#ideality

[nirogryphon]

[anaxerneas]

The sense of the term 'critical' used by critical ethnographers derives from Hegelian and Marxian philosophical ideas and their development by twentieth-century Marxists. As Lobkowicz (1967) shows, Marx adopted a view of the relationship between theory and practice, based on the writings of Hegel and Kant, that is quite different from what is found in earlier thinking about this issue. Thus, for Aristotle, practice was distinct from theory, and neither had much relevance for the other. They were concerned with different domains, the universal and the contingent. He believed that there is practical knowledge, but that this is necessarily only probabilistic and of uncertain validity; and it is directed towards the achievement of the good, not towards truth per se. Theory, on the other hand, is concerned with the contemplation of eternal verities and is of value in itself. There is an implied contrast here between the human and the divine (Lobkowicz 1977). Kant, however, identified the practical with the ethical, and thereby with a higher metaphysical realm which is quite separate from the reality dealt with by theory (in the form of natural science), and is necessarily unknowable in scientific terms (Kroner 1914). What we have here is in many respects an inversion of the Aristotelian view: the practical partakes of the divine, while theory deals with human experience. Hegel's contribution was to 'overcome' these distinctions by reintroducing Kant's metaphysical reality back into the world, and knowledge of it back into theory. He argued that the point in history had been reached (its end-point in fact) at which theory (that is, the ideal) and reality were reconciled. He believed that his own philosophy represented the world become conscious of itself. While, like other left Hegelians, Marx did not accept that this reconciliation had already occurred, he did adopt the view that history had arrived at the point where all the contradictions that had previously characterised human society could be overcome (that is, humanity could be emancipated and realise its true being). And he believed that the potential for that reconciliation was embodied in his own theoretical work. All that remained was for reality to come into line with theory, and this would be achieved through the development of the proletariat and its adoption of his 'scientific socialism' (and the social transformation that would ensue from this). What we have here is a teleological view of history as at least potentially leading towards the self-realisation of humanity, the actualisation of all that human beings have striven for in the past but have previously been unable to achieve. This view is central to the ideas of influential twentieth-century Marxists such as Lukács, Korsch and the Frankfurt School (though some of the latter, notably Adorno and Horkheimer, later became pessimistic about the prospects for emancipation). A crucial feature of this perspective is what is sometimes called negative critique: the criticism of existing social relations in terms of the ideal immanent in history; in such a manner as to stimulate the process by which ideal will become reality. This plays a particularly important role in the thinking of the Frankfurt School, for whom a key feature of advanced capitalism was an ideology that denies (on technical grounds) that social arrangements could be different. From this point of view, negative critique is, at the very least, an essential preliminary to bringing about emancipation. Indeed, it has been argued in relation to Horkheimer and Adorno that: 'critical theory had no active theory of politics and was left only with the notion of "immanent critique"' (Dickens 1983: 134). More sympathetically, we can see the Frankfurt theorists as seeking to keep critical consciousness alive at a time when, they believed, even the very possibility of an alternative socio-cultural order had almost been expunged (Buck-Morss 1979).

Martyn Hammersley, "Critical Theory as a Model for Ethnography", found in What's Wrong With Ethnography?

[poeticque]

One is in love with what resembles an ideal that is out of sight but present in the memory.

Tales of Love - Julia Kristeva

[anaxerneas]

Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space

[bygone]

ιδεατότητα (αποσπάσματα)

[rotenotes]

ιδεατότητα (αποσπάσματα)

[anaxerneas]

At the 20th Congress of the Russian Communist Party, held in February 1956, Khrushchev first denounced Stalin's misdeeds in a secret speech. A few months later Polish and Hungarian writers were openly demanding freedom of thought. These men were leading Communist intellectuals who were recoiling from the theory that morality, justice, art, and truth itself were to be identified with the interest of the party. Hungarian Communist writers solemnly repudiated the teaching that political expedience can be a criterion of the truth and "after bitter mental struggles" vowed "that in no circumstances will we ever write lies." A few weeks later, the Hungarian people, led by these intellectuals, overthrew the Stalinist regime established by Rakosi.

This revolution, as well as that more recent ill-fated one in Czechoslovakia, was fought to gain recognition for the reality of intangible things: truth and justice and moral and artistic integrity. The Bolshevik attempt to establish an empire that denied this reality, though undertaken for high purposes and in the light of a sophisticated theory, had failed. It had proved unbearable. This passionate recognition of a metaphysical reality, irreducible to material elements, may well mark a turning point: it may serve as an axiom for any future political thought.

Writers in Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia have been trying to find a place for the morally responsible individual within the Marxian conception of history. Early manuscripts of Marx, until recently unpublished, offer some substance for this, but the reviving of a few Hegelian ideas in the thought of the young Marx will not take us far. We need a theory of knowledge which shows up the fallacy of positivistic skepticism and supports the possibility of a knowledge of entities governed by higher principles.

Michael Polanyi and Harry Prosch, Meaning

I've seen "policies, not ideals" offered as a concise expression of 'materialism'. But aren't policies attempts to realize ideals? Are there not good or bad reasons (not just intentions!) for trying to implement a policy?