Date: Fri, 4 Oct 1996 06:36:22 -0600 From: Hans Ehrbar <ehrbar-AT-marx.econ.utah.edu> Subject: Goethe's "Am Anfang war die Tat" I see some parallels between Bhaskar's finding in the present readings that all generative mechanisms are the ways of *acting* of things, and Faust's famous "In the beginning, there was the deed." Here is an attempt to look at the monologue in Goethe's Faust from a CR perspective. A literature student who attended one of my Marx classes, Benjamin Dorny, helped me with this. The quoted passages are >from Goethe's Faust: > "In the beginning there was the Word"---thus runs the text. > Who helps me on? Already I'm perplexed! > I cannot possibly hold the *word* in such high esteem > I must translate it in a different way > If I'm indeed illuminated by the Spirit. Faust is searching for the first principles, for "that inner force which holds the world together," (was die Welt im innersten zusammenhaelt). He rejects the "word." Why? Because words (or also the mathematical formulas of physics) allow us to *describe* the constant conjunctions generated in an experimental setup, but such a description still gives us no clue about how these constant conjunctions come about. There must be something that generates the regularity which our mathematical formulas describe. This is what Bhaskar means when he says in RTS2, pp. 45/6: "Without (existential questions about the objects of scientific theory) science would remain, as in empiricism, a purely internal process---with the familiarity of image replacing the reinforcement of sensation\dots" "Internal" means here: internal to the brain. There is therefore enough reason for Faust to go on with his search: > "In the beginning was the Sense." But stay! > Reflect on this first sentence well and truly > Lest the pen be hurrying unduly! > Is sense in fact all action's spur and source? Here the translation of `sense', in German `Sinn', is important. The literature student who attended my class on Capital, Benjamin Dorny, wrote the following: "For years critics have found a base similarity in some usage between `Sinn' and `Feeling', most especially in this passage. Cyrus Hamlin draws an analogue to this from line 3465---in English for our non-german speakers, "Feeling is all!" The notion that feelings give us deeper access to the world than words is compatible with the critical realist philosophical ontology, according to which on the one hand not everything in the world is accessible to science, and on the other hand that the world in its deep structure also contains values, etc. But what would be *Faust's* transition from the word to the feeling? Here is my best try at an answer: just as the world is not driven by the human description of it, so also humans are not merely reactive describers of the world. We are agents, motivated by feelings. Our awareness of our own emergent powers allows us to extrapolate that such emergent powers are also active in the world. Our experience of ourselves as beings with feelings give us intuition about the world's ontological depth. Faust's next step was apparently made to avoid anthropocentrism, the "epistemic fallacy", and teleology: we should not confuse the world with what we are thinking (or feeling) about the world, and we should not impute purposes on the actions of the world: > It should read: "In the beginning there was the Force!" Force is what Bhaskar would call the "generative mechanisms." Yet Faust is still not satisfied: > Yet as I write it down, some warning sense > Alerts me that it, too, will give offense. Why will it give offense? Because it is reification. A force must always be the force of something, it cannot float in the air. Bhaskar says, generative mechanisms are always the ways of things to act, see RTS2, pp. 49/50. Faust arrives at action as well (which presupposes an actor, although Faust does not say this here): > The Spirit speaks! And lo, the way is freed, > I calmly write: "In the beginning there was the Deed." Benjamin wrote me here: "Did you perhaps notice the circular argument here, Hans? What `power' shows him the way to his `senses'? - "The Spirit SPEAKS!" Thus, without Faust evidently realizing it, we are back to Luther's translation: In the beginning was the Word." This time, I do not quite agree with Benjamin. It is certainly interesting that Goethe acts as if some "spirit" was whispering things into his ears while he is writing his poetry. Goethe evidently feels inspired, but he is not collecting or processing data. What is then the source of his inspiration? My conjecture is that Goethe engages here, without being aware of it, in the philosopher's second-order argument: what must the world be like for science to be possible. The same conjecture applies not only to Goethe but also to Marx: if Bhaskar shows that this kind of second-order argument leads the critical realist to the same conclusions which Marx wrote down, without derivation, in his numerous methodological remarks, then this indicates that without being aware of it Marx must have engaged in such a second-order reasoning. Both Marx and Goethe acted as philosophers when they did this, but Marx mistook it for science, and Goethe for poetic inspiration. Hans Ehrbar.
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