A Response to Lukacs's "Existentialism"

I finally got around to reading Lukacs’s critique of existentialism, and although I am glad he recognizes phenomenology as the movement’s theoretical foundations, I have issues with his interpretation of the method (upon which his critique of existentialism is built). Since I have a presentation on Husserl’s passive and active synthesis to finish, I’ll keep this short by responding to a few main points:

“Is there any room for a “third way” besides idealism and materialism? If we consider this question seriously, as the great philosophers of the past did, and not with fashionable phrases, there can be only one answer, “No.” For when we look at the relations which can exist between being and consciousness we see clearly that only two positions are possible: either being is primary (materialism), or consciousness is primary (idealism). Or, to put it another way, the fundamental principle of materialism is the independence of being from consciousness; of idealism, the dependence of being on consciousness. The fashionable philosophers of today establish a correlation between being and consciousness as a basis for their “third way”: there is no being without consciousness and no consciousness without being. But the first assertion produces only a variant of idealism: the acknowledgment of the dependence of being on consciousness.”

The problem with this is that when speaking about a human being’s engagement with the world, it is impossible to leave out the perspective from which they experience that world in which they are embedded in. That is the problem with idealism and materialism according to the phenomenologists. With idealism, there is too little emphasis on being-in-the-world and the dialectical play that is involved for any intuitive evidence to be acquired; with materialism there is too little description as to what the necessary conditions for the possibility of a given experience are. For Husserl, the point is that as individuals we experience multifaceted objects from given perspectives that become synthesized into intuitive objectlike formations, unified by the temporal stream of consciousness and associated affective awakenings of past experiences. For Sartre, consciousness is a transphenomenal dimension functioning as a privation that conditions the appearance of being to the individual. Despite the inability to experience the object in full positivity, the phenomenologists would not deny that there is an object that those facets belong to in the “natural world” (as well as our experience), and therefore wed the idealist and materialist traditions.

“The arbitrariness of the method is seen especially when the question is raised: Is what phenomenological intuition finds actually real? What right does that intuition have to speak of the reality of its object? For Dilthey’s intuition, the colorfulness and the uniqueness of historical situations are the reality; for Bergson’s, it is the flow itself, the duration (durée), that dissolves the petrified forms of ordinary life; while for Husserl’s, the acts in which individual objects are meant constitute “reality” – objects which he treats as isolated units, with hard contours like statuary. Although mutually exclusive, these intuitions were able to dwell together in relative peace.”

The issue with this is precisely what Sartre discusses in Being and Nothingness: it fails to recognize that knowledge is founded on being. In Husserl’s work, we see that a familiarity with objects is what constitutes a truly objective realm; in order to “know” whether what is being intuitively recognized in the primordial present is “real,” we must have past experiences to test that intuition against. Of course, knowledge is never absolute due to the inexhaustive nature of the object, but it is probable. Therefore, the objects are not treated as isolated units, but are pitted against other intuitions of retained experiences in gradations of clarity.

“So Sartre complains of Husserl and Heidegger, two men he otherwise prizes highly. Husserl, in his opinion, has not gone beyond Kant; and he criticizes Heidegger as follows: ‘The character being-together [co-presence, Mitsein] introduced by Heidegger is a character of the isolated ego. Hence it does not lead beyond solipsism. Therefore we shall search Sein und Zeit in vain for a position beyond both idealism and realism [meaning materialism].’”

Just as a side note, Sartre also tells us that to Heidegger, solipsism is a false problem since we are first and foremost a “we,” rather than an “I.” Individuality has to be earned by a call of conscience and a projection towards death (to Heidegger). The one criticism that I believe Lukacs is getting at is Sartre's notion that primordially, we are an objectified "us" that can only be realized as a "we" by an individual in the act of collectively looking at something else. What this means is that we are fundamentally for-others before we can experience ourselves as being-with them. Additionally, Sartre goes on to say that since all consciousness is consciousness (of) being (the parenthetical “of” here representing the co-dependent unity of consciousness as lack and being), the problem with the existence of Others is not a problem with the Other’s existence, but of the consciousness revealing the being.

Lukacs then goes into a tangent and somehow makes the leap that seems ubiquitous to all critiques coming out of his school of thought, classifying phenomenological and existentialist theories of the Other as fetish, albeit without necessity. After moving to a misrepresentation of nothingness in Heidegger and Sartre, which, if anything, conditions the ability to become aware of reified social relations and commodity fetishes, he goes on to say:

“A very specialized philosophical dissertation would be required to show the chains of thought, sometimes quite false, sometimes obviously sophistical, by which Sartre seeks to justify his theory of negative judgment. It is true that, for every “No” which expresses a particular judgment, there is a positively existing situation. But it is only idolizing of subjective attitudes that gives nothingness the semblance of reality. When I inquire, for instance, what the laws of the solar system are, I have not posited any negative being, such as Sartre envisages. The meaning of my question is simply that I lack knowledge.”

Again, however, the point is that in order to gain knowledge, that knowledge must be founded on being, which is obviously lacked (since knowledge is simply a presence to being). Otherwise, we cannot even talk about what we are lacking knowledge of.

“Existentialism consistently proclaims that nothing can be known by man. It does not challenge science in general; it does not raise skeptical objections to its practical or technical uses. It merely denies that there is a science which has the right to say anything about the one essential question: the relation of the individual to life. This is the alleged superiority of existentialism to the old philosophy. ‘Existential philosophy,’ Jaspers says, ‘would be lost immediately if it started believing again that it knew what man is.’ This radical ignorance on principle, which is stressed by Heidegger and Sartre, is one of the main reasons for the overwhelming influence of existentialism. Men who have no prospects themselves find consolation in the doctrine that life in general has no prospects to offer.”

Now this is just an unfair treatment of the literature. The natural sciences have plenty to inform us about the biological or physical relation of human beings to the natural world, but to claim that they have some sort of known grasp of a human being’s “essence” is absurd. But the concluding sentence of the above paragraph implies that to existentialists there is no meaning to be created or discovered by the individual, which is simply not the case (and is the antithesis to one of the major principles of the movement).

“Jaspers and Sartre are less radical than Heidegger in this respect, although their thought is not the less conditioned by time and class. Sartre flatly rejects the concept of specific or personal death as a category of existentialism.”

I thought I’d point out at least one thing Lukacs got right.

Moving on, Lukacs’s quite harsh critique of Sartre’s notions of freedom and responsibility simply don’t seem to present the problems he is drawing from them. He does hit Sartre where he is weakest, which is Existentialism is a Humanism, a lecture given to the “general public” in an attempt to convey the complex ideas of Being and Nothingness that Sartre himself regretted writing (according to Annie Cohen-Solal in the latest translation of Existentialism is a Humanism, if I’m not mistaken). This, however, is not an adequate exposition of Sartre’s notion of value (which I will not go into here, as this has already turned into a much longer post than anticipated), and should be further investigated before accepting Lukacs’s criticisms.

To conclude, Lukacs’s claim that phenomenology is a less-cogent version of Kantian theory is simply indicative of Lukacs’s knowledge depth (or lack thereof) when it comes to the phenomenological method. The point of the epoché is to bracket an experience and shift to a phenomenological reduction, suspending belief about the mode of existence of an object and dogmatic attitudes toward it. What we have in the end is not merely the object as objective reality, but again, an understanding of the necessary conditions for experiencing the object in the way that we do, providing us with, as Lukacs’s school’s fundamental project seeks, the tools to de-fetishize our natural attitudes and recognize the collective social structure as essential to our existence. Just because we are free to act within a determinate framework of social and natural conditions, does not mean we lack a level of indeterminacy within that framework. As Marcuse tells us in his critique of Marxist aesthetics, community originates in the autonomous decisions of individuals, and until we recognize that we are committing ourselves to the same bourgeois ideality we are claiming to critique.

Back on Track

It really does astonish me the way things work sometimes. I started this blog over a year ago in order to write down my reactions to articles involving certain issues that I was concerned with, and after a long hiatus taken to focus on graduate school I've come full circle. Initially motivated by the flaws in psychiatry leading to a dehumanized society, after studying phenomenology for the past few years I've come to a rekindled interest in responsibility qua deliberation and choice, which is currently being attacked by reductionist claims of neuroscience in order to justify the treatment of behavior as diseases by the psychological and psychiatric fields alike. To keep things short for now, although the previous posts require some editing I find myself back on the track of my prior concerns, and look to continue updating this blog more frequently. I leave you with some excellent reading material:

Is Neuroscience the Death of Free Will?

Consciousness: The Black Hole of Neuroscience

Telling the Story of the Brain's Cacophony of Competing Voices

CFP: Dowling College's Second Annual Undergraduate Philosophy Conference

CFP: Undergraduate Philosophy Conference at Dowling College
(Oakdale, Long Island, New York, March 30, 2012)

In order to increase student awareness of and interest in philosophy, and to encourage contributions to the scholarly community, Dowling College Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies invites students to submit papers relating to any philosophical topic or period. Authors of accepted papers will be given the opportunity to present their work at Dowling College’s second undergraduate philosophy conference.

Deadline for Submissions: January 10, 2012

Submission Guidelines:

1. Although papers must relate to a philosophical topic or period, that does not mean that other areas, such as psychology, sociology, neurology, biology, etc., are excluded. As long as the paper engages with its topic in a philosophical manner you are more than welcome to submit the paper. Presenters should plan on having 15-20 minutes to present their work (approx. 3,000 words). Time limits will be strictly enforced.

2. Attach a copy of your submission in .doc or .docx format to an email, and send it to dowlingphilconference@gmail.com. Within the email, please include your name, email address, and college/university that you are affiliated with.

3. Please do not include your name on your paper, so that it may be reviewed “blind” by a committee of conference organizers.

4. Authors whose papers are accepted will be notified by Feb 10, 2011.

5. When you submit your paper, please indicate whether you would be interested acting as a discussant for another speaker's paper.

Please remember that you do not have to be a philosophy major to submit a paper! All currently enrolled undergraduates are welcome to submit their work.

The Rudolph Campus of Dowling College is located in Oakdale, NY. This is 50 miles from NYC, and 25 minutes walk from the Oakdale LIRR train station.

For more information contact Adam Kohler at dowlingphilconference@gmail.com