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Wednesday, 07 December 2005 01:25 |
By DAVID FORBES
| Bruno Bosteels
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People must learn to stop using assumptions about human nature to form political systems and instead focus on politics as actions that disrupt them, Bruno Bosteels, a professor of Spanish literature at Cornell University, said in a presentation at UNC Asheville last Thursday.
?®Politics begins with an interruption of the natural order of things, or the idea that we, by human nature, act in a certain way, whether as selfish capitalist or as liberal, compassionate compatriots,?∆ Bosteels said.
?®The foundation, or ground, of politics is neither nature or convention. It is the absence of foundation. There is no way to refer politics back to an understanding of human nature. Politics does not come when you do what is natural to you, but when you break out of the role that is assigned to you.?∆
The lecture, held in Highsmith University Union, was attended by about 30 people and was the last in a series of presentations this semester on the relationship between politics and philosophy. The series was sponsored by UNCA??s philosophy department.
Early in the presentation, Bosteels noted that his aim ?®was to wholly
break with the old answer to the questions of politics and philosophy.?∆
The question, he said, amounts to: ?®What is to be done??∆
Historically, Bosteels said, philosophers have begun with thinking
about human nature, or ?®being,?∆ and then proceeded to use those
assumptions to deduce how humans should construct their political
systems ?? or what actions they should take in response to their
current one.
?®Usually, their plan for action springs from a realization of certain
principles that lay out what is,?∆ Bosteels said. ?®These political
ontologists take that realization, think about it and then say what is
to be done.?∆
This tendency stretches back to ancient times, Bosteels noted, and is
exemplified in the works of philosophers such as Plato, who followed
his analogy that every human was made of a different metal with the
belief that each person in a society should do one task, and one task
only.
?®Plato defines justice as doing one??s own work and not meddling with
what isn??t one??s own,?∆ Bosteels said. ?®For Plato, this justice depends
on doing what is naturally yours, on sticking to the task. You have one
job that is by nature best suited for you and is a sense harmonized
with you.?∆
Furthermore, Bosteels continued, Plato defined justice for a society as
harmonizing all the various roles ?? and making sure that everyone knew
his place.
?®Injustice in Plato??s world means meddling with what is not your job,?∆
Bosteels said. ?®The farmer or the weaver or the doctor should just
stick to their own business.?∆
Comparatively, Bosteels said, philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels believed that a human could fill many different roles.
?®If you remember Marx and Engel??s statement about the possibility that
one (can) be a fisherman in the morning and a critic in the evening and
a baker in the afternoon ?? Plato??s ideal goes precisely against this,?∆
Bosteels noted. ?®Plato??s idea of sticking to one??s own and obeying
?¥nature?? lays the ground for the next wave.?∆
This philosophical trend continued into the European Renaissance,
Bosteels said, when philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes considered the
nature of human beings and began to draw their own framework of
political systems.
?®The first part of Hobbes?? ?¥Leviathan,?? which deals with the
self-serving nature of man, necessarily proceeds and grounds the second
part on the need for a powerful political commonwealth,?∆ he noted.
?®Some philosophers like David Hume referred instead to mankind??s
tendency towards the common good rather than the fear of death Hobbes
talks about.?∆
However, despite the differences between the conclusions of
philosophers such as Hobbes and Hume, they did have one important
similarity, he asserted. They both drew their conclusions after first
making their assumptions about human nature.
?®In both cases, it is a reference to human nature that sets the terms
for political action,?∆ Bosteels said. ?®Those assumptions explain the
origin, or legitimately, the source of existing political power by
making reference to unquestionable qualities inherent in human nature.?∆
Again, Bosteels said, Marxism offers an alternative to this general
trend of thought, in its belief that human nature can be changed.
Bosteels read one quote from Marx to give an example of this argument.
?®Whoever undertakes to establish the people??s institutions must feel
himself capable of changing human nature itself of transforming
people,?∆ Bosteels read.
This is very different from Hume, Hobbes and many other philosophers, he said.
?®Marx is saying that you can change this human nature, instead of referring politics back to a prior definition of
human nature,?∆ Bosteels noted.
However, many philosophers, even in the 20th century, did not shake
many of the old assumptions, even if they questioned them, Bosteels
said.
In particular, he singled out the philosophers Martin Heidegger and
Jacques Lacan, who tried to deconstruct old ideas of human nature, but
whom Bosteels asserts still refer back to old ideas on human nature in
their thoughts on politics.
?®Heidegger thinks about being as verb, as in coming to being,?∆ he said.
?®It is not a given or an essence, it is the opening up of a horizon.?∆
While Heidegger would seem to be destroying the idea of being as a
fixed state, Bosteels asserts that ?®he gives us little more than an old
version of the old ideas,?∆ Bonsteels added.
Heidegger does that by opening up the idea of politics as a site where
humans can come to realize themselves and become more aware, which
Bosteels noted still assumes that humans are acting in accordance with
their nature, even if Heidegger has changed the definition of that
nature.
Meanwhile, Lacan criticized the notion of people as the pinnacle of
consciousness, Bosteels said, but he still asserted that people acted
by that nature, even if it was fragmented.
Bosteels also said that both Heidegger and Lacan hesitated to advocate
a certain political system arising from their beliefs on human nature,
and both doubted that progress in politics was even possible ?? but that
some of their followers have done so, he noted.
?®Some of their followers have interpreted these ideas as suggesting a
sort of direct democracy,?∆ Bosteels said. ?®These interpretations insist
that the nature of a democracy is a regime where the political center
remains empty, as you can see in an election year. This notion that
democracy is an open system seems ready made to face, after the fact,
some of the critiques of being that are leveled by Heidegger and Lacan.?∆
In contrast, Bosteels asserted that the most beneficial venue for
humans is to entirely escape the idea of politics as being fueled by a
pre-conceived assumption of human nature.
?®What is needed is a break with institution,?∆ Bosteels said. ?®Politics
begins with events, but they are events that break the order of being
or they exceed the order of being. A political sequence of events is in
itself a form of thinking. It is a question then of registering the
sequence of events and how they matter.?∆
After the lecture, Bosteels told the Daily Planet that he believes that
people need to stop thinking in terms of setting up political systems,
and instead focus more on activism.
?®The curse of philosophers has been to think in terms of human nature
and these political systems,?∆ Bosteels said. ?®What??s needed is more
action, more grassroots activity.?∆
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