BOOKS ONE & TWO
Ancient
Greek Philosophy: Materialism vs Idealism
By
Franz J. T. Lee
PANDEMONIUM BOOKS & PUBLICATIONS.
Merida, Venezuela, 2003.
© 2003 Franz
J. T. Lee All Rights Reserved.
Dedicated to:
My Philosophy
Teacher,
ERNST BLOCH
(1885 - 1977)
HISTORY OF WISDOM
Introduction
Like Socrates, Inter alia,
we know that we know nothing.
Labour, Patria and History
Before we blaze the fiery, archaic
Ancient Greek trail of the "History of Wisdom", we have to
introduce our concept of History, based in the Labour process,
developed as a result of decades of investigation, research, scientific
acting and action, of philosophic thinking and thought, in brief, of
práxis a n d theory. Certainly, at least three
major concepts have to be clarified: Labour, History and the Patria.
However, formal logically, it is well-nigh impossible to expound
these far-reaching central conceptual processes in a few introductory
paragraphs,
Nonetheless, as we continue, in the
following chapters, their real meanings, true context and contents will
unfold themselves. Hence, we bid the reader to be patient; on reading
the texts again and again, eventually the above will become philosophic
household words. What follows now is unusual, is new, original,
authentic. Let us follow this
strange logics step by step,
there
is an important "method" in this seeming "madness" ( See: Franz J. T.
Lee,
Science and
Philosophy.
Also: Franz J. T. Lee, Philosophical
Dialogues).
The
Pico Bolivar Scientific-Philosophic Perspective: A Simple Approximation
of a possible New Man of the Third Millennium
Thinking is
surpassing.
Ernst Bloch.
The Truth
is
the Whole.
Hegel.
The Truth
is
Always Concrete.
Lenin.
To think
healthy is the greatest perfection;
Wisdom is
to
tell the Truth, to act according
to Nature,
to
listen to her.
Heracleitus.
Levels. Degrees and Mensions of
Human Knowledge
Looking through the window here in Mérida, outside there, at the
foot
of Pico Bolivar, everything is still near and clear, warm, essential
and identical, simple and easy, level and tangible, only a limited
panorama enters our vision. Higher up, things already move to a
distance, they are seen in another context, more related, contradictory
and complex; they can only be reflected as such in their different
degrees of existence. To explain this complex, complicated matter to
someone who forever has been living, acting and thinking in a formal
logical, flat, limited world, in a binary and bicameral surrounding, is
well-nigh impossible. For her/him to understand concepts like Labour,
Ideology or Revolution, s(he) must make some intellectual effort, must
activate dormant theoretical capacities, must ascend Pico Bolivar, at
least to the second station of the "teleférico", of the cable
car lying
in the middle part.
Who reaches the top, enters new mensions, has an all round view, sees
things in the far distance. Everything appears vague, cool. cloudy and
intangible, but one can perceive all sorts of relations,
contradictions, conflicts, and antagonisms, one gets a global social
vision, a transhistoric perspective.
Because we are socially cognisant of all praxical levels and
theoretical degrees, have reached the cold, lonely, well-nigh
inaccesible trancendental cliffs of snow-capped Minerva, this new
sublime mension, void of all ideological slime, can now be discovered
by us, by conscious and conscientious students and professors, for
precise, incisive and decisive investigation and research work. This
newly acquired knowledge and transhistoric perspective enable us to
surmount other majestic emancipatory Andean heights and depths, to
reach other unknown micro-, meso- and macroscopic spheres of creative,
galactic emancipation.
In this way, the New Man of Ernst Bloch and of Che Guevara could regain
his lost human trinity: the human being and existence and transcendence.
Without a radical, cultural, creative revolution, without a
transcending "exvolution" towards human emancipation, without a
"transvolutionary" exodus (Ernst Bloch) out of capitalist and
imperialist misery, without casting off the religious and ideological
"chains of illusion" (Erich Fromm), a possible new species man can and
will not accomplish any true socialism or real communism, in fact, will
not even be given any transit to purgatory or any keys to open the
gates of earthly paradise or divine heaven.
This has to be kept in mind, in education, in "exformation", in schools
and universities, where revolutionary práxis and theory should
be developed, studied, applied. Mixing up the levels, degrees and
mensions of things, of relations and processes, of labour reality, as
explained above, leads directly to ideological confusion, to
reactionary fatalism, defeatism and nihilism.
In short, in our schools, missions, universities and other institutions
of "higher" learning, in our educational and socialization
institutions, simple things ... like conserving potable water, by
closing leaking taps well, by not singing more than one song under the
shower (Chavez) ... that is, tangible realities that can be grasped
easily by a still oppressed, manipulated and indoctrinated mind, can
and must be expressed straightforwardly as concrete levels, in simple,
scientific, praxical terms as human acts. As such the latter can and
will be understood precisely by any still thinking mind.
Complex things, like práxis and theory, ... like ideology and
practice,
like reform and revolution, like Ernst Bloch's scientific and
philosophic explanations of the relations between cold and warm
currents in revolutionary Marxism, ... cannot be expressed as
simplicity, it is not their natural habitat. They presuppose
intellectual endeavour, social reflection and philosophic creativity.
Vague things like emancipation, like a possible postcapitalist mode of
creation, ... like the Arab philosophic concepts of Avicenna or
Averroes, natura naturata and
natura naturans, creative and
created
nature, ... definitely do include simple and complex issues, but
scientifically and philosophically, they can only be grasped radically
and rationally with excellent reasoning, with transcendental
excellence, that is with emancipatory, creative Wisdom,
more precisely,
with transcendental immanence and immanent transcendence (with Bloch's
principle of hope).
Logically, academic and intellectual issues and questions that concern
the very existence and transcendence, the quo vadis of the human
species cannot be approximated with political multiple choice tables or
by means of mammoth audio-visual manuals and formal logical
questionnaires. We should learn to understand and explain them in
an opaque transhistoric fashion. Otherwise, to explain transhistoric
wisdom irresponsibly in simple and complex terms, as Mickey Mouse comic
strips, as popular hit parade songs, as obsolete catechisms or eternal
textbooks for beginners, as liveless things, as absolute truths, that
have to be learned by rote, is simply a useless educational venture and
a dangerous academic adventure. On the university campus, this kind of
academic abuse plays havoc with anything progressive or hopeful, from
all directions and tendencies will just call into being student turmoil
and devastating professorial typhoons, conspiracy, high treason
sabotage and murder, and consequently, will transform the democratic
alma mater, the sapient spirit
of Minerva, into an ideological factory
of the ruling ideas of the ruling classes, into a reformist,
reactionary lair for all kinds of social vipers, vices, hoaxes,
treachery and corruption.
In the current age, where Hitler's fondest, Orwellian dream is
globally becoming true ... "if you want to control a people,
control its education" ... more than ever should we defend academic
revolutionary práxis and theory, should we create human,
transcendental, emancipatory wisdom. Because dialectically absolute
truths do not exist in the concrete fields of human science and
philosophy, because no objectivity exists without subjectivity, and
vice versa, also, in this case we have to choose sides, the side
of
truth, of humanity, of the billions of "wretched of the earth" (Frantz
Fanon) to instruct ourselves and our students cum ira et studio.
We love our erudite professors, we love our diligent students, but the
knowable truth and truthful knowledge we love even more.
Building on past scientific and philosophic knowledge, in what historic
context can academics and intellectuals support revolutionary
práxis
and theory in the 21st Century? Let us now concretize the quintessence
of our transhistoric quo vadis!
What created us? What can we create?
Gnothi seauton: Labour Created
Man
To understand our current emancipatory status, to know ourselves, we
have to discover the secret "Darwin, Engels and Leakey Code".
Firstly, what did Charles Darwin reveal in "The Descent of Man" (1871)?
He discovered that Man, who calls himself homo sapiens sapiens, the
"crown of creation", in reality is a miserable, brutal animal, who
descends directly from the apes, across the ape-men and man-apes!
Much later, in our age, genetic science will prove the remarkable
proximity of man, chimpanzees and pigs. What a "discovery" my Country
Apes, then you and I, and all of us fell, also our religious, delirious
fantasies concerning the "Children of God Our Father" and of a "Chosen
People"! As Shakespeare wrote: Man is simply the paragon of animals!
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were soberly fascinated by Darwin. Karl
(Charles) Marx even wanted to dedicate Capital, Volume Two, to
his "comrade in name", but not "comrade-in-arms"; but this was a bit
too much for the "fittest survival" of Charles Darwin!
Secondly, as we know, Friedrich Engels in his work, "Dialektik der
Natur" (1882), had elevated Man to the "highest blossom of nature";
this was surely "a step forward", away from the divine ex nihil, nihil
fit. Engels stated that labour was the earthly creator of
Man,
and not God! However, what interests us here is the fragmentary
work of Engels annexed to his "Dialectics of Nature": The Part
Played
by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man.
Concerning human being, in simple terms, let us see what is the very
first thing that Engels explains to us:
"Labour is the source of all wealth,
the economists assert. It is this
– next to nature, which supplies it with the material that it converts
into wealth. But it is also infinitely more than this. It is the
primary basic condition for all human existence, and this is to such an
extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man
himself."
Engels actually confirms that our Creator is not "Our Father", is not
God, also not Mother Nature, but Labour, that is, Alienation itself.
According to him, we are the "Children of Labour"; for our social
benefit, Labour converts the "material" of Nature into ruling class
"wealth".
In the above quotation, there are two more significant things to note:
firstly, the "infinitely more than this" principle, and secondly, that
Engels speaks about "human existence", and not about "human being". Of
course, Engels wrote his article on the transhistoric level of "natural
science" of his "time"; many facts, even those which he had used in the
"Dialectics of Nature", had become "outdated" and obsolete; yet we are
not interested in the simple appearance forms or the phenomenological
aspects of his theory. Of greater importance here are the far-reaching
epistemological content, the complex philosophical degrees of his
revolutionary theories with regard to Labour, to Man, to "History".
Thirdly, now, let us see how the famous British, imperial, bourgeois
scientist, Louis Leakey, who probably did not even read this
fragmentary article, meets the German, socialist, proletarian Engels in
human evolutionary and revolutionary affairs.
Concerning Homo Zinjanthropus or
Homo Habilis – The "Black" Adam
It is of great interest what the famous British anthropologist,
archaeologist and prehistorian Dr. Louis Seymour Bazett Leakey had to
tell us about his discoveries in the Olduvai Gorge of present day
Tanzania in Africa, especially about the first primitive tool-user whom
he had identified in 1959.
For Leakey, the only way to find the "missing link" between
"ape"and "man", between homo kenyapithecus or homo neanderthal
and homo habilis, homo sapiens or homo sapiens sapiens , was to
discover which "homo" was working, was labouring. It happened to be
homo habilis or homo zinjanthropus who according to radio-carbon dating
had evolved in Africa some 2 to 3 000 000 years ago. If this should be
true, then, of course, Man -- young or old -- is already ancient,
obsolete, moribund, then we could understand his current Thanatos
drive, his agonizing self-destruction, his inexorable cosmic, ontic,
nihilist transvolution. According to the German philosopher Hegel,
everything that comes into existence merits to pass away, thus more
that ever, in our time, we should study and understand our current
farewell "trilemma", our tendential capitalist, imperialist demise, our
possible fascist apocalyptic quo vadis.
But, confronted with a myriad of possibilities, scientifically how did
Leakey identify original man, the "black" Adam? How did Leakey
recognize himself?
Next to the fossils of these age old ape-men or men-apes tools were
found, but only homo zinjanthropus alias habilis alias sapiens alias
lupus had developed, had reproduced or improved his tools, in other
words, only he had evolved technical skills or productive technology.
Hence, Labour was decisive for Leakey to determine when exactly our
"forefather", the African Adam, had evolved; in this way, the bourgeois
ideologist totally agreed with the scientific socialist, Engels, that
Labour had produced Man.
Of course, to develop tools, not only manual labour is necessary; the
sine qua non is intellectual reflection. In his manuscript, Engels had
formulated this as follows:
"Thus the hand is not only the organ
of labour, it is also the product
of labour. ...But the hand did not exist by itself. It was only one
member of an entire, highly complex organism. ...First comes labour,
after it, and then side by side with it, articulate speech. ... The
reaction on labour and speech of the development of the brain and its
attendant senses, of the increasing clarity of consciousness, power of
abstraction and of judgement, gave an ever-renewed impulse to the
further development of both labour and speech."
In a complex manner, that is, theoretically, Engels explained to us the
origins of physical and intellectual labour and the central role of
speech or language as tool to express our consciousness, our "power of
abstraction". In nuce: he explained the planetary origin of our
thinking, thoughts and intellectual degrees of reflection,
comprehension and understanding of our inner and outer reality, of our
objective and subjective relations, of human scientific praxis and
philosophic theory.
He also underlined the logic of thinking, the dialectics between
"hand" and "brain", between the two sides of Labour. Obviously,
neither Darwin nor Marx, nor Engels, nor Leakey questioned the very
quintessence of Labour, of Man. Here Labour, which is obviously
Alienation per se ... in
the sense that it progressively becomes
an auto-destructive process, a brutal "struggle for the survival of the
fittest" of all evolutionary creatures ... becomes the most
glorified thing under the sun, the "Holy of Holies", the "Holy Cow".
However, this is not only a transmutation from ape to man, a
revolutionary dialectical leap, it produced and still reproduces a
fiendish, perverse, social relationship towards Nature, towards all
species on this planet.
Finally, talking in objective- and subjective-real utopian Blochian
terms, our contemporary quo vadis, seen from the Pico Bolivar
scientific and philosophic perspective, urgently has to be directed
towards the creation of a new logic, science and philosophy.
Our experimentum mundi may
end in atomic conflagration, however, if the Experiment Man should
prevail, should survive, then the following would blaze his creative
trail, laden with galactic star dust.
These are fundamental prerequisites for giving birth to a new man, to
an authentic human trinity, who has to cross the Rubicon, to transcend
all modes of labour, of production, of history, in order to create
itself as a species, new worlds, new forms of life, galactic
emancipation. For this new species, reality has to be totally
different, his multiverse will be "trifferent"; for it, first will come
existent production, then transcendental creation; its genesis will be
neither at the beginning nor at the end, but will come from all
directions, will be in all places and exist at all times. Ernst Bloch,
in his major work, The Principle of Hope, calls this emancipatory real
utopia "Heimat", Home.
Thales of Miletus: What Is The Best?
Before Plato had developed his summum bonum, the "Highest Good", long before already normative, ethical formal logics was governing Ancient Greece: all polis citizens were talking about the "good" and "non-good"; about the "best" and "non-best"; about "aristos" and "non-aristos". The "Best Man" in Ancient Greece was the Aristocrat, yes, the "best" was already ruling the world.
Everybody was aspiring to be manly, to act aristocratically. Everybody was looking for the aristocratic essence of things. To be aristocratic is to be wise, to be a "Wise Man", and because the Number Seven was the "best", was aristocratic, hence there should always only be "Seven Wise Men", Seven World Wonders, the Chosen Seven. The "Wise Men", not Women, forgot that Number Seven was the Goddess Diana, Artemis. In any case, Miletus was already a "man's world", a shipping and commercial seaport. Man, the Noble Eagle, was already winning many a "Desert Storm", many a "veni, vidi, vici".
Hence, Thales, himself a "Wise Man", one of the "Seven Chosen
Few", was thinking about "What Is?",
about Essence, about Quodditas.
And, true to the "Zeitgeist", to the "Spirit of His Time", he asked the
philosophic question : What Is The Best?
His questioning answer was: "ariston
men hydor" (The Best is Water). "What
Is" is Water, "Water " is "What Is":
"What Is" is "Water",
is "The Best". Thus, the arché,
the
hyle, cosmos, matter, its non-relation, its slave-master
relation,
was still slave-aristocratic, not yet slave-democratic. This is the
road
which "Thou" was still blazing. However, this was already the
masculine, patriarchal, patriotic, philosophic "Quo
Vadis?"
The
"Mythological" Quo Vadis
Long before Thales, all kinds of beings on Earth were acting, were trying to express "What Is" in words, in gestures, in symbols, in rock paintings, in hieroglyphics, in cuneiform writing, in language. Many human beings went further, were already acting and thinking, were asking ontological questions. And they were not only "Human Beings", in other words, not only Male Beings, Ruling, Cratic Beings! "Homo (Man) Kenyapithecus" or the "Neanderthal Man" probably did not even know that they were Men, were Machos.
If it is true what our "modern scientists" say, then among these Beings on Earth were also monkeys, apes and chimpanzees. At least, Charles Darwin already knew this. And, nowadays we know that: " Humans share 98.5 percent of their genes with chimpanzees" .
Actually, the above should be formulated as follows:
"Chimpanzees share 98.5 percent of
their genes with humans."
After all, the chimpanzees are our elders, they were born long before
the sonorous homo sapiens sapiens saw light on this
planet. The above is a typical arrogant manly "scientific" formulation.
These are not redundant remarks, also they have nothing to do with
sophistry or hair-splitting, they indicate what patrian ideology and
hegemony are all about.
Certainly, "Primitive Man" was not only performing "monkey business", (s)he was also asking simple, crucial questions. How did (s)he ask these questions, by what method of communication? This is another topic. That (s)he had a "brain", like millions of other beings on Planet Earth, that (s)he was acting, this is certain, and this is, in the first place, what concerns us here.
Long before Thales, as early as 2000 B.C., when the "Africans" had already "discovered" America, in the slave-owning society of pharaonic Egypt, ruled by "Blacks", where one of the ancient "Seven Wonders", the pyramids, reflected a strong "this-sided" modus vivendi, atheistic crypto-materialistic conceptions were rife. In one of the extant papyrus manuscripts of that remote epoch, we can read: "Man disintegrates and his body changes itself into earth." In the City of Death, "earth" was emphasized as an important archaic element. These ancient Egyptians were very much "down to earth", and for them, "earth" was one of the magical material elements of "What Is", of Essence.
A thousand years later, in faraway "Mother India", the Upanishads, the Sanskrit theosophic and philosophic treatises dealt with cosmic materialist doctrines. Five primordial elements were expounded: water, air, fire, time and space. This was long before Thales declared "water" as being aristocratic, or before Anaximenes of Miletus had declared "air" to be the arché.
The Chandogya-Upanishad stated:
"When water evaporates, then it becomes air, truly, air consumes everything."
Hence we find in ancient India an anticipatory transhistoric fata morgana a priori of the Milesian School. Around 700 B.C., when
Ancient Greece was still directed from the Oracle of Delphi, the oriental Samkhya
School taught that everything originated from the prakrti,
an infinite, eternal, primordial principle. Furthermore, before the
dawn
of the "Wise Men" in Greece, the Chinese
Dschou Jan School also taught about five elements: water, fire, earth, wood and metal. The real philosophic novelty about Thales,
who
was ushering in the commercial, patriarchal age that until today still
underlines aristocratic monotheism -- the religious ideological trend
towards the feudalist, absolutist God -- The Father, The Son, and
The Male Holy Ghost, towards The Holy Trinity, to the All-In-One
-- is that he made Mediterranean "Business", Water, a
Hen-Kai-Pan, an Unomnia, a Universal One-And-All.