Re: Against Psychologism (was Re: Anti-Eurocentrism: Idealist Diversion from Anti-racism/anti-imperialism)

[Ted Winslow <winslow@xxxxxxxx>]

Yoshie wrote:
>
> Keynes' remarks demonstrate that an explanation of post-modernism (or
> anti-anti-Eurocentrism, for that matter) should be neither
> psychologized nor generalized.  For instance, such psychologization
> allows one to argue that a criticism of post-modernism =
> self-righteous expression of contempt = a psychological
> "compensation," and, worse yet, that a criticism of capitalism (or
> racism, sexism, etc.) = self-righteous expression of contempt = a
> psychological "compensation"!  The only people who are against
> capitalism are those who are envious of the rich, or so say
> apologists for capital.
>

Psychoanalysis doesn't allow you to do this. It's only irrational ideas and
feelings that can be explained in this way, not ideas in general.

People do mistakenly use it like this, often as a method of ad hominem
argument.  It then mirrors the mistaken use of "bourgeois thinker" I pointed
to earlier.  It gets in the way of reading with "good will".

Properly used, however, psychoanalysis explains why it's so difficult to
read with good will and why it itself, Marxism, etc. are so frequently made
into weapons in ad hominem arguments.  This often accompanies a state of
mind characterized by "splitting" people into the idealized good (the
working class, the oppressed, non-Europeans) and the demonized bad (the
capitalists, the oppressors, Europeans).

The term "Eurocentric" can be used in this way e.g. to resist changing
beliefs shown to be self-contradictory.  The law of non-contradiction is
dismissed as Eurocentric or phallocentric (ditto for "foundationalism" and
"essentialism").

As Keynes attempted to show there is, in fact, a mistaken understanding of
the role of the law of non-contradiction - of formal logic -  in reason that
has been particularly characteristic of modern white European males like
Newton.  This doesn't invalidate the law.

The adjectives "modern", "white", "European" and "male" are only relevant
when we are trying to understand unreasonable tenacious dogmatic attachment
to this "Ricardian vice" and then only as indicators of the specific
historical social relations (e.g. the differential treatment based on gender
characteristic of family relations) that fettered the development of
autonomy in the way indicated by the particular nature of the mistake.

The starting point in Klein is that what are in question are the ideas of a
more or less potentially rational person, i.e. a person able to be
autonomous (in Kant's sense) in their thinking and willing.  Analysis is a
particular type of educative process (made necessary by unconsciously
anchored "resistance" to ordinary modes of rational discourse).  When it is
successful, it enables individuals to become autonomous in this sense.  The
"determinism" involved allows for rational self-determination of both ideas
and actions.

Psychoanalysis "helps", it "succeeds", to the extent that it enables people
to become rationally self-determined in thought and action.  (Orthodox
psychiatry, in constrast, has no logical space for this conception of "help"
and "success".)

This mirrors Hegel and Marx's treatment of the historical process of human
development as a process of *bildung* in which the human potential for
autonomy (the human "in itself") becomes actual ("for itself").  They
explicitly give a significant role in this process to irrational "passions"
e.g. in Marx's treatment of capitalism, to irrational avarice and a linked
irrational love of power.

Psychoanalysis explains why, as Hegel points out (in the passage from the
*Philoosphy of History* about the "idea" of humanity), the actualization of
autonomy (of a "will proper" and a "universal will") requires "an
incalculable medial discipline of the intellectual and moral powers" and is
so strongly opposed by "natural inclination".

Keynes's claim about capitalist motivation is most likely self-consciously
based on the passage from Civilization and Its Discontents you quote.
Keynes, however, incorporates the idea into a very different ontology.
Freud, in his explicit statements about such questions, uncritically
endorses scientific materialism.  (Key features of the Civilization and Its
Discontents passage reflect this.)

Keynes, as I tried to show, not only explicitly repudiates it, but offers a
psychoanalytic explanation of its irrational aspects e.g. the
misidentification of reason and science with long chains of deductive
reasoning from fixed precisely defined premises (the "Ricardian vice").
This misidentification, by the way, underpins evolutionary psychology's
incoherent scientific materialist conception of the the human mind as a
"calculating machine".

Keynes's criticism of capitalism is rooted in ethical beliefs very close to
Marx's (at least to Marx's beliefs as I interpret them).  See, for instance,
the essay "Economic Possibiities for our Grandchildren" in vol. IX of his
collected writings.  Elsewhere he claims that:

"The decadent international but individualistic capitalism, in the hands of
which we found ourselves after the War, is not a success.  It is not
intelligent, it is not beautiful, it is not just, it is not virtuous - and
it doesn't deliver the goods.  In short, we dislike it and we are beginning
to despise it." (Collected Writings, vol. XIX, p. 239)

He did, however, uncritically assume, in sharp contrast to Marx, that most
people are innately incapable of the universal development required for the
ideal society to be made actual.

Unlike many Marxists, however, he does share with Marx the idea that the
"good life" requires universal development.

Ted
--
Ted Winslow                            E-MAIL: WINSLOW@xxxxxxxx
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