity of the virtues" thesis for two reasons. First, he distinguishes virtues according to general properties of the virtues, such as discretion belonging to prudence, rectitude to justice, moderation to temperance, and strength of mind to courage. This way, he believes that one cannot have any one of the perfect cardinal virtues without also possessing the others. Second, he argues that one cannot be perfectly prudent unless they are also perfectly temperate, just, and courageous. This is because a perfected intellect is necessary for deciding on the virtuous thing to do in any given situation. However, a perfect knowledge of the ends or principles of human action requires the possession of virtues that perfect the irascible appetite, concupiscible appetite, and will.

Aquinas also discusses moral knowledge, arguing that all humans who have reached the age of reason and received an elementary moral education have a kind of moral knowledge, namely, a knowledge of universal moral principles. There are at least three types of universal principles of the natural law: first principles (e.g., do good and avoid evil), second principles (e.g., honoring parents and gifts), and third principles (e.g., abstract formulations of the commandments of the Decalogue).

To know the primary and secondary universal precepts of the natural law is to have the human virtue of understanding with respect to the principles of moral action. Moral knowledge of other sorts is built on the back of having the virtue of understanding with respect to moral action. It is possible to have the virtue of understanding without otherwise being morally virtuous, such as prudentness and courage.

Aquinas believes that the proximate measure for the goodness and badness of human actions is human reason, or right reason. However, right reason is also a part of God's mind, making God the ultimate standard for moral goodness. He uses the language of law to discuss God as the measure of morally good acts, stating that God's infinite and perfect being is the ultimate rule or measure for all creaturely activity, including normative activity.

Aquinas believes that none of the precepts of the Decalogue are dispensable, as each of the Ten Commandments is a fundamental precept of the natural law. However, it would be a contradiction for God to will that a fundamental precept of the natural law be violated, as it would contradict God's own perfection. Therefore, God's will and perfection are the same, and a contradiction in terms would be necessary for living a good human life.

 

Carolyn Steedman's "Culture, Cultural Studies and the Historians" (Summary)

 

Carolyn Steedman’s essay Culture, Cultural Studies and the Historians discusses the concept of culture, cultural studies in Britain since the last war, and the connection between these concepts to the practice and writing of history. Steedman follows a historiographical tradition laid down by British cultural studies, which usually organize themselves in a particular way, rendering up their own account in terms of three key-texts: Richard Hoggart's The Uses of Literacy (1957), Raymond Williams's Culture and Society (1958), and E. P. Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class (1963).

Steedman argues that history is the most impermanent of written forms, as it is only an account that will last a while. The practice of historical work, the uncovering of new facts, and the endless reordering of the immense detail that makes the historian's map of the past performs this act of narrative destabilization daily. The written history is a story that can only be told by the implicit understanding that things are not over, that the story isn't finished, and can never be finished.

However, when text-based historical knowledge is removed from the narrative and cognitive frame of historical practice and used within another field, it loses its impermanence and potential irony. The historical item taken out of its narrative setting to explain something else is stabilized, making it a building block for a different structure of explanation. This has been observed in the use of the written history within sociological explanation.


Steedman asserts that the first bourgeois individual was not an economic man but a domestic woman, born of conduct books, educational manuals, and possibly Samuel Richardson's pen.

She expresses concerns about the authenticity of Raymond Williams' account of culture in Marxism and Literature and Keywords. They argue that Williams' account may have been influenced by historical events, such as the sociology of the gendered reader, family and childcare, and the influence of Locke's text. They suggest that a program of reading and archive research could help identify the historicized subjectivity in the feminine and explore Freud's theory of human inwardness and interiority. The author believes that by 1995, the terms 'woman' and 'child' might be added to the schema, potentially leading to a more profound change in the account. They also question whether there is a connectedness to everything, suggesting that Williams may have never read Some Thoughts Concerning Education, as the ideas expressed in the book would be available from the historical air he breathed when writing about the late seventeenth century.

Carolyn Porter discusses the underlying formalism of critical practice in historical studies, focusing on the tendency of new historicists to use "riveting anecdotes" to explore texts and contexts. This technique reflects a principle of arbitrary connectedness, where any aspect of a society is related to any other. Dominick LaCapra criticizes social historians for their reliance on the concept of culture, where everything connects to everything else and "culture" is the primordial reality in which all historical actors have their being, do their thing, share discourses, worldviews, and languages.

The social historian's reliance on the notion of "culture" as the bottom line has its own history, as seen in the academy's elevation of nineteenth-century historians like Burkhardt and de Tocqueville to canonical status in the post-Second-World-War period. Cultural studies in Britain has intersected with these questions, revealing a more general social and institutional shaping of history and historical knowledge in Britain over the last thirty years. Cultural studies in Britain is nervous about codifying methods of knowledge and attempts at institutionalization, and is constantly repositioning subjects and defining themselves through autobiography and oral history.

Cultural studies in the UK has evolved from native texts and was institutionally established at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in Birmingham. However, the arrival of "structuralisms" disrupted this evolution. The teaching and learning forms in cultural studies degrees have been influenced by the culture concept in schools, which has played a role in organizing historical knowledge for young children and adolescents. The organization of historical knowledge in British cultural studies has been about questions of education, accommodation to learners, and the allure of certain teacher-student relationships.

The practice of history in university-based cultural studies began in the late 1960s, with the MA program at Birmingham. The center's Popular Memory Group struggled with history's empiricism and resistance to theory. The educational form within which they did their wrestling is inimical to conventional historical practice, particularly archive research. Archive research is expensive, time-consuming, and not practical for a group of people.

The textual approach used in these studies was inadequate, making no distinction between spoken and written language, not acknowledging language as a form of cognition and a process of development, and lacking strategies for analyzing literary form as a negotiated form. The most urgent need for history is an adequate model of both spoken and written language, and whether developed within historical studies or by students of cultural studies working on the past does not matter as much as the fact that it might be done.

The curriculum change in national education systems has been influenced by the establishment of English literature as the foundation of a national system of education between 1880 and 1920. This led to the reorganization of education in terms of cheapness and practicality, with accessible texts being the primary focus. However, the amount of history taught in British society has steadily diminished over the last thirty years. The cheapness and practicality of text-based historical inquiry can also be seen as a theoretical propriety. The last great flowering of English progressive education in schools in the 1970s was seen in both the English departments of secondary schools and the practice of integrated topic work in many primary schools. This flowering was seen in the breaking down of barriers between teachers and taught, common involvement in a common project, and the use of texts to make enquirers of them all. The practice of history in primary and lower forms of secondary schools has also been influenced by pedagogical forms.

The focus of cultural studies has shifted from Masters teaching to undergraduate degrees, with the need for historians to teach history. This shift is due to the institutional setting, alignment of humanities subjects under departmental reorganization in polytechnics, and the need for students to understand the interface of different knowledges brought together in undergraduate teaching. As a result, British cultural studies needs to consider its approach to history and the kind of historical thinking it will ask its students to perform.

In a dehistoricized intellectual world, all children in society will be taught exactly the same set of historical knowledges from the age of five to sixteen. British cultural studies may be able to achieve what history cannot, as the history of pedagogical practice and educational forms puts cultural studies in a position to do its own historiography. However, after conference days, cultural studies must ask questions about why they want history, what new acts of transference will items from the past help cultural studies perform, how it will be done and taught, whether there will be room for detailed historical work or rely on schematic and secondary sweeps through time.

Raymond Williams, 9. Typification and Homology (Marxism and Literature)

The concept of 'typicality' has been significant in nineteenth-century thought, with two general forms: the 'ideal' type, which is typically associated with heroes in literature and is a rendering of 'universals', which are permanently important elements of human nature and the human condition. This can be seen as distinct from religious, metaphysical, or idealist forms of thought, but can also be argued that permanent elements of the human social situation, always modified by specific historical situations, are 'typical' or 'universal' in a more secular sense.

A different emphasis on 'typicality' was made by Belinsky, Chernyshevsky, and Dobrolyubov, which became influential in Marxism. The 'typical' is the fully 'characteristic' or fully'representative' character or situation, which concentrates and intensifies a much more general reality. This redefined the notion of'reflection' to reflect the essential or underlying or general reality as an intrinsic process rather than as a separated process in time.

The Marxist theory of art insisted that'social reality' is a dynamic process, and that it is this movement that is reflected by 'typification'. Art, by figurative means, typifies the elements and tendencies of reality that recur according to regular laws, although changing with the changing circumstances. This description of social reality as a dynamic process is a major advance, but there is a danger of reducing this theory to art as the typification (representation, illustration) not of the dynamic process but of its ('known') laws.

In metaphysical and idealist thought, a comparable theory had included recognition of the essential and indication of its desirable or inevitability according to the basic laws of reality. In Marxist theory, the concept of 'ideal type' took on connotations of the 'future man'. However, the concept of 'typicality' is confusing due to its variety.

The sense of 'typicality' most consistent with Marxism is that based on recognition of a constitutive and constituting process of social and historical reality, which is specifically expressed in some particular 'type'. This related movement, of recognition and means of specific expression, is one of the most commonerious senses of'mediation', despite its basic disadvantages. However, 'type' can still be understood in two radically different ways: as an emblematic example of a significant classification, or as the represenative example of a significant classification. This presupposition repeats the basic dualism of all theories centred on the concept of'reflection' or'mediation'.

In the later work of the Frankfurt School, other concepts were developed, including the strict notion of 'correspondences' and the radically new concept of 'homology'. Walter Benjamin used the term from Baudelaire to describe an experience which seeks to establish its own crisis-proof form within the realm of the ritual. His presence and authenticity can be recognized by what he called its 'aura', which can be held at a simple subjectivist level, or it can be moved towards the familiar abstractions of myth, collective unconscious, or creative imagination.

The Frankfurt School was developing the idea of 'dialectical images' as crystallizations of the historical process. This concept is very near one sense of 'fyp~'J gi~.in_gJl' new social and historical sense of 'emblenuitic' or'symbolic' art.

The idea of 'dialectical images' needs definition. Adorno complained that they were often in effect'reflections of social reality', reduced to'simple facticity'. He argued that 'dialectical images' are models not of social products but rather objective constellations in which the social condition represents itself. This argument depends on a distinction between 'the real social process' and the various fixed forms, in 'ideology' or'social products', which merely appear to represent or express it. The real social process is always mediated, and one of the positive forms of such mediation is the genuine 'dialectical image'.

There is still a problem in the description of all inherent and constitutive consciousness as'mediated', even when this mediation is recognized as itself inherent. Yet in other respects, this is a crucial step towards the recognition of art as a primary process.

Theoretically, correspondences are resemblances, in seemingly very different specific practices, which may be both direct and directly related expressions of and responses to a general social process. At another level, correspondences are neither resemblances nor analogies but displaced connections, as in Adorno's example of the negative relation between Viennese 'number games' and the backward state of Austrian material development, given its intellectual and technical capacities.

Homology is a concept that extends from a sense of correspondence in origin and development to a sense of corresponding forms or structures, which are the results of different kinds of analysis. It was developed in the life sciences and includes a radical distinction from 'analogy'. Homology is correspondence in origin and development, while analogy is in appearance and function. The related distinction between'structure' and 'function' is directly relevant, with a range from 'general homology' (the relation of an organ to a general type) through'serial homology' (related orders of connection) to'special homology' (the correspondence of a part of one organism to another part of another organism).

The radical distinction between variants of 'correspondence' and 'homology' in cultural analysis must be related to the fundamental theoretical distinctions that have already been examined. Both 'correspondence' and 'homology' can be modes of exploration and analysis of a social process, which is grasped from the beginning as a complex of specific but related activities. Selection is evidently involved, but there is no a priori distinction between the necessary and the contingent, the'social' and the 'cultural', the 'base' and the'superstructure'.

Both 'correspondence' and 'homology' can be in effect restatements of the base-superstructure model and the 'determinist' sense of determination. Analysis begins from a known structure of society or a known movement of history, and specific analysis then discovers examples of this movement or structure in cultural works. Or, where 'correspondence' seems to indicate too simple an idea of reflection, analysis is directed towards instances of formal or structural homology between a social order, its ideology, and its cultural forms.

Theoretically, the'social order' has to be given an initially structured form, and the most available form is 'ideology' or 'world-view', which is already evidently but abstractly structured. This procedure is repeated in the cultural analysis itself, as the homological analysis is now not of 'content' but of 'form', and the cultural process is not its active practices but its formal products or objects. The 'fit' or homology between 'ideology' and 'cultural object' is often striking and important, but it comes with a heavy price: first, in the procedural selectivity of historical and cultural evidence; second, in the understanding of contemporary cultural process. An alternative approach to the same problems can be found in the developing concept of 'hegemony'.

Edward Soja's "History, Geography, Modernity" (Summary)

The nineteenth-century obsession with history, as described by Foucault, has not fully been replaced by a spatialization of thought and experience. An essentially historical epistemology continues to pervade the critical consciousness of modern social theory, understanding the world primarily through the dynamics arising from the emplacement of social being and becoming in the interpretive contexts of time. This enduring epistemological presence has preserved a privileged place for the 'historical imagination' in defining the nature of critical insight and interpretation.

As we move closer to the end of the twentieth century, Foucault's premonitory observations on the emergence of an 'epoch of space' assume a more reasonable cast. The material and intellectual contexts of modern critical social theory have begun to shift dramatically, with calls for a far-reaching spatialization of the critical imagination. A distinctively postmodern and critical human geography is taking shape, brashly reasserting the interpretive significance of space in the historically privileged confines of contemporary critical thought.

New possibilities are being generated from this creative commingling, such as a simultaneously historical and geographical materialism, a triple dialectic of space, time, and social being, and a transformative re-theorization of the relations between history, geography, and modernity.

Postmodern critical human geography emerged in the late 1960s, but was largely ignored due to the reaffirmation of history over geography in Western Marxism and liberal social science. C. Wright Mills's sociological imagination provides a basis for spatializing the historical narrative and reinterpreting critical social theory. Mills argues that the sociological imagination is rooted in historical rationality, a concept that applies to critical social science and Marxism. He argues that individuals can understand their own experiences and fate by locating themselves within their period and becoming aware of the chances of all individuals in their circumstances. The sociological imagination enables us to grasp history and biography, and their relations within society. Recognizing this task and promise is the mark of a classic social analyst.

The historical imagination, as described by Edward Soja, is a central aspect of critical social theory. It reduces meaning and action to the temporal constitution and experience of social being. This rationality is grounded in the intersections of history, biography, and society, and is shared by all social theories. The historical imagination is never completely spaceless, but it is always time and history that provide the primary "variable containers" in these geographies. Critical social theory has been particularly central to the search for practical understanding of the world as a means of emancipation versus maintenance of the status quo.

The development of critical social theory has revolved around the assertion of a mutable history against perspectives and practices that mystify the changeability of the world. The critical historical discourse sets itself against abstract and transhistorical universalizations, naturalisms, empiricals, positivisms, religious and ideological fatalisms, and any conceptualizations of the world that freeze the frangibility of time, the possibility of 'breaking' and remaking history.

Historicalism has been conventionally defined in several ways, including neutral, deliberate, and hostile. However, this definition identifies historicism as an overdeveloped historical contextualization of social life and social theory that actively submerges and peripheralizes the geographical or spatial imagination. This definition does not deny the extraordinary power and importance of historiography as a mode of emancipatory insight but identifies historicism with the creation of a critical silence, an implicit subordination of space to time that obscures geographical interpretations of the changeability of the social world.

Michel Foucault's contributions to critical human geography can be traced back to his historical insights, particularly in his lectures and interviews. He introduced the concept of 'heterotopias' as the characteristic spaces of the modern world, moving away from the hierarchical 'ensemble of places' of the Middle Ages and the enveloping'space of emplacement' opened up by Galileo. Foucault emphasized the importance of an external space, the lived and socially produced space of sites and their relations. These heterogeneous spaces are constituted in every society but take varied forms and change over time. He identified many such sites, such as the cemetery, church, theater, garden, museum, library, fairground, barracks, prison, Moslem Hamam, Scandinavian sauna, brothel, and colony. Foucault contrasts these'real places' with the 'fundamentally unreal spaces' of utopias, which present society in either a perfected form or turned upside down. The heterotopia can juxtapose in a single real place several incompatible spaces, either creating a space of illusion or creating a space that is other, as perfect as ours is messy and ill-constructed.
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Foucault's work argues against historicism and prevailing treatments of space in human sciences. He proposes a heterogeneous and relational space of heterotopias, which is neither a substanceless void nor a repository of physical forms. Foucault's innovative interpretation of space and time is influenced by structuralism, a critical reorientation that connects space and time in new and revealing ways. Structuralism aims to establish an ensemble of relations that make elements appear juxtaposed, set off against one another. This synchronic configuration is the spatialization of history, the making of history entwined with the social production of space. Foucault's spatialization of history was provocatively spatialized from the very start, opening up history to an interpretative geography. He emphasizes the centrality of space to the critical eye, especially regarding the contemporary moment. In an interview, Foucault reminisces about his exploration of 'Of other spaces' and the enraged reactions it engendered from those he once identified as the 'pious descendants of time'. He believes that space is fundamental in any form of communal life and any exercise of power.

Foucault's exploration of the "fatal intersection of time with space" in his writings is a reflection of his post-historicist and postmodern critical human geography. He was a historian who never abandoned his allegiance to the master identity of modern critical thought. Foucault had to admit that geography was always at the heart of his concerns, and this realization appeared in an interview with the editors of the French journal of radical geography, Herodote.

Foucault's argument takes a new turn, questioning the origins of the devaluation of space that has prevailed for generations. He takes an integrative rather than deconstructive path, holding onto his history but adding the crucial nexus of the linkage between space, knowledge, and power. For those who confuse history with the old schemas of evolution, living continuity, organic development, the progress of consciousness, or the project of existence, the use of spatial terms seems to have an air of an anti-history.

Foucault's spatializing description of discursive realities gives way to the analysis of related effects of power. In 'The Eye of Power', he restates his ecumenical project, stating that a whole history remains to be written of spaces, which would also be the history of powers, from the great strategies of geopolitics to the little tactics of the habitat. Foucault postpones a direct critique of historicism with an acute lateral glance, maintaining his spatializing project while preserving his historical stance.

Marshall Berman's book, All that Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity, explores the reconfigurations of social life in capitalism over the past four hundred years. He defines modernity as a mode of vital experience, encompassing time, space, history, geography, sequence, and simultaneity. Modernity is comprised of both context and conjuncture, reflecting the specific and changing meanings of space, time, and being. Berman's work serves as a means of reinforcing debates on history and geography in critical social theory and defining the context and conjuncture of postmodernity. The spatial order of human existence arises from the social production of space, while the temporal order is concretized in the making of history. The social order of being-in-the-world revolves around the constitution of society, the production and reproduction of social relations, institutions, and practices.

The experience of modernity is shaped by the changing "culture of time and space" that took place from around 1880 to the outbreak of World War I. Technological innovations and independent cultural developments created new modes of thinking about and experiencing time and space, leading to a transformation of life and thought dimensions. This expanded fin de siècle saw industrial capitalism survive its predicted demise through radical social and spatial restructuring, intensifying production relations and divisions of labor.

An altered culture of time and space emerged, restructuring historical geography and introducing ambitious new visions for the future. Both fin de siècle periods resonate with transformative socio-spatial processes, with a complex and conflictful dialogue between urgent socio-economic modernization sparked by systemwide crises affecting contemporary capitalist societies and a responsive cultural and political modernism aiming to make sense of material changes and gain control over their future directions.

Modernization is a continuous process of societal restructuring that is periodically accelerated to produce a significant recomposition of space-time-being in their concrete forms. For the past four hundred years, these dynamics have been predominantly capitalist, as has the nature and experience of modernity during that time. Modernization is unevenly developed across time and space, inscribes different historical geographies across different regional social formations, and has become systematically synchronic, affecting all predominantly capitalist societies simultaneously.

The last half of the twentieth century has followed a similar trajectory, with a prolonged expansionary period after the Second World War and an ongoing, crisis-filled era of attempted modernization and restructuring taking us toward the next fin de siècle.