Midterm Prep

Rousseau’s State of Nature

1) beings try to satisfy their needs

2) place of abundance (fewer people = more resources)

3) rudimentary survival of the fittest

4) very beginning would’ve been no tools = more balanced equality

5) no fear of other animals

6) fewer natural dangers (ie disease wouldn’t have spread at the same rate) → death more from old age, accidents, etc

civilized v. savage man (Rousseau)

• Rousseau’s noble savage = him siding with them

• Rousseau idealized the native american lifestyle over acclaimed civilization in europe; says they’re living the way we should be before we were ruined by our own society)

• everywhere BUT europe = closer to what we were (animals = SON = good)

• “I like them because sub-civilizational” → actually racist but he didn’t think of it that way

→ in this way, progress = regress for Rousseau, and the will to freedom is actually the will to resist

• example: an outdoor cat ≠ an indoor cat, people never fully capitulate to domestication (want comfort yet don’t know how to not resist when things aren’t right)

amour de soi-meme

• the pure love of oneself

• self preservation because love yourself (along the same lines of self-care)

• would’ve existed in SON

amour propre

• an awareness of others that affects your understanding of yourself

• self-love as a means of vanity (love that’s only possible in a world of comparison)

• ex: male gaze

• would not have existed in SON

“the first man, having enclosed a piece of ground, to say whom it occurred to say this is mine” NOT DONE

progress to get to uncontinuable point; Rousseau thinks “this is mine” happened in the the SON but it was what broke it

→ private property broke SON!

1) “this is mine” (piece of ground)

2) there were people simple enough to believe him (naive to property and its gravity)

3) Rousseau attributes social ills to this complex occurrence; this is where crime, murder, war, misery, and inequality come from

4) he asserts the common; collective ownership

5) this was the last moment of SON

original, reflective, and philosophic histories

original

• done by very few, find from eyewitnesses

  • ex: POTUS that retires

• makes the actor a historian themself

• external phenomena and mental representation of the author: inside = historiographer, outside = actual history

→ something that’s not inside people; shapes up and comes to bear on us and the world goes on as if i’m not in it

→ same thing as saying people cannot comprehend the world in it's totality, can only understand your world (if you go to a new city with no phone and no map you’d be lost but that city still makes sense)

reflective

• “beyond the present”

• history of the particular (our individual = prior logically)

1) universal

• effort to write history of the whole thing, ie since the dawn of time (but to whom? where?)

• false presentation of unified history

2) pragmatic

• history for the present, ie XYZ because still a problem

3) critical

• effort to show strong ability of ideas, very academic and often niche

4) specialized

• when/where/who (VERY specific); textured stories from an archive

• narrowed to be particular enough to be knowable

philosophic

• application of philosophic methods to the contradictions of history (and with an attempt to resolve contradictions of history)

• history narrows things to what it can understand but philosophic has tools to focus on it effectively at the same time

reason (conceptually and historically) according to Hegel

reason = substance and infinite power (“stuff” of history but also what’s being exercised)

• reason is its own process; the “action of history” (history = story of reason)

• rules the world in 2 ways

1) tries to deal with differences of mind, understanding, and consciousness

• reason = general logic = rationale on a universal level

2) functions sort of through providence (or religious concept that made things happen through god; divine providence)

→ reason ultimately negotiates abstract (discrete evidence of existence) and concrete (what’s happening)

Hegel’s Dialectical Method

Dialectic = Hegel’s attempt at giving people a way of understanding of spirit beyond us (the universe); moves history forward!

thesis + antithesis → negation or reorganization (NOT synthesis!!)

• negation = ceases to exist

• reorganization =reconciliation through reason, either more or less opposition

** either way the nature of the relation changes!!

→ to Hegel, this is not utopianism and there is no peaceful conclusion/resolution; to him this is just the way things are organized and reorganized and whether or not there’s bloodshed is separate

simply put: view of 2 opposing things that cannot be unified and the outcome is known as the “present”

deontoloy

normative theory that emphasizes rules/laws/norms rather than the consequences of actions (focused on means)

consequentialism

judges whether an action is morally right or wrong on the basis of it’s consequences (focused on ends)

a priori

knowledge gained from pure philosophy (don’t allow this knowledge to be affected by experience, logic & pure thinking)

• exs: math (a priori language)

a posteriori

knowledge gained from experiences

• exs: know something because of data, burn hand on stove so check if it’s on before touching it next time

means of production

elements required for economic production

• assets, raw materials, resources, infrastructure

→ everything in the supply chain except for the workers

means of subsistence

what’s needed to survive

• food, water, shelter, clothes

→ everyone “has” it, but in capitalism the proletariat has to enter a relationship with the bourgeoisie for it

apollonianism vs dionysianism

apollonianism

• stands for order, clarity, sobriety, clockwork, harmony

• for Nietzsche this represents a kind of repression in that our way of living caps what we can do

dionysianism

• stands for unbridled desire, will to be alive, celebration not to dull emotions but to become untethered from rules to feel your true self

• for Nietzsche this is the goal

bourgeoisie and proletariat origins of class difference

bourgeoisie = owners (own the means of production; don’t have to sell their labor)

proletariat = workers (sell their labor because it’s the only thing they own)

**note for Marx, workers must be free (not slaves for capital; i.e. 1) can quit and work for competitor and 2) free from having to own the means of production)

inflation

rising costs of the environment you’re doing business in

labor NOT DONE

unlike all other aspects → only variable capitalists control (everything else is set by the market)

• with inflation, can either fire laborers or boost production; either way asking the remaining workers to do more for the same amount of $

exchange value

quantitative amount that’s born out of exchange (sold $2, $1 to make so $1 exchange value)

use value

qualitative and can create profit but very specific; qualities about the product (good or bad)

• use value is negated by exchange; different forms of the same commodity

self consciousness according to Hegel

take it literally; presence of a thinking self / there is an entity and it thinks

process of self recognizing another; can only be itself by contrast

consciousness according to Hegel

awareness but not reason, critical thinking, or anything else, just the capacity to have a thought

→ if something has a thought, its first thought is about itself (i’m hungry, etc)

existence in general is defined by first thought; wouldn’t know you existed unless you thought about it

→ there’s a way the self finds itself separate from other things

• spirit cannot come to significance until self conscious (self an other have to therefore be different but also have to share in something to be possible)

  • I am me but you don’t call me “me”, you’re you

    • I can’t think you so you’re less than me but not less in existence just in POV

Q: was the thing’s awareness first or the thing’s existence…

lord/bonded or master/slave ideology

• hierarchy in place that entails domination

• in any given situation of opposition, one person sees itself to be able to do what they want (to Hegel this = fact)

  • lord has to be self perceive as free by definition and doesn’t require the bondsmen in order to think they’re free

  • it’s the workplace that creates the freedom (CONTEXT!!)

categorical imperative

“I ought never to proceed except in such a way that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law”

• should never do anything unless it can be made universal and then think if you would actually want to live in that world

will must be good in itself; intentions > outcomes

hypothetical imperative

means to something else (an end)

• ex: donate so go to heaven