Texts:Rom-E-80-L-CaS-1
Citizens and Subjects
Educational Politics in Historical Perspective
"Cities and Empires: The Ancient & Medieval Experience,"
April 14, 1980
"Civic Virtue: The Renaissance & Revolutionary Experience,"
April 22, 1980
"Participation and Bureaucracy: The Modern Dilemma,"
May 2, 1980
I — The Citizen and the Subject
Chaos is chaos — nothing more can be said. Order is created, always the work of living choice. Human order is created by human choice, mortal choice, imperfect choice, the mysterious assertion of intention against chaotic necessity. Before order there was chaos — nothing more can be said. The human order that first appears, clear in view in history, was hierarchic, an order of subordination. This order was created, chosen, willed for reasons, both mystical and rational. The order was intentional, an effort to control necessity, to make it work for the good of people, for the good of life, for a conception of the good life, however foreign we may now feel it to be.
As human order first appeared, clear in view in history, it seemed to emerge in many places at many times. Perhaps it did in fact so emerge; or perhaps its multiple origin is an illusion created as necessity has later played havoc with the clues, the faint traces buried in the earth, the desperate notes cast to the future by peoples shipwrecked in time. We take the order, as we can best make it appear, and speak of it as best we can, for about the encroachments that the encompassing chaos has made on a once achieved order, nothing more can be said.
Thus an order emerged in many places at many times, a hierarchical order, an order of subordination. Wherever it emerged, it appeared as a variation of a single scheme: gods on high, bestowing the order, as they alone could; king at the earthly pinnacle, sole link to the godly givers, a link itself both god and man; priests and scribes, privileged servants, the conduits of order from its earthly bestower, the god-king, to its mundane receptacle, the people; and finally the people themselves, the timeless fellahin, the bacteria of history, symbiotically serving sophisticated forms of life, survival the fruit of their subordination.
An order of subordination thus emerged, in many times and many places, the first to leave a clear historical record of itself, one that was conscious, articulate in thought and action. Yet that did not complete the beginning. After the hierarchical order, the order of subordination, had emerged, there often intruded, again at many times and many places, new peoples from strange lands with foreign mores, tribal peoples, peoples who did not fit into the hierarchical scheme, who on first appearance were perceived, by those accustomed to subordination, as chaos, danger, disruption, who no matter were not chaos, for about them it proved that more could be said.
lo say what more could be said took time, or so it appears in the historical record as it has come to us pruned by necessity, for the new peoples were prone to fleeting speech, not yet to pictures or script that once lost still sometimes last. Yet it became clear eventually that subordination was not their way; rather reciprocal cooperation, a shared participation in the work, in the fruits, and in the suffering of the common enterprise of the community. Here was another order, not an order given by the gods, fixed and eternal, but an order continuously created through mutual interaction, adapted to the ever changing circumstances of peoples on the move, an order loosely structured by custom, reciprocal respect, competitive emulation, and the recurring celebration of heroic example, an order derived from shared memories, an order manifest through participation.
Wherever this order of participation emerged, it too appeared as a variation of a single scheme: gods also on high, themselves a community of peers, some more capable and thus more honored than others, but each with a distinct character, each participating autonomously in life, both Olympian and human; isomorphic with this community of gods, the human community, itself a community of peers, some likewise more capable and thus more honored than others, but each possessing a distinct character, each participating autonomously in the communal life, endlessly interacting each with all, each competing for heroic recognition, and in that competition, each personally helped or thwarted by the gods as one or all of them measured his merits and felt for him affection or animosity.
Thus two orders emerged into history at many places and many times, two forms of order, one of subordination and one of participation. Peoples ordering themselves according to subordination and participation often vied for occupation of the same human space. In time, some people even learned to use both forms of order more or less at once, but such a use could never become a thorough synthesis, for when enclosed within a single space, subordination and participation were like oil and water--they can be contained together but never mixed. Where an order of subordination exists the person is a subject; where an order of participation exists the person is a citizen. Citizen and subject, two ideal types, emerged into history each almost in pure form; the significance of this advent will become clear if we turn far forward, for a time, to later developments in pure epistemology, to certain findings in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason.
Order is created, always the work of living choice. It is an effort within experience acting on experience, and therefore limited by the possibilities of experience. In one way, with respect to possible contents, experience is infinite, limitless. But in another way, with respect to the form of experience, according to which it is possible to apprehend the contents, experience is strictly limited. "Experience is possible," Kant observed, "only through the representation of a necessary connection of perceptions." If, for a living being, there are no necessary connections between its ever-flowing perceptions, if each sense at every instant is gathering stimuli that are utterly discrete, lacking any link one to the other, no experience is possible; the encompassing chaos would be merely registered as encompassing chaos. For experience to exist, connections must be drawn between perceptions. To draw such connections, the sentient being must use first a principle of the permanence of substance: "in all change of appearance substance is permanent." Change ever continues; the same perception never occurs twice; to draw a connection between perceptions, there must be a enduring substance common to them which remains the same despite changing appearances; thus not susceptible to being the content of experience.
For experience to exist, for fleeting perceptions to become the coherent content of experience, for order to be created, a principle of the permanence of substance must be used. But this principle, necessary for experience, is not itself sufficient for experience to exist. The sufficient condition is either one or the other of two further principles, either the principle of production, of succession in accordance with the law of causality, or the principle of community, of coexistence in accordance with the law of reciprocity or mutual interaction. Perceptions of things possessing permanent substance can be connected in one of two ways, Kant observed. Either one conceives that the alterations successively perceived in time "take place in conformity with the law of the connection of cause and effect," or one conceives that all substances perceived coexist and "are in thorough-going reciprocity," "in thoroughgoing community, that is, in mutual interaction." AII experience will involve permanent substances, matters that endure in time and space, and those matters will either be linked in succession according to causal connections or they will coexist in community through their mutual interaction. Experience must be either causal or reciprocal, either a successive subordination of effects to causes, or a community of coexisting elements all mutually interacting through reciprocal relations. The sufficient principle, as a result of which it is possible to experience content-for our purposes, order in human life--will be either the principle of cause and effect or of mutual interaction. Therefore, experience of an order created in history will necessarily be an experience of either subordination or participation, of either hierarchy or reciprocity.
Two orders emerged into history at many times and many places, two types of order, one of subordination and one of participation. From Kant we learn that this was no mere historical accident, but rather the necessary result of the conditions through which experience is possible. It is not merely that two forms of order came into being, with the possibility that other forms might have come into being; on the contrary it is that only two forms of order are possible and that both came into being. Any order that comes into being in history will manifest itself through one of these principles, either as a successive subordination of effects to causes or as a community of coexisting participants all mutually interacting through reciprocal relations.
Enough for Kant; further features of our inquiry will become apparent by reflecting on certain methods advocated by Marx. The former studied the character of possible experience and found in it limits that would be necessary in actual experience. The limits of possible experience do not however, determine the infinite actuality of real experience. Kant gives us reason to believe that the two ideal types we find emerging in history are the only ideal types that we will find, unless by some creative stroke we transmute time into something that admits of more than the three modes that Kant found — duration, succession, and coexistence. Yet to understand actual experience, however it may be limited by possible experience, we need to look with Marx, not at the conditions of thought, but at the conditions of action, the material conditions of life as human beings historically create themselves and through themselves, humanity.
Lecture 2
These lecture notes are very schematic and I can not unpack them well, 40+ years later. I was exploring various relations between Kant's analogies of experience — principles of permanence, reciprocity, and causality — and major cultural concepts significant in medieval and early modern thought. Make of it what you will. As I recollect the lecture (not very vividly), it was a dud.
Recapitulation
- Educational politics = Considerations concerning activity within the polity that influences the way persons acquire their character and culture.
- Citizen and subject — Greek and ancient empires.
- Reciprocity and causality — Kant's analogies of experience.
- The simultaneity of two modes — the last days of Socrates as example.
Further thoughts on reciprocity, causality, and permanence
- Reciprocity: Create <<>> Maintain
- Causality: Annul <<>> Activate
- Permanence: Existence <<>> Essence
- The sequence of interrelations of these applied to perceptions yields an extremely complex set of permutations.
- Lawgiving: interactions that create: Activating causalities concerning essences
- Corruption: interactions tat maintain: Annulling causalities concerning essences
- Civic Virtue: interactions that maintain: Activating causalities concerning essences
- Deception: causalities that annul interactions that maintain essences
- Inspiration: causalities that activate interactions that create essences
- Instruction: causalities that activate interactions that maintain essences
- Plato
- Machiavelli
- Rousseau
- From diagnosis of corruption to lawgiving to civic virtue
- Expand
- The problematic in this tradition: Confusing community with causality
- Civic humanism and the American heritage
- The rise of causal functionalism
- Toward a rearticulation of civic humanism
- Causality — on & off, annul, activate
- Interaction — create, maintain
- Permanence — existence, essence
- causalities that work to annul patterns of interaction that maintain qualities — deception
- causalities that work to activate patterns of interaction that create essences or qualities — inspiration
- causalities that activate patterns of interaction that maintain qualities — instruction
- interactions that maintain annulling causalities concerning essences or qualities — corruption
- interactions that create activating causalities concerning qualities — lawgiving
- interactions that maintain activating causalities concerning qualities — civic virtue
Pedagogically significant reciprocities
Pedagogically significant causalities
The structure of educational politics among civic humanists
Toward our conclusion
| Reciprocity | Causality | Permanence |
|---|---|---|
| 1) Create | Annul | Existece Death |
| 2) | Essence Evil | |
| 3) Create | Activate | Existence Reproduction |
| 4) | Essence Creativity | |
| 5) Maintain | Annul | Existence Disease |
| 6) | Essence Corruption | |
| 7) Maintain | Activate | Existence Continuation |
| 8) | Essence Perfectability |
6 = corruption 8 = civic virtue 4 = law giving (7 = teaching-learning
| Causality | Reciprocityy | Permanence |
|---|---|---|
| 1) Annul | Create | Existece Sterilize |
| 2) | Essence Enslave | |
| 3) Annul | Maintain | Existence Starve |
| 4) | Essence Receive/forget | |
| 5) Activate | Create | Existence Impregnate |
| 6) | Essence Inspire | |
| 7) Activate | Maintain | Existence Work |
| 8) | Essence Instruct |
File:Permanence-Reciprocity-Causality.png
corruption = maintenance
of causalities that destroy
civic virtue = maintenance of causalities that act worthily
Destroy
Transform (Act)
Education according to causality:
Taught >>> Learned Subordination to the igven for the sake of action
Wducation according to reciprocity:
Occasioned <><><> studied
Subordination of the essence for the sake of existence.
Interaction with existence for the sake of essence.
| Permanence | Reciprocityy | Causality |
|---|---|---|
| 1) Existence | Create | Annul |
| 2) | Activate | |
| 3) Existence | Maintain | Annul |
| 4) | Activate | |
| 5) Essence | Create | Annul |
| 6) | Activate | |
| 7) Essence | Maintain | Annul |
| 8) | Activate |
Lecture 3
Recapitulation
Lecture 2 picked up on the concept of educational politics in relation to citizens and subjects by examining rather systematically the pedagogical phenomena that can be defined by using the principles of causality and reciprocity that Kant set forth in his Critique of Pure Reason
If you will recall,
Three types of pedagogically significant, causally driven experiences
Three types of pedagogically significant reciprocal or interactive experience
We then noted, by reference to Plato, Machiavelli, and Rousseau, the prominence of these pedagogically significant reciprocities in the political theory of civic humanism, in that tradition of political theory in which the citizen has been the most prominent figure.
II Let us now turn to our real business; let us try to come to grips with some contemporary problems of educational politics. The situation we will be speaking to characterizes by and large all the industrial, densely populated parts of the world, but let us concentrate on the problem of educational politics as it as developed in American history; let us try to define the juncture we find ourselves in and speculate on a route towards its improvement.
American public life has its routes very much in the tradition of civic humanism: the Revolution and Constitution were wrought by people whose views were formed by the civic humanist tradition. Deep concern for the process of civic corruption and the importance of lawgiving are precisely what was most distinctive and successful in drafting and passage of the Constitution. Early American insight into the problem of maintaining civic virtue was less clear cut, although there were two basic ways of viewing the problem: one derived from English rural, agrarian republicanism, articulated best by Jefferson, relying on a face-to-face ethos in the tradition of the polis to maintain and reinforce the qualities that made for effective participating in public life; and a second derived from Roman republicanism, substantially reinforced, one suspects by Machiavelli's interpretation of it, articulated more by Madison and Hamilton, in which modulated conflict in an expansive polity would stave off stasis. Of the two the second has had the more sustained relevance for American experience, but both have been outmoded by historical development.
III The upshot of this historic development has been to convert the citizen into a subject.