A 'debate' which took place over a period of many years between two highly esteemed philosophers, Jurgen Habermas and Herbert Marcuse, speaks directly to my earlier posts on domination, objectification, and the irrationality of capitalism. Let me see if I can encapsulate some of their ideas here...
One can distinguish, for explanation's sake, between two worlds: the practical and the work. What Habermas and Marcuse talk about in their exchange is the disturbing way in which the practical (everyday) world has been colonized by the work world. The work world is more than just literally offices and places of official work. The world of work is an ideological framework, a way of thinking. As such, if we return to their suggestion that both worlds have been colonized by the ideology of work, we can see how it is not so easy to just step out of this dilemma or to stop working. That is, our ways of thinking have been steered to think in this way. And therefore, for change to occur we must overhaul our way of thinking. Many of us have come to a point where we can't think outside this frame, indeed, to suggest that one could think otherwise is completely ridiculous and hopelessly naive according to this ideology.
The relevance of the ideology of the world of work is that part of this way of thinking involves the neccessary and automatic objectification of things. Historically, the objectification of things has been limited to inanimate objects, plants, and nunhuman animals. Which for me is a problem anyway. But where Habermas and Marcuse get really frightened is when this objectification spills over into our relationships with other people. This starts off in terms of conceptualizing people as work force, as labour. But as we all can see today, it is evident in the ways in which children are coopted in ads as resources for their parents, and the ways in which the body is so easily made object for consumption - I don't think I need to point you to examples of this!
I'll try to finally tie all of this together tomorrow, since I am, once again, out of time.
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2 comments:
See my serious comment below.
What of animal rights activists co-opting children to protest the seal hunt? Does the end justify the means?
There are so many constructs in our society you can just pick one and use it to describe anything then deconstruct it. The idea that work has colonized life and relationships is very accurate, but only one of a million ways of looking at society, work or, or, or. We are very, very privileged to live in a rich society where we can even afford the think about such things. Almost everyone who is alive or who has ever lived has not had such a luxury.
I remember when Matt was talking about a book he had read and saying it really helps to be a philosopher to understand it, and I had thought it really helps to be a scientist to understand it. Probably someone else thinks it realy helps to be an accountant or a farmer of a prisoner or whatever to really understand it because we all see things though our own lens.
Hi Grampa,
I agree that you can slice and dice concepts to 'explain' the world, they are lens or ways into a problem. However, you can just arbitrarily use them or construct them; they are constructions - in the literal sense of the word.
As you say we are very privileged and to a large extent this is why we are not so terribly bothered by processes of objectification. To be clear, we are almost never the objectified. We objectify. Therefore, the big problem with the objectification which is built into the ideology of work is that it leaves many people in dire circumstances, treated as simply labour for first world luxuries. You are right in pointing to the people who don't live in luxury - these are the people who get the worst treatment as a result of the ideology of work and its concomitant alies domination and objectification.
I don't think that Habermas and Marcuse were trying to offer an ontological or epistemological meta-theory, but were rather responding to a particular ahistoric situation in which more and more people are being mistreated in the name of a necessary 'logic' of capitalism/industrialization/modernization.
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