INTELLECTUALS & THE DIVISION OF LABOR--SARTRE ET AL

[Ralph Dumain]

Several people, the most recent being D. Scully, bring up the question, what
is rationality anyhow; what does it mean to think rationally?  And why would
we want to dismiss a school of thought tout court if it seems to be helping
some people?

While I had given this matter a thought or two amidst my busy schedule of
the past few days, my customary train of thought was interrupted by the
experience of the uncanny, right on Independence Day.  For I saw an
outrageous film--feel free to laugh, I did--MEN IN BLACK, which shocked me
into certain recognitions regarding the contradictions of capital and the
lameness of both the traditional artistic avant-garde as well as philosophy
in the face of such a spectacle.  I thought of the innocence of the 60s
generation.  I thought of one of my favorite jazz musicians, Sun Ra, as the
outer limit of the avant-garde.  Not that he is lame.  Au contraire, all of
hiphop is lame in comparison.  One point being: those of us who came up in a
different generation have a different perspective on human possibilities in
comparison to what is being played out now.  Later in the day, while
attending the annual Free Jazz Festival, a group by the name of Michael Ray
and his Kosmic Krewe performed, carrying on the music of Sun Ra, a
coincidence that startled me.  Why was this all uncanny?  I should have to
write up a lengthy report to explain.

What does this have to do with philosophy?  Well, I felt an uncanny
innocence in the face of the complexity of the world, thinking I could
convince anybody of anything by means of organized, rational thought.
Though I do believe in simplicity, which is not simplistic.

Now there's all kind of rational thought.  Even the Catholic Church thought
it was engaged in rational thought.  Aquinas deduced conclusions from first
principles through a chain of logical reasoning, and somehow reason was
pressed into service as a pimp for Faith and Mystery.  One could even say
that the postcolonial pomo crap I read is a specimen of rational thought,
however disjointed.  So where are the differences between these things and
what I defend?  Do I give reason a bad name, as Malgosia claims?  And how do
my harangues compare to the sectarian stalinoid ranting that crops up on the
various marxism lists from time to time and causes the lists to split?  And
in the final analysis, what approach to thought, what ontological
commitments, are productive, and which mislead?

One would have to carefully discriminate between materialism and objective
idealism, not just as ostensible ontological positions but as methodological
approaches, so as to take away the ammo of subjective idealism.  But I'm not
going to do that now, so I'll leave Aquinas alone for the time being.  What
I'm most concerned about is coherence and concentration of human mental
power, self-possession and self-awareness, which must be based upon a
fundamental simplicity that underlies all complexity.  It's knowing who and
where you are, and not dissolving yourself into the diverse phenomena of the
world so you forget who you are.  For while the bored bourgeois intellectual
seeks to dissolve himself because he can't stand himself any longer, the
majority of humanity, millions and even billions of people, haven't learned
to distinguish themselves from their environment, haven't had a break from
the arduous toil of existence long enough to step back and think who they
really are, apart from the conjunctures of the obligations in which they are
trapped.  While the bourgeois intellectual masturbates fantasizing about
connecting with "context", the suffering billions struggle to escape from
the contexts in which they trapped and cannot see beyond.  While the
bourgeois intellectual seeks to escape from his tedious, repressed self, the
struggling billions desperately seek to acquire the "bourgeois" self they
never had the opportunity to squander.  So while a disillusioned bourgeois
like Foucault seeks to abolish "Man" (putting his philosophy into practice
by giving AIDS to as many men as he could before he died), the vast majority
of humankind are still in desperate need of discovering him.

Those of us who come from provincial backgrounds and spend a lifetime
acquiring the tools and experiences we need to overcome our ignorance and
face the world whole at last, have not a second's patience with decadent
little shits who preach confusion and practice incoherence, when we who face
confusion and incoherence every day _know_ down to the marrow what's at
stake in the struggle for the human mind.

I could strive to express these thoughts even more clearly, but then, if you
don't get what I've tried to tell you so far, if you don't agree, then I
have no use for you, none at all, and don't even speak to me again.  Hear?