"The Modern and the Postmodern'


Edouard Manet, Bar aux Folies Bergères, 1881-1882
Professor Michael Roth, University of Wesleyan

The Modern and the Postmodern 

This course started on the 14th February 2013. It was 14 weeks long. We were in Samui, Thailand.

 You will find on this page:

I. Presentation of the course
II. How your work will be evaluated
III. Tips for your assignments
IV. The global structures of my essays
V. Essays
VI. Forum

I. Presentation of the Course

The course “The Modern and the Postmodern” is directed by the president of the University of Wesleyan, Michael S. Roth. We studied Emmanuel Kant, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Karl Marx, Gustave Flaubert, Charles Darwin, Charles Baudelaire, Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, Virginia Woolf, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Judith Butler, Slavoj Žižek, Horkheimer and Adorno, Michel Foucault, Bruno Latour, Cornell West, Kwame Antony Appiah among a few others… We quickly looked at a some artists and architects of the Modern and Postmodern times too… That represents a lot of ideas and perspectives to study in a short period of time… So of course we could not go into their work in great details. But the overall experience was real fun for me. 

Judith Butler, “Introduction” from Undoing Gender (2004)
Slavoj Žižek, “You May!” London Review of Books, vol. 21 (March 1999) 

 We very quickly looked at a few modern and postmodern artists and architects to get better insight of the subject. One nice thing to do can also to listen to great pieces of music from the time period you are learning about... It will get you in the mood...

 Edouard Manet was one of the artist we looked at...

    
 Edouard Manet is said to be the first Modern Artist… Edouard Manet, Le Dejeuner sur l’herbe, 1863

Personally, I had already studied all the thinkers and artists in this course until the mid 20th century when I was 17 years old to pass my baccalaureate. 
Here is an article on the subject:

Why does France insist school pupils master philosophy?

So that course was good refreshment, but, I was really enthusiastic about knowing more about contemporary thinkers. Antony Appiah being my favorite because of his view of the world. He is a champion of hybrid and I can totally really relate to his thoughts.
    
  

 A few contemporary thinkers: 

I also enjoyed the discussions about Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the idea of the noble savage….

   
Jean-Jacques Rousseau in 1753, By Maurice Quentin de La Tour… And  my young son climbing the trees along a river near the jungle. He loves school and he loves nature… My son, conciliating Nature and the Enlightenment!

II. How you work will be evaluated

I am used to writing in French. Writing in English was my main challenge for the assignment. It was most peer's main challenge too. I feel my written English has improved now. And I do have a few tips I would like to share with you to increase your chances of succeeding in this course. 

 Now quick reminder... Succeeding in this course, is not just getting the certificate. Maybe it is not that at all as a matter of fact. When you start thinking that succeeding is that piece of paper then... Then, you might miss part of the teaching experience. Succeeding is walking towards your goal... And when you fail, you get up again and keep on walking. 

 Still, I will stay very practical on this one... 
So, let's first see how you will get evaluated.

 ESSAY.... PEERS EVALUATION...AVERAGE GRADE OUT OF 9:

 Assignments in this course get a grade from your peers.
The assignments consist in writing essays.
I have received grades from only 1, 2 or exceptionally 3 peers (big argue on the forum on this subject... And I agree, even 3 peers correcting you is highly subjective if you look at only one essay, but you will get many essays to write, so don't worry too much... And, then, the way of evaluating might change a bit in the future). Those 2 or 3 grades get added and divided to give you an average rate out of 9. 
What I consider my best essays did not necessarily obtain the best grades for some reasons that I will discuss further. 
For example with an essay that I considered good, I got two evaluations, with one peer giving me only highly enthusiastic feedback (according to his feedback, he must have given me a 9). Another peer got to rate me too. He did not leave one comment at all. I concluded from my final grade that he must have given me a bad grade with not constructive feedback at all, maybe with no reason directly linked to my work. I don't mind the bad grade, I mean, not really. But, on the spot, I was not pleased to find that there just seemed to be no fair justification to it.

Now...if you get bad surprises... RELAX! Let it go! You will be fine! Don't take it personally! 

 - One way bad surprises happen I believe is when the peer evaluating you had himself a bad surprise or a bad day... Thank you very much, but I am not willing to take on his anger... Deep breath! Wait a minute!! You are in a philosophy class!!! Aren't you! So this is part of the learning process. 

 - Another way what you might consider like bad surprises happen when you get evaluated by someone whose English is their first language and who is not a beginner in the field (MOOCs are still sort of a new phenomena, and many professors and teachers and professional in the field are taking those courses for beginners). However, in my case, I only got super constructive feedback from those people. They justified my grade, so I was fine with that. 

 You might get good surprises and bad surprises, but chances are that if you participated seriously and did more than expected, when it comes to calculating your final grade you will get much more than you had been hoping for!

And at the end of the day... Why are you taking that course? Mainly for the learning experience I guess!

III. Tips for the assignments:

Here are my 11+ tips to get better chances at performing well on assignments:

 1. Read the subject very carefully
I have corrected some essays which were way out of subject.
So, be careful! And check the meaning of all the words, even those you think are obvious, they might be the trickiest ones. Their interpretation might be the key to a great conclusion as philosophy can be a lot about playing with word, meanings and concepts.

 2. Write down everything that crosses your mind when you first read the subject.

 3. Go back to your notes and see what you can add

 4. Make extra researches
The web is a great tool. But make sure your sources are serious. And not plagiarism..
Copying the content of a page and you might get a 0 anyway.
Many students check the content of your essay by googling parts of it.

 5. Use a very academic way of writing essays.
I like originality. I consider myself creative. But... Hum. In that course, I have not found one really good essay not following the basic principle of academical structures. Why? Probably because of the way the questions have been formulated...

 6. What level of language should you use?
This one is tricky: should you write using a advanced level of English if you have a native level? Well, sure. But, only if your English is not hermetical. Otherwise, I would say, opt for writing in a clear and simple way, accessible to a large public. This is great exercise anyway! Remember that for some students, English is their third language only. Some might not pass the class, still, the grades they will give you will remain.
If English is not your first language, I would recommend you to use shorter sentences. 

 7. Remember basic stuff:
- Learn how to make proper references: title, author, date of first publication, edition... Internet links... 
- Please, do your best not to misspell the name of the authors, it does not look serious and will (even on an unconscious level) influence the person giving you a grade. 
- Use an auto-correcting program in order to avoid basic misspellings.
- Think about creating clear paragraphs separated with a space. It is so much easier for your peers to read you this way. 

 8. Use the course a lot: 
Use the course quite a bit to write. Even if you already have experience in the discipline, if you innovate too much and have too many personal references you might get out of subject. Of course, just sticking to the course is boring in my opinion and can put off some advanced students. You never know who will get to read your copy and give you a grade. In any case always make sure that you give proper references which are if possible easy to check in a click.
Now, in one of my essays, I used the course far too much, and that was not good either. A bit more and it was plagiarism... Boo! Learned my lesson... So, you will need to find the right balance.

 9. Give your very own point of view
Give your very own point of view only at the end of the essay. And open the subject wide. I find this approach pretty refreshing personally.

 10. Peer psychology
Writing for yourself is cool. Really. 
But, don't forget, you are in a MOOC. M is for Massive... Your peers are coming from all over the world, with various ages, various everything really. I hope you will find it exciting to write FOR them. 
When writing, you can ask yourself questions like: 
- What could be other interesting point of views? What would I be thinking on the subject if I was a man in Zimbabwe,  a teenager in London, a lady in Iran... 
- Might this point offend someone? If yes, is it right for me to expose this idea in this place anyway or not? Maybe it is. Maybe not. Only you can take this decision. Who knows you might even influence someone in a great way if you manage to give good arguments... You never know how what you consider a detail might deeply influence someone you will not even get to meet... 
- What if a beginner reads my essay? Is it clear enough? What if a senior reads my essay? Will he find it entertaining? Will he learn something new? 

 10. Keep on uploading the latest version of your paper. 
You never know what might happen. Your computer might die, you might lack the time to finish your essay like you planned to and so on! Happened to me and to my big surprise I still got 8 out of 9 from an essay which took me a few minutes to write down.

 11. Exceed expectations:
You will have the opportunity to do more than the required number of assignments. Take the challenge and you won't regret it, I promise! And I would recommend that you take this tip as a way of life... 

IV. The global structure of my essays:

Here you will find the way I build my essays and tips to build them the same way. You don't have to stick to that plan to succeed. But, you can always have a look at it and see what could be useful for you...

 The global structure of my essays for this class in particular ... in 4 points...

 1. The introduction: 
Introduce your subject, analyse the key terms. Because you can write with only 800 words, you might have to squeeze a lot of info with a minimum of words. Be clear and to the point. And please, no "I" in this section. At this point, we need to understand what is paper is going to be about. But you have not given any argument yet... You can use "I" at the end of the paper. 

 2. First part:
In this part, develop the view of the first author in relation with the subject

 3. Second part:
In this part, develop the view of the second author in relation with the subject

 4. Conclusion:
a. Compare both authors: what do they have in common, how do they think differently
b. What is your point of view on the subject
c. Open the subject, for example: what is happening in today's world? Do we have the same concerns?
Personally, I would advise you to use "I" in the final bit of your conclusion in order to put your work under perspective. 

V. My essays 

All of them had to be less than 800 words. They might inspire you. But, there is no point in copying them. I mean... What's the point? Right? 

 Kant and Rousseau:

Three main definitions of Enlightenment can be underlined: the project to make the world more of a home for human beings through the use of reason, a social movement of the 18th century and finally Enlightenment according to Kant. If we look at the first two definitions, then Rousseau is clearly an Enlightenment figure as he was concerned about his peers well being and was a public figure of the 18th century. But answering the same question looking at Kant’s definition of Enlightenment is much more complex.

To define Enlightenment in What is Enlightenment, Emmanuel Kant uses the Latin motto “sapere aude” (Horace), “dare to know.” Kant wants people to have the courage to use their own reason believing that knowledge and education are good for the entire society. Kant distinguishes those who are mature, which means that they freely use their reason versus those who are immature, which means they are under tutelage and follow others without thinking for themselves. Kant writes that before being completely free and fully using our reason people go through gradual stages allowing this way the mass not to rebel and to keep on working for the elite.  He explains that we cannot stay with ideas of the past and at the same time he does not believe in revolution. For him, civilization will be enhanced by the gradual use of reason.  He says that it is very difficult for an individual to become free to reason. Kant is a man of the middle course, in-between obedience to the past and revolution. He thinks people who work for institutions have the obligation to serve them which limits their freedom of using their reasoning. However, thinkers, like scholars should have full freedom to express themselves in public in order to help others to cultivate their own minds and therefore enhance civilization. So what does it mean to be an enlightenment figure based on Kant’s definition? An enlightenment figure is different from an enlightened man or from a man of the Enlightenment.  Are you according to Kant an Enlightenment figure if you are simply thinking for yourself in a mature way and expressing it publicly helping in that way others to cultivate their own minds? Rousseau would then be without any discussion an enlightenment figure.

However, when Kant defines Enlightenment, he insists on the importance of intention and attitude. To really be qualified of enlightenment figure according to Kant, should Rousseau believe like Kant that Enlightenment is good for humanity and that it will be made gradually? Should Rousseau believe in reason and defy tradition?  If yes, then, would Rousseau entirely be thinking by himself if he repeated what Kant was saying without questioning it? Can Rousseau still be thinking otherwise and can he still be an Enlightenment figure according to Kant? In Discourse on the Arts and the Sciences, Rousseau says that he does not think that Enlightenment and progress serve humanity. Rousseau believes in the myth of the good “noble savage”. When men were closer to nature he thought, they were better people (they were not animals anymore and not yet corrupted by society he thought): "...nothing is so gentle as man in his primitive state, when placed by nature at an equal distance from the stupidity of brutes and the fatal enlightenment of civil man" Origin of Inequality, Rousseau. He believes knowledge and education are perverting our human condition. So, Rousseau is not encouraging society to “sapere aude”. Rousseau does not believe progress is positive and is clearly against Enlightenment of the entire society. Rousseau puts compassion and pity before reasoning: Can we say Rousseau is using his reason to enhance civilization when he does not believe in progress? Does “enhancing” necessarily imply progress? Rousseau does want the wellbeing of his peers which in many ways is very different from trying to enhance civilization. Anyway, he does not seem to give any real practical solution to do so as he does not even believe to a return to the sources when man was a “noble savage”. 


So how important are intentions and attitude in Kant’s definition to be qualified as an Enlightenment figure? Answers to that question can only be very personal ones, as Kant defines Enlightenment and expresses how he thinks the movement should evolve but does not give any clear definition of an Enlightenment figure. In other word, by being a sharp critic of the Enlightenment, Rousseau goes beyond Kant’s perspectives. This originality makes Rousseau is a key figure of the Enlightenment period and helped people adopting a critical point of view of the social movement from within. 

Emmanuel Kant

Rousseau/Horkheimer and Adorno :

Throughout history, some thinkers have pointed out knowledge as being at the origin of our own destruction. Can progress really be seen as a kind of trap in which we ensnare ourselves?
In 1750, in Discourse on the Arts and the Sciences, Rousseau says that he does not think that Enlightenment and progress serve humanity. Rousseau believes in the myth of the good “noble savage” (1). When men were closer to nature he thought, they were better people (they were not animals anymore and not yet corrupted by society he thought): "...nothing is so gentle as man in his primitive state, when placed by nature at an equal distance from the stupidity of brutes and the fatal enlightenment of civil man" (2). Rousseau believes that knowledge and education are perverting our human condition. Unlike Kant, Rousseau is not encouraging society to “sapere aude” (3), to “dare to know”. Rousseau does not believe progress is positive and is clearly against Enlightenment of the entire society. He puts compassion and pity before reasoning. Rousseau does not seem to have a solution to corruption, and does not even believe to a return to the sources when man was a “noble savage”. 

Had we listened to Rousseau, putting compassion and pity before reasoning, had we found practical solutions to Rousseau’s preoccupation, would we have avoided the horrors of the twenty’s century? Anyhow, two hundred years later, Horkheimer and Adorno can be seen as Rousseauistic when they trace the origin of WWI and WWII along with Nazism, Fascism, weapon of mass destruction and environmental degradation to the Enlightenment: “…the wholly Enlightenment earth is radiant with triumphant calamity.” (4) For them, the knower shows power through the control of others. In other words, knowledge becomes the ability to manipulate things. They explain that by getting rid of the transcendent, by getting rid of God, we have taken God’s place but that the domination of the world through understanding has destroyed the conditions of our own understanding: “Enlightenment stands in the same relationship to things as the dictator to human beings. He knows them to the extent that he can manipulate them.” (4) Knowledge they think is not being used to change the status quo. Knowledge only reflects reality. Knowledge is not used as a tool to re-imagine the world as it might be. Horkheimer and Adorno link domination and technology: “Technology is the essence of this knowledge. It aims to produce neither concepts nor images, nor the joy of understanding, but method, exploitation of the labor of others.” (4) Even thus Horkheimer and Adorno have no real practical solution or alternative to Enlightenment, they do see art and memory as possible keys to create a new world.

We are the only specie on the planet capable of passing on knowledge and information to our children. Today, Susan Blackmore explains this capacity in the continuity of Darwinism. We used to only replicate genetic information with variation, now we replicate all sort of information with memes (an information or idea replicating itself from brain to brain) and temes (an information or idea replicating itself through technology). However memes and temes are spreading at great speed “regardless of the consequences” (5). In a close future it will even be possible for a single individual to easily create deadly viruses with the help of minimum knowledge and high technology. (6) So, will we ever as specie, be able to survive knowledge and technology? I believe we could. Even before the beginning of WWII, Albert Einstein said: “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand” (7). In my opinion, now that knowledge has become so easily accessible, it has lost some of its power. Technology is still a high form of power. And we are entering a world in which what we considered as pure science fiction is about to become reality. But, we are obviously entering a world were technology, unlike in Horkheimer and Adorno’s time does produce concepts, images and the joy of understanding. I do believe that we will manage, just in time, to enhance our character on a planetary scale in order to avoid our own destruction. I hope not being too optimistic thinking that we are leaving behind us a world in which logic and reasoning were dominating to enter a universe where compassion, memory, poetry, music, art and imagination will have the first place.
  • (1)   Discours on the Arts and Sciences, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1750
  • (2)   Origin of Inequality, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1755
  • (3)   (Horace’s quote in: ) What is Enlightenment, Emmanuel Kant, 1784
  • (4)   Dialectic of Enlightenment, Marx Horkheimer and Theodor w. Adorno, 1947
  • (5)   http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/memetics/temes.htm
  • (6)   Physics of the future, Michio Kaku, 2011, Edition Allen Lane, p. 170.
  • (7)    Interview,1929, Albert Einstein
Horkheimer and Adorno

Kant and Marx:

Historical Progress is the idea that civilization can be enhanced or that the world can become better in some fields or in all fields. There are different ways of seeing history. Time can be seen as a straight line, as cyclic or as spiral shaped for example. Kant and Marx have two very personal ways of seeing historical progress. Kant is a German philosopher of the Enlightenment period. For him, progress is not a straight continuous line. For him progress is positive and has imperatively to be made by humankind. In What is Enlightenment, an essay first published in 1784, Kant encourages us to “sapere aude” (Horace), “we should dare to know”. According to Kant, men should search for knowledge, reason by themselves and express their ideas publicly. “Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-incurred immaturity”, Kant, What is Enlightenment. He believes that those who have the courage to be mature are guides for those who are still under tutelage. In Kant’s opinion, the evolution from immaturity to maturity on a large scale of the population will be gradual; it will be made very slowly and with difficulties. Kant argues that this historical progress will enhance civilization and therefore needs to be supported by institutions. So he calls for freedom of speech in public places. Kant does not believe in revolution for this progression to be accelerated. He says that at best, revolution might suppress oppression and despotism but that the unthinking mass will still stay under tutelage. Kant calls for a deep slow historical progress in education and reasoning which will not revolutionize society, which will not call men to rebel against institutions.

 Marx is a figure of the 19th century. Marx was interested in the German philosopher George Hegel’s ideas (1770-1831). According to Hegel, civilizations naturally go from despotism to freedom, from tutelage to reasoning following several stages in human history. The developments would systematically follow three basic laws called a dialectic in which a conflict between two extremes is resolved by an emerging third perspective. With Hegel, history would look like a dialectic spiral. Marx takes Hegel’s idea and inverts his theory when founding historical materialism. Marx is not a man of the middle course like Kant who believes the world makes sense through our mind by observing the phenomenal world and the noumenal side of the world. Kant defends reason and science but also makes a place for faith, when Marx believes in sciences and in laws of evolution to build his theory. For Marx, matter is in motion, inevitably progressing throughout history. For him, economy is the base of society. Capitalism plays a major role in configuring society, but according to him, this stage is not the final one and human should try and help history unfolds faster bringing humankind to the next stage of evolution. Marx believes that a change in economical structure will revolutionized society. “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles”, Marx, Communism Manifesto, 1848. Proletarians, he says, need to free themselves from the domination of the bourgeois. Marx believes capitalism will necessarily leave place to socialism to finally culminate with communism.

 Both Marx and Kant see history as a being progressive. Both think that men should encourage this evolution in order to enhance civilization. Differences between both thinkers are enormous when it comes to how the changes should take place, at what speed changes should happen and what the consequences will be on the whole society. Today’s history tells us how Marx’s work had an enormous impact on the politics of numerous powerful countries. Communism is now an event of the past and capitalism is still dominant… but for how long? Some projects like Project Venus which is indirectly inspired from Marx’s ideas do have in my opinion chances of influencing future cities in a positive way. However, I believe Kant was right when saying all a revolution brings is the suppression of oppression and despotism. Kant could only see history progressing in a linear way, but we are now seeing technology developing in an exponential way which in might change the world for good very fast. The spreading of information and the democratization of education will hopefully contribute to peace and freedom throughout the world.

Karl Marx

Darwin and Nietzsche:
Darwin uses the intellectual traditions of utilitarianism, romanticism and a scientific new way of conducting researches. One of Darwin’s most important ideas is that species evolve through time by means of natural selection: “if it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find no such case.”[i] When species reproduce, they systematically produce contingent variations. All species are interconnected as showed on his trees of evolution.
Utilitarianism is a doctrine which affirms that everything should be done for the happiness and comfort of the biggest number of people. Darwin is not utilitarian in a traditional way. However, he shows from observation and classification that species evolve in ways that are advantages in the struggle of existence. First, he explains that morality and social qualities are byproducts of evolution: “turning now to the social and moral faculties (…). Such social qualities, (…) were no doubt acquired by the progenitors of man in a similar manner, namely, through natural selection, aided by inherited habit.” [ii] The distinction of good and bad depends on what makes the biggest number happy. Second, he believes that being sympathetic, altruist, and working to make the biggest number happy represents an advantage for the human species which is why this is how we tend to evolve to be that way.

Darwin is not a romantic in the sense that he does not think that nature is a proof of the existence of God. However, Darwin has many common traits with romanticism. When Darwin shows that the human race is not the goal of evolution, he like romantics places humans back in nature. It is only when Darwin embarks for a long journey to sail on HSM Beagle that his true scientific work starts. Adventure is also an experience romantics are seeking for. Darwin expresses his wonder for nature in very romantic terms: “in the plumed seed which is wafted by the gentlest breeze”[iii]. A link can be also drawn between romantics who want to express their emotions and Darwin who explains that emotions are a product of natural selection in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, 1872.

Friedrich Nietzsche with his famous “God is dead” repeated in several of his works, declares that there is no ideal, no endpoint, and no history, nothing against what we can measure ourselves. In his work[iv] Nietzsche looks in the past, especially the Christian and Jewish traditions. He explains that we need to forget that part of our history which he says created a moral distinction and guilt at the origin of the denial of our strength and intensity. Morality is for Nietzsche the way the weak protect themselves from the strong. According to Nietzsche, morality creates suffering because we want those who don’t stick to the rule to suffer: “without cruelty, there is no festival.”[v] If we violate the rule or the morality, we found ourselves in dept. For him, so far, and with the exception of Buddhism, “every art, every philosophy may be viewed as an aid and remedy in the service of growing and striving life: they always presuppose suffering and sufferers”[vi]. Nietzsche thinks suffering is not an issue if it has a meaning. However, it is feeling guilty which is problematic because we still have instincts and: “all instincts that do not discharge outwardly turn inwardly”[vii] and take away our strengths. Nietzsche says that what we take to be a natural order is put together for control. He believes that to live a full life, we need to break away from conventions. For Nietzsche, we should judge a philosophy on how much it can help you to feel more alive, not on how much it corresponds to reality.

Darwin and Nietzsche do not attribute the same origin to morality at all. Also, we can note that Darwin was an agnostic and with his work, he revolutionized the way of looking at creation in science and religion, when Nietzsche thinks religions are disempowering. Darwin incorporates some aspects of utilitarianism and romanticism in his life and work. By appropriating himself some shared characteristics from different movements, he invents a new way of seeing man in the universe which will have enormous repercussions in the world. On the contrary, Nietzsche looks at the traditions of the past and wants to forget it all. He wants to show that what we are taught as being most precious is actually taking away our strength. To liberate ourselves he thinks that we need to break away from conventions. One thing both Darwin and Nietzsche have in common is an unconventional way of looking at life.


i On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin, 1859
ii The Descent of Man, Charles Darwin, 1871.
iii On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin, 1859
iv,v, vi, vii On the Genealogy of Moral, Friedrich Nietzsche, 1887
Darwin


Darwin's handwriting

Appiah and Baudelaire:
Anthony Appiah has worked on the concept of cosmopolitanism, on the concept of us being citizen of the world. We live now in a world of hybridity were it is possible for identities to overlap. Appiah believes that as global citizen are responsible collectively for each other but at the same time, it each one of us can be different. Appiah specifies that we should not just accept any behavior from the other, but we should explore the link between cosmopolitanism and freedom. 

“Cosmopolitans think humans variety matters because people are entitled to the opinions that they need to shape their lives in partnership with others.”
Charles Baudelaire and Judith Butler are two authors Anthony Appiah might consider as “cosmopolitan” in his terms and both in very different ways.
Charles Baudelaire is the author who does not hesitate in plunging into the world and meeting the other, the stranger. He walks in the street of Paris, as a flaneur, not expecting anything from his wandering around. Had he lived today, we would probably find him strolling around in airports… When he comes across the other, he does not try to become the other, he does not try to change the stranger, but he gets inspired from the resulting new intense interaction. Baudelaire, like Appiah explores the link between cosmopolitanism and freedom.

Judith Butler could be described as cosmopolitan for very different reasons. Butler believes that the self is never outside of culture. But, by opening categories and maintaining a “critical and transformative relation” to norms, we can reinvent ourselves. Also, Butler wants an activism that is not marked by identity. In other words, like Appiah, Butler believes that she should care for each other in a global way. Butler thinks that we should engage in conversations on ethics and morals concerning questions raised by various groups without needing to belong to them, however, we should at the same time pay attention to the fact that setting up what looks like ethical norms is an operation of power.


Baudelaire, Butler and Appiah are all three intersecting when it comes to the notion of invention.

 Note:
I got an 8 out of 9 on that essay! I laughed because this text is only a quick assemblage of key sentences I wanted to use to write a longer essay. Only I did not find the time to do so... 
Baudelaire

Emerson and Kant:

Enlightenment or the age of reason started in France, spread out in Europe and then reached America. It refers to an attitude as well as a period going from the middle of the XVIIth to the XVIIIth century. To define Enlightenment in What is Enlightenment (1), Kant uses the Latin motto “sapere aude” (Horace), “dare to know.” Kant wants people to have the courage to use their own reason believing that knowledge and education are good for the entire society. Kant distinguishes those who are mature, which means that they freely use their reason versus those who are immature, which means they are under tutelage and follow others without thinking for themselves. Kant writes that before being completely free and fully using our reason people go through gradual stages allowing this way the mass not to rebel and to keep on working for the elite.  For him, civilization will be enhanced by the gradual use of reason.  He says that it is very difficult for an individual to become free to reason. He thinks people who work for institutions have the obligation to serve them which limits their freedom of using their reasoning. However, thinkers, like scholars should have full freedom to express themselves in public in order to help others to cultivate their own minds and therefore enhance civilization.
The American Emerson was just that, a (successful) thinker and speaker (of the XIXth century) trying to help others free themselves. In 1844, Emerson published Second Essay, in which he explains that our way to freedom is to stop being afraid and to cultivate self-reliance, the ability to rely on our own abilities, capabilities and judgments: “Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string” (2). Emerson explains that we should not be the person we were yesterday just to keep up with consistency. According to Emerson we need to act in the world; our thinking does not just come from our perception of the world. This way of thinking situates itself in the perfect continuation of the Enlightenment tradition.
Even though great self-reliant thinkers who have influenced the world are (almost?) always those who have acted in the world in some kind of way - following Kant's and Emerson's postulates - not all of them, even after the Enlightenment period have urged us to think for ourselves. In Discourse on the Arts and the Sciences (3), Rousseau says that he does not share the idea that Enlightenment and progress serve humanity. Rousseau believes, as exposed in Origin of Inequality, in the myth of the good “noble savage”. When men were closer to nature he thought, they were better people (they were not animals anymore and not yet corrupted by society he believed): "...nothing is so gentle as man in his primitive state, when placed by nature at an equal distance from the stupidity of brutes and the fatal enlightenment of civil man" (4). Rousseau believes knowledge and education are perverting our human condition. So, he is not encouraging society to “sapere aude”. However, he is definitely a man who does not conform and who had a great influence on his peers. In that way, he is very close to Emerson.
 “Let us treat the men and women well: treat them as if they were real: perhaps they are” (2), in this quote where the “as if” is very Kantian, Emerson calls us to be respectful with the others and open-minded. I do believe that this is the absolute condition for those who choose to act in order to enhance civilization, whereas being blindly self-reliant, disrespectful and still acting can have dramatic effects. Nietzsche would answer that morality has no foundation in itself and would instead call to strength and intensity. In the Will to Power, he writes: “My idea is that every specific body strives to become master over all space and to extend its force (its will to power) and to thrust back all that resists its extension” (5). But, even thus he did not support Nazism; I cannot, looking back in history, help but find Nietzsche’s ideas highly dangerous.
Nowadays echoes of Kant and Emerson are found in the idea of cultivating your unique voice and inspiring others, a meme (an idea replicating itself from brain to brain) or teme (an idea replicating itself through technology, as described by Susan Blackmore (6) as a continuity of Darwinism), which is being spread through countless contemporary figures across varied disciplines at great speed. Websites like www.ted.com illustrate the wonderful phenomena.
References:
(1)   What is Enlightenment, 1784, Emmanuel Kant
(2)   Second Essay, Self-Reliance, 1844, Ralph Waldo Emerson
(3)   Discourse on the Arts and the Sciences, 1750, Jean-Jacques Rousseau
(4)   Origin of Inequality, 1755, Jean-Jacques Rousseau
(5)  The Will to Power, published postmortem, Friedrich Nietzsche
(6) http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/memetics/temes.htm
Emerson

Freud and Woolf:

A palliative measure helps coping with suffering by making life more bearable. Art, in a very wide meaning, has numerous functions throughout history going from an instinct search for harmony, beauty, to the expression of the mysterious and of the imagination. It can also serve as ritual.
According to Sigmund Freud, to be able of acting in appropriate ways in society, mature people manage to find solutions to convert their impulses by sublimating them: “Life as we find it, is too hard for us, it brings us too many pains, disappointments and impossible tasks. In order to bear it we cannot dispense with palliative measures” Freud, Civilization and its Discontents, 1930.
Art is a powerful activity, serving as outlet for aggression. "The substitutive satisfactions, as offered by art, are illusions in contrast with reality, but they are none the less psychically effective, thanks to the role which fantasy has assumed in mental life", Freud, Civilization and its Discontents, 1930.
In the early 20th century, some artists were highly influenced by Freud’s ideas. For example, surrealists used Freud’s theory of the unconscious, including the interpretation of dreams and free associations to loosen up their inhibitions, liberate their imagination, in order to create a new form of art.
Very interestingly, The Hogarth Press, the Woolf’s house of edition started publishing Freud’s work years before the publication of To the Lighthouse in 1927, Virginia Woolf’s masterpiece. In her novel, Woolf writes while observing her flow of consciousness, proving Freud wrong in his belief that women were less capable of instinctual sublimation.
Virginia Woolf wrote this book, inspired by the Bloomsbury group which she was part of. She was greatly influenced by one of its members, G.E. Moore who thought core values were friendship, beauty, art and love. Woolf’s novel is based on her own childhood. The voices of her parents in the characters of Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay and Virginia Woolf’s own voice in the character of Lily Brisco, the painter, constitute the main stream of the story.
To the Lighthouse reveals a close observation of human behaviors. It mainly shows the relationship between Mrs. Ramsay (a romantic beautiful woman living for love, relationships and intimacy) and her husband, Mr. Ramsay (an enlightenment figure mainly focused on reason and law) and how Lily animated by the creation and the enjoyment of creative expression, positions herself to fix the feeling of intimacy.
Lily struggles to find the right distance to represent things before things get distorted by life. “She could see it all so clearly, so commandingly, when she looked: it was when she took her brush in her hand that the whole thing changed. It was in that moment’s flight between the picture and her canvas that the demons set on her who often brought her to the verge of tears and made this passage from conception to work as dreadful as any down a dark passage for a child.” To do so, Lily’s tries to find the appropriate distance to the object of her painting. Because, things become different depending on the distance you have with them.”…so much depends upon distance: whether people are near us or far from us, for her feeling for Mr Ramsay changed as he sailed further and further across the bay.”
Virginia Woolf’s observations of the process of creation are in my opinion fascinating. Her writing, her view on art and her own personal life are very much overlapping. While she describes herself as very happy with her husband, we know from her books and diary that she had been highly affected by the loss of her parents and by the incestuous sexual abuse she had been the victim from in her childhood. Anecdotally, Woolf wrote in her diary (The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Virginia Woolf, published posthumously) that when she finally met Freud in 1939, he gave her a narcissus (a symbolic reference to the myth of Narcissus) and obviously, she gave him her closest attention!  While Virginia Woolf was interested in Freud’s ideas, she partly resisted them. She did not go through psychoanalysis, a kind of work nowadays still questionable (for example, a French research conducted by INSERM in 2004 found psychoanalysis much less efficient than other psychotherapies). Writing was for Virginia Woolf a palliative measure even thus the activity exhausted her. She wrote her final note to her husband saying that because she started hearing voices stopping her from concentrating on her work, she was into deep depression and would never overcome it. So, she had decided to commit suicide. 

Freud

IV. The discussion Forum

It is nice and enriching to wonder around the discussion forum. You will find new exciting links and discover different perspective and points of views.

 Here are examples of my participation :

 Question of Michael Roth (our professor): What idea from the course thus so far have you found most fruitful to think with? Is it Kant’s “dare to know”, or Rousseau’s search for the authentic, or Marx appropriation of dialectic, or Flaubert’s critic of modernity, Darwin struggle without a telos, or intensity in Baudelaire and Nietzsche. Or is it just a beautiful phrase that stays with you. I love those texts, and I wonder which ones have captured your fancy….

 My answer: I just came back from a walk in the nature. I am a French and I am a “flaneur” (“une flaneuse”, actually) like Baudelaire, but live in a very different kind of environment. Anyway, I was walking and I was thinking about the near future…
The string theory with the discovery of the Higgs Boson last July is creating a shift of paradigm. My kids will be working in a world were reality looks like today’s science fiction. I believe that one day in the far future, we will be able to get well functioning quantum computers which will enable us to program and simulate the formation and the developing of an entire universe with all its elements and fine details. From what I understood, it looks probable that one day we will be able to create a simulated universe. That could mean that there is there is also a possibility that we are also a creation from such an advanced civilization… Civilization which might also be a creation from an even more ancient civilization (and so on)… Are we real?
I like Nietzsche’s idea about using a philosophy that works for you even thus it is not the Truth. While I am an agnostic, I like to dream I am an avatar. So I do sometimes feel close to Descartes’ idea of dissociating mind and body even thus, this way of thinking is in a way obsolete. I like the idea of reincarnation, and that I came on Earth to learn and “dare to now” (I was told I was named Emmanuelle after Kant… not the movie…). And I like to imagine that there is something like Karma (maybe just because we feel guilt and it makes us create situations where we get punished or rewarded).
I like thinking that some ideas which is a derivation from Marx’s work might help us create better cities (for example partly inspired from project like the Venus project).
I like reading Flaubert since high school and had Flaubert not written Madame Bovary, I would have been called Emma… I feel quite close to romantics but at the same time I can see the down side of this. I like stories. I like art for art’s sake. I think art and stories help us survive. I think art and stories are a very Darwinian! I love day dreaming and I like thinking about Freud’s work, but instead of psychoanalysis, I prefer working on learning how to trick my mind to solve my issues.
I like the opportunity this course gives me to make new crazy connections just for fun!

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