Exam 2 Response for PHL4020 Continental Philosophy, taught by Dr. Donovan Miyasaki

Andrew Correll   

March 26, 2020 

A2

Sports executives talk about how they need the “face of a franchise” who the crowds can relate to, but the philosopher Adorno might remark that such thinking is how fascism starts. Adorno thinks a fascist leader exerts such influence by channeling his follower's natural self-love towards himself, thereby becoming the goal maker of a collective group of people driven by their unconscious psyche. 

Without a face, a fascist movement can’t thrive, and Adorno would say this is because Freudian narcissistic self-love needs an object to attach to. Those in love tend to think of themselves as an “item” and idealize their partner. Likewise, followers in a way merge with the fascist leader by making him an “idealization”1 of what they want themselves to be. Adorno says this occurs when people don’t satisfy their “ego demands’’ and have a hard time accomplishing things in life, so “by making the leader his ideal [the follower] loves himself” (140) vicariously living through him. The leader has to appear “as superman” (141) to be like people’s ideal of themselves, maybe by dressing well or by having lots of influence. However, he must also appear “as an average person” (141) because if followers can’t see themselves at all in the leader then this narcissistic self-love won’t take root. To accomplish this middle ground, the leader “turns his own unconscious outward” by speaking in an “uninhibited but largely associative” manner (148). People then see something they admire, the ability to speak without worrying about what others think, but also something that is less than optimal, “a temporary lack of ego  

control” reminiscent of themselves (148). No one is entirely “weakness” or entirely “strength,” so the fascist leader “skillfully merge[s]” the two concepts in his behavior (148). 

While Freudian psychology assumes personal superego control of the id (the primitive desires), the leader replaces everyone’s personal superego with himself since everyone is already self-identifying so strongly with him. A social creature is made with the leader in charge of the group’s collective “expression of instincts and urges” (151). This is why it is not a removal of “psychology” (associated with the super ego and sense of self) but a psychological “revitalization” that “has been taken over by their leaders” (151). Thus, “All [the leader] has to do in order to make the psychology of his audience click, is shrewdly to exploit his own psychology” by making “rational use of the irrational” since he is the controller of the group’s base id desires (148). 

Modern populist political movements also build around a leader largely controlled by their id. Leaders like Donald Trump similarly use generalities playing off “stereotypical thinking,” which Adorno would say removes “self-sufficiency and autonomy of the individual” (152). With a singular superego, people no longer break the “status quo” (150), as their goal-creating personal superego has been replaced with the leader’s. This naturally leads to much conformity, as people in a fascist society fit in with everyone else because fascism “relies absolutely on the total structure” of that around them, in particular “each…trait of the authoritarian character” (150) or leader.

 A potential criticism of Adorno is that his view of a leader manipulating people’s instinctual urges doesn’t explain how nonparticipants resisted manipulation in the fascist collective superego. Another philosopher who analyzed the origins of movements like the Nazis—Hannah Arendt—specifically addresses how people avoided it—by being skeptical of what was told them. Adorno would likely respond to such a critique that he also provided a solution because understanding the problem is usually the remedy. If you understand the mechanism of how a virus spreads, it is easy to wash your hands and prevent getting sick. Likewise, while he doesn’t explicitly mention those that chose to not cooperate, knowing that followers around you are idealizing a manipulative fascist leader and self-identifying with him can help you disengage from the process yourself. Nazi nonparticipants probably had intuitive explanations very similar to Adorno’s for why their countrymen were following along, albeit less eloquently stated than in Adorno’s extensive essay. 

If a critic wants an explicit solution, it is rather evident in how his discussion revolves around an almost universally-established human vice—pride. He clearly describes how the commonly viewed sin of self-love (pride) underpins the adoration of such a leader, so it follows that if you abstain from an overabundance of pride then you likely won’t fall prey. A critic might argue though that Adorno quotes Freud’s seemingly universal picture of all love being out of narcissism (140), so how can a nonparticipant—who must experience some kind of love in life—not fall at least partially prey to a fascist leader? Adorno would likely respond that they do fall partially prey to the leader but not to where their self-love has grown so intense that he replaces their personal superego. For example, Adorno says, “It is precisely this idealization of himself which the fascist leader tries to promote in his followers,” using the word “promote” as if some self-love is already there. However, the diction of “tries” implies he is not entirely successful with every individual. Indeed, in the Freud quote Adorno cites it says “suggestion” is needed to convince the people “whose ego ideal would not have become embodied in [the leader] without some correction” (142). 

A critic might further question Adorno’s analysis by asking, “What makes the difference 

 between the fervor aroused by a fascist leader and the moderate response elicited by a democratic leader who similarly tries to get votes?” Adorno would likely respond that it largely lies in whether the leader purposely manipulates others by using id-driven associate speech. Only when leaders try to “befool…others” by “depend[ing] on their orality” (148) is fascism a possibility in Adorno’s view.

B5 

Science and religion do not mingle at parties. Both plea for the death of the other, but some philosophers like Nishitani have tried to merge the two fields in the phenomenological view. By separating from yourself and from the world’s influence, you can view things in the world as wholly what they are—relations dependent on other things against a backdrop of nothingness.

His argument in “Science and Zen” begins with acknowledging “all the teleological systems…ha[ve] once and for all been completely destroyed,”2 but he thinks there is a fundamental problem with this scientific worldview. Scientists who speak objectively about the world do so as subjective individuals in the first person, as “if their lives had purpose and meaning” (118). Nishitani comments on a Zen monk and master dialogue saying, “‘It’ must also follow ‘the other’ and must perish together with the universe” (121). The “It” in the quote refers to an “inner dimension” of a person (120) and “the other” is “the universe” (121), so the quote essentially means you can’t describe the end of the universe—“the other”—without describing the end of you—the “it.” The end of the world (a scientific reality) and your existence (a human, teleological reality) are tied together, so even the reclusive monk fails to cut himself off entirely from the material world. A merging of science and religion is hinted at here, but Nishitani  

explains something that goes beyond both worldviews.

Nishitani’s solution involves “absolute negation” (120) of the world and oneself. The monk shunned the world in order to save himself from it, thereby not negating himself because his actions had a goal with him in mind. Similarly, the scientist doesn’t negate himself when he is an outside observer to the mechanical world. Full, absolute negation requires “self-abandonment,” essentially “throwing away one’s life” (129), which does not mean to kill yourself. Instead it relates to the Buddhist idea of “no self” where things cause other things to come in and out of existence. Therefore, no selves or objects exist in their own right because they are dependent on and part of the total entity, like when Nishitani says “the universe under those conditions is an expression of himself or…a revelation of his own selfhood” (123). The causal dependence of the world is seen in his statement that “any component element of anything constitutes a similar qualitative unity” (128). When a man “unburden[s] himself of himself” (124) Nishitani calls this “the Great Death” (124). 

Just like how the existentialists are so concerned with being true to yourself, this “Great Death” satisfies their existential concerns because it reveals “the dimension where he truly exists as himself” (124) in all its relations—without the blinding religious and scientific views. Nishitani says this “Great Death” is “an essential transformation of man…[or] a mode of religious existentiality” (123), so you realize you are essentially nothing more than relations (which is against spirituality) while at the same time existentially not understanding the world merely as objects, which is what a spiritual ascetic might strive for.

Phenomenology is closely associated with Heidegger and Nishitani’s understanding of truth as an “unveil[ing]” (124). Nishitani says the “Great Death” opens up a “field of emptiness” that allows “the myriad phenomena to attain their true being and realize their truth” (128). A critic might argue that this view of emptiness could be attained by any scientist or monk who still believes in the self, but Nishitani would respond that this idea of the self “is only an idea or representation of our true self” (128). He says, “In order for us to get to our background” or “field of bottomlessness” to see things “as they appear…in their true facticity” (129) one must go through this “Great Death” (128). For example, a chemist would have a jilted view of artwork, maybe focusing on the pigment chemical make-up of the painting, so removing yourself and framing the art against a field of bottomlessness or “śūnyatā"(128) allows one to see the whole thing as it appears in all its relations. 

Phenomenology aims to see things as “non-analyzable unit[ies]” or as “eidos” (128), and only against the black canvas of “śūnyatā" can “man’s intellect” see things in their “eidos” as wholes and as the relational things they are (127). In this worldview you can still “endlessly analyz[e] this whole into component elements” (127), which is common in science, but the importance lies in first seeing the whole. When you “start…from the mass of analyzed elements as it’s given,” then Nishitani says the mind “is incapable of creating the original whole with its eidos” (127) and you lose part of reality. In other words, “sunyata” is the context in which the concepts X and Y are related, and this consciousness is “always in [the] back of us when we face ‘objects’ in front of ourselves” (128). So, is Nishitani’s view more closely related to science or religion? The answer must be neither, as you experience things in “śūnyatā" as a merged “single vision” that “grasp[s] both sides simultaneously” (129).