Table Of Content

i The Subject of Human Being The Subject of Human Being presents a sweeping account of the nature of human existence. As a work of philosophical anthropology, the analysis ranges from the basic powers emerging from the mind, to our extraordinary psychological capacities, to the shared sociocultural worlds we inhabit. The book integrates different perspectives on social ontology from a selection of philosophers and theorists, whose advances toward understanding the rela- tionship between individuals and society ought to revolutionize social theory as understood and practiced in the social sciences and humanities. Although grounded in the critical realist philosophy of Roy Bhaskar and the social theory of Margaret Archer, the book also draws from philosophy of mind, phenomenology of consciousness, psychoanalytic theory, virtue ethics, and personalism to support and extend its arguments. Four elements of human existence are examined: the nature of consciousness, agency, subjectivity, and the social world. Thus, it addresses related issues of power, the agent-s tructure problem, the formation of beliefs and desires, human universals, and human rights. Portraying a unified social theory that is materialist, realist, dialectical, and centered on emergence, and offering a comprehensive and progres- sive theory of human being, this book is essential reading for students and scholars of critical realism, philosophy, and the social sciences. Christopher W. Haley is an independent scholar based in Austin, Texas, USA. ii Routledge Studies in Critical Realism Critical Realism is a broad movement within philosophy and social science. It is a movement that began in British philosophy and sociology following the founding work of Roy Bhaskar, Margaret Archer and others. Critical Realism emerged from the desire to realise an adequate realist philosophy of science, social science, and of critique. Against empiricism, positivism and various idealisms (interpretivism, radical social constructionism), Critical Realism argues for the necessity of ontology. The pursuit of ontology is the attempt to understand and say something about ‘the things themselves’ and not simply about our beliefs, experiences, or our current knowledge and understanding of those things. Critical Realism also argues against the implicit ontology of the empiricists and idealists of events and regularities, reducing reality to thought, language, belief, custom, or experience. Instead Critical Realism advocates a structural realist and causal powers approach to natural and social ontology, with a focus upon social relations and process of social transformation. Important movements within Critical Realism include the morphogenetic approach developed by Margaret Archer; Critical Realist economics developed by Tony Lawson; as well as dialectical Critical Realism (embracing being, becoming and absence) and the philosophy of metaReality (emphasising priority of the non-d ual) developed by Roy Bhaskar. For over thirty years, Routledge has been closely associated with Critical Realism and, in particular, the work of Roy Bhaskar, publishing well over fifty works in, or informed by, Critical Realism (in series including Critical Realism: Interventions; Ontological Explorations; New Studies in Critical Realism and Education). These have all now been brought together under one series dedicated to Critical Realism. The Centre for Critical Realism is the advisory editorial board for the series. If you would like to know more about the Centre for Critical Realism, or to submit a book proposal, please visit www.centreforcriticalrealism.com. Sociology, Health and the Fractured Society A Critical Realist Account Graham Scambler Empiricism and The Metatheory of The Social Sciences Roy Bhaskar Ethical Consumption: Practices and Identities A Realist Approach Yana Manyukhina The Subject of Human Being Christopher W. Haley For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ Routledge- Studies- in- Critical- Realism- Routledge- Critical- Realism/ book- series/ SE0518 ii i The Subject of Human Being Christopher W. Haley iv First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 Christopher W. Haley The right of Christopher W. Haley to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-i n- Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-i n- Publication Data Names: Haley, Christopher W., author. Title: The subject of human being / Christopher W. Haley. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2018. | Series: Routledge studies in critical realism | Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: LCCN 2018024846 | ISBN 9781138183186 (hbk) | ISBN 9781315642499 (ebk) Subjects: LCSH: Philosophical anthropology. Classification: LCC BD450 .H247 2018 | DDC 128–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018024846 ISBN: 978- 1- 138- 18318- 6 (hbk) ISBN: 978- 1- 315- 64249- 9 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Out of House Publishing v For Andreana vi vi i Contents Acknowledgments viii 1 Introduction 1 2 Philosophical materialism 14 3 The ontology of consciousness 78 4 The ontology of subjectivity 105 5 The subject of psychoanalysis 144 6 The subject of structure 166 7 Social ontology 191 8 Conclusion 237 Index 284 vnewgieiniprepdf Acknowledgments This book is the culmination of many years of study and a subject that has fascinated me since I encountered the “agent- structure problem” and the “question of ontology” as a graduate student in sociocultural anthropology at the University of Virginia. I would like to thank the following people for their intellectual guidance in my education and thinking, each of whom interceded at important moments in the direction this book takes: Momchil Abadzhiev, Ann Anagnost, Kevin Boileau, Jason Craig, Fred Damon, Creston Davis, Kaushik Ghosh, Linda Hansen, Mervyn Hartwig, Sylvain Poosson, Hanan Sabea, Mak Stanchev, and Thomas Tierney. Second, I thank Kit Belgum for editorial assistance with chapter four, Linda Hansen with chapter eight, and Jay Whitten with chapters one, two, seven, and eight. Any remaining faults, of course, are mine. Third, I thank Alice Salt, Emma Thompson, Richard Skipper, and Alan Jarvis at Routledge for their support and understanding. Lastly, I thank my parents, Anne and Chip Haley, for their care and gen- erosity over the many years of pursuing education, raising children, and developing my interests. I also express my gratitude for my wife, Andreana, and our two sons, Adrian and Gabriel, whose support and encouragement carried me through this project to its end. A truncated version of chapter three, “The Ontology of Consciousness,” was published in Presencing EPIS Journal 2014: A Scientific Journal of Applied Phenomenology, Psychoanalysis, & Critical Theory (2015. Vol 1. Missoula, MT: EPIS Press), and is used with permission. 1 1 I ntroduction Human being What is a human being? There is no more immediate and consequential philosophical problem than human self- definition. Answers to the question inevit- ably if not axiomatically shape human institutional reality, governing family, polity, economy, and the infinite permutations of the social world. It might be considerate to provide a comparative study of the many different answers to the question, drawing on Western philosophical, theological, and secular sources with a frank appreciation of cross-c ultural alternatives from India, China, and sub- Saharan Africa to celebrate and relativize all conceptions of how a human being can be defined. The supra-u niversalism of such an inclu- sive party, however, is nothing more than a tautology. Human being is thusly defined as “what you see is what you get,” or perhaps more accurately, “what you know is what you get.” In any case, tautological expressions of human “being” in its specific practice and institutional life are taken as “at one” or identical with its self- nature. On the surface the implication is that human nature is plastic and endlessly malleable to the hand of cultural determinants. This is a consequence, however, of a more fundamental unease, a relativistic tendency generated by an underlying skepticism toward “objective” knowledge and the real problem of categorical imperialism, whether by “pres- entism” or “ethnocentrism.” Because it is true: in the totality of human habitation on earth, the diversity, alterity, and seeming incommensurability of cultural and historical differences, of thousands of different languages and religions and profoundly different familial, political, and economic systems, yields a sense that any attempt to provide a universal philosophical anthropology could only really be a “local prejudice.” The Subject of Human Being proposes that human being cannot be defined in exclusive (or reductionist) terms of being “as is,” whether historical, cultural, or social on the one hand, and certainly not biological, universal, or transcendental on the other. Instead, an objective definition of the nature of human being must account for individual, sociocultural, and universal facets of each human being, and provide a theory of how the universal intersects with the concrete, local, idiosyncratic features of all peoples in all places in all