Date: Thu, 17 Sep 1998 02:04:39 +0300 (EET DST)
From: j laari <jlaari-AT-cc.jyu.fi>
Subject: RE: Sociology or epistemology?


Greetings!

Thanks for you kind words, and sorry, Sergio, I don't have much time
for your long post. You better to remember that thick skin is all
that's really needed in these halls of cyberia... And yes, I had read
some of your posts, not all of them. Can't afford myself the luxury of
going through all posts. Also: You're right. No censorship needed.

The concept of materialism is ambiguous partly because of our (not
only you and me) different viewpoints. One "brackets" the issues of
consciousness and subjectivity, another those of (external) reality.
Therefore it's sometimes difficult to begin. There's no mutual
understanding. But there is one possible beginning if we sum it all up
something like that: the difference between "ideal" and "material" is
*roughly* the same as that between "soul" (or "psyche") and "body", or
the one between "thinking" and "being". "Idealist" concentrates on our
self-conscious, seemingly immediate mental activities (conceptual
operations and such). "Materialist" concentrates on possibility of
those mental activities: "vulgar" one insists on brain and such;
"evolved" one tries to tackle with questions like "how do we have to
theorise the primacy of the material from the point of view of
self-consciousness?" (Our self-consciousness is funny in that it
presents itself as if without any conditions.) One way has been the
effort to go through the idea of "body", sometimes as embodiment of
social rules, structures, norms and the like, sometimes as the bearer
of them, sometimes as the subordinate material upon which social 
powers act, and sometimes as living organism.

(In, say, "leftist" circles, where different schools of marxism have
been hegemonic this century, there's been certain willingness to stick
to some Marx's original remarks especially on Hegel and Feuerbach. And
there's been seemingly overall understanding that it's basically a
waste of time to go outside of well-known terrain of phil of history
and economic theory in social philosophy and theory. Well, the so
called Frankfurt school has been a one exeption to this with their
insistence on old themes of German (idealist) philosophy. In France
Sartre and Merleau-Ponty have presented a more stronger insistence on
phil. of consciousness and other themes close to German idealism. 
Their point of departure was based more on Husserl's phenomenology
than on Kant and Hegel and the like. Marx never discussed Husserl -
that would have been impossible. However, in more orthodox marxist
cicrles they were quite straightforwardly denounced as traitors or
somesuch (like idealists) because of this. For example, sometimes
Ralph echoes these more orthodox marxists. Though I believe he really
don't mean it. I'm afraid that these orthodox groups weren't
particularly interested in what they were saying. Anyway, it became
sort of marxist rhetoric to claim own purity by differentiating
oneself of Sartre and Merleau-Ponty - without paying much attention to
what they were really talking about. That all is also in one sense
background to discussions around Bourdieu. He made sharp difference
between himself and marxists (basically althusserians, I guess).
Thereby he broadened his own intellectual terrain and was able to
confront existentialists in a more nuanced way than marxists did.
Without becoming an existentialist. However, there was yet another
camp, that of structuralists. It seems to me now that he was attracted
by them more powerfully than it was necessary, but France - it seems -
you simply cannot stay outside of camps... and that all was, of
course, related to cryptic political constellations of which I know
nothing... - That as an amateur idea historical sidestep, if
you're interested in it at all... But enough of that. Genug!)

> I think that the individual/social dichotomy carries with it the inertia
> of a substantialist mode of thinking that Bourdieu attempts to break
> with, namely with a relational mode of thought, 

Here I depart PB. To put it short: in order there to be relations
there has to be some things, or bodies, or corpses if you like, to be
in relations. But I guess I've somehow understood his reasons - it's
an economic way of seeing the social world. But it's not very
effective in philosophy-wise (if that matters).

> I believe that on the objectivist level --which Bourdieu prioritises as
> a first step, a necessary "break", as against subjectivism and
> phenomenology-- 

Don't confuse phenomenology with subjectivism!

> "Spontaneity":  something that arises out of itself, im-mediacy. The
> relational construction of logical models is anything but im-mediatist,
> it is through and through mediative. Now, spontaneity is immanent to the
> subjective moment, and what idealists like Cassirer used to do was to
> equate reason (mediation) with spontaneity (immediation), even though
> Cassirer was not a subjectivist (he has an interesting article on this,
> called "Was ist Subjektivismus?" - "What is subjectivism?") .

Hmm? I don't know Cassirer. Let's say that I'm interested in the idea
that basically we are spontaneous beings, and that our self-awareness
(and based on it, our self-consciousness?) is immediate. But that has
to be understood to be different to subjectivity and "ego". In other
words, there's this nice immediate self-awareness (of complex living
being) that gets around itself (through socialisation, or
internalisation of culture, language and the like) new layers that we
are used to call subjectivity and ego and such.

>  Bourdieu's materialism, which drives so forcefully against
> spiritualism, is in itself in a specific way "spiritual" (...)
> How so? Because he rejects the illusions of spontaneity, in order to
> reveal in what ways the subject is determined, i.e., the internalisation
> of objective structures, etc.

It isn't necessary that the conception of spontaneity is illusory. it
just concerns different ("deeper") "level" than what we talk about as
internalised structures and such. Manfred Frank has written about that
recently. Of our French thinkers I'd like to remind you Sartre, 
Merleau-Ponty, Deleuze as examples... all of them rather
"materialists" than "idealists".

>    For this, nothing better than materialism,
> nothing better than pointing out to constraints and determinations
> external to consciousness. 

The question is: how that is done? There are two basic types of
argument here. One is scientific and empirical, another is
philosophical (logical, conceptual only). Both are needed, me
believes.

> contribute to the construction of "something like a subject", even if it
> may only be through an awareness of its determinations! See my point?

I think so. 

Well, that should do this time. Later...

Yours, Jukka L

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