Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2003 09:17:24 -0400 From: Ralph Dumain <rdumain-AT-igc.org> Subject: Re: [HAB:] Moby Dick Ahoy [Ralph] I don't know about pessimism manifest in the nature of being. I don't even know what this means, so I can't take responsibility for such a statement. I am suggesting, as I'm sure some of the Frankfurters must have written somewhere, that bourgeois rationalism and irrationalism are indissolubly linked. The same tensions and dichotomies can be found within Marxism as well, and are marked by conflicting schools of thought within Marxism. I recently wrote a review of part of Martin Jay's MARXISM AND TOTALITY (posted to the Frankfurt-school list), which I think points up the difficulty of overcoming the dichotomy, in this case not so much between rationalism and irrationalism, but between idealist holism and a scientifically oriented standpoint. But more generally, the polarity of scientism and romanticism holds for Marxism, too, as is characteristic of the bourgeois (modern) world as a whole. I see I am now failing to distinguish between this polarity in the history of thought and in social life as a whole. However, the unity of rationality and irrationality holds not just for philosophy but for Stalinism in practice as well, and of course for bourgeois democracies as evidenced by the right-wing reign of terror unleashed by the election of Reagan in 1981. Ruling elites are always irrational. CLR James explained why; I need to find the relevant texts. My experience of the general populace is none the more edifying. Bourgeois rationalism and irrationalism combined pervades the whole society. To confirm this, I need only pick out people I know here in DC who simultaneously hold to astrology, occultism, and religious superstition as well as a bourgeois administrative-bureaucratic orientation to practical matters. I am serious about DofE being a weak work and the worst thing either of these fellas wrote. I wrote an extensive critique of this book over the summer, which I posted, perhaps to frankfurt-school. I don't recall the details, but I criticized the book both for its inept argument about the Enlightenment, and for the lack of concrete argument supporting the general contentions about the culture industry. H & A were far more intelligent in other works, in their opposition to irrationalism as well as positivism, even being harsher on the former than on the latter as is proper. I think the leading Frankfurters were hampered by the very idealist anti-scientific tradition in which they were schooled and rebelled against. This is even more obnoxiously manifest in Marcuse, also in the 1940s. In REASON AND REVOLUTION, positivism rather than irrationalism bears the brunt of the blame for fascism. Marcuse of course was schooled in Dilthey and Heidegger, a very unsavory brew. Disgusting. Now apparently Habermas rebelled against DofE and went in a different direction. Yet he was also influenced by DofE. MY question is, did he really overcome the anti-scientific prejudice of the first FS generation, or did his tripartite classification of the sciences (which I have never believed in) give him the means to compound their confusion rather than clear it up? At 11:42 AM 10/15/2003 +0000, matthew piscioneri wrote: >....... >>But the obvious contradiction of our time, already foreseen by Herman >>Melville in 1851, was the mutual co-existence and interdependence of >>"rational" means combined with irrational ends. > >fascinating insight. but is it a dialectical relation you are positing >here. What then? An indissoluble and irredeemable pessimism manifest in >the nature of being? surely you jest then when you say DoE was a very weak >philosophy. makes my top 20 everytime. --- from list habermas-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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