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John Schostak
May 2008
This is not meant to be definitive. It is a starting point, a framework to be
thrown away. It is a way of thinking about the positions that may be adopted
by qualitative researchers as
well as about the positions that subjects who are being researched may adopt
with regard to their world(s). With that in mind, the story can begin…
All research designs imply one or more philosophical positions regarding what
counts as ‘real’ and ‘true’ and what is to be valued
as ‘good’. There is a ‘story’ implicit in the linked
diagram – probably many hundreds. But there’s one that I want
to tell. It is the story of how philosophy may either provide the conditions
for critique and peace or for violence. Following the story I will expand a
little on the key moments of the story.
The Story
The story begins with the desire for freedom – freedom from want (basic
needs), freedom from fear, freedom to know, believe, act and express one’s
self…..
By working together in some form of group or community one can achieve many of one’s needs and a degree of security. That is, a group is stronger than an individual and thus affords protection.
However, for this security there is a price to pay – one cannot just act as one pleases. One becomes ‘subjected to the group’. There is perhaps a group subject – a ‘transcendental ego’ (i.e., a subject that goes beyond any one individual’s subjectivity) that is the Subject of Reason itself. All then is about administering according to reason which has produced or believes it has the method to produce the ‘theory of everything’ and the perfectly rational society (see Weber’s (2001) iron cage of reason).
If the price of being a member of the group becomes too high in terms of constraining action and freedom of thought and expression then perhaps one can just leave.
If leaving is not an option because there is in a sense no where to go then some sort of ‘reform’ or ‘revolution’ may be needed – a revolution focusing on ‘rights’ of ‘Man’ of the ‘People’ of ‘Humanity’ …. . That depends on whether there are enough ‘people’ (the multitude) who take power into their own hands and demand change under the banner of ‘rights’ (e.g., American war of independence, American Civil War; French Revolution; fall of the Soviet bloc).
Position 1: The desire for the freedom to know, believe,
decide, act involves in some way or another a desire for mastery – I don’t
want to be a puppet, a slave. I am a speaking, thinking being who has a voice
and that voice I want to be heard and taken into account in any public decision
making.
It sounds simple enough. By employing reason, I can use my powers to evaluate, form my views and act upon them. But what if the methods necessary for Reason become just another way of subjecting the individual to the necessity of Reason? Does reason – dialectically – lead me straight into the trap I want to avoid? That is, position 2: subjection to the Absolute State founded upon Reason. How can I get out of this position?
Position 3: I could reject the absolute sovereignty of Reason. How can I do this? I can carry out a historical programme of investigation into how so-called absolutes’ have been social constructed over time (Foucault). I could say there are many ‘rationalities’ and many ‘regimes of justice’ (Walzer 1985). But if I do, how do I choose between them without positing some sort of ‘higher’ rationality and thus returning to position 1 which leads to position 2?
Perhaps there is a way of thinking about Being itself as the source of Truth – that is, one could recover the essential meaning of life, of a people, of humanity. Each aspect given to consciousness is presumably some part of some greater ‘whole’ (Being?). Perhaps then, there is a hermeneutic strategy that could be applied that somehow escapes the Hegelian dialectic?
Or, I could say that reason is not the privileged way of getting knowledge or establishing ‘value’. There is, for example, ‘art’ which focuses on the ‘truth’ of ‘beauty’…. But again, whose ‘truth’ should count here?
Or, I could focus on ‘what works’ in practice – having no higher value than simply the practical accomplishment (or social construction) of some desired outcome. I simply do what works until some problem emerges that needs to have a practical solution – it is a form of pragmatism. However, there is an essential conservatism implied here – keep to the practical routines. Keep to what is known, don’t seek to change. Don’t seek any ‘higher’ value or purpose. But what if one such group comes into conflict with another group? How should they seek to manage their conflict? Isn’t there some ‘higher’ criterion of ‘freedom’, ‘peace’? And shouldn’t one seek rationally to identify how this could be accomplished? Whoops – we seem to be back to position 1 with its potentially slippage into position 2.
Position 4: Recognise there is no solution as such except wiping out opposition! The Fascist position (assumes homogeneity and ‘pureness’ of a people)
Or position 5: Recognise there are no values at all except for one’s own will to power (Nietzsche) and thus eternal war? Or at least, there is only flux – all values and all identities become liquid in the market place where anything can be bought for a price. (the postmodern…. Bauman 2001)
The story has not and perhaps cannot end – indeed, it may not be something
that its end is in any way desirable. Thus there are many more ‘positions’
that an individual might adopt in the search for freedom. Whatever those positions
are, they imply an ontological commitment as to how the world ‘really
is’ or ‘ought to be’ (Quine 1948). This brings the story to
an exploration of ‘discourses’ – that is, how ‘discursively’
the world is constructed by speakers who engage with each other.
This discursively produced world is thus a world of debate, of reasons and of
the kinds of actions that follow from discourses. Research then engages with
the multiple positions that can be adopted by individuals/communities/peoples
in order to create the conditions for public debate that opens wider possibilities
for mutual decision making and action framed by the arena of public debate.
Some critical ‘moments’ in the story
A. Reason - Totality – Unity
1. Cartesian reason - creation of the thinking being
- doubting everything
- what cannot be doubted: That I am doubting
- therefore I am (exist)
T he essential nature of this thinking being is therefore that of reason, and
especially, the freedom to reason. However, Descartes ‘bracketing off’
of prior knowledges/traditions/beliefs led to what has been called the mind-body
split.
For Spinoza who drew upon Descartes, there is no split since it is in the nature of all God’s creations to be what they are and to employ their ‘powers’. Nature was simply thus an expression of God – hence no split as between the reasoning mind and ‘spirit’/nature/bodies.
Nevertheless, the split between what could be thought about in relation to what was given by the senses and the ‘Truth’ or ‘Reality’ of things in themselves influentially continued un Kant’s split between ‘phenomenon’ (what appears to consciousness) and ‘noumenon’ (the essential nature of the thing in itself. Thus we see a tree, it appears as a phenomenon of consciousness, but we do not have direct access to the inner nature of the ‘thing itself’.
Hegel, of course, had a solution – the Dialectic (see ‘3’
below).
2. Enlightenment Reason
Kant famously responded to a challenge to define the ‘Enlightenment’
– this is how it starts
:Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one's understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another. Sapere Aude! "Have courage to use your own understanding!"--that is the motto of enlightenment.
(Kant, ‘An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?' (1784))
Essentially Kant asked: what can be known, what can we do and what can we hope for? Only by having the bravery to challenge the prevailing metaphysics and ontologies could the Enlightenment project in terms of knowledge, action and a hoped for way of life and world be realised.
Nothing is required for this enlightenment, however, except freedom; and the freedom in question is the least harmful of all, namely, the freedom to use reason publicly in all matters. But on all sides I hear: "Do not argue!" The officer says, "Do not argue, drill!" The tax man says, "Do not argue, pay!" The pastor says, "Do not argue, believe!" (Only one ruler in the World says, "Argue as much as you want and about what you want, but obey!") In this we have examples of pervasive restrictions on freedom. But which restriction hinders enlightenment and which does not, but instead actually advances it? I reply: The public use of one's reason must always be free, and it alone can bring about enlightenment among mankind; the private use of reason may, however, often be very narrowly restricted, without otherwise hindering the progress of enlightenment. By the public use of one's own reason I understand the use that anyone as a scholar makes of reason before the entire literate world. I call the private use of reason that which a person may make in a civic post or office that has been entrusted to him. Now in many affairs conducted in the interests of a community, a certain mechanism is required by means of which some of its members must conduct themselves in an entirely passive manner so that through an artificial unanimity the government may guide them toward public ends, or at least prevent them from destroying such ends. Here one certainly must not argue, instead one must obey. However, insofar as this part of the machine also regards himself as a member of the community as a whole, or even of the world community, and as a consequence addresses the public in the role of a scholar, in the proper sense of that term, he can most certainly argue, without thereby harming the affairs for which as a passive member he is partly responsible. Thus it would be disastrous if an officer on duty who was given a command by his superior were to question the appropriateness or utility of the order. He must obey. But as a scholar he cannot be justly constrained from making comments about errors in military service, or from placing them before the public for its judgment.
Enlightenment reason might be characterised as ‘education’ (in the diagram) that is the process of drawing out reasons from a reflection upon experience in relation to what is possible through freedom to create. It stands in direct contrast to ‘drilling’ – and what more generally might be characterised as the techniques of ‘schooling’ – the process of forming, fashioning and moulding mind and behaviours through a tightly monitored and assessed system of curricular and pedagogical administration.
3. Hegelian Reason – violence of master slave – dialectic uniting
Being and Reason
The ideal of reason is to achieve mastery – without mastery there can
be no freedom since then one becomes subject to the will of another. Imagine
the drama of two people meeting. Each want recognition from the other that they
are free as masters of their fate. At some point a battle occurs since, one
cannot be free if the other is superior. However there is a problem:
if one should die, then the winner fails to achieve the desired universal recognition since the other is dead. Similarly, if both should be fatally wounded then there is again failure. The state of mastery is only achieved should one of the warriors give in to their animal fear of death, and recognise the victory of the other. In this circumstance, the loser has no choice but to become a slave to the desires of the winner. The winner, however, in being recognised as ‘master’ only by a slave still does not gain what is most desired: recognition by an equal. To be recognised by a slave cannot possibly be satisfying. As a further irony, the slave in having to meet the desires of the master must work to transform the material resources of the world, eventually learning to make tools in order to be more efficient, perhaps inventing better weapons for the master’s use. In short, the slave is educated through work. Thus:
If then, at the start, in the given world the Slave had a fearful “nature” and had to submit to the Master, to the strong man, it does not mean that this will always be the case. Thanks to his work, he can become other; and, thanks to this work the World can become other.
Kojève (1969: 52)Gradually, therefore, in the Hegelian story, a different vision of political organisation emerges through work and the cultural knowledge that derives from this. An idea of being able to transform the conditions of the world, begins to grow, which includes the possibility of freedom from the Master. However, having an abstract idea of freedom is not the same as having the courage to realise it.
(Schostak 2006)
The dialectic of master and slave thus begins in the desire for recognition.
It develops through a contest focused upon an impossible demand – that
each recognise the other as ‘master’. One has to ‘negate’
(kill/subject) the other. But in killing or subjecting the other the desired
recognition is not achieved by either. The slave, however, achieves a mastery
over nature through knowledge – a position that eventually has to be recognised
by the Master (who does not have that knowledge and thus the ‘mastery’
is ‘negated’). The solution is through a recognition of the new
circumstances that involves mastery for all people through absolute knowledge
produced by the reasoning powers that the former slave developed. So the synthesis
or resolution of differences between people is through absolute reason.
Is this the ‘end of history’ (that is, there are no more contests of different world views since Absolute Reason means we only have to administer people and the world according to reason)? (Weber’s iron cage 2001 and see Fukuyama 1992).
4. Husserian Phenomenology
Husserl produced an alternative ‘phenomenology’ founded upon a reading
of the Cartesian strategy of doubt. Instead of doubt he ‘suspended’
interest in prior knowledge, truths etc in order to inquire into the essential
structure of consciousness with a focus on how things come to mean rather than
just upon the rational measurment of objects. It still has a focus upon the
‘transcendental’ and thus is open to a critique that it leaves the
particular, the heterogeneousness of existence behind in its search of ‘essences’
(invariants). Its sociological implications were developed initially by Schutz
(1976) and influenced ethnomethodology (Garfinkel 1967). The focus was on the
kinds of rationalities employed by people as justifications of their everyday
lives. It also drew upon pragmatism and the construction of meaningful activities
through social interaction.
5. Pragmatism: Pierce, James, Dewey …. Mead
Pragmatism sought a means of avoiding the absolutes of Reason and of the Hegelian
dialectic. It basically focused on thinking as a local activity directed towards
solving problems when they occurred. Its sociological formulation was developed
initially by the philosopher George Herbert Mead 1934) and labelled ‘symbolic
interactionism’. Here, there are not just empirical behaviours to be observed
and measured but behaviours ‘mean’ something within its social context.
The self is thus not simply ‘inside’ but is itself socially constructed
(an integration between Thinking and Being as a kind of modified Hegelianism).
There is an ‘I’ (inner nature, impulsive, unpredictabe’) who
acts are modified and valued socially in the production of a social ‘me’
(see Goffman’s presentation of self in everyday life). hence, there is
a kind of dialectic between the ‘I’ and the ‘me’.
6. structuralism
Structuralism employed as its model, language – drawing upon the work
of de Saussure (1966). It offered a way of rationally analysing the apparent
flux and variation of social forms by focusing upon essential structures. Saussure
showed how language could be analysed as a formal structure of ‘differences’
– crudely, each sign or word works because it is different from every
other sign or word. Hence a society or social group could be studied in terms
of the way in which it constructs ‘differences’: e.g., between ‘man’
and ‘woman’ or ‘adult’ and ‘child’ and thus
between ‘man’s work’ and ‘woman’s work’
etc …..
Structuralism could be combined with symbolic interactionism and phenomenology (as well as psychoanalysis through Lacan) in order to generate studies of the structures underlying the everyday lives of people.
B. reason - Pluralism – Heterogeneity – Agonism
However, Structuralism implied a totality, a whole, and thus led back to a Hegelian
style Absolute. Its rational binary structures could be shown to be historically
structured rather than rationally or essentially given. Lacan and Derrida amongst
others showed how apparent unities and fixities were constructed over time and
thus were the product of history rather than the source of history. An event
like the French Revolution could only be identified and storied afterwards –
no one said, ‘Oh we’re involved in starting the French Revolution’.
It came to be retrospectively named, its meaning produced in terms of what it
would mean for future generations ‘looking back’.
Where a structure has a rational centre, historically produced ‘structures’ are always in movement and subject to change as perspectives on the ‘past’ change – in short, there is no centre, no fixed observation point.
If there is no centre? How can society hold together? By Faith? By tradition? By Ethnic Identity? If any one of these is to define a society then presumably there will be war between those holding different views?
Alternatively, is there a potential return to Kant and the Enlightenment? Foucault (1984) seemed to think there was. It was to involve a critical ontology of ourselves:
Now, in keeping with the call for a “critical ontology of ourselves,” he defined critique as self-critique, that is, as a “testing” or essay-ing of ourselves. Critique amounted to the labour “that thought brings to bear upon itself. In what does it consist, if not the endeavour to know how and to what extent it might be possible to think differently, instead of legitimating what is already known?” By thinking through one’s own history, thought would be released in freedom, allowing it to transform itself in the process.
(Hanssen 2000: 83)
The return to enlightenment thus seems to involve a continual process of ‘thinking differently’. The criterion is thus freedom but a freedom that does not freeze into an absolute and does not dissipate into a nihilistic flux. But how? Mouffe (2005) thinks in terms of radical democracy – that is, driving freedom down to the individual in community with others framed by the incessant reconstruction of democratic practices to encompass new viewpoints. And this lead then to the possibility of a radical research methodology …. (Schostak and Schostak 2008).
The story continues …..
References
Bauman, Z. (2001) The Individualised Society, Cambridge: Polity
Foucault, M. (1984) "What is Enlightenment ?" ("Qu'est-ce que les Lumières ?"), in Rabinow (P.), ed., The Foucault Reader, New York, Pantheon Books, , pp. 32-50.
Fukuyama, F. (1992) The End of History and the Last Man. New York: Free Press; Second paperback edition with a new Afterword, Simon and Schuster, 2006
Garfinkel, H. (1967) Studies in Ethnomethodology, Prentice-Hall.
Hanssen, B. (2000) Critique of Violence: Between Poststructuralism and Critical Theory, Routledge
Kojève, A. (1969) Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit, assembled by Raymond Queneau, edited by Allan Bloom, translated by James H. Nichols, Jr, Ithaca and London, Cornell University Press. Originally published 1947, Gallimard, Paris.
Mead, G.H. (1934) Mind, Self and Society, University of Chicago Press
Mouffe, C. (2005) On the Political, Routledge
Quine, W. V. O. (1948) ‘On What There Is’, The Review of Metaphysics, 2 21-28.
Saussure, F. de, (1966) Course in General Linguistics, ed., C. Bally and A. Sechehaye. Translated by W. Baskin, New York, McGraw-Hill
Schostak, J. F. (2006) Interviewing and Representation in Qualitative Research Projects, Open University press
Schostak, J. F, and Schostak J. R. (2008) Radical Research. Designing, developing and writing research to make a difference, Routledge: London, UK
Schutz, A. (1976) The Phenomenology of the Social World, tr. G. Walsh and F. Lehnert, London: Heineman
Walzer M. (1985) Spheres of justice. A defence of pluralism and equality, Oxford, Blackwell
Weber, M. (2001) The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, London and New York: Routledge; first published 1930, Allen and Unwin.