Axel Honneth and Social Pathologies.

My first point of Contact with Continental Social Philosophy this Semester has been thougt two articles by the current director of the Institut für Sozialforschung Frankfurt, Axel Honneth. Both papers place the origins of social /critical theory in a historical context, tracing its evolution from Rousseau through to ‘modern’ commenators like Arendt and Adorno.  Now while the historical side is interesting I was struck by two things.  First, the distinction between Anglo-saxon and German approaches.  I can’t really comment on contemporary German philosophy, but I do agree with Honneth that social philosophy in the Anglo/America vein really is a kind of applied political philosophy.  This goes to the heart of my early comment post on the Continental-Anglo division.  Yes, by all means, a pragmatic, purposive approach to solving normative questions is very satisfying.  If one sees a problem with a particular aspect of society, it is natural to try and come up with a solution.  However, as Honneth points out, all this takes part in the context of a wider debate- the philosophical anthropology of humanity.

I agree with Honneth’s call for a ‘weak’ formal, philosophical anthropology- a method inherited from Marx (or even Aristotle), and here I can see some points of comparison between John Rawls’ Theory of justice, but more on that later. Perhaps more to the point, I found the idea of social pathology interesting, the notion that society  can be compared to a living organism and, and that the quality of freedom that an individual enjoys is dependant on ‘health’ of that organism, tying in with my understanding of Hegel’s dialectical approach.  Now the point there was a point of comparison made in a lecture, between a sick mind and a sick society- both try to heal themselves, with their own resources. A society should not attempt to heal itself by striving for some fabulous, external utopia, but by looking for the seeds of change within itself- by allowing individuals to realise freedom, not only in the negative (but non-pejorative ‘liberal)’ sense, but through real human flourishing- the weak, purposive anthropology.  In this light, in later posts I’d like to explore the relationship between liberalism and social philosophy, particularly the concept of pluralism; who determines what human flourishing is?  What if my idea of flourishing interferes with your own?

 

Analytic vs. Continental Schools.

As I  mentioned in the ‘about’ preamble, I’ve had very little exposure to 20th century European philosophy; I spent a few weeks studying Husserl, Heidegger, Merlau-Ponty and Satre in an introductory course. On the other hand, I have studied a fair amount of the history of European philosophy: almost every major Philosopher from Descartes through to Nietzsche. In virtually every class I’ve taken, (and this includes some ‘hard’ analytical subjects like formal logic, and philosphy of language), Kant seems to pop us somewhere- in either a set text or in discussion.  Now I know Kant’s work is considered the point of divergence between the two schools, although I am aware that 19th century English idealims owes a large debt to Hegel.  Nonethless, to my mind the differnce in ‘method’ so to speak, apart from a quicker shift away from systematic, all encompassing approaches on the Anglo side,  doesn’t seem to become radically different  until Russel/Frege and Husserl appear on the scene.  Frege’s ‘Sense and Reference’, and later Wittgenstein’s ‘Tractatus’ seem to set the tone for 20th century analytic philososhy, a desire for lucidity through ‘rigorous’ method- appeals to mathematics and the natural sciences.  As Simon Critchley points out in his excellent short introduction to Cotinental philosophy, the Europeans (starting from Husserl, I think) reject this approach claiming that there is a kind of undefined, immanent layer of experience which sits underneath scientific method.  

When I first started to read philosophy, I was inclined to barrack for the Analytics-my first exposure to the Continental side was not a postive one; I was exposed (so to speak), to quote by Lacan from the Ecrits- “The penis is the square root of negative one”- or words to that effect.  For me, this exemplified, what I though at the time , was the typical continental approach- flamboyant claims, interesting to read and presented with panache in a very litterary style, but ultimately baseless- wildly unempirical. After a while however, I came to see problems with some apects of Analytic philosophy- pedantry, conceptual irrelavance couched in pseudo-scientific terms, and frankly, sometimes just plain dullness.  Perhaps the biggest problem with this school is its, at times stubborn refusal to venture outside rigidly perscribed areas of enquiry- particularly its refusal to engage with some aspects of ethics (accounting for the paucity of analytical commentators in this area, are least during the first half of the 20th century), and aesthetics.  Neither school to my mind seems completely on track- I want rigour in my arguments, I want to be able to appeal to the empirical possible, but at the same time, I don’t like being told that I can’t enquire into a particular area, or that my writing must always be dryly technical.

Fortunately, this is an exciting time to be a philosopher- the late 90’s and the opening decade of the 21st century have seen the beginnings of rapprochement between the two schools, and end to the scholarly Schwärmerei Kant warned against.