Transcript
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T H E CI V I L SO S O CI CI ET Y A n I n t e r v i ew W i t h M er a b Mamardashvili
The idea idea of t he civil socie society ty is in th e air t hese days. I t is an old idea, idea, of course, course, but one that seems to have a special resonance in the cont cont empor ary climat e of social social opinion. One One notes a num ber of int ernational conferences conferences on on th e subject. I n a r ecent ecent ar ticle Daniel Daniel Bell Bell surveyed th is rebirth of int erest erest and concluded that "t he demand for a retur n t o civil civil soc socie iety ty is the demand for a return to a manageable scale of social social life. life. I t emph asize asizes s voluntar y asso associa ciations, tions, churches, churches, and comm unit ies, ies, arguing that decisi decisions ons should be m ade locally locally and should not be controlled by the State and its bureaucracies." This demand is keenly keenly felt in t he Soviet Soviet Union Union w here th e winds of glasnost glasnost and perestr perestr oika are blowing thr ough established established structu res. PrePre- eminent among th ose ose calling calling for a ret urn to t he civil civil society society in t he Soviet Soviet Union is Merab Merab Mamar Mamar dashvili, dashvili, of t he Institute of Philosophy, Academy of Sciences, in the Georgian Soviet Republic. Born in 1930 in t he tow n of Gori, Georgia, Georgia, Mamardashvili is one one of a new br eed of philosopher philosopher in the Soviet Union: outspoken, broadly read and international in repute. He is the author of m any books and art icles icles including including Form Form s and Content Content s of Thinking, Thinking, published published in 1 968; The Problem of Objective Method in Psychology, published in 1977; Classic and Non- classic classic I deals of Ration Ration ality , pub lished in 1984 ; Phenom enology and it s Role in Contemporary Philosophy and Consciousnm and the Philosophical Calling, both published in 198 8; and Cartesian Cartesian Thought Thought s, to be published this year. He was recent recent ly appointed a Richard D. Lom Lom bard I nt ernational Fellow Fellow at t he Kett Kett ering Foundation Foundation in Dayt on, Ohio, and late in t he summ er he conducted conducted a series series of seminar seminar s there. The following following int erview reflects what was on Mamardashvili's mind at that time. __ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ CAR - What is it like being a pr ofesso ofessorr in th e Soviet Soviet Union Union t oday? MM - I don't do much teaching. In the Soviet Union the functions of teaching and research research are quit e strictly separated. separated. CAR - Would you like t o do m ore teaching? MM - Not in t he conditions as as they exist now. Marxist- Lent ph ilosophy ilosophy is required of every student in the universities and it takes armies of professors to meet this demand. I f I were a profes professo sorr I would beco become me part of t hat arm y and I wouldn't find that v ery inter esting. esting. Researc esearch h is m ore energizing and liberat ing. CAR - Where did you do y our un iversity d egree? MM - At t he University University of Mosc Moscow. ow. That w as a mistake. I should have stayed in Georgia.
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CAR - Why was it a mistake? MM - Because there was no one there who could teach me anyt hing I want ed to kn ow. I was forced t o learn by m yself. So I t aught m yself English and Germ an and later French and spent most of my time in the libraries reading. CAR - Who did you read? MM - A lot of modern philosophy but especially the classical thinkers. Plato, Descartes and Kant are m y beloved philosophers. CAR - Weren' t th ose classics taugh t in Moscow? MM - Only in highly t run cated form and largely to be refut ed as decadent t hinkers. You have to remember I was a student in the late forties. Stalin was still in power and it was at the height of the anti-cosmopolitan ideology. CAR - How do you describe yourself as a philosopher? MM - In traditional terms I would be called a metaphysician. CAR - You ar e also billed as a p olitical ph ilosopher. MM - In traditional terms it is quite natural to go from metaphysics to political philosophy. Plato and Kant would be ex amples. CAR - What is your m ain int erest as a philosopher? MM - The study of consciousness and the symbolic structures of consciousness. CAR - How did y ou first become interested in philosophy? MM - By way of life. By a sense of aloneness, as though I had come from another planet and found everyt hing strange. At some point in life, quite early in life, I think we all have a sense of being wrenched out of t he norm al, of seeing ordinary t hings otherwise. Things that go by themselves for other people do not go by themselves for you. Life is full of signs to be int erpret ed, Most we let pass. Some, however , we t hink about. Then we become philosophers. Then th e signs begin to shed light on events. CAR - How early in life did t his happen with you? MM - I remem ber one day in t he fifth grade we were studying a history of Egypt. I n th e text a slave comp lains about his life. He sees no good in it and w ants to comm it suicide in order t o go to paradise. I h ave always remem bered the slave's complaint and eventually I cam e to see reality as he saw it and th at r aised questions of j ustice and rights in my m ind. But later I cam e to see that t he slave was wrong in wanting to att ain an ideal life thr ough suicide. The ideal always has to be an aspect of t he real t o be effectiv e. The above is in th e below. We can't take short cuts thr ough history . We can't j um p ou t of hist or y. Grad ually it occurred t o m e t hat it was what Russia did : she j um ped out of history and committed the metaphysical suicide of trying to bypass reality for the ideal. CAR - Explain all of that. MM - We have to go back. As a philosopher int erested in th e phenomenon of consciousness - how consciousness shapes reality, perceives reality and can be mistaken about reality - I naturally draw heavily on Kant w hose work on t his subject has not in m y m ind been surpassed. But it was actually thr ough Marx t hat I came t o the problem in the first place, especially what Marx had to say about false consciousness. The question that occurr ed to m e was: could y ou have a social situation t hat so co-opt ed consciousness th at n o philosophical question could ever arise, t hat no ideas would ever com e into our heads th at w ere not contr olled by t he social situ ation. I also read Orw ell as a stu dent and Orwell and Marx converged on t he question of how language functions to m ediate reality and t o let consciousness emerge or not emerge. So the whole question of critical though t file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/kjakers.OWU/M...ocuments/My%20Webs/civicarts/Vol.%202%20No.%203.htm (2 of 8)9/10/2007 9:06:25 AM
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became central for me. CAR - Are you a Marxist? MM - No. CAR - Why not? MM - Because he was wrong about too m any t hings. CAR - What w as he wrong about ? MM - I 'll come t o th at. I was explaining about consciousness and history . So it occurred to me that the Soviet Union was a state that had complete control of the structures of consciousness, such that no critical questions could arise. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that this had long been the case, that a long history of Russia had prepared t he advent of Marxist- Leninism and Stalinism and t he kind of state the Soviet Union has become in the 20th century. CAR - How far back in history do you go? MM - Back at least t o I van the Terrible in the 16th century. I think t here we find the substitution of what I would call anthr opomorphic thought for historical thought. I van destr oyed Russian society , he left every th ing in ru ins. You m ay recall th at in his tim e the aristocracy was developing the idea that property was to be held in perpetuity. This posed a threat to the authority and the power of Ivan. So he invented a police force whose role was to spy on the enemies of the tsar. Not surprisingly, it turned out that there were quite a few such enemies and they were all property holders. In this way Ivan substit ut ed the reality of th e tsar as th e centr al social and political reality. Nothing was important if it didn't coincide with the will of the tsar. All of society became an elongated shadow of the tsar. But shadows aren't real. From that time forward unreality became the condition of social life in Russia. Russia became a shadow society. That is why the Enlight enm ent bypassed Russia. And t hat is certainly one of t he reasons why th e October 1917 Revolution succeeded. I t f orm alized a long ahistor ical tradit ion, recreating t he conditions that gave r ise to it . I t w as unreality built on u nreality. As a consequence, Soviet citizens are still always shadow boxing , gett ing 48 kinds of perm ission t o do simple things, not knowing ever wh o holds their destiny in hand, finding every attem pt at a rational action thwarted by the shadows. CAR - You sound like Kafka. MM - I t was Kafka wh o described the state as enveloping us everywhere bu t we can find it nowhere. CAR - This raises the t ricky question of how we kn ow w hen we are in history. Certainly Marx and Lenin thought they were in history, on the very cutting edge of history as a m atter of fact. MM - Som e cultu ral symbols m ay help explain this bett er th an analysis. During Lenin's funeral there were banners proclaiming such things as: communism is the cradle of hum anity, w e will lead humanity into paradise, let the litt le children come to us, and the like. Lenin w as buried in a position and in clothes reminiscent of Christ in the t om b. This deliberate parodying of r eligious sym bolism is in itself indicative of ahistorical thinking, which is to say a form of thought that postulates ideals in such a way that they can never effectively interact with the real. Similarly, at the level of analysis Marx mystified the social process by appealing to the utopian thinking of the classless society, which was an updated v ersion of t he Golden Age m yt h. But where does the Golden Age exist? Nowhere. U-topia. To be effective, symbolic think ing has to be a way of illum inating reality. The sym bol of t he Golden Age doesn't say such an age once existed and we m ust file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/kjakers.OWU/M...ocuments/My%20Webs/civicarts/Vol.%202%20No.%203.htm (3 of 8)9/10/2007 9:06:25 AM
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recover it. I t is not something m aterial. I t cannot be destroyed by a mat erial event nor can it be realized in a mat erial event. Now Marx took t he Golden Age for a m aterial event. He thought by get ting rid of priv ate propert y a classless society w ould com e about. He converted a metaphysical entity into a material possibility. That is the mistake the alchemists made. They tried to turn material means into spiritual ends. CAR - How m uch of th is was Marx and how m uch th ose like Lenin who u sed his thought? MM - Later thinkers elaborated, but the mistake is in Marx's own thinking. CAR - So how do we kn ow w e are in history ? MM - Histor ical existence requires conscious hum an part icipation in t he event s of history. This is how I get f rom m y ph ilosophical concept of consciousness to a polit ical theory. History begins with the ability to describe history reflectively, the ability to fill in the blank spaces and provide meaning. I f I were to put it in t erms of my theory of th e civil society I would say t hat historical reality is disclosed by citizens deliberat ing t ogether in public forums. CAR - Tell us m ore about th is theory. MM - All m y life I have lived in a compr essed society. The distinction b etween t he state and society was eliminated. Our public life was like a black h ole in t he univer se, so dense th at it collapsed in on itself. I will express m y not ion in an im age. Think of a chess gam e. You cannot understand a chess gam e by exam ining t he pawns; you cannot even understand a chess game by w atching th e mov es; you can only understand a chess gam e by un derstanding t he storm of psychic forces betw een the m oves. Civic life is like that . I t takes place in the pauses, in the intervals, in the spaces of public life. The poet Rilke spoke of leben in figuren - life as a play of symbols. I use spatial im ages to m ake the point th at we need room t o think, to find ourselves, t o determine our comm on purposes. So the concept of civil society calls for some distinctions: between pu blic and privat e, between state and society, between the ideal and the real, between the inner and outer worlds. The civil society is based on an act of b elief t hat by t rusting people to pursue their own interests a symmetry will develop between the private and public worlds, that our fr ee actions will converge for t he com m on good. During t he War it used to be said th at t he Germ ans were well organized. But exactly t he opposite was tr ue. You cannot organize society by imposing everything from the outside, squashing and denigrating everyt hing t hat ar ises spontaneously. That is what happened in t he October Revolution. The state stepped in and tried to mediate everything. And that is the death of civil society. It condemns citizens to a life after death, a minimal life that is guaranteed by the state but cannot grow. But as a French poet says: Personne ne veut se rendre son âme - We don't want to sell our souls. Now we have to return to the foundations and think historically about how we got out of history. We have to lift up our heads and liberate independent social forces. I h ave to say here that Marx w as absolutely blind t o the existence and th e impor tance of privacy as a condition of politics. Privat e propert y and classes as independent social agents are necessary conditions for the civil society. When nobody is independent no politics is possible. A stat e wit hout citizens is a monstrosity. There is a great irony in Marx because in denying priv ate propert y he created a wor se form of private property. Do you know what t hat was? CAR - What was it? MM - Privilege. It's devastating. It leads to the worst kind of political corruption which is the arbitr ary exercize of power. file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/kjakers.OWU/M...ocuments/My%20Webs/civicarts/Vol.%202%20No.%203.htm (4 of 8)9/10/2007 9:06:25 AM
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We in Am erica have th e str ong im pression that th ings are changing in th e Soviet Union, that a new day is dawning. MM - The cat is out of the bag and I do not think we can put it back in. Still, the outcom e of the present effort s of glasnost and perestr oika is far from cert ain. We are moving around in a kind of fog and no one is quite sure about what is going on. I personally, of course, support th e reform efforts and I have since the early 50 s. Stalin was still alive but even then t he spirit of reform was in the air. One source was the earlier, humanistic Marx who spoke so eloquently about genuine human development and alienation. It struck many of us that however severe alienation might be in the capitalist countries it was certainly very severe also under Stalin. I t w as a great int ellectual tr agedy that Marx's thought did not develop along these lines rather than sinking in the morass of utopian thinking. The other source for reformist t hought w as the hum anist tradition of th e great Russian w rit ers of the 19 th centu ry and t he religious philosophers like Nicolas Berdyaev. Their thought was kept alive by members of the older generation, some of whom were in concentr ation camps, some of whom taugh t in obscure provincial schools, some of whom were in exile, and some of whom went m y way of learning on t heir own and trying t o stay out of t rouble. I n tim e we came to know one another and in tim e, too, we came t o have a cert ain influence. CAR - But you are not inclined to over estim ate t hat influ ence? MM - Far from it. There is still a very prim itive social gramm ar in t he Soviet Union, th e result of long centur ies of shadow existence. That is why Marxism str uck so many as a sophisticated political and economic philosophy. People didn't know th e difference and were not equipped to exam ine it critically, historically. There is still somet hing woefully lacking in t he average citizen's sense of reality, somet hing brok en in th eir relationship to the world around them. They lack drive, they lack a love of life, they lack the will to self- determ ination. They are people without consequence, that is people who cannot understand social processes, w ho are unable t o m ake social ju dgm ents and wh o lack t he ability every citizen must have to relate external events to their internal convictions. In Marxian language t hey are alienated. Som e Western ers say w hat we need is a good Constitution. But we have a good Constitution, perhaps the most democratic and forward looking of any in existence. The problem is we have so few citizens who are capable of living according t o it and r ealizing what is embodied in it . Recently I was talking t o som e university students. They were complaining about t he presence of so many policemen on their campus. I said, Why don't you organize and get rid of them. These days that might have some chance of success. But th ey j ust gave m e a blank look. That kind of self- determination hadn't occurred to t hem. CAR - How th en will reform com e about? Can t he state create a civil society in th e process of reform ing it self? MM - No, absolutely not. The state is the problem not the solution. Although I must confess many of my colleagues think that is the way to go. CAR - I s Gorbachev on th e right tr ack? MM - I think so, unquestionably. CAR - What are his chances of success? MM - No one can say. CAR - This seems to leave you in a very precarious situation for if the public spaces you desire were in fact created wouldn't there be a great danger that they would be file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/kjakers.OWU/M...ocuments/My%20Webs/civicarts/Vol.%202%20No.%203.htm (5 of 8)9/10/2007 9:06:25 AM
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occupied by t he wr ong people? MM - There is no guarantee that th e civil society is always benign. But we m ust t ake th e risk. The civil society corr esponds to t he historical possibilities of m an and histor y as a dram a of good and evil. This is th e dignity of m an: the choice of good and evil. CAR - I sn't t his somew hat f atalistic. I t seems t o dim inish the political effectiv eness of the freedom you desire. MM - There is no formu la for hum an freedom or rem edy for hu m an idiocy. Political efficacy is not the issue. Freedom is the issue. CAR - That seems t o place you squarely wit h t he great 19t h century Russian wr iters. MM - I t places me in the m ainstream of the Western t radition. It m akes me an historical thinker. CAR - What do you t hink t he social role of the philosopher, or any t hinker for th at m att er, should be? Should they speak out and be socially com m itt ed? MM - Speaking out is not th e only way of doing ph ilosophy. Given m y background, I could make a case for the philosopher as spy. CAR - But don't you have a special responsibility to society? MM - I will not be a martyr. I will speak to the leadership when it is ready to hear me. Meanwhile, in m y own ways, I will encourage and educate t he leadership. CAR - We are still left wit h t he question of how t he reform s might concretely come about in t he Soviet Union. MM - Several th ings can be ment ioned. To begin with , t he idea of reform has taken root in the minds of many thinkers and a considerable number of politicians, who are not to be confused wit h t he Part y fu nctionaries. There is considerable ethnic unr est which if properly channeled can help the reform movement; in some states like Latvia and Estonia the genetic memory is reborn in a fresh outburst of republican spirit; there is unpr ecedented innovat ion in satellite nat ions like Hungary and Poland. Also t here is the force of world opinion and a growing sense of solidarity among nations. I am inclined to speculate that the ecology movement might be the strongest force for reform. The Green Movement is very strong in the Soviet Union. In any event, reform is decidedly begun and in my own view it is now or never, the last chance for the Soviet Union to get on course. I f t his mom ent passes another is not likely to come again soon. CAR - Is the Cold War over? MM - The Cold War was in part the result of the primitive social grammar I referred to. We spoke about capitalism and socialism as though t hey were t wo compet ing systems. But capitalism is not a system in t he same way th at socialism is a system . Capitalism , if we understand it as the way of maximizing profits by means of large, concentrated, but socially fragm ented product ion - t hat capitalism is only one historical phenomenon among the many phenomena that characterize contemporary European society. It is one phenomenon existing along with other phenomena that are entirely different in nature, in what m ight be called t he cont empor ary European civil society, urban indu strial society. The entir e energy, all of the cultur e in what I call urban industr ial democracies, is channeled through many social institutions and by forces that have nothing inherently in comm on with what I would properly call the capitalist phenom enon, in the strict m eaning of that word. A capitalist phenomenon does not, from its inherent nature, penetrate all of th e phenomena of m odern European and American society. I n t hat sense, t he capitalist system does not exist. But t hat cannot be said about socialism . Socialism represents a system and a structu re file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/kjakers.OWU/M...ocuments/My%20Webs/civicarts/Vol.%202%20No.%203.htm (6 of 8)9/10/2007 9:06:25 AM
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which from its internal nature has penetrated t hrough all the ot her phenomena of our society, including the m oral and ideological strata. Our problem , t hen, consists in this: th at w e have socialist system s in t his sense, bu t th ere is no developed civil society. Western countries faced the problem, in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, of implementing the capitalist phenomenon in a civil society; for us the problem is to implement the socialist phenomenon - in other words to convert what is so far the only system, into becoming one phenomenon along with the other phenomena of a developed, articulated, and structur ed civil society in w hich socialism could really take its place. I t would be one phenom enon. And it should take t hat place because socialism is a great European idea, one of the great European ideas. CAR - Perhaps socialism along the lines of the welfare democracies of Western Europe? MM - Oh no! I don't think welfare is a good thing at all. CAR - Not even for t he destit ut e? MM - Of course, we have t o help people. I am opposed to t he principle of welfare because it makes people dependent. To be mature we have to know why and how we live, wh at are t he sources of our existence. Ortega y Gassett wrot e about t he m asses as dead tissue, m eaning that large num bers of people have no relationship with t he sources of their existence. We come to that understanding through work and responsibility. But the principle of welfare alienates people from such sources as Marx so well said in his early wr itings. When I speak of socialism as a great idea I m ean the pr inciple of self- determination. I mean in short citizens who are developed to such an extent that they have social ju dgm ent, and m uscles for r esponsible and r isky actions in a society where they cannot even imagine a life in which they would not recognize themselves - or be without consequence. I do not want to live the kind of life in which I would not recognize myself, and I could not consider that kind of life to be my life. Only such people may be called citizens. Not t hose who have t he right to t ake part in public affairs, but those who are obligated and ar e capable of carry ing out their dut ies in public life. This is an old Greek idea, one of the great achievement s of Greek society: we have not simply r ights, but the obligation to take part in public affairs, to resolve our own problems. CAR - Did you learn that from Plato? MM - Yes. What att racted m e to Plato was his powerful m etaphor of th e cave in wh ich he depicts people str uggling w ith shadows. That w as my problem too. And Plato showed a way out : he showed that th e shadows can be t ranscended by consciousness, by t he ideal. And he showed further that there was not a complete rupture between the ideal and t he reality. The polis can contain an ideal wor ld as one elem ent of its sociality. The body social is the carrier of r ationality. Plato did not m ake the m istake of Marxist- Leninism: he did not let the ideal determine the real. Rather he began with the real, with th e shadows, and reached th e ideal th rough t he ideal. I t corresponds to what Christian theologians call the incarnational principle, the idea that commitment to the concrete and fidelity t o daily tasks and work well done can be a way of realizing t he ideal. When Plato's thought came into the religious tradition it became bifurcated: the Western strand retained m uch of Plato's realism and by t he tim e we get t o the Purit ans it is in full flower. The Eastern strand, which quit e powerfully influenced Russia, em braced a m ore m ystical, other-w orldly interpretation, holding t hat salvation consisted in denying the w orld rather th an w orking to realize its ideal possibilities. CAR - You've m entioned I m m anuel Kant several t im es. What political lessons do you draw from that very difficult philosopher? file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/kjakers.OWU/M...ocuments/My%20Webs/civicarts/Vol.%202%20No.%203.htm (7 of 8)9/10/2007 9:06:25 AM
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MM - Kant believed t hat th e structur e of consciousness was the same in everyone so bringing int elligence to bear on social problem s was by t he sam e token w ithin the gr asp of all. He believed that th e spread of r eason by its own logic would r esult in greater freedom and more civil liberties. He spoke about governments treating people with the dignity that should be accorded r ational people. The part icular idea I like in Kant is what he says about "t he citizen of the w orld." One of Kant's rules of thought was to always think through the eyes of another and thus become cosmopolitan in outlook. Today we m ust all think from each oth er's perspectiv es and th us become citizens of th e world. H o m e Pa g e
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