To render inoperative the machine that governs our conception of man will therefore mean no longer to seek new—more effective or more authentic—articulations, but rather to show the central emptiness, the hiatus that—within man—separates man and animal, and to risk ourselves in this emptiness: the suspension of the suspension, Shabbat of both animal and man.
Agamben
"If you look at the emotional circuitry of the brain we're wired for anger, all mammals are wired for anger because anger is a boundary defense. When two animals enter each other's space they don't have to fight because the anger display will actually protect them from having to fight very often so anger is a boundary defense. There's such a thing as healthy anger and it doesn't need to be transformed. In fact the suppression of healthy anger, which happens to a lot of people growing up in ordinary homes, is a risk factor for mental illness and physical illness, autoimmune disease and so on because mind and body are inseparable and anger is a boundary defense, so is the immune system.
When you repress healthy anger you're also messing with your immune system. I mean, it's not that simple, I could go into great detail but that's how it works, healthy anger is important, healthy anger simply maintains a bond and says: no you can't do this to me. It's essential on the political level because on a political level things are being done to people all the time. There's unhealthy anger which is unbridled rage that takes over the brain and you actually lose control and I've experienced that in my life, it's not healthy for me or anybody else around me. We have to make a distinction between three manifestations of anger there is the healthy anger of: no more, you will not do this to me both on individual and the political level. There's the repression of anger which undermines physiological health and it enables political control and then there is rage where suppressed anger just breaks out of you and that's damaging to you and everybody else as well.
When it comes to resistance - resistance is a form of healthy anger, it says no you will not do this to me and furthermore resistance on a political level is breaking out of the individualistic isolated mindset that capitalism imposes on people. Resistance and activism says that I'm not suffering alone, my suffering is part of a larger suffering and to break out of it I have to join with other human beings. And actually when you look at how human beings evolved it was not as the individualistic isolated competitive creatures against one another but as communal creatures. We lived for hundreds of thousands of years as communal creatures and activism on the political level restores that communalism of belonging to something greater which immediately gives you more meaning in life''.
Gabor Mate
Stopping the Anthropological Machine: Agamben with Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty
"To render inoperative the machine that governs our conception of man will therefore mean … to risk ourselves in this emptiness: the suspension of suspension, Shabbat of both animal and man. (Agamben, The Open 92) In The Open, Giorgio Agamben diagnoses the history of both science and philosophy as part of what he calls the “anthropological machine” through which the human is created with and against the animal. On his analysis, early forms of this “machine” operated by humanizing animals such that some ‘people’ were considered animals in human form, for example barbarians and slaves. Modern versions of the machine operate by animalizing humans such that some ‘people’ were/are considered less than human, for example Jews during the Holocaust and more recently perhaps Iraqi detainees. Agamben describes both sides of the anthropological machine: If, in the machine of the moderns, the outside is produced through the exclusion of an inside and the inhuman produced by animalizing the human, here [the machine of earlier times] the inside is obtained through the inclusion of an outside, and the non-man is produced by the humanization of an animal: the man-ape, the enfant sauvage or Homo ferus, but also and above all the slave, the barbarian, and the foreigner, as figures of an animal in human form. (37) The human-animal divide, then, is not only political but also sets up the very possibility of politics. Who is included in human society and who is not is a consequence of the politics of “humanity,” which engenders the polis itself. In this regard, politics itself is the product of the anthropological machine, which is inherently lethal to some forms of (human) life. Although Agamben’s analysis could be extended to include a diagnosis of the dangers to animal life, in The Open, he is primarily concerned with the dangers to human life.1 Agamben argues that the dichotomy between man and animal is a division within the category of the human itself. In both the earlier and the modern versions, humanity is divided into more and less human types, which in turn becomes justification for slavery and genocide. The question, then, for Agamben is not one of human rights, but rather how the category of the “human” is produced and maintained against the category of the animal, which functions as both constitutive outside and inside such that some “people” are rendered non- or sub-human. In other words, how do we come to treat some people like animals? Extending the scope of Agamben’s interrogation, we might also ask, how do we come to treat animals like animals? Or, in other words, how does animality justify enslavement and cruelty? In addition to Agamben’s investigation into how the category of humanity is produced through the anthropological machine, we must also investigate how the category of animality becomes beholden and subservient to humanity. In this essay, I critically engage Agamben’s analysis of the man-animal dichotomy and the anthropological machine that produces it. In the first sections, I delineate the ways in which Agamben moves with and against Heidegger. Agamben maintains that Heidegger’s comparative pedagogy in his lecture course, The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, continues the work of the anthropological machine by defining Dasein as uniquely open to precisely the closedness of the animal. Yet, Agamben’s own thinking does not so much open up the concept of animal or even open up man to the possibility of encountering animals as it attempts to save humanity from the anthropological machine that always produces the animal as the constitutive outside within the human itself. It is the space of the animal or not-quite-human within the concept of humanity that for Agamben presents the greatest danger. Agamben suggests that the only way to stop the anthropological machine is through a “Shabbat” of both man and animal. In this essay, I argue that Agamben’s return to religious metaphors and the discourse of religion as a supposed counter-balance to the science and philosophy through which the machine operates, at best displaces the binary man-animal with the binary religion-science, and at worst returns us to a discourse at least as violent as the one from which he is trying to escape. As an alternative, I look to Merleau-Ponty’s reanimation of science in his Nature Lectures. In the conclusion, I suggest that perhaps we need both Agamben’s diagnosis of the politics of science and Merleau-Ponty’s creative re-enactment of science if there is any hope of stopping the anthropological machine''.
"On 15 November 1902, Italian anarchist Gennaro Rubino attempted to assassinate Leopold II of Belgium, who was riding in a royal cortege from a ceremony at Church of St. Michael and St. Gudula in memory of his recently deceased wife, Marie Henriette. After Leopold's carriage passed, Rubino fired three shots at the procession. The shots missed Leopold but almost killed the king's grand marshal, Count Charles John d'Oultremont. Rubino was immediately arrested and subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment. He died in prison in 1918.
The king replied after the attack to a senator: "My dear senator, if fate wants me shot, too bad!" ("Mon cher Sénateur, si la fatalité veut que je sois atteint, tant pis"!)[26] After the failed regicide, the king's security was questioned, because the glass of the landaus was 2 cm thick. Elsewhere in Europe, the news of this assassination attempt was received with alarm. Heads of state and the pope sent telegrams to the king congratulating him for surviving the assassination attempt.
The Belgians rejoiced that the king was safe. Later in the day, in the Royal Theatre of La Monnaie before Tristan und Isolde was performed, the orchestra played The Brabançonne, which was sung loudly and ended with loud cheers and applause.[26]
In late October, 1902, Rubino relocated to Brussels. On the morning of November 15, 1902, King Leopold was returning from a ceremony in memory of his recently deceased wife, Marie Henriette.
The royal cortege left the cathedral. In the first carriage Prince Albert was seated with the king, and in the second carriage princess Elisabeth was seated.
Rubino took a revolver and waited for the King's procession among a crowd on the Rue Royale in front of the Bank of Brussels. After Leopold's carriage passed, Rubino drew his gun and fired three shots at the third carriage. In this carriage Count Charles John d'Oultremont, the Grand Marshal of the Royal court was seated, and he received broken glass in his face. The carriages didn't stop and continued to the palace. When he arrived in the royal palace, the Grand Marshal was questioned by officials. His uniform was covered in broken glass.[11][12] The king and members of the royal family were told that they had escaped an assassination attempt. The king asked if anybody had been hurt and then continued his day.
All three shots missed, although one smashed the window of a carriage of Count Charles d'Oultremont, who was almost killed.[7] The king was saved by M. J. Bernard from Bar-le-duc who successfully disarmed Rubino.[13] Paul van den Bosch, from Liege, caught Rubino by his throat and handed him to the police.[11] The police put Rubino in a cab, which was immediately surrounded by an angry mob. The police had great difficulty in forcing their way through the crowd, which shouted alternately, "Kill him!" and "Long live the King!"[6]
Wiki
"The anthropological machine, according to Agamben, is a description of the dichotomy between man and animals in the form of a working entity, the machine. In this defining point for the separation of man and animal, Agamben draws on several Heideggerian terms to present his point.[2] For example, man and animal are separated in their ‘openness’ to their world, because man is able to comport himself towards himself and view something as something. Whilst the animal is captivated in the world and captivated alone, which causes the animal to experience poverty in the world.
However in ‘The Open’ and in particular, chapter 9, Agamben tends to focus more so on the bridge between man and animal, ‘the missing link’ or the man-ape and how the anthropological machine works in this case. This is because he views the conception of the ‘missing link’ between animal and man as a point in which we can either humanise the animal, or animalise the man, which causes neither an animal nor human life, but merely ‘bare life’.
The anthropological machine is manifested through culture in two forms, ancient and modern. The ancient anthropological machine works by humanising the animal, including the outside and as a result, creating the man-ape. This according to Agamben, caused people to see outsiders, infidels and slaves as an animal who has taken human form with human features but without completely being a human.
The modern anthropological machine is in a sense, the opposite of the ancient machine because it works by animalising the human, rather than humanising the animal. Agamben intended to express how this works via a means of characterising the infidels with animalistic traits, despite being human-like. The modern anthropological machine is the realising of ‘Homo alalus’ or ape-man. ‘Homo alalus’ is in essence, man without language and in order to realise the consequences of this notion, it is important to realise what language gives to man, or at the very least, has given to man. Language has been perceived for much time, (as I have pointed out earlier) as the defining point that elevates man from any other animal and in the context of the anthropological machine, if this vital characteristic is taken away from an individual, they are then labelled as inferior to man.
Agamben criticises the anthropological machine because it allows people to value others as sub-human through envisioning a stage of life where animals are being humanised or man is being animalised.[3] Some notable results of this are slaves, barbarians or foreigners in the model of the ancient anthropological machine and Jewish people during Nazi Germany are an example of the modern anthropological machine. The film The Mission (1986) powerfully displays the modern anthropological machine at work, despite being set in the 18th century. The film articulates the struggle for liberation of the native South American people from the institute of the Catholic Church. There is a scene in which a court case is held to decide on whether the native South Americans are humans or animals, which shows a very good example of what the anthropological machine was, is, will be and most importantly, what damage it does.
It is this very machine, according to Agamben, that causes people to create such a divide, that in the zone of ‘the missing link’, the value of the being is in flux and therefore ethical considerations can be easily compromised. The use of the word machine in the anthropological machine presents an impersonal and mechanical tool that is in continuous work as long as people’s mindsets are stuck in the same notion of thought, so as a result, Agamben’s aim is to stop the machine.
Stopping the anthropological machine, as Agamben puts it, is not a simple task because the machine is implemented into society and is viewed simply as just another norm. Therefore in order to stop the machine, drastic fundamental beliefs must change regarding man’s relation to the animal and this change according to Agamben is through the enactment of a “Shabbat”. Shabbat refers to the weekly day of rest in Judaic cultures, it is renowned to be a joyful day where people can forget their weekly troubles, and Shabbat has been described as the ‘bride’ or ‘queen’ in Jewish literature. What this means for Agamben’s stopping of the anthropological machine is that we should not continue in our attempts to find what separates man from animal, but to give the idea, the machine, a rest. And as this machine experiences rest or Shabbat, it will be stopped.
Agamben uses several religious terms and metaphors in ‘The Open’, which could be interpreted as a referential point to the apocalyptic and post-historical sections of the book. His use of “Shabbat” and man and animal to be “saved precisely in their being unsavable” could be seen as a reply or interpreting of Heidegger’s “only a God can save us”, which was regarding the state of humanity and how things can get better according to Heidegger. The religious metaphors also assist Agamben in setting the scene in ‘The Open’, which allow him to place the anthropological machine into context.
The anthropological machine, according to Agamben, causes human and animal life to be in an area of danger in which catastrophic events could occur. It is not only vital for man to stop the anthropological machine, but also for the sake of animals and although Agamben focuses primarily on the barbarian, slaves, foreigners and modern victims of dehumanization, the anthropological machine has a great effect on animals. Agamben is not alone in an attempt to create a definition for the relation between man and animal and the next section of the essay will explore several alternative ideas regarding this subject at hand.
A significant section of Agamben’s ‘The Open’ is in some way or another, an analysis on Heidegger’s understanding of the relationship between man and animal. In ‘The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics’, Heidegger claims that in one of the things that make Dasein exactly what it is is their being open to the closed-ness of animals.[4] This kind of thought, according to Agamben is actually a partaking of the anthropological machine because it causes humans to be the exception of the animals, which places them in an excluding inclusion. However Agamben draws to very similar conclusions regarding the differences of animal and man in their differences of ‘openness’ to the world''.
Thrownintotheworld
''Violence appears where power is in jeopardy, but left to its own course its end is the disappearance of power. This implies that it is not correct to say that the opposite of violence is nonviolence: to speak of nonviolent power is actually redundant. Violence can destroy power; it is utterly incapable of creating it''
"Aesthēsis, for the ancient Greeks was related to the circular passive activity of breathing, we breathe in sensory impressions of the cosmic surround and, thus inspired, we breathe out creative expressions. The universe is, then, not merely our environment rather it enters into and rhythmically transacts with the very heart of our being beckoning us to partake in the call and response of the cosmogenic ensemble".
"Attending to the imaginal tides of aesthēsis as they flow to and from and across the sublime edges of embodied experience helps bridge the otherwise gaping chasm between mind and matter. Attending only to conceptual thought or to transcendental structures artificially widens the gap. Dwelling instead upon the way aesthetic and emotional vectors vibrate sympathetically through and between bodies begin to realize that modern philosophies abstract categories of mind and matter no longer hold any water, they leak".
Joseph Stalin paired “From each according to ability” with “To each according to work” in the 1936 Soviet Constitution.
The same article in the Soviet Constitution that employs this phrase also contains a quote from a Bible passage found in the Second Letter to the Thessalonians: “If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.”
The Conversation
"Kant considers an “end” or purpose to be that which is produced by the causality of a concept, as with, e.g. an artifact. One produces a watch by bringing together various mechanical parts for the end or purpose of telling time, etc. An end is thus “the object of a concept insofar as the latter is regarded as the cause of the former” (CPJ §10, 5:220). “Final” causation is causation in which the concept or representation of the end serves as cause of its effect.
an end is the object of a concept insofar as the latter is regarded as the cause of the former (the real ground of its possibility); and the causality of a concept with regard to its object is purposiveness (forma finalis). Thus where not merely the cognition of an object but the object itself (its form or its existence) as an effect is thought of as possible only through a concept of the latter, there one thinks of an end. The representation of the effect is here the determining ground of its cause, and precedes the latter. (CPJ §10, 5:219-20)
Kant contrasts final causation with efficient causation. Efficient causation is such that the cause is always (logically/metaphysically) prior to the effect. There is thus an asymmetry in which (as Kant puts it) the effect is “subordinated” to the cause.
The causal nexus, insofar as it is conceived merely by the understanding, is a connection that constitutes a series (of causes and effects) that is always descending; and the things themselves, which as effects presuppose others as their causes, cannot conversely be the causes of these at the same time. This causal nexus is called that of efficient causes (nexus effectivus). In contrast, however, a causal nexus can also be conceived in accordance with a concept of reason (of ends), which, if considered as a series, would carry with it descending as well as ascending dependency, in which the thing which is on the one hand designated as an effect nevertheless deserves, in ascent, the name of a cause of the same thing of which it is the effect. In the practical sphere (namely, of art) such a connection can readily be found, e.g., the house is certainly the cause of the sums that are taken in as rent, while conversely the representation of this possible income was the cause of the construction of the house. Such a causal connection is called that of final causes (nexus finalis). The first could perhaps more aptly be called the connection of real causes, and the second that of ideal ones, since with this terminology it would immediately be grasped that there cannot be more than these two kinds of causality. (CPJ §65, 5:372-3)
Final causation with respect to artifacts is not, Kant thinks, remotely mysterious. The question is whether we should consider final causation to be at work in nature, apart from the artifice of human agents. Kant calls such products of final causation in nature “natural ends”.
Now for a thing as a natural end it is requisite, first, that its parts (as far as their existence and their form are concerned) are possible only through their relation to the whole. … then it is required, second, that its parts be combined into a whole by being reciprocally the cause and effect of their form. (CPJ §65, 5:373)
There are thus two conditions to a natural end:
Kant’s characterization of a natural end as being a whole that determines its parts and as engaging in reciprocal causation is given its clearest expression in his notion of an organism, e.g. a tree, which has three features (jointly necessary and sufficient):
First, a tree generates another tree in accordance with a known natural law. (§64, 5:371)
Second, a tree also generates itself as an individual. This sort of effect we call, of course, growth; but this is to be taken in such a way that it is entirely distinct from any other increase in magnitude in accordance with mechanical laws, and is to be regarded as equivalent, although under another name, with generation. (§64, 5:371)
Third, one part of this creature also generates itself in such a way that the preservation of the one is reciprocally dependent on the preservation of the other. (§64, 5:371)
In short, an organism as a natural end, exhibits the features of (or capacities thereto):
To explain these features Kant posits what he calls a “Bildungskraft” or “formative power” in the organism, that allows it to engage in these kinds of activities.
An organized being is thus not a mere machine, for that has only a motive power, while the organized being possesses in itself a formative power, and indeed one that it communicates to the matter, which does not have it (it organizes the latter): thus it has a self-propagating formative power, which cannot be explained through the capacity for movement alone (that is, mechanism). (CPJ §65, 5:374)
However, Kant’s conception of nature leave no room for such a formative power. Matter, as such, has merely a “motive” power (i.e. the actuality or possibility of movement), but not the power to be both cause and effect of itself in the manner indicated above. This results in what Kant calls an “antinomy” or conflict of reason with itself, concerning the accommodation of natural ends, and organisms in particular, in nature.
The paradoxical character of natural ends/purposes is thus:
This conflict is expressed in the antinomy in terms of two theses:
The first maxim of the power of judgment is the thesis: All generation of material things and their forms must be judged as possible in accordance with merely mechanical laws. The second maxim is the antithesis: Some products of material nature cannot be judged as possible according to merely mechanical laws (judging them requires an entirely different law of causality, namely that of final causes). Now if one were to transform these regulative principles for research into constitutive principles of the possibility of the objects themselves…as objective principles for the determining power of judgment, they would contradict one another, and hence one of the two propositions would necessarily be false; but that would then be an antinomy, though not of the power of judgment, but rather a conflict in the legislation of reason. However, reason can prove neither the one nor the other of these fundamental principles, because we can have no determining principle a priori of the possibility of things in accordance with merely empirical laws of nature. (CPJ 5:387)
Kant’s solution to the above antinomy is much contested. His strategy for reconciling the two propositions (thesis and antithesis) seems to hinge on recognizing that the thesis & antithesis are merely “regulative” in the sense that they each serve to unify, simplify and systematize concepts, and direct the understanding (the faculty of concepts) to its greatest extent, with a view to arriving at a systematically unified whole of knowledge (a ’scientia or Wissenschaft).
The problem is that, even if we grant Kant the claim that both are regulative, it is not clear how even if thesis and antithesis are both regulative, that they are thereby compatible with one another. The unclarity of this putative solution encouraged philosophers after Kant to think anew the relationship between nature as conceived by physics and as conceived by biology (or any other teleological science). As we’ll see, Schelling’s philosophy of nature aims at just such a reconception and reconciliation.
Though Schelling was greatly influenced by Fichte’s work, Schelling’s philosophy of nature expresses several ideas that ultimately would pull Schelling away from Fichte’s philosophy, and indeed in such a way that it caused a severe personal rift between them.4
The central (and interrelated) elements of Schelling’s philosophy of nature that are relevant for his break with Fichte and development of his “absolute” idealism are:
These last two points only become fully explicit with Schelling’s full break, in the Presentation of My System, from Fichte’s position. I’ll accordingly discuss (1)-(3) here and (4)-(5) in a separate set of notes.
Recall that Kant argued for a conception of nature as the result of a “mechanical” causation wherein material parts, occupying space in virtue a balance of the fundamental forces of attraction and repulsion, efficiently cause the wholes of which they are members. Kant recognizes that this conception of material nature is inadequate for certain types of beings—viz. organisms whose powers contradict mechanical efficient causality, since they are both the cause and effect of themselves (via reproduction, self-organization, and the reciprocal dependence of their parts). Kant argued that these features can only be explained by positing a “formative power” in the organism, which is in opposition to the merely motive or mechanical powers of non-organic matter.
Schelling considers Kant’s conception of an opposition in nature between motive and productive forces an objectionable dualism that cannot be sustained. It encourages a conception of organisms as “ideal” or “spiritual”, standing in opposition to material nature. Schelling’s crucial move is to reject this opposition in favor of positing productive forces as a constitutive part of nature itself. This position is a departure not only from Kant, but also from Fichte, in that it no longer sees nature as something to be derived from the subject or absolute ’I’ of Fichte’s transcendental philosophy. Instead, Schelling here inverts the Fichtean (and implicitly the Kantian) position to derive the self-conscious subject from the ultimate or most complex of the productive forces posited in nature. In Kantian terms Schelling makes the teleological causation characteristic of organisms into a constitutive rather than a merely regulative law.
[The] tendency [of Fichte’s philosophy] will be to bring back everywhere the real to the ideal—a process which gives rise to what is called transcendental philosophy. The regularity displayed in all the movements of Nature—for example, the sublime geometry which is exercised in the motions of the heavenly bodies—is not explained by saying that Nature is the most perfect geometry. Rather conversely, it is explained by saying that the most perfect geometry is the productive power in Nature; a mode of explanation whereby the real itself is transported into the ideal world, and those motions are changed into intuitions which take place only in ourselves, and to which nothing outside of us corresponds. … [in contrast] all of this [order in nature] is explained in our view by saying that it [viz. organization] is an unconscious productivity in its origin akin to the conscious, whose mere reflection we see in Nature, and which from the standpoint of the natural view must appear as one and the same blind drive that exerts its influence from crystallization upward to the highest point of organic formation (in which, on one side, through the technical drive, it returns again to mere crystallization) only acting on different planes. (7:271-2)
Schelling construes the transcendental philosophy of Kant and Fichte, not unfairly, as explaining order and organization in nature in terms of the constitutive and projective acts of the rational mind as such. Thus, to speak in Fichte’s terms, though all our knowledge ultimately adverts to experience, in which subject and object are in opposition, according to Fichte it is the self-conscious subject that is the ultimately privileged explanatory basis of everything that can be known (i.e. anything that could be a “science” in the sense at issue for the Wissenschaftslehre). Here we see Schelling rejecting this position. As he puts things more pithily a few sentences later, “the ideal must arise out of the real and admit of explanation from it” (7:272).
However, Schelling does not yet seem to want to quite reject the position of the Wissenshaftslehre, instead he expresses the view that Naturphilosophie is explanatorily on par with the WL.
if it is the task of transcendental philosophy to subordinate the real to the ideal, it is, on the other hand, the task of the philosophy of nature to explain the ideal by the real. The two sciences are therefore but one science, differentiated only in the opposite orientation of their tasks. Moreover, as the two directions are not only equally possible, but equally necessary, the same necessity attaches to both in the system of knowledge. (7:272-3)
Schelling’s conception of “Nature” distinguishes two distinct aspects, which he borrows from Spinoza. These are Nature as productive and Nature as product. In Spinoza’s terms, it is a distinction between Natura naturans and Natura naturata. Spinoza discusses this distinction most explicitly in two places. The first is from his Short Treatise, which is a kind of non-geometrical exposition of the position elaborated in his Ethics:
Here, before we proceed to anything else, we shall briefly divide the whole of Nature into Natura naturans and Natura naturata. By Natura naturans we understand a being that we conceive clearly and distinctly through itself, without needing anything other than itself (like all the attributes which we have so far described), that is, God. The Thomists have also understood God by this phrase, but their Natura naturans was a being (as they called it) beyond all substances.
… Turning now to universal Natura naturata, or those modes or creatures which immediately depend on, or have been created by God—we know only two of these: motion in matter, and intellect in the thinking thing. We say, then, that these have been from all eternity, and will remain to all eternity, immutable, a work truly as great as the greatness of the workman (1:47-8).
Spinoza articulates the distinction in a similar, if slightly condensed, way in the Ethics:
(E1P29S): Before I proceed further, I wish to explain here—or rather to advise [the reader]—what we must understand by Natura naturans and Natura naturata. For from the preceding I think it is already established that by Natura naturans we must understand what is in itself and is conceived through itself, or such attributes of substance as express an eternal and infinite essence, that is (by P14Cl and P17C2), God, insofar as he is considered as a free cause. But by Natura naturata I understand whatever follows from the necessity of God’s nature, or from any of God’s attributes, that is, all the modes of God’s attributes insofar as they are considered as things which are in God, and can neither be nor be conceived without God. (2:71)
Schelling makes several allusions to Spinoza’s position in the Introduction, but the clearest is from part II of section 6:
As long as we only know the totality of objects as the sum total of all being, this totality is a mere world, that is, a mere product for us. It would certainly be impossible in the science of nature to rise to a higher idea than that of being if all permanence (which is thought in the idea of being) were not deceptive, and really a continuous and uniform reproduction.
Insofar as we regard the totality of objects not merely as a product, but at the same time necessarily as productive, it becomes Nature for us, and this identity of the product and the productivity, and this alone, is implied by the idea of Nature, even in the ordinary use of language. Nature as a mere product (natura naturata) we call Nature as object (with this alone all empiricism deals). Nature as productivity (natura naturans) we call Nature as subject (with this alone all theory deals). (7:284)
In drawing on Spinoza, Schelling aims to make at least the following points:
<Nature> marks an “ontological difference” (as Heidegger will ultimately call it) between particular beings and Being as that through which they are what they are.Thus by construing Nature as intrinsically productive Schelling avoids the antinomy to which Kant construed reason as subject. But Schelling also effectively embraces a quasi-pansychist position in doing so. The advantage of this position is that it allows for the adoption of a genuine form of realism concerning things apart from the human mind. But it does so at the potential cost of introducing mindedness (at least in its most primitive form) into the world itself, in the form of an unconscious drive in nature to organic production.''
colinmclear
"Where is the object on which to focus one's new self assertion, an object that is for most people a victim? This is what we have to be constantly on guard for. The Dionysian festival reflected man's experience in the round, and so for the masochistic loss of self there was the corresponding sadistic affirmation of self: the Dionysian celebrators tore apart with their bare hands and ate raw a scapegoat or a bull to climax the ceremony. Every heroic victory is two sided: it aims toward merger with an absolute "beyond" in a burst of life affirmation, but it carries within it the rotten core of death denial in a physical body here on earth. If culture is a lie about the possibilities of victory over death, then that lie must somehow take its toll of life, no matter how colorful and expansive the celebration of joyful victory may seem. The massive meetings of the Nazi youth or those of Stalin in Red Square and Mao in Peking literally take our breath away and give us a sense of wonder. But the proof that these celebrations have an underside is in Auschwitz and Siberia: these are the places where the goats are torn apart, where the pathetic cowardliness of what it is all about on its underside is revealed. We might say that modern heroism is somewhat out of joint compared with Dionysianism, where both aspects of transcendence took place on the spot; modern scapegoating has its consummation in bureaucratic forms, gas ovens, slow rotting in prison camps. But it still is all about the real, lived terror of the individual German, Russian, and Chinese over his own life, however coldly and matter-of -factly it may be staged, whatever the clean and disinterested scientific methods used. Hannah Arendt in her brilliant and controversial analysis of Adolf Eichmann showed that he was a simple bureaucratic trimmer who followed orders because he wanted to be liked; but this can only be the surface of the story, we now see. Rubber-stampers sign orders for butchery in order to be liked; but to be liked means to be admitted to the group that is elected for immortality. The ease and remoteness of modern killing by bespectacled, colorless men seems to make it a disinterested bureaucratic matter, but evil is not banal as Arendt claimed: evil rests on the passionate personal motive to perpetuate oneself, and for each individual this is literally a life-and-death matter for which any sacrifice is not too great, provided it is the sacrifice of someone else and provided that the leader and the group approve of it".
Ernest Becker
Scientific attention has focused on the toxic consequences of stress for brain function and mental and physical health. It is has become increasingly clear that one of the mechanisms through which poverty affects the health and well-being of children and adults is through the toxic effects of stress on the brain. A growing body of evidence indicates that effects of poverty on physiologic and neurobiologic development are likely central to poverty-related gaps in academic achievement and the well-documented lifelong effects of poverty on physical and mental health.1–5
Here we review studies delineating the substantial effects of poverty on children’s biological and psychologic development, thus emphasizing the importance of early experience and the malleability of developmental processes that are shaped early in life to establish a foundation for later competence. We also review studies that demonstrate the efficacy of early intervention for children at risk, highlighting implications for policy.
Although examinations of direct relations between income and brain structure and function are relatively recent, 2 prominent reports demonstrate that effects are particularly large and seen early in development for children in poverty. One study examined a cross-sectional sample of 389 children aged 4 to 22 years and found that children in families in poverty had reduced gray matter volumes in the frontal and temporal cortex and the hippocampus. When families were at 150% of poverty, these reductions were 3% to 4% below developmental norms. For children in families at 100% of poverty or below, reductions in these regions were 8% to 9% below developmental norms. Given the association of these regions with school readiness and school achievement, this analysis further examined the extent to which these gray matter reductions account for the well-known effect of poverty on academic outcomes. Mediation analysis of standardized achievement test data indicated that the measures of gray matter in frontal and temporal regions accounted for between 15% and 20% of the income-related achievement gap.2 In a similar analysis examining cortical surface area with 1099 children and young adults aged between 3 and 20 years, both parental education and income were found to be positively related to surface area. Associations were greatest in the frontal, temporal, and parietal regions.6 As with the analysis of Hair et al,2 this study also found that the effects of income on brain development are largest for children in families whose incomes fell below the poverty line.
Effects of poverty on brain development start early and are seen in infancy. In a longitudinal analysis of 77 children participating in the National Institutes of Health (NIH) MRI Study of Normal Brain Development and seen between the early postnatal period and age 4 years, those in low-income or poor families were found to have total gray matter volumes that were nearly half a standard deviation smaller than their better-off counterparts. These reductions were particularly large in the frontal and parietal regions associated with executive function abilities.7 Growth modeling indicated that these associations are developmental, with reduced growth trajectories for total, frontal, and parietal gray matter volumes that were most pronounced for children in poverty. These results are consistent with an EEG study of 6- to 9-month-old infants that found reduced high-frequency electrical oscillations in the frontal cortex, the seat of executive function abilities, among children in poverty relative to their higher-income counterparts.8 A second analysis from the NIH MRI study of 283 children aged 11 years found that parental education as an indicator of socioeconomic status was positively associated with regional gray matter in the left superior frontal gyrus and right anterior cingulate gyrus, both regions associated with executive function abilities.4 Similar longitudinal findings were seen in an analysis of 145 children followed longitudinally from preschool and who underwent MRI when they were approximately 10 years old. In this analysis, household income-to-need was positively related to gray and white matter volumes; the quality of parenting that children received in early childhood and the number of stressful life events experienced were found to mediate some of the effects of income on the volume of the hippocampus.9
In combination, available evidence confirms that the shaping of children’s biology and behavior by experience starts early and happens rapidly. The burgeoning research evidence of the costs of poverty to children’s early development and the parallel evidence of the benefits of early intervention have triggered a call to action on the part of many to “preserv[e] and support our society’s most important legacy, the developing brain.”10 Here we outline some developmental foundations that underlie the effects of poverty on brain development and consequences for early learning. We underscore the importance of addressing the negative consequences of poverty-related adversity early in children’s lives. In doing so, we also emphasize the need for an increased scientific focus on the malleability and plasticity inherent in development, particularly given the relatively slow time course of brain development in areas that underlie the higher-order self-regulation associated with executive function. Finally, we highlight some new directions for prevention and intervention that are rapidly emerging at the intersection of developmental science, pediatrics, child psychology and psychiatry, and public policy.
Traditionally research on child development in the context of poverty has focused on reduced stimulation and reduced opportunity for learning relative to children in higher-income homes. Increasingly, however, research in a variety of disciplines is converging on the idea that in addition to reduced opportunity for types of stimulation that positively affect development, such as a rich and varied language environment,11 poverty is also characterized by an overabundance of types of stimulation that negatively affect development. Key mechanisms that link children’s exposure to poverty-related adversity and brain development include the presence of chronic stressors such as noise, including background noise such as that associated with ongoing and unmonitored television, household chaos, and conflict among family members that alter the physiologic response to stress, leading to potentially teratogenic effects of stress-related hormones on the developing brain and to a range of negative cognitive, emotional, and behavioral sequelae.12,13 Importantly, poverty-related stressors have been theoretically argued and empirically shown to tune or program the physiologic response to stress in ways that alter neuroendocrine activity and consequently neural activity, thereby influencing the course of brain development and function14 (Text Box 1). Controlled experiments in rodents and to some extent nonhuman primates demonstrate that exposure to chronic stressors and the resulting corticosterone/cortisol increase from the prenatal period through adulthood is associated with alterations to the volume of the amygdala, atrophy of the hippocampus, and atrophy of pyramidal dendrites, neurons that are integral to prefrontal cortex function and communication between prefrontal cortex and numerous regions throughout the brain, including limbic structures that activate and terminate the stress response.15–18 Further, patterns of neural activity in the brain are altered under conditions of stress, suggesting that experience-dependent neural and behavioral responses to stimulation will be progressively established over time, biasing the developing individual to be reactive and defensive, rather than to engage in reflective and approach-oriented responses to stimulation.19,20
A number of studies have shown that cortisol and other stress markers are elevated in children in poverty.21–23 In addition, these studies have shown that effects of poverty on the stress response in part underlie the effects of poverty on the development of executive function and the regulation of emotion and attention. These effects are consistent with animal models demonstrating that glucocorticoids influence activity in, and thereby the development of, brain structures and neural circuitry that are important not only for regulating the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenocortical (HPA) response to stress but also for executive function abilities.16 Executive function is essential for self-regulation and school readiness and is a basic building block of early cognitive and social competence. Available evidence indicates that effects of socioeconomic and early psychosocial disadvantage on cortisol and brain structure partially mediate effects of poverty on the development of executive function in childhood.24–26 Effects of poverty on brain development and executive function are likely one key pathway, along with reduced stimulation for learning, through which poverty is associated with gaps in school readiness and achievement and positive life outcomes. These effects are consistent with, albeit perhaps less severe than, those seen in studies examining effects of extreme stress and trauma, such as that associated with institutional rearing. Findings from studies of traumatic early rearing experience indicate alterations to the volume of the amygdala and hippocampus and total gray and white matter volumes in brain areas that underlie executive function and emotion regulation capabilities.27,28
Clancy Blair, PhD, MPH and C. Cybele Raver
