Continental Theory Summaries Flashcards
Rene Descartes, 1596-1650
Thinking about one’s existence proves—in and of itself—that an “I” exists to do the thinking.
David Hume, 1711-1776
1) Desire rather than reason governed human behavior.
2) He also argued against the existence of innate ideas, concluding that humans have knowledge only of things they directly experience.
3) Humans have no actual conception of the self, only of a bundle of sensations associated with the self.
Hume’s fork is an explanation, developed by later philosophers, of David Hume’s aggressive, 1730s division of “relations of ideas” from “matters of fact and real existence”.
The necessary is a state true in all possible worlds—usually by mere logical validity—whereas the contingent hinges on the way the particular world is.
On the necessary versus contingent (concerning reality):
-the a priori versus a posteriori (concerning knowledge),
The a priori is knowable before or without,
whereas the a posteriori is knowable only after or through, experience in the area of interest.
truths relating ideas (abstract) all align on one side (necessary, a priori, analytic),
whereas truths on actualities (concrete) always align on the other side (contingent, a posteriori, synthetic).
-and the analytic versus synthetic (concerning language),
The analytic is a statement true by virtue of its terms’ meanings, and therefore a tautology—necessarily true by logic but uninformative on the world’s state—
whereas the synthetic is true by its terms’ meanings in relation to a state of facts, contingent.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, 1770-1831
1) The philosophy of history. If we look at our past it will determine the direction history is taking us.
2) History progressed through class struggle- the master/slave.
3) Dialectic moved history forward.
Karl Marx, 1818-1883
1) The superstructure determines consciousness. 2) The structure produces alienation.
Friedrich Nietzsche, 1844-1900
Concepts are metaphors which do not correspond to reality.
Important for Derrida in the 1970s.
It deals largely with epistemological questions of truth and language, including the formation of concepts.
Every word immediately becomes a concept, inasmuch as it is not intended to serve as a reminder of the unique and wholly individualized original experience to which it owes its birth, but must at the same time fit innumerable, more or less similar cases—which means, strictly speaking, never equal—in other words, a lot of unequal cases. Every concept originates through our equating what is unequal.
Although all concepts are human inventions (created by common agreement to facilitate ease of communication), human beings forget this fact after inventing them, and come to believe that they are “true” and do correspond to reality. Thus Nietzsche argues that “truth” is actually:
A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms—in short, a sum of human relations which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins.
Sigmund Freud, 1856-1939
1) Man is not compelled by reason alone, there exists an unconscious with desires that shape neuroses. 2) A straightforward interpretation is therefore no longer possible.
Ferdinand de Saussure, 1857-1913
1) Language is not just speech, but in system that is structurally organized. 2) A sign is composed of a signifier and a signified.
Edmund Husserl, 1859-1938
1) The distinction between ‘natural’ and ‘phenomenological’ modes of understanding. In the former, sense-perception in correspondence with the material realm constitutes the known reality, and understanding is premised on the accuracy of the perception and the objective knowability of what is called the ‘real world’.
2) Phenomenological understanding strives to be rigorously ‘presuppositionless’ by means of what Husserl calls ‘phenomenological reduction’.
Consciousness of any given thing calls for discerning its meaning as an ‘intentional object’. Such an object does not simply strike the senses, to be interpreted or misinterpreted by mental reason; it has already been selected and grasped, grasping being an etymological connotation, of percipere, the root of ‘perceive’.
Carl Jung, 1875-1961
Founded analytical psychology. Jung proposed and developed the concepts of extraversion and introversion; archetypes, and the collective unconscious.
Saw the human psyche as “by nature religious”.
The central concept of analytical psychology is individuation—the psychological process of integrating the opposites, including the conscious with the unconscious, while still maintaining their relative autonomy. Jung considered individuation to be the central process of human development.
Jung de-emphasized the importance of sexual development and focused on the collective unconscious: the part of unconscious that contains memories and ideas that he believed were inherited from ancestors. While he did think that libido was an important source for personal growth, unlike Freud, Jung did not believe that libido alone was responsible for the formation of the core personality.
Martin Heidegger, 1889-1976
1) The things in lived experience always have more to them than what we can see; accordingly, the true nature of being is “withdrawal”. The interplay between the obscured reality of things and their appearance is Heidegger’s main theme. 2) The presence of things for us is not their being, but merely their being interpreted as equipment according to a particular system of meaning and purpose.
Walter Benjamin, 1892-1940
1) “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”: in the absence of any traditional, ritualistic value, art in the age of mechanical reproduction would inherently be based on the practice of politics.
2) Aura and Authenticity: authenticity, particularly in application to reproduction. ‘Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be.’ He argues that the “sphere of authenticity is outside the technical” so that the original artwork is independent of the copy, yet through the act of reproduction something is taken from the original by changing its context. He thus introduces the idea of the “aura” of a work and its absence in a reproduction.
2) A literary translation, by definition, produces deformations and misunderstandings of the original text. Moreover, in the deformed text, otherwise hidden aspects of the original, source-language text are elucidated, while previously obvious aspects become unreadable. Such translational mortification of the source text is productive; when placed in a specific constellation of works and ideas, newly revealed affinities, between historical objects, appear and are productive of philosophical truth.
Max Horkheimer, 1895-1973
1) Linked positivist and instrumental reason with the rise of fascism. He describes the difference between objective, subjective and instrumental reason, and states that we have moved from the former through the center and into the latter (though subjective and instrumental reason are closely connected). Objective reason deals with universal truths that dictate that an action is either right or wrong. It is a concrete concept and a force in the world that requires specific modes of behavior. The focus in the objective faculty of reason is on the ends, rather than the means. Subjective reason is an abstract concept of reason, and focuses primarily on means. Specifically, the reasonable nature of the purpose of action is irrelevant - the ends only serve the purpose of the subject (generally self-advancement or preservation). To be “reasonable” in this context is to be suited to a particular purpose, to be “good for something else”.
This aspect of reason is universally conforming, and easily furnishes ideology. In instrumental reason, the sole criterion of reason is its operational value or purposefulness, and with this, the idea of truth becomes contingent on mere subjective preference (hence the relation with subjective reason). Because subjective/instrumental reason rules, the ideals of a society, for example democratic ideals, become dependent on the “interests” of the people instead of being dependent on objective truths.
Horkheimer outlined how the Nazis had been able to make their agenda appear “reasonable”, but also issued a warning about the possibility of a similar occurrence happening again. Horkheimer believed that the illnesses of modern society are caused by misunderstanding of reason: if people use true reason to critique their societies, they will be able to solve problems they may have.
2) Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno collaborated together to publish “Dialectic of Enlightenment”, which was originally published in 1944:
The work criticized popular culture as the product of a culture industry whose goal was to stupefy the masses.
Antonio Gramsci, 1891-1937
Cultural hegemony describes how states use cultural institutions to maintain power in capitalist societies.
Gramsci developed a theory that emphasized the importance of the political and ideological superstructure in both maintaining and fracturing relations of the economic base.
- Capitalism, Gramsci suggested, maintained control not just through violence and political and economic coercion, but also through ideology. The bourgeoisie developed a hegemonic culture, which propagated its own values and norms so that they became the “common sense” values of all. People in the working-class (and other classes) identified their own good with the good of the bourgeoisie, and helped to maintain the status quo rather than revolting.
- To counter the notion that bourgeois values represented “natural” or “normal” values for society, the working class needed to develop a culture of its own.
Vladimir Propp, 1895-1970
Analyzed the basic plot components of Russian folk tales to identify their simplest irreducible narrative elements.
Herbert Marcuse, 1898-1979
1) Repressive desublimation refers to his argument that postwar mass culture, with its profusion of sexual provocations, serves to reinforce political repression. If people are preoccupied with unauthentic sexual stimulation, their political energy will be “desublimated”; instead of acting constructively to change the world, they remain repressed and uncritical. Marcuse advanced the prewar thinking of critical theory toward a critical account of the “one-dimensional” nature of bourgeois life in Europe and America.
2) Capitalism and industrialization pushed laborers so hard that they began to see themselves as extensions of the objects they were producing.
“The people recognize themselves in their commodities; they find their soul in their automobile, hi-fi set, split-level home, kitchen equipment,” meaning that under capitalism (in consumer society) humans become extensions of the commodities that they buy, thus making commodities extensions of people’s minds and bodies. Affluent mass technological societies, it argued, were totally controlled and manipulated.
