Marxism and Alternatives: Towards the Conceptual Interaction Among Soviet Philosophy, Neo-Thomism, Pragmatism, and Phenomenology

316 Pages·1981·21.56 MB·English

by  Tom Rockmore

MARXISM AND ALTERNATIVES
SOVIETICA
PUBLICATIONS AND MONOGRAPHS
OF THE INSTITUTE OF EAST-EUROPEAN STUDIES AT THE
UNIVERSITY OF FRIBOURG/SWITZERLAND AND
THE CENTER FOR EAST EUROPE, RUSSIA AND ASIA
AT BOSTON COLLEGE AND THE SEMINAR
FOR POLITICAL THEORY AND PHILOSOPHY
AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MUNICH
Founded by J. M. BOCHENSKI (Fribourg)
Edited by T. J. BLAKELEY (Boston), GUIDO KONG (Fribourg), and
NIKOLAUS LOBKOWICZ(Munich)
Editorial Board
Karl G. Ballestrem (Munich) Bernard Jeu (Lille)
HelmutDahm (Cologne) George L. Kline (Bryn Mawr)
Richard T. DeGeorge (Kansas) James J. O'Rourke (Manchester, N.H.)
Peter Ehlen (Munich) Friedrich Rapp (Berlin)
Michael Gagern (Munich) Tom Rockmore (New Haven)
Philip Grier (Carlisle, Pa.) Andries Sarlerirljn (Eindhoven)
Felix P. Ingold (St. Gall) James Scanlan (Columbus)
Edward Swiderski (Ox/orc!)
VOLUME 45
TOM ROCKMORE WILLIAM J. GAVIN
Yale University University of Southern Maine
JAMES G. COLBERT THOMASJ.BLAKELEY
Boston State College Boston College
MARXISM AND
ALTERNATIVES
Towards the Conceptual Interaction
Among Soviet Philosophy, Neo-Thomism,
Pragmatism, and Phenomenology
D. REIDEL PUBLISHING COMPANY
DORDRECHT: HOLLAND I BOSTON: U.S.A.
LONDON: ENGLAND
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Main entry under title:
Marxism and alternatives.
(Sovietica ; v. 45)
Includes index.
1. Dialectical materialism. 2. Neo-Scholasticism.
3. Pragmatism. 4. Phenomenology. I. Rockmore, Tom, 1942-
II. Series: Sovietica (Universite de Fribourg. Ost-Europa Institut) ;
v.45.
B809.8.M3733 146'.32 81-12153
ISBN-l3: 978-94-009-8497-4 e-ISBN-13: 978-94-009-8495-0
DOl: 10.1007/978-94-009-8495-0
Published by D. Reidel Publishing Company,
P.O. Box 17, 3300 AA Dordrecht, Holland.
Sold and distributed in the U.S.A. and Canada
by Kluwer Boston Inc.,
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In all other countries, sold and distributed
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D. Reidel Publishing Company is a member of the Kluwer Group.
All Rights Reserved
Copyright © 1981 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t Edition 1981
No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction ix
PART ONE: THE IMMANENCE OF MARXISM-LENINISM 1
1. Emergence of the "New Soviet Man" 3
2. The Scientific-Technological Revolution 28
3. Dialectical Logic 42
4. The Dialectic of Nature 54
5. Meta-Marxism 62
PART TWO: THE TRANSCENDENCE OF NEO-THOMISM 65
6. Natural Law and the Common Good 67
7. Nature and Knowledge 89
8. Logic and Knowledge 98
9. Immateriality 106
10. The ''Predicamental'' Perspective 113
PART THREE: THE CONCRETENESS OF PRAGMATISM 121
11. Context 123
12. Science and Progress 132
13. Making Logic Practical 150
14. Nature and the.Natural 165
15. "Context" as a Philosophical Concept 177
PART FOUR: THE TRANSCENDENTALISM OF
PHENOMENOLOGY 187
16. The Phenomenological Movement 189
17. An Approach to Social-Context 211
18. Phenomenological Methodology 227
19 _ An Ontological Phenomenology? 240
20. Meta-Phenomenology 255
vi T ABLE OF CONTENTS
PART FIVE: CONCLUSION 265
Notes 277
Index of Names 305
Index of Subjects 309
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to acknowledge with gratitude the following permissions to
reprint parts of my essays: To Prof. Norris Clarke, S. J., Editor, International
Philosophical Quarterly, Fordham University, New York, N.Y., for parts of
'William James on Language' (Vol. XVI No.1, March, 1976); to the D. Reidel
Publishing Company, Dordrecht, The Netherlands, for permission to reprint
some pages from Chapter VI, 'Underlying Themes and the Present Cultural
Context'. This later appeared as part of the volume co-authored with Professor
Blakeley, and entitled Russia and America: A Philosophical Comparison
(Dordrecht, 1976); to the D. Reidel Publishing Company for permission to
use parts of my article 'The Importance of Context: Reflections on Kuhn,
Marx, and Dewey', which appeared in their journal Studies in Soviet Thought
(Vol. 21 No.1, Feb. 1980); to Martinus NijhoffPublishers, The Hague, The
Netherlands, for permission to use parts of my article entitled 'James' Meta
physics: Language as the House of "Pure Experience" , which appeared in
their journal Man and World, An International Philosophical Review (Vol. 12,
No.2,1979).
WILLIAM J. GAVIN
Portland, Maine 1981
vii
INTRODUCTION
Contemporary philosophy is by its nature pluralistic, to a perhaps greater
extent than at any moment of the preceding tradition, in that there are
multiple forms of thought competing for a position on the center of the
philosophic stage. The reasons for this conceptual proliferation are numerous.
But certainly one factor is the increasing development of contemporary
means of publication and communication, which in turn make possible the
rapid dissemination of ideas as well as an informed reaction to them. And
this in turn has increased the possibility for serious philosophic exchange by
enhancing the available opportunities for the interaction of competing forms
of thought.
But, although informed philosophic interaction has in principle become
increasingly possible in recent years, the frequency, scope and quality of such
discussion has often been less than satisfactory. Contemporary philosophic
viewpoints tend not to interact in a Hegelian manner, as complementary
aspects of a totally satisfactory and a-perspectival view, facets of a singly
and all-embracing true position. Rather, contemporary philosophic viewpoints
tend to portray themselves as mutually exclusive alternatives only occasionally
willing to acknowledge the possible validity or even the intrinsic interest of
other perspectives. Thus, although the multiplication of different forms of
philosophy in principle means that there are greater possibilities for meaning
ful exchange between them, in practice the tendency of each of the various
philosophic positions to raise claims to philosophic truth from its point of
view alone has had the effect of impeding such interaction.
This point can be illustrated through a brief glance at the generally hostile
Marxist-Leninist reception of other philosophic tendencies. The touchstone
of all forms of Marxism - as species of neo-Hegelianism - is the dialectic. In
the case of Marxist-Leninist philosophy this has taken the specific form of
dialectical logic, where the "subjective dialectic" reflects the "objective
dialectic"; and the proletariat creates its revolutionary method and historical
world, subject only to the removal of man's alienation from nature and other
men. All non-Marxisms - as well as other Marxisms - are judged, assessed,
and condemned on the basis of their incapacity for handling one aspect or
the other of the dialectical-1ogical world view .
ix
x INTRODUCTION
From the Marxist-Leninist perspective, to take a series of examples, neo
Thomism sins on the side of "objective idealism" through misplaced and
non-dialectical concretion of fictitious entities; pragmatism fails correctly
to identify the dialectical and historical character of human practice; and
phenomenology robs the dialectic of any concrete (read "material") referent.
Initially, Soviet preoccupation with neo-Thomism came from the latter's
connection both with certain political' movements in Eastern Europe and in
Latin America, and its involvement with the Catholic religion, the most
militant opponent of Communism throughout the world.
These extra-philosophic linkages of neo-Thomism not only discredit it in
Soviet eyes (as well as in those of many pragmatists and phenomenologists)
as reactionary but also are said to fmd expression in its philosophic ideas on
concreation and "double truth". Through the neo-Thomistic doctrine of
double truth (viz. truths of reason cannot contradict truths of faith) man is
robbed of his integrity and made to depend on figments of his imagination,
namely God, saints, etc. In concreation, the human being who is said to collab
orate with divine creativity loses his revolutionary vigor and practical auton
omy; religious otherworldliness destroys man's efficacy in the real world.
Even more destructive within neo-Thomism, for the Marxist-Leninists, is
its denigration of human nature through the doctrine of sin and its assignment
of nature in general to the realm of the Devil. As there are two truths, there
are two worlds, and man has no need to make revolutionary efforts in the
here and now. He need only study theology and let the Church take care of
the rest.
The set of philosophic views that the Marxist-Leninists see as posing
perhaps the greatest threat to a truly dialectical-lOgical worldview belongs to
the heirs of the Vienna Circle - variously called ''neopositivists'' or "analytic
philosophers". The verificationism, conventionalism and physicalism of
Anglo-American philosophy are rejected as so many "subjectivisms", as so
many attempts to reach some sort of certainty that reduces science to formal
logical, Cartesian validity and, hence in principle, rejects the Marxist-Leninist
dialectical model
Even the assimilation of ideas from pragmatism does not help such neo
positivism in its effort to link up with the real world. In fact, there is a tend
ency on the part of the Marxist-Leninist simply, but misleadingly, to identify
neopositivism and pragmatism. Neopositivism on this interpretation fails
because the ':praxis" of pragmatism is abstract - it is the merely rational
practice of an ahistorical agent, instead of the world-historical practice of
the proletariat.
INTRODUCTION xi
Were neopositivism-pragmatism able to identify a historical agent, it would
not lose itself in interminable disputes on questions of method. Its method is
abstract and subjective. It is grounded purely and simply in a Humean belief,
lodged in a Berkeleyan mind, with no links to history or society.
Because of this methodological commitment, neopositivism-pragmatism
is incapable of giving any answer to the question "what do we know about
what we know beyond what we know about it?". In other words, they cannot
account for a reality beyond the immediate knower.
Nor can neopositivism-pragmatism say anything about human misery or
alienation, because it has no account of a nature beyond the knower, and
reduces the human context to the biological constitution of the same knower.
The Soviet critique of phenomenology and existentialism contains some
of the same elements as their critique of pragmatism because both existen
tialism and pragmatism have roots in nineteenth-century Lebensphilosophie.
Just as the Marxist-Leninists sometimes find it difficult to distinguish between
neopositivism (which is basically a view of science and method) and prag
matism (which can be described as an account of man and his world), so they
are often not too clear about the distinction between contemporary pheno
menology (which stresses a method and view on science, originating with
Husserl) and existentialism (concerned mainly with man and his hostile
world).
What is clear to the Marxist-Leninist who criticizes phenomenology and
existentialism from a dialectical-logical perspective is that these latter join
neopositivism-pragmatism in failing correctly to identify the human context.
For this reason they cannot explain nature or man's relationship to it; which
is why their extensive commentaries on the symptoms of man's alienation
remain abstract and unconvincing.
The failure of existentialism to explain man, nature, and history parallels
and may be caused by the subjectivist methodology of the phenomenologist.
According to Soviet accounts, the anti-psychologism, doctrine of the life
world and transcendental reduction of phenomenology remain on the level
of pure description. Phenomenology is Cartesian in the worst sense; and
neither Ingarden nor Sartre has been able to do anything to remedy this.
It is the work of the later Sartre that the Marxist-Leninists see as demon
strating the final bankruptcy of phenomenology-existentialism. In effect,
they argue, if Sartre's version of dialectical reason cannot justify the praxis
of history, then it is clear that the "constitutivity" of the phenomenologists
is historically meaningless.
In sum, the Soviets see all non-Marxist-Leninist philosophies as falling