Filozofski vestnik ISSN 0353-4510 Programska zasnova Filozofski vestnik (ISSN 0353-4510) je glasilo Filozofskega inštituta Znanstveno- raziskovalnega centra Slovenske akademije znanosti in umetnosti. Filozofski vestnik je znanstveni časopis za filozofijo z interdisciplinarno in mednarodno usmeritvijo in je forum za diskusijo o širokem spektru vprašanj s področja sod- obne filozofije, etike, estetike, poli tične, pravne filozofije, filozofije jezika, filozo- fije zgodovine in zgodovine politične misli, epistemologije in filozofije znanosti, zgodovine filozofije in teoretske psihoanalize. Odprt je za različne filozofske usme- ritve, stile in šole ter spodbuja teoretski dialog med njimi. Letno izidejo tri številke. Druga številka je posvečena temi, ki jo določi uredniški odbor. Prispevki so objavljeni v angleškem, francoskem in nemškem jeziku s pov- zetki v angleškem in slovenskem jeziku. Filozofski vestnik je vključen v: Arts & Humanities Citation Index, Current Con- tents / Arts & Humanities, EBSCO, DOAJ, IBZ (Internationale Bibliographie der Zeitschriften), The Philosopher's Index, Répertoire bibliographique de philo- sophie, Scopus in Sociological Abstracts. Izid revije je finančno podprla Javna agencija za raziskovalno dejavnost Repu- blike Slovenije. Filozofski vestnik je ustanovila Slovenska akademija znanosti in umetnosti. Aims and Scope Filozofski vestnik (ISSN 0353-4510) is edited and published by the Institute of Phi- losophy of the Scientific Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Filozofski vestnik is a philosophy journal with an interdisciplinary character. It provides a forum for discussion on a wide range of issues in contemporary polit- ical philosophy, history of philosophy, history of political thought, philosophy of law, social philosophy, epistemology, philosophy of science, cultural critique, ethics, and aesthetics. The journal is open to different philosophical orientations, styles and schools, and welcomes theoretical dialogue among them. Three issues of the journal are published annually. The second issue is a special issue that brings together articles by experts on a topic chosen by the Editorial Board. Articles are published in English, French, or German, with abstracts in Slove- nian and English. Filozofski vestnik is indexed/abstracted in the Arts & Humanities Citation Index; Current Contents / Arts & Humanities; DOAJ; EBSCO; IBZ (Internationale Bibli- ographie der Zeitschriften); The Philosopher's Index; Répertoire bibliographique de philosophie; Scopus; and Sociological Abstracts. Filozofski vestnik is published with the support of the Slovenian Research Agency. Filozofski vestnik was founded by the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Filozofski vestnik ISSN 0353-4510 1 2017 iS SN 0 35 3 45 10 Le tn ik /V ol um e x x x V ii i Št ev ilk a/ N um be r1 Lj u bl ja n a 20 17 Filozofski vestnik ANCiENT PHiLOSOPHy UTOPiAS MARx ANd THE CRiTiqUE OF POLiTiCAL ECONOMy Ancient Philosophy Lale Levin Basut, Meno’s “Paradox”: An Analysis of the Eristic Argument Boris Vezjak, Aristotel proti Platonu: variacije dokaza tretjega človeka in samopripis idej Pavel Gregorić, Alexander of Aphrodisias on Common Sense Utopias Ernest Ženko, Mapping the Unmappable: Dichotomies of Utopianism Aleš Erjavec, The Avant-Gardes, Utopias, and Clothes Tyrus Miller, Expressionist Utopia: Bruno Taut, Glass Architecture, and the Dissolution of Cities Marx and the Critique of Political Economy Jason Barker, Schizoanalytic Cartographies: On Maps and Models of Capitalism Rado Riha, Badiou, Marx in analiza vrednostne forme Sašo Furlan, Rekonstrukcija Marxove teorije vrednosti: Alternativna izpeljava pojma abstraktnega dela Martin Hergouth, O etiki kapitalizma Fi lo zo fs ki v es tn ik Uredniški odbor | Editorial Board Matej Ažman, Rok Benčin, Aleš Bunta, Aleš Erjavec, Marina Gržinić Mauhler, Boštjan Nedoh, Peter Klepec, Tomaž Mastnak, Rado Riha, Jelica Šumič Riha, Tadej Troha, Matjaž Vesel, Alenka Zupančič Žerdin Mednarodni uredniški svet | International Advisory Board Alain Badiou (Pariz/Paris), Paul Crowther (Galway), Manfred Frank (Tübingen), Axel Honneth (Frankfurt), Martin Jay (Berkeley), John Keane (Sydney), Ernesto Laclau † (Essex), Steven Lukes (New York), Chantal Mouffe (London), Herta Nagl-Docekal (Dunaj/Vienna), Aletta J. Norval (Essex), Oliver Marchart (Luzern/Lucerne), Nicholas Phillipson (Edinburgh), J. G. A. Pocock (Baltimore), Wolfgang Welsch (Jena) Glavni urednik | Managing Editor Jelica Šumič Riha Odgovorni urednik | Editor-in-Chief Peter Klepec Tajnik | Secretary Matej Ažman Jezikovni pregled angleških tekstov | English Translation Editor Dean J. DeVos Naslov uredništva Filozofski vestnik p. p. 306, 1001 Ljubljana Tel.: (01) 470 64 70 fi@zrc-sazu.si | http://fi2.zrc-sazu.si/sl/publikacije/filozofski-vestnik#v Korespondenco, rokopise in recenzentske izvode pošiljajte na naslov uredništva. Editorial correspondence, enquiries and books for review should be sent to the Editorial Office. Revija izhaja trikrat letno. | The journal is published three times annually. Letna naročnina: 21 €. Letna naročnina za študente in dijake: 12,50 €. Cena posamezne številke: 10 €. | Annual subscription: €21 for individuals, €40 for institutions. Single issues: €10 for individuals, €20 for institutions. Back issues are available. Naročila sprejema Založba ZRC p. p. 306, 1001 Ljubljana Tel.: (01) 470 64 65 E-pošta: narocanje@zrc-sazu.si © Filozofski inštitut ZRC SAZU | Institute of Philosophy at SRC SASA, Ljubljana Oblikovanje / Design: Phant&Puntza Tisk / Printed by: Cicero Begunje Naklada / Printrun: 370 Orders should be sent to ZRC Publishing House P.O. Box 306, SI-1001 Ljubljana, Slovenia Phone: +386 (1) 470 64 65 E-mail: narocanje@zrc-sazu.si Editorial Office Address Filozofski vestnik P.O. Box 306, SI-1001 Ljubljana, Slovenia Phone: +386 (1) 470 64 70 FV_01_2017_ovitek_16,5mm_Layout 1 7. 11. 17 19:51 Page 1 Filozofski vestnik ISSN 0353-4510 Programska zasnova Filozofski vestnik (ISSN 0353-4510) je glasilo Filozofskega inštituta Znanstveno- raziskovalnega centra Slovenske akademije znanosti in umetnosti. Filozofski vestnik je znanstveni časopis za filozofijo z interdisciplinarno in mednarodno usmeritvijo in je forum za diskusijo o širokem spektru vprašanj s področja sod- obne filozofije, etike, estetike, poli tične, pravne filozofije, filozofije jezika, filozo- fije zgodovine in zgodovine politične misli, epistemologije in filozofije znanosti, zgodovine filozofije in teoretske psihoanalize. Odprt je za različne filozofske usme- ritve, stile in šole ter spodbuja teoretski dialog med njimi. Letno izidejo tri številke. Druga številka je posvečena temi, ki jo določi uredniški odbor. Prispevki so objavljeni v angleškem, francoskem in nemškem jeziku s pov- zetki v angleškem in slovenskem jeziku. Filozofski vestnik je vključen v: Arts & Humanities Citation Index, Current Con- tents / Arts & Humanities, EBSCO, DOAJ, IBZ (Internationale Bibliographie der Zeitschriften), The Philosopher's Index, Répertoire bibliographique de philo- sophie, Scopus in Sociological Abstracts. Izid revije je finančno podprla Javna agencija za raziskovalno dejavnost Repu- blike Slovenije. Filozofski vestnik je ustanovila Slovenska akademija znanosti in umetnosti. Aims and Scope Filozofski vestnik (ISSN 0353-4510) is edited and published by the Institute of Phi- losophy of the Scientific Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Filozofski vestnik is a philosophy journal with an interdisciplinary character. It provides a forum for discussion on a wide range of issues in contemporary polit- ical philosophy, history of philosophy, history of political thought, philosophy of law, social philosophy, epistemology, philosophy of science, cultural critique, ethics, and aesthetics. The journal is open to different philosophical orientations, styles and schools, and welcomes theoretical dialogue among them. Three issues of the journal are published annually. The second issue is a special issue that brings together articles by experts on a topic chosen by the Editorial Board. Articles are published in English, French, or German, with abstracts in Slove- nian and English. Filozofski vestnik is indexed/abstracted in the Arts & Humanities Citation Index; Current Contents / Arts & Humanities; DOAJ; EBSCO; IBZ (Internationale Bibli- ographie der Zeitschriften); The Philosopher's Index; Répertoire bibliographique de philosophie; Scopus; and Sociological Abstracts. Filozofski vestnik is published with the support of the Slovenian Research Agency. Filozofski vestnik was founded by the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Filozofski vestnik ISSN 0353-4510 1 2017 iS SN 0 35 3 45 10 Le tn ik /V ol um e x x x V ii i Št ev ilk a/ N um be r1 Lj u bl ja n a 20 17 Filozofski vestnik ANCiENT PHiLOSOPHy UTOPiAS MARx ANd THE CRiTiqUE OF POLiTiCAL ECONOMy Ancient Philosophy Lale Levin Basut, Meno’s “Paradox”: An Analysis of the Eristic Argument Boris Vezjak, Aristotel proti Platonu: variacije dokaza tretjega človeka in samopripis idej Pavel Gregorić, Alexander of Aphrodisias on Common Sense Utopias Ernest Ženko, Mapping the Unmappable: Dichotomies of Utopianism Aleš Erjavec, The Avant-Gardes, Utopias, and Clothes Tyrus Miller, Expressionist Utopia: Bruno Taut, Glass Architecture, and the Dissolution of Cities Marx and the Critique of Political Economy Jason Barker, Schizoanalytic Cartographies: On Maps and Models of Capitalism Rado Riha, Badiou, Marx in analiza vrednostne forme Sašo Furlan, Rekonstrukcija Marxove teorije vrednosti: Alternativna izpeljava pojma abstraktnega dela Martin Hergouth, O etiki kapitalizma Fi lo zo fs ki v es tn ik Uredniški odbor | Editorial Board Matej Ažman, Rok Benčin, Aleš Bunta, Aleš Erjavec, Marina Gržinić Mauhler, Boštjan Nedoh, Peter Klepec, Tomaž Mastnak, Rado Riha, Jelica Šumič Riha, Tadej Troha, Matjaž Vesel, Alenka Zupančič Žerdin Mednarodni uredniški svet | International Advisory Board Alain Badiou (Pariz/Paris), Paul Crowther (Galway), Manfred Frank (Tübingen), Axel Honneth (Frankfurt), Martin Jay (Berkeley), John Keane (Sydney), Ernesto Laclau † (Essex), Steven Lukes (New York), Chantal Mouffe (London), Herta Nagl-Docekal (Dunaj/Vienna), Aletta J. Norval (Essex), Oliver Marchart (Luzern/Lucerne), Nicholas Phillipson (Edinburgh), J. G. A. Pocock (Baltimore), Wolfgang Welsch (Jena) Glavni urednik | Managing Editor Jelica Šumič Riha Odgovorni urednik | Editor-in-Chief Peter Klepec Tajnik | Secretary Matej Ažman Jezikovni pregled angleških tekstov | English Translation Editor Dean J. DeVos Naslov uredništva Filozofski vestnik p. p. 306, 1001 Ljubljana Tel.: (01) 470 64 70 fi@zrc-sazu.si | http://fi2.zrc-sazu.si/sl/publikacije/filozofski-vestnik#v Korespondenco, rokopise in recenzentske izvode pošiljajte na naslov uredništva. Editorial correspondence, enquiries and books for review should be sent to the Editorial Office. Revija izhaja trikrat letno. | The journal is published three times annually. Letna naročnina: 21 €. Letna naročnina za študente in dijake: 12,50 €. Cena posamezne številke: 10 €. | Annual subscription: €21 for individuals, €40 for institutions. Single issues: €10 for individuals, €20 for institutions. Back issues are available. Naročila sprejema Založba ZRC p. p. 306, 1001 Ljubljana Tel.: (01) 470 64 65 E-pošta: narocanje@zrc-sazu.si © Filozofski inštitut ZRC SAZU | Institute of Philosophy at SRC SASA, Ljubljana Oblikovanje / Design: Phant&Puntza Tisk / Printed by: Cicero Begunje Naklada / Printrun: 370 Orders should be sent to ZRC Publishing House P.O. Box 306, SI-1001 Ljubljana, Slovenia Phone: +386 (1) 470 64 65 E-mail: narocanje@zrc-sazu.si Editorial Office Address Filozofski vestnik P.O. Box 306, SI-1001 Ljubljana, Slovenia Phone: +386 (1) 470 64 70 FV_01_2017_ovitek_16,5mm_Layout 1 7. 11. 17 19:51 Page 1 Filozofski vestnik XXXVIII | 1/2017 Izdaja | Published by Filozofski inštitut ZRC SAZU Institute of Philosophy at SRC SASA Ljubljana 2017 FV_01_2017.indd 1 26. 10. 17 11:08 Contents Filozofski vestnik | Volume XXXVIII | Number 1 | 2017 Ancient Philosophy 7 Lale Levin Basut Meno’s “Paradox”: An Analysis of the Eristic Argument 23 Boris Vezjak Aristotel proti Platonu: variacije dokaza tretjega človeka in samopripis idej 47 Pavel Gregorić Alexander of Aphrodisias on Common Sense Utopias 67 Ernest Ženko Mapping the Unmappable: Dichotomies of Utopianism 89 Aleš Erjavec The Avant-Gardes, Utopias, and Clothes 107 Tyrus Miller Expressionist Utopia: Bruno Taut, Glass Architecture, and the Dissolution of Cities Marx and the Critique of Political Economy 133 Jason Barker Schizoanalytic Cartographies: On Maps and Models of Capitalism 153 Rado Riha Badiou, Marx in analiza vrednostne forme 171 Sašo Furlan Rekonstrukcija Marxove teorije vrednosti: Alternativna izpeljava pojma abstraktnega dela 189 Martin Hergouth O etiki kapitalizma 205 Abstracts FV_01_2017.indd 3 26. 10. 17 11:08 Kazalo Filozofski vestnik | Letnik XXXVIII | Številka 1 | 2017 Antična filozofija 7 Lale Levin Basut Menonov »paradoks«: analiza erističnega argumenta 23 Boris Vezjak Aristotle against Plato: Variants of the Third Man Argument and the Self-predication of Ideas 47 Pavel Gregorić Aleksander iz Afrodizijade o skupnem čutu Utopije 67 Ernest Ženko Kartiranje tistega, česar ni mogoče kartirati: dihotomije utopianizma 89 Aleš Erjavec Avantgarde, utopije in oblačila 107 Tyrus Miller Ekspresionistična utopija: Bruno Taut, steklena arhitektura in razgradnja mest Marx in kritika politične ekonomije 133 Jason Barker Shizoanalitične kartografije: zemljevidi in modeli kapitalizma 153 Rado Riha Badiou, Marx, and an Analysis of the Value-Form 171 Sašo Furlan A Reconstruction of Marx’s Theory of Value: An Alternative Derivation of the Concept of Abstract Labour 189 Martin Hergouth On the Ethics of Capitalism 205 Povzetki FV_01_2017.indd 4 26. 10. 17 11:08 Ancient Philosophy FV_01_2017.indd 5 26. 10. 17 11:08 7 * Philosophy Department, Yeditepe University Many attempts have been made in order to analyze and/or unriddle the so- called “Meno’s ‘Paradox’”. Among those who were more interested in the gen- eral framework of the dialogue but not particularly and solely in the “paradox” itself, Rosemary Desjardins succeeds in forming a wider glance over the whole of the dialogue1 which inarguably requires a strenuous effort, and is able to “re-collect” answers to the main questions that are posed in the beginning of the dialogue such as “what is virtue?” and whether it can be taught or not. When it comes to her opinion concerning the paradox, Desjardins should indeed be called right in her claim that “Meno’s paradox actually strikes with a peculiar- ly contemporary flavor and force…”2 since it is not preternatural to chance upon sophistical reasonings, refutations, “ἐριστικοὶ λόγοι” as Plato described them, in the “problems” of contemporary epistemology, the contributors of which usual- ly assume that those who indulge in etymology and etymological analyses are seen as wallowing in some sort of a peculiar “athleticism”3 that is frivolous, and in an attempt the result of which is often described as indigent. Etymology, how- ever, not in its mere form as looking up words from a most trusted and highly ac- knowledged dictionary, but as philo-logy, as the fundamental basis of any phil- osophical inquiry, often requires ample effort, intricate analyses and abysmal scrutiny through which only, one can savvy the philosophical problem while dissecting the text that is in question. I aim to manifest in this paper using a philological approach that the two claims that come together to bring about this eristic argument by no means make a par- adox. The ‘eristic’ feature of the argument has been emphasized quite a many 1 Rosemary Desjardins, “Knowledge and Virtue: Paradox in Plato’s ‘Meno’”, The Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 39, No.2 (Dec. 1985), pp. 261–281. 2 Ibid., p. 264. 3 Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari, What is Philosophy?, Columbia University Press, New York 1994, p. 8. Filozofski vestnik | Letnik XXXVIII | Številka 1 | 2017 | 7–21 Lale Levin Basut* Meno's “Paradox”: An Analysis of the Eristic Argument FV_01_2017.indd 7 26. 10. 17 11:08 8 lale levin basut times4, but it seemingly is not conspicuous, and therefore requires further anal- ysis in order that one can point out where the fallacy exactly rests. In the following philological analysis I believe I have solved a problem, which throughout the history of philosophy, has taken much more credit than it should really have. Many papers point out that Socrates attempts and manages to solve the diffi- culty regarding one’s knowing some one thing by introducing the discussion concerning ἀνάμνησις and calling out for the slave boy.5 Nevertheless once the eristic argument is uttered, Socrates immediately presents his judgment for its quality, calling it “not sound”, and seems to be somewhat reluctant to meddle with sophistic babble. The fact that Socrates simply “changes the subject” and seems not keen on discussing further on this point is not because he regards the argument as an epistemic dilemma that is unrealizably difficult to deal with but because he thinks that it is simply not worth the effort even to try looking into it. The discussion concerning ἀνάμνησις on the other hand, which we are going to discuss in this paper right after dealing with the eristic argument, is introduced separately in the dialogue in order to shed light into how knowing comes about. Thus, showing what is really eristic/sophistical about the argument seems like one task that needs to be fulfilled. 4 Among many see J. T. Bedu-Addo, “Recollection and the Argument ‘From a Hypothesis’ in Plato’s Meno, The Journal of Hellenistic Studies, Vol. (1984), pp. 1–14; and also Robert G. Hoerber, «Plato’s ‘Meno’» Phronesis, Vol. 5, No. 2 (1960), pp. 78–102. 5 T. Bedu-Addo, op. cit., p. 1, claims that “Socrates describes this paradox as a piece of eristic, but he does not dismiss it. To resolve it, he introduces the theory of recollection, ἀνάμνησις (81a–e); R. Desjardins, op. cit., p. 265, argues that “Socrates’ way of cutting through dilemma is to introduce the theory of recollection”); his conception of the theory of recollection much different than that of Dejardins’, and mine being much closer to that of Dejardins’, Dale Jac- quette also claims that “Socrates’ purpose in examining Meno’s slave is to demonstrate that even if knowledge cannot be acquired, the soul is in permanent possession of knowledge of Forms, and so has no need to acquire it.” (Dale Jacquette, “Socrates’ Ironic Image of Meno”, The Personalist Forum, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Fall 1996), p. 127.) FV_01_2017.indd 8 26. 10. 17 11:08 9 meno's “paradox”: an analysis of the eristic argument Firstly, this argument6 seems to block out any possibility of an inquiry (ζητέιν). And this is why it seems to create an ἀπορία, a no way out situation. Since it comes with the claim that “one cannot search either for what one knows or what one does not know”, it seems to suggest that one is at a loss about starting an inquiry concerning some one object. However the “illusion” of the eristic ar- gument lies exactly here, for the argument hides the area of ζητέιν (inquiry) by means of a deliberate word choice, though it is still there for the inquirer. I argue that it necessary to make a philological analysis of the argument, point out where the fallacy exactly rests and show the possibility of any ζητέιν. In order to do this kind of an analysis we should first introduce some types of “knowing”: Throughout ancient Greek texts ‘knowing’ and ‘knowledge’ are used and said in many ways. There are different words used to express the verb ‘to know’ and each of them implies knowing in a different sense. Some of these different types of knowing are7: (1) γιγνώσκειν (often interchangeable with γνωρίζειν): a knowledge type that al- ways follows a certain kind of αἴσϑησις (perception). γιγνώσκειν means recog- nizing, discerning, distinguishing something, noticing, being aware of some one thing, being aware that that one thing is, among many others. (2) εἰδέναι: (knowing in a wider, more general sense): usually covers for the eve- rydayness usage of the term “knowing” in situations such as when you need to express an “information” you have concerning some one thing. (3) ἐπίστασϑαι: knowing thoroughly with reasons and principles. Having introduced these types of knowing, from here let us go back to the text only to trace the development of the argument, and using the points that we 6 “[A] human being cannot search either for what he/she knows or for what he/she does not know. He/she cannot search for what he/she knows – since he /she knows it, there is no need to search – nor for what he/she does not know, for he/she does not know what to look for.” When quoting this passage, I mainly sticked to the Grube translation (Plato, Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo, trans. by G.M.A. Grube, 2nd edition, Hackett Publishing Company, Indianapolis 2002, 80e.) but I felt the need to alter his trans- lation of ἄνϑρωπως as man to human being, and also the gender of the personal pronouns, since ἄνϑρωπως cannot fairly be restricted to men only. 7 For a detailed analysis of different types of knowing see Saffet Babür, “Episteme in Aristo- tle”, Philosophy in Yeditepe I, Vol. I, (2002), pp. 7–20. FV_01_2017.indd 9 26. 10. 17 11:08 10 lale levin basut have introduced so far let us try to unravel what the argument screens, and in what way and by means of what it beguiles. In the passages following 80d a new discussion in the dialogue arises with a question directed at Socrates by Meno, who seems to fall short of coming up with a solid answer to the question ‘what is virtue?’. How are you to search for virtue, if you do not know (μὴ οἶσϑα) what it is?8 After claiming that what Meno is trying to express is an ἐριστικὸς λόγος, Socrates once again in his own words utters what he thinks Meno is trying to say9: ...[A] human being cannot search either for what he/she knows (εἰδέναι) or for what he/she does not know (εἰδέναι). He/she cannot search for what he knows (εἰδέναι) – since he /she knows (εἰδέναι) it, there is no need to search – nor for what he/she does not know (εἰδέναι), for he/she does not know (εἰδέναι) what to look for.10 (80e) It is worth to note here –again- that right after Socrates puts it forth, Meno asks Socrates whether he finds this argument (λόγος) beautiful (κάλος) or not, and Socrates, thinking no highly of this argument, claims that it is not beautiful. The first sentence of the quote goes as follows: “ a human being cannot search either for what he/she knows or for what he/she does not know” (ζητεῖν ἀνϑρώπῳ οὔτε ὃ οἶδε οὔτε ὃ μὴ οἶδε). Here the term translated as “knowing” is εἰδέναι, which implies knowing in a general, wider sense. Using εἰδέναι for both of these cas- es, namely when saying ‘a human being cannot search either for what he/she knows” and ‘a human being cannot search either for what he/she does not know’ gives the impression that both of these types of knowing are said in the same sense. However, on the contrary, what we are trying to state with the term “know- ing” when we say “a human being cannot search either for what he/she knows” 8 Plato, op. cit., 80e. 9 Although the “paradox” is commonly attributed to Meno himself and thereby called “Me- no’s Paradox”, I agree with Jon Moline who claims that “Socrates does not ‘restate’ Meno’s remark – he slyly replaces it for his own (legitimate) purposes in the dialogue.” Jon Mo- line, “Meno’s Paradox?”, Phronesis, Vol. 14, No. 2 (1969), p. 154. 10 Plato, op. cit., 80e. FV_01_2017.indd 10 26. 10. 17 11:08 11 meno's “paradox”: an analysis of the eristic argument is dramatically different in comparison to what we mean by the same word when we say: “a human being cannot search either for what he/she does not know”. Thus, here using εἰδέναι for both of these cases seems to be some sort of a skill- ful sophistry, a deceit. For according to what we have stated, εἰδέναι implies knowing in a wider and general sense. But in the sentences quoted above highly specific meanings are hidden behind the term εἰδέναι. The problem with using εἰδέναι is that this term not only lacks the power to emphasize these distinct and different meanings but also it veils and conceals them. When we look further into the argument, we also quickly notice that the deduc- tion has no formal order but the conclusion statement of the argument is stated first. Let us then rewrite the argument in the following order so that we can ob- serve the reasoning more clearly: A human being cannot search for what he/she knows — since one knows it, there is no need to search A human being cannot search for what he/she doesn’t know, for one does not know what to look for. Conclusion: A human being cannot search either for what he/she knows or for what he/she does not know The following analysis of the two premises of the argument aims to shed light to the covert meanings of knowing that are veiled by the verb εἰδέναι: Case/Premise 1: Using of εἰδέναι instead of ἐπίστασϑαι A human being cannot search either for what he/she knows or for what he/she does not know. He/she cannot search for what he/she knows — since he/she knows it, there is no need to search – nor for what he/she does not know, for he/she does not know what to look for.11 When we say that “a human being cannot search either for what he/she knows”, here we imply knowing something with its causes and principles, knowing or 11 Ibid., 80e. FV_01_2017.indd 11 26. 10. 17 11:08 12 lale levin basut grasping what something really is. This is the exact point where our investigation regarding some one object comes to an end12 and where we no longer feel it nec- essary to inquire about the object in question, but have landed upon a conclu- sion, namely the what it is for that object to be (τὸ τί ἤν εἶναι)13. To form this type of a knowing is not an easy task, but once contrived it implies that the inquiry is complete.14 Case/Premise 2: Using of εἰδέναι instead of γνωρίζειν A human being cannot search either for what he/she knows or for what he/she does not know. He/she cannot search for what he knows – since he/she knows it, there is no need to search – nor for what he/she does not know, for he/she does not know what to look for.15 12 The search came to an end only because one has now grasped the αἰτίαι and άρχαί (reasons and principles), “[s]ince that is when we say we know each thing, when we think we know its first cause, while the causes are meant in four ways, of which one is thinghood, or what it is for something to be, …” (Aristotle, Metaphysics, trans. by Joe Sachs, Green Lion Press, Santa Fe, New Mexico 2002), 983a 29) (τότε γὰρεἰδέναι φαμὲν ἕκαστον, ὅταν τὴν πρώτην αἰτίαν οἰώμεϑα γνωρίζειν, τὰ δ’ αἴτια λέγεται τετραχῶς, ὥν μίαν αἰτίαν φαμὲν εἶναι τὴν οὐσίαν καὶ τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι (Aristoteles, Metaphysik, Griechisch–Deutsch, Meiner Verlag, 1991), 983a 29) 13 One can -and justifiably so- ask how a Platonic concept can be elucidated by means of an Aristotelian one, for the conventional way of dealing with the ancient texts almost always requires and considers as “sensible” the exact opposite of this approach. However, when it comes to grasping Aristotelian texts, there comes out a necessity to take Platonic concepts as a background or a field of inquiry in order that one can trace the root meanings of the concepts which are handed down to Aristotle by no one but Plato himself for him to work on and further advance them. Furthermore, the well-crafted concepts of Aristotle offer im- mense help in dealing with Platonic concepts, which are used relatively looser and again with relative less coherency. A Platonic concept is almost always the “root-version” of an Aristotelian one, therefore a study of Aristotle without Plato or Plato without Aristotle, as is widely practiced, comes off as a slovenly effort. Additionally, not only they are explica- ble by means of one another but also they stand not as distinct and far off from each other in the things that they explain and in the manner they explain them, but quiet the contrary they are, with respect to what they do and how they philosophize, complementary. 14 One should perhaps add that the product of ἐπίστασϑαι namely ἐπιστήμη by no means refers to “absolute knowledge” but on the contrary when one sees it necessary, namely when the conditions or the nature of the object in question change, this result can be reevaluated. 15 Plato, op. cit., 80e. FV_01_2017.indd 12 26. 10. 17 11:08 13 meno's “paradox”: an analysis of the eristic argument When we say “a human being cannot search either for what he/she does not know”, what we mean by knowing is more like recognizing, noticing something among all the other things, perceiving that that thing is that thing; namely what we mean with knowing, in this case is nothing but γνωρίζειν. γνωρίζειν is one type of knowing which comprises recognizing, noticing or being aware of something, being aware that that something is. This “being aware” is a necessary condition for the start of each and every inquiry concerning some one object. Although necessary as a beginning, it is by itself not adequate enough to grasp the nature of the object in question. γνωρίζειν is a beginning and indeed an inescapable one, however there is a long and arduous way from γνωρίζειν (recognizing) to ἐπίστασϑαι (grasping, understanding, figuring out the nature of some one thing). γνωρίζειν comes about only when it is preceded by an αἴσϑησις (perception). We should recall the account Aristotle gives of αἴσϑησις, which is more articulate and complex in comparison to that of Plato’s which he provides us with in his dialogue titled Theaetetus, if we are to understand this concept clearly and its difference from any ἐπιστήμη. In its primary sense and in general Aristotle grasps αἴσϑησις (perception) as something that comes about or realizes within a certain range. Everything that falls out of this range stands as imperceptible to the animal, and in addition to that the excess of a certain quantity of perceptible data (for example: heat or cold) could easily destroy the organ of sense. The animal, let it be human or non-human, according to this threshold it comprises, “discriminates the things perceived”16. If we try to further expand our explanation, we can claim that according to Ar- istotle the thing we call αἴσϑησις begins and ends within a certain range. I can only capture those objects falling within this range as long as my δύναμις of αἴσϑησις allows me to. In humans and other non-human animals there are differ- ent δυναμεῖς of αἴσϑησις that have different limits and capacities (though in what- ness what we call αἴσϑησις is the same in both humans and other non-human animals) in capturing the different qualities of σῶμα qua σῶμα. Aristotle further argues that this κριτικὴ δύναμις called αἴσϑησις is not found in plants, and that 16 Aristotle, Aristotle’s On the Soul, trans. by Joe Sachs, Green Lion Press, Santa Fe, New Mex- ico 2004, 424a 5. FV_01_2017.indd 13 26. 10. 17 11:08 14 lale levin basut means plants lack such a capacity that comprises a threshold of hearing, sight and other basic perceptions. That means while αἴσϑησις requires a κριτικὸν μεσόν, plants do not have this sort of a complex structure. Whenever a plant comes in contact with something that is warm or something that is cold, it can only be af- fected from the heat or the cold with its ὕλη (matter). That indicates that the plant does not work on or “embroider” the data it receives from the object that is trans- mitting it the heat or the cold, but it merely receives that data without processing it and does so even up to that point which the plant ceases to be. The δύναμις related to αἴσϑησις in animals however makes a distinction between things that are to be perceived and does not perceive everything that comes in front of it. This is not the case with plants because plants lack κρίνειν. A δύναμις of κρίνειν in a being indicates capableness for distinguishing, processing and judgment (in a specific sense), and it is, according to Aristotle, an activity that comprises λόγος. Because plants do not partake from κρίνειν, we cannot argue that they have a δύναμις related to distinguishing, processing, measuring or dis- criminating. The following quotes from different passages from Aristotle’s work provide fur- ther insight on αἴσϑησις, and also explicate its difference from νόησις (thinking): 1. ...[T]he sense is receptive of the forms of perceptible things without their ma- terial.17 Here Aristotle aims to state that in perceiving we do not take the ὕλη of the thing we are to perceive, and literally put it in our brain. That thing, as a perceivable thing, remains there for others who are yet to perceive it. We only contrive its εἶδος within ourselves. The following is a quote from Aristotle’s On Perception and Perceptible Things: 2. ...[P]erception comes about through the body in the soul.18 17 Ibid., 421a 20. 18 Aristotle, On the Soul-Parva Naturalia-On Breath, trans. by W.S. Hett, Harvard University Press, Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge, Massachusetts 1957, 436b 9. FV_01_2017.indd 14 26. 10. 17 11:08 15 meno's “paradox”: an analysis of the eristic argument It has to be noted that αἴσϑησις itself is not a μέγεϑος (427a 27). What is a μέγεϑος is the thing that has the potency to perceive, namely the animal. 3. “..[B]eing a sense, or...being perceptive...is certainly not of any size.”19 4. “...[S]ense perception is a λόγος, and what is excessive undoes or destroys λόγος.”20 In the 2nd Book of his treatise called On the Soul Aristotle makes the following clear with distinctions made with regard to αἴσϑησις: “sense perception when directed at its proper object is always truthful”.21 That is, in the case of basic per- ceptions such as seeing, hearing, smelling, touching and tasting, if the object to be perceived is not far away, i.e. standing within a certain distance, it is not possible to speak of a false perception. We have already uttered that αἴσϑησις is a κρίνειν and an activity that involves λόγος. Therefore it has to be asserted that measuring-eliminating-discriminating is necessary for every single sense per- ception. For instance in the perception called sight we distinguish the red thing from the yellow one; by touching, the hard one from the soft one or the hot one from the cold one. In 426b 15 and cont. Aristotle asks the following: what tells us that the thing that is hot and the one that is hard are different? Our δύναμις called αἴσϑησις falls short when trying to provide us with an answer to this question. The answer to this question should be formed next to or come after an αἴσϑησις, as something in addition to it. Individual sense perceptions cannot come up with such dis- tinctions, for here “something common is being said at a single time” regarding the object of both perceptions. Therefore arriving upon such distinction is not something that can be achieved solely with the δύναμις called αἴσϑησις, but it is something that can be contrived with what we call νόησις (thinking). According to Aristotle, from the δυναμεῖς of the soul, αἴσϑησις and φρωνέιν are not the same, as some philosophers (as for instance Empedocles) have stated. In addition to that, thinking is not “something bodily like perceiving”.22 19 Aristotle, Aristotle’s On the Soul, op. cit., 424a 28. 20 Ibid., 426b 8. 21 Ibid., 427b 12. 22 Ibid., 427a 29. FV_01_2017.indd 15 26. 10. 17 11:08 16 lale levin basut While there is sense perception in all animals, thinking through (φρωνέιν) is present only in some of them (427b 7). Whereas νόησις (thinking) is distin- guished from αἴσϑησις in the following aspects: ...[I]n thinking there is what is right and what is not right, right thinking being un- derstanding and knowing and true opinion, and the opposites of these not being right; ...sense perception when directed at its proper objects is always truthful.23 In 418a 7 and cont. Aristotle elaborates in what senses αἰσϑητόν (that which is perceived) may be used: AISTHETON kat’ auto kata symbebekos idion koinon While saying “the white thing is the son of Diares”, the white thing’s being the son of Diares is incidental. Sight Hearing Touch Taste Smell (κύριως ἐστίν αἱσϑητά, πρὸς ἅ ἡ οὐσία πέφυκεν ἑκάστης αἰϑήσεως) Motion Rest Number Shape Size Among the different types of αἰσϑήσεις, κοινὴ αἴσϑησις is one key concept for any comprehension of γνωρίζειν. κοινὴ αἴσϑησις (general perception) as distinct from the other basic five perceptions, implies our grasp and awareness of one ob- ject’s being in motion or being at rest; its being “one” or a many of them being “many”; or one object having this or that shape; or being this or that size. With regard to γνωρίζειν, when a person recognizes (γνωρίζει), it occurs to him/ her that this certain object is, and that it is standing within his recognition scope. But considering the whatness of this object that is newly recognized, an obscurity still takes place. 23 Ibid., 427b 7–13. FV_01_2017.indd 16 26. 10. 17 11:08 17 meno's “paradox”: an analysis of the eristic argument “Not knowing what to look for”, however, is a state of not recognizing, a being unaware of the presence of a particular object. Nevertheless it is very much pos- sible for a person to notice something, take it as his/her object and then start an inquiry concerning its nature. Thus, in the above analysis we have successfully laid out that it is an ill choice to use the term εἰδέναι in both of the cases that are presented in the eristic ar- gument, for the specific meanings and their implications are being veiled by it. We had however claimed before that the argument creates the illusion that there isn’t any possibility of ζητέιν. After having analyzed the argument philologically we can now rewrite and relook at it: (a) A human being cannot search either for what he/she knows (ἐπίστασϑαι) or for what he/she does not know (γιγνώσκειν). He/she cannot search for what he/she knows (ἐπίστασϑαι) — since he/she knows (ἐπίστασϑαι) it, there is no need to search — nor for what he/she does not know (γιγνώσκειν), for he/ she does not know (γιγνώσκειν) what to look for. (80e) (a’) A human being cannot search for what he/she knows (ἐπίστασϑαι) —since he/she knows it, there is no need to search (T) A human being cannot search for what he/she does know (γνωρίζειν), for he/she does not know what to look for. (T) Conclusion: A human being cannot search either for what he/she knows (ἐπίστασϑαι) or for what he/she does not know (γνωρίζειν) (T) The argument now seems to contain two true premises and a true conclusion derived most healthily out of these. Besides, there is no trace of any paradox. Furthermore, having analyzed the argument in this way it is necessary to state that it is very much possible for a man or a woman to search for (1) what he/she does not know (οὐκ ἐπίσταται) and (2) also for what he/she knows (γνωρίζει)24. Therefore one is not at a loss about starting with an inquiry about something. 24 One recognizes something, one perceives/is aware that that thing is, then the inquiry con- cerning that object starts. FV_01_2017.indd 17 26. 10. 17 11:08 18 lale levin basut The following table indicates the domain of the eristic argument and the do- main of any possible ζητέιν (inquiry):25 ζητέιν ζητέιν αἴσϑησις→γνωρίζειν →ἐπίστασϑαι Before αἴσϑησις & γνωρίζειν no ζητέιν (inquiry) as the argument points out. Perceive, recognize, choose one object to conduct your investigation This is where a certain type of ζητέιν (inquiry) comes about Where the inquiry concerning some one object comes to an end and reaches a stability: epi- istemi; to stand firm upon some place.25 No ζητέιν as the argument suggests. Another chapter in this inquiry requires that we investigate into what Plato is trying to state by introducing the εἴκων of ἀνάμνησις. For as we have stated in the beginning of this paper many scholars point out to ἀνάμνησις as the solution Plato offers for the eristic problem regarding knowing at 80d. When we follow the text we see that in passages following 81c Socrates intro- duces the argument which suggests that learning is recollection (ἀνάμνησις). ...[F]or searching and learning are, as a whole, recollection.26 In order to show that learning is recollection, Socrates asks Meno to fetch one of the slaves that work for him, and with proper questioning Socrates makes the slave almost solve a geometrical problem. Meanwhile Socrates asks Meno to ob- serve this questioning in order to find out whether Socrates is teaching the slave something that he didn’t know beforehand. For he claims the following: ‘I shall do nothing more than ask questions, and not teach him.’27 25 See Greek-English Lexicon by H. G. Liddell, Harper&Brothers Publishers, New York 1853. 26 τὸ γὰρ ζητεῖν ἄρα καὶ τὸ μανϑάνειν ἀνάμνησις ὅλον ἐστίν. (Translation: Plato, op. cit., 81d.) 27 Ibid., 84c. What the “eristic” argument points out and is right about pointing at FV_01_2017.indd 18 26. 10. 17 11:08 19 meno's “paradox”: an analysis of the eristic argument Socrates, in explaining how he shall question the slave, asserts that he is only going to ask for the opinions (δόξαι) in him (84d). The slave then obviously has some opinions in him, which he held prior to or will end up forming upon Socrates’ questioning him. However we know that the intention Socrates had when calling out for this slave boy instead of someone else was to invite some- one into the discussion who had no prior knowledge or training in geometry, and thus he called for the slave boy. However when approaching this issue, we should also always keep in mind that according to Plato “...neither ἐπιστήμη nor ἀληϑὴς δόξα come to men by nature but are acquired.”28 Therefore the answer to the question whether the slave boy ended up having the opinions he had about the geometrical puzzle directed at him by Socrates, or already had opinions concerning geometrical objects, and calculations regarding them, becomes ap- parent. The boy, having no prior knowledge or training in geometry, came near Socrates neither with a geometrical ἐπιστήμη nor with an ἀληϑὴς δόξα but with one δύναμις which enabled him to form opinions (δόξαι) when Socrates tried the dialectical way of questioning on him. Furthermore even when it comes to topics one is fairly knowledgeable about, unlike the slave boy in the example who has no knowledge at all regarding the subject of the discussion, we might assume that in each person there are usually some ‘raw’ opinions, which can be thought as some basic ‘convictions’ regard- ing some one object which imply that that object is or might be this way or the other. These raw opinions stay the way they are, unless the person, who has them, is questioned. Forming these opinions, on the other hand, start right af- ter we perceive or discern a particular object, and determine it as distinct from all the other objects around it. Only after this γιγνώσκειν we can obtain some opinions regarding the nature of this object. However, these opinions are things Plato held as “shameful” and “ugly” only because it is not possible to work on a solid ground using them because they lack λόγος, which plainly means that the argumentation process behind them is frail. Therefore what Plato is trying to explain by using recollection is by no means that we have by nature ἐπιστήμη nor δόξα but only that we have such a nature that is capable of contriving them, and that we do not have ἐπιστήμη or δόξα by nature but only have them δυνάμει. 28 Ibid., 98d. FV_01_2017.indd 19 26. 10. 17 11:08 20 lale levin basut In passages following 86c we see Socrates persisting vigorously that ‘one should seek to find out what one does not know’29. With this remark that Socrates makes, we are also reminded of the ἐριστικὸς λόγος that is uttered in 80e. What we have conducted so far is not a mere etymological analysis but a phi- lo-logical one30 and this analysis of the eristic argument makes the following clear: (a) The argument Socrates introduces at 80e is by no means a paradox. (b) There is no ἀπορία awaiting that person who wants to conduct an investiga- tion concerning some one thing. (c) The eristic feature of the argument is due to the wide meaning of the term εἰδέναι that is used in this very argument exactly to create the illusion of a paradox. Bibliography Aristoteles (1991), Metaphysik, Griechisch–Deutsch, Meiner Verlag. Aristotle (2002), Metaphysics, trans. by Joe Sachs, Green Lion Press, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Aristotle (2004), Aristotle’s On the Soul, trans. by Joe Sachs, Green Lion Press, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Aristotle (1957), On the Soul-Parva Naturalia-On Breath, trans. by W.S. Hett, Harvard Uni- versity Press, Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Saffet Babür (2002), “Episteme in Aristotle”, Philosophy in Yeditepe I, Vol. I, pp. 7–20. J. T. Bedu-Addo (1984), “Recollection and the Argument ‘From a Hypothesis’ in Plato’s Meno, The Journal of Hellenistic Studies, Vol., pp. 1–14. Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari (1994), What is Philosophy?, Columbia University Press, New York. Rosemary Desjardins (1985), “Knowledge and Virtue: Paradox in Plato’s ‘Meno’”, The Re- view of Metaphysics, Vol. 39, No.2 (Dec.), pp. 261–281. Martin Heidegger (2009), Basic Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy, trans. by R. D. Metcalf and M. B. Tanzer, Indiana University Press, Bloomington &Indianapolis. Robert G. Hoerber (1960), “Plato’s ‘Meno’”, Phronesis, Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 78–102. 29 Ibid., 86c. 30 “If philology means the passion for knowledge of what has been expressed, then what we are doing is philology.” (Martin Heidegger, Basic Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy, trans. by R. D. Metcalf and M. B. Tanzer, Indiana University Press, Bloomington &India- napolis 2009, pp. 23–24.) FV_01_2017.indd 20 26. 10. 17 11:08 21 meno's “paradox”: an analysis of the eristic argument Dale Jacquette (1996), “Socrates’ Ironic Image of Meno”, The Personalist Forum, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Fall), pp. 123–134. Henry George Liddell (1853), Greek-English Lexicon, Harper&Brothers Publishers, New York. Jon Moline (1969), “Meno’s Paradox?”, Phronesis, Vol. 14, No. 2, pp. 153–161. Plato (2002), Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo, trans. by G.M.A. Grube, 2nd edition, Hackett Publishing Company, Indianapolis. FV_01_2017.indd 21 26. 10. 17 11:08 FV_01_2017.indd 22 26. 10. 17 11:08 23 Filozofski vestnik | Letnik XXXVIII | Številka 1 | 2017 | 23–46 Boris Vezjak* Aristotel proti Platonu: variacije dokaza tretjega človeka in samopripis idej Aristotel v svoji razpravi o Platonovih idejah razvije tezo, da je vsaka splošnost (to katholou) neke vrste enotnost na osnovi izpostavitve (ekthesis) te splošno- sti poleg posameznih stvari.1 Na podoben način dokaz tretjega človeka, najbolj prepoznaven in v teoretskem oziru ključen argument v ustroju Aristotelove lo- gične kritike Platonovih idej in njene utemeljitve, nadaljuje s korakom takšne izpostavitve: v Metafiziki (Metaph. 991a 5, 1090a 17) ideja, ki je pripisana več po- sameznostim in biva ločeno od njih, zahteva dodani element, ki je pripisljiv tej ideji in vsem naštetim posameznostim, ki spadajo pod takšno idejo. Če imamo skupino ljudi, bivajo kot ljudje zaradi svoje udeležbe na ideji človeka: toda ker je človek kot ideja nekaj, čemur je po nujnosti treba pripisati lastnost človeka, hkrati pa ni istovetna z nobenim posameznim človekom, nujno biva nova ideja človeka. Aristotel opiše v Alfa knjigi Metafizike dokaz tretjega človeka s temi besedami: »Nadalje pa izmed bolj natančnih dokazov, nekateri vzpostavljajo pralike (ideas) odnosnosti, za katere ne trdimo, da so rod same po sebi, nekateri pa vodijo v sklep o tretjem človeku.« (Metaph. 990b15 isl.) Dokaz tretjega človeka velja za bolj natančen argument oz. sodi v skupino bolj natančnih argumentov.2 Hkrati velja za najbolj poglobljen element v kritiki Platonove teorije idej in celo za temelj, na katerem je Aristotel zgradil lastno teorijo predikacije in kategorij. Še več, Aristotelov ugovor Platonu šteje za pre- poznavni znak njegove metafizike, ko gre za ločevanje od platonizma.3 Izraz »tretji človek« (ho tritos anthropos) nima enotnega izvora. Platon v svojem Parmenidu opisuje dva »regresivna« argumenta, ki ju je Aristotel v Metafiziki in 1 Prim. Metaph. 1090a 17. 2 Kateri so ostali »bolj natančni« argumenti, žal ni jasno, vsekakor pa sem sodi še argument iz relativov. 3 Aristotel na mestu 1059b8 v Metafiziki v kontekstu razprave o matematičnih predmetih, ki so med idejami in čutnozaznavnimi stvarmi, ob tretjem človeku navede še tretjega konja (tritos hippos). * Oddelek za filozofijo, Filozofska fakulteta, Univerza v Mariboru FV_01_2017.indd 23 26. 10. 17 11:08 24 boris vezjak delu Sofistične ovržbe, opisal na navedeni način.4 Šele stvar naknadne interpre- tacije je postala, da so dokaz poistovetili z enim od dveh regresivnih argumen- tov iz Parmenida. Aleksander Afrodizijski navaja še Evdemovo verzijo tega ar- gumenta, za katero pravi, da je enaka kot Aristotelova. Če jih torej preštejemo, lahko najdemo kar štiri opise, ki vsebujejo logično podobnost v dokazovanju: dve Platonovi, eno Aristotelovo in eno Evdemovo. V čem se razlikujejo in ali so logično ekvivalentni? V nadaljevanju se lotevam njihove primerjave in razlik – pri branju bom upo- števal formalno branje, ki ga je uvedel Gregory Vlastos v svojem odmevnem članku »The Third Man Argument in the Parmenides« iz leta 1954 in z njim za- količil interpretativno območje, s pomočjo katerega lahko analiziramo logi- ko vseh dokazov tretjega človeka. Po njegovem je edina eksplicitna premisa, ki poudarja enkratnost idej in hkrati ustvarja regres, tista, ki je zapisana v Parmenidu (132a3): »Ko imaš mnogo stvari, ki jih imaš za velike, potem se zdi, da v vsaki izmed njih vidiš neko eno in isto idejo.«5 Označimo z izrazom I kate- rokoli skupno lastnost, ki jih pripisujemo več stvarem pod isto idejo; takšna je recimo »biti človek« in vse stvari, ki so človek, so takšne zaradi lastnosti I. Na drugi strani v skladu s komentatorsko tradicijo označimo z izrazom I-nost samo idejo, pod katero uvrščamo stvari z lastnostjo I, »biti človek«. Takšna ideja je ideja človeškosti, pa pravičnosti, rdečosti, okroglosti in podobno. Po Vlastosu je teza o enkratnosti idej formulirana na sledeči način: T1 Če so določene stvari a,b,c vse po vrsti I, potem bo morala bivati ena ideja/obli- ka I-nost, zaradi katere razumemo a,b,c kot I. Iz trditve T1 Platon izpelje sklep, ki ga sam posploši na takšen način: 4 Prim. mesta v Metafiziki: 990b17, 1079a13 in 1039a2 ter v Sofističnih ovržbah, 178b36. 5 Sledim svojemu prevodu v Platon, Parmenid, ZRC SAZU, Ljubljana 2001. FV_01_2017.indd 24 26. 10. 17 11:08 25 aristotel proti platonu: variacije dokaza tretjega človeka in samopripis idej T2 Če so a,b,c in I-nost vsi po vrsti I, bo morala bivati še neka ideja, I-nost1, zaradi katere razumemo a,b,c in I-nost kot I-je.6 Iz T1 še ne sledi T2, ugotavlja Vlastos. Argument je torej bodisi neveljaven, ali pa mu moramo morali dodati kakšno tiho premiso, ki jo Platon v argumentu tretje- ga človeka nehote vključuje. Da bi bil T2 upravičen sklep, moramo po njegovem dodati še dve predpostavki, in sicer predpostavko o samopripisu in neistovetno- sti. Sam ju opiše na naslednji način: (Samopripis) Vsaka ideja je lahko pripisana sama sebi. Velikost je sama velika. I-nost je sama I. (Neistovetnost) Če ima x neko določeno lastnost, ta x ne more biti istoveten z idejo, s katero razumemo to lastnost. Če je nek x I, potem x ne more biti istoveten s I-nostjo.7 Medtem ko se je Vlastos posvetil analitičnemu branju še zlasti Platona, najde- mo enega ključnih momentov za razumevanje razvoja dokaza tretjega človeka, njegove utemeljitve pri Aristotelu in tudi elementov Platonove »samokritike«, kakršno je razvil v dialogu Parmenid, pri Aleksandru Afrodizijskem, v njegovem komentarju k Aristotelovi Metafiziki. V njem povzema osnovne značilnosti spisa Peri ideon, ta povzetek pa je tudi edini vir iz katerega poznamo vsebino spisa, ki naj bi ga napisal Aristotel. V prvem delu parafraze spisa so obravnavane različ- ne strategije dokazovanja obstoja idej, nato pa Aristotel poda še njihovo kritiko. Argumentov ali dokazov, ki jih Aleksander navaja, lahko po vrsti, kot si sledijo v spisu, naštejemo pet. To so argument iz znanosti, argument iz enega preko mnoštva, argument iz misli, argument iz relativov in argument tretjega člove- 6 Izpeljavo najdemo razvito v Vlastosovem članku »The ‚Third Man‘ Argument in the Par- menides«, v: Reginald E. Allen (ur.), Studies in Plato‘s Metaphysics, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London 1965, str. 231-263. 7 Ibid., str. 236-237. FV_01_2017.indd 25 26. 10. 17 11:08 26 boris vezjak ka.8 Med slednjimi Aleksander Afrodizijski navaja dve njegovi različici, najprej Evdemovo, nato Aristotelovo. Že golo dejstvo, da navede tudi Evdemovo, celo pred Aristotelovo, je eden od poglavitnih indicev za to, da spis Peri ideon morda ni naveden v svoji integralni obliki in je vsaj v nekem svojem delu parafraza tistega, kar je Aristotel v Peri ideon dejansko zapisal. Drugače si namreč ne mo- remo razložiti vrinka, ki ga je zapisal Evdem, Aristotelov učenec z Rodosa. V prvi različici, vzeti iz Evdemove Peri lexeos (83.34.- 84.7), sledi takšno dokazo- vanje: obstaja skupna narava bitnosti in splošnosti, ki se imenujejo ideje. Toda stvari so ene drugim podobne tako, da si vzajemno delijo neko isto stvar, ki je povsem splošna oz. univerzalna, in takšna naj bi bila platonska ideja. Toda tisto, kar se pripisuje stvarem kot skupno, bo v primeru, da ni nekaj od tega, kar se jim pripisuje, nekaj drugega onkraj teh stvari. Človek bo rod zato, ker se pripisuje posameznostim in ni isto z njimi. S tem bo bival tretji človek ob posameznosti (kot sta Sokrat in Platon) in ob ideji, ki je prav tako ena po številu. Aristotelova verzija (84.21-85.3) je nekoliko, vendar ne bistveno, drugačna: kar je resnično pripisano mnoštvu stvari, je nekaj drugega in onkraj stvari, katerim je pripisa- no, ločeno od njih (ideja človeka je resnično pripisana posameznemu človeku). Toda če je človek, ki je pripisan, nekaj drugega od stvari, ki jim je pripisan, ter sam po sebi subsistira (kata idian huphestos), in če je človek pripisan tako po- sameznostim kot idejam, potem bo bival še tretji človek ob posameznostih in ideji. Na isti način bo bival še četrti človek, ki bo pripisan temu tretjemu, ideji in posameznostim, nato pa še peti, in tako v neskončnost.9 Evdemova različica (83.34-84.7) Argument »tretjega človeka«, vzet iz Evdemove Peri lexeos, je uveden s stavkom: »Dokaz, ki vpeljuje tretjega človeka, je naslednji« in se glasi: Pravijo, da bivajo stvari, ki se pripisujejo bitnostim na splošno, popolnoma in da so ideje. Nadalje pa so si stvari, ki so si med sabo podobne, med sabo podobne za- radi udeležbe na eni in isti stvari, ki je popolnoma takšna; to pa je ideja. Toda če je 8 Doslej najcelovitejši pregled vseh dokaznih strategij Aristotelove kritike Platonovih idej v spisu Peri ideon najdemo pri Gail Fine, On ideas. Aristotle‘s Criticism of Plato‘s Theory of Forms, Clarendon Paperbacks, Oxford 1993. 9 Več o Aleksandrovi vpeljavi Evdemovega razmisleka o tretjem človeku v: Boris Vezjak, »Argumentacija o tretjem človeku v spisu Peri ideon«, Analiza, 1/2 (2001), str. 35-37. FV_01_2017.indd 26 26. 10. 17 11:08 27 aristotel proti platonu: variacije dokaza tretjega človeka in samopripis idej temu tako in če je pripisano na splošno stvarem, potem bo moralo biti, v primeru, da to ne bo katera od teh stvari, ki se jim pripisuje, nekaj drugega ob njih (zato je tudi človek sam rod, saj se pripisuje posameznostim, pa ni isti z nobeno od njih), tako da bo še tretji človek ob posameznostih (kot sta Sokrat ali pa Platon) ter ob ideji, ta bo pa prav tako en po številu.10 Aleksander trdi, da je ta argument enak tistemu, ki sledi (85.4), da sta torej Ev- demov in Aristotelov dokaz enaka. Evdem začenja z naslednjima dvema premi- sama: (1) Kar se pripisuje bitnostim I na splošno, biva popolnoma (kurios) in je ideja I. (2) Če sta si a in b med sabo podobna v tem, da sta I, sta si podobna zaradi ude- ležbe na eni in isti stvari, ki je ideja in ki je popolnoma I. Kot bomo videli, tako (1) kot (2) zahtevata neko vrsto samopripisa. Kajti (1) pravi, da bo tisto, kar je pripisano skupini bitnosti I, to pa je ideja I, tudi samo takšno (toiauta) kot stvari, ki jim je pripisano (83.35). Kar pomeni, da bo, zato ker bo I, tudi samo takšno kot bitnosti.. Obe premisi govorita tudi o tem, da je ideja I taka (touto, 84.2) popolnoma, tj. da je I popolnoma (kurios). Iz argumenta iz relativov (odnosnosti) je razvidno, da je, če je nekaj popolnoma I, pač I: če je ideja I po- polnoma I, potem je I in to pomeni, da je nekako deležna samopripisa.11 Opisano načelo, ki se zdi ključno, vsebujeta tako Evdemova kot Aristotelova različica, obakrat v zoženi obliki: katerakoli ideja I bo morala biti prav I, pri čemer ni do- ločeno, pod kakšnimi pogoji in kako se to primeri. Trditev, da je katerakoli ideja I popolnoma I, pa je združljiva z razumevanjem idej kot splošnosti. Če se ideje »na splošno pripisujejo bitnostim«, torej različnim stvarem, potem tak »splošni« pri- pis naznačuje univerzalnost, s čimer so ponovno odprta vrata aristotelski rešitvi težave z idejami, tj. v postavitvi splošnosti namesto idej. Aristotelska splošnost bo kasneje v sholastiki zahtevala izključitev posamezne »materialne« določi- tve vsake posameznosti. Matjaž Vesel pri interpretaciji Tomaža Akvinskega prav na podlagi definiranja bitnosti človeka (homo) pokaže, na kakšen način je ta 10 Pri prevodu, ki je moj, ob Hayduckovi ediciji sledim tudi Harlfingerjevi izdaji spisa Peri ideon pod naslovom »Edizione critica del testo del »De Ideis« di Aristotele«, v: Walter Leszl, Il »De ideis« di Aristotele e la teoria platonica delle idee, Olschki, Firence 1975, str. 15-39. 11 Dokaz iz relativov v spisu Peri ideon analiziram v: Boris Vezjak, »Argument iz relativov v spisu Peri ideon«, Filozofski vestnik, 1 (2001), str. 33-54. FV_01_2017.indd 27 26. 10. 17 11:08 28 boris vezjak označena dvosmerno: kot celota, ko je izražena s konkretnim imenom »človek« (homo), ali pa kot del, kadar je izražena z abstraktnim imenom »človeškost« (humanitas): abstraktno ime »človeškost« je abstrahirano z izključitvijo vsake individualne označitve, ki je pri Akvinskem označena materija.12 Tako označuje človeško bistvo/bitnost na način, da je bitnost razumljena samo kot »tisto, po čemer je človek človek«, z vidika definicijske formule, ki vsebuje tisto, kar pri- pada človeku kot človeku. V tem primeru, dodaja Vesel, ne more biti predikat posameznega človeka, saj ne moremo reči: »Sokrat je človeškost.«13 Druga predpostavka, ki jo vključujeta osnovni premisi Evdemove različice doka- za, je »eno preko mnoštva«. V (1) se zdi, da se ideje zahtevajo le za bitnosti, pri čemer ni jasno, kaj natančneje izraz ousia Evdemu dejansko pomeni. Zdi se, da z njimi misli predvsem prve bitnosti, kot jih Aristotel razvije v Kategorijah, kot ugotavlja Gail Fine.14 Raba tovrstnega dokaza bi bila torej rezervirana predvsem za entitete, kot sta človek ali konj, s tem pa ožja od konteksta, ki ga je Aristotel že navajal in v katerem so bile postavljene ideje tudi za, denimo, velike stvari ali pravičnost. V drugi premisi tega argumenta se trdi, da je katerakoli skupina stvari, ki so si med sabo podobne, I takrat, ko si bodo podobne zaradi udeležbe na eni in isti stvari, ki je ideja in ki je popolnoma I. Toda kako vemo, da kateri- koli stvar, denimo a, b ali c, ki so I, ni tista, zaradi katere bi vse bile I? Argument enega preko mnoštva nam tega ne omogoči, Evdem pa zahtevo zapiše na nasle- dnji način: »Toda če je temu tako in če je pripisano na splošno stvarem, potem bo moralo biti, v primeru, da to ne bo katera od teh stvari, ki se jim pripisuje, ne- kaj drugega ob njih.« (84.3-4) To zahtevo bi lahko preoblikovali v tretjo premiso: (3) Kar je pripisano na splošno stvarem, ne bo katera od teh stvari, ki se jim pri- pisuje, ampak nekaj drugega ob njih. Če se x pripiše nečemu, potem je x drugačen od tega, čemur je pripisan. Iz tega sledi, da nič ne more biti pripisano samemu sebi, tako da nič ni I zaradi samega sebe. Ta premisa, kot bomo videli, vsebuje Vlastosovo predpostavko o neisto- 12 Matjaž Vesel, »Problem univerzalij pri Tomažu Akvinskem«, Filozofski vestnik, XXV/1 (2004), str. 60. 13 Ibid., st. 62. 14 Gail Fine, On ideas. Aristotle‘s Criticism of Plato‘s Theory of Forms, Clarendon Paperbacks, Oxford 1993, str. 221. FV_01_2017.indd 28 26. 10. 17 11:08 29 aristotel proti platonu: variacije dokaza tretjega človeka in samopripis idej vetnosti.15 Če torej postuliramo niz stvari, ki so I, potem bomo dobili natanko eno idejo I, ki je ob (para) njih in neistovetna z njimi. Evdemova in Aristotelova različica razumeta vse čutnozaznavne ljudi v »kolektivnem smislu« kot Člove- ka1, prvo idejo pa kot drugega Človeka2. Druga ideja, ki je Človek3, nadaljuje to verigo na višjem nivoju s tem, da vključi prejšnji nivo. Vsak niz se torej dogaja na višjem nivoju, vključujoč nižji, kar pomeni običajno uporabo argumenta »enega preko mnoštva«. Predpostavka »enega preko mnoštva« je torej bistvena sestavi- na v razumevanju dokaza tretjega človeka. Specifični označbi v Evdemovi različici, ki to razlikujeta od Aristotelove, pa sta naslednji: prvič, le v njej bomo našli zapisano, da je ideja I popolnoma (kyrios) I. Ta zahteva ni prisotna v ostalih različicah argumenta tretjega človeka, četudi se tak prislov omenja že v argumentu iz relativov. Druga značilna označba je ta, da je vsaka ideja opisana kot »ena po številu« (84.7). Kot vemo, je za Aristotela to, kar je eno po število, skoraj vedno posameznost. Sicer v Metafiziki dopušča možnost, da so tudi splošnosti ene na določene načine,16 vendar je osnovna Ari- stotelova kritika platonizma idej prav v tem, da razume splošnosti kot posame- znosti, kar bi nujno pomenilo, da jih razume kot ene. Aristotelova različica (84.21-85.3) Argument »tretjega človeka«, pripisan Aristotelu, uvaja stavek »Tretji človek se dokazuje na ta način« in se glasi: Če je tisto, kar je resnično, pripisano mnoštvu stvari, tudi neka druga stvar ob stva- reh, ki jim je pripisano, pa tudi ločeno od njih (kajti to je tisto, kar postavljajo tisti, ki želijo dokazati ideje in kar, v skladu z njimi, dokazuje obstoj stvari, kot je človek sam, kajti človek je pripisan resnično posameznim ljudem, ki so mnogi, hkrati pa je drugo od posameznih ljudi), potem bo [obstajal], če je temu tako, tudi tretji človek. Kajti če je človek, ki se pripisuje, nekaj drugega od stvari, ki se jim pripisuje in biva po sebi, in če je človek pripisan tako posameznostim kot ideji, potem bo bival še tretji človek ob posameznosti in ideji. In na isti način bo tudi še četrti, ki bo pripisan temu in ideji, na podoben način pa še peti, in tako dalje v neskončnost.17 15 Vlastos, op. cit., str. 235. 16 Prim. še zlasti šesto poglavje o enem in enosti v Delta knjigi Metafizike, 1015b16-1017a6. 17 Harlfinger, op. cit., str. 15-39. FV_01_2017.indd 29 26. 10. 17 11:08 30 boris vezjak Aristotelova formulacija argumenta tretjega človeka v Peri ideon (84.21-85.3) se naslanja na argument »enega preko mnoštva« (hen ek pollon). Zato meni, da ravno zato, podobno kot navedeni argument, tudi tretji človek zapadel regresu. Kot smo videli, vsebuje argument enega preko mnoštva naslednji pomembni premisi: (1) Mnoge stvari (I-ji) so to, kar so (torej I) zaradi tega, ker jim vsem skupaj pri- pišemo taisti I. (2) I, ki je (a) eno preko mnoštva (I-jev) in (b) od njih ločeno, je ideja. Začetek argumenta tretjega človeka v Peri ideon postreže z izpeljavo iz natanko teh dveh premis – ko imamo mnoštvo stvari, ki so I in ko je I pripisan vsem med njimi (84.22-3), hkrati pa je ločen od tega mnoštva stvari, ki jim je pripisan (84.23-4), Aristotel potemtakem izpeljuje takole: kar je pripisano mnoštvu stva- ri, je nekaj ob (para) stvareh, ki se jim pripisuje (84.23-4, 84.27). Nadaljevanje bo nato stališče tretjega človeka določilo na še natančnejši način: če je človek, ki se pripisuje, nekaj drugega od stvari in če je človek pripisan tako posameznostim kot ideji, potem bo bival še tretji človek ob posameznosti in ideji. (85.1) Tretji človek bo torej »ob« (»poleg«, »preko«, »onstran«; para) in bo bival ob/poleg posameznostih in ideji.18 Platonova in Aristotelova formulacija predpostavke o enem, ki je preko (para) mnoštva, se nekoliko razlikujeta. Medtem ko Platon pravi, da so mnoge stvari I to, kar so, ker so udeležene na ideji I ali zaradi nje, Aristotel meni, da so I-ji zato, ker se jim pripisuje I (recimo človek, ho anthropos). Verjetno je uporaba glagola kategorein na tem mestu mišljena predvsem v horizontu aristotelskega razume- vanja idej kot splošnosti ali lastnosti – te se pač pripisujejo. Po Aristotelu namreč lahko pripišemo veliko stvarem le splošnost, ne pa tudi posameznost.19 Dokaz »enega preko mnoštva« in predpostavka o neistovetnosti pa še nista zadostna 18 Zanimivo »štetje« navaja Gwilym E.L. Owen, ki meni, da »tretji človek« ni druga ideja člove- ka, »drugi človek« pa ne prva ideja človeka, pri čemer bi »prvi človek« bil posameznost. V članku »Platonism in Aristotle« meni, da sta prvi in drugi človek recimo Kalija in Sokrat, tako da je »tretji človek« šele prva ideja. Preimenovanje konceptov seveda v ničemer ne zmanjša problematičnosti koncepta tretjega človeka. Primerjaj Gwilym E.L. Owen, Martha Nussbaum (ur.), Logic, Science and Dialectic, Cornell University Press, Ithaca 1986, str. 208-209. 19 Takšno trditev najdemo v spisu De interpretatione, 17a38 isl. FV_01_2017.indd 30 26. 10. 17 11:08 31 aristotel proti platonu: variacije dokaza tretjega človeka in samopripis idej pogoja za regres. Po prvem so namreč vsi in samo čutnozaznavni ljudje ljudje zaradi neke ene lastnosti, namreč lastnosti biti človek, tj. ho anthropos (primer- jaj 84.25), ki se jim pripisuje. Platonisti to lastnost razumejo kot idejo in ne »la- stnost biti človek«, zato jo lahko Aristotel na mestu 84.25 opiše kot nekaj, kar platonisti imenujejo autoanthropos, tj. človek sam. Imenujmo to idejo Človek1, saj je očitno ideja, ki je nivojsko postavljena višje od čutnozaznavnih ljudi. Po predpostavki o neistovetnosti bo Človek1 nujno zunaj te skupine in ne bo njen član. Toda to še ne dovoljuje, da bi na podlagi tega Človeka1 nujno sklepali na še eno idejo človeka. Za kaj takega moramo maksimizirati samo skupino – tudi sam Človek1 mora biti človek. Da bi Človeka1 opisali kot človeka, pa ne zado- ščata predpostavki o neistovetnosti in tudi ne argument enega preko mnoštva. Upoštevati moramo namreč še predpostavko o samopripisu. S to predpostavko bomo ustvarili niz, ki bo vseboval člane čutnozaznavnih ljudi in Človeka1. V besedilu na mestih 84.29 do 85.1 Aleksander skupaj z Aristotelom trdi, da biva še en človek ali lastnost biti človek, zaradi katere so vsi člani tega niza lju- dje. Če je prva lastnost biti človek ali človek ideja človeka, bo tudi druga ideja človeka – imenujemo jo Človek2. Tako bo torej bival še tretji človek (84.27), tj. Človek2, ki bo ob bival ob čutnozaznavnih ljudeh in Človeku1. In od tod pa še katerikoli naslednji: argument se torej konča z regresom ad infinitum. Aristotel pa predpostavke o samopripisu ne navede takoj, temveč pravi, da bo bival tretji človek še pred izpeljavo regresa, za katerega pa je samopripis očitno nujen. Na mestu 84.29 in vse do 85.1 pravi, da je človek pripisan tako posameznosti kot ideji – lastnost biti človek je torej pripisana tako čutnozaznavnemu človeku kot ideji človeka. V čem je torej izpeljava tretjega človeka pri Platonu po Aristotelu problematična? V kratkem bi lahko našteli tri možne intence takšne pojasnitve. Prva je omenjeni neskončni regres in njegove omejitve z vidika slabosti pojasni- tve, kar pomeni: da bi lahko uspešno pojasnili posameznosti s pomočjo njihove ideje, nam zaradi tistega, kar ju povezuje, ne bo uspelo pokazati na pravi vzrok (prvo počelo) in z njim razložiti partikularnega človeka. Ideja torej ne more biti vzrok in nehipotetični arche, kar je sicer po platonski definiciji, kajti neskonč- no ustvarjenje idej ne reši težave, temveč jo le prestavlja. Če naj bi ideja repre- zentirala svoje posamezne »uprimeritve« in jih naredila za to, kar so, hkrati pa podobne stvari naredila za podobne med sabo, nam nova ideja, ki naj bi bila ideja nečesa, tega ne razloži. Reči, da bivajo ideje, nam ne razloži podobnosti med stvarmi in tudi ne, zakaj so stvari takšne, kot so. Ideja torej ne more biti razlaga za obstoj stvari. Recimo temu omejitev tretjega človeka iz njene logične FV_01_2017.indd 31 26. 10. 17 11:08 32 boris vezjak neuspešnosti. Druga možnost zadeva semantično neuspešnost na ravni ekvivo- kacije: Aristotel ne sprejema dejstva, da se partikularne stvari imenujejo »člo- vek«, hkrati pa biva še »človek« kot ideja in nadalje še veliko drugih »ljudi«, ki so vsi imenovani na enak način. Toda kaj naj bi bil ta »človek«? Kako se lahko pojem, o katerem govorimo, nanaša na oboje hkrati (ali celo na troje, četvorno in neskončno mnoštvo stvari, ki nastanejo v regresu)? Tretja možnost razlage zadeva neuspešnost, da bi se o bitnostih izrekali glede na njihovo enost (pros hen). Če ima Aristotel pri argumentu tretjega človeka v mislih tudi tak ugovor, potem utegne razmišljati v naslednjo smer: o stvareh govorimo na mnogotere načine, toda vedno merimo na neko njihovo enost – obstaja nek enovit pomen, ki se ponuja skozi platonsko idejo, ki je neka enost preko mnoštva. Toda če ne obstaja le ena ideja človeka, temveč dve ali več njih, tudi ideja ne bo več ena. Platonov argument tretjega človeka (Parmenid 132a1-b2) Večina interpretacij začenja in jemlje za platonsko ilustracijo tretjega človeka naslednji odlomek iz dialoga Parmenid (dodane številke se nanašajo na posa- mezne trditve): »Mislim, da po tvojem mišljenju biva ena, ista uzrtost (ideja) (1). Ko imaš mnogo stvari, ki jih imaš za velike, potem se zdi, da v vsaki izmed njih vidiš neko eno in isto idejo (2), iz česar sklepaš, da je to Veliko eno (3). Res je, kar praviš, je odvrnil. Toda če zdaj z dušo opazuješ veliko samo in ostale velike stvari (4), ali se ne bo pokazalo spet neko eno /novo/ veliko, in ali ni to /veliko/ nujno za vse skupaj, da se kažejo kot velike (5)? Videti je tako. Torej se bo pojavila še neka druga ideja velikosti zraven velikosti same in stvari, ki so na njej udeležene (6), in spet še naslednja nad vsemi temi, zaradi katere so vse te velike, vsaka od idej zato ne bo več bila eno, temveč neskončno mnoštvo. (7)«20 Prvi stavek odlomka (1) zagotovo zatrjuje enkratnost ideje – za vsak predi- kat ali lastnost biva natanko ena ideja. Kakor ugotavlja Michael J. Hansen, je v Parmenidu načelo enkratnosti postavljeno na sam začetek razprave o ide- jah – dejansko je popolnoma odvisno in izpeljano iz argumenta »enega preko 20 Sledim svojemu prevodu v: Platon, Parmenid, ZRC SAZU, Ljubljana 2001. FV_01_2017.indd 32 26. 10. 17 11:08 33 aristotel proti platonu: variacije dokaza tretjega človeka in samopripis idej mnoštva«.21 V nadaljevanju Platon iz začetne predpostavke o enkratnosti idej pripelje pod vprašaj to enkratnost; v resnici jo bo karseda spodbijal. Tako v (7) zatrjuje, da ne bo le ene ideje I-nosti, temveč bo ta neskončno mnoštvo. Ostale trditve od (2) do (6) so podane na dvojen način – po eni strani se zdi, da navajajo razloge za Platonovo prepričanje v predpostavko enkratnosti ideje na podlagi primera ilustracije z velikim kot I-nostjo, hkrati pa neizogibno peljejo v dvom in spodbijanje le-te. Ta argument seveda nikjer ne omenja človeka – vprašanje je torej, če sta argument o velikem in argument o človeku kot regresivna argumen- ta sploh enakovredna. Iz predpostavke o samopripisu potemtakem torej sledi, da bo moralo veliko samo, tj. veliko kot ideja, biti veliko. Iz predpostavke o neistovetnosti sledi, da bo morala neka stvar, denimo kamen, ki je I, tj. velik, biti neistovetna s I-no- stjo, tj. velikostjo. T1 torej po sebi še ne vsebuje regresa, vendar ga vključuje takrat, ko imamo v mislih predpostavki o samopripisu in neistovetnosti. Kajti predpostavimo, da so a,b,c vsi po vrsti I. Glede na T1 bo bivala ena ideja, recimo ji I-nost1, zaradi katere so a,b,c vsi po vrsti I. Po predpostavki o samopripisu bo torej I-nost1 sama I. V skladu s T2 pa bo bivala še neka ena ideja, zaradi katere so a,b,c in I-nost1 vsi I. Imenujmo jo I-nost2. Po predpostavki o neistovetnosti torej tudi I-nost2 ne bo identična s I-nost1. Torej bosta bivali dve ideji za nek »I«: I-nost1 in I-nost2. Po isti predpostavki o samopripisu bo tudi I-nost2 sama I. Niz stvari, ki so I, lah- ko zdaj torej razširimo na a,b,c, I-nost1 in I-nost2. Glede na T1 bo torej ta niz mo- ral biti I zaradi neke ene ideje – imenujmo jo I-nost3. Po predpostavki o neisto- vetnosti pa I-nost3 ni in ne more biti identična z I-nostjo1 ali I-nostjo2. Tako zdaj nenadoma bivajo tri ideje, ki ustrezajo I - I-nost1, I-nost2, I-nost3. Očitno lahko isto sklepanje nadaljujemo ad infinitum. Četudi Vlastos pravilno izpelje regres iz podanih premis, to naredi z določeno rezervo. Po njegovem sta namreč pred- postavki o samopripisu in neistovetnosti vzeti skupaj nekonsistentni. Neistove- tnost zapoveduje tole: če je x I, potem x ni identičen s I-nostjo. Toda samopripis pravi, da je I-nost I. Iz tega bi sledilo, da I-nost ni I-nost, oziroma da ni istovetna sama s sabo. Toda nobena stvar kakopak ni neistovetna sama s sabo. Ker sta to- rej predpostavki o samopripisu in neistovetnosti nezdružljivi in nekonsistentni, 21 Michael J. Hansen, »Plato’s Parmenides: Interpretations and Solutions to the Third Man«, Aporia 1 (2010), str. 66. FV_01_2017.indd 33 26. 10. 17 11:08 34 boris vezjak bi iz tega trivialno sledilo, da njuna hkratna uporaba pripelje do regresa. Toda iz protislovnih predpostavk lahko izpeljemo karkoli. Ali to pomeni, da je Platon formuliral argument z nekonsistentnimi premisami? Navzlic odporu, ki ga uspe prebuditi ta ideja pri nekaterih, je to seveda mogoče. Vlastos sicer pravi, da je verjetneje to, da Platon zavestno ali hote ni ponudil takšnega argumenta.22 Ker ga je Platon ponudil nehote ali nevedoma, Vlatos argument tretjega človeka označi za »a record of honest perplexity«.23 Če bi se Platon zavedal, da gre za nekonsistentno rabo premis, bi tega argumenta ne po- nudil. Po Vlastosu je stvar še hujša: ker se celotna Platonova teorija idej nasla- nja na predpostavki o samopripisu in neistovetnosti, ni usodna le za argument tretjega človeka, temveč pokaže tudi notranjo nekonsistenco teorije. Constance C. Meinwald je med drugimi opozorila, da se Vlastos moti s svojo tezo o »iskreni zmedenosti« pri Platonu, češ da v svojem drugem delu Parmenida že navaja re- šitve za svoj regres.24 Spet bo veljalo, da bo mogoče Platonov argument tretjega človeka razumeti šele ob vpeljavi obeh Vlastosovih načel: T1 in T2. V trditvi (4) iz navedenega besedila je povedano, da moramo z dušo opazovati veliko samo in ostale velike stvari. Ve- liko samo je tu gotovo implicitno razumljeno kot veliko, saj se omenjajo »ostale velike stvari«. Če je veliko samo veliko, potem lahko ta del stavka razumemo, kot da predpostavlja samopripisljivost. V trditvah (5) in (6) pa se predpostavlja, da veliko samo, tj. ideja velikosti, zaradi katere je niz velikih stvari velik, samo ni član tega niza – spet smo torej vsaj intuitivno pred tem, da v tem prepoznamo predpostavko o neistovetnosti. Nekoliko drugačno branje obeh Vlastosovih predpostavk ponuja Fineova. Po njenem ju lahko razumemo in interpretiramo tako, da predpostavko o samopri- pisu razumemo kot »Vsaka lastnost ali ideja I je sama I«, predpostavko o neisto- vetnosti pa kot »Nič ni I zaradi samega sebe.«25 Po Vlastosovi razlagi bi morala predpostavka o samopripisu povedati, kako in zaradi česa je neka ideja I sama I. Toda podamo jo lahko brez tega, pravi Fineova, če zatrdimo zgolj to, da ta 22 Vlastos, op. cit., str. 237. 23 Ibid., str. 254. 24 Constance C. Meinwald, Plato’s Parmenides. Oxford University Press, New York 1991, str. 155– 57. 25 Fine, op. cit., str. 206. FV_01_2017.indd 34 26. 10. 17 11:08 35 aristotel proti platonu: variacije dokaza tretjega človeka in samopripis idej ideja I preprosto je I. Njeno redukcionistično razumevanje na nek način izničuje sam izraz »samopripis«, ki bi moral vsebovati zahtevo po tem, da je vsaka ideja pripisana sama sebi. Predpostavka o neistovetnosti preprosto pravi, da nič ni I zaradi samega sebe. Če bi se Platon želel izogniti regresu, bi verjetno moral zavreči natanko to predpostavko. Ker neistovetnost ne izključuje možnost, da bi nekaj bilo I zaradi njega samega in ker nam I potem sploh ni dosegljiv, bo seveda kakršnokoli znanje ali vedenje nemogoče. Če bi Platon moral zavreči predpo- stavko o neistovetnosti pa še ne pomeni, da ji ni zavezan. Alternativni branji obeh predpostavk, ki sta formulirani zgoraj, se zdita konsistentni in v skladu z besedilom Parmenida. Toda po Fineovi še nista zadostni za regres. Z njima se torej utegnemo izogniti regresu, s tem pa neveljavnosti argumenta.26 Poglejmo si pobliže, kako. V predpostavki o samopripisu lahko »je« razumemo na več načinov. Vlastos ga razume na najbolj splošen in razširjen način – kot »je« pripadnosti nekemu razredu. Vsaka ideja I je sama član razreda I stvari. V predpostavki o neistovetnosti pa lahko razlikujemo šibko in močno neistove- tnost. Trditi v skladu s šibko neistovetnostjo pomeni reči, da so čutnozaznavne stvari takšne, da niso I zaradi njih samih, saj so namreč I s tem, ko se ustrezno nanašajo na idejo I. Trditi v skladu z močno neistovetnostjo pa pomeni, da prav nič ni I zaradi samega sebe, celo ideja I ne. Močna neistovetnost seveda implicira šibko, ne pa tudi obratno. Predpostavka neistovetnosti v primeru Platonovega tretjega človeka je očitno močna in je na tem mestu kot takšna tudi zahtevana. Toda predpostavko o neistovetnosti velja razlikovati ne le od tiste šibke, ampak tudi od predpostavke razločitve. Razločitev (chorismos) zahteva, da bo katera- koli ideja I bivala neglede na to, ali biva katerakoli I čutnozaznavna posame- znost.27 Razločitev torej implicira šibko, ne pa tudi močno neistovetnost. Pa tudi stroga neistovetnost ne implicira razločitve. Močna neistovetnost in razločitev torej nista takšni, da bi zavezanost eni implicirala zavezanost drugi. Če sta bili zdaj podani formulaciji predpostavk o neistovetnosti in samopripisu na tak na- čin, da sta skupaj še zmerom konsistentni, pa pravimo še, da nista zadostni za regres. Če nista, potem je v argumentu naveden še nek drugi element. Edina 26 Ibid., str. 207. 27 Predpostavka razločitve ali separacije je utemeljena med drugim tudi v Parmenidu in zna- na pod imenom »argument dveh svetov«: ideje so seveda ločene od na njih udeleženih stvari. Prim. Prm.1331-134e. FV_01_2017.indd 35 26. 10. 17 11:08 36 boris vezjak eksplicitna premisa v besedilu je tista, ki smo jo označili z (2) in se glasi (Prm. 132a1-2): »Ko imaš mnogo stvari, ki jih imaš za velike, potem se zdi, da v vsaki izmed njih vidiš neko eno in enako idejo.« Mnoge stvari, ki jih imamo za velike, se nam takšne zdijo zaradi ene ideje, ki je enaka. Kot vemo, bo Platon razložil mnoge stvari kot takšne, da so udeležene na tej ideji. Na kakšen način to mesto interpretira Vlastos? Po njegovem lahko stavek formuliramo takole: »Če obstaja niz velikih stvari, potem obstaja natanko ena ideja velikega, člani tega niza pa so veliki zaradi nje.« Toda če so člani nekega niza veliki zaradi ene in le ene ideje velikega, bo po predpostavki o samopripisu ta velika. Po Fineovi je torej navedeni argument takšen, da vsebuje medsebojno konsistentne predpostavke argumenta tretjega človeka, razumljenega na podlagi argumenta enega preko mnoštva in predpo- stavk o samopripisu in neistovetnosti. Če Platon vse te premise prizna, potem se ne more izogniti regresu.28 Regres iz podobnosti (Parmenid 132d-133a) V izogib nadaljevanju argumenta, ki nakaže njegovo neveljavnost in možnost regresa, Sokrat pohiti z novo hipotezo o razumevanju idej: »Ali ni morda sleher- na od teh oblik umevanost (noema) teh resničnosti? Morda se zanjo ne spodobi, da bi se pojavljala kjer koli drugje kot v dušah?« (Prm. 132b3-5)29 Čeprav ni povsem jasno, kako bi lahko to razumevanje idej ustavilo regres v po- danem argumentu in ponudilo rešitev, pa je povsem jasno, da bo tudi ta rešitev zavržena. Ideje so namreč resnične, od duše in umevanja neodvisne entitete, ki so predmeti misli, nikakor pa niso misli same. Sokrat nadalje pravi, da ideje bivajo v naravi kot vzori, druge stvari pa so jim podobne in so njihovi posnetki. Udeleženost drugih stvari na idejah ni nič drugega kot to, da so te po njih posne- te.30 Nekoliko pred tem je v Parmenidu Platon podal dve alternativni možnosti tega, kako razložiti odnos udeležbe – ideja je na stvareh udeležena bodisi v celo- ti bodisi delno. Toda obe rešitvi sta bili gladko zavrnjeni.31 Četudi se je zdelo, da 28 Ibid., str. 211. 29 Sledim prevodu Gorazda Kocijančiča v: Platon, Zbrana dela (I in II), Mohorjeva družba, Celje 2004. 30 Prm. 132d1-4. 31 Prm. 131a4-e7. FV_01_2017.indd 36 26. 10. 17 11:08 37 aristotel proti platonu: variacije dokaza tretjega človeka in samopripis idej sta to obe alternativi razlage, zdaj nenadoma uvede še tretjo. Lahko bi jo opisali na tale način: »Če je x udeležen na y, potem je y paradigmatska ideja, glede na katero je x neka podobnost ali posnetek.« Takšna formulacija razlage udeležbe je pomembna zato, ker je iz nje izpeljan re- gres. Imenujemo ga lahko regres (iz) podobnosti. Besedilo, ki ga uvaja, se glasi: »Te ideje stojijo (estanai) v naravi kot vzori (paradeigmata), druge stvari pa so jim podobne in so njihove upodobitve (ta alla toutois eoikenai kai einai homoiomata). Ta udeleženost (methexis) drugih stvari na idejah ni nič drugega kot to, da so stva- ri po njih upodobljene.« »Če je torej,« je rekel, »nekaj podobno (eoiken) ideji – je mogoče, da bo ista ideja ne bila podobna temu, kar upodablja, kolikor se je po tem upodobila? Ali pa je kako mogoče, da bi podobno ne bilo podobno podobnemu?« »Ni mogoče.« »In ali ni zelo nujno, da je podobno udeleženo na eni in isti ideji?« »Nujno.« »Toda ali ne bo to, na čemer so udeležene podobne stvari, da so podobne, ideja sama?« »Vsekakor.« »Torej ni mogoče, da bi nekaj bilo podobno ideji niti da bi bila oblika (podobna čemu) drugemu. Sicer se bo poleg ideje vedno pojavljala neka druga ideja, in če bo ta podobna kakšni drugi, se bo pojavljala spet druga, in tako se ne bo nikoli ustavilo nastajanje nove ideje – če je oblika podobna temu, kar je na njej sami udeleženo.« (Prm. 132d-e) V navedenem odlomku se zdijo očitne naslednje premise: (1) Če je a I, potem je a I s tem, da je udeležen na neki ideji I, ki je vzorec za a in ki ji je a podoben. (2) Vzori in njihove upodobitve so si med sabo podobni. (3) Torej bo, če je a udeležen na ideji I1, a podoben tej ideji. (4) Če sta dve stvari med sabo podobni, sta podobni zaradi tega, ker sta udele- ženi na neki eni ideji I. FV_01_2017.indd 37 26. 10. 17 11:08 38 boris vezjak (5) Torej bo, če sta si a in I med sabo podobna, še neka ena nova ideja, na kateri sta oba udeležena in zaradi katere sta si podobna. (6) Torej bo bivala še neka nova ideja I, denimo I2, na kateri sta udeležena tako a kot ideja I1, zaradi katere sta si podobna. Argument je očitno veljaven zaradi premise (5). Poglejmo si primer. Če razume- mo z a neko čutnozaznavno veliko stvar, bo v skladu z (1) a udeležen na ideji velikega. Ta ideja, denimo ideja1 velikega, je vzorec ali paradigma za a, ki ji je podoben. Ker so si po (2) vzorci in njihove podobnosti med sabo podobni, bosta a in ideja1 velikega med sabo podobna. Domnevamo, da zaradi zahteve v premi- si (3), ki pravi, da je a kot udeležen na ideji I1 podoben tej ideji – tako a kot I1 sta si podobna kot velika. Toda če sta si a in I1 med sabo podobna zato, ker sta oba velika, potem se regres iz podobnosti naslanja na predpostavko o samopripisu, podobno kot Platonov argument tretjega človeka - vsaka ideja I je sama I. Ker sta si a in I2 podobna zaradi tega, ker sta velika, bosta po premisi (4) takšna zaradi tega, ker sta udeležena na enaki eni ideji. Premisa (4) tako na nek način vpeljuje predpostavko enega preko mnoštva, ki je bila razvita kot poseben argument. V premisi (5) je pravilno izpeljano, da sta a in ideja I1 velika s tem, ko sta udele- žena na neki eni ideji, recimo I2. Tako je v premisi (6) zatrjeno, da je I1 drugačna, tj. neistovetna z I2. Iz tega sledi, da tudi regres iz podobnosti vključuje pred- postavko o neistovetnosti. Vključuje pa tudi, kot rečeno, neke vrste argument enega preko mnoštva in predpostavko o samopripisu. Samopripis in tretji človek Celo Vlastos je verjel, da Platonov argument iz regresa ni veljaven očitek teoriji idej na način, kot jo je podal Sokrat – da bi res bil veljaven, bi moral predposta- viti načelo samopripisa. Te možnosti pa, po njegovem, ni vpeljal.32 Neka ideja I bo morala sama biti I: kot pravi Platon, je lepota lepa, pravičnost je pravična, velikost je velika, pobožnost pobožna in podobno. Po eni strani so takšne izja- ve razumljene kot neke vrste izraz nepremišljene kategorialne napake ali vsaj dvoumnosti. Takšna interpretacija bo trdila, da lepota, denimo, ni take vrste stvar, ki bi bila lepa na enak način, kot to pravimo za ljudi, slike, skulpture ali 32 Vlastos, op. cit., str. 236-38. FV_01_2017.indd 38 26. 10. 17 11:08 39 aristotel proti platonu: variacije dokaza tretjega človeka in samopripis idej kaj tretjega. Po drugi strani pa je kar nekaj razlogov za to, da v samopripisu ne uvidimo le prazne tavtologije, saj se zdi, da je bistveno povezana s Platonovim naukom in še zlasti z vsebino ideje: vsaka ideja je nekakšen vzorec ali popolni primerek za posameznosti, ki jih »pokriva«. Kot popoln primerek tako lepota ne bo le lepa, temveč celo najlepša stvar med vsemi primerki lepega. Situacijo tako včasih analizirajo na podlagi predpostavke o dveh pomenih glagola »biti« oziroma kopule »je«. Eden od pomenov je predikativni (kot v stavku »Sokrat je razumen«), drugi je identitetni (kot v stavku »Sokrat je Ksantipin mož«). Sicer ni povsem jasno, če se je Platon resnično zavedal te razlike, toda določena skupina interpretov zagovarja stališče, da Platon striktno razume vsebino samopripisnih stavkov in da jih razume kot trditve o istovetnosti. To prevladujoče stališče pa ni najbolje utemeljeno. Poskusimo analizirati primer samopripisa, ki kaže na drugačno branje, tj. na takšno, po katerem nam razume- vanje teh stavkov kot stavkov istovetnosti ali identitete ne zadošča. V Parmenidu na mestu 132a-b Platon podaja že citirani dokaz tretjega človeka; Parmenid se na tem mestu obrača k mlademu Sokratu, da bi ga prepričal v enotnost ideje, ki je enaka v vseh stvareh. Prva stvar, ki jo brž opazimo, ni le podana ilustracija tega, kar je videti kot neskončni regres, ampak preprosto dejstvo, da so Sokratove trditve v nasprotju z naslednjim načelom: (1) Vsaka izmed idej je ena. Parmenid v tem odlomku ves čas napada točno to načelo. Zato skuša Sokrat v nadaljevanju uiti zanki tako, da ponudi možnost razumevanja vsake ideje kot umevanosti oziroma misli, ki biva zgolj v duši (Prm. 132b5). S tem bi vsaka ideja bila ena in ne bi utrpela navedenih posledic - verjetno zato, ker misel velikega, za razliko od velikega samega, ni nujna tudi sama velika. Tudi v odlomku, ki je bil naveden pred tem, je Parmenid na vsak način poskuša zanikati to možnost, medtem ko jo Sokrat na vse kriplje brani. Vprašanje, ki se ga Parmenid in Sokrat ves čas lotevata, je torej, če je vsaka ideja dejansko ena: »Kaj meniš: ali celotna ideja (holon to eidos), ki je ena, biva v mnogih stvareh, ali je kako drugače?« »Kaj bi ji preprečevalo, Parmenid,« je odvrnil Sokrat, »da bi bila v njih (eneinai)?« »Če ostaja ena in ista, bo celotna istočasno prisotna (enestai) v mnogih stvareh, ki so med sabo ločene, in bo ločena tudi od same sebe.« FV_01_2017.indd 39 26. 10. 17 11:08 40 boris vezjak »Ne,« je odvrnil, »razen če s tem ni kot z dnevom (hemera), ki ostaja eden istoča- sno na mnogih mestih in zaradi tega ni sam nič bolj ločen od samega sebe; tako vsaka posamezna ideja kot prisotna v mnogem ostaja ena in ista (hekaston ton eidon en pasin hama tauton eie).« »Lepo si povedal, Sokrat,« je rekel, »kako je eno in isto lahko prisotno obenem tudi v mnogem; to je podobno, kot če bi z jadrom pokril veliko ljudi in potem re- kel, da je eno in celo na mnogem. Ali nisi hotel reči nekaj takega?« »Mogoče,« je odvrnil. »Bi celotno jadro segalo preko vsakega človeka, ali bi njegov del segal preko ene- ga, drugi pa preko drugega?« »Del preko enega.« »Torej imajo,« je rekel, »ideje same dele, na njih udeležene stvari pa imajo delež na enem delu ideje; v vsaki od njih ne bo celota, temveč le del ideje.« »Tako je videti.« »Torej želiš reči, Sokrat, da je enotna ideja (to hen eidos) za nas v resnici deljiva (hemin...merizesthai), toda še vedno ostaja ena?« »Nikakor,« je odvrnil.« (Prm. 132d-133a) Parmenid torej misli, da Sokrat zagovarja (1) in poskuša pokazati, da je taka trdi- tev nevzdržna.33 Njegov argument se torej osredotoči na poseben primer, na ide- jo velikega oziroma velikosti, hkrati pa na izpeljavo zanikanja naslednje trditve: (2) Veliko je eno. Toda kaj trditvi, kot sta (1) in (2), ali trditve oblike »A je en«, sploh pomenita Platonu? Navidez pomenijo preprosto to, da je vsaka ideja ena ideja. Toda to bi bilo le trivialno branje. Poskusimo zagovarjati tezo, da Platon dejansko s trditvi- 33 Ključni stavek o tem, da je vsaka ideja ena, razume Vlastos drugače. Gre za pomembno in odločilno razlago, kajti v njegovi interpretaciji je grški stavek preveden na sledeč na- čin: »There is one form in each case« oziroma »Obstaja ena ideja v vsakem primeru«. V kontekstu odlomka in razprave o »enem preko mnoštva« je še nekaj navedb istega izraza, ki ne govorijo v prid tej interpretaciji. Ta bi pomenila, da obstaja »v vsakem primeru« raz- lika med idejami in lastnostmi na drugi strani, vsaka ideja pa pokrije mnoštvo stvari ali lastnosti, četudi morda ideje preprosto so lastnosti. Sam bom poskušal razumeti kontekst v skladu z utečenim branjem in ne Vlastosovo rešitvijo, ki se naslanja na Cornfordovo. Primerjaj Gregory Vlastos, Platonic studies, Princeton University Press, Princeton 1973, str. 344 in Francis M. Cornford, Plato and Parmenides, London 1939, str. 112. FV_01_2017.indd 40 26. 10. 17 11:08 41 aristotel proti platonu: variacije dokaza tretjega človeka in samopripis idej jo (2), tj. »Veliko je eno« ne misli le tega, da je ideja velikega ena ali le tega, da je vsaka ideja ena. Njegovo zahtevo bi lahko preoblikovali na tale način: (3) Ne more se zgoditi, da bi bivali dve različni ideji I1 in I2 na ta način, da bi bilo nekaj veliko zaradi I1 in nekaj zaradi I2.34 S tem, ko Parmenid v odlomku zavrne možnost (2), zavrača tudi (1), osnovno spodbijano načelo. Platonistični pristop nam tako razkrije, da ne bo ena katera- koli ideja, zaradi katere so velike stvari velike, ampak natanko ena takšna ideja. Zgoraj navedeni začetni dokaz lahko parafraziramo na tale način: sicer so mno- ge stvari velike, vendar bo bivala neka ideja velikega, ki je enaka v vseh med temi stvarmi in zaradi katere so vse velike. Tako je to veliko, tj. ideja velikega, eno. Toda ker je taista ideja sama velika, bo bivala še neka ideja, ki je enaka v tej ideji in ostalih velikih stvareh in zaradi katere so vse velike. Zato bo torej bivala več kot ena ideja, zaradi katere so velike stvari velike, veliko pa tudi ne bo več eno. Navedena parafraza bi s tem vsebovala naslednje premise: (1) Vsaka izmed idej je ena; (2) Veliko je eno; (3) Toda veliko je samo veliko; (4). Če je veliko veli- ko, potem mora bivati še ena ideja, zaradi katere je veliko; 5. Torej Veliko ni eno. Je tak argument veljaven? Ali Platon na tem mestu kritizira samega sebe in dopušča vrzel, ki skorajda nakazuje, da se odpoveduje svoji teoriji idej?35 In v čem je ta vrzel? Očitno v zaključku, ki pravi, da bo bivala še ena ideja, zaradi katere so vse velike stvari velike. Nastajanje novih ideje steče le ob dopustitvi možnost samopripisa, ki takšen problem sploh omogoča. Ideja velikega bo šele kot velika zahtevala novo idejo velikega. Problem samopripisa in njegova razla- ga predstavljata ključ do razumevanja nastalega regresa, če je vpeljava takšne predikacijske teorije točna. Toda od Chernissa naprej velja, da lahko izjave tipa »Veliko je veliko.« razumemo tudi kot izjave istovetnosti in ne le atribucije (ali predikacije). Platon po njegovem razlikuje med dvema pomenoma »je x«, in si- cer kot »ima značaj x« in »je identičen z x«.36 To preprosto pomeni, da sta v izjavi »Pravičnost je pravična« in »Lepota je lepa« »pravičnost« in »pravičen«, pa tudi »lepota« in »lepa« identična. V splošnem skratka Cherniss verjame, da »ideja x 34 Primerjaj o tem še podrobnejšo še razlago v: Anders Wedberg, Plato‘s philosophy of mathe- matics, Stockholm 1955, str. 30. 35 Primerjaj David Ross, Plato‘s Theory of Ideas, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1951, str. 87. 36 Harold F. Cherniss, »The relation of the Timaeus to Plato‘s later dialogues«, American Jour- nal of Philology 78, 1957, str. 258-9. FV_01_2017.indd 41 26. 10. 17 11:08 42 boris vezjak je x« pomeni toliko kot »ideja x in x sta identična in zato ideja x nima značaja x«. Četudi tega izrecno ne pravi, bi verjetno takšno stališče pomenilo, da argument tretjega človeka, ki je naveden v zgornjem odlomku, ni zadosten za našo domne- vo o tem, da bi lahko »je velik« pripisali velikemu oz. ideji velikega z enakim pomenom, kot ga lahko pripišemo kateri posamezni veliki stvari. Tudi Vlastos se pridružuje Chernissovi distinkciji dveh pomenov »je«, delitvi na tako imenovani atributivni in identitetni pomen. Prav tako se zdi, da Platonu priznava vednost o razliki med obema. Toda hkrati je veliki novum Vlastosa v tem, da stavkom z obliko »A je B«, kjer je A ime za idejo in kjer je B pridevnik, pripiše dvoumnost, ob tem zatrjujoč še, da se te dvoumnosti Platon ni zavedal. Vlastosova interpretacija stavka »A je B« je, povzeta na kratko, naslednja: (1) splošni pojem, ki označuje mesto osebka, ima na mestu prilastka povedek ali predikat (tj. navaden pripis); (2) karkoli je primerek splošnega pojma, bo eo ipso imelo prilastek, označen s predikatom (tj. Pavlov pripis).37 Primer, ki ga daje za ilustracijo obeh tipov pripisa, je naslednji: »Pravičnost je pobožna«. V stavkih tipa »A je B« bo torej v skladu z navadnim pripisom splošni pojem, tj. pravičnost, imel prilastek pobožnosti. V skladu s Pavlovim pripisom pa je vse, kar je pravičnost, eo ipso tudi samo pobožno. Vlastos interpretira Platona s pomočjo Pavlovega pripisa, ki nosi ime po diktumu svetega Pavla, ki je rekel »usmiljenje je potrpežljivost«, tj. usmiljeni so tudi potrpežljivi. V skladu s tem pristopom je preprosto želel reči, da je vse pravično prav tako tudi pobo- žno. Toda, ko pravi, da je pravičnost pravična, Platon prav tako misli le na to, da je vse, kar je pravično, samo po sebi pravično. Kar lahko zveni neinformativno, vendar ima določene posledice v, denimo, platonski ideji o enotnosti vrline, predlagani v dialogu Protagora.38 37 Gregory Vlastos, Platonic studies, Princeton University Press, Princeton 1973, str. 307. 38 V Protagori namreč Platon postavi vprašanje po tem, ali je vrlina ena in enotna, kar po- meni, da so pravičnost, premišljenost, pobožnost itd. njeni deli, ali pa so vse to le različna imena za isto stvar (Prt. 329c-d). Zaključek je ta, da iz izjav »pravičnost je pobožna« ali »po- božnost je pravična« izhaja to, da je pravičnost bodisi enaka kot pobožnost bodisi to, da ji je karseda podobna (331b), medtem ko je iz tega, da je vsako premišljeno dejanje modro in vsako modro dejanje premišljeno, izpeljano to, da sta premišljenost in modrost eno (333b). FV_01_2017.indd 42 26. 10. 17 11:08 43 aristotel proti platonu: variacije dokaza tretjega človeka in samopripis idej V kontekstu dokaza tretjega človeka bi torej lahko rekli, da je tudi stavek »Veliko je veliko« razumljen kot Pavlov pripis. V takem primeru bo ta smiseln, saj veliko ne bo pripisano na enak način sebi in ostalim velikim stvarem. Če ga razumemo v smislu navadnega pripisa, pa stavek »Veliko je veliko« postane preprosto napa- čen ali celo nesmiseln. Iz povedanega torej lahko izpeljemo, da komentatorji več- krat na podlagi dveh pomenov »je« izpeljejo predpostavki, ki se zdita dvomljivi: (1) v stari grščini, kakor tudi v sodobnih jezikih, se največkrat artikulirata vsaj dva različna pomena »je« (esti), namreč »je« identitete in »je« pripisa ali predikacije; (2) če naj bodo stavki tipa »Lepota je lepa« smiselni, mora kopula »je«, ki v njih nastopa, imeti drugačen pomen kot v stavku tipa »Melanija Trump je lepa«. Platon nikjer izrecno ne govori ne o prvi in ne drugi predpostavki, iz česar izvira tudi večkraten dvom o tem, ali je takšne distinkcije sploh poznal. Po drugi strani pa tudi razlikovanje med identiteto in pripisom v kopuli »je« ni šele Vlastosova ali Chernissova iznajdba. Klasičen primer ponazoritve, ki ga utegne najti bralec, je namreč že Russllov znameniti primer izjav »Scott je avtor romana Waverley« in »Scott je človek«. Prva zagotovo pove, da je Scott identičen z avtorjem Waverleyja (in ne preprosto to, da je »avtor Waverleyja« tu le prilastek, saj je verjetno avtor Waverleyja človeško bitje in ne prilastek), druga pa pove, da ima Scott eno od lastnosti človeškosti, s katero pa prav očitno ni identičen. Vendar, kot rečeno, za vsako od Platonovih uporab težko povemo, ali jih njihov avtor uporablja z razumevanjem razlik med »je« pripisa, istovetnosti in morda Pavlovega pripisa. Oglejmo si še dodatno zagato, v katero se zapletemo ob čisto platonskih stavkih samopripisa. Vzemimo stavek »Lepota je lepa«. Ko tehtamo ta primerek pripisa, zlahka najdemo stališče, da je tovrstna izjava nesmiselna. Če je lepota neka ab- straktna entiteta, večna in nespremenljiva, eksistirajoča v ločenem svetu, kot jo opiše Platon, bodo posamezne lepe stvari zavezane drugemu svetu, svetu vide- nja in zvokov, lepe pa prav zaradi tega, ker jih kot takšne zaznavamo, tj. vidimo, slišimo ipd. Iz tega bi lahko kdo sklepal, da stvari, ki so si docela različne in ki pripadajo v tako različne kategorije stvari, ne morejo imeti skupnih lastnosti. Za abstraktno Lepo, tj. idejo lepega, torej ne bo mogoče reči ne, da je dobro, lepo ali karkoli, s čimer opisujemo stvari tega sveta. Še bolje rečeno: zanj ne bomo mogli trditi istega na enak način kot za posamezne konkretne predmete. Težava bo vpisana že v sam uporabljen jezik, s katerim se izraža, kajti povratni FV_01_2017.indd 43 26. 10. 17 11:08 44 boris vezjak zaimek Platon formulira na različne načine. Namesto da bi uporabil abstraktni samostalnik na mestu osebka, se bo oprijel pridevnika s členom, kar bo ustva- rilo dobeseden ponovitev tega, kar pomeni stavek »veliko je veliko« v sloven- ščini. Jezikoslovna razlaga izraza to kalon (»lepo«) se lahko nanaša na neko abstraktno entiteto, tj. lepoto, lahko se na nek značilno lep predmet, a tudi na predmet, o katerem ravnokar govorimo. Iz Platonovih dialogov neizpodbitno izhaja, da noben sogovorec nikoli ne okleva ob izjavi to kalon kalon esti (lepo je lepo) ali katerikoli drugi, v katerem prihaja do samopripisa. Razlog temu je verjetno v tem, da bi za Grka bil takšen stavek tako rekoč logična resnica in trivialno prepoznan kot veljaven. Možnosti so torej te: (1) »Lepota je lepa.« (2) »Karkoli je lepo, je eo ipso lepo.« (3) »Lep predmet (o katerem govorimo) je lep.« Platon v navedenem odlomku iz Parmenida zagotovo brez razločka uporabi obe varianti: tako obliko pridevnika s členom kot abstraktni pojem. Ker ni razlik med možnostmi (a), (b) in (c), tudi ponujena rešitev ni podkrepljena s kakšno distinkcijo med njimi. Argument tretjega človeka torej ne bo odvisen le od tega, kako razumemo »je velik« in za katerega pravimo, da je dvoumen. Če bi bil le od tega, bi ta dvoumnost predstavljala veliko nevarnost za Platonov nauk o tem, da so posameznosti podobnosti njim ustrezajočih idej, tj. da so njihovi posnet- ki. Besedilo, ki na najbolj jasen način ilustrira to zadrego, je v Simpoziju, kjer Sokrat opisuje hierarhijo lepih stvari – imamo lepa telesa, toda lepše od njih so lepe duše, lepota zakonov in različnih oblik znanja pa je na lestvici uvršče- na še višje. Najlepša med lepimi stvarmi, je še rečeno, je lepota sama.39 Nato Sokrat poskuša razložiti, čemu in zakaj je lepota lepša od česarkoli drugega. V nasprotju z drugimi lepimi stvarmi je namreč večna, nenastajajoča in nemine- vajoča, prav tako pa ni lepa le v odnosu do nečesa in grda v odnosu do nečesa drugega. Če povedek »je lep« ne bi bil uporabljen v enem pomenu skozi ves opis odlomka, bi zvenel nenavadno, zato smemo domnevati, da se pri tem ohranja isti pomen; kajti reči, da je lepota lepša od lepih duš, toda v drugačnem smislu povedka »je lep«, bi pomenilo trditi nekaj takega kot to, da je svetloba potuje hitreje od zvoka, toda v nekem drugačnem smislu pridevnika »hiter«. Platon se torej ne bi mogel pridružiti vsem tistim, ki bi želeli zadrego tretjega človeka 39 Prim. Smp. 210a-211b. FV_01_2017.indd 44 26. 10. 17 11:08 45 aristotel proti platonu: variacije dokaza tretjega človeka in samopripis idej rešili na ta način, da bi našli dvoumnost v izrazu »je« ali »je velik«. Njegove različne izjave napeljujejo na sklep, da takšne dvoumnosti ne rabimo vpeljati, pravzaprav jo moramo celo zavračati. Zato ga težave tretjega človeka ni mogoče ubraniti s tem, da bi trdili, kako je »je« v »je velik« uporabljen dvoumno. V obeh različicah Aleksandrovih argumentov tretjega človeka, pa tudi v zapi- sanih v Parmenidu, lahko skupaj z Vlastosom ugotovimo, da vsebujejo predpo- stavke »enega preko mnoštva«, pa tudi samopripisa (ki pa ne pove nujno, kako je lahko neka ideja I sama I) ter neistovetnosti. Iz teh predpostavk ali premis lahko izpeljemo naslednje sklepanje: če biva ena ideja I, biva neskončno veliko idej I. Logično so torej vsi argumenti po svojih posledicah enaki in vsi po vr- sti končujejo v neskončnem regresu. Vendar določene razlike obstajajo: Platon tako v Parmenidu predvsem nakaže, da je regres neprijeten zato, ker postavlja pod vprašaj načelo enkratnosti idej. Da so te takšne, nenazadnje sledi že iz raz- prave o njihovi z bogom pogojeni enkratnosti. Mehmet Tabak v svoji razlagi navedka iz Države (597c) opozarja na Platonovo izrecno sklicevanje na boga.40 Ko je ta ustvarjal idejo postelje – in v opisu lahko meri le nanjo –, je izdelal le eno, torej le eno obliko ali idejo za razred stvari, ki jim pravimo postelja. Ta biva »v naravi«, medtem ko je »drugo« izdelal mizar, »tretjo« pa slikar. V regresu iz podobnosti Platon jemlje za težavno trditev tisto, po kateri so vsi ču- tnozaznavni I-ji in ideja I med sabo podobni zato, ker ravno so I – take oblike ne bomo našli pri ostalih različicah, ki smo jih navedli. V Evdemovi različici, povzeti po Aleksandru Afrodizijskem, bo specifična označba ta, da so ideje ene po števi- lu. Toda to so le razlike v zastavitvi vsakega od naštetih regresov in ne v njihovi lo- gični strukturi. Vsaka od navedenih različic po svoje zarisuje koncepcijo idej, kjer so te niansirane kot vzori oziroma paradigme (kot v regresu iz podobnosti), kot posameznost, splošnost ali oboje hkrati, hkrati pa variira tudi odnos med idejami in čutnozaznavnimi stvarmi. So le ideje popolnoma I ali pa so takšne tudi čutno- zaznavne stvari, kakor nam nakazuje Evdemova različica? Vsi odgovori, kakršni- koli že so, ne koristijo temu, da bi Platon uspel ubežati regresivnosti idej, s čimer se zdi, da na argument o tretjem človeku tudi sam ne ponuja dobrega odgovora. 40 Mehmet Tabak, Plato’s Parmenides reconsidered, Palgrave Macmillan, New York 2015, str. 27. FV_01_2017.indd 45 26. 10. 17 11:08 46 boris vezjak Literatura Reginald E. Allen (1983), Plato‘s Parmenides, Translation and Analysis, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. Reginald E. Allen, ur. (1965), Studies in Plato‘s Metaphysics, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London. 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Boris Vezjak (2001), »Argumentacija o tretjem človeku v spisu Peri ideon«, Analiza, 1/2, str. 27-48. Gregory Vlastos (1965), »The Third Man Argument in Parmenides«, v: Reginald E. Allen, Studies in Plato‘s Metaphysics, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, str. 231-263. Gregory Vlastos (1973), Platonic studies, Princeton University Press, Princeton. Anders Wedberg (1955), Plato‘s philosophy of mathematics, Almqvist & Viksell, Stockholm. FV_01_2017.indd 46 26. 10. 17 11:08 47 * Institute of Philosophy, Zagreb Filozofski vestnik | Letnik XXXVIII | Številka 1 | 2017 | 47–64 1. Introduction The primary aim of this paper is to present Alexander’s understanding of the common sense and its functions. In doing so, I will keep an eye on Alexander’s agreement with or departure from Aristotle and indicate his contributions to the subject matter. The secondary aim of this paper is to discuss one particular point of departure which came to dominate later reception of Aristotle’s notion of the common sense. Alexander’s most extensive discussion of the common sense occurs in his treatise De anima, towards the end of his account of the perceptual power of the soul (60- 14-65.21).1 Having dealt with each one of the special senses, Alexander indicates that the special senses are subject to certain limitations, and these limitations are addressed by introducing the common sense. The common sense makes ap- pearance also in two later passages of Alexander’s De anima (78.2-23 and 97.8-25), as well as in the Mantissa (119.10-19). Moreover, there are two chapters of the Questiones and a stretch of a few pages of Alexander’s commentary on De sensu 7 which are informative of his views on the subject.2 However, the Questiones and the commentary on De sensu do not explicitly mention the common sense and they add little or nothing of substance to what he says about it in his De anima. Alexander’s conception of the common sense can be summarized as follows. First, he accepts Aristotle’s view that the special senses are unified, and more precisely, that they are unified at the perceptual level. In other words, there is 1 All references to Alexander’s De anima and Mantissa are to Bruns’s edition in the Com- mentaria in Aristotelem graeca. Volumes from the same series are used for other cited texts by Alexander and the later commentators on Aristotle. 2 Quaestio III.7, 91.24-93.22 (Bruns) is on Aristotle’s De anima III.2, 425b12-25;  Quaestio III.9, 94.10-98.15 is on Aristotle’s  De anima III.2, 427a2-14. In de Sensu 163.18-168.10 (Wendland) is on Aristotle’s  De sensu 7, 449a2-20. Pavel Gregorić* Alexander of Aphrodisias on the Common Sense FV_01_2017.indd 47 26. 10. 17 11:08 48 pavel gregorić a perceptual power which unifies the special senses, and Alexander calls this power ‘the common sense’ (koinê aisthêsis). Second, that the special senses are indeed unified at the perceptual level is ev- ident from several functions which Alexander, much like Aristotle, takes to be strictly perceptual functions, yet functions which no special sense can achieve as such. The functions that Alexander explicitly attributes to the common sense are: (i) perceptual discrimination, (ii) perceptual awareness, and (iii) perception of the common sensibles. One could argue that here too – with regard to this list of functions – Alexander follows Aristotle, but here one needs to be care- ful, since Aristotle’s views as to the scope and precise functions of the common sense are notoriously controversial.3 Third, Alexander takes the common sense to be operative in the heart. Having said that, it is important to observe that this is a consequence of Alexander’s view that the whole perceptual power of the soul is located in the heart. Strictly speaking, seeing does not occur in the eyes, according to Alexander, but in the heart – through, or by means of, the eyes. The eyes, being made of the suitable material, are affected by coloured objects, this affection is transmitted to the heart, and only when the affection arrives to the heart it brings about an act of perception, in this case an act of seeing. So the eyes and other peripheral sense organs are not the proper seats of the special senses, but only parts of the bodily infrastructure by means of which features of the external world are presented to the perceptual power in the heart. In this framework, the perceptual power of the soul located in the heart can at the same time perceive two or more spe- cial sensibles, discriminate among them, perceive the features that accompany different types of special sensibles – these are the common sensibles, such as shape or size – and be aware of seeing or hearing. The outlined framework is part and parcel of Alexander’s comprehensive car- diocentrism. Alexander believes that all powers of the soul are located in the heart (with the exception of the intellect). One of his arguments in support of cardiocentrism (De anima 97.8-25) is the following. Given that phantasia is the activity of the soul with respect to the remnants of earlier perceptions, the pow- er to have representations (to phantastikon) must be located at the same place 3 See Gregoric (2007: 13-15, 193-199). FV_01_2017.indd 48 26. 10. 17 11:08 49 alexander of aphrodisias on the common sense where the common sense is, ‘and this has been shown to be in the heart’ (97.14).4 Moreover, where the power to have representations is, that must also be the lo- cation at which acts of assent take place (sunkatatheseis). And where the acts of assent take place, that must be also be the place where impulses and desires take place, which are the starting points of a chain of physical events that lead to local motion of the animal. Another of Alexander’s arguments in support of cardiocentrism (e.g. De anima 78.5-23, 99.15-39; Mantissa 119.10-19) is that there must be a cognitive power of the soul (to kritikon) which is a differentiated unity in exactly the same way in which the perceptual power of the soul is a differentiated unity. The perceptual power is differentiated insofar as we have the special senses operating on their respective special sensibles, and it is a unity insofar as we have the common sense which discriminates different special sensibles. Likewise, the cognitive power is differ- entiated insofar as we have perception and other forms of cognition (phantasia, assent, belief, reasoning, understanding), and it is a unity insofar as we have something which discriminates between the reports of these different forms of cognition. And this cognitive power of the soul must be in the heart. Regarding this comprehensive cardiocentric framework, one naturally wonders if Alexander follows Aristotle here too, given Aristotle’s global hylomorphic the- sis from De anima II, namely that the soul is the form of the whole living body. I believe that Alexander does in fact follow Aristotle very closely, for I am confi- dent that Aristotle holds the same cardiocentric view – most strongly expressed in Chapter 10 of De motu animalium – but elaborating on this claim would take us too far from the present topic.5 Following this three-point summary of Alexander’s understanding of the common sense, I wish to draw the reader’s attention to two further points. First, Alexander does not connect the common sense with phantasia, but confines it to the level of perception. I emphasize this because the remark in Aristotle’s De memoria 1, 450a10-11 (‘phantasma is an affection of the common sense’) can be, and often has been, taken to the effect that phantasia is one of the functions of the common 4 All translations from Greek are mine, unless indicated otherwise. 5 See Corcilius&Gregoric (2013) and Gregoric (forthcoming). FV_01_2017.indd 49 26. 10. 17 11:08 50 pavel gregorić sense.6 Alexander ignores that, and quite rightly so, I think. For Alexander, the common sense is a higher-order strictly perceptual capacity which is directed at operations of the lower-order perceptual capacities, that is the special senses. Second, Alexander is reasonably consistent in using the term ‘common sense’ solely for the higher-order perceptual capacity, as contrasted with the special senses and their operations.7 In that respect Alexander contributed to clearing up the terminological mess that Aristotle had made. Namely, Aristotle used the phrase ‘common sense’ in the relevant manner only four times, at De memoria 1, 450a10, De partibus animalium IV.10, 686a31, De anima III.1, 425a27, and an incomplete occurrence at De anima III.7, 431b5. It seems that in the first two of these occurrences he used it with reference to the perceptual part of the soul taken most broadly, inclusive of phantasia. So I am inclined to think that it was due to Alexander’s consistent and specialized use of the term ‘common sense’ that it became the technical term for one internal sense, distinct from phantasia and the other internal senses, in the Arabic and Latin scholastic tradition.8 Let me now turn to the three functions which Alexander assigns to the common sense, starting with perceptual discrimination. 2. Functions of the common sense: Perceptual discrimination Alexander remarks that each special sense not only apprehends the underlying type of special sensible, but also ‘discriminates their differences’ (60.16-17). I understand this to mean that in an act of perception, a special sensible is picked out from its immediate phenomenal environment. Next, Alexander observes that we do not perceive and discriminate only the differences within one type of special sensible, but across two or more types of special sensibles, and he wants 6 See Gregoric (2007: 14-15, 99-111). 7 There are only two occurrences in a latter passage of De anima (78.10 and 12) where Alex- ander seems to use the expression koinê aisthêsis with reference to the perceptual power of the soul as a whole: at 78.10 he says that perception as such (as contrasted with seeing, hearing etc.) is the work of the common sense, and at 78.12 he says that we discriminate each type of special sensible object through the respective sense-organ, but we discrimi- nate special sensibles in general with the common sense. 8 For a helpful overview of the notion of internal senses in the Arabic and Latin tradition, see di Martino (2013). FV_01_2017.indd 50 26. 10. 17 11:08 51 alexander of aphrodisias on the common sense to explore what it is that achieves perceptual discrimination of heterogeneous special sensibles. Whatever it is that achieves perceptual discrimination of heterogeneous special sensibles, it has to satisfy two conditions (which were formulated already by Aristotle in De anima III.2): (i) the discriminating thing has to be one and undi- vided, and (ii) it has to do the job at one and undivided time. The conjunction of these two conditions generates problems, because there seems, prima facie at least, to be no one and undivided thing that can simultaneously apprehend two heterogeneous qualities, such as sweet and white, and even worse, no one and undivided thing that can simultaneously apprehend two homogeneous quali- ties, among which two contraries – such as white and black – are the toughest case. This is the toughest case, I take it, because it appears to violate the intui- tive principle of excluded contraries, the principle on which Plato’s well-known tripartition of the soul in Republic was based.9 In any case, the most acute problem with perceptual discrimination, in Alexander’s words, is this: ‘How can vision grasp the differences of white and black, if it must apprehend both of them at the same time and if the apprehen- sion occurs through becoming like the sensibles? It is impossible for the same thing to become like white and like black at the same time’ (61.27-30). Alexander’s solution to the problem of perceptual discrimination – both of heter- ogeneous and homogeneous special sensibles – comes in two parts. The relation between these two parts is not at all obvious. In fact, some interpreters have tak- en them to be two distinct solutions.10 I will argue that the two parts complement each other, as two steps towards an adequate solution to the problem.11 The first part (61.30-63.5) has no direct parallel in Aristotle, as some commenta- tors have observed but failed to explain.12 This part makes the claim that becom- 9 ‘It is obvious that the same thing will never do or suffer opposites in the same respect in relation to the same thing and at the same time’ (Plato, Republic IV, 436b8-9; translated by P. Shorey). 10 Bergeron&Defour (2008: 308). 11 So Accattino&Donini (1996: 228). They say very little on the relation between these two steps, however. 12 Accatino&Donini (1996: 228); Bergeron and Defour (2008: 308). FV_01_2017.indd 51 26. 10. 17 11:08 52 pavel gregorić ing like a sensible in an act of perception is not a case of material change, which exempts it from the principle of excluded contraries. Something can perceive and discriminate two contrary sensibles – or indeed any other combination of homogeneous sensibles, or even any combination of heterogeneous sensibles – because this does not involve any material change, but a different type of change.13 Alexander offers four pieces of evidence in support of the thesis that a different type of change is involved in perception – the ‘immateriality thesis’, as I shall call it. First, the sense of vision (opsis) does not become white and black when it perceives them. Second, air which is lit does not become white and black when it mediates these colours to the perceivers. Third, mirrors and water surfaces that reflect white and black objects do not themselves become white and black. Fourth, unlike mirrors and water surfaces that reflect white and black objects only as long as they are exposed to them, we are aware of white and black even after white and black objects are gone, since perception of them leaves traces due to phantasia; the fact that a white or black object does not need to be present and causally active for me to be aware of white or black, I take it, is meant to show that this is not a case of standard material change.14 If perception does not involve material change, then the perceptual capac- ity which apprehends all types of special sensibles – though not all of them through the same sense-organs – will be able to discriminate them at one and the same time. And that perceptual capacity is the common sense. This clearly constitutes an important step towards the solution of the problem of perceptual discrimination of heterogeneous sensibles. But what about homogeneous sen- sibles? Presumably, eyes are not affected by white and black materially either, so this part of the solution applies to the case of perceptual discrimination of homogeneous sensibles, too. However, what this part of Alexander’s solution leaves undecided is whether the perceptual capacity which discriminates white and black in the non-material way is vision or the common sense. That is why the second part of Alexander’s solution is needed. 13 Cf. Aristotle, De anima II.5 and the contemporary discussion between ‘spiritualism’ and ‘literalism’ in Aristotle’s theory of perception; a helpful summary of the discussion can be found in Caston (2004). 14 I read lines 62.22-63.5 as the fourth piece of evidence in support of the thesis that a differ- ent change is involved in perception, so I would suggest that these lines be transposed to line 16, before the sentence that starts with ei dê kai. FV_01_2017.indd 52 26. 10. 17 11:08 53 alexander of aphrodisias on the common sense This part (63.6-65.2) consists in showing that the perceptual capacity which ap- prehends all types of special sensibles – the common sense – is a sort of thing which can be both one and many at the same time. Insofar as it is one, it satisfies the two conditions for perceptual discrimination, and insofar as it is many, it conforms to the principle of excluded contraries. How does that work? Very briefly, Alexander uses the same sort of trick that Aristotle used at the end of De anima III.2: he proposes an analogy with a geometrical point. However, whereas Aristotle used the analogy with a point bisecting a line, Alexander in- novates: he compares the common sense to the centre of a circle in which differ- ent radii meet. Alexander’s idea is this: insofar as the centre is the end-point of different radii, it is many; and insofar as the end-points of different radii coin- cide in one and the same point, it is one. ‘We should take the common sense to be one and many in the same way,’ he says at 63.12-13. This analogy is further elaborated by Alexander and it deserves a separate dis- cussion. This I leave for Section 5 below. 3. Functions of the common sense: Awareness of perception Like Aristotle, Alexander has no doubt that we are aware of ourselves seeing and hearing, and that this awareness must be of a perceptual kind. However, Aristotle seems to have two different accounts as to what it is that enables us to perceive that we are seeing and hearing. One account is found in De anima III.2 (425b12-25), where Aristotle suggests that it is the special senses that supply us with perceptual awareness. The upshot of Aristotle’s argument in De anima III.2 is that we perceive that we see by the sense of vision, for ‘to perceive by the sense of vision is not a single thing’ (ouch hen to têi opsei aisthanesthai, 425b20). The other account is found in De somno et vigilia 2, where Aristotle says that ‘cer- tainly it is not by vision that one sees that one sees’ but by some ‘common pow- er which accompanies all the special senses’ (DSV 2, 455a16-17). This ‘common power’ (koinê dunamis) that accompanies all the special senses is standardly identified with the common sense.15 15 Of course, there are various ways of reconciling these two accounts; cf. Gregoric (2007: 174- 192), Johansen (2012: 195-198). FV_01_2017.indd 53 26. 10. 17 11:08 54 pavel gregorić Alexander is perfectly aware of both accounts in Aristotle. He expounds Aristotle’s De anima account at length in his Quaestiones III.7. Interestingly, in the course of his exemplary exposition, Alexander does not even hint at the second account from Aristotle’s De somno, which Alexander himself advocates in his De anima and the Mantissa. Likewise, in his De anima and the Mantissa Alexander does not mention the alternative account he expounded in Questiones III.7. Presumably, this is because in the Quaestiones Alexander takes his job to be only to elucidate Aristotle’s words as best as he can, and in his own De anima Alexander’s task is to present the Peripatetic doctrine of the soul in its most robust form, admittedly aiming to demonstrate its superiority over the rival Stoic doctrine. In any case, it is interesting that Alexander in De anima opts for the second account regarding the source of perceptual awareness, that is the account from Aristotle’s De somno. Alexander says in the relevant passage of his De anima that perceptual awareness is the work of the ‘primary, chief and the so-called “common” sense’ (65.8-10). That this is indeed Alexander’s considered view is clear from two further sources, one direct and the other indirect. The direct source is a passage from the Mantissa (119.13-15): ‘That the common sense is dis- tinct from the special senses is clear from the fact that seeing is perceptible, but not visible.’ The indirect source is a later report in Ps.Philoponus’ commentary on Aristotle’s De anima, who compares four different views as to what enables us to be aware of our perceptions. In this report, Aristotle’s view from De ani- ma III.2, according to which it is the special senses that are aware of their own operations (Philoponus, In de An. 463.29-32 Hayduck), is explicitly contrasted with Alexander’s view, according to which it is the common sense that supplies awareness of the operations of the special senses: ‘Alexander in his Commentary makes the five senses aware of their underlying sense objects, whereas he makes the common sense aware of both the underlying objects and their activities’ (Philoponus, In de An. 464.20-23 Hayduck).16 This is an interesting finding because it shows that, although Alexander’s De anima closely follows Aristotle’s De anima in plan and doctrine, Alexander is sufficiently independent to depart from the particular ideas in Aristotle’s De an- ima in favour of ideas stated in Aristotle’s other works that Alexander finds more 16 Alexander’s commentary on Aristotle’s De anima is lost, but the view described in this passage is found in Alexander’s De anima 65.2-10. FV_01_2017.indd 54 26. 10. 17 11:08 55 alexander of aphrodisias on the common sense congenial. And, again, I would argue that it is due to Alexander’s influence on posterity that the common sense came to be regarded as the source of perceptu- al awareness in the later Arabic and scholastic tradition. 4. Functions of the common sense: Perception of the common sensibles The last function Alexander attributes to the common sense is perception of the common sensibles – features such as shapes and sizes that are accessible to more than one special sense. No doubt Alexander’s attribution of this function is inspired by Aristotle’s De anima III.1, 425a14-28, where he says that ‘for the common sensibles we now have aisthêsin koinên’. Here I would like to make a digression. I have argued elsewhere that the quoted passage from Aristotle’s De anima III.1 should not be interpreted to the effect that the common sensibles are perceived by the common sense. Rather, it should be interpreted in a more nuanced way, as stating that the special senses have a shared sensitivity to the common sensibles.17 Of course, this shared sensitivity to the common sensibles is due to the presence of the common sense which uni- fies the special senses, but that is not equivalent to saying that we perceive the common sensibles by the common sense. Surely we would all agree that the red colour of a tomato is seen with the sense of vision, but would anyone seriously claim that the round shape of the tomato is not really seen, but perceived by the common sense? I do not think so. Aristotle himself says that we see shapes, sizes, motions etc.18 To be sure, we would not be able to see them, had our vision not been unified with the other senses by the common sense; but granted that our vision is thus unified, and given that we have seen and felt many things in the past and compared the reports of our senses, we are now as a matter of fact able to see the common sensibles. Let me put the same point differently. Instead of relegating the perception of the common sensibles to the common sense, I take Aristotle to be expanding the special senses, so that in addition to perceiving their underlying special sensi- bles, they also perceive the common sensibles. I have already quoted Aristotle’s 17 Gregoric (2007: 69-82). 18 See, e.g. De anima II.6, 418a19-20; III.1, 425b9-11; De sensu 1, 437a5-9. FV_01_2017.indd 55 26. 10. 17 11:08 56 pavel gregorić remark that ‘to perceive by vision is not a single thing’ (De anima III.1, 425b20- 22), with the example of vision discriminating not only colours, but also light and darkness. So a special sense, on Aristotle’s view, cannot be reduced to its narrow function specified in its definition. The definition accurately captures the essence of a special sense considered in full theoretical abstraction, inde- pendently of the perceptual system in which every token of every special sense in fact happens to be embedded. However, since no special sense ever occurs unembedded, I would claim that, in addition to its innate or essential sensi- tivity to one type of special sensible, each special sense acquires sensitivity to the common sensibles as the animal experiences the world. This acquired sen- sitivity, of course, presupposes integration of the special senses and function- ing of the common sense in the perceiver’s early career.19 With these conditions fulfilled, the common sensibles are perceived by the special senses; we can see (and feel) shapes and sizes. In contrast to my interpretation of Aristotle, Alexander says very clearly that the common sensibles are perceived by the common sense. His argument at 65.17-19 is that the common sensibles are not visible, because they do not accompany only colours but also other types of special sensibles; they are not tangible, be- cause they do not accompany only tactile qualities but also other types of spe- cial sensibles, etc. This argument presupposes that whatever is visible must be a colour or something that accompanies only colours, and it fails to do justice to the very deep intuition that the common sensibles are indeed visible as well as tangible, and so on. I suppose that Alexander’s ascription of perception of the common sensibles to the common sense has influenced generations of interpreters who follow him in taking this insufficiently nuanced view. However, there are three places in which Alexander seems to contradict himself. Twice in his commentary on De sensu (84.20 and 85.14) he says that it is vision that apprehends shape and size. 19 Of course, not every special sense is sensitive to all types of common sensibles, e.g. we cannot perceive shapes by hearing (Aristotle’s claim in De anima II.6, 418a18-19 must be a careless overstatement). Also, not every special sense is equally sensitive to any given type of common sensible, e.g. we are better at perceiving motion by vision than by hearing. I would also argue that the special senses improve their sensitivity to the common sensibles with experience, e.g. our vision gets better or more reliable at perceiving sizes and shapes of distant things. FV_01_2017.indd 56 26. 10. 17 11:08 57 alexander of aphrodisias on the common sense More importantly, there is a passage in his De anima which comes some pages after his account of the common sense, where he says: ‘Vision perceives a colour at the same time as it gains perception of size, shape, and motion or rest that come together with the colour’ (83.19-21). Apparently, Alexander also felt the tug of the intuition that the common sensibles are genuinely visible, tangible, and so forth. In any case, ascribing the perception of the common sensibles to the common sense seems somewhat more problematic or counter-intuitive than ascribing the first two functions to it, namely perceptual discrimination and per- ceptual awareness. It is interesting to observe, before moving on to the next section, that Alexander adds ‘distance’ (apostêma, 65.14) to the list of the common sensibles, without any indication that in doing so he goes beyond Aristotle. Adding ‘distance’ to the list of common sensibles does not seem to be Alexander’s innovation, how- ever. Already Theophrastus mentions diastêma twice in his De sensu, along with size and motion (36.5 Wimmer = 509.21 Diels; 54.10 Wimmer = 514.32 Diels), so the inclusion of distance in the list of the common sensibles was probably a part of the Peripatetic lore long before Alexander.20 5. The analogy I have pointed out that Alexander’s solution to the problem of perceptual dis- crimination proceeds in two parts, or rather in two steps. In the first step (62.3- 63.5) he appeals to the immateriality of perception, whereas in the second step (63.6-65.2) he introduces the analogy with the centre of a circle in which differ- ent radii meet (see Figure 1). I have argued earlier that the first step leaves it undecided whether perceptual discrimination is done by the special senses or by the common sense, so the second step is needed to establish that it is the common sense. In this section I will argue that the first step is also necessary to make the second one work. 20 In the Mantissa (146.30-31), Alexander distinguishes between apostêma, which refers to the distance between the perceiver and the object, and diastêma, which refers to the dis- tance between two perceived objects. However, Galen was not aware of that distinction when he criticized Aristotle for failing to explain ‘how we recognize the position or size or distance of each perceived object’ (De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis VII.7, 470.17-18 De Lacey); see Ierodiakonou (1999). FV_01_2017.indd 57 26. 10. 17 11:08 58 pavel gregorić Let us look at the second step. Alexander introduces the analogy of the common sense with the centre of the circle (63.6-13), and then applies it first to the case of perceptual discrimination of heterogeneous sensibles (63.13-64.4), and then to the case of perceptual discrimination of homogeneous sensibles (64.4-65.2). In the first application, Alexander argues as follows. Insofar as the common sense is the end-point of different affections produced by the special sensibles in the peripheral sense organs, the common sense is many; insofar as it is an imma- terial (asômatos, 63.18) power of the entire central sense organ and each part of it, the common sense is one and indivisible. He unpacks this still further (63.19- 28): insofar as the common sense is many, it simultaneously perceives different special sensibles, because it is the power and the end-point, as it were, of each sense organ; insofar as the end-points of all sense organs coincide in one and the same thing, namely in the common sense housed in the heart, it discriminates the differences of the perceived special sensibles at one and indivisible time. The upshot of this is that the problem of perceptual discrimination of heterogeneous sensibles is solved because the common sense is both one and many. The analogy is applied in much the same way to the case of perceptual discrim- ination of homogeneous sensibles. The peripheral sense organ, Alexander ob- serves, is affected at different parts by different homogeneous special sensibles. So, in the toughest case of two contrary sensibles, such as white and black, Figure 1A C B D E F FV_01_2017.indd 58 26. 10. 17 11:08 59 alexander of aphrodisias on the common sense white affects one part of the eye and black affects another part, so that the prin- ciple of excluded contraries is respected: it is not one and the same thing in the same part that is both white and black at the same time, but in two different parts. When these two contrary affections reach the central sense organ – and presumably they reach two neighbouring (paraplêsiôs, 64.8-9) parts of the cen- tral sense organ – they are simultaneously perceived and discriminated against one another by one and the same perceptual power which is the form of the whole central sense organ, i.e. by the common sense in the heart. Insofar as the common sense is one, then, it satisfies the two conditions for per- ceptual discrimination (that the discriminating thing be one, and that the time of discrimination be one), and insofar as it is many, it conforms to the principle of excluded contraries. That is, insofar as it is many, the common sense simul- taneously perceives white and black – white on account of being the immaterial power which informs that part of the central sense organ which is affected by the white colour of an external object, and black on account of being the im- material power which informs the neighbouring part of the central sense organ which is affected by the black colour of the external object. Observe the stress laid on the immateriality of the common sense: it is because the common sense is immaterial – namely, it is the form of the whole central sense organ – that it can be affected by any number of sensible qualities that ar- rive from the peripheral sense organs to different parts of the central sense organ. Affections arriving from the eyes and from the ears will arrive at different regions of the heart, whereas affections of white and black from two neighbouring parts of the eye will arrive at two neighbouring parts of the same region of the heart; either way, the common sense, being one and the same form of the whole central organ, registers them all at once. As we have seen, the immateriality thesis was introduced in the first step of Alexander’s solution, and now it is clear that the analogy introduced in the second step could not possibly work without it. In other words, had Alexander not introduced the immateriality thesis, his anal- ogy would be badly spoilt. Saying that affections from different peripheral sense organs (or from different parts of the same peripheral sense organ) arrive at dif- ferent parts of the central sense organ would be analogous to different radii of a circle that terminate in different points around the centre, as shown in Figure 2. In this picture nothing corresponds to a single thing that does the discrimi- FV_01_2017.indd 59 26. 10. 17 11:08 60 pavel gregorić nating job! So the immateriality thesis in step one was absolutely necessary for Alexander’s modification of Aristotle’s original analogy with a point bisecting a line. How did Aristotle arrive at his original analogy? He wondered how one and the same thing can simultaneously perceive and discriminate two special sensibles. For two heterogeneous sensibles, like white and sweet, he had a solution. The thing which simultaneously perceives and discriminates two heterogeneous sensibles is much like a physical object which instantiates different properties at the same time – like an apple which is fragrant, red and cold at the same time. There is no problem for one thing to be at the same time like a colour and like a flavor.21 However, this solution did not work for homogeneous sensibles, espe- cially not for the contraries in each type of special sensible; no one thing can at the same time be like white and like black.22 So Aristotle had to find another solution. And he found it in the analogy with a point bisecting a line, put forth at the end of De anima III.2, 427a9-14 and repeated at III.7, 431a20-b1 (see Figure 3). The idea of the analogy is that one and the same point can be two contraries at the same time. As Figure 3 shows, point B is the end-point of section AB and the starting-point of section BC. Likewise, a sense can simultaneously perceive 21 Aristotle, De sensu 7, 449a2-20; cf. De anima III.2, 426b29-427a5. 22 De anima III.2, 426b29-427a5-9. Figure 2A C D E F FV_01_2017.indd 60 26. 10. 17 11:08 61 alexander of aphrodisias on the common sense two contrary qualities, say white and black, and discriminate them at one and indivisible time. This analogy, I take it, was only meant to show that it is possible that there be something which is one and two contraries at the same time, since being a start- ing-point and being an end-point are contraries. But this analogy was not meant to be unpacked as a suggestion as to how the sense achieves this unity and contrariety at the same time. In other words, Aristotle’s analogy with a point bisecting a line does not contain anything approaching an explanation of the operation of the sense when it simultaneously perceives and discriminates two contrary sensibles. Its sole function was to show that it is not preposterous to think that a sense could do such a thing, not to explain how it does that. One might say that the weakness of Alexander’s analogy with the centre of a circle in which different radii meet is that it fails to show how a single thing can instantiate contrariety at the same time, since there is no contrariety involved in point B being the end-point of radius AB, the end-point of radius CB, etc. This analogy can explain only perceptual discrimination of heterogeneous sensibles, where different qualities like white and sweet are not mutually contrary. There are two ways to reply to this objection. First, one can argue that this is a weakness of Alexander’s analogy only if one judges it from the background of Aristotle’s reasoning at the end of De anima III.2, where the immateriality thesis is not utilized. Alexander’s analogy, as we have seen, is built on differ- ent grounds than Aristotle’s analogy. Second, one might propose to amend Alexander’s analogy by drawing different diameters passing through point B (Figure 4), which then accommodates Aristotle’s reasoning. The diameter AC is bisected by point B at the centre, which is at the same time the starting-point of the radius BC and the end-point of the radius AB.23 23 I would like to note a minor inconvenience with the proposed amendment of Alexander’s analogy (Figure 4). The contraries, which affect the same sense organ, are represented in Figure 3 BA C FV_01_2017.indd 61 26. 10. 17 11:08 62 pavel gregorić Returning to Alexander’s original analogy, its comparative advantage over Aristotle’s analogy is that it encapsulates a model of how the whole thing works. Its purpose is not only to show that something is possible, as with Aristotle’s analogy with a point bisecting a line, but to explain how perceptual discrimina- tion takes place. The special sensibles affect the peripheral sense organs, and these affections reach the central sense organ. Because there is a single percep- tual power informing the whole central sense organ, the affections arriving to the central sense organ from different peripheral sense organs are all perceived at the same time and discriminated from one another. The analogy works al- most as a diagram of a human being with the periphery and the heart as a cen- tral organ! It is because of the intuitive power of Alexander’s analogy, I suggest, that it became the standard interpretation of Aristotle’s analogy in De anima III.2, used by Plotinus (IV.7.6.11-14), and pretty much all the later commentators on Aristotle’s De anima, e.g. Themistius (In de Anima 86.18-25), Ps.Simplicius (In de Anima 196.31, 200.26, 270.27-29), Ps.Philoponus (In de Anima 481.7-11), Sophonias (In de Anima 114.24-28). To conclude this section, if we look at the two steps of Alexander’s solution to the problem of perceptual discrimination – the idea that perception and dis- the amended analogy by two points on opposite sides of the circumference, e.g. A and C or D and E. That spoils the analogy as a representation of the cardiocentric model, which requires each radius to represent one peripheral sense organ linked to the central organ located (very roughly) in the middle of the body. Figure 4A D FE G B C FV_01_2017.indd 62 26. 10. 17 11:08 63 alexander of aphrodisias on the common sense crimination are non-material, and the idea that the common sense is like the centre of a circle in which different radii converge – we see that they rely on one another. The first step supplies to the second the crucial premise of imma- teriality, which allows the common sense to perceive simultaneously and dis- criminate not only heterogeneous sensibles, such as white and sweet, but also homogeneous sensibles, such as white and black, much like air allows for the simultaneous mediation of white and black in the case of a white Caucasian and a black African staring at each other. The second step in turn completes the first one with the crucial specification that it is one and the same perceptual power located in the central sense organ that perceives and discriminates all special sensibles, including the contraries such as white and black. 6. Conclusion I have argued that Alexander, while being generally faithful to Aristotle regard- ing the common sense, made four lasting contributions to this topic. First, he re- stricted the term ‘common sense’ (koinê aisthêsis) to the unified perceptual power of the soul which excludes phantasia. This blazed a trail for later theories of the internal senses in which the common sense figures as a non-rational cognitive capacity distinct from phantasia, memory, and whatever further capacity vari- ous Arabic and Latin philosophers may have postulated. Second, Alexander’s claim that we perceive ourselves seeing and hearing by means of the common sense, rather than by the special senses, influenced (correctly, in my opinion) later readings of Aristotle’s passages dealing with awareness of perception, giv- ing preference to Aristotle’s account in De somno et vigilia 2, 455a16-17, over his more widely read account in De anima III.2, 425b12-25. Third, Alexander’s state- ment that the common sensibles are perceived by the common sense, rather than by the special senses, made its mark (incorrectly, in my opinion) on later readings of Aristotle’s passages dealing with the common sensibles, most nota- bly of De anima III.1, 425a14-425b11. Fourth, Alexander’s analogy of the common sense with the centre of a circle in which different radii meet, though inspired by Aristotle’s analogy with a point bisecting a line in De anima III.2, 427a9-14, was a brilliant innovation that intuitively captured the Peripatetic cardiocentric model, leaving a deep impression on later students of Aristotle. That analogy, however, required the immateriality thesis which Alexander supplied in the first part of his solution to the problem of perceptual discrimination, the part that has no direct parallel in Aristotle. FV_01_2017.indd 63 26. 10. 17 11:08 64 pavel gregorić Bibliography Alexander of Aphrodisias (1887), De anima liber cum Mantissa (Commentaria in Aristotelem graeca Vol. 2, Pars 1), ed. I. Bruns, Reimer, Berlin. Alexander of Aphrodisias (1882), Quaestiones – De fato – De mixtione (Commentaria in Aristotelem graeca Vol. 2, Pars 2), ed. I. Bruns, Reimer, Berlin. Alexander of Aphrodisias (1901), In librum De sensu (Commentaria in Aristotelem graeca Vol. 3), ed. P. Wendland, Reimer, Berlin. Accattino, Paolo & Donini, Pierluigi (1996), Alessandro di Afrodisia: L’anima, Laterza, Roma. Bergeron, Martin & Defour, Richard (2008), Alexandre d’Aphrodise: De l’âme, Vrin, Paris. Caston, Victor (2004), ‘The Spirit and the Letter: Aristotle on Perception’, in R. Salles (ed.), Metaphysics, Soul and Ethics: Themes from the Work of Richard Sorabji, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 245-320. Corcilius, Klaus & Gregoric, Pavel (2013), ‘Aristotle’s Model of Animal Motion’, Phronesis 58/1, 52-97. di Martino, Carla (2013), Ratio particularis: Doctrine des sens internes d’Avicenne à Thomas d’Aquin, Vrin, Paris. Diels, Hermann (1879), Doxographi Graeci, Reimer, Berlin. Gregoric, Pavel (2007), Aristotle on the Common Sense, Clarendon Press, Oxford. Gregoric, Pavel (forthcoming), ‘The Origin and the Instrument of Animal Motion – De Motu Animalium Chapters 9 and 10’, in O. Primavesi and C. Rapp (eds.), Proceedings of the XIXth Symposium Aristotelicum, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Ierodiakonou, Katerina (1999), ‘Galen’s criticism of the Aristotelian theory of colour vi- sion’, in C. Natali and S. Maso (eds.), Antiaristotelismo, Hakkert, Amsterdam, 123-141. Johansen, Thomas K. (2012), The Powers of Aristotle’s Soul, Clarendon Press, Oxford. Philoponus (1887), In Aristotelis De anima libros (Commentaria in Aristotelem graeca Vol. 15), ed. M. Hayduck, Reimer, Berlin. Simplicius (1882), In libros Aristotelis De anima (Commentaria in Aristotelem graeca Vol. 11), ed. M. Hayduck, Reimer, Berlin. Sophonias (1883), In libros Aristotelis De anima paraphrasis (Commentaria in Aristotelem graeca Vol. 23), ed. M. Hayduck, Reimer, Berlin. Themistius (1899), In libros Aristotelis De anima paraphrasis (Commentaria in Aristotelem graeca Vol. 5), ed. R. Heinze, Reimer, Berlin. Theophrastus (1857), Theophrasti Eresii opera quae supersunt omnia. Vol. 4: Fragmenta, ed. F. Wimmer, Teubner, Leipzig. FV_01_2017.indd 64 26. 10. 17 11:08 Utopias FV_01_2017.indd 65 26. 10. 17 11:08 Earlier versions of articles by Ernest Ženko, Tyrus Miller and Aleš Erjavec were presented as conference papers in the “5th International Forum on Marxist Aesthetics,” titled “The Power of Utopia,” and held on 23-25 September 2016 in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China. The forum was hosted by the Zhejiang University. We thank the organizers of the Forum for the permission to publish these contributions. FV_01_2017.indd 66 26. 10. 17 11:08 67 * Univerza na Primorskem Ernest Ženko* Mapping the Unmappable: Dichotomies of Utopianism Filozofski vestnik | Letnik XXXVIII | Številka 1 | 2017 | 67–87 Part 1 The 500th anniversary of the first edition of Thomas More’s Utopia1 was accom- panied by a seemingly inexhaustible wave of discussions, conferences, and publications on utopianism and its innumerable well- and less- known forms. All this buzz around the topic showed, on the one hand, that there is plenty of interest in utopia at the beginning of the 21st century, most notably in academia given that utopian studies are thriving, and researchers are publishing books and articles on a regular basis. On the other hand, however, at least in devel- oped countries, there has been a growing tendency toward dystopia for the last couple of decades, and utopia became predominantly a pejorative word—a way to insult someone for his or her political orientation. This situation, at the surface level at least, implies a contradiction. As utopia becomes ever less important in our society, more thoroughly it appears a subject of the research. However, when it comes to utopia and utopianism, very little is straightforward and almost nothing is devoid of paradox. Five centuries after the publication of More’s Utopia, not only the proper meaning of his book, but also the origin of utopianism itself remain controversial. Utopianism belongs to all historical periods and can be found in most known cultures, therefore tran- scending the limits of time and space and revealing an unambiguous human propensity. Nevertheless, it would be an oversimplification to claim that the uto- pian tradition as a whole could have been simply and straightforwardly related to one or more particular psychological features. Even less rigorous statements, according to which utopianism stems from a certain longing or specific desire shared by members of the human species, are rather difficult to confirm, even though they can have strong explanatory power. 1 Originally published in Latin in 1516. Thomas More, Utopia, Casell & Company, London 1901. FV_01_2017.indd 67 26. 10. 17 11:08 68 ernest ženko Ruth Levitas, one of the leading scholars in utopian studies, claims that the most useful kind of concept of utopia would be one, which would be broad enough and would therefore “not exclude from the field of utopian studies any of the wide variety of related work that currently is defined by practitioners as part of the field,” and consequently offers a definition of utopia, which recognizes precisely “the common factor of the expression of desire.”2 Hence, “Utopia is the expression of the desire for a better way of being.”3 Another important au- thor in the field of matters utopian, Fredric Jameson, subtitled Archeologies of the Future,4 his well-known book on the subject, The Desire Called Utopia [and Other Science Fictions] pointing out the importance of the desire as a unifying and defining notion. Contrary to this tendency, which strives to a single, though an all-encompassing and broad designation of utopia, following a single concept, we argue in this paper that utopia and utopianism as such can be, at best, grasped through a series of dichotomies, contradictions, or paradoxes. From early utopian strate- gies dating back millennia to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, utopias always feature contradictory tendencies, which require closer inspection. It may be that in this contradictory nature of the utopian lies the key to understanding not only our present, but probably the most important part of all of human his- tory along with our future yet to come. The best way to find such dichotomies, however, is to look back in time. Part 2 It seems that the idea that our world is the best of all possible worlds, as once in- dicated by Leibniz, has hardly been a part of common belief, regardless of an ep- och, culture, or civilization. In most historical periods human beings considered their own time as inferior in relation to some invented past or imaginary future, leading to the invention of better places many centuries before Thomas More published his own description of utopia, and gave this endeavor its proper name. 2 Ruth Levitas, The Concept of Utopia, Syracuse University Press, Hampstead 1990, p. 8. 3 Ibid. 4 Fredric Jameson, Archeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions, Verso, London & New York 2005. FV_01_2017.indd 68 26. 10. 17 11:08 69 mapping the unmappable: dichotomies of utopianism All such efforts, however, did not share the same focus or strive to achieve the same goal. As pointed out by Lewis Mumford in the beginning of the twenti- eth century, utopias can be divided into two main categories: into ‘utopias of escape’ and ‘utopias of reconstruction’.5 Both categories were present in early utopianism and persisted through the history until today. For some commenta- tors, however, only the second type qualifies as a utopia, because the first one “refers to the projection of desire without the consideration of limiting condi- tions,”6 and focuses mainly on bodily pleasure, often with plenty of available food, drink and sex. In some cases, such ‘utopias of escape’ or ‘body utopias’ are not social fictions, but only private and egocentric fantasies focusing on person- al fulfilment, and frequently interpreted as primitive, excessive, and dangerous. This is probably easier to understand if we realize that utopias of this kind may also take the form of Carnival, the Feast of Fools, or Saturnalia, and that they can instantly turn against the established political or religious system. Classic folk myths, appearing through centuries in different cultures all over the world, often take the form of ‘the utopia of escape’. We find this kind of utopia also in the description of biblical Eden, in stories of a golden age or the earthly paradise, present in Greek and Roman culture but also in similar myths in other ancient cultures, such as for example in Chinese ‘Peach Blossom Spring’.7 They may display differences on a level of a culture from which they develop, but they still share many common features. For example, many of those stories begin with a place in which gods and humans were close to each other, and as we read in Hesiod (8th century BCE): They lived as if they were gods, their hearts free from all sorrow, by themselves, and without hard work or pain; no miserable old age came their way; their hands, their feet, did not alter. They took their pleasure in festivals and lived without troubles. When they died, it was as if they fell asleep. All goods were theirs. The fruitful grainland yielded its harvest to them of its own accord; this was great and 5 Cf. Lewis Mumford, The Story of Utopias: Ideal Commonwealths and Social Myths, Harrap, London 1923. 6 Levitas, op. cit., p. 15. 7 Lyman Tower Sargent, Utopianism: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, Ox- ford & London 2010, p. 48. FV_01_2017.indd 69 26. 10. 17 11:08 70 ernest ženko abundant, while they at their pleasure quietly looked after their works, in the midst of good things.8 As pointed out by Tower Sargent, another influential utopian scholar, there is an important difference in focus between the Greek poet Hesiod and the Ro- man author Ovid (43 BCE to 17/18 CE). In Hesiod, the good life is all about abun- dance, equality and joy. His story appears to be completely out of time, and socio-historical reality is actually never reflected. Ovid, whose poetry made a much stronger impression, and influenced the Middle Ages’ view of the golden age, stressed, on the other hand, pressing contemporary political issues. His de- scription of the Golden Age is thus above all a negative image of his own epoch: In the beginning was the Golden Age, when men of their own accord, without threat of punishment, without laws, maintained good faith and did what was right. There were no penalties to be afraid of, no bronze tablets were erected, carrying threats of legal action, no crowd of wrong-doers, anxious for mercy, trembled before the face of their judge: indeed, there were no judges, men lived securely without them. [...] The peoples of the world, untroubled by any fears, enjoyed a leisurely and peaceful existence, and had no use for soldiers.9 Many utopias of escape were in a similar way concerned with solving the prob- lems of the present, and some of them also explained how and why the good life in a paradise turned into a vale of tears. Two important modifications had yet to occur in relation to those myths before the approach to utopias in a proper sense was finally open, and both can be traced back to the Roman writer Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro, 70-19 BCE). The first change is associated with the concept of eucronia, the problem of the best possible time, as an analogue to eutopia, which designates the best possible place. Virgil was probably the first, who, in his Fourth Eclogue, moved golden age from the past to the future. Instead of looking backwards, one has to look forward, because the golden age is going to appear sometime in the future.10 8 Hesiod, Works and Days; quoted in Doyne Dawson, Cities of the Gods: Communist Utopias in Greek Thought, Oxford University Press, New York & Oxford 1992, p. 13. 9 Quoted in Tower Sargent, op. cit., p. 55. 10 In the modern utopian tradition, it was probably Edward Bellamy’s contribution that was the most important in this sense. He was the one who has associated the ideal society with FV_01_2017.indd 70 26. 10. 17 11:08 71 mapping the unmappable: dichotomies of utopianism Nevertheless, and this is Virgil’s second important modification, nothing in this better future world will be given as a gift from the gods. In their future utopia, people will still have to work, mostly as peasants or farmers. They will live sim- ple lives, but they will be happy. Both Virgil’s innovations, future oriented uto- pianism and simple rural life, still play an important role in numerous modern utopias and in culture pessimism of Walter Benjamin, escapism of Raymond Williams and postmodern nostalgia as well. The distinction between ‘utopias of escape’ and ‘utopias of reconstruction’ as introduced by Mumford can be modified to form a list of categories that broad- en our understanding of the concept of utopia and the nuances distinguishing various types of utopian strategies. Probably the most important in this sense is the delineation between myth, fantasy, and messianism, on the one hand, and political utopianism on the other. This difference, as pointed out by Doyne Dawson,11 is based mainly on the con- cept of realism; political utopias are more realistic than myths or fantasy albeit only to a certain extent—true political utopias are called utopias not because they are realizable, but because they are not. Therefore, not all political utopias are equal; some of them are more realistic than others, and the concept of ‘polit- ical utopia’ calls for a further refinement. Drawing from complex utopian traditions of ancient Greeks, Dawson proposed a division of political utopianism, which comprises of the following two catego- ries:12 1. ‘Low’ utopianism. In the center of this strategy stands a comprehensive pro- gram for an ideal city-state, which was meant to be put into action, but in the meantime also to provide a critique of existing state of affairs. This catego- ry is called utopian, because in its goals it reaches beyond regular political reforms and focuses on radical and total political transformation. It is also termed ‘low’—and this is important to emphasize—because the program is a relatively far-distant future instead of some unmapped space as did his predecessors like More, Bacon, Campanella and others. Cf. Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward 2000-1887, Oxford University Press, Oxford & New York 2007 [1888]. 11 Dawson, op. cit., p. 14. 12 Ibid., p. 7. FV_01_2017.indd 71 26. 10. 17 11:08 72 ernest ženko nevertheless a real and practical program. In other words, it is too real to be (properly) utopian. 2. ‘High’ utopianism. Known also as ‘classical utopianism,’ or utopianism in a proper sense. In the center of the strategy is a plan for an ideal city-state that was not meant to be literally enacted. It may include a critique and a plan for reform, but only in an indirect way. Its plan cannot be implemented in reality; therefore, it can be understood as truly utopian. Contrary to the traditions of utopian escapism, which go back to some indistinct past and can be found all over the world, political utopianism is a peculiarly Greek tradition that appeared in the late fifth century BCE. Consequently, the first examples of ‘low’ and ‘high’ utopias can be found among ancient Greek authors. Examples of ‘low’ utopianism can be found in Plato’s Laws, Aristotle’s Politics, in pre-platonic utopian authors Phaleas and Hippodamus and in some other authors’ work as well. On the other hand, although there are several exam- ples of ‘high’ utopianism in Stoic and Cynic traditions, nevertheless, the most important example of this kind of political utopianism is undeniably found in Plato’s Republic. Plato’s best-known work is often regarded as the true origin of Western utopian- ism13 and for some commentators also the most influential example of classical utopian literature, which in its importance reaches even beyond More’s Utopia itself. For others, however, Western utopianism begins in the Age of Renaissance as “a hybrid plant, born of the crossing of a paradisiacal, otherworldly belief of Judeo-Christian religion with the Hellenic myth of an ideal city on earth”.14 In such frameworks, Plato (428/27-348/47 BCE) is not seen as an utopian author, even though his (at least indirect) role in the utopian tradition still remains un- deniable. The society described in the Republic is “the closest possible approximation to the ideal society,”15 nevertheless still an approximation; since it is created by humans it cannot be more than a reflection of the ideal. As pointed out by Tower 13 Cf. Tower Sargent, op. cit., p. 56. 14 Cf. Frank E. Manuel & Fritzie P. Manuel, Utopian Thought in the Western World, The Belknap Press, Cambridge, MA, 1997, p. 15. 15 Cf. Tower Sargent, op. cit., p. 57. FV_01_2017.indd 72 26. 10. 17 11:08 73 mapping the unmappable: dichotomies of utopianism Sargent: “The important thing here is not the theory but the underlying point that there cannot be a perfect society or human being on this earth. The best we can achieve is an approximation, which will inevitably collapse.”16 This essential and ultimate failure of utopia, described by Plato in the Republic, is somehow paradoxically the reason, why it counts as a form of ‘high’ utopia- nism. For Plato, but also for other Greek writers on utopia, it was inconceivable that an ideal society could be a large one, that is, one in which citizens could not regularly meet and discuss important political topics. Aristotle (448-380 BCE) even proposed that in a utopia citizens live in a state of self-sufficiency within the limits of small territory and population and that they possibly know each other. Many commentators relate Plato’s ideal city-state, described in the Republic, to the Greek city of Sparta with which Athens fought a war, when Plato was writ- ing his book. Sparta was a military regime based on the equality among citi- zens, who were to dedicate themselves completely to the state—a characteristic, found in many subsequent utopian narratives. In writings of Plutarch, who has described the plan of the supposed founder of Sparta, Lycurgus, the idea behind it was quite radical. For Lycurgus, a partial alteration of the laws would not be enough to induce true social change; citizens should be treated as patients, full of diseases, and what is needed is to “reduce and alter the existing temperament by means of drugs and purges, and introduce a new and different regimen”.17 “This strange society has never ceased to fascinate the world,” and played an important role in Western utopian tradition. Its secret, however, did not lay in Spartan political institutions, which were relatively ordinary, but above all “in the unique collectivist features of Spartan social and economic structure.”18 Two Greek authors contributed to the creation of this Spartan myth, mainly Critias, but also Xenophon, and they both believed that Spartan unique collectivist prac- tices were the key to their political and military success. Xenophon pointed out that they “shared one another’s horses, dogs, servants, and provisions at need; that they shared wives freely for breeding purposes, and treated all children as their own; that their homogenous way of life and restrictions on money-making 16 Ibid. 17 Quoted in Tower Sargent, op. cit., p. 50. 18 Dawson, op. cit., p. 28. FV_01_2017.indd 73 26. 10. 17 11:08 74 ernest ženko reduced distinctions between rich and poor and unified the citizens”.19 Many utopian writers to this day draw from the Spartan model and replicated above all its egalitarian and collectivist, or communist features, and Plato was only one of them, but definitely not the last. Both Plato’s Republic and Spartan society, but also Aristotle, who is generally not considered a utopian author, share a common argument regarding equality. The best possible society provides the best life for their citizens, but to achieve it, it requires the existence of non-citizens (or, in fact, slaves) to do undignified labor, and free citizens from it. Utopia is therefore possible only if a large part of a population is excluded from it, and this inequality is the price to be paid for equality.20 In contrast to modern utopias, which typically put the labor problem into the center of their concern, Plato or Aristotle do not consider it as a true problem at all.21 Ancient Greek culture, however, did not only invent a formal utopia, but also its important counter-part: anti-utopia. The first important anti-utopian was Aris- tophanes (445-375 BCE),22 the well-known writer of comedies, who wrote at the same time as utopians and examined comparable topics. The most important of his plays in this sense was entitled Women in Parliament (or Ecclesiazusae in Greek). In this play Aristophanes describes a situation in which a group of women succeeded in taking over the parliament (i.e. the legislative assembly) and enacting a form of communism. In the development of the play, Aristophanes gives us a standard reason for re- jecting utopias. Women legislature fails, but it does not fail because it is bad or irrational but because it requires altruism in order to function. Nevertheless, altruism is something that human race is not capable of, and therefore any uto- pia based on communism is doomed to fail, because egoism will always win. Aristophanes used a similar strategy in another play with the telling title Wealth (Plutus). There the blind god of wealth is given sight, and when he sees the in- equalities in the world and those deserving, he redistributes the wealth to ac- 19 Ibid., p. 29. 20 A theme that is reiterated in George Orwell’s Animal Farm. 21 Cf. Mumford, op. cit., p. 23. 22 Aristophanes, The Complete Plays, New American Library, New York 2005. FV_01_2017.indd 74 26. 10. 17 11:08 75 mapping the unmappable: dichotomies of utopianism complish equality among the people. However, in a way analogous to that of the former play, Aristophanes shows that equality cannot last forever—human greed soon takes over and rapidly redistributes the wealth again inequitably. Part 3 There is a period of nearly two thousand years between Plato and Aristophanes, on the one side, and Thomas More on the other. During that time, at least in the Western World, utopia mainly disappeared from literature. There are several exceptions, such as Cicero’s essay on the state, Augustine’s City of God, but also, if one includes various forms of ‘utopias of escape’, medieval Carnival, the Feast of Fools, and different mythical stories, like the story of Cockaigne: There are rivers broad and fine Of oil, milk, honey and of wine; Water serveth there no thing But for sight and for washing.23 These are, as the excerpt above shows, similar to those escapist and past orient- ed utopias, developed in the antiquity and in other cultures all over the world. In the era of Christianity, social utopianism took a distinctive, albeit somehow similar, turn. In Lewis Mumford’s description, “the utopia of the first fifteen hundred years after Christ is transplanted to the sky, and called the Kingdom of Heaven. It is distinctly a utopia of escape. The world of men is full of sin and trouble. Nothing can be done about it except to repent of the sin and find refuge from the trouble in the life after the grave.”24 The shift from a heavenly and es- capist utopia to a worldly and social one, came during the decline of the Middle ages and the beginning of Renaissance and Reformation. The first expression of this change is the Utopia of Thomas More from 1516. It is not realistic, however, to expect that this short book, which gave the name to the whole tradition, will harmonize various contradicting aspects and answer all our questions concerning utopianism. Quite the contrary, for Utopia is “a com- 23 Quoted in Tower Sargent, op. cit., p. 55. 24 Mumford, op. cit., p. 2. FV_01_2017.indd 75 26. 10. 17 11:08 76 ernest ženko plex work, and More is a complex man”.25 More’s Utopia with the full title Utopia, A Fruitful and Pleasant Work of the Best State of a Commonwealth and of the New Island Called Utopia, is contradictory, paradoxical and inconsistent from the be- ginning to the end. And, as Quentin Skinner, the famous Cambridge historian observes: “Almost everything about Thomas More’s Utopia is debatable.”26 Even its title is a joke and it contains deliberate ambiguity: utopia is a combina- tion of Greek words eutopia, i.e. the good or the best place, and outopia, i.e. the non-existing place. It therefore designates the place that is the best possible, but at the same time it does not exist. The text is full of word games, and if it appears to be straightforward on the surface, this is only an illusion that disappears on closer inspection. For example, the surname of the person describing Utopia, Hythlodaeus (Hythloday), means literally ‘speaker of nonsense’, however, his first name, Raphael, means ‘healer from God’. If you put the two together, his whole name becomes inconclusive if not paradoxical. Or, in another example, the main river of Utopia is called Anydrus, which means ‘no water’. More himself did shed the light on this problem, even though in a letter to Peter Giles, published in the 1517 edition, commenting on the play on words. More claimed that if Utopia had been fiction he would have indicated it: “Thus, if I had done nothing else than impose names on ruler, river, city, and island such as might suggest to the more learned that the island was nowhere, the city a phantom, the river without water, and the ruler without a people, it would have been much wittier than what I actually did. [...] I am not so stupid as to have pre- ferred to use those barbarous and meaningless names, Utopia, Anydrus, Amau- rotum, and Ademus.”27 But the names he cites—Utopia, Anydrus, Amaurotum, and Ademus—do mean precisely the island was nowhere, the city a phantom, the river without water, and the ruler without a people! Again, instead of solving the problem, Thomas More strengthens the ambiguity. The same problem appears on many different levels within the text, but also in its interpretation. Due to the lack of space here, let us focus on one, but signif- 25 David James Sarty Hood, A Place Called ‘Nowhere’: Towards an Understanding of St. Thom- as More’s ‘Utopia’, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa 2009, p. 30. 26 Quoted in Hood, op. cit., p. 2. 27 Quoted in Tower Sargent, op. cit., p. 62. FV_01_2017.indd 76 26. 10. 17 11:08 77 mapping the unmappable: dichotomies of utopianism icant theme: “In the Utopia the root of all evil in society is the lust for posses- sions, a passion that leads men to behave like beasts toward one another.”28 It seems quite straightforward that More is supporting a society without private property, and Hythloday, the main character in the book, states: “I do fully per- suade myself that no equal and just distribution of things can be made, nor perfect wealth ever be among men unless their proprietorship be exiled and banished.”29 This and similar statements convinced Marxist scholars that More was essentially a communist, and hailed his Utopia as “one of the earliest and greatest works of socialist theory”.30 When, for example, a monument to the most influential thinkers who promoted the liberation of humankind from op- pression, arbitrariness, and exploitation was suggested by Lenin and erected in Moscow in 1918, Thomas More was on the list (ninth from the top). Yet again things in Utopia are never what they seem on the surface, and this in- terpretation again turns out to be problematic. Namely, More himself claims that he is of the contrary opinion, and actually strongly defenses private property: For methinks men shall never live wealthily there, where all things are held in common. For how can there be abundance of goods or of anything, where every man holds back his hand from labor? Where regard for his own gains drives him not to work, and the hope that he has in other men’s toil makes him slothful. Then when they are pricked with poverty, and yet no man can by any law or right defend for his own that which he has got with the labor of his own hands, will not there of necessity be continual sedition and bloodshed?31 It is clear from the statement above that More is expressing concern over the so- cialist foundations of the Utopian society, but also that Hythloday does not real- ly offer any kind of substantive reply to these concerns. As pointed out by David J. S. Hood, there are several inconsistencies with a Marxist interpretation; the question of private property and communism is only one of them. For instance, there are slaves in Utopia. Utopians are willing to go to war to defend the private property of their neighbors. Religion in Utopia poses another problem, since its 28 Manuel & Manuel, op. cit., p. 125. 29 Quoted in Hood, op. cit., p. 15. 30 Ibid. 31 Ibid. FV_01_2017.indd 77 26. 10. 17 11:08 78 ernest ženko citizens abhor atheism and irreligion. Atheists are considered to be less than human, they are deprived of all honors, excluded from all offices and rejected from all public administration. Inconsistencies and contradictions that pose a serious problem for a Marxist interpretation of Utopia do not vanish, when More’s text is interpreted within other contexts. Since its publication, commentators mostly agreed that Utopia is a socio-political text. However, they commonly took one of two main positions, that either it was written as a serious treatise, or it was written to be a satire. The first school of interpretations is based on a traditional Catholic perception of More as a conservative defender of faith, who wrote Utopia to “provide Europe with real solutions to their social and political problems. The commonwealth of Utopia is therefore an example of the best state of a commonwealth”.32 The second school of interpretations is rooted in a more modern perception of More that emphasizes two different, yet interconnected, characteristics, his hu- manism and his love of the satire. According to their view, “More did not intend for his Utopia to be taken seriously. He wrote it as a satire to attack and mock various aspects of traditional and medieval English society, culture and reli- gion.”33 Satire is in fact fundamental to both main utopian traditions, ‘escapist’ and ‘political’, and both use it to ridicule the present; in order to do so, and to intensify the contrast, they mostly use exaggeration. The satire may be one of the keys to understanding More’s Utopia, but also the problem of utopia in general. In its radical sense it enables its writer to build a narration without a positive position, leaving a reader to decide what to make out of it. In his book Erewhon or Over the Range (1872), English novelist Samuel Butler followed a pattern found in More’s Utopia. Criminals, for example, are treated as sick and sent to doctors, but the sick are thrown to jail. A similar strat- egy is to be found in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726).34 The good place in the book (eutopia) is inhabited by horses and humans. However, the horses, Houyhnhnms, are rational, whereas the humans, Yahoos, are animalistic. It fol- lows from Swift and Butler that the idea is not to give a proper answer to a burn- 32 Hood, op. cit., p. 3. 33 Ibid. 34 The precise title of the book is Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. FV_01_2017.indd 78 26. 10. 17 11:08 79 mapping the unmappable: dichotomies of utopianism ing social or political issue, but to open space for a discussion and ultimately to enable a positive social change. This seems to be a very important point. Since the nature of utopia is in its es- sence satirical, it cannot be taken literally. Exaggerations, inconsistencies, and paradoxes are a necessary part of a utopian strategy and should be accepted as such. This view, on the other hand, does not imply that one should not take uto- pia seriously, rather quite to the contrary. It should be taken seriously because of its inconsistencies, contradictions, and paradoxes. Part 4 In centuries after the publication of More’s Utopia, various writers gave birth to a number of utopian works, which more or less followed the path of the great master. Some of them appear on various lists of utopias, composed by utopian scholars, but there are only a few that belong to the agreed core texts and are con- sidered as ‘key’ utopias.35 These would be Plato’s Republic, More’s Utopia, Fran- cis Bacon’s New Atlantis (1626),36 Tomasso Campanella’s City of the Sun (1623)37 and Étienne Cabet’s Voyage en Icarie (1845).38 Some utopian works became even world-wide bestsellers, sometimes to the surprise of their own authors. Looking Backward: 2000-1887 AD, published by the American writer Edward Bellamy in 1888 opened a ‘golden age of utopias’, which lasted until World War I. At least two other great utopians of this period should be mentioned: British writer William Morris, who’s most important utopian work was News from Nowhere; or, An Epoch of Rest (1890),39 and H. G. Wells, probably the most prolific writer of utopias. Wells, who is best described as a pessimistic utopian,40 marks an important turn in the development of utopianism. His novels, such as The Time Machine (1895) and A Modern Utopia (1905),41 are the writings of an author, who believed that it 35 Cf. Levitas, op. cit. p. 11. 36 Francis Bacon, The New Atlantis, Pennsylvania State University, Philadelphia 1998. 37 Tommaso Campanella, The City of the Sun, The Floating Press, Auckland 2009. 38 Étienne Cabet, Voyage en Icarie, Bureau du populaire, Paris 1848. 39 William Morris, News from Nowhere, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge & New York 1995. 40 Cf. Tower Sargent, op. cit., p. 65. 41 H. G. Wells, A Modern Utopia, Chapman and Hall, London 2010. FV_01_2017.indd 79 26. 10. 17 11:08 80 ernest ženko was possible to improve human life radically, but also doubted that the will to do so would ever be found. As a writer who wrote utopias as well as dystopias, Wells never lost hope, but he never stopped doubting either. History showed, unfortu- nately, that his pessimism was not unfounded, and negative utopias (or, dysto- pias) became the dominant form of utopian literature in the twentieth century. The aforementioned turn is well expressed in an assertion found in the con- clusion of Mumford’s Story of Utopias (1922): “Our most important task at the present moment is to build castles in the air.”42 Four decades later, he only wondered, how he could have expressed such upbeat sentiments in the wake of World War I. He had been writing, Mumford explained, under the “impetus of the great nineteenth century, with its fund of buoyant idealism and robust social enterprise. [...] I was still living in the hopeful spirit of an earlier age.”43 This age was now gone. The word ‘dystopia’ was first used in 1868 by John Stuart Mill, who used it in a speech in Parliament, but became common only in the twentieth century. There is definitively more than one reason for the anti-utopian turn, but probably the most important role in this sense has been played by the possibility of the reali- zation of old dreams. Ideas that seemed unrealizable a couple of centuries ago, gradually became not only a possibility, but a reality, achievable by technologi- cal means and social engineering. This leads to the most outstanding paradox and also the mystery of utopianism. Utopia is something highly desirable, unless it becomes too close to reality itself. At that point, the ‘sweet utopian dream’ becomes the ‘worst nightmare’. In his Utopianism and Politics, Jacob Talmon wrote that “the tragic paradox of Utopia- nism” is that instead of leading to freedom, “it brought totalitarian coercion”.44 For most anti-utopian writers, social Darwinism, eugenics, Auschwitz, Nazism and Stalinism, the A-bomb, and terror of the First and Second World Wars are sufficient cause for the denigration of the whole tradition of utopianism. 42 Mumford, op. cit. p. 187. 43 Quoted in Russell Jacobi, Picture Imperfect: Utopian Thought for an Anti-Utopian Age, Co- lumbia University Press, New York 2005, p. ix. 44 Quoted in Jacobi, op. cit., p. 59. FV_01_2017.indd 80 26. 10. 17 11:08 81 mapping the unmappable: dichotomies of utopianism A series of writing appeared in the wake of the Second World War that defined contemporary anti-utopianism, which in the last decades of the 20th and the first decades of the 21st centuries only gained in strength. On the one hand, there was a growing tradition of dystopian literature defined by now well-known and well-read novels such are Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We (1921),45 and especially Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932)46 and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty- Four (1949).47 On the other hand, there was a set of influential political philosophers, who made a compelling case about the dangers of utopian thought. Their major works include Karl Popper’s The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945), Jacob Talmon’s the Origins of Totalitarian Democracy (1951), Hannah Arendt’s Origins of Totali- tarianism (1951), but also several essays of Isaiah Berlin and others. As pointed out by Russell Jacoby, “they saw Marxism and fascism as related phenomena, different versions of totalitarianism. Inasmuch as a utopianism informed Marx- ism [...] the theory of totalitarianism, which they developed, underlined the toxicity of utopianism. Presented by refugee scholars of great repute and allure, it carried the day. Their liberal criticism became the conventional wisdom of the our time; it damned utopianism as the scourge of history.”48 Both streams, literary and theoretical, thus successfully helped turning utopian hopes into dystopian fears. It cannot be claimed, nonetheless, that they were the ones actually responsible for this turn. More accurately, one could say that they sensed, articulated, and interpreted the sea change in the society in which they lived and tried to grasp it. In any case, this move opened a series of questions that has persisted to this day and which still demands answers, especially, the following. If utopia is a desire for a better life, why did it turn into dystopia? Why do we allow fear to dominate over hope? Is it true that we do not strive for a bet- ter life anymore, and, if not, why did utopia get its predominantly—pejorative meaning? 45 Yevgeny Zamyatin, We, Random House Publishing, New York 2007. 46 Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Rosetta Books, New York 2010. 47 George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Buccaneer Books, Cutchogue (NY) 1982. 48 Jacobi, op. cit., p. 52. FV_01_2017.indd 81 26. 10. 17 11:08 82 ernest ženko Part 5 The above questions and their context uncover probably the most challenging issue regarding contemporary utopianism—the contradiction between a posi- tive orientation toward the future (interpreted as hope) and negative representa- tions of this same orientation (in the sense of fear). This contradiction calls for an approach that is divided in its core and based on the difference between two distinct utopian traditions. Several authors have frequently pointed out the dif- ference between the ‘true’ and ‘false’ utopia; some of them within the frame- work of utopian studies, others in contexts that only border on utopianism. Nev- ertheless, they both made contributions important for our case. In a classical discussion between Ernst Bloch and Theodor W. Adorno from 1964, published as Something’s Missing: A Discussion between Ernst Bloch and Theodor W. Adorno on the Contradictions of Utopian Longing,49 the latter pointed out the distinction between the “cheap utopia, the false utopia, the utopia that can be bought,”50 and the ‘negative utopia’ understood as the only ‘true’ uto- pia. What Adorno calls the ‘cheap utopia,’ is above all the fulfillment of many so-called utopian dreams through technological development and culture in- dustry: “television, the possibility of travelling to other planets, moving faster than sound” etc., but “insofar as these dreams have been realized, they all op- erate as though the best thing about them had been forgotten—one is not happy about them. As they have been realized, the dreams themselves have assumed a peculiar character of sobriety, of the spirit of positivism, and beyond that, of boredom.”51 The result of this positivism of the ‘false’ utopia is therefore that one sees oneself always deceived, and that is also the reason why its opposite, the ‘true’ utopia can be discussed “only in a negative way, [...] in the determined negation,” which in Adorno’s view leads to “the commandment not to ‘depict’ utopia or the commandment not to conceive certain Utopias in detail”.52 Even though it is not so difficult to recognize philosophical ideas of Hegel and Marx that are hidden behind these claims, their true origin lies elsewhere. What 49 Ernst Bloch, The Utopian Function of Art and Literature, MIT Press, Cambridge (MA) 1988, pp. 1-17. 50 Ibid., p. 11. 51 Ibid., p. 1. 52 Ibid. pp. 10-11. FV_01_2017.indd 82 26. 10. 17 11:08 83 mapping the unmappable: dichotomies of utopianism “is meant here is the prohibition of casting a picture of utopia actually for the sake of utopia, and that has a deep connection to the commandment, ‘Thou shalt not make a graven image!’53 As in a form of apophatic theology, utopia must remain defined and experienced only negatively. Two important consequences follow from this assertion. The first one is that it is not even possible to state positively what is the essential concept of utopia. What is more, utopia does not even consist of a single category, because categories change themselves in the process. Even categories that played a crucial role in the utopian tradition, such as happiness or freedom, may be subject to a change or even subversion. The second consequence concerns a maintenance of utopi- an consciousness, because, as Adorno states it, “insofar as we are not allowed to cast the picture of utopia, insofar as we do not know what the correct thing would be, we know exactly, to be sure, what the false thing is”.54 To put it simply, even if we do not know how to change the situation in order to make it better, we still may (and should) criticize the existent one, when we find it to be bad. In his Picture Imperfect, Russell Jacobi follows a similar approach, and divides utopias and utopianism in two distinct classes. On the one hand, there are ‘blue- print utopias,’55 and virtually all attention in the utopian tradition is focused on them. “From Thomas More to B. F. Skinner, the blueprint utopians have detailed what the future will look like; they have set it out; they have elaborated it; they have demarcated it. [...] The utopian blueprinters give the size of rooms, the number of seats at tables, the exact hours at which to arise and retire.”56 There are several problems regarding ‘blueprint’ utopias: they are static, rigid, frozen in time, and they rapidly become dated. However, they are also authoritarian and repressive. “They say: this is the way people must dress; this is the hour they must eat.”57 53 Ibid., p. 11. 54 Ibid. p. 12. 55 The first blueprint utopia was probably that of Hippodamus, one of the first city planners known to history, who achieved fame in the ancient world by designing cities. Cf. Mum- ford, op. cit., p. 18. 56 Jacobi, op. cit., p. 32. 57 Ibid. FV_01_2017.indd 83 26. 10. 17 11:08 84 ernest ženko On the other hand, there is a tradition of utopians, who were less noticed and not so easy to define. They form the opposite class, anti-blueprint utopians, or, as Jacobi called them, the iconoclastic utopians. “Rather than elaborate the fu- ture in precise detail, they longed, waited, or worked for utopia but did not vis- ualize it. The iconoclastic utopians tapped ideas traditionally associated with utopia—harmony, leisure, peace, and pleasure—but rather than spelling out what could be, they kept, as it were, their ears open toward it.”58 To address the problem of utopia today, therefore, means above all to grasp the dichotomy between the two aforementioned strategies. In the center of this rift stands the problem of image construction as the central preoccupation of contemporary societies. In traditional societies, wrote Daniel J. Boorstin, peo- ple had their ideals and they strove to follow them, even if they knew that they could not achieve them. Nevertheless, in the twentieth century, this changed: “We came then to distrust the very concept of an ideal, as an abstraction. We distrusted any standard of perfection toward which all people could strive.”59 Moreover, continues Boorstin, human aims and motives lost their relation to ideals, and the image took this role instead. In the process, the way of thinking about the relation between ideals and images has been reversed: “Instead of thinking that an image was only a representation of an ideal, we came to see the ideal as a projection or generalization of an image.”60 In a process, similar to the one described by Boorstin, the ‘false’, or blueprint utopia, based on image production, became the mainstream utopian tradition. However, due to development of technology and society, it turned either into dystopia, which denigrated utopianism as a whole, or to escapism in the form of popular culture or, as Adorno and Horkheimer called it, culture industry. Both ‘solutions’ are devastating in the sense that they do not offer thinking of a dif- ferent (possibly better) society in the future, since they both contribute either to fear of the future or of the status quo. The only way to a different and possi- bly better future, therefore, seems to be offered by the ‘true’, iconoclast utopia, which keeps alive probably the most important trait of human existence: hope. 58 Ibid., p. 32. 59 Daniel J. Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America, Vintage Books, New York 2012, p. 201. 60 Ibid. FV_01_2017.indd 84 26. 10. 17 11:08 85 mapping the unmappable: dichotomies of utopianism Not a ‘hope’ in the sense of an image within some slogan in a political cam- paign, but in the sense of a true utopian spirit. However, even so, one should not forget, as the ancient Roman poet Virgil pointed out, that nothing in this better future world will be given as a gift from the gods. 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(2003), A Century of Genocide: Utopias of Race and Nation, Princeton Uni- versity Press, Princeton NJ. Wells, H. G. (2010 [1905]), A Modern Utopia, Chapman and Hall, London. Yoran, Hanan (2010), Between Utopia and Dystopia: Erasmus, Thomas More, and the Hu- manist Republic of Letters, Lexington Books, Lanham. Zamyatin, Yevgeny (2007 [1921]), We, Random House Publishing, New York. FV_01_2017.indd 87 26. 10. 17 11:08 FV_01_2017.indd 88 26. 10. 17 11:08 89 The avant-gardes are an essential constitutive part of modernism, they are “the spearhead of modernity at large.”1 For many artists their modernist status and that of their art is being perpetually questioned, this questioning itself being a characteristic of modernism. For all practical (if not always also theoretical) reasons they nonetheless are considered to be modernist. Modernism reached into realms that used to be off limits both to art and its theoretical reflection. In fact, one of the characteristics of modernism was its constant transgression of the confines set up by previous works and thus a con- tinuous broadening of the frontiers of what is art. The mentioned perpetual questioning of the status of modernist works of art complements the broadening of art’s frontiers. The final consequence of such situation is that anything can become art: either by spatial and institutional contextualization or by concep- tual argumentation. The avant-gardes are a paramount example of this—wheth- er they exist as (a) nineteenth-century “proto-avant-gardes”2 that are bound up with the birth of the socialist movement; as (b) the early or classical avant-gar- des of the first three decades of the twentieth century; as (c) the post-World War II neo-avant-gardes; as (d) movements simultaneous with, but otherwise very different from, the neo-avant-gardes, such as Situationism; or as (e) what I have designated as “the third generation avant-gardes” or the “postmodern postso- cialist avant-gardes.”3 In 1845 when Gabriel Désiré Laverdant wrote the passage about the avant-garde which we often quote today, he linked the identity of the avant-gardes to human 1 Matei Calinescu, Five Faces of Modernity. Modernism, Avant-Garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism, Duke University Press, Durham 1987, p. 119. 2 See Stefan Morawski, “The Artistic Avant-Garde. On the 20th Century Formations,” Polish Art Studies 10, 1989, pp. 79–107. 3 Aleš Erjavec (ed.), Postmodernism and the Postsocialist Condition. Politicized Art under Late Socialism, University of California Press, Berkeley 2003. * FI ZRC SAZU Aleš Erjavec* The Avant-Gardes, Utopias and Clothes Filozofski vestnik | Letnik XXXVIII | Številka 1 | 2017 | 89–106 FV_01_2017.indd 89 26. 10. 17 11:08 90 aleš erjavec totality, to humans (i.e. “artists”) as members of a particular species who are “of the avant-garde” for they know where “Humanity is going, and what the destiny of our species is.”4 This destiny and the direction in which Humanity is going became standardized, a change that we owe partly to Marx and partly to Lenin. In spite of its enormous impact and the opening of a window of opportunity to emancipate the whole world, the aftermath of the October Revolution resembled the reign of Terror during the French Revolution. The only way to salvage utopia as a relevant concept implied by Laverdant’s “destiny of our species” was with the idea of progress, i.e. the idea of a desired future. A related concept was the enlightenment project of emancipation and thus the connectedness of aesthetics and ethics. This bond was what in 1970s allowed Miklós Szabolcsi to claim that a political and social “revolution without an avant-garde [in art] is really a pseu- do-revolution.”5 He furthermore argued that “we can speak of a true avant-garde only if it overlaps with a political revolution, realizes it or prepares it.”6 It is such revolution that opens the doors to a possible utopia in a positive sense. There ex- ist of course other views about this relation, according to which “the assumption of a necessary relation between cultural avant-garde and left politics is mislead- ing as well as incomplete, because the political activities of avant-garde artists (of all kinds) have included other politics than those of the left.”7 It is for such reasons that it remains highly questionable whether the project of utopia remains relevant today. Instead we could side with Thierry de Duve, for example, who argues that the “emancipation project has to be replaced by the ‘emancipation maxim’”8 because “humanity will never reach adulthood—un- derstood as the entirely rational and autonomous state of enlightened subject.”9 The early or classical avant-gardes employed various new realms of human practice to create unprecedented works and to express new ideas and positions, thereby broadening the sphere of what was hitherto considered art. The new 4 Quoted in Calinescu, p. 107. 5 Miklós Szabolcsi, “Ka nekim pitanjima revolucionarne avangarde,” Književna reč 3, no. 101, 1978, p. 14. 6 Ibid. 7 David Cottington, The Avant-Gardes. A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2013, p. 100. 8 Thierry de Duve, Kant after Duchamp, MIT Press, Cmbridge, Mass. 1998, p. 443. 9 Ibid., pp. 437-38. FV_01_2017.indd 90 26. 10. 17 11:08 91 the avant-gardes, utopias and clothes avant-garde spirit reached into all crevices of life. This was especially true of ex- pressionism, Italian Futurism, Russian Constructivism and French Surrealism. Some avant-gardes—such as Russian Constructivism—reached also into arts and crafts. In this respect, Russian Productivism to some extent resembled Art Deco practices, the Arts & Crafts movement, the Deutscher Werkbund, Bauhaus, etc., thus creating works that were also meant to resemble art of the post-Octo- ber Russia. In the early twentieth century a fairly new expressive terrain was clothing, but one could also mention cuisine, smell, touch, furniture, and all sorts of novel ex- pressive devices, ranging from Futurist photo-dynamism, the cinema, Russolo’s 1910 noise intoners (intonarumori), and Giacomo Balla’s clothes as presented in “The Male Futurist Clothing Manifesto” (1914), to the Russian fusion of avant-gar- de experimentalism in stage design and theater staging as such with cinematic montage, scenography and costumes: “Applied arts were [...] the instrument to materialize the Soviet utopian ideals in post-revolutionary Russia.”10 Such thinking was by 1920 preceded by a long history, reaching all the way to Henri de Saint-Simon. The latter planned a new society built by artists, engineers, and scientists. In this way, the Saint-Simonian utopian vision was much later linked to Constructivism, with Saint-Simon’s concept of the avant-garde of art- ist-producers strongly resembling that of the Russian Constructivists. The Utopia that the Constructivists envisioned was to be constructed by a union of technol- ogy, art, and industry. Margaret A. Rose claims that the Saint-Simonian concept of the artist as an avant-garde leader of men was what Russian Constructivism appropriated into its own conceptual and ideological framework.11 Until the nineteenth century clothes remained on the fringes of theoretical and reflexive attention. Since our conference is devoted to utopia, let me begin by pointing to the zero point of utopia, namely to Thomas More’s Utopia: “In the ideal society outlined in Utopia by Thomas More (1516), people wear practical clothes that are ‘quite pleasant,’ ‘allow free movement of the limbs’ and are suit- 10 Flavia Loscialpo, “Utopian Clothing: The Futurist and Constructivist Proposals in the early 1920s,” Clothing Cultures 1, no. 3, October 2014, p. 17. 11 See Margaret A. Rose, Marx’s Lost Aesthetic. Karl Marx & the Visual Arts, Cambridge Uni- versity Press, Cambridge 1984, p. 11. FV_01_2017.indd 91 26. 10. 17 11:08 92 aleš erjavec able for any season. In Utopia people are ‘happy with a single piece of clothing every two years.”12 In the second half of the nineteenth century clothes became important expres- sions and manifestations of people’s utopian expectations: “[T]hey seem to break the continuum of history, articulating another vision of the world—the utopian idea of a total reorganization of life.”13 Even before Romanticism artists expressed their life philosophy with their life- styles, their clothes, hair, general behavior and even with the choice of food and drink. Thus, in the seventeenth century drinking hot chocolate was fashionable among the European nobility (and denoted aristocracy), while in coffee shops where patrons supported the enlightenment, coffee was the required beverage accompanying liberal discussions. The semantic individuation offered by the dress codes of the middle ages was gone, but the more easy-going and eclectic Bohemian style became typical of the nineteenth-century artists and poets and has remained in this respect unchanged until today, only that since the 1960s it has been typical mostly of pop musicians and less frequently—if at all—of poets, painters or installation artists. There were exceptions, such as American conceptual artists of the 1970s whose conservative dress code—black suit and white shirt—has from the outset been their trademark. Similarly, members of the Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK) organization in Slovenia dressed from their beginning in the early 1980s in black, the more general style of their dress being made specific in the case of one of its central groups—the group of visual artists, the IRWIN group—in black suits, white shirts, and black ties. A specific case was and remains Dragan Živadinov, the leader of the theater chapter of the NSK who was under the strong influence of Malevich, his Suprematism, and to some extent also Russian Constructivism. In the 1980s and 1990s Živadinov wore a special suit: overalls. For him, too, this dress signified more than mere clothes possessing a simple practical value: “Overalls were introduced about 1750 as a protective article of clothing intended to prevent work related wear and tear 12 Loscialpo, “Utopian Clothing,” p. 2. 13 Ibid., p. 4. FV_01_2017.indd 92 26. 10. 17 11:08 93 the avant-gardes, utopias and clothes to breeches and stockings, which were the standard clothing items required by fashion at the time.”14 The first use of overalls as part of military uniform was by the Americans, while the earliest written mention of the “overalls” in English language was from 1776. The term was retained by the U. S. army until the 1850s. “By the 1859s, the over- alls became a single piece and worn over the trousers. The standard colors slow- ly became standardized with white being for painters, pin striped for rail road workers, and finally the blue shades for the rest of the working class.”15 In the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries overalls were used by mechanics and later by aircrews. In the early twentieth century overalls (coveralls) acquired additional aesthetic and ideological functions. Their political ideological function related mostly to the fashionable “artist-Constructor”—the Russian (pro-Bolshevik) constructor from the early 1920s. The image of the “artist-Constructor” was also promoted in the early 1920s by Aleksandr Rodchenko and László Moholy-Nagy, two well- known personalities who shared many political and ideological views. In this they were both preceded by John Heartfield as witnesses the painting Monteur John Heartfield by Georg Grosz from 1920. In Russia overalls became one of the symbols of the new Soviet society. In many respects, Russian Constructivism coincided with Italian Futurism. As early as 1911 and 1912, Giacomo Balla and Fortunato Depero developed theoretical positions on clothing according to which clothing should follow principles of Futurist painting. As he did on many similar occasions, Marinetti modified the text of the relevant manifesto so that it expressed the militant opposition of Futurists to “neutralists,” i.e. those who wanted Italy to stay out of the Great War (socialists for example). On September 11, 1914, Giacomo Balla published the manifesto “Anti-Neutral Clothes.” It was meant not as an attack on neutral- ists so much as an opposition to conformist dress and the promotion of clothes that were asymmetrical, colorful and daring. Shoes, for example, were intend- 14 Walton & Taylor Mercantile, “A Brief History of Overalls and the Origins of Blue Jeans,” htttp://www.waltontaylor.com/overalls/html. 15 Blair Mountain Reenactment Society, “The History of Overalls,” http://blairmountain- reenactment.wordpress.com/2011/05/10/the-history-of-overalls/. FV_01_2017.indd 93 26. 10. 17 11:08 94 aleš erjavec Fig. 1: Ernesto Michahelles (Thayaht), “Tuta” (1919) FV_01_2017.indd 94 26. 10. 17 11:08 95 the avant-gardes, utopias and clothes ed to “deliver merry kicks to all neutralists.”16 For a short while after the war communists and Futurists cooperated. For instance, they jointly formed local Proletkult organizations. During this brief period of time “it was conceivable to have a Communist Party official wearing a suit from Depero’s workshop.”17 The early Futurist clothes were primarily a theoretical concept not meant for mass consumption. A completely different story was that of tuta, an invention of Ernesto Michahelles (aka Thayat) and his brother Ruggero Michahelles (RAM). Thayat (1893 – 1959) created the tuta (also written as TuTa) in 1919 with the pur- pose of offering Italians a dress that was practical, functional, simple, and inex- pensive at the same time that it overcame class divisions. The two brothers re- ceived support from the Florentine newspaper La Nazione, made a film about the tuta, and printed postcards with the slogan “Everybody in tuta” (Tutti in tuta): “[M]ore than 1000 people in Florence had adopted the tuta, which was consid- ered the most provocative garment of the summer of 1920.”18 When Thayat creat- ed his tuta, he did not yet fully embrace Futurism, as he did later. In spite of such “ideological” ambiguity, his works and ideas already at an early time exhibited affinity to ideas held by Futurists, making the question whether the Tuta can be considered a Futurist invention somewhat irrelevant. Italian Futurism and Russian Constructivism thus held views that perhaps possessed no causal rela- tion but shared features on the level of global society and its Weltanschauung. What was a tuta? It was an overall, a simple dress in the shape of a letter T. From its inception, the tuta was an anti-bourgeois project, born as a protest against the high prices of the post-war period and the obsolete stylistic conventions. Thayaht’s aim was to “initiate a transformation similar to an ‘industrial revolu- tion’ of fashion, making the masses feel well dressed and cultured.”19 The Russian overalls—the prozodezhda, the production clothes—had much in common with the Italian invention, the tuta—not to mention their historical simultaneity: the tuta was created in 1919 and the Russian overalls in 1918/19. Both underlined the social function of art and the importance of industrial pro- 16 Caroline Tisdall & Angelo Bozzolla, Futurism, Thames & Hudson, London 1977, p. 194. 17 Günter Berghaus, Futurism and Politics. Between Anarchist Rebellion and Fascist Reaction, 19091944, Berghahn Books, London 1996, p. 198. 18 Loscialpo, “Utopian Clothing,” p. 13. 19 Ibid., p. 11. FV_01_2017.indd 95 26. 10. 17 11:08 96 aleš erjavec duction. Both suits represented “a crucial moment in the utopian vision of a total reorganization of life.”20 In the nineteenth century avant-garde art emerges that is consciously partisan and whose creators consciously support social and political ideals. The found- er of such notion of the avant-garde (and the first to use this term) was Henri de Saint-Simon whose character in his Opinions from 1825 exclaims: “It is we, artists, who will serve you as avant-garde: the power of the arts is in fact most immediate and most rapid: when we wish to spread new ideas among men, we inscribe them on marble or on canvas.”21 In Saint-Simon’s schema of society, art- ists were supposed to be its leaders, with art “exercising over society a positive power, a truly priestly function, and of marching forcefully in the van of all the intellectual faculties, in the epoch of their greatest development!”22 In such a society the role of the government would be reduced to that of police, “an idea,” remarks Donald D. Egbert, that “like Marx’s classless society, was ultimately anarchistic.”23 An echo of Saint-Simon’s ideas is later to be found in Marinetti and Futurism in general, as well as in Russian Constructivism. After Saint-Simon’s death in 1825, his ideas spread across Europe and America. His followers, such as Emile Barrault, published works on his views on art aimed at attracting artists and writers to the cause of social progress through social art and away from the Romantic mentality. Saint-Simonians had a spe- cial affinity toward engineering. Thus, his disciples Père Enfantin and Michel Chevalier, were projecting new technical possibilities, taking the construction of buildings as their favorite technical, even utopian activity. This ranged from a temple (Chevalier) to support for the Suez canal (Barthélemy Prosper Enfantin) and the Grandes Halles in Paris (Eugène Flachat). As John Bowlt observes, “Constructivism produced very little of permanence. It was a movement of built-in obsolescence, of ready-to-wear and throw-away, of designs often intended for multiple and mass consumption, of theories, statements, and projects that left behind a precious, but very scant, legacy of 20 Loscialpo, “Utopian Clothing,” p. 3. 21 Quoted in Donald Drew Egbert, Social Radicalism and the Arts. Western Europe, Gerald Duckworth & Co., London 1970, p. 121. 22 Quoted in ibid., p. 122. 23 Ibid. FV_01_2017.indd 96 26. 10. 17 11:08 97 the avant-gardes, utopias and clothes material objects.”24 On September 21, 1921, five avant-garde artists opened an exhibition of their works titled 5 x 5 = 25. This was a path-breaking exhibition. Rodchenko, who was one of the exhibiting artists, claimed that five of the mon- ochrome paintings he contributed represented the final stage of the decompo- sition of traditional or past art. After them art could only be functional and in- tegrated into the new historical and social reality of the post-October Russia. Soon after theorist Osip Brik invited 25 artists to leave the realm of pure art and begin working in industry. Except for Liubov’ Popova, Alexandra Exter, Varvara Stepanova, Tatlin and a few others, Brik’s revolutionary idea was not accepted by the revolutionary artists: instead of focusing their activity upon the produc- tion of practical and useful objects, they preferred to work in theater, commer- cials, posters, etc. That is to say, they preferred to continue their previous artistic creativity. They became artists-Constructors and strove to practice production art: The Revolution had created a new proletarian class who badly needed func- tional objects: “[The artist-Constructor was] someone who would combine the tough formal values of Constructivism with an understanding of technology to produce a new kind of industrial product.”25 In Rodchenko’s opinion design was not concerned with aesthetics but was a synthesis of ideological, theoretical and practical elements, all of which were related to the broader historical setting represented by the new political sys- tem with unprecedented expectations of a classless society and one as it never existed before. Osip Brik shared this opinion: “Only those artists who once and for all have broken with easel craft, who have recognized productional work in practice, not only as an equal form of artistic labor, but also as the only one possible—only such artists can grapple successfully and productively with the solution to the problems of contemporary artistic culture.”26 Can it be claimed that Constructivists responded to the demands set up by Saint- Simon? The answer to this question remains uncertain. In 1984 Margaret Rose 24 John E. Bowlt, “5 x 5 = 25? The Science of Constructivism,” in Aleš Erjavec (ed.), Aesthetic Revolutions and Twentieth-Century Avant-Garde Movements, Duke University Press, Dur- ham 2015, p. 42. 25 Victor Margolin, The Struggle for Utopia. Rodchenko, Lissitzky, Moholy-Nagy, Chicago Uni- versity Press, Chicago 1997, pp. 83-84. 26 Osip Brik, “From Pictures to Textile Prints” (1924), in John Bowlt (ed.), Russian Art of the Avant-Garde, Thames and Hudson, London 1976, p. 248. FV_01_2017.indd 97 26. 10. 17 11:08 98 aleš erjavec wrote: “In the very first years of the revolution, the Constructivists El Lissitzky and Rodchenko were also to echo Saint-Simon’s encouragement of artists and engineers to co-operate in bringing to birth the new ‘golden age’ in their slogans, and to attempt to put the latter into practice in their monuments, engineering ventures, and new experimental designs for Soviet goods and propaganda.”27 What is certain is that the aesthetic avant-garde—what Victor Margolin calls “the artistic-social avant-garde”—wanted the innovative forms that began to emerge with the Bolshevik Russia “to become signifiers of a new spirit. Their ambition was to create a new social role for art, one that made the artist a significant par- ticipant in the organization and building of social life.”28 Again this brings us into proximity with Productivism. Let me return to Rodchenko’s avant-garde gesture of wearing overalls. This is how Galina Chichagova, a young female art student at the VKhHUTEMAS (Higher Art and Technical Studios), remembered seeing her teacher Aleksandr Rodchenko for the first time, just as he was entering the room to instruct the school’s Basic Course: “A man walked into the studio, from his appearance he looked like a combination of pilot and motorist. He was wearing a beige jacket of military cut, Gallifet-breeches of a grey-green color, on his feet were black boots with grey leggings. On his head was a black cap with a huge shiny, leath- er peak. [...] I immediately saw that this was a new type of man, a special one.”29 We know how Rodchenko’s overalls looked like (and how he looked in them) thanks to the photographer Mikhail Kaufmann, who took a picture of him in overalls in 1922. In the photograph we see Rodchenko smoking a pipe, his head shaven, looking sternly to the right, with two enormous pockets that are im- mediately noticeable on the front of his overalls and were designed (just like the overalls themselves) by his wife, Varvara Stepanova. As in medieval pic- tures, three-dimensional constructions behind the artist (most probably we see Spatial Construction from 192021) illustrate his craft: the production of Constructivist objects. 27 Rose, Marx’s Lost Aesthetic, p. 127. 28 Nina Gurianova, The Aesthetics of Anarchy. Art and Ideology in the Early Russian Avant- Garde, University of California Press, Berkeley 2012, p. 283. 29 Quoted in Margolin, The Struggle for Utopia, p. 87. FV_01_2017.indd 98 26. 10. 17 11:08 99 the avant-gardes, utopias and clothes Rodchenko’s overalls were not a product of the fashion industry; it is fairly ob- vious that what mattered about them was their message and not the fine details of the handiwork of a professional seamstress. In this respect, Rodchenko’s clothes were different from the overalls of the other well-known Constructivist who also belonged to the avant-garde, namely those of László Moholy-Nagy, of whom we possess a photograph as well. We observe his photographic image taken by his wife Lucia Moholy in Dessau in 1925. In his case the fabric of the overalls falls over his body in soft folds, and his trousers are impeccably ironed. The Hungarian aristocrat—at that time already the director of Bauhaus—resem- bles a fashion model rather than a militant Constructivist. Although Rodchenko emanates the spirit of self-assurance and vivacity, he nonetheless looks very different from his aristocratic Hungarian friend: modest and provincial, in overalls made at home, in the kitchen perhaps. Moholy Nagy’s piece of clothing, on the other hand, is easy to imagine being sewn in a high-end couture shop from which a special delivery boy brings it to Lucia Moholy. The artist-Constructor was to announce a new time and new society, one in which Construction would replace all previous art, with this being so much eas- ier and legitimate for it was created (or was to be created) in a Soviet Union that was on its path toward a classless society in which new art was to replace that of the old bourgeoisie. Nonetheless, the story of the overalls doesn’t end here. For a long time it seemed to me that Rodchenko was the source of the avant-garde overalls and that Moholy-Nagy simply appropriated them and wore them in Bauhaus in Weimar and in Dessau. Moholy-Nagy projected “the modern image of the artists as an engineer and technician, thereby replacing the expressionist image of the ex- pressionist artist that had dominated the school before his arrival.”30 In this he differed from the previous leadership and its director, the spiritualist Johannes Itten, who dressed in unusual clothes, adhered to Zoroastrianism, and was eas- ily recognizable by his image and behavior. Moholy-Nagy was offered the post of director in part because conceptually and philosophically he was a complete opposite of Itten: practical, technically oriented, a believer in the special aes- 30 Louis Kaplan, “The New Vision of László Moholy-Nagy” (From the Exhibition Catalogue ‘LUMA – Modern Photography from First Half of the 20th Century). http://thesip.org/lan- guage/en/lkaplanmoholynagy-en/. FV_01_2017.indd 99 26. 10. 17 11:08 100 aleš erjavec thetic and practical value of machinery and construction, he also highly appre- ciated the role of design. In correspondence with the author of this essay, Prof. Dr. Alexander Lavrentiev from the Moscow State Academy “Sergei Stroganov,” (who is also the grand- son of Aleksandr Rodchenko) explained that as far as he was familiar with the matter, the person who was the main promotor of overalls was “John Heartfield [Johann Hartfelde] who was known as ‘monteur’ and wore blue robes while do- ing his collages and photomontages in 1919 and 1920. Rodchenko designed his Productivist suit as a demonstration of the general principle of the specialized functional cloth which had its origin in the costumes of the aviators and drivers, in the principle of the uniform as well. A costume as part of the profession, as a professional instrument.”31 Stepanova and Popova added to overalls a geometric design that referred to the imagined order and efficiency of the Soviet state. Some of the clothes created by Constructivists also found their way into the theater. Popova, for instance, in planning the costume and set design for the Meierkhol’d production of The Magnanimous Cuckold (1922), declared her intention “to find a general principle of prozodezhda for the professional work of the actor in con- nection with the essentials of his present professional role.”32 According to Christina Lodder, “Among the first practical realisations of [pro- duction] clothing was the work-suit which Stepanova made for Rodchenko. [...] Rodchenko’s work-suit, resembling a jump-suit aggressively demonstrating its fastenings and its storage pockets, transformed these essential components into significant formal elements. Otherwise it was extremely simple, and economic in cut, sewing and material. It was a very specialized and individual garment.”33 Another photograph exhibiting the overalls is that of El Lissitzky: Vladimir Tatlin at Work on the Monument to the III International from around 1922. Yet another, 31 Alexander Lavrentiev, Correspondence with the Author, April 17, 2015. 32 Loscialpo, “Utopian Clothing,” p. 19. 33 Christina Lodder, Russian Constructivism, Yale University Press, New Haven 1983, p. 149. FV_01_2017.indd 100 26. 10. 17 11:08 101 the avant-gardes, utopias and clothes titled The Constructor from 1924, employs photographic montage and is in fact El Lissitzky’s self-portrait. One of Gropius’s students at Bauhaus was the Slovenian artist Avgust Černigoj who in 1925 held a Constructivist exhibition in Ljubljana. To the consternation of the local population, he walked around the city, which then had no more than 50,000 inhabitants, dressed in overalls, like a mechanic—an obvious reference to the figure of the artist-Constructor and particularly to Moholy-Nagy whom he met at Bauhaus. Picasso and Braque also wore overalls becausethey were practical for work in the studio, were anti-conventional and distinguished them as artists. In 1984 in Ljubljana there took place a colloquium organized by the Slovenian Society for Aesthetics. Among the participants were artists and academics who had first-hand knowledge of the classical avant-gardes from the 1910- 1930 period; likewise, there were those of us who were born after World War II. Articles and essays from the colloquium were then published in three issues of the magazine Sodobnost. One of the contributions in the colloquium was by France Klopčič, who was one of the founding members of the Slovenian Communist Party (founded in 1923). In his paper Klopčič drew a vivid image of that time, among the most memorable ones being his recollections of a visit to the Constructivist exhibition organized by Avgust Černigoj in Ljubljana in 1925. Klopčič, who was no art connoisseur, nonetheless sensed the revolutionary na- ture of this new art that Černigoj took as his own and which he presented at the 1925 exhibition from a fairly militant standpoint. This is how France Klopčič recalled his visit: “The exhibition of Constructivism was organized by Avgust Černigoj, who in Germany learned much new from the architect-artist Groppius [sic] and his school Bauhaus. [...] In the hall were hanging big posters, standing upright, diagonally or upside down: “Capital is theft,” “the Artist must become an engineer,” etc. In the exhibition there were objects and pictures. Among the objects one could see individual bicycles, scooters and a typing machine, for the organizer of the exhibition started from the principle: Construction is the first expression of art of that time. It is here that originated the name of the current— Constructivism. Between the pictures were circles, squares and similar combi- nations in white, black and red color. FV_01_2017.indd 101 26. 10. 17 11:08 102 aleš erjavec “I visited the exhibition in the company of Ludvik Mrzel, Stane Melihar, Ivo Grohar and some other male and female comrades. [...] We were greeted by Avgust Černigoj. What I saw overturned all my previous conceptions of artistic exhibitions. I liked the slogan ‘Capital is theft,’ for until then something like that did not exist. With great curiosity I gazed at canvases with black squares and red semi-circles or triangles. And why is here a motor bicycle, where did the wooden bicycle come from? It was unclear to me. But of one thing I was certain; the exhibition marked in essence a protest against the culture and the aesthetic of the bourgeois class, for it destroyed what until then was not allowed to be upturned.”34 Černigoj was especially attracted to Moholy-Nagy: “He made us create from dif- ferent materials something completely new; it was at the same time temporal and abstract.”35 Soon after Černigoj left for Trieste. He intended to start publishing together with the poet and friend Srečko Kosovel a journal titled Constructor, but the periodi- cal never materialized. Thereafter Černigoj lived and worked for most of his life in Trieste, to be discovered and recognized as a unique Slovenian artist only in the 1980s. In the early 1980s not only were numerous academic gatherings devoted to the avant-gardes, but also an extensive revived interest in the clas- sical avant-gardes sprung up across the globe—from Ljubljana to Belgrade and from Ukraine to Armenia. In this respect, our activities in Slovenia strongly re- sembled those all over Europe and beyond. It was during that time that Dragan Živadinov started to dress in overalls. Dragan Živadinov started his career as the leader of various theater groups and has as such become involved in the activities of the Neue Slowenische Kunst organization, in which he has been most intensively active and interested in theater, ritual, space and space travel (supported by similar ideas emanating in the first half of the twentieth century in Russia). Živadinov soon developed his theater pieces and events in the direction of Russian mysticism, especial- 34 France Klopčič, “Slovenska zgodovinska avantgarda 19101930,” Sodobnost, XXXIII, no. 3, 1985, p. 293. 35 Avgust Černigoj, “Slovenska zgodovinska avantgarda 1910-1930,” Sodobnost, XXXIII, no. 3, 1985, p. 297. FV_01_2017.indd 102 26. 10. 17 11:08 103 the avant-gardes, utopias and clothes ly that which had its sources in Kazimir Malevich and his personal and artis- tic mythology. In the 1980s and the 1990s, the figure of the artist-Constructor was very much a part of Živadinov’s Weltanschauung—and to some extent still is, except that in his recent works and discourse abound phrases such as “an engineer is constructing a new theatre.” This shows that the figure of the artist-Constructor is still present, but its previous plethora of significations is now drastically reduced. While such traces of the Constructivist past remain noticeable in Živadinov’s works, lately he has focused on space travel and re- fers in passing to Constructivism. Thus, in 2009 he held a lecture devoted to the “Trieste Constructivist Ambiance as an Announcement of Post-Gravitational Art.” (This original “ambiance” was a spatial construction devised by Avgust Černigoj, Edvard Stepančič, Georgio Carmelich and Josip Vlah in 1927 in Trieste.) Especially in the 1990s, Živadinov made use of the term “artist-Constructor” and proclaimed himself the “attractor,” a “Constructor”36 and “an engineer who is constructing a new theater, in which spectators will look around their own axis and learn a new circumvision.”37 The image of the engineer has today lost its attraction. It no longer relates to the works and ideas of artists and thinkers who attempt to fuse and upgrade art and Construction—two elements at the same time connecting and separating the old bourgeois and class society with the new communist society that was in the making but in fact never quite made it. Let me conclude by summarizing the main points of this article: at approximate- ly the same time Italian Futurists and Russian Constructivists started to develop specific clothes (overalls) so that they would serve practical function and would at the same time represent a step toward the imagined utopia of the future. Balla and Depero in Italy had some modest success with their clothes already at the time of the First World War, while the real success in Italy was that of tuta, de- veloped by Thayaht. The tuta and the productivist prozodezhda had much in common for both were based on the same modernist ideology, namely to create objects that fulfill the functions and needs of the human being as a social being 36 See Tomaž Toporišič, “Spatial Machines in Slovene (No Longer-)Experimental Theatre in the Second Half of the 20th Century,” in Ivo Svetina (ed.), Occupying Spaces. Experimental Theatre in Central Europe 19502010, Slovenski gledališki muzej, Ljubljana 2010, pp. 456-57. 37 Quoted in ibid., p. 457. FV_01_2017.indd 103 26. 10. 17 11:08 104 Fig. 2: Dragan Živadinov, Bajkonur, 2015 aleš erjavec FV_01_2017.indd 104 26. 10. 17 11:08 105 the avant-gardes, utopias and clothes and that at the same time denigrate stratified society, turning the nation into one big political party. In this and in many other respects, these new overalls represent a successful instance of modernist utopianism. The other (but also related) topic of my paper has been the history of the de- velopment and ramifications of the concept of overalls. They were first used by the American army before becoming diversified in the early twentieth century and developed both in Italy and in Russia, with both cases being also excel- lent examples of modernist utopianism. In Bauhaus the Slovenian artist Avgust Černigoj admired Moholy Nagy in his red overalls and decided to emulate him. In 1925, he thus publicly wore such working clothes in Ljubljana. Six decades later—for the first time in 1981—the overalls were once more publicly worn by an artist—Dragan Živadinov—who was emulating both Russian Constructivists and Avgust Černigoj, thereby prolonging not only the practical but also the symbolic life of this piece of clothing. Bibliography Berghaus Günter (1996), Futurism and Politics. Between Anarchist Rebellion and Fascist Reaction, 19091944, Berghahn Books, London. Blair Mountain Reenactment Society, “The History of Overalls,” http://blairmountain- reenactment.wordpress.com/2011/05/10/the-history-of-overalls/. Bowlt John E. (2015), “5 x 5 = 25? The Science of Constructivism,” in Aleš Erjavec (ed.), Aesthetic Revolutions and Twentieth-Century Avant-Garde Movements, Duke Universi- ty Press, Durham. Brik Osip (1976), “From Pictures to Textile Prints” (1924), in John Bowlt (ed.), Russian Art of the Avant-Garde, Thames and Hudson, London. Calinescu Matei (1987), Five Faces of Modernity. Modernism, Avant-Garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism, Duke University Press, Durham. Cottington David (2013), The Avant-Gardes. A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Černigoj Avgust (1985), “Slovenska zgodovinska avantgarda 1910-1930,” Sodobnost XXXIII, no. 3. Duve Thierry de (1998), Kant after Duchamp, Cambridge, MIT Press, Mass. Egbert Donald Drew (1970), Social Radicalism and the Arts. Western Europe, Gerald Duck- worth & Co., London. Erjavec Aleš (ed.) (2003), Postmodernism and the Postsocialist Condition. Politicized Art under Late Socialism, University of California Press, Berkeley. FV_01_2017.indd 105 26. 10. 17 11:08 106 aleš erjavec Gurianova Nina (2012), The Aesthetics of Anarchy. Art and Ideology in the Early Russian Avant-Garde, University of California Press, Berkeley. Kaplan Louis, “The New Vision of László Moholy-Nagy” (From the Exhibition Catalogue ‘LUMA – Modern Photography from First Half of the 20th Century), http://thesip.org/ language/en/lkaplanmoholynagy-en/. Klopčič France (1985), “Slovenska zgodovinska avantgarda 19101930,” Sodobnost, (XXX- III) 1910/1930, no. 3. Lavrentiev Alexander (2015), Correspondence with the Author, April 17. Lodder Christina (1983), Russian Constructivism, Yale University Press, New Haven. Loscialpo Flavia (2014), “Utopian Clothing: The Futurist and Constructivist Proposals in the early 1920s,” Clothing Cultures, 1, no. 3, October. Margolin Victor (1997), The Struggle for Utopia. Rodchenko, Lissitzky, Moholy-Nagy, Chica- go University Press, Chicago. Morawski Stefan (1989), “The Artistic Avant-Garde. On the 20th Century Formations,” Polish Art Studies 10. Szabolcsi Miklós (1978), “Ka nekim pitanjima revolucionarne avangarde,” Književna reč 3, no. 101. Rose Margaret A. (1984), Marx’s Lost Aesthetic. Karl Marx & the Visual Arts, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Tisdall, Caroline & Bozzolla Angelo (1977), Futurism, Thames & Hudson, London. Toporišič Tomaž (2010), “Spatial Machines in Slovene (No Longer-)Experimental Theatre in the Second Half of the 20th Century,” in Ivo Svetina (ed.), Occupying Spaces. Ex- perimental Theatre in Central Europe 19502010, Slovenski gledališki muzej, Ljubljana. Walton & Taylor Mercantile, “A Brief History of Overalls and the Origins of Blue Jeans,” htttp://www.waltontaylor.com/overalls/html. FV_01_2017.indd 106 26. 10. 17 11:08 107 * University of California, Santa Cruz Filozofski vestnik | Letnik XXXVIII | Številka 1 | 2017 | 107–129 Tyrus Miller* Expressionist Utopia: Bruno Taut, Glass Architecture, and the Dissolution of Cities I This essay focuses on the visionary artistic activity of the German-born archi- tect and theorist Bruno Taut during and shortly after World War I. In such works as Alpine Architecture (1919), The City Crown (1919), The World-Master Builder (1919), and The Dissolution of Cities (1920), Taut developed a number of archi- tectural visions that were not simply elaborations of a new architecture or new urbanism, but also schemata of a total spatial disposition to produce a utopi- an “new man.” As he argued in his Architektur-Programm, published in late 1918, “The direct carrier of the spiritual forces, moulder of the sensibilities of the general public, which today are slumbering and tomorrow will awake, is architecture. Only a complete revolution in the spiritual realm will create this architecture.”1 As Taut’s statement for a 1919 exhibition in Berlin of “Unknown Architects” clearly indicates, he fully identified the utopian social future with the future of architecture, as if both were simply expressions of the same spiritual-historical forces: “We call upon all those who believe in the future. All strong longing for the future is architecture in the making. One day there will be a world-view, and then there will also be its sign, its crystal—architecture.”2 Similarly, in his 1919 book The City Crown, Taut formulates a total reciprocity of urban space with social experience, so that a more organic organization of the city becomes the typological image of communal happiness and harmony, as it was in the phalanstères of the 19th century utopian socialist Charles Fourier. “Architecture,” Taut writes, “becomes the crystallized image of human strati- fication. The entire city is accessible to everyone; and people go to where they 1 Bruno Taut, “A Programme for Architecture”, in: U. Conrads (ed.) Programs and Manifes- toes on 20thCentury Architecture, 1975, trans. Michael Bullock, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press, p. 41. 2 Bruno Taut, “New Ideas on Architecture,” in Programs and Manifestoes on 20th-Century Architecture, p. 47. FV_01_2017.indd 107 26. 10. 17 11:08 108 tyrus miller are drawn. There is no conflict, because people who have the same opinions always find each other.”3 Already in an article published in Der Sturm in 1914, “Eine Notwendigkeit” (A Necessity), Taut had expounded his view that new, modernistic tendencies in the arts, which emphasized the construction [Aufbauen] of images from ab- stract elements, implied a renewed relation to architecture that could unify the bewildering proliferation of new forms: “There is a necessity implicit in this new art that requires the union of architecture, painting, and sculpture.”4 In turn, he posits architecture as the super-art that can incorporate each of the innovations of modern painting and sculpture and bring them together in a higher synthetic unity: The building should contain rooms that will embody the characteristic man- ifestations of our new art: the light compositions of Delaunay in large glass windows; on the walls, the cubistic rhythms—the painting of Franz Marc and the art of Kandinsky. The columns of the exterior and interior should await the constructive sculptures of Archipenko; and the ornament will be created by Campendonck. The collaborators herewith are by no means finished. They should all act independently, as is thoroughly possible in an architectural or- ganism—in order that the whole constitutes a splendid overall timbre.5 By the time of his 1918 “Architektur-Programm,” written under the influence of the revolutionary upheavals following Germany’s defeat in World War I, Taut would even more fervently insist that only architecture could lead art into a new synthesis that would redeem its spiritual and social role from chaos: Today there is no art. The various disrupted tendencies can find their way back to a single unity only under the wings of a new architecture, so that every indi- 3 Bruno Taut, Die Stadtkrone [1919] (Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag, 2002), p. 66. English trans- lation: Bruno Taut, The City Crown, ed. and trans. Matthew Mindrup and Ulrike Alten- müller-Lewis (Surrey: Ashgate, 2015), p. 88. 4 Bruno Taut, “Eine Notwendigkeit,” Der Sturm 4/196-97 (February 1914): pp. 174-75. English translation: “A Necessity,” in German Expressionism: Documents from the End of the Wil- helmine Empire to the Rise of National Socialism, ed. Rose-Carol Washton Long (New York: G.K. Hall, 1993), p. 125. 5 Bruno Taut, “Eine Notwendigkeit,” p. 175; “A Necessity,” p. 126. Translation modified. FV_01_2017.indd 108 26. 10. 17 11:08 109 expressionist utopia: bruno taut, glass architecture, and the dissolution of cities vidual discipline will play its part in building. There will be no frontiers between the applied arts and sculpture or painting. Everything will be one thing: archi- tecture.6 The capacity of architecture to synthesize the arts could in turn, in Taut’s view, provide a new spiritual unity for a turbulent age, insofar as it could “strive for the concentration of all the national energies in the symbol of the building be- longing to a better future” and “demonstrate the cosmic character of architec- ture, its religious foundations, so-called Utopias.”7 Imagining this utopian horizon on an expanded scale in The City Crown, Taut counterpoised to the chaotic and unplanned growth of the modern metropolis and industrial city a vision of a highly organized, spatially and experientially coherent disposition of construction and functions, all symbolically magnet- ized by the “city crown” at its center, which lifted itself above any functional use to symbolize transcendence. The new city was envisioned as an architec- tural-urbanistic Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art), which in the process of shaping society and space in a utopian image, would also unite and spiritually redeem the arts, which in modernity have fallen asunder from an earlier reli- gious unity exemplified by the Gothic cathedral. Other of Taut’s works of this period, however, most notably Alpine Architecture and The Dissolution of Cities, imagine a fantastic modulation of the English Garden City movement’s basic idea of disaggregated, suburban development. Taut’s visionary texts imagine the dispersion of building across the earth, into agrarian areas and into the mountains, thus artistically prefiguring the reunion of alienating divisions between city and countryside, and eventually the closing all divisions that separate man, nature, and cosmos. In what follows, I describe the elements of Taut’s developing utopian vision during the period of 1914 to 1921, but more importantly also I consider the larger contextual conditions that supported the formation of this expressionist architectural utopia and Taut’s fairly sudden abandonment of it in favor of more sober, functional projects in the mid-1920s until the end of his life. 6 Bruno Taut, A Programme for Architecture,” p. 41. 7 Ibid. FV_01_2017.indd 109 26. 10. 17 11:08 110 tyrus miller II Bruno Taut was born in 1880 in Germany and died in 1938 in exile from Nazism in Turkey, where he was a professor of architecture in Istanbul and made several significant contributions to the architecture of the administrative city of Ankara. Early on in his career, he was strongly influenced by the Garden City movement of urban planning introduced in Great Britain by Ebeneezer Howard at the turn of the century. As noted, Taut would later radicalize certain Garden City precepts concerning the decentralization of cities and the balancing of built and green open space, making them elements of his utopian, anarchistic visions of a new harmony of architecture, earth, and the cosmos. Taut was a leading figure in the left-wing, independent socialist “activist” movement of artists and architects that formed during the revolutionary ferment in Germany following its defeat in World War I. He was a key organizer of the Arbeitsrat für Kunst (Work-Council for Art), founded in Berlin in 1918, as well as the instigator of the esoteric “Crystal Chain Circle” of architect-artist correspondents who, unable to build in the dif- ficult post-World War I circumstances, sought to develop visionary architectural ideas on paper, in sketches and descriptions shared among each other.8 He lived and worked in Berlin and in Moscow in the interwar years, where he dedicated himself especially to building housing in consonance with the municipal social- ist politics of interwar Germany and Austria, and in Japan following the coming to power of the National Socialists in Germany, which threatened Taut as a left- ist architect considered by the Nazis to be a cultural Bolshevik. A particularly important date in Taut’s architectural career was 1914, when he constructed one of the most important actually-built examples of expressionist architecture, his Cologne Werkbund Exhibition Glass House, which was spon- sored by the glass industry. Drawing inspiration from the visionary writer Paul Scheerbart, whose novels contain architectural fantasies that merge technol- ogy and aesthetic experience in marvelous constructions, Taut designed an elaborate domed and faceted pavilion of colored glass dedicated to Scheerbart and including commissioned inscriptions by Scheerbart about the wonders of glass architecture, such as “Das bunte Glas / Zerstört den Haß” (Colored glass / 8 For documentation of this circle’s activities and correspondence, see Crystal Chain Letters: Architectural Fantasies by Bruno Taut and His Circle, ed. and trans. Iain Boyd Whyte (Cam- bridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1985). FV_01_2017.indd 110 26. 10. 17 11:08 expressionist utopia: bruno taut, glass architecture, and the dissolution of cities Destroys hatred) and “Das Glas bringt uns die neue Zeit; / Backsteinkultur tut uns nur leid” (Glass heralds a new age / The culture of brick brings only sorrow). Taut’s Glass House, as Reyner Banham argued, is a masterpiece for its design and use of material: “Both structurally and visually this is the most brilliant combination of glass and steel achieved by any architect in the years immediate- ly preceding 1914. ... [I]ts rare qualities suggest that it was produced in a moment of genius that Taut was unable to repeat.”9 9 Reyner Banham, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age, 2nd edition (Cambridge, Mas- sachusetts: The MIT Press, 1960), p. 81. Fig. 1: Bruno Taut, Glass House, from Paul Scheerbart’s article “Glass Houses” in the Technische Monatshefte, 28 March 1914. FV_01_2017.indd 111 26. 10. 17 11:08 112 tyrus miller But Taut’s ambitions for the piece went beyond architectural intentions into a quasi-religious utopian realm of spiritual regeneration through architectural design. He spoke of it as an immersive architectural environment in which a viewer’s trajectory through the building would be like entering a kaleidoscope and having a child-like experience of wondrous play in a built space. Describing the descending path from the entrance to the lower sections of the building, Taut wrote: The cascade’s downward trail leads the eye to a purple fabric-line niche with a screen, upon which rhythmically shifting kaleidoscopic images are projected. The beauty of the images reminds the viewer of childhood. Until now, what the eye sees in a kaleidoscope had never been successfully projected onto a screen, since in the projected image the mirrored parts of the image are usually obscured by the opacity of the tube that holds them. This is the first time that such clear kaleido- scopic images have been projected.10 As the architectural historian Iain Boyd Whyte has argued, Taut’s Glass House was in itself a kind of manifesto-building that performatively demonstrated its own aspiration to transcend architectural materiality and materialistic aims in 10 Bruno Taut, “Glass House: Cologne Werkbund Exhibition 1914,” in Glass Architecture, in Glass! Love!! Perpetual Motion!!!, eds. Josiah McElheny and Christine Burgin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), p. 103. Fig. 2: Bruno Taut, Glass House (interior view) FV_01_2017.indd 112 26. 10. 17 11:08 113 expressionist utopia: bruno taut, glass architecture, and the dissolution of cities favor of a sublime play of light, color, and spiritual qualities. In a retrospective article from 1921, Taut underscored that his relation to architectural materiality embodied not merely a compositional approach, but furthermore an architec- tural ontology that conceived of architecture spiritually: [F]rom a spatial perspective, architecture or building is nothing other than the bringing of light. Glass is light itself, and wood and stone architecture have al- ways striven to bring light, so “glass architecture” is nothing more than the final link in the chain of building. The history of glass architecture is therefore the history of architecture itself.11 Light, in Taut’s view here, is the very being of architecture, which till recently has appeared to us only through a veil of heavy, opaque materials; glass archi- tecture now allows the transparent essence of architecture to shine through. As Whyte sums up, “the Glashaus was both a refutation of materialism and a model for a new, non-materialistic architecture.”12 Similarly, Detlef Mertens notes the aim of Taut’s building to reshape and spiritualize the inner self through the ex- perience of his architecture. Such individual experience of a new spiritual-aes- thetic totality, in turn, prefigured broader utopian transfigurations of mankind in a “New Man.” “[F]or Scheerbart and Taut,” Mertens writes, glass architecture created a new environment for new kinds of experience, for a new subjectivity. The Glass House provided an immersive artistic environment—a total work of art integrating glass construction, glass art and mosaics—which in- duced an altered state of consciousness as the subject dissolved empathetically to be at one with the world.13 Taut’s conception of glass architecture even implied a pedagogical vision, as is typical of utopias, in which the “training” of new utopian subjects to form and generalize the future “New Man” is always a critical task. With his 1910 and 1913 exhibition pavilions, built for the German cement and iron industries respec- tively, Taut aimed for the aesthetic education of his visitors into the characteris- 11 Bruno Taut, “Glass Archiecture” in Glass! Love!! Perpetual Motion!!!, p. 119. 12 Iain Boyd Whyte, Bruno Taut and the Architecture of Activism (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni- versity Press, 1982), p. 17. 13 Detlef Mertins, “Glass Architecture” in Modernity Unbound: Other Histories of Architec- tural Modernity (London: Architecture Association, 2011), pp. 17-18. FV_01_2017.indd 113 26. 10. 17 11:08 114 tyrus miller tics of industrial materials. As Matthew Mindrup writes, “Contrary to his simple, pragmatic housing developments in Berlin and Magdeburg, Taut’s exhibition pavilions were conceived as mechanisms to create vivid optical and partly hap- tic experiences of the materials they were intended to market.”14 With his 1914 Glashaus Taut goes even further in his aesthetic pedagogy, drawing upon the figure of the child, playing with the glass materials of an architectural kaleido- scope assembled through constructive tinkering: [W]e win over children, who have been thrust into this cold, joyless life, through play. Our building is play. ... And we make children into our master builders with real playthings (for example my glass construction kits with colorful, nearly un- breakable glass blocks). These master builders see with emotion, and when they are grown-ups they will build with and through us, even if “we” are dead.15 Implicitly, these children are the bearers of the utopian task of constructing, like Taut, an architectural kaleidoscope within which the creative work-play of a utopian future will be anticipated. However, as Walter Benjamin noted, the kaleidoscope (and more generally, the notion of kaleidoscopic experience) carried a particular symbolic valence with respect to architecture and the city. This optical toy, which was invented in the early 19th century, had for exam- ple been seized upon by Baudelaire to metaphorize the aesthetic sublimation of shock experience in the metropolis, with its constantly changing stream of visual intensities, constellations of bodies, and interpenetrating perspectives and shapes. Accordingly, Baudelaire imagined the man of the crowd, with the modern artist as a special instance of the type, experiencing urban life as if he were a “kaleidoscope gifted with consciousness.”16 We might then see Taut’s Glashaus as an attempt to construct a haven where harried city-dwellers could retreat from the urban exterior into a sheltered interior; yet rather than eluding the shock experience of the outside, they would receive it in a glittering, aesthet- ically transfigured form. The experience to be had inside Taut’s glass pavilion would, in this view, function as an aesthetic pharmakon against the onslaught 14 Matthew Mindrup, “Introduction: Advancing the Reverie of Utopia,” in Bruno Taut, The City Crown, ed. and trans. Matthew Mindrup and Ulrike Altenmüller-Lewis (Surrey: Ash- gate, 2015), p. 9. 15 Bruno Taut, “Glass Archiecture” in Glass! Love!! Perpetual Motion!!!, p. 121. 16 Charles Baudelaire, “The Painter of Modern Life,” in The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays, ed. and trans. Jonathan Mayne (London: Phaidon Press, 1964), p. 9. FV_01_2017.indd 114 26. 10. 17 11:08 115 expressionist utopia: bruno taut, glass architecture, and the dissolution of cities of metropolitan shock: a weakened dose of the same poison, refined, filtered, and reconfigured by the transparencies of colored glass. Notably, however, Benjamin employed the kaleidoscope metaphor critical- ly, to call in question the ideological function of modern aesthetic experience which creates an apparent order from a disintegrated, fractured social experi- ence—with its constantly renovated forms constituted by the reflecting mirrors that capture appearances from the churning shards of material life. Although Benjamin was a great admirer of Taut’s hero Scheerbart, and fervently advocat- ed in his writings the virtues of glass architecture,17 he judged the aestheticizing utopias of expressionists such as Taut to be regressive and reactionary, in need of a shattering shock to release their pent-up forces: The course of history, seen in terms of the concept of catastrophe, can actually claim no more attention from thinkers than a child’s kaleidoscope, which with every turn of the hand dissolves the established order into a new array. There is profound truth in this image. The concepts of the ruling class have always been the mirrors that enabled an image of “order” to prevail.—The kaleidoscope must be smashed.18 For Benjamin, in contrast to Taut, glass signified the possibility of a depthless, zero-degree experience correlative to basic material properties of clarity, light- ness, and smoothness, such that, he would claim, “objects of glass have no ‘au- ra.’”19 Closer, then, to the glass curtain walls of the Bauhaus and the skyscrapers of Mies van der Rohe than to expressionist crystal cathedrals, Benjamin valued in glass architecture not its ability to “enrich” experience with kaleidoscopic light-play, but rather its experiential “poverty”: the glass house’s disenchanted transparency, its abolition of secrets and traces, its exposure of the interior to 17 For further discussion of Benjamin, Scheerbart, and glass architecture, see Tyrus Miller, Modernism and the Frankfurt School (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014), pp. 35-76. 18 Walter Benjamin, “Central Park,” in Selected Writings, Volume 4: 1938-1940, ed. Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings, trans. Edmund Jephcott and Howard Eiland (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003), p. 164. 19 Walter Benjamin, “Experience and Poverty,” trans. Rodney Livingstone, in Selected Writ- ings, Volume 2, Part 2, eds. Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland, and Gary Smith (Cam- bridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press, 2005), p. 734. FV_01_2017.indd 115 26. 10. 17 11:08 116 tyrus miller the social space outside. The utopian possibilities of glass could, in Benjamin’s view, only be unleashed when it was unburdened of any nostalgic utopia to re- new experience in an aesthetic preserve of colored glass. III Already partially explicit in Taut’s single Glass House was a larger utopian vision in which modern metropolitan experience and subjectivity might be spiritually transfigured through its encounters with glass architecture. The visitor to the Glass House should become more childlike, more creative, more connected to the spiritual phenomena of light, which connects our visible world of space with nature and the cosmos and metaphorizes our access to timeless, intelligible es- sences, according to the schema of Platonic and neo-Platonic metaphysics and theosophic esoteric doctrines that were influential among the artistic avant-gar- de of the time. However, it is not until Taut takes the step from architectural design at the level of individual building to urban planning and the redesign of cities along visionary lines that he engages fully the utopian imaginary of total social, anthropological, and metaphysical change through architecture. His vi- sionary schemes go in two polar, but complementary directions, though both converge on the utopian goal of using “architecture to overcome national and social differences,”20 a utopian moment that, as Manfredo Tafuri has expound- ed, had a broad if short-lived moment of existence in the larger unfolding of modern architecture and urbanism.21 The first of Taut’s directions is to imagine a total organization of city-space around a sacred built center, “the City-Crown,” that serves as a kind of magnetic field holding all functions of the city, and all spaces where they are carried out, in its symbolic sway. Taut’s complementary but opposite direction was to project, in a set of conceptual architectural works encompassing both visual art and literary invention, the “dissolution of cities.” According to these latter works, buildings and population would be dissemi- 20 Ulrike Altenmüller, “The City Crown: A Utopianist’s Vision of a Better World by Bruno Taut,” Spaces of Utopia: An Electronic Journal, 2nd series, no. 2 (2013): p. 134. 21 See, Manfredo Tafuri, Architecture and Utopia: Design and Capitalist Development, trans. Barbara Luigia La Penta, Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1976; Tafuri and Francesco Dal Co, Modern Architecture, trans. Robert Erich Wolf, New York: Rizzoli, 1986; Tafuri, The Sphere and the Labyrinth: Avant-Gardes and Architecture from Piranesi to the 1970s, trans. Pellegrino d’Acierno and Robert Connolly, Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1987. FV_01_2017.indd 116 26. 10. 17 11:08 117 expressionist utopia: bruno taut, glass architecture, and the dissolution of cities nated out into the countryside and nature, to engender a new organic unity of humanity, the earth, and the cosmos. Taut’s The City Crown, published in 1919 with overall authorial and editorial responsibility by Taut and additional textual material from Paul Scheerbart, Erich Baron, and Adolf Behne, developed a concept of city organization based on the concentric, radial garden city, but with deeper utopian aspirations to overcome the social and spatial disorder of the modern metropolis or industrial city. In their afterword to the English translation of Taut’s book, the architec- tural historians Ulrike Altenmüller-Lewis and Mark L. Brack underscore the pivotal role of The City Crown in Taut’s architectural thinking and practice. “Die Stadtkrone can be seen,” they write, “as a turning point where Taut’s social and spiritual agendas became equal to the pragmatic and aesthetic impulses found Fig. 3: Page from Bruno Taut, The City Crown with graphic view of model city FV_01_2017.indd 117 26. 10. 17 11:08 118 tyrus miller in his work.”22 Underscoring Taut’s social and political concerns is, in fact, a ref- erence to the new city as a reinvented polis, as a space not simply to reproduce a bare material and biological functioning, but to produce and clarify shared conceptions of “the good life.” “A new idea directs all these heads and hands,” Taut writes, “the model of the new city. A deep desire directs us all: according to Aristotle, we want cities in which we can live not only safely and healthily, but also happily.”23 The specifically utopian dimension of the city-construction, how- ever, is that it lifts the city up from the conflictual realm of politics and the class struggle, into a spiritualized community conjoined in their common enjoyment of the new city. Taut declares his conception on behalf of socialism, but qualifies this as another sort of socialism than that pursued by parties and labor unions, as a “new form of Christianity” that projects its utopia of ethical and spiritual Gemeinschaft beyond the chaotic Gesellschaft of the modern, industrial city: Socialism in the non-political, supra-political sense, far removed from every form of authority is the simple, ordinary connection between people and it bridges any gaps between warring classes and nations to unite humanity—if one philosophy can crown the city of today, it is an expression of these thoughts.24 This thought is expressed architecturally, above all by the high, central con- struction of the “city crown” itself, the tallest building of the city, which, “entire- ly void of purpose, reigns above the entirety as pure architecture.”25 This pure architecture offers an experience of the sublime in which practical purpose can be suspended, in favor of a religiously-tinged aesthetic communion that has as its sole content the utopian overcoming of conflict in a new collective, architec- tonically objectified harmony and transcendence: Emanating from the infinite, [light] is captured in the highest point of the city. It shatters and shines on the colored panels, edges, surfaces and concavities of the crystal house. This house becomes the carrier of cosmic feelings, a religiousness that reverently remains silent. ... The brilliance, the shining of the pure and the transcendental, shimmers above the festivity of the unbroken, radiating colors. 22 Ulrike Altenmüller and Mark L. Brack, “Afterword: The City Crown in the Context of Bruno Taut’s Oeuvre,” in Bruno Taut, The City Crown, p. 149. 23 Taut, Die Stadtkrone, p. 55; The City Crown, p. 79. 24 Taut, Die Stadtkrone, p. 60; The City Crown, p. 83. 25 Taut, Die Stadtkrone, p. 67; The City Crown, p. 89. FV_01_2017.indd 118 26. 10. 17 11:08 119 expressionist utopia: bruno taut, glass architecture, and the dissolution of cities Like a sea of color, the municipality spreads itself around the crown, as a sign of the good fortune of new life.26 Taut’s expressionist utopia is problematic, however, or even perhaps reaction- ary, for its attempt to overcome the contradictions of industrial society and the modern city with a spiritualized, visionary architecture inflated to a total so- cio-spatial utopia. Its problematic nature, however, lies less with its positive content, despite the attempts by some critics, such as Wolfgang Pehnt, to depict Taut’s utopia as völkisch and proto-fascist.27 More serious is its vagueness and emptiness, its indulgence in a rhapsodic, pseudo-mystical rhetoric that belies Taut’s lack of serious engagement with either the intensities of theological ex- perience or the social dynamics of building and planning, and his satisfaction with a confected mishmash of both: “Infused by the light of the sun this crystal house reigns over above the entire city like a sparkling diamond, a sign of the highest serenity and peace of mind. In its space, a lonely wanderer discovers the pure bliss of architecture.”28 Emil Fader’s hostile review of The City Crown in 1920 formulated precisely the problem of Taut’s underlying utopian premise, which his text, for all its florid paeans to glass and light, could not protect from critical exposure: the assumption that buildings could, of themselves produce spiritual experiences that would in turn be generalized into universal culture. As Fader tartly observed, “To lift the cultural level of the people with beautiful architectural designs is an impossible thing.”29 IV Taut’s Alpine Architecture, a portfolio of 31 watercolors with text, at once mod- ulates certain of the ideas of The City Crown and offers a self-criticism of them [Figure 4]. Most importantly, rather than maintaining its vision of utopian tran- scendence within the inherited, if heavily spiritualized form of the garden city, it now explodes the form of the city altogether—in a sense, expanding the garden city to the ends of the earth, but in doing so, accepting the absence of calcula- tion of symmetries and districting intrinsic to city planning, in favor of a utopian 26 Taut, Die Stadtkrone, p. 69; The City Crown, p. 91. 27 Wolfgang Pehnt, Expressionist Architecture (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1973), p. 30. 28 Taut, Die Stadtkrone, p. 69; The City Crown, p. 90. 29 Emil Fader, quoted by Matthew Mindrup, “Introduction: Advancing the Reverie of Uto- pia,” p. 22. FV_01_2017.indd 119 26. 10. 17 11:08 120 tyrus miller dialogue with the earth and cosmos themselves as the measures of architectural form and dwelling. Fig. 4: Bruno Taut, Alpine Architecture (“Snow, Glacier, Glass”) FV_01_2017.indd 120 26. 10. 17 11:08 121 expressionist utopia: bruno taut, glass architecture, and the dissolution of cities Alpine Architecture is divided into five sections, referencing the five-part division of symphonic music, and is composed of illustrated panels progressing stepwise towards more and more cosmic dimensions: 1. Crystal House, 2. Architecture of the Mountains, 3. Alpine Building, 4. Building on the Earth’s Crust, 5. Astral Building. Revealingly, in the third panel of the first section, Taut self-referential- ly criticizes his own previous lack of utopian radicality, in maintaining the form of the city itself as a limiting container for his vision: This Crystal House is not intended to be a “crown”! And certainly not a “City’s Crown.” Bruno Taut has no right to place the Most Sublime, the Void above a city. Architecture and the vapour of cities remain irreconcilable antitheses. Architecture does not allow itself to be “used.” Not even for Ideals. Every human thought must become silent when Art and Delight in Building speak—far away from foundries and barracks.30 30 Bruno Taut, Alpine Architecture (along with Paul Scheerbart, Glass Architecture), ed. Den- nis Sharp, trans. Shirley Palmer (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1972), pp. 121-122. Fig. 5 (left): Bruno Taut, Alpine Architecture (“The Mountain-Night”) Fig. 6: Bruno Taut, Alpine Architecture (“The Spheres! The Circles! The Wheels!”) FV_01_2017.indd 121 26. 10. 17 11:08 122 tyrus miller From this self-criticism, Taut begins to imagine the mountains as the space for this crystal architecture of transcendence, which in turn will allow a transfigu- ration of the surface of the earth and, as in Scheerbart’s utopian “asteroid nov- el” Lesabéndio,31 a new relation to the celestial firmament. [Figure 5, Figure 6] In the third section, on “Alpine building,” Taut expounds the social utopia that this centrifugal movement from cities to mountains allows one to imagine: Preach: the social Concept: the Brotherhood of Man. Get organized! and you all can live well, all be educated and at peace!. ... Harness the masses—for a gigantic task, in the completion of which each man will feel himself fulfilled, to be the humblest or the most exalted. A task whose completion can be felt to have mean- ing for all. Each man will see his own handiwork clearly in the common achieve- ment: each man will build—in the true sense. All men will serve the one concept, Beauty—as the image of the Earth that bears them.—Boredom disappears, and with it strife, politics and the evil spectre of War.32 This is a universal “socialism in an unpolitical, superpolitical sense,” in which the construction of a cathedral of mankind in the Alps offers a form of work in which economic alienation is overcome in the aesthetic transfiguration of the sur- face of the earth. From there, it is possible for Taut to imagine even more cosmic extensions of architecture to the stars themselves, as with the “cathedral star” and the “cavern star” of the last section. This reaches its final end in mystical namelessness and nothingness, which is implicitly defined by Taut as the abso- lute limit of architecture—a metaphysical force of change which through earthly building and cosmic imagination extends to the very limits of the universe. Taut subsequently added two further works to Alpine Architecture, to consti- tute a trilogy of related utopian works, rehearsing in different forms more or less the same narrative of the passage from disorganized cities to organized na- ture to transcendence in the transfigured cosmos. The first of these, The World- Master Builder, was an experimental theatrical work that imagined a theater 31 Paul Scheerbart, Lesabéndio: Ein Asteroiden-Roman (Frankfurt a/M: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1986); English translation: Lesabéndio: An Asteroid Novel, trans. Christina Svendsen (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Wakefield Press, 2012). For further discussion of Scheerbart’s Lesabéndio, see my chapter on Walter Benjamin in Modernism and the Frankfurt School. 32 Bruno Taut, Alpine Architecture, pp. 125-126. FV_01_2017.indd 122 26. 10. 17 11:08 123 expressionist utopia: bruno taut, glass architecture, and the dissolution of cities in which architecture would be the principal dramatic agent and would exem- plify the workings of “the creating and dissolving principle behind things, the ‘world-master builder’ effective in the cosmos.”33 The work goes from curtain opening to curtain closing, and in between, earthly architectural forms arise, collapse, and become atomic forms that spin out into space, interact with the stars, then return to earth as light that animates the crystal houses of the new architecture built in the countryside and mountains. The other work, The Dissolution of Cities, or, Earth a Good Dwelling, or even: The Road to Alpine Architecture, as the title indicates, explicitly references the cos- mic drama of Alpine Architecture.34 [Figure 9] Composed of 30 colored ink-draw- 33 Bruno Taut, “Über Bühne und Musik: Nachwort zum Architekturschauspiel,” in Taut, Der Weltbaumeister: Architektur-Schauspiel für symphonische Musik [1919], ed. Manfred Speidel (Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag, 1999), n. p. 34 See also, for example, the bibliographic cross-reference in drawing 28 to Alpine Architec- ture in Bruno Taut, The Dissolution of Cities, or, Earth a Good Dwelling, or even: The Road to Alpine Architecture (Hagen: Folkwang Verlag, 1920). Fig. 7 (left): Bruno Taut, The World-Master Builder (“Curtain”) Fig. 8: Bruno Taut, The World-Master Builder (“Cathedral-Star”) FV_01_2017.indd 123 26. 10. 17 11:08 124 tyrus miller ings, the book also includes a “literary appendix” comprising 82 pages of quo- tations from literary and political authors from Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Walt Whitman to the anarchists Peter Kropotkin, Gustav Landauer, and Leo Tolstoi and socialist founding-father Friedrich Engels. The work begins with an image of the collapse of cities, captioned with the texts “Let fall the built vulgarities! Houses of stone make hearts of stone. Now our earth blooms.”35 On the principle that “Other contents of life create other forms of life,”36 Taut advocates a breaking of boundaries of cities and their subdivided districts in favor of open, organic space. Expressing a clearly anarchist senti- ment in the rhetorical question “Who now wants to draw borders?” Taut ex- pounds the anti-urban, anti-political sentiment of his utopian vision: 35 Bruno Taut, The Dissolution of Cities, drawing 1. 36 Ibid., drawing 7. Fig. 9: Bruno Taut, The Dissolution of Cities (Title Page) FV_01_2017.indd 124 26. 10. 17 11:08 125 expressionist utopia: bruno taut, glass architecture, and the dissolution of cities The great spiders—cities—are now only memories out of an earlier time, and along with them, states.—City and state, one with the other, have died.—In place of the fatherland, the homeland has arisen—and each one finds it everywhere that he works. There is no more city and countryside, and also no more war and peace. One recognizes no abstractions to which one grants power over life, work, happiness, and health.—From natural belonging-together in activity and living, common interests emerge.37 In the immediate post-World War I situation in Central Europe, such utopian imaginings could draw on real points of reference in the contemporary envi- ronment, such as the anarchic manifestations of the Russian Civil War and so- called “War Communism” (1918-1921); the popular uprisings and socialization 37 Ibid., drawing 12. Fig. 10: Bruno Taut, The Dissolution of Cities (“Utopia?”) FV_01_2017.indd 125 26. 10. 17 11:08 126 tyrus miller of land during the shortlived Soviet Republics in Hungary and Bavaria (1919); and the emergence of “gypsy urbanism,” spontaneous organization of squat- ter dwelling and garden cultivation on the outskirts of European cities such as Vienna (1918-1923).38 These real dynamics of a chaotic and revolutionary period inspired Taut’s utopic conclusion that the social and spatial structures presently under strain and in some cases collapsing might lead to a higher, more harmoni- ous order, rather than to a restoration of the same after the crisis. Taut thus insists on the reality of his visions and concludes the drawings with an explicit address to the question of their “utopian” nature. If “utopian” implies something that is impossible and nowhere, he rejects the designation, for, he insists, the dynamics of dissolution depicted in his visionary books are present in the world now, even if their issue and meaning is still unsettled. He thus ad- dresses the rhetorical question “Utopia?” as follows: Is it not the “certain,” the “real” that is utopia, swimming in the swamp of illusion and lazy habits! Is the content of our striving not the true present resting on the rock of belief and knowledge!39 [Figure 10] V In conclusion I want to pose the question, though I can only schematically al- lude to an answer, of the significance of these utopias, in light of their short existence and Taut’s own relatively complete abandonment of them in favor of a functionalist orientation by the mid-1920s. The architectural scholar Manfredo Tafuri offers an incomparably insightful and lapidary formulation when he writes, “The utopia in the pure state of Taut is without a future, precisely be- cause the future is its subject.”40 By this Tafuri means that the utopian energy of Taut’s visions—and those of other architects, urbanists, and artists at this critical moment at the end of World War I and the revolutionary turmoil that followed in Europe—depended on their anticipatory, future-oriented quality. But the fictional-utopian events projected in Taut’s cosmic-architectural graph- 38 For a discussion of “gypsy urbanism” in Vienna, see Nader Vossoughian, Otto Neurath: The Language of the Global Polis (Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 2008), p. 27ff. 39 Bruno Taut, The Dissolution of Cities, drawing 30. 40 Tafuri, The Sphere and the Labyrinth, p. 104. FV_01_2017.indd 126 26. 10. 17 11:08 127 expressionist utopia: bruno taut, glass architecture, and the dissolution of cities ic narratives were only credible so long as the “future” had not manifest itself in the historical field of actual politics, policy, and action. Left-oriented artists and architects, as well as mystically-inclined anarchists, soon had to confront two key fields of facts: first, by 1922 or 1923, it had become abun- dantly clear that the all-embracing revolution that would transfigure everything and foster in a New Man had not arrived and would not in any foreseeable time-frame. Yet at the same time concrete historical events such as the Russian Revolution and the consolidation of the Soviet Union following an anarchic Civil War, the installation of social municipal governments faced with socialist prob- lems such as housing shortages, and the overall rationalization of society, mass political organization, and industrial concentration during the Weimar Republic prior to the Great Depression had set new practical tasks for architects and urban planners, rendering such utopian visions as Taut’s ethereal and obsolete. It is true that Taut’s visionary question of “the dissolution of cities” after World War I had been taken up in a renewed debate between “urbanist” and “de-ur- banist” architects and planners of the Soviet Union during the first Five-Year Plans. As James H. Bater notes, this debate also well-exceeded the practical ar- ticulation of planning guidelines and bore some of the utopian traits of the earli- er period, in which practical building was constrained by limited opportunities to realize projects: Out of the debates of the late 1920s there emerged two principal and opposed schools of thought about the future Soviet socialist city. Some of the underlying assumptions of the revivalist and garden-city movements can be subsumed in the urbanist and de-urbanist schools respectively. The vast majority of schemes propounded under these labels was simply utopian. Many presumed complete reconstruction of the existing urban system. Most assumed almost unlimited financial resources.41 Yet while the intense ideological tension and social violence of this period in the Soviet Union was also accompanied by grand utopian hopes, Taut found little traction for his ideas and was out of touch with the spirit of Moscow during 41 James H. Bater, The Soviet City: Explorations in Urban Analysis (Beverly Hills: Sage Publica- tions, 1980), p. 22. FV_01_2017.indd 127 26. 10. 17 11:08 128 tyrus miller his sojourn of 1932-33. Although he was better received in Japan and Turkey fol- lowing his escape from Hitler’s Germany, his activity in exile reveals little of his earlier visionary impulses. From today’s perspective of historical hindsight, we must view not just Taut’s ex- pressionist visions and anarchistic fantasies, but also seemingly more grounded expressions of the age, such as the great socialist housing projects of Frankfurt and Vienna and the Soviet debates on industrialism and agriculture, as equally ruined monuments of utopian dreams out of a distant past. Perhaps only this profound leveling of historical perspective, this groundtruthing of the utopian dreamscapes of the 20th century, will allow us to approach the utopian visions of this period anew, taking fresh measure of their historical magnitude, signifi- cance, and imaginative pathos. BIBLIOGRAPHY Altenmüller, Ulrike (2013) “The City Crown: A Utopianist’s Vision of a Better World by Bruno Taut,” Spaces of Utopia: An Electronic Journal, 2nd series, no. 2. Altenmüller, Ulrike and Brack, Mark L. “Afterword: The City Crown in the Context of Bruno Taut’s Oeuvre,” in Bruno Taut, The City Crown. Banham, Reyner (1960), Theory and Design in the First Machine Age, 2nd edition, The MIT Press, Cambridge MA. Bater, James H. (1980), The Soviet City: Explorations in Urban Analysis, Sage Publications, Beverly Hills. Baudelaire, Charles (1964), “The Painter of Modern Life,” in The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays, ed. and trans. Jonathan Mayne, Phaidon Press, 1964. Benjamin, Walter (2003), “Central Park,” in Selected Writings, Volume 4: 1938-1940, ed. Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings, trans. Edmund Jephcott and Howard Eiland, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. -- --2005), “Experience and Poverty,” trans. Rodney Livingstone, in Selected Writings, Volume 2, Part 2, eds. Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland, and Gary Smith, The Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Boyd Whyte, Iain (1982), Bruno Taut and the Architecture of Activism, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Mertins, Detlef (2011), “Glass Architecture” in Modernity Unbound: Other Histories of Architectural Modernity, Architecture Association. Mindrup, Matthew (2015), “Introduction: Advancing the Reverie of Utopia,” in Bruno Taut, The City Crown, ed. and trans. Matthew Mindrup and Ulrike Altenmüller-Lewis, Ashgate, Surrey. FV_01_2017.indd 128 26. 10. 17 11:08 129 expressionist utopia: bruno taut, glass architecture, and the dissolution of cities Miller, Tyrus (2014), Modernism and the Frankfurt School, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh. Tafuri, Manfredo (1976), Architecture and Utopia: Design and Capitalist Development, trans. Barbara Luigia La Penta, The MIT Press, Cambridge MA. -- -- and Francesco Dal Co (1986), Modern Architecture, trans. Robert Erich Wolf, Rizzoli, New York. -- -- (1987), The Sphere and the Labyrinth: Avant-Gardes and Architecture from Piranesi to the 1970s, trans. Pellegrino d’Acierno and Robert Connolly, The MIT Press, Cambridge MA. Pehnt, Wolfgang (1973), Expressionist Architecture, Praeger Publishers, New York. Scheerbart, Paul (1986), Lesabéndio: Ein Asteroiden-Roman, Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt a/M:; English translation (2012): Lesabéndio: An Asteroid Novel, trans. Christina Svendsen Wakefield Press,. Cambridge MA. Taut, Bruno, “A Programme for Architecture,” in Programs and Manifestoes on 20th-Century Architecture, ed. Ulrich Conrads, trans. Michael Bullock, The MIT Press, Cambridge MA. -- --, “New Ideas on Architecture,” in Programs and Manifestoes on 20th-Century Architecture. -- -- ([1919], 2002) Die Stadtkrone, Gebr. Mann Verlag, Berlin; English translation: Taut, Bruno (2015), The City Crown, ed. and trans. Matthew Mindrup and Ulrike Altenmüller- Lewis, Ashgate, Surrey. -- -- (1914), “Eine Notwendigkeit,” Der Sturm 4/196-97 (February 1914); English transla- tion (1993), “A Necessity,” in German Expressionism: Documents from the End of the Wilhelmine Empire to the Rise of National Socialism, ed. Rose-Carol Washton Long, G.K. Hall, New York. -- -- ([1919] 1999), “Über Bühne und Musik: Nachwort zum Architekturschauspiel,” in Taut, Der Weltbaumeister: Architektur-Schauspiel für symphonische Musik, ed. Manfred Speidel Gebr. Mann Verlag, Berlin. -- -- (1920), The Dissolution of Cities, or, Earth a Good Dwelling, or even: The Road to Alpine Architecture, Folkwang Verlag, Hagen. -- -- (1972), Alpine Architecture (along with Paul Scheerbart, Glass Architecture), ed. Dennis Sharp, trans. Shirley Palmer, Praeger Publishers, New York. -- -- (1985), Crystal Chain Letters: Architectural Fantasies by Bruno Taut and His Circle, ed. and trans. Iain Boyd Whyte, The MIT Press, Cambridge MA. -- -- (2014), “Glass House: Cologne Werkbund Exhibition 1914,” in Glass Architecture, in Glass! Love!! Perpetual Motion!!!, eds. Josiah McElheny and Christine Burgin, University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Vossoughian, Nader (2008), Otto Neurath: The Language of the Global Polis, NAi Publishers, Rotterdam. FV_01_2017.indd 129 26. 10. 17 11:08 FV_01_2017.indd 130 26. 10. 17 11:08 Marx and the Critique of Political Economy FV_01_2017.indd 131 26. 10. 17 11:08 FV_01_2017.indd 132 26. 10. 17 11:08 133 *Kyung Hee University, School of Global Communication, South Korea Filozofski vestnik | Letnik XXXVIII | Številka 1 | 2017 | 133–151 A tourist prepares to take a photograph of the Grand Canyon. Overwhelmed by its sheer scale, she zooms in on the sublime vista in the hope that isolating a dis- crete portion of it will somehow capture its holistic essence. However, in a final gesture of resignation she ushers her friend into the frame. If a photograph can’t do justice to the thing itself then at least it can testify to the missing context: “this” is where we were. Was the photographer mistaken in her reasoning? A neo-Kantian or post-mod- ern take on the incident would surely conclude, at least according to the best linguistic models currently available, that in an age when, “Every day, we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data—so much that 90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone,”1 any such representation of the whole, even in part, is impossible. Acutely aware of this technology-induced shortfall, contemporary psychoanalytic and set theoretical discourses content themselves with transforming an epistemological deficit into an ontological da- tum. The analysand’s resistance to the analyst is by no means incompatible with the truth of the symptom; nor is the mathematician any less remote from the concept of infinity by working in abstractions. On the contrary, in either case the limits of knowledge can be fixed as the property of a universe, as e.g. when the analysand works through the symptom herself rather than being treated by the analyst, or the mathematician proves that the subset of the set of reals is a neighbourhood of the set of natural numbers. In this essay I want to move beyond the Lacano-Žižekian approach to the rep- resentation of capitalism. Alberto Toscano and Jeff Kinkle’s Cartographies of the Absolute offers the occasion for considering precisely what’s at stake when the limits and barriers of the type we associate with the social forces and relations of 1 “Bringing big data to the enterprise,” IBM website, no date. Online. https://www-01.ibm. com/software/data/bigdata/what-is-big-data.html. Jason Barker* Schizoanalytic Cartographies: On Maps and Models of Capitalism FV_01_2017.indd 133 26. 10. 17 11:08 134 jason barker production are not given as abstract objects. There is a tendency, in the Hegelian ontology practised by Žižek, to be able to describe social relations through bi- nary relations, so that for any ordered pair (x, y) the output y is a function of the input x where every input fed into the machine gives a corresponding output. So, for example, if “Donald Trump” is the absolute of pathological capitalism (its probability 1), and “Hilary Clinton” its reasonable argument, then the do- main of Hilary Clinton inputs can nonetheless still be mapped on to the codo- main of Donald Trump outputs apart from the differentiation of the antagonists themselves. The medium is certainly not the message here. Who is speaking, not what is being said or how it’s conveyed, is decisive. In the above example it makes no difference if certain Donald Trump outputs have no corresponding inputs or “argument.” In the latter case, negative access to the Absolute is mi- raculously transformed into the “Absolute itself as negativity,” as Žižek puts it.2 In set theory the bijective function or mapping of positive integers on to even numbers where n→2n provides one example of the negative absolute: an infinite set of smallest cardinality 0א. But what happens when every input from the domain, or indeed most of them, cannot be mapped on to an output of its codomain? What happens when the machine, the miraculous “black box” whose inner workings remain hidden to us, confounds our expectations? Or, to adopt Toscano and Kinkle’s perspective, what happens when the map hinders the mapping so that the data provided is not an index of what remains hidden, but becomes a feature of absolute dislo- cation and disorientation?3 We might agree with Michael Hardt that “capitalism functions by breaking down.”4 The point, however, is how to go about reori- enting ourselves in relation to it—let alone change “it”—when the breakdown scatters all the coordinates. Indeed, what if from within the radically changing world of “capitalism” there were no longer any fixed points at all? Ray Brassier has previously highlighted Alain Badiou’s practice of separating thought from calculation in order to distinguish truth procedures from ideo- logical doxa. This “venerable distinction” between thought and calculation, 2 Slavoj Žižek, The Parallelax View, MIT Press, MA 2006, p. 27. 3 Alberto Toscano and Jeff Kinkle, Cartographies of the Absolute, Zero Books, Winchester 2015, p. 4. 4 Marx Reloaded. Dir. Jason Barker, ZDF/Arte/Medea Film/Films Noirs, 2010. FV_01_2017.indd 134 26. 10. 17 11:08 135 schizoanalytic cartographies: on maps and models of capitalism truth and ideology, “Alan Turing subverted from inside mathematics itself” in his response to Hilbert’s Entscheidungsproblem.5 I shall return to Turing in due course. Badiou’s demotion of calculus is arguably his most non-Marxist trait as a mathematician, given the crucial importance Marx attributed to it towards the end of his life.6 According to Leibniz, where y is a function of x, i.e. y = f(x), derivatives of the function can be derived according to the differential equation dy/dx. So, for instance, the derivative of velocity (dependent variable y) can be taken in respect of time (independent variable x) as an infinitesimal change in y governed by the ratio of the two variables; or, more precisely, as the quotient of the infinitesimal increment of y by x. Marx’s objection, thoroughly materialist in motivation, was that Leibniz’s formula fell down on the question of deriva- tives due to the “mystical” and “metaphysical” foundations of the calculus it- self. According to Marx, what was missing from calculus was the dialectic, the means by which movement is grasped as a dynamic process of change, or as true variables, rather than as a ratio of disappeared quantities which Marx de- noted as dy/dx = 0/0.7 Marx’s conviction was that both Leibniz and Newton’s respective equations for differential calculus merely papered over the cracks of the long-running “crisis of infinity,” underway since the Pythagorean discovery of irrational numbers, through the fallacious use of symbolic formulae and un- founded concepts, which enabled them to avoid the problem of how “infinitely small magnitudes” could ever converge on a limit (this of course being one of Zeno’s four paradoxes, “Achilles and the Tortoise”).8 We need not delve here into Marx’s mathematical manuscripts, as fascinating as they are in themselves and for the present discussion, since their philosophical orientation was famously 5 Ray Brassier, “Nihil Unbound: Remarks on Subtractive Ontology and Thinking Capital- ism,” in ed. Peter Hallward Think Again: Alain Badiou and the Future of Philosophy, Con- tinuum, London 2004, p. 55. 6 In his Logics of Worlds Badiou does of course go on to consider the relational differentia- tion or logics—the “appearing”—of multiple-beings in worlds, irrespective of any subject or of the binary choice of “infinity or nothing” that confronts and defines the latter in the process of its becoming. Cf. Alain Badiou, Logics of Worlds, Being and Event, 2, trans. Alberto Toscano, Continuum, London 2009, p. 195; Alain Badiou, Being and Event, trans. Oliver Feltham, Continuum, London 2005, p. 221. 7 See Karl Marx, “On the Differential” in Mathematical Manuscripts, ed. S. A. Yanovskaya, New Park, London 1983. 8 Useful points of reference here include C. Smith, “Hegel, Marx and Calculus” in Karl Marx, Mathematical Manuscripts; and E. T. Bell, “Chapter 13: From Intuition to Absolute Rigor” in The Development of Mathematics, Dover Publications, New York 1992. FV_01_2017.indd 135 26. 10. 17 11:08 136 jason barker set out by Engels in his Dialectics of Nature.9 However, it is worth highlighting the lacklustre approach of both psychoanalytic and set theoretical discourse when it comes to the question of the “real movement which abolishes the present state of things,” which needless to say is the central thesis of Marx and Engels’s own “idea” of communism. Marx makes it abundantly clear in his manuscripts that mathematics is no less immune from its own history than any other product of the social forces and relations of production. Marx would certainly have balked at Badiou’s conviction that mathematics is a mere condition of philosophy, of thinking the novelty of events, rather than a description of matter in motion (“an abstract science which is concerned with creations of thought, even though they are reflections of reality,” as Engels will say10). Then again, it is equally no secret that on more than one occasion Marx insists a little too eagerly on the dialectical “laws” that ensure the real “movement,” particularly in his famous passage from the German preface to Capital: Intrinsically, it is not a question of the higher or lower degree of development of the social antagonisms that result from the natural laws of capitalist production. It is a question of these laws themselves, of these tendencies working with iron necessity towards inevitable results. The country that is more developed industri- ally only shows, to the less developed, the image of its own future.11  Quite obviously it was statements of this kind that would lead Althusser, Badi- ou and Žižek away from Marx and his critique of political economy in the first place, toward a wholly other Marx, into the realm of speculative philosophy. I am certainly not in the habit of defending any scientific Marxist “orthodoxy”. However, Toscano and Kinkle’s work brings to mind the following observation from E. Kol’man, in his commentary on Marx’s manuscripts, on the capitalist dynamics of scientific abstractions, which is certainly worth recalling: 9 Whether Engels was entirely correct in his unfinished elaboration of his and Marx’s shared position is of course another matter entirely. 10 Friedrich Engels, “The Dialectics of Nature” in Marx and Engels Collected Works, Volume 25, Lawrence and Wishart, 2010, p. 495. Electronic edition. 11 Karl Marx, “1867 Preface to the First German Edition” in Capital. A Critique of Political Eco- nomy, trans. Samuel Moore, Edward Aveling and Friedrich Engels, Progress Publishers, Moscow 1887, n.pg. Online edition. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867- -c1/p1.htm. FV_01_2017.indd 136 26. 10. 17 11:08 137 schizoanalytic cartographies: on maps and models of capitalism The increasing difficulties offered to the mathematics of complicated forms of mo- tion, piling up in an ascending series in leaps from mechanics to physics, from physics to chemistry, from there to biology and onwards to the social sciences, do not, in the dialectical materialist conception, entirely block its path, but allow it the prospect of even “determining the main laws of capitalist economic crisis.”12 Capitalism’s seamless continuum of vertical hierarchies of discipline and surveil- lance (from ground-level CCTV cameras to communications satellites in the up- per reaches of the atmosphere) to horizontal hierarchies of physical and political geography (the dependent and “contingent” variables of birthplace and resource distribution, aided and abetted by all manner of in/visible barriers) sets down a challenge to dialectics: namely, to confront and re-appropriate capitalism’s fric- tionless freewheeling transitions, to assert that the seamlessness both is and is not real, and that matter in motion, rather than simply being the object of measure- ment, is also part and parcel of the system of classification. To assume, as Kol’man does, that this type of motion is “capitalist”—or that there exist such things as “laws of capitalist economic crisis” (Kol’man is quoting Marx13)—is of course a moot and complex point. Indeed, the ability to identity capitalism as a system in movement where, crucially, variables are not merely rendered as constants, and where the subjects are able to identify themselves as variables or as values thereof (i.e. gain consciousness) is, following Jameson, the aim of Toscano and Kinkle’s stimulating work. However, let us not forget in passing, in the context of “cogni- tive mapping,” that Jameson and other neo- and post-Marxist thinkers besides him are usually credited with having relegated the vulgar base/superstructure model (the famous “topography” dismissed by Althusser as a mere spatial “met- aphor,”14 and by Jameson as a “starting point and a problem”15) to the backwater of philosophical reflection. Moreover, where Marx could once write that “the ma- terial transformation of the economic conditions of production […] can be deter- 12 E. Kol’man, “Karl Marx and Mathematics,” in Karl Marx, Mathematical Manuscripts, pp. 252—53. 13 See Marx’s letter to Engels, 31 May 1873 in Marx and Engels Collected Works, Volume 44, Letters 1870—73, Lawrence and Wishart, 2010, p. 504. The translation reads “to determine mathematically the principle laws governing crises” with no mention of “capitalist”. 14 Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an Investiga- tion)” in On the Reproduction of Capitalism, trans. Ben Brewster, Verso, London 2014, p. 237. 15 Fredric Jameson, “Marxism and Postmodernism” in New Left Review I/176, July/August 1989, p. 42. FV_01_2017.indd 137 26. 10. 17 11:08 138 jason barker mined with the precision of natural science,”16 today Alain Badiou even makes the opposite claim: namely, that where “the predictions of economic ‘science’ are still more uncertain than those of meteorology,”17 the state apparatus can itself count as one a totality of denumerable parts or subsets.18 One wonders where this “utopian” impulse might leave the mapping of capitalism as such and, given the state’s absolute autonomy from the material reality of the economic, what sense the “anarchy of production”19 could continue to have, not least in the political sense Badiou clearly intends for this slogan, aside from ascribing to capitalism, as a mode of production, purely “random” social effects. Ways of Seeing Given capitalism’s ubiquitous and ill-defined boundaries cognitive mapping is to be understood as a speculative attempt at the visible representation, or “pic- turing,” of a self-referential paradox: a decision problem. Taking their cue from the preface to Fredric Jameson’s The Geopolitical Aesthetic, Toscano and Kinkle remark that, “The phrasing is important here: [Jameson] didn’t announce its existence [i.e. the aesthetic of the cognitive mapping of capitalism], detecting its presence in a corpus of works, but stressed instead the political need for its elaboration in both theory and practice.” They continue: Works emerging under the banner of this aesthetic would enable individuals and collectivities to render their place in a capitalist world-system intelligible: “to enable a situational representation on the part of the individual subject to that vaster and properly unrepresentable totality which is the ensemble of society’s structures as a whole.” While such artworks and narratives would not be merely didactic or pedagogical, they would of necessity also be didactic or pedagogical, 16 Karl Marx, “Preface” in A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy [1859], Progress Publishers, Moscow 1977, n.pg. Online edition. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/ works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm. 17 Alain Badiou, Ethics. An Essay on the Understanding of Evil, trans. Peter Hallward, Verso, London 2001, p. 31. 18 See Badiou, Being and Event, trans. Oliver Feltham, Continuum, London 2006, pp. 105—6: “It is this one-effect that Marxism designates when it says that the State is ‘the State of the ruling class.’ If this formula is supposed to signify that the State is an instrument ‘pos- sessed’ by the ruling class, then it is meaningless… [I]n posing that the State is that of the ruling class, it indicates that the State always re-presents what has already been presented.” 19 Badiou, Ethics, p. 31. FV_01_2017.indd 138 26. 10. 17 11:08 139 schizoanalytic cartographies: on maps and models of capitalism recasting what political teaching, instruction or even propaganda might mean in our historical moment.20 In Malign Velocities: Accelerationism and Capitalism Benjamin Noys argues that so-called “accelerationist” theory’s mapping of (or modelling in the sense of ap- ing) capitalism has taken a wrong turn toward “the libidinal fantasies of machinic integration.”21 Such moral judgements are of no interest to Toscano and Kinkle. For them the integration or immersion instead raises the challenge of developing new ways of seeing, new faculties of sense. Why subscribe to the fiction of (rea- sonable) limits? For the authors the mapping of the absolute (absolute mapping?) would be “a precondition for identifying any ‘levers,’ nerve-centres or weak links in the political anatomy of contemporary capitalism.”22 As well as presumably for ascertaining whether in fact the emperor is naked and the pulleys and levers that supposedly keep the system turning are simply being manipulated in order to pre- vent people from realising that “the system” is really nothing other than the kind of fake nerve-centre Dorothy encounters in The Wizard of Oz. Marx was dedicated to retrieving the “vanishing quantities” of calculus in an at- tempt to conceive socioeconomic crisis as a determinate magnitude. But in what sense or to what extent, according to Toscano and Kinkle, might capitalism be a question of scale? The authors devote ample attention to the “cinematic mode of production” or to the big screen dimensions of the capitalist totality. Albeit “to- talities” plural: “each epoch develops cultural forms and modes of expression that allow it, however partially and ideologically, to represent the world—to ‘to- talise’ it.”23 The theme that stretches from Vertov’s Kino Eye through to so-called post-cinematic film theory is omniscient or God’s eye narration. The Soviet film- maker for his part imagines that, by dispensing with God, he can go beyond the problem of representing the social world and its “chaotic movements” and take on the universe instead (with quantum physics): “Freed from the boundaries of time and space,” Vertov declares in his famous manifesto of 1923, “I co-ordinate any and all points of the universe, wherever I want them to be. My way leads to- 20 Toscano and Kinkle, Cartographies of the Absolute, pp. 7—8. 21 Benjamin Noys, Malign Velocities. Accelerationism & Capitalism. Zero Books, Winchester 2013, p. 47. 22 Toscano and Kinkle, p. 8. 23 Ibid. FV_01_2017.indd 139 26. 10. 17 11:08 140 jason barker wards the creation of a fresh perception of the world.”24 With statements of this kind Vertov portrays himself as an experimenter in a science of cinema, or tech- no-science, rather than a philosophy. However, such “science” is somewhat at odds with a form of cinematic narration that aims to represent workers as more than simple cogs in a machine, the spare parts of the plan. In The Sixth Part of the World Vertov can succeed in freeing “you” from the boundaries of time and space (albeit not from ideological interpellation), make you inhabit two places at once, provide for the total immersion in the freedom of socialist work, all on condition of there being an external capitalist market, and thus another total- ity, to export to.25 In passing, the idea of Kino Eye as a new and revolutionary faculty of sense-making, of “seeing” in three or four or more dimensions, from somewhere inside the blind totality of the real subsumption, remains a seduc- tive idea, even if it carries with it the real spectre of dead labour.26 I am thinking here of one application of Vertov’s “fresh perception”; namely, the coordination of “any and all points of the universe” in the form of the geographic informa- tion systems (GISs), unlimited in their coverage, that are able to laser capture and convert large swathes of physical data into topographical models. (One such cameraless technology was used in the making of Radiohead’s “House of Cards” music video27). This leads to another variety of “cinema,” that of economic productivity as its own representation, “the ‘making’ or ‘fixing’ of the economy as a fundamentally representational problem” to be solved with graphs and charts. “In this story,” the authors tell us, “the eighteenth-century invention and stability of diagrams and images of the economy marks a kind of epistemic shift with significant re- percussions for the very idea of representation.”28 Ian Hacking argues in a simi- lar vein when he talks of another epistemic shift, in the nineteenth century this time, of a dual process of the rise of indeterminism in the physical sciences and the accompanying “feedback effect” in the human sciences.29 For Hacking, if physical processes are deemed contingent and/or non-deterministic then their 24 Vertov qtd. in John Berger, Ways of Seeing, Penguin, London 1972, p. 17. 25 Toscano and Kinkle, pp. 91—2. 26 Ibid, pp. 235—36. 27 See Radiohead, “The Making of ‘House of Cards’ video,” 2008. Online video. https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=cyQoTGdQywY. 28 Toscano and Kinkle, pp. 33—4. 29 Ian Hacking, The Taming of Chance. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1990, p. 2. FV_01_2017.indd 140 26. 10. 17 11:08 141 schizoanalytic cartographies: on maps and models of capitalism representation requires order and precision, for the sake of the higher social order, which in Hacking’s view has been achieved through statistical analysis and population management. In Toscano and Kinkle’s example, disciplinary mapping ultimately brings with it the alienation of work and employment in the abstract “science” of “economic management,” enabling the experts to seek refuge in times of economic and social crisis behind the complexity of “finan- cial instruments” that none of them can explain, not least for being linked to a financial “movement” of trades too fast for the naked eye.30 The unrepresentability of capitalism through indeterminism provokes the “feedback effect” whereby the subjugated populations discipline their own be- haviour, or it is disciplined for them, and in so doing aggravate or increase the unrepresentability and/or indeterminism—the abstract and ideological impres- sion that things are beyond human intervention and that “there is no alterna- tive”—thereby exacerbating the forces of free market sovereignty and its dead labour. A methodological question emerges here regarding the presumed “un- representability,” the negative abstractness, of the system. Is it the system or its representation that is abstract? Or, alternatively, are we dialectically bound to view any such distinction as a relatively philosophical abstraction that assumes the existence of what it sets out to explain, i.e. the system? Telling Stories I want to depart slightly from the question of the system’s substantial dyna- mism toward that of narrative. For the methodological or strategic question of cognitive mapping would appear to hinge on the representation of a system that takes in “all” of reality, a totality which also subsumes physical change or the “motion and rest” that Spinoza describes on the grand scale of extended sub- stance, as well as the representation of a substance as the universal predicate poised behind each and every thing—implying the need for a camera with a lens of such precision as to be able not only to depict the subject itself in toto— cloning rather than representing, perhaps—but which in so doing might actu- 30 Toscano has dealt with this question separately in “Gaming the Plumbing: High-Frequency Trading and the Spaces of Capital” in Mute Magazine, 16 January 2013. Online article. http:// www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/gaming-plumbing-highfrequency-trading-and- spaces-capital. FV_01_2017.indd 141 26. 10. 17 11:08 142 jason barker ally be or present the subject. Here one recalls Borges’ forged novel On Exacti- tude in Science, where Suarez Miranda recalls the wayward imaginations of the mapmakers of yore: ... In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Genera- tions, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.31 Borges’ literary “fragment” might serve as a model for the representation of capitalism as a system that can only be represented in fragments; a system no less real for the fragmentation, for the detachment of a piece of the jigsaw which approximates in part to our journey to this place—though crucially an ancient relic no less rich in heritage than the history that we have. Mapmaking as mak- ing history. However, the difficulty in mobilising this formalistic approach for strategic political ends is that, in the case of Borges’ cartography, the “frag- ments” of the map turn out to be no more fragmentary than the territory they purport to map. The scale is 1:1. Perhaps one possible means of breaking out of this formalistic tautology would be to shift the mode of representation from narrative to drama. Consider for instance Brecht’s criticisms of Lukács’ formal- ism and his campaign for both a fully immersive and estranging theatre which, unlike Lukács’ privileging of the novel as a means of self-withdrawal (cathar- sis as therapy), puts the audience in direct contact with an outside world.32 As successful as Brecht’s work may be at exposing literary form and forms of aes- thetic mediation we should also note the no less ideological burden of Brecht’s 31 Jose Luis Borges, “On Exactitude in Science” in Collected Ficciones, trans. Andrew Hurley, Allen Lane, London no date, pp. 704—5. Online edition. https://posthegemony.files.word- press.com/2013/02/borges_collected-fictions.pdf. 32 See Fredric Jameson’s “Reflections in Conclusion” in Aesthetics and Politics, trans. Ronald Taylor, Verso, London 1977, p. 202ff. FV_01_2017.indd 142 26. 10. 17 11:08 143 schizoanalytic cartographies: on maps and models of capitalism political aesthetics, which can be summed up in a single word: epic theatre. In other words, instead of capturing the real movement of people and things, of what Aristotle dubs the “all in action,” Brecht may be just as reliant on didactic constructions, or politics at the level of “telling stories.” Nevertheless it seems to me that by attending to such narrative questions we may still be able to prize apart and expose the false choice—the ideological abstraction—between the system “or” its representation. The interesting question here is whether the dra- matic-showing (mimesis) or narrative-telling (diegesis) mode of representation is more suited to the kind of abstraction required to represent capitalism; or whether instead, as both Aristotle and (occasionally) Plato believed, each mode is a subgenre of mimesis as the all-encompassing concept of representational art. This would be the occasion for considering the extent to which our current obsession with capitalism as the totality of totalities could ever amount to any- thing other than a form of story-telling. There is also a crucial issue here to do with the difference between the ethical and representational regimes of art respectively. Namely, the fact that in Pla- to’s narrative theory, to exceed authorial responsibility carried with it certain psychological dangers and social prohibitions, even and especially in spite of those occasions where “Socrates” appears in the dialogues as a homodieget- ic narrator.33 Here there is a nagging proximity of ethical duty in relation to aesthetic perception; the recognition of a dialectic of compound narration and narrative, where both subject and representatum are parts of the story-telling process(es), and of stories wrapped up in stories. Here the challenge of mapping might be to unravel some labyrinthine conundrum—as e.g. in The Name of the Rose, The Da Vinci Code—whereby solving the mystery or breaking the code is the condition of charting one’s course, equally virtuous as social work for being able to “recollect” forgotten history and past lives. The model I am thinking of is Plato’s Meno and the egalitarian sources of knowledge Socrates divines from the mind of the slave.34 33 Stephen Halliwell’s work is illuminating on such questions. See for example his “Diege- sis—Mimesis” in The Living Handbook of Narratology, 2012, n.pg. Online edition. http:// www.lhn.uni-hamburg.de/article/diegesis-%E2%80%93-mimesis. 34 Plato, Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo, 2nd ed. trans. G. M. A. Grube and John M. Cooper, Hackett, IN 2002, 80-1a-b, pp. 70-1. FV_01_2017.indd 143 26. 10. 17 11:08 144 jason barker Algorithmic Practice I shall conclude by pursuing these random and somewhat schizophrenic thoughts further in a direction which I dare say Toscano and Kinkle wouldn’t re- motely endorse, but which nonetheless strikes me as a legitimate course follow- ing their intervention. I set out from the premise that despite being a compound narrative, a history that goes “all the way down,” there are ways and means, mil- itant practises—even if the latter form part of the algorithm—for bringing “capi- talism” back up; and even if the price to be paid for such (re)modelling is the kind of abstraction that threatens the very dynamism or real movement (in spatial terms of course) that the authors are keen to recover. There is a leading role for “calculation” in such practices (in keeping with Marx’s quest to recover those “vanishing quantities”) or at least for separating that which it’s actively possible to calculate, or implement on the basis of a principle or axiom, and that which remains “active” in the realm of thought alone. Indeed, it might be said that the work of Alan Turing offers a blueprint for the dialectical distinction between dead and living labour, given the very practical dimension of what he under- stood “thinking” to mean.35 Although renowned in popular culture for his con- tribution to computer design, code-breaking and artificial intelligence, Turing’s most significant contribution to mathematics is to be found in his 1936 paper “On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem.”36 For Turing, “computer” had nothing to do with the specific hardware technologies or software applications that we take for granted today, but was the name he gave the algorithmic procedure by which it’s possible to compute any computa- ble sequence of numbers rendered in binary notation. Although Turing’s paper was not remotely concerned with capitalism and the universal money-form or general equivalent, one need only consider, as a measure of its “common cur- rency,” the rapid spread of binary notation and its encoding of almost anything we possess or care to imagine as a series of 0s and 1s. Admittedly technocratic capitalism’s use of statistics-based algorithms to eradicate “redundancy” from the system is reductive and nefarious in respect of the social and ethnic diversity of human populations, to say nothing of our common humanity, the one we col- 35 See for example Alan Turing, “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” in Mind 59, no. 236, 1950. 36 Alan Turing, “On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsprob- lem” in The Undecidable: Basic Papers on Undecidable Propositions, Unsolvable Problems and Computable Functions, ed. Martin Davis, Hewlett, Raven Press, New York 1965. FV_01_2017.indd 144 26. 10. 17 11:08 145 schizoanalytic cartographies: on maps and models of capitalism lectively want. However, might Turing’s work be used in order to compute—and so demystify?—the tautologies, iterations and recursions of the “random” market processes—the myth of laissez faire capitalism—that capitalists pretend amount to a system beyond any kind of social intervention or control? Consider Marx’s 1859 preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Econo- my in this respect: No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society.37 For all the algorithmic complexity of this statement might it be modelled in some restricted sense, as a formal analogue, for instance? We can immediately identi- fy tautologies (“No social order is ever destroyed…” = social order is a constant) and iterations (attaining “superior relations of production” depends on the fail- ure of the loop-continuation condition of the existing “material conditions…”). Let’s define recursion simply as the ability to define an infinite number using a finite argument or algorithm. Can the “social order” of which Marx speaks be interpreted on such formal criteria? For example, reverting to more familiar philosophical language, is the social order always sublated during the process of being destroyed, i.e. retained and carried forward in the “superior relations of production”? Is it a matter of sublation ad infinitum? If we could come up with an algorithm for determining this question, for every “input” of a given social order, then we could model capitalism in what Noys describes, in reference to Marx’s famous preface, as its “Nietzschean Marxist” mode;38 and, in so doing, model the terms of capitalism’s social transition. Now, I am not suggesting we could model capitalism, or even one of its historical modes, on arbitrary input. Turing famously demonstrates that it is impossible to devise an algorithm for predicting whether an arbitrary mathematical statement will be accepted or rejected by some computer, or by what’s referred to in light 37 Marx, “Preface” in A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, n. pg. 38 Noys, Malign Velocities, p. 8. FV_01_2017.indd 145 26. 10. 17 11:08 146 jason barker of his work as a “Turing machine.”39 Simply put, we cannot model (or compute) random processes. However, we can still compute some enormously complex ones by recursive means; or, in other words, devise computer programs for the infinite decimal expansion of any rational number and certain transcendentals, such as π and e. In passing, and notwithstanding the massive social and economic disinvest- ment surrounding the dead labour of “machine work” (deskilling as “class war” in no uncertain terms), let’s make it abundantly clear that there is nothing inher- ently technocratic, capitalist or neoliberal in the social application of Turing’s mathematical concept of computing or calculating. This is a crucial point. In his comments on the design of “instruction tables”—the “code” of contemporary computer programmers—Turing could even be described as a social visionary.40 Although the question of exactly how and under what social conditions such “armies” might be mobilized for common ends was not remotely Turing’s con- cern, ironically Fredric Jameson has recently ventured onto such terrain.41 How appropriate is it to think that this degree of abstraction—i.e. modelling infinite totalities with computing machines—could result in any knowledge of capitalism as such? The question is misleading in the sense that we should at least treat with scepticism the idea that some adequate representation of capi- talism depends on maintaining a certain threshold beyond which it escapes our grasp (although of course the idea of there being other universes or “multivers- 39 This is known as “the Halting problem.” In summary form: Let U be a machine that can simulate any Turing machine (TM) behavior on a string of data x so that U halts and ac- cepts x if the TM does; halts and rejects x if the TM does; or, loops on x if the TM does. Is there a way for U to decide in advance, or in other words without running what is essen- tially a simulation, whether and how the TM will halt for data x? No, not without actually running the simulation. Although, “there are certainly machines for which it is possible to determine halting by some heuristic or other: machines for which the start state is the accept state, for example.” See Dexter C. Kozen, Automata and Computability, Springer, New York 1997, p. 230; see also pp. 231–34. 40 Turing, “Proposed electronic calculator” [1945] in Alan Turing’s Automatic Computing Machine, ed. B. Jack Copeland, OUP, Oxford 2005, p. 392: “This process of constructing instruction tables should be very fascinating. There need be no real danger of it ever be- coming a drudge, for any processes that are quite mechanical may be turned over to the machine itself.” 41 Fredric Jameson, An American Utopia: Dual Power and the Universal Army, ed. Slavoj Žižek, Verso, London 2016. FV_01_2017.indd 146 26. 10. 17 11:08 147 schizoanalytic cartographies: on maps and models of capitalism es” apart from the one we inhabit is consistent with so-called digital philoso- phy). Toscano and Kinkle illustrate the point nicely with the short film Powers of Ten (1977) in which a camera ascends from ground level in God’s eye perspec- tive to a distance of 1024 metres before zooming back down to Earth to inspect a man’s hand at 10-16 metres. From the quarks of a carbon atom to the outer reach- es of space, the film represents “the upper and lower bounds of the then known universe.”42 Is capitalism up there or down here? Is it all any more visible on earth than in the outer, or inner, reaches of space? The authors might also have cited Tom Tykwer’s short film Der Mensch im Ding in which the freeze-framing of an urban street scene enables the camera to navigate things without rela- tions. “The textile industry is one of the oldest and major branches of manu- facturing,” the voiceover informs us, as we hover in extreme close up over the fabric of a woman’s skirt, handbag and boots. “Based on Palaeolithic foot and leg skeletons we know that people wore shoes 40,000 years ago. In the Middle Ages handbags were male accoutrements.”43 The narrator then reels off a list of low-wage textile producing countries: China, India, South Korea, Taiwan. Every “thing” here is concretized labour the history of whose dead labour ordinarily remains invisible to us. But what are we seeing in extreme close up that we fail to see in everyday life? In Tykwer’s film social relations boil down to forms of matter in the sense of the intimate “stuff” that the commodity abstracts, or sub- tracts from the real. Our shared social history as social fabrics: a handbag, skirt and boots, leather and cotton... For Toscano and Kinkle the representation of capitalism and the resulting knowledge is a question of in/visibility, especially where the latter becomes a screen memory or stand in for something other. But might we pass from things to matter to real numbers without loss of resolution, given what the authors describe as capitalism’s “shipwreck of the spectator”?44 Would such passage affect (accelerate or decelerate, for instance) the capitalist “engine”? In his Malign Velocities Noys observes how “accelerationists” tend to argue that the more we abstract ourselves from the concrete social realities of capitalism, the more authentic or real our experiences of its abstract dynamics become. Noys’ “machinic integration” is perhaps a misleading expression when it comes to 42 Toscano and Kinkle, p. 2. 43 Der Mensch im Ding. Dir. Tom Tykwer. 2008. 44 Toscano and Kinkle, p. 67. FV_01_2017.indd 147 26. 10. 17 11:08 148 jason barker understanding the political aesthetics of capitalism. It relies on a restricted con- ception of machines, computers and technology that seems dated and ill-suited to the problem of social abstraction. Recall that for Toscano and Kinkle the sub- ject’s total integration into the machine, as they find it in Vertov’s cinema for example, is visually inadequate for mapping the totality: The visual analysis [in Vertov’s A Sixth Part of the World] breaks up and recom- poses the labour-process but removes its proper logic and complexity, together with its agency, creating a socialist abstract labour subsumed by the flow and the plan.45 One way to respond to the threat of machinic integration is to point out that Turing’s “machine” defines an algorithmic procedure in terms of a practical pro- cedure for mathematical computation. Simply put, his “computer” means “one who computes.” Turing sets out to prove that a human being with pencil and paper can, under finite conditions, compute any computable sequence of num- bers regardless of their assumed complexity or degree of abstraction.46 The in- structions “the computer” follows in order to compute the sequence (its behav- iour) will result in an “output.” Crucially there is no minimum speed and hence no acceleration conditioning this process. In the case of the human being the output will be the marks or symbols she writes down on the paper. The instruc- tions can be converted into a description of the behaviour (its algorithm), with each unique behaviour describable by a finite “description number” (a com- puter program written in binary code) which can then be universally simulated or modelled by any computer. In the days of mainframe computers with limit- ed writable memory the output would be reams of paper or card, usually with holes punched in the surface; these programs would then be fed back through any computer conversant in the same language to be simulated in turn. Today of course even local, non-writable memory vastly exceeds the stored memory capacity of the early digital computer prototypes. 45 Ibid, p. 90. 46 For an accessible and sophisticated blow by blow account of Turing’s “On Computable Numbers” see Charles Petzold, The Annotated Turing: A Guided Tour through Alan Turing’s Historic Paper on Computability and the Turing Machine. Wiley, Indianapolis 2008. For an Althusserian reading of Turing see Barker, “Are We (Still) Living in a Computer Simula- tion? Althusser and Turing” in Other Althussers. Special issue of diacritics. A Review of Contemporary Criticism, ed. Jason Barker and G. M. Goshgarian, 43.2, 2015. FV_01_2017.indd 148 26. 10. 17 11:08 149 schizoanalytic cartographies: on maps and models of capitalism Taking inspiration from the abstract modelling of all variety of human behav- iours as computable programs and their universal language, popular culture envisions our contemporary society as the Meta-Machine comprising machine parts (ours) in which, ironically, machines are also said to rule over all aspects of “our” lives. Needless to say on this basis the idea that the subject is subsumed by capitalism and its machinic processes, or is the product of them, should be treated with caution. What does “machinic integration” mean exactly? Does it refer to capitalism’s sublime dominance as a social system, as in the case of the “state capitalism” of Vertov’s A Sixth Part of the World? Or, on the contrary, might any social system (capitalism, socialism…) thereby deprived of its subjects go on functioning at all? How realistic is it to assume that a system could oper- ate effectively without the reproduction of subjects, or without what Althusser calls the “interpellation” of individuals as subjects, i.e. without the inputting of individuals into the machine and its outputting of subjects? We might thus be inclined to turn the question of the subject completely around, wondering instead whether its elision through machinic integration might have the unex- pected effect of disabling the system rather than disempowering the subject. Could there be any “social order” at all without the subject?47 In conclusion, having strayed off the charts mapped out so exquisitely by To- scano and Kinkle, let me suggest that the direction in which we might wish to pursue the mapping or modelling of contemporary capitalism is not so much toward the computation of (a singular) randomness, the one envisioned by the fanatical desire of capitalism’s high frequency traders or “flash boys”48 —“one- armed bandits” might be more apt—to colonize or “invent” the future. On the contrary the more realistic and democratic alternative would surely be to at- tempt to imagine the consequences of randomness as uncomputability, given Gregory Chaitin’s ground-breaking work in computation theory.49 Perhaps something akin to Vertov’s imaginary science of cinema is not so improbable after all for re-imagining the system (“freed from the boundaries of time and space”) in all its incompressible variety; a system, in other words, with all the 47 Frederic Jameson defines utopia as a desubjectified “statistical population” and, further on, as a period of “great social ferment but seemingly rudderless, without any agency or direction: reality seems malleable, but not the system.” See “The Politics of Utopia” in New Left Review 25, January/February 2004, pp. 39—40, 45. 48 See Michael Lewis, Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt, New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2014. 49 See Gregory Chaitin, Meta Math! The Quest for Omega, New York: Vintage, 2005. FV_01_2017.indd 149 26. 10. 17 11:08 150 jason barker “redundancy” left in.50 A true cinema, open to different ways of seeing, albeit one that so far has only shown us “filmed Victorian novels,”51 to quote the authors quoting Peter Greenaway, rather than the engine of capitalism itself. BIBLIOGRAPHY Althusser, Louis (2014), “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an In- vestigation)” in On the Reproduction of Capitalism, trans. Ben Brewster, Verso, London. Badiou, Alain (2001), Ethics. An Essay on the Understanding of Evil, trans. Peter Hallward, London: Verso. -- -- (2006), Being and Event, trans. Oliver Feltham, Continuum, London. -- -- (2009), Logics of Worlds, Being and Event, 2, trans. Alberto Toscano, Continuum, London. Barker, Jason (2015), “Are We (Still) Living in a Computer Simulation? Althusser and Tu- ring” in Other Althussers. Special issue of diacritics. A Review of Contemporary Criti- cism, ed. Jason Barker and G. M. Goshgarian, 43.2. Bell, E. T. (1992 ), “Chapter 13: From Intuition to Absolute Rigor” in The Development of Mathematics, New York: Dover Publications. Berger, John (1972), Ways of Seeing, London: Penguin. Borges, Jose Luis, “On Exactitude in Science” in Collected Ficciones, trans. Andrew Hur- ley, London: Allen Lane, no date, pp. 704—5. Online edition. https://posthegemony. files.wordpress.com/2013/02/borges_collected-fictions.pdf. Brassier, Ray (2004),“Nihil Unbound: Remarks on Subtractive Ontology and Thinking Capitalism,” in ed. Peter Hallward Think Again: Alain Badiou and the Future of Philos- ophy, Continuum, London: “Bringing big data to the enterprise,” IBM website, no date. Online. https://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/bigdata/what-is-big-data.html. Chaitin, Gregory (2005), Meta Math! The Quest for Omega, Vintage, New York. Engels, Friedrich (2010), “The Dialectics of Nature” in Marx and Engels Collected Works, Volume 25, Lawrence and Wishart. Electronic edition. Hacking, Ian (1990), The Taming of Chance. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Halliwell, Stephen (2012), “Diegesis—Mimesis” in The Living Handbook of Narratology. On- line edition. http://www.lhn.uni-hamburg.de/article/diegesis-%E2%80%93-mimesis. Kol’man, E. (1983),“Karl Marx and Mathematics,” in Karl Marx, Mathematical Manu- scripts. ed. S. A. Yanovskaya, New Park, London. Kozen, Dexter C. (1997), Automata and Computability, Springer, New York. 50 See my “Are We (Still) Living in a Computer Simulation? Althusser and Turing.” 51 Greenaway qtd. in Toscano and Kinkle, p. 275n. FV_01_2017.indd 150 26. 10. 17 11:08 151 schizoanalytic cartographies: on maps and models of capitalism Jameson, Fredric (1977), “Reflections in Conclusion” in Aesthetics and Politics, trans. Ronald Taylor, Verso, London. -- -- (1989), “Marxism and Postmodernism” in New Left Review I/176, July/August. -- -- (2004), “The Politics of Utopia” in New Left Review 25, January/February. -- -- (2016), An American Utopia: Dual Power and the Universal Army, ed. Slavoj Žižek, Verso, London. Lewis, Michael (2014), Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt, W. W. Norton & Co., New York. Marx, Karl (1983), “On the Differential” in Mathematical Manuscripts, ed. S. A. Yano- vskaya, New Park, London. -- -- (1987), “1867 Preface to the First German Edition” in Capital. A Critique of Political Economy, trans. Samuel Moore, Edward Aveling and Friedrich Engels, Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1887. Online edition. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/ works/1867-c1/p1.htm. -- -- (2010), A letter to Engels, 31 May 1873 in Marx and Engels Collected Works, Volume 44, Letters 1870—73, Lawrence and Wishart. -- -- (1977), “Preface” in A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy [1859], Pro- gress Publishers, Moscow. Online edition. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/ works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm. Marx Reloaded. Dir. Jason Barker, ZDF/Arte/Medea Film/Films Noirs, 2010. Noys, Benjamin (2013), Malign Velocities. Accelerationism & Capitalism. Zero Books, Win- chester. Petzold, Charles (2008), The Annotated Turing: A Guided Tour through Alan Turing’s His- toric Paper on Computability and the Turing Machine. Wiley, Indianapolis. Plato (2002), Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo, 2nd ed. trans. G. M. A. Grube and John M. Cooper, Hackett, IN. Radiohead (2008), “The Making of ‘House of Cards’ video”. Online video. https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=cyQoTGdQywY. Smith, C.,“Hegel, Marx and Calculus” in Karl Marx, Mathematical Manuscripts Toscano, Alberto and Kinkle, Jeff (2015), Cartographies of the Absolute, Zero Books, Win- chester. Toscano, Alberto (2013), “Gaming the Plumbing: High-Frequency Trading and the Spaces of Capital” in Mute Magazine, 16 January 2013. Online article. http://www.metamute. org/editorial/articles/gaming-plumbing-highfrequency-trading-and-spaces-capital. Turing, Alan (1950), “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” in Mind 59, no. 236. -- -- (1965),“On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem” in The Undecidable: Basic Papers on Undecidable Propositions, Unsolvable Problems and Computable Functions, ed. Martin Davis, Hewlett, Raven Press, New York. -- -- (2005), “Proposed electronic calculator” [1945] in Alan Turing’s Automatic Computing Machine, ed. B. Jack Copeland, OUP, Oxford. Žižek, Slavoj (2006), The Parallelax View, MIT Press, MA. FV_01_2017.indd 151 26. 10. 17 11:08 FV_01_2017.indd 152 26. 10. 17 11:08 153 * Filozofski inštitut ZRC SAZU Filozofski vestnik | Letnik XXXVIII | Številka 1 | 2017 | 153–169 Rado Riha* Badiou, Marx in analiza vrednostne forme blaga V članku bomo poskušali preveriti, ali je mogoča povezati Marxa in Badiouja na področju, kjer je, ne samo na prvi pogled, njun vsebinsko-tematični stik mini- malen, tako rekoč ničen: na področju Marxove kritike politične ekonomije. Naše preverjanje vodi hipoteza, da obstaja homologija med Badioujevo onto-logiko, ki je organizacijsko in vsebinsko jedro Logike svetov, in, če že ne Marxovo kritiko politične ekonomije v celoti, pa vsaj njegovo analizo vrednostne forme v prvem poglavju prvega zvezka Kapitala. Strukturna sorodnost obeh miselnih zastavi- tev je, če našo hipotezo razvijemo, v njuni materialistični orientaciji oziroma v načinu, kako je ta orientacija zastavljena. Ustavimo se najprej pri Badioujevi onto-logiki. Z njeno kompleksno problema- tiko se tu ne bomo ukvarjali, za namen članka zadošča, da uvodoma samo na kratko predstavimo, kako jo tu razumemo. Onto-logika je na svoji elementarni ravni Badioujev odgovor na vprašanje, na kakšen način sta med seboj poveza- ni dve temeljni problematiki njegove filozofije: na eni strani ontološki problem biti-kot-biti, problem čistega, nekonsistentnega mnoštva, mnoštva mnoštva, na drugi strani logični problem pojavitve biti, ki je v tem, da je bit vedno dana v obliki neke situacije oziroma sveta. A če se bit-kot-bit sicer vedno udejanja kot biti-tu-v-nekem-svetu, je Badioujeva bit za razliko od Heglove indiferentna do svoje pojavitive, do svojega biti-tu, tako kot je njena pojavitev vedno kontin- gentna glede na bit samo. Udejanjenje biti ni zahteva, vpisana v bit-kot-bit, z Badioujevimi besedami, telos biti ni njena pojavitev.1 Badioujeva onto-logika se zato ne ukvarja z vprašanjem, kako lahko bit-kot-bit pripelje samo sebe do poja- vitve – biti-tu je pač način biti-kot-biti. Njena naloga je vse prej opredeliti, na ka- kšen način je lahko v pojavitvi biti, v njeni vselejšnji svetni lociranosti, navzoč tudi moment biti same. Na kakšen način je torej bit-kot-bit, ki se kot taka v svoji pojavitvi ne pojavlja, v njej vseeno navzoča. Artikulacija te navzoče odsotnosti biti-kot-biti v njenem biti-tu sodi k logični teoriji materializma objekta. Naloga 1 Cf. A. Badiou, Logiques des mondes [Ldm], Seuil, Pariz 2003, str. 45. FV_01_2017.indd 153 26. 10. 17 11:08 154 rado riha dialektike je potem, da opredeli, na kakšen način je mogoče priskrbeti momentu ne-svetnega, ne-situacijskega njegovo telo in ga kot takega uveljaviti v svetu.2 Vrnimo se k temu, kar smo imenovali materialistična orientiranost Badioujeve in Marxove misli. Tako pri materializmu onto-logike Logike svetov, kakor pri materializmu Marxove kritike politične ekonomije gre za materializem sveta, ki nima, če uporabimo Badioujevo formulacijo, ne nekega spodaj (substancialne- ga temelja, ki bi ga nosil), ne nekega zgoraj (zunajsvetnega, transcendentnega načela, ki bi ga urejal).3 Tri značilnosti določajo tako Badioujev kakor Marxov materializem sveta brez spodaj in zgoraj. Prvič, pri obeh avtorjih je materializem, za katerega gre, logični materializem ozi- roma materializem realnega. To je materializem, ki ga proizvedejo logične opera- cije kot zunanjo posledico svojega notranjega logičnega, pojmovnega razvijanja. Proizvedejo ga kot posledico, ki je za logične operacije nujna in v kateri se potr- jujejo kot konsistentne in koherentne logične operacije, vendar jih ta posledica hkrati presega. Je nekaj, kar je za njih kontingentno in nanje ireduktibilno.4 Drugič, pri obeh miselnih zastavitvah je nosilni moment materialistične orien- tacije teorija objekta. Pri Badiouju je objektu taka vloga pripisana eksplicitno. Teorija objekta oziroma logika pojavitve, transcendentalna logika biti-tu, je po- leg teorije teles resnic nosilni element njegove materialistične dialektike. Prav vprašanje objektivnosti je po Badiouju temeljno za razmejitev materialistične 2 Minimalna, a absolutno nujna zahteva, ki mora biti izpolnjena, da bi lahko mislili skupaj obe ravni, raven indiferentnosti biti do njene pojavitve, in raven kontingentnosti pojavitve glede na bit, je v tem, da je na ravni pojavitive zarisana tako sled indiferntnosti biti do njene pojavitve kakor tudi sled kontingentosti pojavitve glede na bit. V tej dvojni sledi je navzoča bit-kot-bit, bit, ki je nekaj manj kot bit-kot-bit, zgolj njena sled. Badioujev odgovor na vprašanje, na kakšen način je na ravni transcendentalne organizacije biti navzoča tudi na tej ravni odsotna bit-kot-bit, je koncept kraja, site, cf. Ldm, str. 380. 3 Ldm, str. 234. Dodajmo, da je tak svet brez spodaj in zgoraj prav tisti svet razveze sleherne vezi in razkroja sleherne substancialnosti, ki ga na ravni politike rekonstruirata Marx in En- gels v Komunističnem manifestu kot svet kapitalizma (cf. Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Komu- nistični manifest, v Marx-Engels, Izbrana dela, zv. II, Cankarjeva založba, Ljubljana 1971). 4 Za materializem Marxove analize vrednostne forme lahko, v nasprotju z materializmom marksizma, uporabimo tudi trditev, ki jo Pierre Bruno formulira v navezavi na Lacana: da je namreč pogoj avtentičnega materializma prednost realnega pred resničnim. Cf. Pierre Bruno, Lacan, passeur de Marx. L’invention du symptôme, Point Hors Ligne, Editions érès, Toulouse 2010, str. 28. FV_01_2017.indd 154 26. 10. 17 11:08 155 badiou, marx in analiza vrednostne forme blaga dialektike od demokratičnega materializma. Logike svetov prinašajo, kot zatr- juje Badiou, novo definicijo objekta, ki jo je treba razumeti kot logično teorijo, v celoti tujo slehernemu nauku reprezentacije ali referenta in ki je prav kot taka stvar materializma.5 Marx svoje analize sistema meščanske ekonomije, ki je hkrati »prikaz sistema [...] in skozi prikaz njegova kritika«,6 v nasprotju od Badiouja sicer ne predstavlja kot teorije objekta. A ne glede na to je za Marxovo analizo objektov sistema meščan- ske ekonomije značilno to, kar je značilno za Badioujevo logično teorijo objekta, da so namreč objekti zanjo, pa naj gre za objekt »kapitalistični produkcijski na- čin« ali pa za objekt »blago« in »denar«, ne-empirične pojmovne tvorbe, produkti logične, pojmovne konstrukcije.7 Z epistemološkega gledišča bi lahko kritiko po- litične ekonomije tako opredelili kot Marxov »kopernikanski obrat« na področju politično-ekonomskega mišljenja, saj je njen dosežek v tem, da empirično mate- rijo ekonomskega mišljenja sploh šele spravi na pojem, se pravi, jo preoblikuje v znanstveni objekt v pravem pomenu besede. Tako, denimo, H. Brentel ugotavlja, da je prav Marx odkril specifično ekonomsko-družbeno predmetnost oziroma specifični objekt kapitalistične družbe.8 Zaradi odkritja specifičnega objekta eko- nomije lahko zato za Marxovo kritiko politčne ekonomije nedvomno rečemo, da je v strogo epistemološkem pomenu zastavljena kot teorija objekta. Tretjič, prišli smo do tretje značilnosti Badioujevega in Marxovega logične- ga materializma. Ne za Badiouja ne za Marxa logično-pojmovna konstrukcija objekta ni ne končni produkt njune teoretizacije ne njen smoter. Skratka, ni že vse – uspešna je takrat, kadar kot njena zunanja posledica iz nje izpade moment materialnega, realnega. Teorija objekta je zgolj prehodni element, ki pelje k mo- žnosti dojetja realne spremembe. Realna sprememba pa je sprememba, ki teme- lji na specifični artikulaciji materialističnega, realnega momenta teorije objekta. 5 Ldm, str. 46 sl. 6 Marx Lasallu, 22. 2. 1858, Marx-Engels Werke [MEW] zv. 29, str. 550. 7 Cf. tudi M. Heinrich, Die Wissenschaft vom Wert. Die Marxsche Kritik der politischen Öko- nomie zwischen wissenschaftlicher Revolution und klassischer Tradition [WvW], Verlag We- stfälisches Dampfboot, Münster 2011, 5. izd., str. 175: »ne posamezne kategorije ne katego- rialni prehodi nimajo neposrednega empričnega referenta«. 8 H. Brentel, Soziale Form und ökonomisches Objekt. Studien zum Gegenstands- und Metho- denverständnis der Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, Springer Fachmedien, Wiesbaden, 1989, str. 12 sl. FV_01_2017.indd 155 26. 10. 17 11:08 156 rado riha A bolj kot samo vprašanje materializma je za možnost povezave Badioujeve onto-logike in Marxove kritike politične ekonomije zanimiva tista formalna in materialna konceptualna operacija, na kateri temelji celotna struktura Logike svetov. To pa je, z Badioujevimi besedami, suplementacija realnosti Dvojega s Trojim, na kratko, prehod od suverenosti Dvojega k Trojemu kot notranji izjemi Dvojega.9 Pri Badiouju je prehod zastavljen kot integralni del materialistične di- alektike, v okviru naše hipoteze o homologiji med onto-logiko in Marxovo anali- zo vrednostne forme pa ga razumemo na naslednji način: če naša hipoteza drži, mora biti tudi mogoče pokazati, da je operativen in kako je operativen prehod od Dvojega k Trojemu tudi na področju Marxove kritike politične ekonomije. Prehod je namreč pogoj možnosti za zadovoljiv odgovor na ključno vprašanje Marxove analize vrednostne forme »kaj je vsebina te forme?«. Skratka, prehod od Dvojega k Trojemu je po našem mnenju nujno treba afirmirati na področju Marxove kritike politične ekonomije. Prehod je potreben, da bi lahko analizirali in razvili njeno vsebinsko raven, se pravi, njen specifični, logični materializem. I Naše stališče, da je prehod od Dvojega k Trojemu logično-formalna zahteva, na katero mora danes odgovoriti vsak resen poskus reafirmacije Marxove kritike politične ekonomije, bomo najprej upravičili po posredni poti. Za izhodišče bomo vzeli zaključek članka Quentina Meillassouxa »Zgodovina in dogodek pri A. Badiouju« iz l. 2008.10 V njem se Meillassoux, potem ko je obravnaval Bit in dogodek in Logike svetov, naveže še na Svetega Pavla in Badioujev prikaz sv. Pavla kot »utemeljitelja univerzalizma«, ki je dojel, da je resnica zadeva borbe- nosti, ne pa učenosti. Temu Meillassoux potem dodaja: »V tem smislu predsta- vlja [Badiou] nedvomno eno od mogočih prihodnjih usod marksizma, ki je od svojega izvora naprej razdeljen na kritično misel in revolucionarno eshatologijo. Velik del bivših marksistov se je odpovedal eshatologiji, češ da gre za religiozni preostanek, ki je eden glavnih virov prometejskih katastrof realnega socializma. Badioujeva enkratnost pa je, kot se zdi, v tem, da iz marksizma izloča njegov eshatološki del in ga hkrati ločuje od njegove, po Badioujevem mnenju iluzorne, 9 Če navedemo še znano Badioujevo formulacijo: »Obstajajo samo telesa in jeziki, razen da obstajajo še resnice … Te resnice so netelesna telesa, jeziki brez smisla, generične neskonč- nosti, brezpogojni suplementi,« Ldm, str. 12. 10 Quentin Meillassoux, »Histoire et événement chez Badiou«. http://michelpeyret.canal- blog.com/archives/2016/02/21/33402815.html FV_01_2017.indd 156 26. 10. 17 11:08 157 badiou, marx in analiza vrednostne forme blaga zahteve po ekonomski znanstvenosti, ter ga, polnega zanosa, predaja razprše- nim subjektom najrazličnejših bojev, tako političnih kot ljubezenskih. Namesto da bi se kritika ukvarjala z razpustitvijo religiozne iluzije eshatologije, razvija eshatologija dogodka, ki je postala ireligiozna, svojo kritično moč v temačni se- danjosti naših vsakdanjih odpovedovanj«.11 Kar velja po Meillassouxu za Badioujev lik sv. Pavla, velja seveda še toliko bolj za Badioujevo »filozofijo pod pogoji« v celoti: le težko bi se namreč ne stranjali s tem, da je resnica v njej predstavljena in dojeta kot stvar »borbenosti«, ne pa »učene vednosti«. Ne glede na to pa se nam zdi Meillassouxjevo neposredno zoperstavljanje »ekonomske znanstvenosti« in praktično-kritične »eshatologije dogodka« problematično. Problem, ki ga vidimo v taki neposredni zoperstavi- tvi, je dvojen. Prvič, Meillassoux govori sicer o marksizmu, a plat »ekonomske znanstvenosti« drži v njem slej ko prej Marxova kritika politične ekonomije. Z zarisano opozi- cijo pozitivne vednosti na eni strani in borbene resnice na drugi Meillassoux dejansko prevzema in vzdržuje tradicionalno podobo Marxa kot kritičnega teo- retika specifičnega področja vednosti, ekonomije. Tradicionalna podoba Marxa kot avtorja kritike politične ekonomije,12 ki je zaznamovala delavska gibanja 20. stoletja in bila tudi sestavni del marksizma v njegovih različnih inačicah, je v sebi podvojena. Podvojena je, na eni strani, na podobo Marxa kot avtorja ogromnega korpusa pozitivne, ekonomske vednosti o kapitalističnem produk- cijskem načinu in, na drugi strani, na plat Marxa kot kritika,13 pri čemer je Marx- kritik spet podvojen na teoretsko kritiko politične ekonomije, na Marxa, ki je izvedel znanstveno revolucijo na področju ekonomije kot znanstvene vede, in na Marxa kot političnega misleca in akterja, ki mu gre v njegovi teoretski kritiki za praktično, revolucionarno spremembo danega družbenega reda, kapitalizma. Podvojena podoba Marxa je ena od manifestacij usode marksizma, ki se je, če tvegamo poenostavitev, v 20. stololetju razvijal v podobi dveh nasprotujočih si 11 Ibid. 12 Marx jo imenuje v pismu Ferdinandu Lassallu z dne 22.2.1858 »moje ekonomsko delo«. Njegova izjava se v celoti glasi: »moje ekonomsko delo = kritika ekonomskih kategorij oziroma, če ti je ljubše, sistem meščanske ekonomije, prikazan kritično. Je hkrati prikaz sistema [ekonomskih kategorij] in skozi prikaz njegova kritika«. Op. cit., str. 550. 13 Cf. k temu M. Heinrich, WvW. FV_01_2017.indd 157 26. 10. 17 11:08 158 rado riha zastavitev. Vse do svojega zatona kot žive misli se marksizem namreč ni znal rešiti antinomije ekonomskega in razrednega redukcionizma, nihanja med sta- liščem, da odloča o družbenem dogajanju v zadnji instanci ekonomska baza, in stališčem, da je dejavnik, ki odloča v zadnji instanci, praksa političnih in ideo- loških bojev. Lahko bi tudi rekli, da ni znal prignati do njenega pojma Marxove na videz enostavne izjave, da je kritika politične ekonomije prikaz sistema eko- nomskih kategorij in skozi prikaz njegova kritika. Meillassouxjevo vezanje prihodnje usode marksizma na nasprotje znanstvene vednosti in borbenega delovanja v zaključku njegovega članka nam naravnost vsiljuje naslednjo misel: zdi se, da je, potem ko je zlom realnih socializmov oznanil tudi zaton tradicionalne podobe tako Marxa kakor tudi marksizma, ne- kaj od te uhojene podobe vendarle ostalo živo. In sicer prav forma podvojenosti tako Marxove kritičnoekonomske zastavitve, podvojene na njen pozitivno-znan- stveni in njen kritično-politični del, kakor tudi marksizma in njegovih dveh antinomičnih zastavitev, prednosti instance ekonomije, področja »znanstvene vednosti«, vs. prednosti instance politično-ideoloških bojev, področja »borbene resnice«. Ohranila se je prav tista forma, in v tem je za nas temeljna proble- matičnost Meillassouxjeve argumentacije, ki je bila eden od generatorjev krize marksizma, v kateri se je marksizem nahajal že veliko pred zrušenjem realno obstoječega socializma. Kar pomeni tudi: o dvojnosti »pozitivne vednosti« in »borbene eshatologije dogodka« je danes mogoče govoriti le pod pogojem, da smo vzeli krizo marksizma resno. Vzeti krizo resno, pa je to, kar imenuje Badiou na nekem drugem mestu subjektiven, natančneje, subjektiviran odnos do krize. Odnos implicira, da smo kot subjekti krize vzeli krizo nase, šli skozi njo in stopili iz nje.14 Prekoračitev krize je po našem mnenju vezana na naslednjo zahtevo: po zlomu tradicionalne podobe Marxa in marksizma se je nujno treba znebiti tudi tega, kar je od nje še preostalo. To pa so, kot nam z vso očitnostjo kaže Meillassouxjeva argumentacija, formalne razlagalne sheme v okviru Dvojega: v njenem primeru je to opozicija »ekonomske vednosti« in »borbene resnice«, če poenostavimo, opozicija teorije in prakse. Marx sam sicer ni marksist, ven- dar je njegova misel danes neločljiva od marksizma: znebiti se zadnjih preo- stankov tradicionalnih miselnih shem marksizma je zato nujen pogoj tudi za reafirmacijo Marxove kritike politične ekonomije, vsaj tisto reafirmacijo, ki je 14 Za subjektiviran odnos do krize napotujemo na Badioujevo opredelitev treh možnih drž do krize v Ali je mogoče misliti politiko, prev. R. Riha, Založba ZRC, Ljubljana 2004. FV_01_2017.indd 158 26. 10. 17 11:08 159 badiou, marx in analiza vrednostne forme blaga pripravljena vzeti krizo marksizma resno. Ni torej nedolžnega marksističnega branja Kapitala. Drugi problem, ki ga vidimo v dvojici, s katero operira Meillassouxjev članek, je povezan s prvim. Formuliramo ga lahko takole: če je opozicija znanstvene vednosti in borbenosti resnice pertinentna za dojetje Badioujeve filozofije, po- tem bi bilo treba iz Logike svetov in zarisa onto-logike v njej izločiti kot odvečno, torej nepotrebno, skoraj celotno »Veliko logiko« in njeno teorijo objekta oziroma logike pojavitve. Logična teorija objekta, ki jo Badiou razvija, je, če se še enkrat spomnimo, tuja slehernemu nauku reprezentacije ali referenta in je znamenje materializma onto-logike. Kot taka je eden od dveh ključnih elementov materia- listične dialektike – drugi je teorija resničnostnih teles – če jo izločimo iz Logike svetov, izgubimo tudi materialistično orientacijo Badioujeve filozofije. Če izgu- bimo njeno materialistično orientacijo, pa izgubimo hkrati z onto-logično zasta- vitvijo tudi ireligioznost eshatologije dogodka. Velja pa tudi nasprotno: če teorije objekta, kot sami postavljamo, ni mogoče iz- ločiti iz onto-logike kot organizacijskega jedra Logike svetov, potem lahko po našem mnenju odpravimo in hkrati ohranimo nasprotje med ekonomsko znan- stvenostjo in borbeno resnico na podlagi hipoteze, da obstaja homologija med onto-logiko Logike svetov in Marxovo kritiko politične ekonomije v Kapitalu, pri čemer je, kot smo postavili, nosilni element te homologije materialistična orien- tiranost obeh del. V tem primeru bi bilo tisto, kar vsebinsko in formalno organi- zira problemsko zastavitev tako enega kakor drugega teoretskega dela, če za naš namen uporabimo Badioujevo dikcijo, prav specifični kontrast med ekonomsko znanstvenostjo in borbeno resnico15, kontrast, ki se manifestira v logičnem ma- terializmu Marxove misli. II Našo hipotezo o homologiji med Badioujevo in Marxovo miselno zastavitvijo bomo zdaj poskušali upravičiti bolj neposredno. Njeno veljavnost bomo preve- rili na področju Marxove kritike politične ekonomije. Obširno področje Marxove 15 »Pot materialistične dialektike organizira kontrast med kompleksnostjo materializma (lo- gika pojavitve ali teorija objekta) in intenzivnostjo dialektike (živa utelesitev v postopke resnice).« Ldm, str. 46. FV_01_2017.indd 159 26. 10. 17 11:08 160 rado riha kritike politične ekonomije bomo pri tem zožili na en sam, vendar ključen se- gment: na začetno analizo vrednostno določenega produkta dela, blaga, natanč- neje, na analizo njegove vrednostne forme. Marxova analiza vrednostne forme blaga je prikaz načinov, kako se pojavlja vrednost blaga, od njegove enostavne, preko razvite ali totalne in obče vrednostne forme vse do zadnje, denarne forme, v bistvu pa je kompleksen odgovor na enostavno vprašanje »zakaj ta vsebina to formo?« oziroma, kot se glasijo Marxovi stavki: »Politična ekonomija je, čeprav nepopolno, analizirala vrednost in vrednostno velikost ter odkrila vsebino, skri- to v teh formah. Nikoli pa ni niti zastavila vprašanja, zakaj privzema ta vsebina to formo, zakaj se torej delo prikazuje v vrednosti in mera dela z njegovim časov- nim trajanjem v vrednostni velikosti produkta dela.«16 Vprašanje se ne ukvarja z delom, ki je vsebina vrednosti, ukvarja se z vrednostjo samo. Sprašuje, zakaj ima vrednost kot taka, vrednost, vzeta sama na sebi neko od sebe ločeno, osamo- svojeno pojavno obliko. Kaj torej dobimo, če apliciramo na to Marxovo vprašanje, kot smo to zahtevali zgoraj, badioujevski prehod od Dvojega k Trojemu? Če anticipiramo odgovor, ki ga bomo širše razvili v nadaljevanju: dobimo možnost, da v odgovoru na to vprašanje podrobneje določimo denarno formo v njeni funkciji izjeme Tretjega glede na izključnost Dvojice vsebine in forme. Pojmovni prikaz pojavitve vre- dnosti v okviru analize vrednostne forme je prikaz nečesa, kar nima svojega predmetnega referenta, kar pa vseeno obstaja. Prikaz pojavitve vrednosti je hkrati tudi že konstrukcije svojega referenta, in sicer konstrukcija, ki ji ustreza neka realna predmetnost. Konstrukcija tega referenta stoji in pade z možnostjo pojmovnega razvitja tiste druge, vrednostne predmetnosti, ki jo ima blago poleg svoje naturalne, čutne predmetnosti. Kar pomeni: stoji in pade z uspešnim raz- vitjem predmetnosti denarnega blaga. Marxovo vprašanje »zakaj ta vsebina to formo?« operira s pojmovno dvojico vsebina/oblika in je dejansko heglovski dialektiki zvesta zahteva po posredo- vanosti vsebine in oblike. Rezultat njune posredovanosti v okviru analize vre- dnostne forme je na formalni ravni to, kar nemški razlagalci Marxa imenujejo Formgehalt, se pravi, formna vsebina. Vse, v prvi vrsti pa status materialistične dialektike, je seveda odvisno od tega, kako to posredovanost in formno vsebi- 16 K. Marx, Kapital. Kritika politične ekonomije, zvezek 1, knjiga 1, [K1], Cankarjeva založba, Ljubljana 2012, str. 63/64 FV_01_2017.indd 160 26. 10. 17 11:08 161 badiou, marx in analiza vrednostne forme blaga no kot njen rezultat razumemo. Jasno je, da formna vsebina ni zgolj seštevek vsebine in forme. Prav tako pa je tudi ne smemo reducirati na tisti trivialni tip dialektične posredovanosti vsebine in forme, v veliki meri ljub tudi tradiciji he- glovskega marksizma, ki se zadovolji z razumevanjem formne vsebine kot vselej že s formo določene vsebine oziroma vsebinsko razvite forme, z nečim torej, kar v bistvu ni kaj več kot njuna kombinacija ali zmes. Po našem mnenju nas denarna forma kot rezultat Marxovega razvijanja vredno- stne forme naravnost sili k sklepu, da je Marxovo posredovanje vsebine in forme zvesto tistemu tipu dialektike, o katerem govori Badiou, ko zapiše, da v skladu s Heglom »dialektika« pomeni, da je »bistvo sleherne razlike v tretjem terminu, ki zaznamuje razmik obeh drugih«.17 V tem smislu je formna vsebina kot rezultat posredovanosti vsebine in forme nekaj, kar je ireduktibilno tako na formo ka- kor na vsebino, presežek nad njuno posredovanostjo. Namesto dvojega, vsebine in oblike, imamo strukturo trojega: obstajata samo vsebina in oblika, razen da obstaja še formna vsebina, ki ni ne vsebina ne forma, pač pa obstaja natanko v preseku: kot presek obeh. Lahko bi rekli tudi, da je materializacija dvojne nega- tivnosti, materializacija praznine, ki jo prinaša dvojni ne.18 A kaj v Marxovi analizi vrednostne forme ustreza formni vsebini, torej vsebini, ki se kot izjema Tretjega dodaja Dvojemu vsebine in forme? Vsebini, ki je iredukti- bilna na posredovanost vsebine in forme, čeprav je njen rezultat? Izhodišče na- šega odgovora bo Marxova opredelitev vrednostno določenega produkta dela, blaga, na začetku Kapitala I. Blago je delovni produkt, ki ga določata dva fak- torja, oziroma je nekaj »dvocepega«, »ein Zwieschlächtiges«, če prevedemo ne- koliko bolj dobesedno Marxovo sopomenko za dva faktorja. Dva cepa, na katera je razcepljeno blago, sta uporabna vrednost in, vsaj na prvi pogled, menjalna vrednost. Vsaj na prvi pogled zato, ker je menjalna vrednost zgolj pojavna forma tega, kar imajo različna blaga skupno, to pa je njihova vrednost. Prava razceplje- nost blaga je njegova razcepljenost na uporabno vrednost in vrednost, na upo- rabno in na vrednostno reč. Na empirični, pojavni ravni pa se to, z Marxovimi 17 Ldm, str. 12. 18 Formna vsebina je vsebina, ki je ireduktibilna na svojo vselejšnjo določenost s formo, in je forma, ki je organizirana okoli vsebinskega presežka, ki ga proizvede kot čista forma. Je vsebina same forme, tista njena vsebina, zaradi katere ima forma, in ravno v tem je epistemološko novum Marxove analize (vrednostne) forme, svojstven primat nad vsebino oziroma interesom za neposred(ova)no vsebino. FV_01_2017.indd 161 26. 10. 17 11:08 162 rado riha besedami, »notranje nasprotje« prikazuje v obliki »zunanjega nasprotja« med uporabno vrednostjo in menjalno vrednostjo kot samostojno pojavno oziroma izrazno formo vrednosti.19 Marxova opredelitev dvojice uporabne vrednosti in vrednosti kot »notranjega nasprotja« blaga nam seveda preprečuje, da bi oba faktorja oziroma cepa blaga razumeli preprosto kot dve sestavini blaga, ki skupaj prebivata v blagu in bi ju lahko dobili, če bi blago uspeli nekako razstaviti na njegova dva cepa. Kako naj razcepljenost blaga in Marxovo dialektiko notranjega in zunanjega nasprotja pravzaprav razumemo? Prvo, kar bomo pri odgovoru na to vprašanje upoštevali, je, da blago, ki je pred- met Marxove analize, ni empirično dana entiteta, pač pa je logično oziroma pojmovno konstruiran objekt. Marxova pojmovna konstrukcija objekta »blago« je pri tem zgrajena na abstrakciji od vseh konkretnih, uporabnovrednostnih lastnosti delovnega produkta kot blaga, prav tako tudi na abstrakciji od vseh značilnosti konkretnega dela, potrebnega za njegovo produkcijo. Materializem analize vrednostne forme temelji na redukciji oziroma izbrisu materialnosti kot nečesa neposredno, empirično danega. Zaradi te Marxove prekinitve z empirizmom se bomo v prvem koraku naše raz- lage razvojnega niza vrednostnih form blaga v prvem poglavju Kapitala 1 oprli na logiko označevalca. Gre namreč za logiko, ki prav tako temelji na redukciji materialnosti oziroma na mortifikaciji stvari same. Oprli se bomo na dve na- čeli tiste označevalne logike, ki jo je na podlagi strukturalistične lingvistike F. Saussurja razvil J. Lacan, na načelo diferencialnosti in načelo sistemskosti.20 Načelo diferencialnosti nam pomaga razložiti, v kakšnem pomenu je razceplje- nost blaga »notranje nasprotje« blaga, ki se pojavlja v obliki »zunanjega naspro- tja«. Načelo sistemskosti pa nam pomaga razumeti specifično občost vredno- stne določitve produkta dela, splošneje rečeno, univerzalistični značaj blaga in blagovne produkcije. 19 K 1, 49/50. Izpeljava vprašanja »zakaj ta vsebina to formo?« bi bila: »Zakaj potrebuje vred- nost neko od sebe ločeno, osamosvojeno formo?«. 20 Opiramo se na prikaz Lacanove rabe označavalne logike v seminarju 1, 2, 3, 4 iz leta 1984/5 Jacquesa-Alaina Millerja (neavtorizirana objava). FV_01_2017.indd 162 26. 10. 17 11:08 163 badiou, marx in analiza vrednostne forme blaga Začnimo z načelom diferencialnosti, se pravi, z elementarno ravnijo označeval- ne logike. Za označevalec velja, če ponovimo njegovo splošno znano osnovno definicijo, da se določa v razliki do drugega označevalca. Oziroma, kot se glasi znana Lacanova opredelitev označevalca: označevalec je to, kar zastopa subjekt za drugi označevalec, S1 – $ – S2. Homologija z blagom je na tej elementarni ravni neposredna: blago je, kot smo rekli, vrednostno določen produkt dela. Vendar pa blago svoje vrednosti ne izraža na samem sebi. Tako kot določanje »v razliki do« velja za označevalec, velja tudi za blago, da se določa, se pravi, izraža svojo vrednost edino v razliki-razmerju do drugega blaga. Šele v tem razmerju, v tej razliki do samega sebe, pride blago k sebi kot vrednostno določenem produk- tu dela. In tako, kot velja, da označevalec reprezentira subjekt za (vselej) drugi označevalec, S1 – $ – S2, velja v primeru blaga, da blago reprezentira vrednost za (vselej) drugo blago, torej B1 – V – B2. Tej osnovni formalizirani pojavni obliki blaga ustreza to, kar imenuje Marxova analiza enostavna vrednostna forma bla- ga: x blaga A = vredno y blaga B.21 Subjekt, ki se nahaja v presledku dveh označevalcev, je v gornji formuli prečr- tan, in sicer zato, ker v označevalem nizu ne more priti do svoje biti. Prečrtati pa je treba tudi vrednost, ki pride, natančneje, ki naj bi prišla do svojega izraza v enostavni vrednostni formi. V prečrtanosti vrednosti je za nas tista »skrivnost« vrednostne forme, o kateri govori Marx.22 Skrivnost, ki žene razvijanje vredno- stnih form od enostavne vrednostne forme do denarne forme, je v tem, da blago v svojih vrednostnih formah v nasprotju s tem, kar te vrednostne forme so, so pa formalizirani vrednostni izrazi blaga, ravno ne more priti do svoje vrednostne določitve. Oziroma, ko blago v denarni formi končno le pride do svojega vre- dnostnega izraza, je to določitev neke predmetnosti, ki je ni mogoče določiti, predmetnosti brez razpoložljivih predmetnih določitev. A glede skrivnosti prečr- tane vrednosti moramo biti natančni. Skrivnost ni neposredno sama odsotnost vrednosti v nizu njenih izrazov. Skrivnost je v tem, da je ta odsotnost način, kako je vrednost ravno prisotna. Na to mislimo, ko trdimo, da je vrednost blaga v nje- govih vrednostnih formah prisotna le kot nedosežena, z drugimi besedami, kot vselej že prečrtana. Pojasnimo zdaj naše trditve. 21 K1, str. 39. 22 Za nas: zapuščamo torej raven Marxovega samorazumevanja, ne pa tudi, kot upamo, kon- ceptualne in metodološke zastavitve njegove analize vrednostne forme. Marxov stavek se glasi: »Skrivnost sleherne vrednostve forme tiči v tej enostavni vrednosti formi. Analiza te forme je torej tista prava težava.« K1, str. 40. FV_01_2017.indd 163 26. 10. 17 11:08 164 rado riha Da blago v svoji enostavni vrednostni formi ne more priti do svoje vrednosti, ni težko razumeti. Blago ni namenjeno menjavi samo z enim blagom, kot to zapi- suje ta forma. Namenjeno je menjavi s potencialno neskončno množico blag. V menjavi z enim samim blagom ostaja njegova vrednost nedoločena. A njego- va vrednost ostaja nedoločena tudi v naslednji, razviti vrednostni formi, kjer je blago v vrednostnem razmerju s potencialno neskončnim nizom drugih blag. Nedoločena ostaja ravno zaradi odprtosti, načelne nedokončanosti tega niza. V prvem primeru je torej v razmerju premalo blag, v drugem jih je preveč. Zdi se, da je rešitev teh težav z izrazom vrednosti dosežena s tretjo po vrsti, z občo vre- dnostno formo blaga. Do nje pridemo z enostavnim obratom razvite vrednostne forme. Blago, ki je izražalo svojo vrednost v neskončnem nizu vseh drugih blag, postane s tem obratom blago, v katerem vsa druga blaga najdejo svoj vrednostni izraz. Postane obči ekvivalent, torej izraz vrednosti nasploh, s katerim je vredno- stna forma vseh drugih blag izražena kot »enostavna in skupna, torej obča«.23 Obči ekvivalent je blago, ki stoji vsem drugim blagom nasproti kot obči izraz oziroma reprezentant njihove vrednosti. Na eni strani preoblikuje neskončni niz blag v celoto blag, na drugi strani je iz tega blagovnega univerzuma samo izklju- čeno. V primeru obče vrednostne forme je torej blag ravno prav, ravno prav pa jih je takrat, ko tvorijo blagovni univerzum, v katerem eno blago manjka, tisto, ki blaga sklene v celoto vseh. Z občo vrednostno formo smo dejansko že stopili na področje veljavnosti dru- gega načela označevalne logike, načela sistemskosti. Sistemskost je logična konsekvenca diferencialnosti označevalca: da bi lahko označevalni niz nekaj pomenil, se mora na neki točki skleniti z označevalcem, ki zaznamuje, poeno- stavljeno rečeno, da je bilo izrečeno vse, kar je bilo v danem primeru treba reči. Gre za izjemen označevalec, ki zapre ostale v sistem oziroma celoto Vseh: celo- ta vseh obstaja edino pod pogojem, da je še eden več. Sistemskost je, kot smo rekli, logična konsekvenca diferencialnosti, Marxovo razvijanje vrednostnih form pa je zgrajeno tako, da opozori na logično konsekvenco same sistemskosti. Konsekvenca je v tem, da se označevalca, ki prešije označevalni niz v celoto ozi- roma sistem vseh, drži neki zunaj – oziroma neoznačevalni presežek. V primeru vrednostnega razmerja blag je to zunajvrednostni presežek tistega blaga, ki s tem, da reprezentira vrednost nasploh, prešije ostala blaga v celoto. Prav ta zu- najvrednostni presežek zastopnika vrednosti nasploh, ki je konsekvenca načela 23 K1, str. 53. FV_01_2017.indd 164 26. 10. 17 11:08 165 badiou, marx in analiza vrednostne forme blaga sistemskosti, je tisto, kar nam omogoča vstop v problematiko formne vsebine, se pravi, v problematiko specifične materialnosti denarnega blaga. Vendar obča vrednostna forma ne uspe rešiti težave, ki jo imata enostavna in raz- vita vrednostna forma s prikazom vrednosti blaga. Ne le zaradi očitne empirične hibe te forme, da lahko namreč, načelno vzeto, katerokoli blago zavzame mesto občega ekvivalenta. Težava je v sami strukturi ekvivalentske forme. Vsa blaga v njej sicer izražajo svojo vrednost enotno in obče v enem samem blagu, toda zara- di izključenosti tega blaga iz sveta vseh ostalih blag, obči ekvivalent strogo vzeto sam ni več blago. S tem pa izgubi tudi svojo zmožnost, da na ustrezen način, torej z »objektivno trdnostjo« in »obče družbeno veljavnostjo«,24 izraža vrednost. Negativne konsekvence, ki jih ima izključenost občega ekvivalenta za prikaz vre- dnosti, postanejo manifestne z vrednostno formo, ki deluje kot dovršitev obče vrednostne forme in s katero se niz vrednostnih form zaključi, z denarno formo. Denarna forma nastopa s pretenzijo, da odpravlja pomanjkljivost obče vredno- stne forme, ki je v tem, kot smo zapisali, da lahko v njej vsako blago blagovnega sveta – in torej nobeno zares – prevzame vlogo občega ekvivalenta. Z denarno for- mo se namreč vloga občega ekvivalenta omeji na eno samo blago. Naturalno telo tega izključenega in izključnega blaga je zdaj izraz vrednosti vseh drugih blag.25 Z omejitvijo reprezentanta vrednosti nasploh na eno samo blago pride tudi do tega, kar je za denarno formo Marxovega prikaza bistveno: naturalna forma de- narnega blaga, ki je postalo izključni obči ekvivalent, se zraste, če uporabimo Marxov izraz, z njegovo vrednostno formo.26 Denar je blago, pri katerem natural- na forma neposredno, v svoji čutno nazorni predmetnosti, velja za vrednostno formo, natančneje, katerega naturalna forma je neposredno tudi že predmetnost same vrednosti. Na začetku tretjega razdelka »Vrednostna forma ali menjalna vrednost« Marx pripomni, da se vrednostna predmetnost od običajne, čutno oprijemljive predmetnosti reči razlikuje po tem, da ne vemo, kje bi jo prijeli27. Z 24 Za oba izraza cf. K1, str. 56. 25 Za Marxa je blago, ki je, in sicer, kot zapiše, zaradi družbene navade, prevzelo vlogo obče- ga ekvivalenta kot zastopnika vrednosti, še zlato; ibid. 26 »forma neposredne obče zamenljivosti ali obča ekvivalentska forma je zdaj zaradi družbe- ne navade dokončno zraščena s specifično naturalno formo blaga zlato.« Ibid. 27 Cf. K 1, str. 39. Nanašamo se na Marxovo shakespearjansko prispodobo, da se »vrednostna predmetnost blaga od vdove Furje [lika Shakespearovega dela »Henrik IV«] razlikuje po tem, da ne vemo, kje bi jo prijeli«; v nemškem izvirniku Kapitala se zadnji del stavka glasi: FV_01_2017.indd 165 26. 10. 17 11:08 166 rado riha denarnim blagom pa imamo pred seboj vrednost, ki ima telesno, čutno nazorno predmetno formo. Pri denarju torej vemo, kje in kako lahko vrednostno predme- tnost »primemo«. Za denarno formo bi lahko rekli, da je v njej vrednost končno prišla do svojega izraza. Bi lahko skoraj rekli, če smo natančni. Skoraj zato, ker lahko zdaj vrednostno predmetnost sicer »primemo«, imamo pa zato opraviti z drugim problemom – da namreč vrednostne predmetnosti ne moremo določiti. Da torej ne vemo, kaj pravzapav držimo v roki. Vrednostna predmetnost je mo- dus predmetnosti, ki je obstoječi svet in njegova dvojica materialnih in duhovnih entitet ne poznajo in za katero ni na razpolago nobenih predmetnih določitev. Oglejmo si še enkrat strukturo denarnega blaga. Denar je vrednostna forma, v kateri se vrednost kot to, kar je skupno vsem blagom, kot občost, ki abstrahi- ra od vseh partikularnih lastnosti blag, kot taka vrednostna abstrakcija vzpo- stavi v tem, od česar abstrahira, v partikularnosti nekega blagovnega telesa. Natančneje, vzpostavi se, ker je to blagovno telo nekaj enkratnega, v neki enkra- tni partikularnosti, torej singularnosti. Denar je neko singularno telo, ki je hkrati točka eksistence obče vrednostne abstrakcije kot obče. Vrednostna predmetnost je, formalno vzeto, občost, ki ima kot občost svojo bit v točki zanjo nedosegljive singularnosti. V vrednostni predmetnosti denarnega blaga nam Marx predlaga nekaj, kar je, če uporabimo Badioujevo formulacijo v njegovem besedilu »Scena Dvojega«28, Eno, ki je iz sebe ven Dvoje, Eno Dvojega, v kar se da čisti obliki – ne da bi imel sam na razpolago pojmovni aparat, s katerim bi lahko dojel tako v sebi razcepljeno Eno. Cena, ki jo mora, vsaj na prvi pogled, Marxova analiza vrednostne forme plačati za to, da v njej vrednost blaga naposled le pride do svojega ustreznega izraza v vrednostni predmetnosti denarja, je visoka: da se jo sicer »prijeti«, je čutno opri- jemljivo navzoča, vendar se izmika vsem obstoječim predikativnim določilom predmetnosti. Ni ne fizična ne metafizična, ne čutna ne nadčutna. Še najbliže ji pridejo Marxove ironične opredelitve blaga kot čutno-nadčutnega dejanstva, kot pošastne predmetnosti itn. «...daß man nicht weiß, wo sie zu haben ist«, cf. Kapital Kritik der politischen Ökonimie, MEW, zv. 23, str 63. Prevod »da ne vemo, kje bi jo prijeli«, je naš; slovenski prevod se od- loča za prevod Mateja Bora angleškega izvrinika »A man knows not where to have it«, »človek ne ve, kam naj jo dene«, cf. K 1, str. 39. Glede našega prevoda cf. tudi. http://www. englishpage.net/showthread.php?6975-a-man-knows-where-to-have-her 28 Cf. A. Badiou, »Scena Dvojega«, prev. A. Zupančič, Analecta 11, Ljubljana 1999. FV_01_2017.indd 166 26. 10. 17 11:08 167 badiou, marx in analiza vrednostne forme blaga Ena od najboljših interpretacij Marxove kritike politične ekonomije, interpre- tacija M. Heinricha, se zato odloča, da je Marxova določitev denarnega bla- ga kot utelesitve oziroma upredmetenja vrednosti zgrešena. Karkoli lahko, po Heinrichu, reprezentira denar, predmetenost vrednosti ni zares nekaj pred- metnega, materialnega, ustrezneje je, če jo razumemo kot »predmetni refleks družbenega razmerja«. Heinrichova kritika je po našem mnenju nezadostna,29 vendar ni mogoče prezreti, da se dotika dejanskega problema Marxove analize vrednostne forme: da se sicer konča s pojmovno, logično izpeljano utelesitvijo vrednosti kot druge sestavine blaga. Vendar ne ponudi, vsaj ne eksplicitno, lo- gičnih operacij, s katerimi bi lahko določili ontološki status upredmetenja vre- dnosti. Če formuliramo konec analize vrednostne forme v jeziku stare dileme: ali je Nekaj ali ni Nič, potem bi lahko rekli, da se Marxova analiza konča s trdi- tvijo, da vrednost je Nekaj. Ne glede na to odločitev za Nekaj, pa določitev tega Nekaj pri Marxu umanjka. Tako da se na koncu zdi, da tam, kjer je Marx videl Nekaj, vendarle ni Nič.30 Iz te zagate se lahko rešimo po našem mnenju le na en način. Tako, da vztraja- mo, če že ne na črki, pa vsaj na duhu Marxove analize. Kar pomeni naslednje: pri Marxu je sicer predmetnost denarja vezana na denarno blago, konkretno, na zlato. Vztrajati na duhu Marxove analize pa zahteva, da vežemo material- nost denarja na logično operacijo razvijanja vrednostnih form, ne na neki že dani »zunanji predmet«, ki bi imel funkcijo reprezentanta čutno-nadčutne pred- metnosti vrednosti. Skratka, da vežemo vrednostno predmetnost na to, da je referent vrednosti, toda referent, ki je rezultat konstrukcije same vrednostne analize. Vrednostna predmetnost je rezultat, ki je zunanja posledica notranjega pojmovnega razvijanja in je kot taka nekaj realnega. Prav s svojo izpadlostjo iz pojmovne konstrukcije, s svojo zunanjostjo, potrjuje torej njeno uspešnost in deluje kot konstrukciji strogo notranji moment. Vrnimo se zdaj k našemu izhodiščnemu vprašanju, kako je treba razumeti raz- cepljenost blaga, prav tako pa tudi k naši trditvi, da ja na področju analize vre- dnostne forme mogoč in potreben prehod od Dvojega k Trojemu. Končni rezultat 29 Nezadostnost te kritike je vsebovana že v njenem nosilnem pojmu »refleksa«, ki ostaja na ravni adekvatnosti med mišljenjem in realnostjo, torej pod ravnijo minimalne dialektike med realnostjo in mišljenjem. 30 Kar pomeni tudi: predmetnost denarja je znamenje tistega kraja v danem svetu, kjer lahko pride do realnih sprememb. FV_01_2017.indd 167 26. 10. 17 11:08 168 rado riha našega pregleda niza vrednostih form – pojavitev vrednosti blaga v obliki neke čutno-nadčutne predmetnosti, ki je, ni je pa mogoče določiti – nam namreč omogoča, da formuliramo tako odgovor na vprašanje o razcepljenosti, kakor tudi, da upravičimo našo zahtevo po prehodu od Dvojega k Trojemu. Če se ozremo iz končnega rezultata analize vrednostnih form nazaj na enostav- no vrednostno formo, lahko ugotovimo, da je pravzaprav že v tej vrednostni for- mi na dva načina dovolj jasno zarisano, kaj je vrednost kot drugi faktor blaga. Nedoseženost vrednosti v enostavni vrednostni forma nam pove, prvič, da vre- dnostni faktor blaga strogo vzeto ni več kot neko prazno mesto, ki sodi k blagu. Vrednost je vpisana v blago kot nična razlika, ki blago ločuje od njega samega in ga v tej ločenosti od njega samega sploh šele postavlja kot blago. Kot blago ga postavlja, drugič, v drugem blagu, katerega telesna, predmetna eksistenca po- stane vrednostni izraz prvega blaga. Ta predmetna eksistenca je sicer od prvega blaga ločena, blagu zunanja, vendar gre za zunanjost, ki mu je strogo notranja, saj šele v njej pride do svoje blagovne eksistence. Blago je, nam pove začetek Kapitala 1, razcepljeno na uporabno reč in na (menjalno) vrednost. Toda v sebi je razcepljena tudi vrednost sama. Nastopa v dveh oblikah, na eni strani kot pra- znina, na drugi strani kot neka predmetnost, ki je pojavna oblika te praznine. Če hočemo biti natančni, moramo torej od dvojega uporabne reči in vrednosti preiti k trojemu. V luči prehoda od Dvojega k Trojemu se razcepljenost blaga kaže ta- kole: blago je razcepljeno na vrednostno razcepljeno blago, se pravi, na Dvoje čutne uporabne reči in nadčutnega občega vrednosti, to Dvoje pa suplementira izjema Tretjega, eksistenca blaga v obliki neke zunajvrednostne, presežne pred- metnosti, ki ni ne čutna ne nadčutna, pač pa obstaja kot materializacija prazni- ne, do katere pripelje ta dvojni ne. Marxova delovna teorija vrednosti je kot monetarna teorija tudi že kapitalska teorija.31 Za podrobnejšo določitev te presežne predmetnosti bi bilo zato seve- da treba upoštevati še njeno nadaljnjo formno določitev, določitev kapitala. A to, kar smo razvili doslej, nas vendarle že upravičuje k naslednjemu sklepu: Marxova monetarna teorija delovne teorije vrednosti vpeljuje v svet blagovne produkcije neko predmetnost, ki ni del tega, blagovnega sveta, neko posebno, presežno predmetnost, ki je vselej nekaj več in drugo od same sebe. Kot blagov- 31 Cf. H. Brentel, op. cit., str. 256: »Vrednostno teorijo je mogoče kot delovno teorijo vrednosti razložiti le kot kapitalsko teorijo«. FV_01_2017.indd 168 26. 10. 17 11:08 169 badiou, marx in analiza vrednostne forme blaga nemu univerzumu izvzeta predmetnost je navzočnost možnosti nekega drugega in drugačnega sveta. Literatura Badiou, Alain (2003), Logiques des mondes, Seuil, Pariz. Isti (1999), »Scena Dvojega«, prev. Alenka Zupančič, Analecta 11, Ljubljana. Isti (2004), Ali je možno misliti politiko. Manifest za filozofijo, Založba ZRC, Ljubljana. Meillassoux, Quentin (2016), »Histoire et événement chez Badiou«, dostopno na http://michelpeyret.canalblog.com/archives/2016/02/21/33402815.html Brentel, Helmut (1989), Soziale Form und ökonomisches Objekt. Studien zum Gegenstan- ds- und Methodenverständnis der Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, Springer Fachme- dien, Wiesbaden. Bruno, Pierre (2010), Lacan, passeur de Marx. L’invention du symptôme, Point Hors Ligne, Editions érès, Toulouse. Marx, Karl (2011) Kapital. Kritika politične ekonomije, Zvezek 1, Knjiga 1, Naprej, Ljubljana. Isti (1971), Das Kapital Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, Erster Band, Buch 1, Marx-Engels Werke, zv. 23, Dietz Verlag, Berlin. Heinrich, Michael (2011), Die Wissenschaft vom Wert. Die Marxsche Kritik der politischen Ökonomie zwischen wissenschaftlicher Revolution und klassischer Tradition, Verlag Westfälisches Dampfboot, Münster. FV_01_2017.indd 169 26. 10. 17 11:08 FV_01_2017.indd 170 26. 10. 17 11:08 171 * Filozofska fakulteta UL Filozofski vestnik | Letnik XXXVIII | Številka 1 | 2017 | 171–187 Sašo Furlan* Rekonstrukcija Marxove teorije vrednosti: Alternativna izpeljava pojma abstraktnega dela Michael Heinrich je v prodornem delu Die Wissenschaft vom Wert pokazal, da je Marxovo pojmovanje abstraktnega dela v Kapitalu ambivalentno. Marx se je ponekod opiral na »substancialistično teorijo vrednosti,« ki sta jo pred njim za- snovala Adam Smith in David Ricardo, medtem ko je drugod razvil nastavke za povsem drugačno »monetarno teorijo vrednosti,« ki prelamlja s teoretskim po- ljem klasične politične ekonomije in uvaja teoretsko polje kritike politične eko- nomije. Ker je Marx, kot je pokazal Heinrich, razvijal dve nekompatibilni teoriji vrednosti – v okviru prve je vrednost zapopadel kot substanco, v okviru druge pa kot družbeno razmerje –, je v Kapitalu mogoče zaslediti tudi dva nezdružlji- va pojma abstraktnega dela: Marx se je ponekod opiral na naturalistično poj- movanje abstraktnega dela v fiziološkem smislu, drugod pa je abstraktno delo pojmoval kot družbeni odnos, ki se vzpostavi v blagovni menjavi.1 V pričujočem članku bomo argumentirali, da Marxu v Kapitalu niti v okviru substancialistične teorije vrednosti niti v okviru monetarne teorije vrednosti ni uspelo konsisten- tno izpeljati notranje pojmovne zveze med vrednostjo in abstraktnim delom. Predpostavka o abstraktnem delu kot vrednotvorni substanci je v obeh primerih ostala zgolj predpostavka. Nadalje bomo poskusili pokazati, da je izpeljava no- tranje zveze med pojmom vrednosti in pojmom abstraktnega vendarle mogoča, toda le, če se opremo na tretje pojmovanje abstraktnega dela kot razpredmetene subjektivnosti, ki ga Marx razvije v Očrtih (Kritika politične ekonomije 1857-58). Trdili bomo, da je šele po tej poti mogoče utemeljiti tezo, da je edino abstraktno delo vrednotvorno. Najprej se bomo posvetili uvodnim stranem prvega poglavja Kapitala, kjer Marx razvija substancialistično delovno teorijo vrednosti. Marx se takoj po opredeli- tvi dveh faktorjev blaga – uporabne vrednosti in vrednosti – loti utemeljitve vre- dnostne substance. Slednjo izpeljuje z dvojnim postopkom abstrahiranja: za iz- 1 Cf. Michael Heinrich, Die Wissenschaft vom Wert, Westfälisches Dampfboot, Münster, 5. Auflage, 2011. FV_01_2017.indd 171 26. 10. 17 11:08 172 sašo furlan hodišče vzame kvalitativno heterogene uporabne vrednosti, ki se v menjalnem razmerju izenačijo. Izenačitev različnih koristnih reči v menjalnem razmerju po Marxu nakazuje, da v njih »eksistira nekaj skupnega enake velikosti.«2 To sku- pno blag ne more biti nobena fizično oprijemljiva lastnost, ki blagom pripada kot uporabnim vrednostim. Kot uporabne vrednosti se namreč blaga kvalitativ- no razlikujejo, zato jih je treba pri analizi menjalnega razmerja odmisliti. Ko to- rej abstrahiramo od različnih uporabnih vrednostih, pa jim, tako Marx, »ostane le še ena lastnost, lastnost produktov dela.«3 Tisto kar je posameznim blagom, pa naj si bodo še tako različna, skupno, je potemtakem to, da so produkti dela. Vendar pa utemeljitev adekvatnega pojma dela kot vrednostne substance po Marxu zahteva še dodatno odmišljanje: kolikor pri analizi menjalnega razmerja abstrahiramo od kvalitativnih specifik blag kot uporabnih vrednosti, toliko mo- ramo abstrahirati tudi od kvalitativnih specifik heterogenih del, ki proizvajajo te uporabne vrednosti – šele ta, druga abstrakcija nas privede do pojma kvali- tativno homogenega abstraktnega človeškega dela. Vrednostna substanca upo- rabnih vrednosti je zato po Marxu abstraktno delo, ki ga v nadaljevanju oprede- li kot »porabljanje človeškega dela nasploh«4 ali kot »produktivno porabljanje človeških možganov, mišic, živcev, rok, itd.«5 Takoj je mogoče opaziti, da se prvi in drugi postopek abstrahiranja bistveno razlikujeta: po odmišljanju kvalitativnih specifik različnih del Marx ostane pri istem pojmu, tj. delu, le da mu doda drugačen predikat – delo ni več konkretno, temveč abstraktno. Po odmišljanju kvalitativnih specifik uporabnih vrednostih pa neutemeljeno uvede povsem drug pojem – od uporabnih vrednosti iznenada preide k delu. Če bi Marx tudi v slednjem postopku abstrahiranja postopal tako kot v prvem, bi bil rezultat drugačen: če abstrahiramo od kvalitativnih specifik blag kot raznolikih uporabnih vrednosti, tem blagom kajpada še vedno ostane skupno to, da so uporabne vrednosti nasploh. Na takšen sklep napeljuje tudi Heglova izpeljava »vrednostne substance« prek pojma potrebe nasploh v Orisu filozofije pravice: 2 Karl Marx, Kapital I, Založba Naprej!, Ljubljana 2012, str. 31. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid., str. 36. 5 Ibid. FV_01_2017.indd 172 26. 10. 17 11:08 173 rekonstrukcija marxove teorije vrednosti Stvar v uporabi je posamezna stvar, ki je določena po kvaliteti in kvantiteti in je v odnosu do neke specifične potrebe. Vendar je njena specifična uporabnost kot kvantitativno določena hkrati primerljiva z drugimi stvarmi z isto uporabnostjo, kakor je tudi specifična potreba, ki ji služi, hkrati potreba nasploh, in je s tem po svoji posebnosti prav tako primerljiva z drugimi potrebami in potemtakem tudi stvar s takimi stvarmi, ki so uporabne za druge potrebe. Ta njihova občost, katere enostavna določnost izhaja iz partikularnosti stvari, tako da hkrati abstrahiramo od te specifične kvalitete, je vrednost stvari, v kateri je določena in je predmet zavesti njena resnična substancialnost.6 Tako kot je posameznim primerkom konkretnega dela skupno to, da so dela na- sploh, je posameznim potrebam, ki jih zadovoljujejo posamezne uporabne vre- dnosti, skupno to, da so potrebe nasploh, posameznim primerkom uporabnih vrednosti pa to, da so uporabne vrednosti nasploh. Kritika, ki jo je na Marxa prvi naslovil Eugen Böhm-Bawerk, kasneje pa jo je populariziral Alois Schumpeter7, je zato povsem na mestu: »v menjalnem razmerju blag [je] seveda abstrahirano od specifičnih modalnosti, v katerih se uporabne vrednosti pojavljajo, […] ni- kakor pa ne tudi od uporabnih vrednosti nasploh. Marx bi lahko vedel, da od slednjih kratko malo ne moremo abstrahirati, saj brez uporabne vrednosti ne more biti niti menjalne vrednosti – to dejstvo je bil Marx sam prisiljen vedno znova priznati.« 8 (Prevedel S.F.) Kolikor torej obravnavamo menjalno razmerje med blagi, ki so v izhodišču dolo- čena kot uporabne vrednosti, toliko imamo tudi po abstrakciji od partikularnih uporabnih vrednosti med blagi vselej opravka z neko občo uporabno vrednostjo, medtem ko pravzaprav ni nujno, da imamo opravka z abstraktnim človeškim de- lom, saj se lahko menjajo tudi blaga, ki niso produkt človeškega dela (denimo neobdelana zemlja). Po tej logiki vrednostna substanca blag ni abstraktno delo, temveč abstraktna uporabna vrednost oziroma koristnost nasploh. Od šestdesetih letih dvajsetega stoletja dalje je skupina teoretikov Novega branja Marxa (Neue Marx-Lektüre) – med najbolj znanimi so Hans-Georg Backhaus9, 6 G. W. F. Hegel, Oris filozofije pravice, Založba Krtina, Ljubljana 2013, str. 77. 7 Cf. Joseph A. Schumpeter, History of Economic Analysis, Routlege, London 1986, str. 567. 8 Eugen Böhm-Bawerk, Zum Abschluß des Marxschen Systems, dostopno na: https://www. marxists.org/deutsch/referenz/boehm/1896/xx/4-irrtum.htm. 9 Cf. Hans-Georg Backhaus, Dialektik der Wertform, Ca Ira-Verlag, Freiburg 1997. FV_01_2017.indd 173 26. 10. 17 11:08 174 sašo furlan Helmut Reichelt10 in že omenjeni Michael Heinrich – Marxovo teorijo vrednosti reinterpretirali kot monetarno teorijo vrednosti. V primerjavi s substancialistič- no teorijo vrednosti monetarna teorija vrednosti uvede tri bistvene konceptual- ne premike: prvič, vrednostna substanca ni več pojmovana kot reč oziroma kot substanca, ki je inherentna posameznemu blagu, temveč kot družbeno razmerje med blagi, ki je posredovano z denarjem; drugič, blagovna vrednost ni več dana a priori, pred vzpostavitvijo menjalnega razmerja, marveč se konstituira a po- steriori, skozi menjalno razmerje; in tretjič, abstraktno delo ni več pojmovano kot rezultat odmišljanja kvalitativnih razlik med konkretnimi deli, temveč kot rezultat »realne abstrakcije« – izraz je skoval Alfred Sohn-Rethel11 –, praktične- ga akta redukcije raznolikih konkretnih del na enakovrstno abstraktno delo v sferi menjave. V Marxovem opusu lahko nastavke monetarne teorije vrednosti, ki se opira na antinaturalistično pojmovanje abstraktnega dela, najdemo zlasti v Prispevku h kritiki politične ekonomije (1859), v poglavjih o genezi denarne forme in o feti- škem značaju blaga v Kapitalu (1873), ter v rokopisu, ki ga je Marx spisal pozimi 1871/72, ko je revidiral prvo izdajo prvega zvezka Kapitala in pripravljal drugo. V slednjem rokopisu je moč zaslediti številne pasuse, v katerih Marx vrednost in abstraktno delo enoznačno opredeli na način razmerja, ki se a posteriori vzpo- stavlja v menjavi in tako nakaže prelom s substancialistično teorijo vrednosti. Ko analizira menjalno razmerje med dvema dobrinama (plaščem in platnom) zatrdi: »Zunaj medsebojnega razmerja – razmerja, v katerem veljata za enaka – niti plašč niti platno ne posedujeta vrednostne predmetnosti ali svoje pred- metnosti kot strdini človeškega dela nasploh.«12 (Prevedel S.F.) V nadaljevanju sklene: »Delovni produkt, zapopaden v izolaciji, ni niti vrednost niti blago. Vrednost postane šele v svoji enakosti z drugim produktom dela.«13 (Prevedel S.F.) Pasus, v katerem Marx nemara najbolj enoznačno uvede pojem realne ab- strakcije, ki se bistveno razlikuje od miselne abstrakcije, pa se nahaja v poglavju o fetiškem značaju blaga v Kapitalu: »Ljudje […] svojih produktov dela ne po- 10 Cf. Reichelt, Zur logischen Struktur des Kapitalbegriffs bei Karl Marx, Ca Ira-Verlag, Frei- burg 2001. 11 Cf. Sohn-Rethel, Geistige und körperliche Arbeit, VCH Verlagsgesellschaft, Weinheim 1989, str. 12. 12 Karl Marx in Friedrich Engels, Marx/Engels Gesamtausgambe, Zweite Abteilung, Band 6, str. 30. 13 Ibid., str. 31. FV_01_2017.indd 174 26. 10. 17 11:08 175 rekonstrukcija marxove teorije vrednosti stavljajo v medsebojne odnose kot vrednosti zato, ker jim te stvari veljajo le za stvarne ovoje enakovrstnega človeškega dela. Nasprotno. S tem ko svoje razno- vrstne produkte v menjavi zenačijo kot vrednosti, zenačijo svoja različna dela drugo z drugim kot človeško delo.«14 V Kapitalu so konceptualni prelomi monetarne teorije vrednosti nemara najbolje zgoščeni v poglavju o Vrednostni formi ali menjalni vrednosti, v katerem si Marx zada podati opraviti tisto, »česar meščanska ekonomija ni niti poskušala, na- mreč pokazati genezo […] denarne forme.«15 Za klasično delovno teorijo vredno- sti, ki sta jo razvila Smith in Ricardo, in v katere konceptualni okvir se umešča tudi Marxova substancialistična teorija vrednosti, je pojmovna geneza denarne forme pravzaprav nepomembna. Denar v substancialistični teoriji vrednosti ni nič več kot tehnični pripomoček, ki lajša menjavo blag, medtem ko pri konstitu- ciji abstraktnega dela in vrednosti ne igra nobene vloge. Nepomembnost denar- ja izhaja že iz izhodiščne opredelitve vrednosti kot rečevne substance, ki je in- trinzična posameznemu blagu: če je namreč vrednostna substanca inherentna posameznemu blagu, potem je v celoti določena že pred menjavo oziroma pred posredovanjem denarja. S pojmovno genezo denarne forme pa Marx poskusi pokazati, da je denar bistven tako za konstitucijo vrednosti kot za konstitucijo abstraktnega dela. Kot smo de- jali, je v monetarni teoriji vrednosti abstrakcija, ki izenačuje raznolike uporabne vrednosti in s tem posredno tudi raznolika konkretna dela, ki so bila potrošena za proizvodnjo teh uporabnih vrednosti, zapopadena kot realna abstrakcija, tj. abstrakcija, ki v praksi menjave, neodvisno od zavesti vpletenih, prek redukcije konkretnih del na homogeno in enakovrstno delo konstituira abstraktno delo. Denarno formo, katere genezo bomo na kratko rekonstruirali v nadaljevanju,16 pa lahko razumemo kot specifično družbeno formo te realne abstrakcije in s tem tudi kot specifično družbeno formo bogastva v kapitalistični družbi. Marx v Kapitalu genezo denarne forme prične z analizo enostavne vrednostne forme, tj. vrednostnega izraza enega blaga v drugem blagu (x blaga A = y blaga 14 Marx, Kapital, str. 59. 15 Ibid., str. 39. 16 Pri rekonstrukciji si bomo pomagali z analizo vrednostne forme, ki jo v delu Kritika politič- ne ekonomije: Uvod (Založba Sophia, Ljubljana 2012, str. 50-57) poda Michael Heinrich. FV_01_2017.indd 175 26. 10. 17 11:08 176 sašo furlan B). Blagi A in B v izrazu igrata kvalitativno različni vlogi: blago A se nahaja v relativni vrednostni formi – svojo vrednost izraža v blagu B; blago B pa se nahaja v ekvivalentski formi – njegova uporabna vrednost služi kot sredstvo izraza vre- dnosti blaga A. Že enostavna vrednostna forma nakazuje, da vrednosti ni mogo- če zapopasti kot atributa posameznega blaga: blago A namreč lahko predmetno vrednostno formo dobi šele v uporabni vrednosti blaga B. Člena A in B sta na sebi, pred vzpostavitvijo medsebojnega razmerja, zgolj uporabni vrednosti, ne pa tudi vrednosti. Nasprotje med uporabno vrednostjo in vrednostjo, ki se sprva kaže kot inherentno posameznemu blagu, se lahko izrazi šele ko se povnanji ali ko se udejanji kot enakost dveh nasprotipostavljenih blag v menjalnem raz- merju.17 Z izenačitvijo dveh kvalitativno raznolikih zoperstavljenih blag pa se v menjalnem razmerju izenačita tudi dve popolnoma različni konkretni deli, ki sta bili potrošeni za proizvodnjo teh blag: ko sta ti deli prek delovnih produktov postavljeni v razmerje enakosti, sta reducirani na homogeno abstraktno delo. Toda, pomanjkljivost enostavne vrednostne forme se kaže v tem, da izraža vre- dnost enega samega blaga (A), saj ga postavi v razmerje z zgolj enim blagom (B). To pomanjkljivost odpravlja totalna vrednostna forma, tj. vrednostni izraz enega blaga v vseh drugih blagih (x blaga A = y blaga B ali z blaga C ali w blaga D,…). Totalna vrednostna forma blago A postavi v razmerje s celotnim blagovnim svetom, saj je vrednost blaga A zdaj mogoče izraziti v uporabni vrednosti kate- regakoli blaga (B, C, D,…). Totalna vrednostna forma nakazuje, da je vrednost določenega blaga neodvisna od specifične forme uporabne vrednosti, saj lahko za sredstvo izraza vrednosti blaga A, ki se nahaja v relativni vrednostni formi, služi sleherna uporabna vrednost, ki se nahaja v ekvivalentski formi: vrednost blaga A je enaka ne glede na to, ali se izrazi v uporabni vrednosti blaga B, blaga C, blaga D, itd.18 Vendar pa se nazadnje tudi totalna vrednostna forma izkaže za pomanjkljivo, kajti prikazuje mnoštvo vrednostnih izrazov posameznega blaga, ki se medse- bojno izključujejo. Ker je vrednost blaga A izražena ali v blagu B ali v blagu C ali v blagu D, itn. imamo opravka le z nizom posamičnih vrednostnih izrazov enega blaga, ne pa tudi s hkratnim vrednostnim izrazom vseh blag. Takšen izraz vzpostavlja šele obča vrednostna forma, v kateri je vrednost vseh blag izražena 17 Cf. Marx, Kapital, str. 39-49. 18 Ibid., str. 50-52. FV_01_2017.indd 176 26. 10. 17 11:08 177 rekonstrukcija marxove teorije vrednosti v enem blagu (x blaga A in y blaga B in z blaga C … = w blaga D). V tej formi vsa blaga »prikazujejo svoje vrednosti, prvič, enostavno, saj jih prikazujejo v enem samem blagu, in, drugič, enotno, saj jih prikazujejo v istem blagu. Njihova vre- dnost je enostavna in skupna, torej obča.«19 Marx poudarja, da obča vrednostna forma vrednost vsakega blaga izrazi tako, da ta ni več »razlikovana le od njego- ve uporabne vrednosti, temveč od sleherne uporabne vrednosti, in je prav s tem izražena kot nekaj, kar je skupno vsem blagom. Zato se blaga šele s to formo dejansko nanašajo druga na drugo kot vrednosti oziroma se drugo drugemu po- javljajo kot menjalne vrednosti«20. V obči vrednosti formi tako vsako posamezno blago, ki se nahaja v relativni vrednostni formi, dobi enakovrsten vrednostni izraz v enem blagu, ki je postavljeno na mesto občega ekvivalenta. Posamično blago zdaj svoje vrednosti ne izraža več v mnoštvu izključujočih se vrednostnih izrazov (vrednost blaga A se ne izraža več ali v blagu B ali v blagu C ali v bla- gu D,…), temveč v enotnem vrednostnem izrazu, ki v danem trenutku vključuje celoten blagovni svet (vrednost blaga A in vrednost blaga B in vrednost blaga C,… se izražajo v blagu D). Ker v obči vrednostni formi sleherno blago v občem ekvivalentu dobi enotno vrednostno predmetnost, pa v tej predmetnosti enoten izraz dobi tudi sleherno konkretno delo. »Delo, upredmeteno v blagovni vre- dnosti«, pojasnjuje Marx, »tako ni le negativno prikazano kot delo, v katerem so abstrahirane vse konkretne forme in koristne lastnosti dejanskih del. Njegova lastna pozitivna narava izrazito stopi v ospredje. Je redukcija vseh dejanskih del na njihov skupni značaj človeškega dela«21. Marx po analizi obče vrednostne forme preide še k obravnavi denarne forme. Toda, kot je opozoril Heinrich, pri tem prehodu nimamo več opravka s pojmov- no genezo vrednostne forme22: pojmovna struktura denarne forme je identična pojmovni strukturi obče vrednostne forme. Denarna forma vključuje le dodatno okoliščino, v kateri akterji blagovne menjave v praksi za obči ekvivalent pripo- znajo neko specifično blago, ki s tem prične funkcionirati kot denar. Z genezo denarne forme Marx tako prelomi s substancialističnim pojmovanjem vredno- sti, saj vrednost opredeli kot družbeno razmerje, ki se prek realne abstrakcije in s posredovanjem denarja aposteriori vzpostavi v praksi blagovne menjave. 19 Ibid., str. 53. 20 Ibid. 21 Ibid., str. 54. 22 Michael Heinrich, Kritika politične ekonomije: Uvod, str. 56. FV_01_2017.indd 177 26. 10. 17 11:08 178 sašo furlan Vendar pa poante geneze vrednostne forme ni mogoče izčrpati v tezi, da vrednost ni reč, temveč družbeno razmerje. Marxova poanta je prej v tem, da je vrednost družbeni odnos, ki nujno privzame formo reči: kot poudarja Marx, v obči vre- dnostni formi abstraktno delo ni prikazano le kot negacija vseh konkretnih form dela, temveč kot negacija konkretnih form dela, ki se pozitivira v predmetni for- mi občega ekvivalenta oziroma denarja. Geneza denarne forme zato ni le ekspli- kacija monetarne teorije vrednosti, temveč tudi geneza nujnega videza vrednosti kot rečevne substance. Kolikor se vrednost lahko adekvatno izrazi le v uporabni vrednosti blaga, ki funkcionira kot denar, toliko nujno zadobi videz rečevne sub- stance. Problem substancialistične teorije vrednosti je potemtakem v tem, da vre- dnost že v samem izhodišču neposredno izenači z njenim predmetnim videzom, medtem ko monetarna teorija vrednosti pokaže, da je ta predmetni videz učinek družbenega odnosa, ki se vzpostavi skozi prakso blagovne menjave. Monetarna teorija vrednosti se na prvi pogled izogne temeljni zagati substancia- listične teorije vrednosti: kot smo pokazali zgoraj, slednji prek postopka miselne abstrakcije ne uspe dokazati, da je skupni imenovalec blag v menjalnem raz- merju abstraktno človeško delo. Zdi se, da monetarna teorija vrednosti problem iskanja v naprej danega skupnega imenovalca zaobide z reformulacijo izhodišč- nega vprašanja: vprašanje ni več, kaj v blagih je tisto, kar jih dela za enake, mar- več kaj blaga naredi za enaka. Tisto kar različne uporabne vrednosti in različna konkretna dela naredi za enaka, je zdaj praksa menjave. Vendar pa mislimo, da tudi monetarna teorija vrednosti ne more utemeljiti nujne pojmovne zveze med vrednostjo in abstraktnim delom, saj ne rešuje problema, ki ga je izpostavil Böhm-Bawerk, temveč ga zgolj premešča. Marxova izpeljava denarne forme navsezadnje z gotovostjo pokaže le to, da menjava, ki je struk- turirana v skladu z občo vrednostno formo, vselej proizvede abstrakcijo od spe- cifične naturalne forme uporabne vrednosti vseh blag. Če zavrnemo Marxovo izhodiščno izpeljavo abstraktnega dela kot vrednostne substance, potem alter- nativne utemeljitve pojmovne zveze med abstraktnim delom in vrednostjo ne moremo podati zgolj z izpeljavo denarne forme kot forme realne abstrakcije. Denarna forma namreč izraža le formalno strukturo razmerja med uporabnimi vrednostmi v menjavi, ki pa sama po sebi ne more podati vsebinskega kriterija za razločevanje med delovnimi produkti in dobrinami, ki niso produkt člove- škega dela. V izraz denarne forme so vsekakor lahko vključene tudi dobrine, ki niso produkt človeškega dela: na primer, v nasprotju z Marxovo predpostavko, FV_01_2017.indd 178 26. 10. 17 11:08 179 rekonstrukcija marxove teorije vrednosti da mora mesto občega ekvivalenta vedno zasedati »denarno blago«, ki je samo produkt človeškega dela23 – v njegovem času je bilo to zlato – je danes pravza- prav očitno, da to mesto zlahka zasede tudi neblagovni denar, bodisi v obliki papirnatega denarja, ki ga tiskajo centralne banke, bodisi v obliki kreditnega denarja, ki ga ustvarjajo poslovne banke. Skratka, tudi po izpeljavi denarne forme ni jasno, zakaj bi morali realno ab- strakcijo nujno obravnavati kot praktično redukcijo konkretnih del na abstrak- tno človeško delo. Tudi če abstrakcije ne pojmujemo kot miselne abstrakcije, temveč kot realno abstrakcijo, jo moramo naposled zapopasti kot faktično re- dukcijo konkretnih uporabnih vrednosti na abstraktno uporabno vrednost ozi- roma na koristnost nasploh. Izpeljava denarne forme nas zato zopet vodi zgolj do pojma vrednosti kot abstraktne koristnosti, ki pa ni nujno zvezan z ali uteme- ljen na abstraktnem delu. Niti substancialistični niti monetarni teoriji vrednosti torej ni uspelo izpeljati notranje pojmovne zveze med vrednostjo in abstraktnim delom. V nadaljevanju bomo poskusili pokazati, da je nedoslednosti obeh teorij mogoče premostiti z alternativnim pojmovanjem abstraktnega dela. V nasprotju z Marxom, ki v Kapitalu vrednost izpeljuje iz abstraktnega dela, bomo v rekon- strukciji izhajali iz pojmovanja vrednosti kot abstraktne koristnosti, do katerega nas je pripeljala geneza denarne forme, nato bomo od denarne forme napredo- vali h kapitalski formi vrednosti, in šele iz slednje izpeljali pojem abstraktnega dela. Nadejamo se, da bomo tako začrtali konceptualni teren, na katerem je mo- goče izpeljati notranjo pojmovno zvezo med vrednostjo in abstraktnim delom. Geneza denarne forme nas je torej privedla do pojma vrednosti, ki se prek realne abstrakcije vzpostavi kot abstraktna uporabna vrednost oziroma uporabna vre- dnost nasploh. Najprej bomo poskusili pokazati, da pojem vrednosti s pojmov- no genezo denarne forme še ni dovršen. Marx namreč v Kapitalu denarno formo obravnava v okviru »enostavne cirkulacije«, tj. cirkulacije, pri obravnavi katere je abstrahirano od pojma kapitala. Enostavno cirkulacijo zapopade s formulo B – D – B, ki prikazuje proces prodaje enega blaga zavoljo nakupa drugega blaga. A na ravni enostavne cirkulacije je abstrakcija od specifičnih uporabnih vredno- sti blag pomanjkljiva, saj v krogotoku B – D – B ne pride do abstrakcije od spe- cifične uporabne vrednosti kot smotra menjave. Oseba, ki enostavno cirkulacijo požene v tek, sicer s prodajo prvega blaga (B – D), tega reducira na obči ekviva- 23 Ibid., str. 56. FV_01_2017.indd 179 26. 10. 17 11:08 180 sašo furlan lent kot predmetno denarno formo uporabne vrednosti nasploh (D), vendar pa v naslednjem koraku, tj. z nakupom drugega blaga (D – B), obči ekvivalent zopet preobrazi v uporabno vrednost drugega blaga. V sklepnem momentu nakupa se zato abstrakcija, do katere je prišlo v izhodiščnem momentu prodaje, izniči. Ko denar odigra svojo vlogo posrednika blagovne cirkulacije, blaga nemudoma odvržejo svojo občo družbeno formo vrednosti in se povrnejo v naturalno formo partikularnih uporabnih vrednosti. V enostavni cirkulaciji specifična uporabna vrednost ostane tako začetek kot končni smoter menjave. Marxova analiza temeljnih funkcij denarja, ki izvirajo iz enostavne blagovne cirkulacije, pa nazadnje pokaže, da je denarna forma zaprečena s protislovjem. Med temeljnimi funkcijami denarja je funkcija cirkulacijskega sredstva: denar opravlja vlogo posredovanja cirkulacije uporabnih vrednosti v krogotoku B – D – B.24 Kot pojasnjuje Marx, je forma gibanja denarja v cirkulaciji B – D – B »stal- no oddaljevanje denarja od izhodišča, njegov tok iz rok enega posestnika blaga v roke drugega oziroma njegov obtok.«25 V prvem momentu tega procesa (B – D) namreč posestnik blaga dobi denar le zato, da bi ga v drugem momentu (D – B) zopet spravil stran od sebe oziroma zamenjal za drugo blago. Enostavna cirku- lacija zato »nenehno izloča denar«.26 Med temeljnimi funkcijami denarja Marx omenja tudi funkcijo samostojne podobe vrednosti. Denar v vlogi samostojne podobe vrednosti nastopa »kot edino adekvatno bivanje menjalne vrednosti na- sproti vsem drugim blagom kot golim uporabnim vrednostim.«27 Kot samostojna podoba vrednosti lahko denar funkcionira na tri različne načine: kot zaklad, kot plačilno sredstvo in kot svetovni denar. Za našo nadaljnjo izpeljavo bo dovolj, če na kratko osvetlimo funkcijo denarja kot zaklada. Zaklad deluje kot zaloga vrednosti, ki ne posreduje cirkulacije blag, temveč je odtegnjena iz nje. Tezavrator blag ne prodaja zato, da bi jih nato prodal, marveč zato, da bi kopičil denar kot denar: kopičenje zaklada zato izraža formula B – D. Smoter prodaje v tem pri- meru ni več kaka specifična uporabna vrednost temveč denar kot samostojna podoba uporabne vrednosti nasploh. 24 Ibid., str. 84. 25 Ibid., str. 90. 26 Ibid., str. 89. 27 Ibid., str. 102. FV_01_2017.indd 180 26. 10. 17 11:08 181 rekonstrukcija marxove teorije vrednosti Že geneza denarne forme je pravzaprav pokazala, da mora vrednost blaga prido- biti samostojno podobo v predmetni vrednostni formi občega ekvivalenta oziro- ma denarja. Da bi denar lahko v cirkulaciji konsistentno funkcioniral kot samo- stojna podoba vrednosti, v kateri lahko sleherna uporabna vrednost vselej pri- dobi svoj vrednostni izraz, pa mora biti ta podoba tudi trajna. Toda v enostavni cirkulaciji denar ravno ne more pridobiti trajne samostojne podobe vrednosti, saj deluje le kot »izginevajoče posredovanje«28 cirkulacije uporabnih vrednosti. V sferi cirkulacije B – D – B je prisotnost denarja le začasna in naključna: ko denar odsluži svoje dejanje posredovanja menjave posameznih blag, se izloči iz cirkulacije. Ker se denar v cirkulaciji ne more obdržati v trajni samostojni podo- bi vrednosti, pa tudi vsa preostala blaga konstantno izgubljajo svoj trajen in sa- mostojen vrednostni izraz. Gibanje denarja v enostavni cirkulaciji je zato le izraz cirkulacije blag, ki sledi smotru potrošnje specifičnih uporabnih vrednosti, torej smotru, ki je samemu denarju zunanji. Denar šele v funkciji samostojne podobe vrednosti postane sam sebi smoter, saj se, kakor v primeru zaklada, kopiči v sebi lastni formi občega predmetnega bogastva. Vendar pa se v takšni formi lahko ohranja le kolikor se izolira od sveta specifičnih uporabnih vrednosti, katerih vrednostni izraz je. Rezultat Marxove analize funkcij denarja na ravni enostavne cirkulacije je zato protisloven: »Da mora biti osamosvojena menjalna vrednost – absolutna eksistenca menjalne vrednosti – tista, v kateri je menjalna vrednost odtegnjena menjavi, je res protislovno.«29 To protislovje po Marxu nakazuje, da enostavna cirkulacija ni v sebi zaključen proces, marveč le moment nekega širšega procesa. Nesklenjenost enostavne cir- kulacije je razvidna že iz tega, da sestoji iz denarnega posredovanja dveh mo- mentov (uporabnih vrednosti), ki si jih cirkulacija ne postavlja sama, temveč sta ji predpostavljeni od zunaj. Če je enostavna cirkulacija odvisna od momentov, ki so ji heterogeni, pa to pomeni, da mora biti cirkulacija kot posredovanje sama posredovana.30 Zato Marx sklene, da je enostavna cirkulacija »fenomen nekega procesa, ki poteka za njenim hrbtom.«31 A za kakšen proces gre? Gre za proces, ki naj omogoči to, česar enostavna cirkulacija sama po sebi ne zmore, torej za 28 Marx Karl, H kritiki politične ekonomije, METI, 9. zvezek, Filozofski inštitut ZRC SAZU, Ljubljana 1989, str. 63. 29 Ibid., str. 58. 30 Ibid., str. 59. 31 Ibid. FV_01_2017.indd 181 26. 10. 17 11:08 182 sašo furlan proces, skozi katerega naj se denar ohranja kot samostojna in trajna podoba vrednosti, ne da bi pri tem izpadel iz cirkulacije. Temu pogoju lahko zadosti le gibanje v katerem se vrednost v cirkulaciji in skozi cirkulacijo konstantno ohranja v samostojni podobi vrednosti. To pa je proces, v katerem je denar v sami sferi cirkulacije tako predpostavka kot tudi rezultat svojega lastnega gibanja, torej proces v katerem se vrednost preobrazi v kapital. Šele ko denar prične funkcionirati kot kapital, katerega gibanje izraža formula D – B – D, se lahko vrednost vzdržuje v sebi enaki samostojni podobi, ne da bi se pri tem izolirala od cirkulacije specifičnih uporabnih vrednosti. Prav zato pa lahko tudi raznolike uporabne vrednosti šele v kapitalski formi dobijo svoj trajen in samostojen vrednostni izraz. Medtem ko se v enostavni cirkulaciji vre- dnost v samostojni podobi lahko ohranja le kot od cirkulacije blag odtegnjena vrednostna reč, kot denar, ki je docela ločen od sveta uporabnih vrednosti, pa se v gibanju kapitala vrednost iz reči spremeni v proces, v katerem tako denar kot blago obstajata le kot njeni eksistenčni obliki. Vrednost se v kapitalski formi D – B – D spremeni v subjekt oziroma procesirajočo substanco, ki privzema en- krat denarno, drugič blagovno formo. A skozi te konstantne preobrazbe se vre- dnost le zato, ker denar stoji tako na začetku kot na koncu njenega procesa, lahko ohranja kot sama sebi enaka.32 Marxova izpeljava pojma kapitala pravzaprav pokaže, da adekvatna forma vre- dnosti ni denarna, temveč kapitalska forma vrednosti. V nadaljevanju bomo po- skusili pokazati, da se s prehodom od enostavne cirkulacije B – D – B k obči for- muli kapitala D – B – D precizira tudi pojmovanje realne abstrakcije. V cirkulaciji kapitala D – B – D vrednost v denarni formi kot formi občosti blagovnega sveta, ne deluje več le kot »izginevajoči posrednik« cirkulacije partikularnih uporab- nih vrednosti, temveč postane tudi smoter cirkulacije. Cirkulacija kapitala zato dopolni abstrakcijo od uporabnih vrednosti blag, s tem ko si homogeno formo abstraktnega bogastva postavi ne le za začetek, temveč tudi za smoter svojega gibanja. Abstrakcija od heterogenih uporabnih vrednosti zato ni več omejena na posamične minljive momente blagovne menjave, temveč postane neprekinjen proces redukcije uporabnih vrednosti na njihovo enakovrstno formo abstrak- tnega bogastva. V okviru krogotoka D – B – D realna abstrakcija postane ne- skončen proces abstrahiranja. Enostavna cirkulacija B – D – B je namreč končen 32 Marx, Kapital, str. 127. FV_01_2017.indd 182 26. 10. 17 11:08 183 rekonstrukcija marxove teorije vrednosti akt: njen smoter je lociran zunaj cirkulacije, v potrošnji uporabne vrednosti, ki prekine proces enostavne cirkulacije, medtem ko smoter cirkulacije kapitala ni nič drugega kot sama cirkulacija kapitala. Gibanje vrednosti, ki v krogotoku D – B – D postane samosmoter, s tem postane neskončno, saj ni več prekinjeno ob udejanjanju sebi zunanjega smotra, temveč začne slediti imanentnemu smotru neprekinjenega samoohranjanja. Vendar pa tudi v cirkulaciji D – B – D realna abstrakcija še ni dovršena. Da bi lahko prišlo do absolutne redukcije specifičnih uporabnih vrednosti na občo for- mo uporabne vrednosti nasploh, ni dovolj, da se vrednost ohranja v sebi lastni homogeni formi, temveč se mora v tej formi tudi kvantitativno množiti. Naša teza je, da do dovršitve realne abstrakcije pride šele s prehodom od D – B – D k D – B – D‘. Kot v Očrtih pojasnjuje Marx, je tudi v okviru gibanja D – B – D funkcionira- nje denarja protislovno: denar je po svojem pojmu enakovrsten vrednostni izraz vseh uporabnih vrednosti, toda v svoji empirični eksistenci je vselej v neki spe- cifični uporabni vrednosti upredmetena končna vsota denarja. Denar je torej v svoji empirični eksistenci še vedno jetnik svoje naturalne forme oziroma svoje specifične uporabne vrednosti: ker eksistira v obliki končne vsote denarja v pra- ksi ne more služiti kot vrednosti izraz vseh blag, temveč le kot vrednosti izraz omejene količine blag. Denar tega protislovja med svojim pojmom in svojo empi- rično eksistenco ne more rešiti enkrat za vselej, rešuje ga lahko le procesualno, tako da se kvantitativno oplaja.33 D – B – D‘ je potemtakem forma nepretrganega kvantitativnega oplajanja vrednosti, ki v sebi lastni obči in abstraktni formi kon- stantno podira kvantitativne omejitve, ki ji jih postavljajo partikularne uporabne vrednosti. Šele kapitalska forma D – B – D‘ torej vrednost osvobodi okov njene naturalne forme oziroma njene specifične uporabne vrednosti in jo s tem naredi za adekvaten obči vrednosti izraz sleherne specifične uporabne vrednosti. Izhajajoč iz kapitalske forme vrednosti bomo nazadnje poskusili določiti notra- njo pojmovno zvezo med vrednostjo in abstraktnim delom. Marx v Kapitalu po- kaže, da je tudi obča formula kapitala D – B – D‘ zaprečena s protislovjem: v ka- pitalski formi se mora vrednost uvrednotiti oziroma pomnožiti v sebi lastni obči formi abstraktnega bogastva. Takšno formo, kot smo pokazali, vrednost pridobi v cirkulaciji kapitala. Toda, kot opozarja Marx, je uvrednotenje vrednosti na rav- 33 Cf. Karl Marx, Kritika politične ekonomije 1957–58, METI, 8. zvezek, Filozofski inštitut ZRC SAZU, Ljubljana 1985, str. 86. FV_01_2017.indd 183 26. 10. 17 11:08 184 sašo furlan ni same cirkulacije možno le, če pride do nakupa določenega blaga pod njegovo vrednostjo ali prodaje blaga nad njegovo vrednostjo. V tem primeru lahko sicer tisti, ki kupuje nad vrednostjo ali prodaja pod vrednostjo, realizira dobiček, a zgolj pod pogojem, da nekdo drug utrpi enako veliko izgubo. Od tod sledi, da v sferi cirkulacije lahko pride le do redistribucije vrednosti, ne pa tudi do nastan- ka nove vrednosti.34 Obča formula kapitala D – B – D› zahteva, da se vrednost uvrednoti, in to v sferi cirkulacije, a izkaže se, da vrednost ne more izvirati iz cirkulacije. Nastalo zagato Marx opiše takole: »Naš posestnik denarja, ki obstaja šele kot kapitalistova gosenica, mora blaga kupiti po njihovi vrednosti, prodati po njihovi vrednosti in kljub temu na koncu potegniti iz procesa več vrednosti, kakor jo je vrgel vanj. Njegovo razvitje v metulja mora potekati v sferi cirkulacije in ne sme potekati v njej. To sta pogoja problema. Hic Rhodus, hic salta!«35 To protislovje obče formule kapitala nakazuje, da tudi cirkulacija kapitala D – B – D‘ ne more biti avtonomen in sklenjen proces, temveč je lahko le moment širšega procesa, ki vključuje neko dejavnost zunaj cirkulacije. Proces D – B – D‘ sestoji iz dveh momentov menjave, iz nakupa (D – B) in prodaje (B – D‘). Kot smo pokazali, v nobenem od teh momentov ne more priti do nastanka vredno- sti. Vrednost zato lahko izvira le v sferi, v kateri ne pride niti do prodaje niti do nakupa blag, temveč do konsumpcije blag. Če se hoče torej posestnik denarja iz gosenice razviti v metulja, če hoče vrednost spraviti v proces uvrednotenja, mora na trgu najti specifično blago, katerega uporabna vrednost je v tem, da je vir vrednosti, in ga produktivno konsumirati.36 V Kapitalu se Marxu rešitev problema ponudi kar sama po sebi: »In posestnik denarja na trgu najde takšno specifično blago – delovno zmožnost ali delovno silo«37. S to gesto Marx človeško delo, tokrat zapopadeno kot uporabno vrednost delovne sile, ustoliči še na mesto vira vrednosti. A tudi tu se ustavi pri golem zatrjevanju: v Kapitalu nikjer ne pojasni zakaj naj bi bilo vrednotvorno ravno delo delovne sile, ne pa denimo mehansko delo, ki ga opravijo stroji ali druga produkcijska sredstva. Tudi na tem mestu so na videz trivialni očitki, ki so jih meščanski ekonomisti naslovili na Marxa, povsem na mestu: Alfred Marshall je 34 Marx, Kapital, str. 134. 35 Ibid., str. 136-137. 36 Karl Marx, Kritika politične ekonomije 1957–58, str. 137. 37 Ibid. FV_01_2017.indd 184 26. 10. 17 11:08 185 rekonstrukcija marxove teorije vrednosti upravičeno trdil, da Marx v Kapitalu z določitvijo človeškega dela kot vira vre- dnosti, enostavno predpostavlja tisto, kar bi moral šele dokazati.38 V Kapitalu torej Marxu tudi pri tematizaciji človeškega dela kot vira vrednosti ni uspelo utemeljiti notranje pojmovne zveze med delom in vrednostjo. Naša teza pa je, da je takšno pojmovno zvezo mogoče utemeljiti z alternativnim pojmom abstraktnega dela, ki ga Marx razvije v Očrtih: tam abstraktnega dela ne pojmu- je niti kot fiziološke dejavnosti niti kot družbenega razmerja, ki se vzpostavi v menjavi, temveč kot razpredmeteno subjektivnost.39 Razpredmeteno subjektiv- nost živega dela Marx zapopade kot rezultat ločitve neposrednih producentov od produkcijskih sredstev in delovnih produktov. S to ločitvijo, ki delo odtegne od predmetnih pogojev njegovega udejanjenja, se vzpostavi delo, ki je reducira- no na čisto potencialnost, tj. na delovno silo. Kolikor delo v obliki delovne sile obstaja zgolj kot zmožnost dela, ki je tako rekoč odsekana od lastne realizacije, toliko to delo obstaja kot abstrakcija od vseh svojih možnih konkretnih manife- stacij. Zato Marx v Očrtih delovno silo ali delovno zmožnost neposredno izena- či z abstraktnim delom. Ker je abstraktno delo kot delovna zmožnost radikalno ločeno od sleherne predmetnosti ali od vse objektivnosti, obstaja le kot čista razpredmetena subjektivnost. Z Marxovimi besedami gre za: »delo, ločeno od vseh delovnih sredstev in delovnih predmetov, od vse svoje objektivnosti. Živo delo, eksistirajoče kot abstrakcija od teh momentov svoje realne dejanskosti […]; to popolno razgaljenje, vse objektivnosti naga, čista subjektivna eksistenca dela.«40 Skratka, delovna zmožnost »ni to ali ono delo, ampak kar naravnost delo, abstraktno delo; absolutno ravnodušno do svoje posebne določenosti, toda sposobno vsake določenosti.«41 Videti je, da lahko šele prek takšnega pojmovanja abstraktnega dela pokažemo zakaj lahko v okviru krogotoka kapitala D – B – D‘ do uvrednotenja privede zgolj konsumpcija delovne sile, ne pa tudi konsumpcija drugih »produkcijskih faktor- jev«. Kot smo pokazali, udejanjenje sekvence D – B – D‘ zahteva, da se vrednost uvrednoti, ne v formi kake specifične uporabne vrednosti, temveč v sebi lastni formi bogastva kot abstraktne uporabne vrednosti oziroma koristnosti nasploh. 38 Alfred Marshall, Principles of Economics, Macmillan and Co. 8th ed., London 2011, str. 338. 39 Cf. Karl Marx, Kritika politične ekonomije 1957–58, str. 180. 40 Ibid. 41 Ibid., str. 181. FV_01_2017.indd 185 26. 10. 17 11:08 186 sašo furlan Da bi se vrednost v kapitalski formi lahko uvrednotila, mora torej produktivno konsumirati neko uporabno vrednost, ki ne more biti nobena specifična pro- duktivna sila, temveč je lahko le produktivna sila nasploh. Mislimo, da je ravno v tem kontekstu moč vzpostaviti odločilno kvalitativno razliko med delovno silo in preostalimi produkcijskimi sredstvi: stroj je v razmerju do kapitala vselej spe- cifična produktivna sila, ki je upredmetena v specifični reči. Abstraktno delo kot gola zmožnost dela pa je, nasprotno, ravno razpredmetena produktivna sila, je edina produktivna sila, ki ne obstaja na način reči, saj je radikalno ločena od vseh specifičnih, v rečeh upredmetenih produktivnih sil: kot se izrazi Marx, je abstraktno delo: »ne-surovina, ne-delovni instrument, ne-polizdelek«42. Ker torej delovna zmožnost v svoji eksistenci faktično izključuje vse posebne pro- duktivne sile, je v razmerje s kapitalom postavljena kot produktivna sila v obče oziroma kot produktivna sila nasploh. Medtem ko je uporabna vrednost stroja vselej neka specifična forma uporabne vrednosti, je uporabna vrednost delov- ne zmožnosti uporabna vrednost nasploh. Do uvrednotenja vrednosti v formi abstraktne uporabne vrednosti lahko privede le uporabna vrednost, ki sama na sebi uteleša dimenzijo občega bogastva – ta uporabna vrednost mora zato biti neko posebno, ki je samo na sebi obče. Takšna uporabna vrednost pa je lahko le abstraktno delo, ki na sebi negira vsakršno posebno, kvalitativno specifično boga- stvo, tj. delo »kot absolutna revščina: revščina ne kot pomanjkanje, ampak kot popolno izključevanje predmetnega bogastva.«43 Zgolj abstraktno delo v obliki razpredmetene subjektivnosti je zato kapitalu zoperstavljeno kot obča produktiv- na sila, ne kot vir kakega posebnega bogastva, temveč kot vir občega bogastva in ne kot vir kake specifične uporabne vrednosti, temveč kot vir vrednosti. Izpeljava denarne forme vrednosti nas je torej vodila le do nedovršenega pojma vrednosti kot abstraktnega bogastva, ki ima v nasprotju s specifičnimi uporab- nimi vrednostmi formo uporabne vrednosti nasploh. Pojmovna zveza med vre- dnostjo in abstraktnim delom na tej točki še ni bila razvidna. Izpeljava kapital- ske forme vrednosti, prek katere smo izpopolnili pojem abstraktnega bogastva, pa nas je naposled vodila do sklepa, da je uvrednotenje vrednosti kot abstraktne uporabne vrednosti mogoče le s produktivno potrošnjo edinstvene uporabne vrednosti, ki v lastni eksistenci negira sleherno specifično uporabno vrednost in 42 Ibid., str. 180. 43 Ibid. FV_01_2017.indd 186 26. 10. 17 11:08 187 rekonstrukcija marxove teorije vrednosti zato eksistira kot uporabna vrednost nasploh: argumentirali smo, da je ta upo- rabna vrednost lahko le abstraktno delo kot razpredmetena subjektivnost živega dela. Po tej poti smo skušali utemeljiti notranjo pojmovno zvezo med delom in vrednostjo, ki v Marxovem Kapitalu umanjka: izkazalo se je, da k imanentni do- ločitvi vrednosti ne spada le koristnost, temveč tudi abstraktno delo. LITERATURA Backhaus, Hans-Georg (1997), Dialektik der Wertform, Ca Ira-Verlag, Freiburg. Böhm-Bawerk, Eugen Zum Abschluß des Marxschen Systems, dostopno na https://www. marxists.org/deutsch/referenz/boehm/1896/xx/4-irrtum.htm. Heinrich, Michael (2011), Die Wissenschaft vom Wert, Westfälisches Dampfboot, 5. Au- flage, Münster. Isti (2012), Kritika politične ekonomije: Uvod, Založba Sophia, Ljubljana. Hegel, G. W. F. (2013), Oris filozofije pravice, Založba Krtina, Ljubljana. Marshall, Alfred (2011), Principles of Economics, Macmillan and Co. 8th ed., London. Marx, Karl in Engels, Friedrich, Marx/Engels Gesamtausgabe, Zweite Abteilung, Band 6. Marx, Karl (1985), Kritika politične ekonomije 1957–58, METI, 8. zvezek, Filozofski inštitut ZRC SAZU, Ljubljana. Isti, (1989), H kritiki politične ekonomije, METI, 9. zvezek, Filozofski inštitut ZRC SAZU, Ljubljana. Schumpeter, Joseph A. (1986), History of Economic Analysis, Routlege, London. Reichelt, Helmut, (2001), Zur logischen Struktur des Kapitalbegriffs bei Karl Marx, Ca Ira-Verlag, Freiburg. Sohn-Rethel, Alfred (1989), Geistige und körperliche Arbeit, VCH Verlagsgesellschaft, Weinheim. FV_01_2017.indd 187 26. 10. 17 11:08 FV_01_2017.indd 188 26. 10. 17 11:08 189 * Filozofska fakulteta UL Kapitalizem Marxovega časa se je nemara dalo prepričljivo opisati z zanaša- njem na pretežno objektni besednjak – njegovi mehanizmi podrejanja so ne- mara bili res pretežno zunanji, niso očitno posegali v notranjost subjekta, moti- vacija je bila predvsem ohranitev lastne eksistence, v zameno za kar je delavec za čas delovnega dne dal produkcijskemu procesu na razpolago svoje telo in njegove zmožnosti. V današnji fazi kapitalizma – nemara lahko za njen začetek vzamemo slavno izjavo Margaret Thatcher, da ji gre za »spreminjanje duše« – pa nekaj vse bolj napeljuje, da je za njen ustrezen opis in kritiko treba seči glo- blje v subjektno pojmovnost. Bistven element tradicije kritike kapitalizma, za katerega se zdi, da teh spre- memb v njegovem delovanju ne more preživeti nedotaknjen, je teorija aliena- cije, vsaj alienacije, kot je razumljena v »klasični« lukácsevski zastavitvi: kot izginjanje kvalitativnih, subjektnih, individualnih prvin dela v kapitalistični produkciji, ki se s tem vzpostavlja kot subjektu tuj, objektiven, reificiran in reifi- cirajoč red. Vse subjektno po tej shemi ostaja zunaj sistema in s tem potencial- no antisistemsko, izvor revolucionarnega obrata prisvojitve, ko bo reificiranost prekoračila kritično točko. Toda smiselna se zdi diagnoza, da imamo danes opravka s kapitalizmom, ki mu bolj uspeva mobilizirati subjekt kot subjekt. Očrtamo lahko dva etična fenome- na, značilna za sodobni kapitalizem, ki nista enostavno združljiva s klasično shemo alienacije in sta v resnici, vsaj na prvi pogled, tudi v določenem naspro- tju drug z drugim. Po eni strani se zdi, da sistem kapitalističnega izkoriščanja danes vse pogosteje in vse bolj zadeva (in zahteva) celega človeka, ne le njegovih telesnih delovnih zmožnosti, temveč tudi splošno osebno pripadnost delu, kar navsezadnje po- meni opuščanje vseh struktur normativnosti, na katere bi se lahko oprl zunaj delovnega procesa. Martin Hergouth* O etiki kapitalizma Filozofski vestnik | Letnik XXXVIII | Številka 1 | 2017 | 189–203 FV_01_2017.indd 189 26. 10. 17 11:08 190 martin hergouth V isti sapi pa je vendarle prav tej isti dobi lasten tudi globoko zakoreninjen etič- ni impulz, po katerem ekonomsko delovanje, vključitev v sistem, samo na sebi nikakor ni posebej moralno cenjeno, da je torej v najboljšem primeru moralno nevtralno, toda vedno nevarno blizu zdrsu v brezno odbijajoče neavtentičnosti. Vztrajajoča možnost takšne neodobravajoče etične sodbe bi se nam pravzaprav morala zdeti izjemno nenavadna poteza kapitalističnega sistema. Vključiti se v ekonomski sistem navsezadnje pomeni le vključiti se v enoten režim preso- janja legitimnosti delovanja družbe in nikakor ni očitno, kako lahko to znotraj te iste družbe velja za nekaj spornega. Takšno negativno vrednotenje ne ve- lja namreč le za situacije, kjer se očitno proizvajajo trpljenje in nepravičnosti: že sama vključitev v sistem, vsaj za določeno (toda dovolj pogosto) nazorsko držo (res pa, da to, razumljivo, načeloma velja v primerih, ki so vsaj nekoliko odmaknjeni od neposredne skrbi za preživetje), šteje kot nekaj bolj ali manj zavrženega (to držo povzema sintagma »prodati se«). V preteklosti je bilo pre- cej teoretske energije investirane v analizo in kritiko ideologij, ki legitimirajo in vzdržujejo kapitalizem kljub vsej nevzdržnosti in nepravičnosti. Toda ali se nam ne bi moralo iz nekega vidika zdeti presenetljivo prav nasprotno: kako je mogoče, da tako dolgo in stabilno vzdrži sistem, ki je enkraten prav po šibkosti lastne legitimacijske ideologije, ki torej znotraj sebe nenehno poraja notranji odpor do sebe? In res, mnenje o načelni etični spornosti kapitalizma kot takega je tako splošno razširjeno – in v socialnem kontekstu humanistike to verjetno drži še nekoliko bolj –, da bi ob površnem branju pričujoči članek lahko razumeli kot nekoliko naivno navdušeno dokazovanje precej nekontroverznih stališč. Toda članek je smiseln, ravno kolikor zahteva suspenzijo te samoumevnosti o etični spornosti kapitalizma in namesto tega poskuša izslediti njene precizne pojmovne izvore v pogojih in imperativu delovanja, ki jim je podvržen posameznik v kapitalizmu. Če imam prav in sta oba pola tega protislovja globoko vgrajena v mehanizme sistema, potem ta globinska protislovnost sistema zahteva razlago. Da bi si to protislovnost razjasnili, je treba nekako povezati objektni jezik kritike politične ekonomije s subjektnimi kategorijami delovanja in moralnosti. V ta namen bom poskušal Marxa vpeti v ozadje njegove filozofske pojmovnosti, torej v Heglo- vo filozofijo. Natančneje, zaključek razdelka »Duh« Fenomenologije duha nam ponuja dobro izhodišče za to, ker hkrati vsebuje močno konceptualizacijo pri- mernega zgodovinskega momenta (v analizi in kritiki francoske revolucije) in okvir teorije (družbeno umeščenega) delovanja (v poglavju »Sebe zagotovi duh. FV_01_2017.indd 190 26. 10. 17 11:08 191 o etiki kapitalizma Moralnost«). Poskušal bom torej odgovoriti na vprašanje, ali in kako markso- vski prikaz kapitalistične dinamike intervenira v in spremeni osnovne pogoje delovanja v moderni družbi, kot jih je predstavil Hegel. Heglova teorija dejanja v poglavju »Moralnost« Fenomenologije duha Heglova obravnava moralnosti v Fenomenologji duha ima neko posebej zanimi- vo potezo, in sicer: dovolj jasno je umeščena na določeno zgodovinsko mesto. Nahaja se na koncu najbolj izrecno zgodovinskega dela Fenomenologije, razdel- ka »Duh« oziroma, natnačneje, po njegovi kulminaciji v momentu francoske revolucije (»Absolutna sovoboda in strahovlada«). Francoska revolucija je (za Hegla) značilno obravnavana kot ambivalenten fenomen: je nastop absolutne svobode ideja zmožnosti čiste samodoločitve duha kot enotnega suverenega ljudstva. Toda ta ideal se pokvari v trenutku udejanjenja, zahteva po neposre- dnem udejanjenju obče volje (in zgolj nje) ne prenese momenta posebnosti in pade v vrtinec destruktivnega samonanašanja, »furijo izginjanja«. Za temo, ki jo obravnavamo tukaj, ni nezanimivo, da ima svojevrstno strukturo »furije izginjanja« tudi sam kapital, le da je kapital obenem tudi »furija proi- zvajanja«: gibanje kapitala je neskončno vračanje abstraktne občosti vrednosti k sami sebi, vendar je v tem primeru onemogočen revolucionarni kratek stik občosti same s sabo, ker je to vračanje speljano preko krogotoka produkcije in konzumpcije. Nauk tu je, da sta kapitalizem in revolucija dve nasprotni, toda sopripadajoči si, najabstraktnejši pojmovni podobi modernosti, ki jo, sedaj vi- dimo, opredeljuje ontologija obče človeške dejavnosti. To je torej zgodovinski kontekst, kamor se zdi Heglu smiselno umestiti obrav- navo moralnega delovanja. To je bolj razumljivo, če upoštevamo, da za Hegla moralnost ni nekaj naknadnega glede na pojem dejanja, temveč je vsako avto- nomno delovanje po pojmovni nujnosti vedno že moralno. Moralnost je Aufhe- bung revolucije v smislu, da se posameznik po izkustvu uničujočega vrtinca re- volucije umakne in sprijazni z zasebnim življenjem, le da sedaj revolucionarni imperativ občosti ponotranji. Znajde se torej na poziciji Kantove moralne filozo- fije: zahteva po občosti njegovih dejanj za subjekt ni več prisotna kot imperativ političnega delovanja, temveč kot notranji moralni zakon. Z besedami Rebecce FV_01_2017.indd 191 26. 10. 17 11:08 192 martin hergouth Comay: »Moralnost je tako podaljšanje terorja z drugimi sredstvi«1. Subjekt se mora sedaj soočiti s protislovjem, kako to čisto občost moralnega zakona prive- sti do konkretnega delovanja, ne da bi se primešali zanj patološki vzgibi. Zanimal nas bo predvsem zadnji, najbolj slikovit razdelek poglavja o moralo- nosti, »Vest, lepa duša, zlo in njegovo odpuščanje«2. Hegel se v tem poglavju nasploh premika podrobno in počasi in zdi se, da se do zadnjega razdelka teren problema ne premakne posebej daleč. Prva figura, ki jo tu srečamo, figura »ve- sti«, je sicer postavljena kot uspešna razrešitev protislovij med občim zakonom in njegovim udejanjanjem, kolikor »vest« pomeni ravno instanco notranjega prepričanja o pravilnem delovanju, odločitev o uspešni razrešitvi konflikta – toda ta razrešitev se bo v nadaljevanju izkazala za enostransko in neutemelje- no. V grobem lahko tako ta razdelek opišemo, ne zares kot naslednjo stopnjo, temveč kot dramatizacijo protislovij moralnega nazora, pri čemer je vsaka stran protislovja – med načelom delovanja in načelom občosti – pripisana eni podobi zavesti: prepričani delujoči zavesti ter presojajoči zavesti. Poglavje se bo zaklju- čilo z njunim soočenjem in končno njuno spravo. Motor (mestoma ne zelo jasnih) premen med mnogimi podobami zavesti, na katere trčimo v tem razdelku (»vest«, »moralni genij«, »lepa duša«, moralizira- joči »osebni sluga« ter že omenjeni »delujoča« in »presojajoča zavest«) je, eno- stavneje povedano, dejstvo, da četudi je zavest v podobi vesti še tako prepri- čana sama vase, mora pravilnost lastnega delovanja še vedno upravičiti pred drugimi, kar pomeni, da mora njeno delovanje še vedno spremljati naracija; še več, dejanje sploh ni popolno brez te naracije. Četudi se v izhodišču zdi uteme- ljevanje zgolj postransko dopolnilo dejanja, se izkaže, da dejanje brez te nara- cije še ni nič, vsa vsebina dejanja se skriva šele v njej. To je razlog, da zavesti postane govorjenje o dejanju pomembnejše od dejanja samega, – če je dejanje pomembno predvsem kot izražanje, povnanjanje subjektivnosti, potem je treba poskrbeti predvsem za subjektivno plat dejanja. Zavest tako svoj moralni napor osredotoči na to izrekanje pred drugimi. »Duh in substanca njihove povezave je torej medsebojno zagotavljanje o svoji vestnost, dobrih namerah, razveseljenost nad to vzajemno čistostjo in naslajanje nad veličastjem svojega védenja in izre- 1 Rebecca Comay, Mourning Sickness, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 2011, str. 93. 2 Hegel, nav. delo, str. 322. (Od tod naprej: »Vest«.) FV_01_2017.indd 192 26. 10. 17 11:08 193 o etiki kapitalizma kanj, gojenja in negovanja te odločnosti.«3 Toda po Heglu v nobenem primeru ni mogoče popolnoma odpraviti razmika oziroma momenta arbitrarnosti med dejanjem in njegovo naracijo. Zavest je načeloma vselej zmožna upravičiti svoje delovanje in se braniti pred potencialnimi izzivalci, ki dvomijo o pravilnosti, o občem značaju dejanja – toda prav tako lahko izzivalci to samoobrambo vedno zavrnejo in jo označijo kot hinavski poskus preoblačenja partikularnih intere- sov v obče sprejemljive razloge. V sklepnem momentu tega gibanja, zavesti tako postane ne-bistvenost njenega predmetnega delovanja očitna, vrača in zapira se nazaj vase, postane nedejavna »lepa duša«. Še en možen način, kako kar najbolj zgoščeno, četudi nekoliko poenostavljeno, zajeti prehode, ki jih doživlja zavest v poglavju »Vest,« pelje preko pojma ironi- je. Pojem se sicer v tem delu Fenomenologije ne pojavi, je pa vsekakor izjemno strukturno pomemben pojem Heglove filozofije, produkt njegovega soočanja z romanticizmom, kar je nedvomno referenca našega poglavja.4 In najbolj po- membno, pojem se pojavi ob zaključku razdelka »Moralnost« v Orisu filozofije pravice - in tam je povezava z mestom Fenomenologije duha, ki nas zanima, eksplicitna. Ironijo Hegel opredeli kot »Vrhunec subjektivnosti … Obstoji torej v tem, da človek sicer dobro ve, kaj je nravno objektivno, vendar se, nepripravljen pozabiti nase in se odreči sebi, ne potopi v njegovo resnobo in ne deluje iz nje- ga, temveč ga v tem odnosu drži stran od sebe in sebe ve kot tisto, kar tako hoče in sklene in kar prav tako lahko hoče in sklene tudi drugače.«5 Ironija je torej drža, v kateri se temeljna notranja protislovnost delovanja zaostri do skrajnosti: subjektivnost, ki svoje delovanje ve bistveno kot svoje delovanje, kot samoizra- žanje, kot izraz lastnega gospodovanja nad svetom, prav zato v tem delovanju, v svetu nasploh, ne more priti do ničesar dejanskega. In to nam omogoča uvid v kontinuiteto med radikalno razlikujočima se podobama zavesti, ki zasedeta oder v sklepnem dejanju poglavja. Ironija kot lahkotnost delovanja, ki ji v de- janju nikoli ne more iti zares, ker ji delovanje služi le kot sredstvo povnanjanja subjektivnosti, že vsebuje to nečimrnost, ki nazadnje vodi lepo dušo do sploh opustitve, zavračanja delovanja. Ironija je tako le korak stran od cinizma (utele- šenega v figuri osebnega sluge, za katerega noben junak ni junak), ki v vsakem 3 Hegel, Fenomenologija duha, str. 333. 4 Cf. Jamila Mascat, »When Negativity Becomes Vanity: Hegel’s Critique of Romantic Irony«, Stasis journal http://www.stasisjournal.net/all-issues/1-politics-of-negativity/13-when-ne- gativity-becomes-vanity-hegel-s-critique-of-romantic-irony 5 G.W.F Hegel, Oris filozofije pravice, Krtina, Ljubljana, 2013, str. 140. FV_01_2017.indd 193 26. 10. 17 11:08 194 martin hergouth dejanju vidi neizogibnost hinavščine, ker nobeno dejanje ni možno brez mo- menta posebnosti, če nič drugega, vsaj v tem, da gre delujoči zavesti v dejanju nujno za afirmacijo same sebe v dejanju, bolj kot za dejanje samo. V sklepnem delu poglavja se tako ti skrajni stališči presojajoče in delujoče zave- sti soočita druga z drugo. Toda izhajata iz iste nečimrnosti, kar pomeni, da sta za Hegla enako konsekventna in enako zgrešena neuspela poskusa delovanja. Protislovje poglavja, ki nastane s tem razcepom pa se, dovolj edinstveno v Fe- nomenologiji, ne razreši z enostavnim prehodom na neko novo raven, temveč v spravi, v vzajemnem uvidu in odpuščanju zla, ki ga vidita druga v drugi. Na tej točki Fenomenologije torej ni več nobene razlike med tem, kaj je resnično za zavest, in kaj za nas (bralce). Nova podoba duha nastane, ko zavesti spozna- ta nerazrešljivost nasprotja, v katerega sta se zapletli in preko tega spoznanja ustvarita skupnost. Ta zaključek lahko deluje kot določeno razočaranje. Robert B. Pippin6 tako, de- nimo, obžaluje odsotnost očitnih vezi, ki bi napotovala na formacijo racional- nega sklopa institucij, kakršnega Hegel opisuje v Orisu filozofije pravice. Zaklju- ček poglavja ne ponudi nobenih kriterijev – ali vsaj zasnove zanje – po katerih bi se dejanja lahko presojala kot pravilna ali napačna. Sled zločinskosti v deja- nju ni odpravljena, situacija se razreši le zato, ker presojajoča zavest v situacijo všteje samo sebe, svoje dejanje presojanja dojame kot dejanje, ki je zato lahko podvrženo isti kritiki, in na podlagi tega se med zavestima vzpostavi enakost. Toda tako dejanje kot njegovo presojanje v tej spravi izgineta. Zdi se, da moramo torej to poglavje razumeti predvsem kot prikaz nezmožno- sti izolirane zavesti, da upraviči svoje delovanje v razmerju do neke zunanje, nevtralne instance; ni nobene metapozicije presojanja dejanj, temveč slednje vedno že predpostavlja prehodno sopripadnost skupnosti in s tem napotuje na to, kar bo v Filozofiji pravice obravnavano kot sfera nravnosti. Torej, vsako de- janje, gledano v izolaciji, nosi madež zla, in odpuščanje tega zla priskrbi šele z vpetostjo v normalizirajoč okvir institucij. 6 Robert B. Pippin, »Recognition and Reconciliation« in Katarina Degliorgi ur.), Hegel: New directions, Acumen, Chesham 2006, str. 139. FV_01_2017.indd 194 26. 10. 17 11:08 195 o etiki kapitalizma Kapital kot režim delovanja Nas pa torej zanima, v kakšnem smislu lahko to Heglovo obravnavo moralnosti aktualiziramo v kontekstu kapitalizma in ali lahko preko tega dobimo uvid v pogoje in omejitve delovanja, ki so naloženi sodobnemu posamezniku. V ta namen najprej nekaj pojasnil: a) V kakšnem smislu natočno tu mislimo pojem kapitala in kaj pomeni misliti ga kot režim delovanja in b) kaj natančno je tisto, kar nas napeljuje, da področja moralnosti ne pustimo tam, kjer ga je pustil Hegel, torej kot preabstraktne, še ne dejanske sfere delovanja, ki dobi svojo do- vršitev šele v bolj določeni sferi nravnosti. Glede na določeno zagatnost pojma je nemara tu smiselnih nekaj pojasnil: kako natančno tu uporabljamo pojem kapitala. Kapital, zapopaden v čistosti svojega pojma, seveda ni nobena konkretna reč v svetu, ne pripada redu uporabnih vre- dnosti, ne smemo ga zamenjati s pojmom produkcijskih sredstev niti s pravnim odnosom lastništva – kapital je najprej zaloga nakopičene abstraktne vredno- sti, ki s tem nakopičenjem vzpostavlja privilegirano družbeno mesto začenjanja družbene dejavnosti (produkcije). Ta pojmovni razvoj, ki desubstancializira po- jem kapitala, je navsezadnje že stvar vsakdanjega izkustva: dolgo je že, kar se je kapital dalo ustrezno zamišljati v upodobljivi kombinaciji tovarne in njenega lastnika. Po razvoju finančnega sektorja in mehanizmov financiranja se kapitala očitno ne da enačiti s kontinuiteto posameznega produkcijskega procesa, niti s pravno formo podjetja (samo pomisliti je treba na kompleksne pravne strukture multinacionalnih korporacij, z njihovimi podružnicami in podizvajalci) in niti z lastniško funkcijo (ki pač lahko seže do popolne pasivnosti). Prej ga je treba razumeti kot celoten institucionalen sklop lastništva/financiranja/upravljanja, ki, vzeto skupaj, sestavlja osrediščen mehanizem razporejanja družbeno potreb- nega dela, tj. legitimnega delovanja v ekonomski sferi. V tem smislu je mogoče kapital najabstraktneje (v tej abstraktnosti se sicer izgu- bi marsikaj pomembnega o kapitalu, vendar ne pomembenga za tukajšnje cilje) zapopasti kot režim delovanja – razporeditev moči potencialnega delovanja, s pomebnim dodatkom, da vsako tako delovanje šteje le, če privede do tržne re- alizacije, tj., če to delovanje privede do tega, da se povrne v abstraktno formo denarja. Na način, ki ga bomo še določili, med tema dvema formama obstoja FV_01_2017.indd 195 26. 10. 17 11:08 196 martin hergouth kapitala – nakopičena abstraktna vrednost in konkretno udejanjenje v produk- cijskem procesu – obstaja napetost. Tu najprej polemična razmejitev: Nam ta strukturna poteza kapitala – namreč razpetost med abstraktno občostjo čiste potencialnosti ter konkretnostjo, po- sebnostjo in raznoterostjo realnega gospodarstva – služi kot izhodišče za razme- roma šibko interpretacijo kapitala kot režima delovanja. Obstajajo pa sodobnejši poskusi vzporednega Marxa in Hegla, ki iz istega izhodišča napredujejo do moč- nejših zaključkov in kapital primerjajo z veliki pojmi Heglove filozofije, kot so pojem, ideja, duh. Omeniti bi morali, denimo, Moishea Postoneja z njegovo tezo o analognosti oziroma ujemanju pojmov kapitala in duha7. Problem, ki ga vidim v tej tezi, je, da je vzdržna samo, kolikor ostane izjemno abstraktna in ne posebej informativna. Res je, da imata pojma duha in kapitala skupno osnovno struktu- ro enotnosti abstraktne občosti in raznoterosti posebnega. Toda strukture tega tipa – tj. strukture (poskusa) totalizacije, posredovanja med občostjo in poseb- nostjo – v Heglovi filozofiji najdemo vsepovsod; prav tako bi lahko govorili tudi o »ideji«, »pojmu« ali, konec koncev, o »subjektu«. Da bi torej tej enačbi duh = kapital lahko pripisali kak globlji pomen, bi morali bolj upoštevati specifično funkcijo, ki jo pojem duha ima v Heglovi filozofiji. Gotovo je sicer tudi kapital taka struktura totalizacije ali, nemara, neskončna ambicija totalizacije oziroma subsumpcije družbenega življenja, toda hkrati ima očitno strukturne poteze, ki ga od heglovskih pojmov uspešne totalizacije, kot je duh, očitno razlikujejo. Predvsem duh kot uspešen princip enotnosti zgodovinskega družbenega življe- nja ne dopušča jasne izločitve iz imanence tega življenja. Kapital pa se po drugi strani kaže kot izrazito vsiljiv oziroma nasilen, torej, ne izgubi značaja nečesa tujega in zunanjega glede na družbeno življenje, ki ga poskuša subsumirati. (Obstaja razlog, zakaj obstaja mnogo upornih glasov in gibanj proti kapitalu in le malo proti duhu.) Ta razlika torej zahteva razlago, se pravi, opis, kako kapital vendarle ni popolna struktura zajetja; nujen je opis spodletelosti tega zajetja. Toda to, opozarjam, ne pomeni, da je kapital tisti, ki mu spodleti – kapital je ta spodletelost. Če te spodletelosti ne bi bilo, ne bi bilo nobenega prostora za etično ogorčenje nad kapitalom; zgodilo bi se natanko tisto, kar bi se moralo. 7 Moishe Postone, Time, Labor and Social Domination, Cambridge University Press, Cam- bridge 1993, str.78. FV_01_2017.indd 196 26. 10. 17 11:08 197 o etiki kapitalizma Kapital in nravnost Poglejmo sedaj zadevo z druge plati: če je kapital spodletelost udejanjanja, po- tem je smiselno razmisliti, kako forma kapitala – ključen fenomen modernosti, ki ga Hegel v svoji filozofiji ni zapopadel – deluje pri razrešitvi problema delova- nja. Pri Heglu dobijo zagate zgolj-moralnega delovanja svojo razrešitev v fiksaci- ji, ki jo omogoča šele konkreten socialni red nravnosti: ta mu omogoča, da si, ko gre za delovanje, vselej postavlja bolj določena vprašanja in mu ni treba iskati nemogočega odgovora na to, kako ravnati dobro nasploh. Kapitalizem, trdimo, nepopravljivo šibi in krha okvir nravnosti, na katerega se je zanašal Hegel. To seveda ne pomeni, da je Hegel meril na družbo danih, tradici- onalnih vlog; je pa njegova poltiična filozofija bistveno strukturirana kot napor, kako v družbo vključiti moderni princip avtonomne posameznikove določitve lastne posebnosti na način, ki bi obenem zajezil oziroma zamejil moment raz- pustitve, ki jo to vključuje. Civilna družba kot sfera delovanja, kjer ta napetost najbolj pride do izraza, vsebuje naslednje mehanizme, ki preprečujejo, da bi posameznikovo delovanje, njegov razvoj lastne posebnosti obvisel v praznini: dejstvo da mora posameznik svojo posebnost poobčiti na način, da jo podredi zadovoljevanju neke potrebe znotraj sistema potreb in drugič preko članstva v profesionalnih združenjih, »korporacijah«, preko katerih je do neke mere ob- varovan pred kontingentnostmi trga in preko katerih lahko doseže neko drugo formo pripoznanja – poklicno čast – kot pa zgolj kopičenje bogastva. Kar zadeva slednje, zgolj pripomnimo, da očitno v obliki, kot si jo je zamišljal Hegel, stanovske organizacije (razen izjem) ne morejo nuditi opore pred trans- formativnim in razpuščajočim gibanjem kapitalizma – stabilne poklicne identi- tete so ravno tisto, kar kapitalizem transformira in razpušča. Tudi če določena stabilnost poklicev in stanov še zdaleč ni povsod odpravljena, pa jo imamo da- nes vedno težje za nekaj normalnega, iz tega področja relativne fiksnosti, se zdi, izpadajo vedno širši sektorji prebivalstva in gospodarstva. Toda danes je vse bolj problematična tudi ideja, da je ekonomski sistem moč opisati kot »sistem potreb«. Ne gre za to, da Hegel ne bi predvidel spreminanja in širjenja področja človeških potreb – delitvi na umetne in naravne potrebe je izrecno nasprotoval. Toda obravnavati ekonomijo kot sistem potreb pomeni postaviti te potrebe kot nekaj minimalno predobstoječega produkciji, ki naj jih FV_01_2017.indd 197 26. 10. 17 11:08 198 martin hergouth zadovoljuje, kot njen zunanji smoter. Toda očitno je kapital avtonomna socialna forma, ki ga bo težnja po povnanjanju v produkciji gnala neodvisno od tega, ali onkraj te produkcije čaka kakšna potreba. Če Hegel ločuje med zgolj moralnim delovanjem, ki se mora utemeljevati iz čiste praznine občosti in nravnim delovanjem dodatno utemeljenim v določenem so- cialnem kontekstu, pa iz gornjih razlogov trdim, da delovanje v okviru kapitala predstavlja vmesni modus delovanja; vmesen zato, ker proizvaja vedno nova prazna izhodišča delovanja. To se dogaja na dva načina: s tehnološkim razvo- jem, ki do tedaj potrebno delo naredi nesmiselno, ter s kopičenjem profitov ki se morajo tako ali drugače spraviti v produkcijo. To praznjenje izhodišč tako velja tako za stran kapitala kot dela. Ta prazna izhodišča delovanja so tisto, kar v Heglovo teorijo ni ni zares všteto. V ekonomiji, ki je ne more več uokvirjati etični okvir služenja potrebam, je delova- nje ponovno izpostavljeno patologijam, ki jih je Hegel opisoval glede moralnega delovanja; upravičeno pričakujemo, da se bo zapletlo v enake težave glede do- seganja intersubjektivnega pripoznanja. Tiranija posplošene ironije Če začnem počasi strnjevati in preiti k tistemu, kar sem si v uvodu postavil za nalogo: moralizirati politično ekonomske-kategorije – predvsem formo kapita- la – se pravi, prikazati, kakšen moralni utrip in držo vtisnejo življenju, ki ga organizirajo. Po teoretski izpeljavi smo prišli do teze, da bo ta moralnost, ki jo s seboj nosi kapital, verjetno pripeljala do podobnih neuspehov delovanja, kot jih je izkazo- vala zavest na stopnji Heglove moralnosti – pač zato, ker v heglovskem okviru vsako delovanje brez drugega konteksta je moralno delovanje in kapitalizem stalno vzpostavlja in udejanja takšne brezkontekstualnosti. Sedaj nam gre za to, da predstavimo smer mišljenja, ki to tezo operacionalizira. Najprej lahko ugotovimo, da je kapital soočen z istim protislovjem med ohranja- njem čistosti lastne občosti (tj. svojega obstoja v formi abstraktne nakopičnene vrednosti ) in nujnosti udejanjanja v konkretnosti produkcije, ki pomeni tvega- nje, da ta spust ostane nepripoznano nepovraten. Obdobja heglovsko zglednega FV_01_2017.indd 198 26. 10. 17 11:08 199 o etiki kapitalizma obnašanja kapitala, ko ta ve, da se njegova občost ohranja zgolj v nenehnem udejanjanju v posebnem in se v njem ne izgubi, prekinjajo momenti kriz, ko je zanesljivo obča le utelešena vrednost sama – denar. Z Marxovim slikovitim opisom: »To protislovje postane očitno v tistem trenutku produkcijskih in trgo- vinskih kriz, ki se imenuje denarna kriza. … Še ravnokar je meščan, pijan od pro- speritete in v prosvetiteljski domišljavosti, razglašal denar za prazno blodnjo. Le blago je denar. Le denar je blago! Se zdaj razlega po svetovnem trgu, njegova duša vpije po denarju, tem edinem bogastvu, kakor jelen ruka po sveži vodi.«8 To pa velja prav zato, ker bi nasploh lahko držo kapitala nasproti svojemu ujde- anjanju opisali kot ironično. To je sedaj tista spodletelost oziroma nepopolnost dejanja kapitala, o kateri sem govoril zgoraj: kolikor se kapital udejanja v pro- dukciji, počne to z enako neiskrenostjo in nečimrnostjo, ki smo ju prej opazovali pri ironični vesti. Ves smoter produkcije uporabnih vrednosti je, da se povrnejo v – za presežno vrednost povečano – formo abstraktno-obče menjalne vredno- sti. Kapital kot potencialnost delovanja ima edini smoter krepiti ta potencial delovanja in vse delovanje, ki ga sproža, je podrejeno temu smotru. Za kapital očitno velja Heglov opis ironične subjektivnosti, da »Uživa le samega sebe.«9 Četudi se zdi, da sem do te točke izpeljave zanemaril večinsko človeško perspek- tivo na delovanje kapitala, namreč perspektivo delovne sile, pa od tega nisem tako oddaljen. Seveda klasična teorija alienacije, po kateri delavec z vstopom v produkcijo preda kakršnokoli sled avtonomije in se prelevi v zgolj mehanično orodje izpolnjevanja diktata produkcijskega procesa, še vedno opiše dobršen del realnosti – ne more pa nam več veljati za ustrezen splošen opis položaja de- lovne sile. Velika sprememba v delovanju kapitala, ki jo tu poskušam zasledova- ti, je na širokih področjih ekonomije bistveno spremenila prav ta status delovne sile: vsepovsod je opaziti tendenco, da kapital zanika specifično asimetrično formo mezdnega razmerja in delavca predstavlja kot formalno enakovrednega partnerja v menjavi, ki mora svojo uporabnost za kapital najprej šele samostoj- no zagotoviti. Velika inovacija kapitalizma zadnjih desetletij je torej v tem, da avtonomija de- lovne sile za kapital ni nič škodljivega. To pa tudi pomeni, da delovna sila pre- 8 Marx, Kapital, str. 109. 9 Hegel, Oris filozofije pravice, str. 140. FV_01_2017.indd 199 26. 10. 17 11:08 200 martin hergouth vzame držo kapitala, kar zadeva delovanje (za to gre pri popularizaciji pojma »človeški kapital«). Seveda s pomembno razliko: edino kapital je tisti, ki določa dostop do družbene pripoznanosti dela in s tem nenazadnje možnosti prežive- tja. Edino kapital občost že poseduje, delovna sila mora na drugi strani imeti ironično držo do lastnega delovanja, toda brez možnosti umika v neaktivnost – kapitalizem ni kraj za lepe duše. Njena ironija je prisilna ironija človeškega kapi- tala in CV-ja: imperativ delovanja, ki pa obenem ne sme biti delovanje v smislu podreditve zunanjemu smotru, temveč dejanje kot samopovnanjanje. V nekem smislu pride v primerjavi s klasično shemo izkoriščanja in alienacije do pravega obrata: če je tedaj kapital izkoriščal občost delovne zmožnosti, v no- vem produkcijskem režimu kapital vedno bolj izkorišča zmožnost uposebljanja delovne sile. To zahtevo po posebnosti je treba razumeti kar najbolj dobesedno. Prav kolikor je neka dejavnost vnaprej obče pripoznana, standardizirana, je z vidika kapitala takoj manj privlačna, vsaj dolgoročno. Po eni strani so prav take dejavnosti najbolj verjetno tehnološko nadomeščene (kot je opažal že He- gel sam, čim bolj mehanično je neko delo, tembolj verjetno je, da bo dejansko prepuščeno stroju), če pa že to ne, pa bodo ostale neprivlačne vsaj v smislu, da bodo prej tržno zasičene, tj. ne bodo predstavljale nikakršne konkurenčne prednosti. Izraz te zagate kapitala je jasno viden v vedno intenzivnejših zahte- vah po »kreativnosti« in »inovativnosti« dela. Toda sedaj lahko vidimo, da je za tem splošnejša zahteva po posebnosti, ki se jo da, če te kreativnosti in inova- tivnosti ni, zadostiti tudi na manj bleščeče načine, med drugim, denimo, s po- skusi privatizacije, tj. iztrganja že obče pripoznanih dejavnosti iz sfere javnosti (in javnega financiranja) in s splošno težnjo, da se namesto obče pripoznanih funkcionalnih struktur vzpostavlja netransparentne privatne hierarhije. Rečeno kar najbolj zaostreno: ob odsotnosti obče sprejetih idej o nujno potrebnem delu se kapitalistična organizacija ne bo kar ustavila ali omejila, le v obupani gonji po novih mehanizmih ekstrakcije vrednosti bo vedno bolj brisala mejo, ki eko- nomsko delovanje loči od zločina (gibanje, ki ga, denimo, izjemno jasno prikaže film Nightcrawler (2014) Dana Gilroya). Kapital namreč v zadnji instanci zahteva subjekt kot tak, ne v zanikanju nje- govih subjektnih kvalitet, kot sta svoboda in samodoločanje, temveč njihovo uspešno uporabo, le da skladno s cilji kapitala. Imperativ delovanja, ki ga postavlja kapital, se z odsotnostjo občeveljavnih idej, kaj bi bilo treba početi, nikakor ne zrahlja, postaja pa vedno bolj nedoločen in prazen. Ena bolj iskre- FV_01_2017.indd 200 26. 10. 17 11:08 201 o etiki kapitalizma nih formulacij tega imperativa se je posrečila – v resnici ne zelo presenetljivo – Tonyju Blairu, ko je zadnjič nagovarjal laburistični kongres s pozicije vodje stranke: »Značaj tega spreminjajočega se sveta je ravnodušen do tradicije. Ne- odpustljiv do ranljivosti. Brez spoštovanja do preteklega slovesa. Nima navade in prakse. Je poln priložnosti, toda te gredo samo k tistim, ki se hitro prilagajajo, počasi pritožujejo, ki so odprti, voljni in zmožni spremeniti se.«10 Spremeniti se – toda ne da bi bilo povedano, spremeniti se v kaj, predvsem se zahteva sprememba sama, tj., na subjekt sodobnega kapitalizma se v prvi vrsti naslovlja zgolj zahteva po določitvi, ki pa sama ostaja nedoločena. Sklep Ta razmislek naposled ponuja trdneje sistemsko utemeljene in razporejene etič- ne fenomene, ki sem jih orisal na začetku. Etični pomen in zavezujčnost eko- nomske dejavnosti, v smislu heglovske nravnosti, sta odvisna od tega, ali ta de- javnost sodi v splošno razširjeno predstavo o tem, kar je »treba početi«, tj. o tem, kar vsaj posredno, zadovoljuje neko potrebo. Kapitalistični produkcijski način je specifičen v tem, da so akterji v njem vedno znova – zaradi tehnološkega ra- zvoja in konkurenčnega boja, ki prej ali slej zasičita vsako dejavnost – prisiljeni prebijati ta okvir splošno sprejetih potreb. Zdi se, da imamo danes opraviti s ka- pitalizmom, kjer se obseg tega drugega modusega delovanja, ireduktibilnega na nujnost, veča. Ključni uvid, ki sem ga poskušal podati v pričujočem članku, je, da nikakor ni točka zloma kapitalizma (četudi morda težje vzpostavlja organiza- cijsko stabilnost), temveč določeno izčiščenje njegove logike delovanja – tu, ko ni več obremnjen z zunanjo smotrnostjo, privzame obliko brezciljne neskončne ironije uposebljanja. To je tudi točka, kjer klasična formulacija problema ali- enacije odpove, kolikor poudarja zgolj protipostavljenost subjekta in objektne realnosti kapitalistične ekonomije. Kapital sedaj namreč ne posrka subjekta v 10 Mimogrede, prav ta citat nam omogoča videti, da je ta zgodovinska preusmeritev socialde- mokratskih strank, katere ime je Blair, nekoliko manj nerazumljiva. Kakorkoli presenetljivo se zdi, da je to funkcijo ventrilokista kapitala prevzela leva stranka, pa je pravzaprav še veliko bolj nemogoče to izjavo si predstavljati iz ust konservativnega politika. Konserva- tivna politika, četudi naklonjena kapitalu, mora tega še vedo legitimirati z vsaj ohlapnim sklicevanjem na dani »naraven« ali vsaj najmanj škodljiv red stvari. Levica na drugi strani pa je vedno težila k artikulaciji nepogojene občosti, in potem, ko je opustila projekt splošne alternative kapitalizmu, popolno sprejemanje pozicije kapitala ni zares nekonsekventno. FV_01_2017.indd 201 26. 10. 17 11:08 202 martin hergouth neki, subjektu tuj red, pač pa dejansko proizvaja tujost v smislu, da zahteva de- lovanje, ki izstopa iz dane normalnosti: zahteva subjektovo lastno postajanje-tuj na način, ki je popolnoma združljiv z zahtevo po njegovi avtentičnosti. Od tod potem izhaja tudi navidezno protislovna naraščajoča etična kontrover- znost kapitalizma, orisana v uvodu: kapital zahteva vse več subjekta, toda v za- meno mu – razen mezde, in niti to ni samoumevno – ne ponudi ničesar občega, za moralno ekonomijo lastnega delovanja je subjekt odgovoren sam, kar pome- ni, da se navzven ne reši suma egoizma (zato lahko že sama vključitev v sistem ekonomskega delovanj učinkuje moralno sporno, kot izdaja oziroma prodaja samega sebe). In to je pravzaprav bistvo tega, kar je v zadnjih desetletjih tako zmedlo levico in njen mobilizacijski potencial. Zagate levice v poznem kapitalizmu se najpogo- stejeposkuša pojasniti na ravni pogojev organizacije – razpad oziroma ošibitev sindikatov, atomiziranost in prekarnost delovnih razmerij ipd. Tu pa poudarjam večinoma spregledani moralni vidik oziroma korelat te organizacijske razlage. Vsak radikalnejši levi projekt se (bolj, kot je eskplicitno pripoznano) še vedno nujno opira na klasičen model alienacije, ki porodi homogeno množico izko- riščanih proti reificiranemu sistemu. Mehanizmi mobilizacije sodobnega kapi- talizma, ki sem jih opisal, pa odločno brišejo jasnost takšne ločnice. V resnici jo nadomeščajo z novo, ki vsebuje veliko manj eksplozivnega revolucionarnega potenciala: bodisi si absolutno izključen iz sistema, bodisi si njegov sokrivec. Literatura Balibar, Etienne (2011), »Réponse à la question de Jean-Luc Nancy: 'Qui vient après le sujet?'« v Citoyen Sujet et autres essais d‘anthropologie philosophique, Presses Univer- sitaires de France, Pariz. Comay, Rebecca (2011), Mourning Sickness, Stanford University Press, Stanford. Hegel, G.W.F. (1995), Fenomenologija duha, Analecta, Ljubljana. Isti (2013), Oris filozofije pravice, Krtina, Ljubljana. Hergouth, Martin (2014), »Subjekt heglovskega kapitalizma« v Problemi: revija za kulturo in družbena vprašanja, letn. 52, št. 3/4, str. 51-80. Houlgate, Stephen (2010), »Action, Right and Morality in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right« v Arto Laitinen (ed.) Hegel on Action, Palgrave Macmillan, London. Marx, Karl (2012), Kapital: Kritika politične ekonomije, Sophia, Ljubljana. FV_01_2017.indd 202 26. 10. 17 11:08 203 o etiki kapitalizma Isti (1977), »Pripombe k Millu» v Marxova in Engelsova izbrana dela I, Cankarjeva založba, Ljubljana. Mascat, Jamila, »When Negativity Becomes Vanity: Hegel’s Critique of Romantic Irony«, Sta- sis journal http://www.stasisjournal.net/all-issues/1-politics-of-negativity/13-when- negativity-becomes-vanity-hegel-s-critique-of-romantic-irony. Pippin, Robert B. (2006), »Recognition and Reconciliation« in Katarina Degliorgi (ed.), Hegel: New directions. Acumen, Chesham. Postone, Moishe (1993), Time, labor, and social domination, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. FV_01_2017.indd 203 26. 10. 17 11:08 FV_01_2017.indd 204 26. 10. 17 11:08 205 Povzetki | Abstracts Lale Levin Basut Meno’s “Paradox”: An Analysis of the Eristic Argument Keywords: Plato, Meno, paradox, eristic argument, types of knowledge The vast amount of contemporary work on the dialogue entitled Meno by Plato aims to shed light on the construction of virtue by attempting to figure out how it can be obtained considering the three moments suggested at the beginning of the dialogue, namely διδακτόν, ᾰσκητόν, and ϕύσει. This article aims to target the eristic argument in 80e famously known as “Meno’s Paradox”, dissecting it to its elements, and attempts to unveil the deliberately hidden meanings in each part of the argument using different Greek terms that signify knowing in a different sense. This philo-logical/philosophical analysis of the eristic argument helps crack the sophistical/eristic façade which has led many philosophers into thinking that it is not possible to start or proceed with a philo- sophical inquiry, and is also intended to accentuate the difference between sophistical refutations and genuine philosophising, as the latter is a feature to be found in Platonic and Aristotelian texts. Lale Levin Basut Menonov »paradoks«: analiza erističnega argumenta Ključne besede: Platon, Menon, paradoks, eristični argument, vrste vednosti Velika večina sodobnih analiz Platonovega dialoga Menon poskuša osvetliti vzpostavitev kreposti, pri čemer skušajo ugotoviti, kako lahko pridemo do nje, upoštevajoč tri mo- mente, navedene na začetku dialoga: διδακτόν, ᾰσκητόν in ϕύσει. Članek se osredotoča na slavni eristični argument v 80e, ki je znan kot »Menonov paradoks«. Tega razgradi na elemente in skuša razkriti namenoma prikrite pomene v vsakem kosu argumenta, upora- bljajoč različne grške izraze, ki označujejo »vednost« v različnih pomenih. Ta filo-loška/ filozofska analiza erističnega argumenta omogoča prebiti sofistično/eristično pročelje, ki je številne filozofe napeljalo na misel, da ni mogoče začeti ali napredovati s filozofskim raziskovanjem. Cilj te analize je tudi, da poudari razliko med sofistično ovržbo in pravim filozofiranjem, kolikor je slednje značilnost Platonskih in Aristotelskih besedil. FV_01_2017.indd 205 26. 10. 17 11:08 206 po vz et ki | a bs tr ac ts Boris Vezjak Aristotle against Plato: Variants of the Third Man Argument and the Self-predication of Ideas Keywords: forms, third man argument, self-predication, non-identity, Plato, Aristotle, Alexander of Aphrodisias Gregory Vlastos famously reconstructed the “tritos anthropos” argument by claiming that the third man regress becomes fatal by affirming at least two contradictory logical fea- tures of Plato’s theory of ideas at the same time, namely by assuming the principles of self-predication and non-identity. I interpret the third man argument in terms of these two principles by considering two variants of it in Alexander of Aphrodias: the first ver- sion is traditionally ascribed to Aristotle under the name Peri ideon and found in Alex- ander’s commentary on Metaphysics, and the second by Eudemus and also quoted with regard to AriAristotle’s criticism of Plato’s theory of ideas. Also, a comparison is made between Aristotle’s versions of the third man argument and Plato’s recognition of the infinite regress in two varieties thereof in his Parmenides (the largeness regress and ideas are paradigms), all resulting in logically endless series of new ideas: no longer will each of them be one, but will rather be infinite in multitude. Boris Vezjak Aristotel proti Platonu: variacije dokaza tretjega človeka in samopripis idej Ključne besede: ideje, argument tretjega človeka, samopripis, neistovetnost, Platon, Ari stotel, Aleksander Afrodizijski Gregory Vlastos je v svoji znani rekonstrukciji argumenta »tritos anthropos« menil, da je regres tretjega človeka usodna napaka platonske teorije idej, saj vpeljuje najmanj dve protislovni logični značilnosti tega nauka: predpostavlja namreč dve načeli, samopripis in neistovetnost. Argument tretjega človeka zato obravnavam na podlagi upoštevanja omenjenih načel in njune veljavnosti v dveh inačicah, ki ju je podal Aleksander Afrodizij- ski. V prvi, ki je tradicionalno pripisana Aristotelu pod imenom O idejah in jo najdemo v Aleksandrovem komentarju k Metafiziki, in nato še v Evdemovi inačici, kakršno domnev- no ta navaja pri svoji aristotelski kritiki Platonove teorije idej. V drugem delu prispevka je narejena primerjava med Aristotelovima inačicama tretjega človeka in Platonovim pri- poznanjem neskončnega regresa v obeh verzijah iz njegovega Parmenida: regres iz ideje velikega in regres iz idej kot vzorov, ki prav tako končujeta v neskončnem regresu novih idej: te po svojem bistvu ne bodo več ene, ampak brezmejno mnoge. FV_01_2017.indd 206 26. 10. 17 11:08 207 po vz et ki | a bs tr ac ts Pavel Gregorić Alexander of Aphrodisias on Common Sense Keywords: perception, awareness, discrimination, analogy, De anima Aristotle introduced the notion of common sense (sensus communis), a higher-order per- ceptual capacity that unifies and monitors the special senses. The primary aim of this paper is to present the understanding of common sense – and its functions – of Aristot- le’s most distinguished ancient commentator, Alexander of Aphrodisias. In doing so, I will keep an eye on Alexander’s agreement or departure from Aristotle and indicate his contributions to the subject matter. The secondary aim of this paper is to discuss one par- ticular point of departure that came to dominate the subsequent reception of Aristotle’s notion of common sense, an analogy of which is common sense as being the centre of a circle at which different radii meet. Pavel Gregorić Aleksander iz Afrodizijade o skupnem čutu Ključne besede: zaznavanje, zavedanje, razločevanje, analogija, De anima Aristotel je vpeljal pojem skupnega čuta (sensus communis), zaznavno zmožnost višjega reda, ki združuje in nadzoruje posamezne čute. Osnovni namen prispevka je predstaviti, kako je skupni čut in njegove funkcije razumel Aristotelov najodličnejši antični komenta- tor Aleksander iz Afrodizijade. Avtor je pri tem pozoren na Aleksandrovo ujemanje z Ari- stotelom ali odmikanje od njega, opozarja pa tudi na njegove prispevke k problematiki. Drugi cilj prispevka je obravnava enega posebnega odmika, ki je prevladoval v kasnejših razlagah Aristotelovega pojma skupnega čuta, tj. analogije med skupnim čutom in sredi- ščem kroga, v katerem se srečujejo različni polmeri. Aleš Erjavec The Avant-Gardes, Utopias, and Clothes Keywords: avant-garde movements, Futurist clothing, Constructivist clothing, tuta, prozodezhda The author presents two instances in which quotidian overalls were in the early twentieth century transformed into projects with utopian potential: in Italy into tuta and in Russia into prozodezhda. The first was one-piece overalls that were warmly embraced by the Ital- ian population after the First World War. They were a project associated with Futurism and utopianism. Before the war a somewhat similar project (the “anti-neutralist” clothes) was launched by Futurists Giacomo Balla and Fortunato Depero. Less than a decade after this early Futurist intervention in clothing, the tuta was created. Independently of the Italian FV_01_2017.indd 207 26. 10. 17 11:08 208 po vz et ki | a bs tr ac ts tuta appeared its Russian equivalent, i.e. “production clothes” (prozodezhda). Earlier the overalls were used by mechanics and aviators. Around 1920 they became a symbol of the new post-October revolutionary society, wherein human relations and “post-art” creativity were intended to significantly diverge from traditional notions such as art, the artist, and the artwork. The Artist-Constructor, who was to be more of an engineer than an artist, was to replace the obsolete bourgeois artist and the bourgeois institution of art. In Bauhaus a Slovenian artist, Avgust Černigoj, was fascinated by the overalls worn by Moholy-Nagy, and wore them upon his return to Ljubljana to the consternation of the local populace. In the 1980s this fashion was followed by another artist, namely Dragan Živadinov. Aleš Erjavec Avantgarde, utopije in oblačila Ključne besede: avantgardna gibanja, futuristična oblačila, konstruktivistična oblačila, tuta, prozodezhda Avtor predstavi dva primera, ko je bil v zgodnjem dvajsetem stoletju kombinezon preobli- kovan v projekt z utopijskim potencialom. V Italiji je bil tak primer tuta, v Rusiji pa pro- zodezhda. V prvem primeru je šlo za enodelni kombinezon, ki je postal po prvi svetovni vojni zelo priljubljeno oblačilo. To je bil projekt, ki je asociiral na futurizem in utopizem. Pred vojno sta nekoliko podoben projekt (anti-nevtralna oblačila) razvila Giacomo Bal- la in Fortunato Depero. Manj kot desetletje po tej futuristični intervenciji v oblačenju je nastala tuta. Neodvisno od italijanskega oblačila je nastal njen ruski ekvivalent, t.i. »proizvodna oblačila« (prozodezhda). Pred tem so kombinezon nosili mehaniki in letalci. Okrog leta 1920 je kombinezon postal simbol nove postoktobrske revolucionarne družbe, v kateri naj bi človeški odnosi in »postartistična« ustvarjalnost bistveno odstopali od tra- dicionalnih pojmov, kot so umetnost, umetnik in umetnina. Umetnik-konstruktor, ki naj bi bil bolj inženir kot pa umetnik, naj bi zamenjal zastarelega buržoaznega umetnika in buržoazno institucijo umetnosti. V Bauhausu je slovenskega umetnika Avgusta Černigoja fasciniral kombinezon, ki ga je nosil Moholy-Nagy. Po vrnitvi v Ljubljano ga je nosil tudi sam ter vzbujal osuplost med lokalnim prebivalstvom. V osemdesetih letih dvajsetega stoletja je tej modi sledil še drug slovenski umetnik, namreč Dragan Živadinov. Ernest Ženko Mapping the Unmappable: Dichotomies of Utopianism Key words: utopia, dystopia, utopianism, escapism, iconoclasm, Sir Thomas More, Theodor W. Adorno One of the most challenging issues regarding contemporary utopianism is the contradic- tion between a positive orientation toward the future (interpreted as hope) and negative FV_01_2017.indd 208 26. 10. 17 11:08 209 po vz et ki | a bs tr ac ts representations of this same orientation (in the sense of fear). Contrary to the tendency, which strives to a single, though an all-encompassing and broad designation of utopia, following a single concept, we argue in this paper that utopia and utopianism as such can be, at best, grasped through a series of dichotomies, contradictions, or paradoxes. From early utopian strategies dating back millennia to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, utopias always feature contradictory tendencies, which require closer inspection. It may be that in this contradictory nature of the utopian lies the key to understanding not only our past and present, but also the future. The most important in this sense turns out to be the difference between the “true” (or the iconoclast) and “false” (or the blueprint) utopia. Even though during the twentieth century the utopian hopes turned into dystopian fears, the only way to a different and possibly better future, therefore, seems to be offered by the “true”, iconoclast utopia, which keeps alive probably the most important trait of human existence: hope. Ernest Ženko Kartiranje tistega, česar ni mogoče kartirati: dihotomije utopianizma Ključne besede: utopija, distopija, utopianizem, eskapizem, ikonoklazem, Thomas More, Theodor W. Adorno Enega izmed največjih izzivov sodobnega utopianizma predstavlja protislovje med pozi- tivno usmerjenostjo v prihodnost (interpretirano v izrazih upanja) in njenimi negativni- mi reprezentacijami (v smislu strahu). V nasprotju s prevladujočimi pristopi, ki so us- merjeni k širokim in vseobsegajočim opisom utopije na podlagi nekega koncepta, avtor pričujočega prispevka zagovarja prepričanje, da obstaja ustreznejši način dojemanja utopije in utopianizma, ki napreduje prek vrste dihotomij, nasprotij ali celo paradoksov. Od zgodnjih utopičnih strategij, katerim lahko sledimo več tisočletij v preteklost, do primerov iz dvajsetega in enaindvajsetega stoletja, je utopija vedno izražala nasprotu- joče si težnje, ki zahtevajo temeljitejšo obravnavo. Lahko si je namreč zamisliti, da v tej kontradiktorni naravi utopije leži ne samo ključ do razumevanja preteklosti in sedan- josti, temveč tudi prihodnosti. V tem kontekstu se kot najpomembnejša kaže razlika med »resnično« (ali ikonoklastično) utopijo in »lažno« utopijo (temelječo na natančnem načrtovanju). Kljub temu, da se je v dvajsetem stoletju utopično upanje sprevrnilo v distopični strah, pot k drugačni in po možnosti boljši prihodnosti ponuja le »resnična«, ikonoklastična utopija, ki ohranja pri življenju bržkone najpomembnejši vidik človeške eksistence: upanje. FV_01_2017.indd 209 26. 10. 17 11:08 210 po vz et ki | a bs tr ac ts Tyrus Miller Expressionist Utopia: Bruno Taut, Glass Architecture, and the Dissolution of Cities Keywords: Bruno Taut, expressionism, utopia, urbanism, architecture, glass, anarchism, socialism In such works as Alpine Architecture (1919), The City Crown (1919), The World-Master Builder (1919), and The Dissolution of Cities (1920), expressionist architect and artist Bru- no Taut developed a number of architectural visions that were not simply elaborations of a new architecture or new urbanism, but also schemata of a total spatial disposition to produce a utopian “new man.” In The City Crown, Taut counterpoised to the chaotic and unplanned growth of the modern metropolis and industrial city a vision of a highly or- ganized, spatially and experientially coherent disposition of construction and functions, all symbolically magnetized by the “city crown” at its center. Other of Taut’s works of this period, however, most notably Alpine Architecture and The Dissolution of Cities, imagine the dispersion of building across the earth, into agrarian areas and into the mountains, thus artistically prefiguring the reunion of alienating divisions between city and coun- tryside, and eventually the closing all divisions that separate man, nature, and cosmos. I describe the elements of Taut’s developing utopian vision during the period of 1914 to 1921, but also the larger contextual conditions that supported the formation of this expressionist architectural utopia and Taut’s fairly sudden abandonment of it in favor of more sober, functional projects in the mid-1920s until the end of his life. Tyrus Miller Ekspresionistična utopija: Bruno Taut, steklena arhitektura in razgradnja mest Ključne besede: Bruno Taut, ekspresionizem, utopija, urbanizem, arhitektura, steklo, anarhizem, socializem V delih, kot so »Alpska arhitektura« (1919), »Mestna krona« (1919), »Svetovni mojster gradbenik« (1919) in »Razpustitev mest« (1920) je ekspresionistični arhitekt in umetnik Bruno Taut razvil vrsto arhitekturnih vizij, ki niso bile le preproste izpopolnitve nove ar- hitekture ali novega urbanizma, pač pa tudi sheme popolne prostorske dispozicije proiz- vesti utopičnega »novega človeka«. V »Mestni kroni« je Taut nasproti kaotični in nenačr- tovani rasti modernega metropolisa in industrijskega mesta postavil vizijo visoko organ- izirane, prostorsko in izkustveno skladne dispozicije konstrukcije in funkcij, ki so bile vse simbolično namagnetene z »mestno krono« v svojem središču. Druga Tautova dela iz tega obdobja, zlasti »Alpska arhitektura« in »Razpustitev mest«, predstavijo podobo razmeščenosti gradnje po zemeljski površini, v agrarne površine in v gore, s čemer je bila nakazana združitev odtujujočih delitev med mestom in podeželjem in sčasoma zaprt- je vseh delitev, ki ločujejo človeka, naravo in kozmos. Sam opisujem elemente Tautove FV_01_2017.indd 210 26. 10. 17 11:08 211 po vz et ki | a bs tr ac ts razvijajoče se utopične vizije med leti 1914 in 1921, kot tudi širše kontekstualne pogoje, ki so nudili podporo oblikovanju te ekspresionistične arhitekturne utopije in povzročili Tautovo precej nenadno opustitev te utopije v prid bolj treznih, funkcionalnih projektov sredi dvajsetih let pa do konca njegovega življenja. Jason Barker Schizoanalytic Cartographies: On Maps and Models of Capitalism Keywords: algorithm, Althusser, capitalism, computing, Kinkle, Marx, Toscano, Turing What potentials exist for representing capitalism as such? The question is posed in rela- tion to the idea of cognitive mapping, as explored in Toscano and Kinkle’s Cartographies of the Absolute, before considering the abstract potentials of computing and Turing ma- chines to this end, where capitalism might be modelled algorithmically. Jason Barker Shizoanalitične kartografije: zemljevidi in modeli kapitalizma Ključne besede: algoritem, Althusser, kapitalizem, Kinkle, Marx, Toscano, Turing Kakšne možnosti obstajajo za reprezentacijo kapitalizma kot takega? To vprašanje se opira na predstavo o kognitivnem mapiranju, kot sta ga raziskovala Toscano in Kinkle v Cartographies of the Absolute, v nadaljevanju pa avtor glede na to vprašanje obravnava abstraktne potenciale računalnikov in Turingovega stroja, ki omogočajo izdelavo algo- ritmičnega modela kapitalizma. Rado Riha Badiou, Marx, and an Analysis of the Value-Form Keywords: onto-logic, the reality of the Two, the exception of the Three, critique of political economy, analysis of the value-form, value’s materiality This article is an attempt to bring together Marx and Badiou, precisely there where the connection between their problematics seems to be minimal, almost null, i.e. in the realm of Marx’s critique of political economy. This attempt at linking Marx and Badiou takes as its guiding thread the hypothesis that there is a homology between Badiou’s onto-logic in his Logics of Worlds and the analysis of the value-form in Marx’s Capital 1. A crucial step in this homology consists in the conceptual operation of a transition from the reality of the Two to the Three, conceived as an internal exception of the Two. The article thus aims at showing that on the basis of this transition it is possible to solve the problem of the materiality of money-commodity in Marx. FV_01_2017.indd 211 26. 10. 17 11:08 212 po vz et ki | a bs tr ac ts Rado Riha Badiou, Marx in analiza vrednostne forme Ključne besede: onto-logika, realnost Dvojega, izjema Trojega, kritika politične ekonomije, analiza vrednostne forme, vrednostna predmetnost Članek skuša povezati Marxa in Badiouja na področju, kjer je njun vsebinski stik minimalen, tako rekoč ničen, na področju Marxove kritike politične ekonomije. Posk- us njune povezave vodi hipoteza, da obstaja homologija med Badioujevo onto-logiko v Logiki svetov, in analizo vrednostne forme v Marxovem Kapitalu 1. Ključen element te homologije je konceptualna operacija prehoda od realnosti Dvojega k Trojemu kot notranji izjemi Dvojega. V nadaljevanju članek dokazuje, da je mogoče na osnovi tega prehoda rešiti uganko predmetnosti denarnega blaga pri Marxu. Sašo Furlan A Reconstruction of Marx’s Theory of Value: An Alternative Derivation of the Concept of Abstract Labour Keywords: Marx, value, abstract labour, deobjectified subjectivity In his lucid work Die Wissenschaft vom Wert, Michael Heinrich showed that Marx’s con- ception of abstract labour in Capital is ambivalent. According to Heinrich, Marx was si- multaneously developing a “substantialist theory of value” that draws upon a naturalist conception of abstract labour as physiological activity, and a “monetary theory of value” that is based on a different conception of abstract labour as a social relation constituted in the practice of commodity exchange. We will argue that Marx failed to derive an im- manent conceptual link between value and labour within the frameworks of both sub- stantialist and monetary theories of value. Furthermore, we will attempt to demonstrate that an immanent conceptual relation between value and labour can nevertheless be es- tablished, but only if a third conception of abstract labour as deobjectified subjectivity is brought in, as sketched out by Marx in Grundrisse. Sašo Furlan Rekonstrukcija Marxove teorije vrednosti: Alternativna izpeljava pojma abstraktnega dela Ključne besede: Marx, vrednost, abstraktno delo, razpredemtena subjektivnost Michael Heinrich je v prodornem delu Die Wissenschaft vom Wert pokazal, da je Marxovo pojmovanje abstraktnega dela v Kapitalu ambivalentno. Po Heinrichu je Marx sočasno razvijal »substancialistično teorijo vrednosti«, ki se opira na naturalistično pojmovanje abstraktnega dela kot fiziološke aktivnosti in »monetarno teorijo vrednosti«, ki temelji na drugačnem pojmovanju abstraktnega dela kot družbenega odnosa, ki se vzpostavi v FV_01_2017.indd 212 26. 10. 17 11:08 213 po vz et ki | a bs tr ac ts praksi blagovne menjave. V prispevku bomo argumentirali, da Marxu niti v okviru sub- stancialistične niti v okviru monetarne teorije vrednosti ni uspelo vzpostaviti notranje pojmovne zveze med vrednostjo in delom. Nadalje bomo poskusili pokazati, da je notra- njo pojmovno zvezo med vrednostjo in delom vendarle mogoče vzpostaviti, toda le, če se opremo na tretje pojmovanje abstraktnega dela kot razpredmetene subjektivnosti, ki ga je Marx razvil v Očrtih. Martin Hergouth On the Ethics of Capitalism Keywords: capitalism, alienation, irony, morality, ethical life, Hegel, Marx General accounts of capitalist subjectivity usually (and most influentially) deploy the notion of alienation, understood as the general vanishing of any subjective dimension in the production process. However, in the contemporary, “post-Fordist”, form of cap- italism, with its emphasis on the mobilisation of the subject as such, such an account of alienation is often obviously inadequate. The article therefore attempts to remedy this by sketching anew the conditions of the subject’s entry into the capitalist regime of action. To that end, we employ Hegel’s account of morality (as opposed to “ethical life”, or Sittlichkeit) and moral action in Phenomenology of Spirit. There, Hegel develops how the attempt at pure moral action, unbound by the ethical-social context of Sittlichkeit, gives rise to pathologies and failures of such action. We argue that the defining feature of capitalism is precisely the continuous erosion of such ethical context, which is why the actors in capitalism are continuously pressed into non-ethical, contextless action (such as in demands for “innovation” and “creativity”): the instabilities and uncertain- ties of the market-based recognition of activity in capitalism repeat the patterns of the pathologies of purely moral action described by Hegel. On this ground, we characterise the general mode of action in capitalism as compulsory irony, i.e. as a compulsion to act, which is not at the same time a compulsion to submit to some external purpose, but the compulsion to affirm the potential for action itself. This, however, turns out to be a quite different ethical disposition than the one described by the standard notion of alienation and is therefore, as we point out in the conclusion, a great obstacle to the inception of any general anti-capitalist political project. Martin Hergouth O etiki kapitalizma Ključne besede: kapitalizem, alienacija, ironija, moralnost, nravnost, Hegel, Marx Splošni prikazi, kako kapitalizem zadeva subjektivnost, se najpogosteje (in najbolj vplivno) opirajo na pojem alienacije, razumljene kot izginjanje vsake subjektne razse- žnosti v kapitalističnem produkcijskem procesu. Toda v sodobnem, postfordističnem FV_01_2017.indd 213 26. 10. 17 11:08 214 po vz et ki | a bs tr ac ts kapitalizmu, s poudarjeno mobilizacijo subjekta kot takega, je tak opis alienacije v mno- gih primerih očitno neadekvaten. V članku tako poskušamo na novo skicirati pogoje subjektovega vstopa v sodobni kapitalistični režim delovanja. V ta namen se opremo na Heglovo kritično obravnavo moralnosti (za razliko od nravnosti) in moralnega de- lovanja v Fenomenologiji duha. Hegel tam prikaže patologije in neuspehe, ki jih porodi poskus čistega moralnega delovanja, nevpetega v nravnostni kontekst. Utemeljujemo, da je bistvena poteza kapitalizma prav vselejšnje načenjanje stabilnosti takšnega nrav- nostnega konteksta, s čimer akterje vedno znova sili v nenravnostno, brezkontekstual- no delovanje (denimo v zahtevah po »kreativnosti« in »inovativnosti«): nestabilnosti in negotovosti tržnega pripoznavanja dejavnosti v kapitalizmu ponavljajo vzorce patologij moralnega delovanja. Na tej podlagi splošno formo delovanja v kapitalizmu opredelimo kot prisilno ironijo, torej prisilo k delovanju, ki pa ni prisila k podreditvi zunanjemu smotru, temveč prisila k afirmaciji same zmožnosti delovanja. To pa se izkaže za etično dispozicijo, ki je pomembno drugačna od tiste, ki jo opisuje klasičen teorem alienacije, in s tem, kot nakažemo v sklepu, velika ovira za zastavitev splošnih antikapitalističnih političnih projektov. FV_01_2017.indd 214 26. 10. 17 11:08 216 Obvestilo avtorjem Prispevki so lahko v slovenskem, angleškem, franco- skem ali nemškem jeziku. Uredništvo ne sprejema prispevkov, ki so bili že obja- vljeni ali istočasno poslani v objavo drugam. Izdajatelj revije se glede urejanja avtorskih razmerij ravna po veljavnem Zakonu o avtorskih in sorodnih pravicah. Za avtorsko delo, poslano za objavo v reviji, vse moralne avtorske pravice pripadajo avtorju, vse materialne avtorske pravice pa avtor brezplačno prene- se na izdajatelja. Prispevki naj bodo pisani na IBM kompatibilnem ra- čunalniku (v programu Microsoft Word). Priložen naj bo izvleček (v slovenščini in angleščini), ki povzema glavne poudarke v dolžini do 150 besed in do 5 ključnih besed (v slovenščini in angleščini). Za oddajo prispevkov prosimo sledite navodilom: http://ojs.zrc-sazu.si/filozofski-vestnik/information/ authors. Prispevki naj ne presegajo obsega ene in pol avtorske pole (tj. 45.000 znakov s presledki) vključno z vsemi opombami. Zaželeno je, da so prispevki razdeljeni na razdelke in opremljeni z mednaslovi. V besedilu dosledno uporabljajte dvojne narekovaje (npr. pri nava- janju naslovov člankov, citiranih besedah ali stavkih, tehničnih in posebnih izrazih), razen pri citatih znotraj citatov. Naslove knjig, periodike in tuje besede (npr. a priori, epoché, élan vital, Umwelt, itn.) je treba pisati ležeče. Opombe in reference se tiskajo kot opombe pod črto. V besedilu naj bodo opombe označene z dvignjenimi indeksi. Citiranje naj sledi spodnjemu zgledu: 1. Gilles-Gaston Granger, Pour la connaissance philo- sophique, Odile Jacob, Pariz 1988, str. 57. 2. Cf. Charles Taylor, “Rationality”, v: M. Hollis, S. Lukes (ur.), Rationality and Relativism, Basil Blackwell, Oxford 1983, str. 87–105. 3. Granger, op. cit., str. 31. 4. Ibid., str. 49. 5. Friedrich Rapp, “Observational Data and Scientific Progress”, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Oxford, 11 (2/1980), str. 153. Sprejemljiv je tudi t. i. sistem »avtor-letnica« z referen- cami v besedilu. Reference morajo biti v tem primeru oblikovane takole: (avtorjev priimek, letnica: str. ali pogl.). Popoln, po abecednem redu urejen bibliografski opis citiranih virov mora biti priložen na koncu posla- nega prispevka. Prispevki bodo poslani v recenzijo. Avtorjem bomo po- slali korekture, če bo za to dovolj časa. Pregledane ko- rekture je treba vrniti v uredništvo čim prej je mogoče. Upoštevani bodo samo popravki tipografskih napak. Information for Contributors Manuscripts in Slovenian, English, French and German are accepted. Manuscripts sent for consideration must not have been previously published or be simultaneously considered for publication elsewhere. Authors are required to provide the text written on a compatible PC (in a version of Microsoft Word), accom- panied by an abstract (in the language of the original and in English) summarizing the main points in no more than 150 words and up to 5 keywords. To submitt manuscript please follow instructions: http://ojs.zrc-sazu.si/filozofski-vestnik/information/ authors. A brief biographical note indicating the author’s in- stitutional affiliation(s), works published and central subject of professional interest should also be enclosed. Manuscripts should not exceed 8,000 words (45,000 characters with spaces) including notes. Papers should be sectioned with clearly marked subheadings. Use double quotation marks throughout the text (e.g. for titles of articles, quoted words or phrases, technical terms), except for quotes within quotes. Titles of books and periodicals, and foreign words (e.g. a priori, epoché, élan vital, Umwelt, etc.) should be in italics. Note numbers should be referred to in the text by means of superscripts. Citations should be presented as follows: 1. Gilles-Gaston Granger, Pour la connaissance philo- so phi que, Odile Jacob, Paris 1988, p. 123. 2. Cf. Charles Taylor, “Rationality”, in: M. Hollis, S. Lukes (Eds.), Rationality and Relativism, Basil Blackwell, Oxford 1983, pp. 87–105. 3. Granger, op. cit., p. 31. 4. Ibid., p. 49. 5. Friedrich Rapp, “Observational Data and Scientific Progress”, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Oxford, 11 (2/1980), p. 153. The author-date system is also acceptable with a text reference reading. References in the text are then made as follows: (author’s last name, date: page(s) or sec- tion). Detailed bibliographical information should be given in a separate alphabetical list at the end of the manuscript. Articles will be externaly peer-reviewed. Proofs will be sent to authors. They should be corrected and returned to the Editor as soon as possible. Altera- tions other than corrections of typographical errors will not be accepted. FV_01_2017.indd 216 26. 10. 17 11:08 Filozofski vestnik ISSN 0353-4510 Programska zasnova Filozofski vestnik (ISSN 0353-4510) je glasilo Filozofskega inštituta Znanstveno- raziskovalnega centra Slovenske akademije znanosti in umetnosti. Filozofski vestnik je znanstveni časopis za filozofijo z interdisciplinarno in mednarodno usmeritvijo in je forum za diskusijo o širokem spektru vprašanj s področja sod- obne filozofije, etike, estetike, poli tične, pravne filozofije, filozofije jezika, filozo- fije zgodovine in zgodovine politične misli, epistemologije in filozofije znanosti, zgodovine filozofije in teoretske psihoanalize. Odprt je za različne filozofske usme- ritve, stile in šole ter spodbuja teoretski dialog med njimi. Letno izidejo tri številke. Druga številka je posvečena temi, ki jo določi uredniški odbor. Prispevki so objavljeni v angleškem, francoskem in nemškem jeziku s pov- zetki v angleškem in slovenskem jeziku. Filozofski vestnik je vključen v: Arts & Humanities Citation Index, Current Con- tents / Arts & Humanities, EBSCO, DOAJ, IBZ (Internationale Bibliographie der Zeitschriften), The Philosopher's Index, Répertoire bibliographique de philo- sophie, Scopus in Sociological Abstracts. Izid revije je finančno podprla Javna agencija za raziskovalno dejavnost Repu- blike Slovenije. Filozofski vestnik je ustanovila Slovenska akademija znanosti in umetnosti. Aims and Scope Filozofski vestnik (ISSN 0353-4510) is edited and published by the Institute of Phi- losophy of the Scientific Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Filozofski vestnik is a philosophy journal with an interdisciplinary character. It provides a forum for discussion on a wide range of issues in contemporary polit- ical philosophy, history of philosophy, history of political thought, philosophy of law, social philosophy, epistemology, philosophy of science, cultural critique, ethics, and aesthetics. The journal is open to different philosophical orientations, styles and schools, and welcomes theoretical dialogue among them. Three issues of the journal are published annually. The second issue is a special issue that brings together articles by experts on a topic chosen by the Editorial Board. Articles are published in English, French, or German, with abstracts in Slove- nian and English. Filozofski vestnik is indexed/abstracted in the Arts & Humanities Citation Index; Current Contents / Arts & Humanities; DOAJ; EBSCO; IBZ (Internationale Bibli- ographie der Zeitschriften); The Philosopher's Index; Répertoire bibliographique de philosophie; Scopus; and Sociological Abstracts. Filozofski vestnik is published with the support of the Slovenian Research Agency. Filozofski vestnik was founded by the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Filozofski vestnik ISSN 0353-4510 1 2017 iS SN 0 35 3 45 10 Le tn ik /V ol um e x x x V ii i Št ev ilk a/ N um be r1 Lj u bl ja n a 20 17 Filozofski vestnik ANCiENT PHiLOSOPHy UTOPiAS MARx ANd THE CRiTiqUE OF POLiTiCAL ECONOMy Ancient Philosophy Lale Levin Basut, Meno’s “Paradox”: An Analysis of the Eristic Argument Boris Vezjak, Aristotel proti Platonu: variacije dokaza tretjega človeka in samopripis idej Pavel Gregorić, Alexander of Aphrodisias on Common Sense Utopias Ernest Ženko, Mapping the Unmappable: Dichotomies of Utopianism Aleš Erjavec, The Avant-Gardes, Utopias, and Clothes Tyrus Miller, Expressionist Utopia: Bruno Taut, Glass Architecture, and the Dissolution of Cities Marx and the Critique of Political Economy Jason Barker, Schizoanalytic Cartographies: On Maps and Models of Capitalism Rado Riha, Badiou, Marx in analiza vrednostne forme Sašo Furlan, Rekonstrukcija Marxove teorije vrednosti: Alternativna izpeljava pojma abstraktnega dela Martin Hergouth, O etiki kapitalizma Fi lo zo fs ki v es tn ik Uredniški odbor | Editorial Board Matej Ažman, Rok Benčin, Aleš Bunta, Aleš Erjavec, Marina Gržinić Mauhler, Boštjan Nedoh, Peter Klepec, Tomaž Mastnak, Rado Riha, Jelica Šumič Riha, Tadej Troha, Matjaž Vesel, Alenka Zupančič Žerdin Mednarodni uredniški svet | International Advisory Board Alain Badiou (Pariz/Paris), Paul Crowther (Galway), Manfred Frank (Tübingen), Axel Honneth (Frankfurt), Martin Jay (Berkeley), John Keane (Sydney), Ernesto Laclau † (Essex), Steven Lukes (New York), Chantal Mouffe (London), Herta Nagl-Docekal (Dunaj/Vienna), Aletta J. Norval (Essex), Oliver Marchart (Luzern/Lucerne), Nicholas Phillipson (Edinburgh), J. G. A. Pocock (Baltimore), Wolfgang Welsch (Jena) Glavni urednik | Managing Editor Jelica Šumič Riha Odgovorni urednik | Editor-in-Chief Peter Klepec Tajnik | Secretary Matej Ažman Jezikovni pregled angleških tekstov | English Translation Editor Dean J. DeVos Naslov uredništva Filozofski vestnik p. p. 306, 1001 Ljubljana Tel.: (01) 470 64 70 fi@zrc-sazu.si | http://fi2.zrc-sazu.si/sl/publikacije/filozofski-vestnik#v Korespondenco, rokopise in recenzentske izvode pošiljajte na naslov uredništva. Editorial correspondence, enquiries and books for review should be sent to the Editorial Office. Revija izhaja trikrat letno. | The journal is published three times annually. Letna naročnina: 21 €. Letna naročnina za študente in dijake: 12,50 €. Cena posamezne številke: 10 €. | Annual subscription: €21 for individuals, €40 for institutions. Single issues: €10 for individuals, €20 for institutions. Back issues are available. Naročila sprejema Založba ZRC p. p. 306, 1001 Ljubljana Tel.: (01) 470 64 65 E-pošta: narocanje@zrc-sazu.si © Filozofski inštitut ZRC SAZU | Institute of Philosophy at SRC SASA, Ljubljana Oblikovanje / Design: Phant&Puntza Tisk / Printed by: Cicero Begunje Naklada / Printrun: 370 Orders should be sent to ZRC Publishing House P.O. Box 306, SI-1001 Ljubljana, Slovenia Phone: +386 (1) 470 64 65 E-mail: narocanje@zrc-sazu.si Editorial Office Address Filozofski vestnik P.O. Box 306, SI-1001 Ljubljana, Slovenia Phone: +386 (1) 470 64 70 FV_01_2017_ovitek_16,5mm_Layout 1 7. 11. 17 19:51 Page 1 Filozofski vestnik ISSN 0353-4510 Programska zasnova Filozofski vestnik (ISSN 0353-4510) je glasilo Filozofskega inštituta Znanstveno- raziskovalnega centra Slovenske akademije znanosti in umetnosti. Filozofski vestnik je znanstveni časopis za filozofijo z interdisciplinarno in mednarodno usmeritvijo in je forum za diskusijo o širokem spektru vprašanj s področja sod- obne filozofije, etike, estetike, poli tične, pravne filozofije, filozofije jezika, filozo- fije zgodovine in zgodovine politične misli, epistemologije in filozofije znanosti, zgodovine filozofije in teoretske psihoanalize. Odprt je za različne filozofske usme- ritve, stile in šole ter spodbuja teoretski dialog med njimi. Letno izidejo tri številke. Druga številka je posvečena temi, ki jo določi uredniški odbor. Prispevki so objavljeni v angleškem, francoskem in nemškem jeziku s pov- zetki v angleškem in slovenskem jeziku. Filozofski vestnik je vključen v: Arts & Humanities Citation Index, Current Con- tents / Arts & Humanities, EBSCO, DOAJ, IBZ (Internationale Bibliographie der Zeitschriften), The Philosopher's Index, Répertoire bibliographique de philo- sophie, Scopus in Sociological Abstracts. Izid revije je finančno podprla Javna agencija za raziskovalno dejavnost Repu- blike Slovenije. Filozofski vestnik je ustanovila Slovenska akademija znanosti in umetnosti. Aims and Scope Filozofski vestnik (ISSN 0353-4510) is edited and published by the Institute of Phi- losophy of the Scientific Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Filozofski vestnik is a philosophy journal with an interdisciplinary character. It provides a forum for discussion on a wide range of issues in contemporary polit- ical philosophy, history of philosophy, history of political thought, philosophy of law, social philosophy, epistemology, philosophy of science, cultural critique, ethics, and aesthetics. The journal is open to different philosophical orientations, styles and schools, and welcomes theoretical dialogue among them. Three issues of the journal are published annually. The second issue is a special issue that brings together articles by experts on a topic chosen by the Editorial Board. Articles are published in English, French, or German, with abstracts in Slove- nian and English. Filozofski vestnik is indexed/abstracted in the Arts & Humanities Citation Index; Current Contents / Arts & Humanities; DOAJ; EBSCO; IBZ (Internationale Bibli- ographie der Zeitschriften); The Philosopher's Index; Répertoire bibliographique de philosophie; Scopus; and Sociological Abstracts. Filozofski vestnik is published with the support of the Slovenian Research Agency. Filozofski vestnik was founded by the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Filozofski vestnik ISSN 0353-4510 1 2017 iS SN 0 35 3 45 10 Le tn ik /V ol um e x x x V ii i Št ev ilk a/ N um be r1 Lj u bl ja n a 20 17 Filozofski vestnik ANCiENT PHiLOSOPHy UTOPiAS MARx ANd THE CRiTiqUE OF POLiTiCAL ECONOMy Ancient Philosophy Lale Levin Basut, Meno’s “Paradox”: An Analysis of the Eristic Argument Boris Vezjak, Aristotel proti Platonu: variacije dokaza tretjega človeka in samopripis idej Pavel Gregorić, Alexander of Aphrodisias on Common Sense Utopias Ernest Ženko, Mapping the Unmappable: Dichotomies of Utopianism Aleš Erjavec, The Avant-Gardes, Utopias, and Clothes Tyrus Miller, Expressionist Utopia: Bruno Taut, Glass Architecture, and the Dissolution of Cities Marx and the Critique of Political Economy Jason Barker, Schizoanalytic Cartographies: On Maps and Models of Capitalism Rado Riha, Badiou, Marx in analiza vrednostne forme Sašo Furlan, Rekonstrukcija Marxove teorije vrednosti: Alternativna izpeljava pojma abstraktnega dela Martin Hergouth, O etiki kapitalizma Fi lo zo fs ki v es tn ik Uredniški odbor | Editorial Board Matej Ažman, Rok Benčin, Aleš Bunta, Aleš Erjavec, Marina Gržinić Mauhler, Boštjan Nedoh, Peter Klepec, Tomaž Mastnak, Rado Riha, Jelica Šumič Riha, Tadej Troha, Matjaž Vesel, Alenka Zupančič Žerdin Mednarodni uredniški svet | International Advisory Board Alain Badiou (Pariz/Paris), Paul Crowther (Galway), Manfred Frank (Tübingen), Axel Honneth (Frankfurt), Martin Jay (Berkeley), John Keane (Sydney), Ernesto Laclau † (Essex), Steven Lukes (New York), Chantal Mouffe (London), Herta Nagl-Docekal (Dunaj/Vienna), Aletta J. Norval (Essex), Oliver Marchart (Luzern/Lucerne), Nicholas Phillipson (Edinburgh), J. G. A. Pocock (Baltimore), Wolfgang Welsch (Jena) Glavni urednik | Managing Editor Jelica Šumič Riha Odgovorni urednik | Editor-in-Chief Peter Klepec Tajnik | Secretary Matej Ažman Jezikovni pregled angleških tekstov | English Translation Editor Dean J. DeVos Naslov uredništva Filozofski vestnik p. p. 306, 1001 Ljubljana Tel.: (01) 470 64 70 fi@zrc-sazu.si | http://fi2.zrc-sazu.si/sl/publikacije/filozofski-vestnik#v Korespondenco, rokopise in recenzentske izvode pošiljajte na naslov uredništva. Editorial correspondence, enquiries and books for review should be sent to the Editorial Office. Revija izhaja trikrat letno. | The journal is published three times annually. Letna naročnina: 21 €. Letna naročnina za študente in dijake: 12,50 €. Cena posamezne številke: 10 €. | Annual subscription: €21 for individuals, €40 for institutions. Single issues: €10 for individuals, €20 for institutions. Back issues are available. Naročila sprejema Založba ZRC p. p. 306, 1001 Ljubljana Tel.: (01) 470 64 65 E-pošta: narocanje@zrc-sazu.si © Filozofski inštitut ZRC SAZU | Institute of Philosophy at SRC SASA, Ljubljana Oblikovanje / Design: Phant&Puntza Tisk / Printed by: Cicero Begunje Naklada / Printrun: 370 Orders should be sent to ZRC Publishing House P.O. Box 306, SI-1001 Ljubljana, Slovenia Phone: +386 (1) 470 64 65 E-mail: narocanje@zrc-sazu.si Editorial Office Address Filozofski vestnik P.O. Box 306, SI-1001 Ljubljana, Slovenia Phone: +386 (1) 470 64 70 FV_01_2017_ovitek_16,5mm_Layout 1 7. 11. 17 19:51 Page 1