Philippe Descola or anti-Girard, the last spasms of constructivism?
By
Nicolas Madelenat di Florio
From the Society of Literary History of France.
Research Associate at
Centre for Research in Economic Ethics,
Université Paul Cézanne.
To Jean-Yves Naudet, a modest tribute to a scholar interested in the new anthropology.
A Maouche Youcef, in recognition of our common love for freedom.
IT IS UNCLEAR attachment of any philosopher to a method as strange if it had three advantages: to flatter his vanity, to facilitate its work, and give the illusion of definitive knowledge. As it leads to some very general theory, an idea almost empty, he can always, later, put the idea in retrospect all that experience has taught on the thing then he will pretend to have anticipated, on experience through the sheer force of argument, kissing in advance in a more extensive designs smaller indeed, but only difficult to train and only useful to keep, which is reached by digging for the facts. Since, on the other hand, nothing is more easy to reason geometrically, on abstract ideas, he built a doctrine without penalty where everything fits, and which seems necessary for its rigor. But this severity comes from what is operated on a schematic idea and stiff, instead of following the sinuous and movable from reality. How many would prefer a more modest philosophy, which goes straight to the object without worrying about the principles which it seems to depend on! She aspired to a more immediate certainty, which can be ephemeral. She would take his time. It would be a gradual ascent to the light.
Henri Bergson, The Spiritual Energy .
The release of the latest work of Rene Girard, Bloody origins already begun to make some noise. In a long interview granted to Le Monde and published this morning (January 21, 2011), Philippe Descola gives its opinion on the text and the ideas of anthropologists mimetics. I wanted to meet here in a form slightly different from my usual work, critics and opposing arguments by the Collège de France the new anthropology.
Levi-Strauss, the antithesis of Girard: prefer the "key that opens all doors" (article) to "a method of thinking. ?
This first attack is unfounded; one hand Girard does not ignore the danger of formalizing knowledge and reading of human phenomena through systems. His "key" is a base, a base on which to base any intellectual pilgrimage aimed at understanding human groups. Besides, who read his works can be regarded as tending to show that they have a truth, or Truth. Mr. Descola should consider, in good philosopher he is, that the first requirement it is not mine but of the intellectual-Socrates is able to control the words he uses. However, Girard does not have a frame through which to read the relations of men, but by the contemplation of reality, and thus rejecting the cherished Constructivist abstractions which proudly claims to be his opponent he draft, not a theory but a presentation of what exists beyond of man that the child naturally imitates his fellows, is it so incredibly shocking? Is it shocking, too, even illogical, to say that without the relation to the value given by the other to a property, the individual who does not need basically could desire? And add, then, that the report value, and covetousness, are among philosophers and economists for centuries, just as there are in St. Augustine. However, the good philosopher must find out where his thought Mr. Descola should do likewise or else recognize that St. Augustine was already talking about relationships mimetics, and Girard is everything her duty. And finally admit that constructivism is a form of dogmatic thinking, including anthropological thought. Who, then, Mr. Descola, tends to impose its vision of man?
Girard, a descendant of Freud or Frazer?
The first consideration is unfounded, although a first and awkward reading Girard's thought, he may leave an impression of psychoanalysis. However, the charge of Freudian family, several counterarguments On the one hand, Freud tends to impose an absolute model of man is to be normal, normal to which is added closer to the strange-Mental Health. Second, Freud's thought is based on a set of assumptions, theories, including practitioners and scholars choose to say they are true. Yet, believing sincerely in a lie does not diminish the falsity and this data intellectualization "rough" cut so any hypothesis of relationship. The anthropologist mimetic will find very quickly by a personal intellectual journey of the main mechanisms which mimetic. The mimetic is not an abstraction: it is a spontaneous, natural, present in every human being. This imitation, this training catallactic (in constant interaction with others) and provides group life and individual training. One of the best illustrations of this phenomenon is language. If, as claimed yet much of the constructivist language is present in humans and grows, how is it that a baby, adopted and transported across the world can easily learn the language of his new parents? Constructivism does not, and Mr. Descola should correct its mistakes before poor to address the ideas of others.
As for Frazer, what say? It is instead a great anthropologist in the classical sense, the same line that seems to defend Descola. We thinker in all the usual excesses of anthropology: the imperative of land (collect acorns with a tribe in a land known only to understand the increasing share of advertising in European societies for the next fifteen years ...), the alleged objectivity (the anthropologist expressed is necessarily the most objective and is, by law, the absolute censorship of thought). No need for lengthy this hypothetical relationship, the argument does not hold. Girard is not a man of "land" or a man of experimentation, by lying numbers, tends to show the result he wants. In short, he is sincere with its limitations and uncertainties.
Girard, indifferent to the accumulated knowledge and empirical data?
The first objection raised in this interview is funny as it is contradictory. After all, what the researcher must have respect for the famous "accumulated knowledge"? A ratio which distanced intellectual knows where he is coming, Judge awareness of past mistakes and is the strength of the history of thought as to avoid repeating the excesses often serious (think of the current Darwinian which, through natural selection to justify colonialism, slavery, and many other abominations that still list them all would take weeks). Either he cuts himself off from everything, to be revolutionary and without knowing what it will base its new thinking, wages war against tradition. The first is smart, embracing a way of conscience, not turning its back on the past but without being trapped by a habit of practicing while the second is dogmatic, not in tradition but in opposition. This will never build anything properly, merely to destroy. The wiser course is to learn to mix the two approaches to assess and judge them in terms of his own humanity, the idea to mix reason and instinct is not mine but comes from Poincaré, who then sought to define the types of scientists. The first is a sort of logistics, ie that his thinking is based on building a network of probabilities confirmed (contemplation, but different points, so the results would be projected in a contemplation of the intellectual space for blank then release the logical connections between his "discoveries"). The second is a pure intuitive; Poincare does not exist among mathematicians, as I define it. Indeed, mathematics is already a separate language to be integrated before accessing mathematical thinking, intuition yes, but under cover introductory language. Girard, meanwhile, knows where anthropological thought, he knows the current schools, some of the sources. Yet he will also find, in St. Augustine, and that its own observations confirm this trend to imitate humans. Over the years unborn certainty: human beings, dynamically interacting with the other permanent, is constructed by imitation and is pushed by the opposition. We have here the basic mechanisms of the new anthropology on the one hand imitation, mimesis and other opposition mimetic rivalry.
As for empirical data, what to say? We should embrace the Socratic method here, this method spread by Socrates which tended to challenge everything. Mr. Descola should know and should apply to traditional anthropology. For if one accepts, as the average anthropologist wants us to believe, it takes numbers and measures to understand the man, making his humanity? Do we have a great yardstick to measure where the feelings, the fear of group membership, rules for quantifying the frustrations leading to hatred? In short, if the measures are necessary and empiricism (do not forget that man is made of flesh!) Should we lower it, and there simply what is worse, all mankind? And this is where the Girard's thought is richer than the constructivists who want to erase part of a dimension of freedom intrinsic to the individual (if everything is already in him, confer Bourdieu and his atrocious social determinism) man can not decide, and secondly to deny the man's superior. It is not an animal who thinks he is a human body of flesh must not forget the dimension that will differentiate it from the animal, ie consciousness of himself beyond the requirements. The animal eats because he is hungry, can make reservations, reproduces and dies, it can be endowed with memory and even a talent for imitation. It only becomes not in some respects "human", but still a beast that imitates. And it should leave this anthropocentrism constructivists to reform their dogma; Girard did. He does not judge what he looks but merely to describe and present the results where his opponents like to place exhibitors in chimeras.
" Is a certain configuration French, from Levi-Strauss and Bourdieu Balandier, would render difficult any discussion of Girard's thesis? "
is very probably the passage most intelligent and most sincere of the article. And draw two unfortunate consequences: firstly, acknowledges Descola dominance of structuralism in French anthropological thought and, secondly, it also recognizes a state of facts doubles dogmatism is shown, that for anthropologist recognized in France, we must embrace a certain line (and here constructivists are horribly sincere, for them, and from the fact that they possess the truth, other words must be rejected in silence as being emanations the error. So, no questioning, no opening, and most importantly, no change) but also that any innovation, any discrepancies, will be condemned by the official general dislike (beautiful as a public trial in the USSR). And defender of freedom of thought to add that everything is frozen tending to die the next few years will, finally, that other voices in the howling, silent agony of the constructivist.
As for the authors presented as worthy defenders of the single thought, and so-so little! - To say. Levi-Strauss was a famous author; no one will dare challenge it. Yet few still adhere to his ideas as they are outdated and are bathed in a strange representation of man, so divorced from reality (which puts it in contrast to the image of the ideal field anthropologist dear to Descola) it becomes a long travelogue. However, anthropology is not a novel where you have to seduce his readers, the novel can, however, able to demonstrate some important phenomena present in man. Descola condemns the attack in Girard and the use of references to literature, yet he should consider whether it is more useful to Science submit fictitious persons whose few traits can be easily seized by the audience that dealing with people whom we know not even pronounce the name and who disappeared before publication of the book with their lives. Yet in Tristes Tropiques , Levi-Strauss tells a long journey, describing the characters and relationships that assume. Proust did exactly the same thing, except that it does not judge. Believe that between an author deliberately biased and the father of the modern novel that takes the fictitious characters but their wishes highlight what to see? One professed objectivity of a feint, one recognizes that there is no objectivity in man, and one sells mirages, the other miracles. No bluff in Girard, or attempt to shed a tear for the reader to the plight of the natives, before explaining how to stack the rocks can be compared with the modern attitude to drink too much. However, critics of the new anthropology attack his thoughts on the caricature, but history will judge. Bourdieu is much more fun than Levi-Strauss, his mind is incredibly complex, incredibly complex enumerative boring. However, it is considered, the volume, as one of the best analysts of modern society, his works and his views are essential in the French University. Yet it is a Marxist author all out there and he has also good reason to do so because, if not significant in anthropology, his ideas are the last whiff of a sad part of history. But it is good to read Bourdieu before discovering the critical Descola! It is good to think The distinction , this rag of a few hundred pages where the author explains, in good constructivist, that freedom does not exist and that the person is a deliberate construction of the bourgeois order to ensure the sustainability of exploitation of the masses. Freedom is not possible, no choice, everything goes well in the best of possible worlds and the gray cloth is the future of man. Anthropology is simply a weapon to demonstrate the Marxist gloomy assumptions of Bourdieu, and constructivism to recognize him all the qualities of its current. Man of the extreme left revolutionary small-time, opposed to any form of progress, the label is etched in his flesh, he is the pure product of negation of free thought by the Constructivists. Where Girard sees a spontaneous attitude of imitation to be built, Bourdieu sees a format the person by the company. This idea, moreover, is largely reflected in his discussions on television, is the acquisition automation . Any sensible person would see a need for integration of mechanisms in society (the common language for trade, social convention to avoid infighting ...), but not the Marxist thinker who did find a way to conditioning.
And on this last opposition made clear that the fundamental difference between dogmatic anthropology advocated by constructivists and the new anthropology (or anthropology mimetic) is the place of freedom left, or not at the man, if trapped in a group that is packaged, it is basically a slave, constructivists are right, if imitated by necessity during its formation and shape of choice in good conscience if So more than a machine in which automation is stored, so it is free, anthropologists mimetics are on track.
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