Philosophy of Care

Boris Groys

• Publisher: Verso
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781839764943
• Topic: Philosophie
• Subtopic: Sozialphilosophie

Our current culture is dominated by the ideology of creativity. One is supposed to create the new and not to care about the things as they are. This ideology legitimises the domination of the "creative class" over the rest of the population that is predominantly occupied by forms of care - medical care, child care, agriculture, industrial maintenance and so on. We have a responsibility to care for our own bodies, but here again our culture tends to thematize the bodies of desire and to ignore the bodies of care - ill bodies in need of self-care and social care.
But the discussion of care has a long philosophical tradition. The book retraces some episodes of this tradition - beginning with Plato and ending with Alexander Bogdanov through Hegel, Heidegger, Bataille and many others. The central question discussed is: who should be the subject of care? Should I care for myself or trust the others, the system, the institutions? Here, the concept of the self-care becomes a revolutionary principle that confronts the individual with the dominating mechanisms of control.

1

From Care to Self-Care

The paradoxical situation of judging knowledge from the position of non-knowledge is first described in Plato’s dialogues. Socrates was an attentive and interested listener of the Sophistic discourses offering him different answers to the questions: What is truth? and What is the correct way of life? Thus, Socrates finds himself in a metaposition of choice among these discourses. Now, one would expect Socrates to try to overcome his initial state of non-knowledge – to learn, to become knowledgeable. That is what is usually expected from somebody who does not know – that he or she learns. However, Socrates disappoints these expectations: instead of going forward on the way to the accumulation of knowledge, he takes a step back and rejects the knowledge that he already has. Socrates does not only distrust any teachings that the Sophists propagate but also the Greek tradition of mythology, poetry and tragedy that predisposes the listeners to find the Sophistic discourses persuasive. In other words, Socrates distances himself from and takes an eccentric position towards Greek cultural identity in its totality. The movement of philosophy is not a movement forward, not a progress on the road to education and knowledge, but a movement back, a regression towards a state of non-knowledge. Socrates does not learn and does not teach. He does not want to acquire knowledge, nor does he want to propagate it.

Socrates famously compared himself to a midwife who helps another woman deliver a child. In the same way, Socrates claimed to help the truth to be born in the soul of another person if this person was pregnant with truth. It is obviously a medical metaphor – the care of truth is here understood in analogy to the care for the human body. Being pregnant with truth and giving birth to it is a painful experience: ‘Dire are the pangs which my art is able to arouse and to allay in those who consort with me, just like the pangs of women in childbirth; night and day they are full of perplexity and travail which is even worse than that of the women.’¹ When the truth is born, Socrates’ patient feels himself relieved. However, this truth can be rejected by Socrates as being false: ‘And if I abstract and expose your first-born, because I discover upon inspection that the conception which you have formed is a vain shadow, do not quarrel with me on that account, as the manner of women is when their first children are taken from them. For I have actually known some who were ready to bite me when I deprived them of a darling folly’.²

Here the desire for truth is placed on a quasi-physiological level. The patients suffer because they desire the truth. So they go to the Sophists, to the teachers, because they expect to receive the truth from them. Socrates, though, believes that that is the wrong diagnosis: actually, the patients are already pregnant with the truth but cannot deliver it. The truth is not beyond but rather within us – a line of reasoning that became very familiar. The question, however, is this: Does the original internal pressure to receive or deliver the truth emerge in individuals independently of the society in which they live? The whole context of Plato’s dialogues suggests that that is not the case. The desire for the truth is imposed on individuals by the society in which they live. The individual is attacked from all sides by different Sophistic discourses and is under the obligation to position itself in the field of knowledge – as a follower of this or that famous teacher. The Socratic method is seductive because it allows the patients to avoid this positioning by claiming that they already have their truth within them – even if this truth remains hidden.

Indeed, even today if one rejects certain philosophical teachings and social projects one is usually asked: And what are your own convictions and projects? Socrates taught us how to avoid this rhetorical trap. One should not say: I reject your opinions. One should just ask: Could you explain your opinions and arguments in more detail? And maybe you can see that there are some contradictions in your argument? This defensive strategy causes every persuasive speech to collapse internally and, at the same time, avoids the requirement to formulate a counter-argument. Of course, this kind of defence is irritating because society wants its members to formulate explicitly their positions related at least to the main problems of public life. To say, ‘I have no position at all’ looks like an insult. And Socrates, as we know, was sentenced to death because of this insult. The decision of the court was not without certain logic: a man who has no political and ethical positions is already socially dead. What is overlooked here is this: that Socrates – at least in Plato’s interpretation – believed that, in the ideal society, nobody will be in need of any individual position. An individual position is always an expression of personal interests. These are primarily economic interests and/or loyalty to one’s family. But, in an ideal state, as described in Plato’s Politeia (The Republic), nobody has private property and familial loyalties. It is a state at zero-level. Such a state is eternal because, historically, the relationships of property change and familial structures also change – but their absence cannot change.

This state should be ruled by philosophers who see the true, the good, the right and the beautiful as such and are able to compare these true images to the reality that surrounds them. Philosophy does not take here the form of a teaching, of a discourse. The contemplation of the eternal Good happens in silence. In his famous parable of the cave from Politeia, Plato’s Socrates insists that one must to be put under external pressure to be brought to the contemplation of truth. The social space is compared to a cave. Originally, one is sitting with one’s face to the wall, seeing the shadows of the things that are carried in different directions at the entrance of the cave. The impulse to discover the origin of these shadows has to come from outside, one has to be forced to change the position of one’s body: ‘At first, when any of them is liberated and compelled suddenly to stand up and turn his neck round and walk and look towards the light, he will suffer sharp pains; the glare will distress him, and he will be unable to see the realities of which in his former state he had seen the shadows’.³ The event of evidence does not happen momentarily but as a result of the further application of violence: ‘And suppose once more, that he is reluctantly dragged up a steep and rugged ascent, and held fast until he’s forced into the presence of the sun himself, is he not likely to be pained and irritated? When he approaches the light his eyes will be dazzled, and he will not be able to see anything at all of what are now called realities.’⁴ Here, it is important to see that this violence is applied to the whole body of the patient/student because they cannot turn their eyes to the truth without turning their whole body. The whole scene of the conversion to the philosophical mode of existence is a terrifying story – true horror.

Indeed, the individual soul is brought to the vision of the eternal light not through persuasion or its own arbitrary decision but as an effect of the changed position of its body produced by the direct application of physical violence. To speak in Marxist terms, the subject sees the light not as a result of spiritual awakening on the level of the superstructure but due to the shift of the position of its body on the level of the material base. Not surprisingly, Badiou stresses the violence of this act of materialistic metanoia in his ‘translation’ of Plato’s Republic:

His eyes hurt horribly, he wants to run away, he wants to go back to what he can endure seeing, those shadows whose being he considers a lot more real than that of the objects they’re showing him. But all of a sudden a bunch of tough guys in our pay grab him and drag him roughly through the aisles of the movie theater. They make him go through a little side door that was hidden up till then. They throw him into a filthy tunnel through which you emerge into the open air, onto a sunlit mountainside in spring. Dazzled by the light, he covers his eyes with a trembling hand; our agents push him up the steep slope, for a long time, higher and higher! Still higher! They finally get to the top, in full sun, and there they release him, run back down the mountain and disappear.⁵

But does this painful exercise make the philosopher a better member of society? Not at all. When the philosopher – blinded by the light of truth – comes back into the cave, ‘men would say of him that up he went and down he came without his eyes; and that it was better not even to think ascending and if any one tried to loose another and lead him up to the light, let them only catch the offender, and they would put him to death.’⁶

However, the perspective of death does not frighten the philosopher. In the eternal light of truth, he discovers that his soul is eternal. The contemplation of the eternal idea of the Good guarantees to philosophers their eccentric position towards their own bodies and the social body as a whole. Thus, they can turn themselves from objects of care into the subjects of care and self-care. Plato does not say explicitly who drags one of the cave dwellers out of the cave – just as he does not identify the workers moving the objects back and forth at the entrance to the cave. In any case, it becomes clear that the subject itself is too weak to develop an initiative in matters of truth. It can achieve truth – but only under external guidance and control. But why is it so weak? Plato would say: because it is imprisoned inside its body. This imprisonment makes the soul too preoccupied by corporeal desires and everyday interests. And that makes the soul weak. The philosophical care of truth presupposes removal of bodily desires, pragmatic calculations and personal obligations. The truth shows itself when everything that is related to the body and its social status is removed and the soul becomes able to contemplate itself. That is why philosophy is the preparation for death – for leaving the cave of earthly, corporeal existence. And the preparation for death is a lonely and quiet activity – it is the activity of contemplation.

The Platonic philosopher avoids struggle and competition. The Sophists compete for fame and money, but the philosopher is already tired of this competition and only watches it. The philosopher is ready to make a couple of ironic remarks about this spectacle of competition – and that is all. The light of truth cannot be articulated and presented in the form of teaching. However, Socrates did not remain silent. He did not try to escape from public space and public view. He did not go to live in the woods or the desert. Instead, he remained very much a part of the social life of Athens. He continued participating in public gatherings and Sophistic disputes. But having reached point zero of opinions, Socrates was confronted with the task of developing a zero discourse – a discourse without content. What was the goal of this zero discourse if it did not have as its goal to inform, influence and persuade? Its goal was not to persuade but to dissuade – for Plato’s Socrates the evidence of truth is an effect of the elimination of all the false opinions. The same can be said about the experience of evidence to which Descartes appeals in asserting the truth of his famous cogito ergo sum.

The experience of evidence is, obviously, merely ‘subjective’ experience. That is why the evidence needs a confirmation of its truth status by the same caretaker who put the individual in the position of access to truth – by the midwife, to use the Socrates’ comparison. Historically, it was the Church that took on this role of universal caretaker. The Church reorganized the everyday life of the European population down to the smallest details with the goal of turning it towards the contemplation of God – and it examined the results of individual contemplations to establish whether the corresponding evidence was true or false. Later, in post-Cartesian times, the Church was replaced by the scientific community that had the same role to control the personal evidences. In other words, here self-care is understood as an effect of institutional care, the eccentricity of self-care remains subjected to the institutions of care.

To become truly eccentric, the subject of self-care has to insist on the validity of his or her personal evidence – even against the judgement of the Church or the scientific community. For Plato, the light of truth could be obscured by the imprisonment of the soul in the body but not simulated or falsified. However, in the Christian tradition the light that seems to be truth can be demonic – Lucifer is one of the names of Satan. One has to choose – not between light and darkness but between two lights. And the decision to choose the wrong light can be easily understood as the triumph of the freedom of the subject of self-care – even if such a choice is risky and can lead to eternal perdition. During the Romantic period, many intellectuals and poets were ready to identify themselves with Mephistopheles, the Devil and Satan, that is, with all forms of negation and rebellion – only to get free from the protective oppression of institutionalized Christianity. One turned from God to freedom. But what about health? Is the search for freedom good or bad for our health?

2

From Self-Care to Care

One can argue that this question is at the centre of Hegel’s philosophy. History is understood here as a process of revealing freedom as the essence of human subjectivity. The movement of history follows its own inner logic – the logic of the revelation of freedom. The philosopher is not a teacher, caretaker or leader but a spectator of this movement. Not unlike Plato’s Socrates, the philosopher can identify when the search for freedom has come to an end, when it has become successful. Throughout history, freedom manifests itself as negation. Freedom is demonic, if you will. Subjectivity will know its truth when it goes through the whole history of negations of everything that was historically established and institutionalized. At the end of the violent history of revolutions and wars, the human spirit will establish its own law. Then subjectivity will live in its own world – and not in the world imposed on it by the powers of the past.

Not accidentally, Hegel speaks about human history as the Golgotha of the spirit. The truth of subjectivity should demonstrate itself ‘phenomenologically’, which means becoming visible by manifesting itself in historical action – as divine subjectivity manifested itself through the death of Christ on the cross. Human history is the history of the liberation of subjectivity from the obscurity and burden of things as they are. The goal of this liberation is to demonstrate subjectivity as it is, as freedom. History is thus a teleological and guided process – guided by the dialectical logic of negation of negation. But, contrary to role of the Christian Church, we have here to do with guidance without protection. History guides us to the truth, but if it protected us we would never get access to this truth – our subjectivity would never be fully manifested. Hegel celebrates opposition, protest and revolt. However, for him they are justified only if they are successful – and they are successful only if they correspond to the progressive movement of history and take place at the right historical moment. But who is to decide which particular historical action is opportune and which is not? It is a decision not of the historical agent but of history itself. And this decision becomes evident only after the action has been taken, not before. As a phenomenologist, Hegel takes up the position of spectator of the historical movement. He is not a spectator of souls but a spectator of bodies in action – of the body of God suffering on the cross but also of the bodies mobilized by the historical progress in their fight for their freedom.

Hegel saw the ultimate self-revelation of subjectivity in the terror of the French Revolution. The universality of this terror demonstrated that the truth of subjectivity is freedom. Thus, the French Revolution became the ultimate historical revelation of human subjectivity and, at the same time, the end of history: ‘In this absolute freedom all social groups and classes which are the spiritual spheres into which the whole is articulated are abolished; the individual consciousness that belonged to any such sphere, and willed and fulfilled itself in it, has put aside its limitation; its purpose is the general purpose, its language universal law, its work is universal work’.¹ And, further:

Universal Freedom, therefore, can produce neither a positive work, nor a deed; there is left for it only a negative action; it is merely a fury of destruction … The sole work and deed of universal freedom is therefore death, a death too which has no inner significance or filling, for what is negated is the empty point of the absolutely free self. It is just the coldest and meanest of all deaths, which no more significance than cutting off a head of cabbage or swallowing a mouthful of water.²

This death does not translate the individuals into the Heaven of Christianity – but also has no utility in the sense of Enlightenment, bringing no riches and no fame.

This is why, after the revelation of their universal freedom as universal terror, the individuals return to their particular roles, to their particular conditions and limited tasks – in other words, they return to culture. However, it is not a simple return to the pre-revolutionary culture that would rejuvenate the established order – and then leave a possibility of the revolutionary explosion being repeated again. Revolutionary terror teaches the individuals fear of death as ‘their absolute master’.³ The post-revolutionary fear of death is, therefore, not the same as the pre-revolutionary fear of God. The individual now knows death not as an external danger but as the work of its own freedom. In this sense, the negativity of freedom becomes positive: now the individual knows itself – as this knowledge becomes its essence.⁴

The end of history is reached. Historical action has become senseless. After the French Revolution, every individual knows about itself everything it has to know. Namely, it knows that it has to fear itself. History was the history of negation – and ended with the negation of negation, with the return of the individual to its particular place and its re-inscription into a system of government and administration. This system of government can present itself as an embodiment of freedom but that is a false claim:

Neither by the mere idea of obedience to self-given laws which would assign to it only a part of the whole, nor by its being represented in law-...