Why I Do What I Do (Kind of)

A lot of people, especially those who I wait on, ask me what I am studying in school. Given the nature of my jobs, this curiosity isn’t that surprising; it can be annoying, however, since the title of my major isn’t a very clear indicator of what I actually study or what I’m interested in. When I tell people that I’m a political science major, most of them automatically assume that I am deeply excited by the inner workings of the federal government and want to go work on some local senate campaign. To be polite, I usually give in to their desire to have a “chat about politics”, often biting my tongue when they express opinions rather contrary to my own (really, Minnesotans, do you have to think that abolishing the minimum wage will make life better?) ⁰. I feel compelled to do this a. because I work in the service industry and can’t spend too much time chatting with a few customers at the expense of others and b. because most people would not give a fuck about what I actually study and how I justify being in a major that mostly doesn’t interest me.

A lot of people who know me (and know of my interests in critical theory and philosophy) ask me “Then why be a political science major? Why not major in English? Why not philosophy?”. I couldn’t really give an honest answer to these questions for quite a while (I kept saying that it was due to convenience and the lack of actual required classes). This led to me exploring other majors like English and Religious Studies, mostly enrolling in classes that explored theory from those perspectives. These classes were mostly interesting; they often introduced me to different aspects of theorists or their writings that I had been previously exposed to in other courses.

It wasn’t until last semester, however, in a Modern Lit Crit class, that I finally realized why I am still a fucking political science major. This class, much to my delight, turned out to be a survey of the major theoretical movements since Hegel that went beyond their impact on the study of literature. Most of the class was spent reading excerpts from important figures (Derrida, Hegel, Freud etc…) and discussing their basic points and influence. To supplement our extensive readings on postmodernism, we read an essay by Habermas that (predictably) extolled us not to give up quite yet on the incomplete project of the Enlightenment. Most people in the class were absolutely puzzled as to why we were reading something that seemed so far removed from literary criticism ¹; I was absolutely fascinated. This piece captivated me in a way that most of the rest of the class was unable to, not because I love Habermas (he’s great but misguidedly idealistic), but because it was theory that concerned itself with everyday life. That reading, and that class, helped me realize that what I love most is applied philosophy, thinking about people and their relationships to the world, each other, and themselves. ²

All political science, on some level, is studying human interactions – each subfield examines a different level of such interactions. While IR studies the relationships between states and political psychology looks at the development of leaders of states, straight political theory attempts to determine the relationships between people that lead to the formation of (and then sustain) such states. This examination of the citizenry and their interactions is what draws me to political theory, applied philosophy, over pure political science (too often driven by the quantitative) or philosophy. It’s not simply looking at data and drawing conclusions or theorizing about different aspects of the human experience (the mind, ethical behavior etc…); it’s about our total being and the material world in which we exist.³

0. While bartending yesterday, I had a conversation with one of the regulars who claimed that if everyone just demanded to be paid just as much as they thought their work was worth, the economy would magically heal itself since there’d be no reason to pay people a certain minimum wage. (Because, shit, my work isn’t worth 7.25 an hour at all. I need to work harder and demand my true worth of infinity dollars a minute.) At least he left a 25% tip.

1. They, of course, were wrong. I blame this on the large number of people who become English majors because they like books but don’t like to read.

2. Yes, I know, philosophy isn’t about anything but people. However, its focus tends to be on the study of the individual person and the different physical and mental processes that make up the person rather than on the interactions of people with others. In a way, it’s on the opposite spectrum from most other political science that, as I mention later, usually examines the interaction between political societies.

3. I realize just how Marxist that sounds (wow, guys, let’s not just think, let’s change the world!), and I am still trying to reconcile this position with my intense love for such postmodern thinkers like Nietzsche and Derrida. Considering how long it’s taken me to figure why I do what I do, I’ll probably be dead before I fucking know what’s what.

Public Sphere

I have many issues with Habermas’ formulation of the public sphere. Does it exist? Did it ever exist? Can it ever exist in this age of ideologies (both in the conventional, political and the Adornian senses)?

More thoughts on this later, but my main query is this. Can we possibly attempt to resurrect the “goals” of the Enlightenment and enact them within a framework that has terribly exclusionary origins? Is it is possibly to glean the best from the past without repeating its failures? Is this all to idealist? Or pragmatic?

Thoughts on Rousseau

Might as well just jump right in!

THE first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows, “Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.”

– Discourse on Inequality, Part II

So, Rousseau’s The Social Contract is really fucking boring, especially when it’s approached as the last in the series of basic contractarian political theorists (preceded by Hobbes and Locke, of course). When I (at least attempted to) read it for Early Modern Thought, it was profusely dry, just as dreadfully dull as the explicitly political parts of Leviathan and the Second Treatise. I really didn’t care to read his reasoning as to why Geneva was the bomb or how everyone is still free if they sacrifice equal amounts of their freedom in order to create a fair sovereign. Now, maybe I’m just bored by the particulars since I don’t really enjoy the actual study of political praxis, but, really, it’s because I was fucking spoiled.

Folks, fuck The Social Contract; read Discourse on Inequality instead. It’s both shorter and actually interesting. Rousseau’s basic argument in Inequality is that shit is broken – the way both the political and social realms have been set up to promote competition has allowed for the development of severe inequalities that are so great, we need to reinvent the way we operate as social human beings. This is the work that explains why we need the specific constructs present within The Social Contract. Now, the point that he’s attempting to make is pretty simple; the intriguing part of the book lie within the argument itself. Rousseau asserts that the origin of this fundamental selfishness, which leads to inequality, lies in language and its ability to both categorize and compare. When we use words to stand in for concepts, we are creating general groups of things that are exclusive of everything else (all things that look like trees are trees, but a rock is not a tree).

Once these categories are established, one can look at objects/actions/concepts and compare them to each other, both within and across categories. Rousseau, in the vein of many early modern thinkers, plays anthropologist and theorizes that primitive man, lacking these abilities, acted like an animal, grabbing at any opportunity to further his chances at survival. At some point, man realized that certain activities, like hunting, were easier with others and began to form groups in order to perform these common tasks. He posits that language arose from these groups’ need to communicate shared goals and flourished because of the continued contact within them.

Whether or not this is exactly how language developed is, obviously, unclear, and indeed, not that important to the argument at hand. What matters is that language carries with it inherent comparison. As soon as man acquired that ability, he was able to sort himself and his neighbors according to their characteristics. From that comes jealousy, and for Rousseau, jealousy is the root of all evil. When we are jealous, we are greedy, we want to be as good, if not better than others. We become self-serving and forget about other human beings. Another thing that proto-anthro Rousseau believed that primitive man possessed was a strange form of altruism, the ability to understand pain in others and want to stop it just because it hurt so much to think of oneself in such a situation. When envy is around, this selfish care for others is replaced with the overwhelming desire to destroy others in order to uphold the self, even at the cost of denying what one really wants. As pointed out above, this causes competition, which leads to inequalities; it also causes man to live a lie because he is trapped into trying to be better than his neighbor at all costs, just so he can stay ahead in society.

Now, that’s actually interesting. Some hidden linguistic theory in political science? Awesome! It gets even better, though. Rousseau’s presentation of the development of language is highly reminiscent of Nietzsche’s (and Foucault’s) conception of genealogy. First off, the most obvious point of comparison is that the focus is not on the actions of people themselves but on language, a common institution that, at least according to Rousseau, has a hidden influence/history. Secondly, language is not only topically the subject but also the actual dominant force in this narrative. People didn’t consciously create language and then manipulate it for their own purposes; language somehow came to be and manipulates the thoughts and actions of people. Look at that, an entire century before Nietzsche.

What is really murky in all of this is whether or not Rousseau really thinks primitive hunter gatherers, without a conception of self beyond animalistic need, are better off than us cunning, false people of modernity. He just ends Inequality on such a dour note, concluding with specific examples of how jealousy has ruined current societies. I guess that’s what The Social Contract is for, sorting out what to do next. I just fucking hate it.

Random Endnotes

• If you’re interested in reading any of these text, free English translations are available online, but I’d highly recommend looking for any edition published by Hackett at the library or bookstore.
• Discourse on Inequality reminded me why I study political theory – there are people!

Today’s Baking: Oatmeal Raisin Cookies
Currently Watching: “Patterns of Force”,  Star Trek
Currently Reading: Black Hawk Down