Ethics
Karl MmmmmRx
There can’t only be equality on legal terms, but also in regards to material means.
Hegel and Marx closely linked.
According to Kojeve, all of history can be understood as a struggle for mutual recognition. The problem of a dominant instance, which fails to treat other instances as full and equal members of the community.
In Marx’s approach to history, all of history is about class struggle, powerful instances and weak instances.
The solution for Hegel is mutual recognition, to see each other as equal (I think that implies material eqaulity as well).
The solution for Marx, is a power struggle wherein the labour class take over and attempt to create a classless society, much as in Hegel. Everyone is equally recognised.
In Hegel there is the idea that the master, by being dominant, and by being able to make the slaves work for them, they are only interested in getting served, and there is nothing spiritual in this kind of being, it is superficial. Whilst the slave, when being obliged to work, creates all kinds of things. They are serving their master and as such develop ways of making life easier, and as such is the one of action. The labour done by the slave at the end will give the slave a far better status than the master. It is then easy for the slave to take over.
For the young Marx, becoming a person with content to one’s identity, it is by labour, by your way of handling things and creating things that you express yourself, and give content to yourself. Labour is important because it is a kind of self-realisation, and without labour you cannot become realised.
Modern labour unions, are often busy with the amount of money the labourer gets, but the idea that doing some work in which you can develop yourself is almost lost. It is never argued for having a kind of job that is fulfilling. In the kind of labour we have today, we cannot express ourselves and as such are alienated.
A lot of people are suffering from the idea that they are tired of working, they give up, they burn out, and the professor thinks it has something to do with the fact that labour is inhumane, sad, unrealising. It would be interesting in regards to creating a better society to create work which is relevant and appreciated.
Once you have made something, the added value in what you express is not counted in what it expresses and what you have put into it. The value of things is not really the kind of labour you put into it. At the end, it is the market, and the amount of people prepared to buy it, or rather the price that is fixed… As such you are alienated from the value of your expression as well. You just get a wage. It is as if the employer, the work-buyer, owns you.
Marx studied in Trier, then in Berlin, and was fascinated with Hegel. He was fascinated with injustice and became a journalist, taking the part of the workers. So multiple times he was ousted from the country he was in, like Germany, Belgium and France.
He has quite reasonable demands in the communist manifesto according to the professor.
If we got rid of inheritance for example, we would reduce the amount of people starting out with a silver-spoon.
It is not asking people locally for the well-being of the nation, but for the international. It is about a universal solidarity that needs to be developed.
Marx explains.
Capitalism has a clear logic. Is it deterministic that a revolution should happen due to the conclusions drawn by Marx?
Marx says you need to be closer with how people live, with their power-relations, and how they evolve. Instead of thinking on an abstract level, Marx applies Hegel in regards to material conditions.
Piketty:
Young up and coming economist
Made a lot of studies on the income gap.
There is a big difference between those who earn money because they have money, and those who earn because they work.
At certain moments in history, getting money from money is easier than a wage!
If you look to this evolution, we will see that the economy will generaly continue to go downward if we continue as we are now. Rather than infinite growth we will have infinite decline.
Piketty is for a progressive annual global wealth tax of up to 2% lol
A progressive income tax reaching high as 80%
Professor is in metaforum: they want interdisciplinary discussions. Many scientists only know their own random disiciplines, and have no idea about what science can do for society in reality.
Professor thinks that there are a lot of socialist economistis in our day. That’s great.
In the faculty of economy, there are those who do business economics and macro economics, and these have different mentality. For societal issues, a sound economical analysis, with figures, usually leads to marxism yay.
Durkheim
There was a start in the division of labour at university. A decent psychologist was aware of Kant and Hegel. Everyone read everyone’s publications despite this division of labour. Now a days, a lot of scientists are specialised and think that they don’t need to read a certain thing discipline.
At that time there was the idea that society would collapse, so Durkheim needed to create a discipline which understands what keeps us together.
In France there are a lot of upheavals. The currency sucks. People invest in things that collapse. People who are in favour of having a dictator that just solves it.
Franco-prussian war. And then the commune of paris. Did well for a few months, but didn’t really have leadership.
Then the state executed 30 000 communards.
Why is society on the brink of collapse? Maybe because we shot everyone idk and because they were anti-semites idk (dreyfus affair).
Newspapers became a thing, which were about sensationalist news. Epic. They were creating a mass, and as such a fascination with this, created mass-psychology. Freud reacts against this. Durkheim’s idea was that solidarity was dissolving in society. This means that we have shifted from mechanical solidarity, to organic solidarity.
The reason he thought we had an anomic situation is because we don’t have a clear goal in society.
Everyone in old society are glued together because they are the same. They look the same, they act the same, they think the same etc. As such they had a strong collective consciousness.
Symbols in groups are loaded with some kind of energy, and when we decide to wear something, we are implicitly deciding to join that group. Are you blood or crip?
And then, when people are not doing what is expected to keep the sacred group mentality safe, they would be annoying. This would damage the collective emotion, it would make it less self-evident. And as such you need to make them suffer. And by making them suffer, you reinstall the common feeling in the group.
If everyone did as they liked, and weren’t punished, the group would dissolve. The energy in making someone suffer reinstates the importance of the ”we”. It is the kind of society in which punishment is always harsh and cruel.
Durkheim thought he could find the change between mechanical and organic solidarity by looking at the change in legal systems. Old legal systems existed to enact revenge on individuals who differ. Now, it is rather to restore relations. Everyone has their function in organic solidarity, and everyone needs everyone in their arrangement of services. As such there is solidarity on the basis of necessity rather than conformity. If something goes wrong, you want to restore the economical relations. If someone ruins my car, I want them to pay for it. If I had ruined the car of the king back in the day, he would have ate my head.
He realised that the kind of ethical feeling of importance, cannot be without the basis of conformity. If I refrained from stealing something on the division of labour, I would reason that it would hurt the economic system. But if that was the only argument against stealing, everything would be stolen, because multinational mega corps don’t care if I steal a can of coke. As such, there must be conformity here too. He thought that in order to make society function, we need motivation, energy and feelings of worthwhileness, through unions. Whaaaa?
So we create professional unions for all kinds of jobs. And this motivates us I guess.
A lot of these movements came from the 20th century, like unions and youth movements.
Durkheim liked fascism :3.
If we don’t care about science, science will fall apart. So we need to have evil crazy rituals to keep it alive.
You can empirically prove for what reasons take their life.
His observation was that the suicide figure is quite constant. However, suicide goes down during struggle. When the economy is fine, suicide goes up.
He tries to come up with all kinds of arguments. Perhaps it’s random. Perhaps it’s climate. Perhaps alcoholism. But it isn’t.
There are 3 kinds of suicides.
There are those committed in those with collective conscious, and this is altruistic suicide. You are prepared to give your life for your comrades. You are prepared to be a hero.
Then there is suicide by societies with low collective conscious, there is only disinterest and laissez-faire, now one is aware, and as such nothing is worthwhile. The confrontation is only with emptyness. This is egoistic suicide.
Lastly, anomic suicide: if there is a strong collective conscious, the things you can complete is given a lot of appreciation. The idea is that if you will only feel that you have reached something if you have reached the stop. So the problem then is that there is no possibility to deal with the infinity of your desire. So you just have to keep getting more and more and more and keep levelling up. There might then be a barrier, like age and so on, and in a kind of feeling of ”this all doesn’t make sense” you jump out of the window.
Sensational news are still about conformity. This creates group mentality, which is against strangers and different people.
Durkheim gave a bunch of courses on morality.
In his approach, he was aware that if it is just about explaining things rationally, that will not be enough. The emotional component is lacking. The feeling that it is of sacred value to be good. In the catholic schools, this existed of course. This is lost if you secularise the schools. How can we then have an education system that feels worthwhile in and of itself. His definition is about discipline.
It has to do with infinite desire. We need to discipline ourselves so that we are not just engaging in our desire. We need to leave early, work hard and eat healthy. The reason why you have discipline is because you are called by something of worth. If there is not such a project, you cannot discipline yourself enough. As such, you need attachment to a social group, so that you get positive stimulation to be disciplined. Morality is always in a context of a social relation. It cannot be for an isolated individual. You need to be doing something for society and the group. There must need to be an attachment to the group so that you feel called to do your work in a way you care for.
In the education system of a school, it is not sufficient to teach things, but you need to create an ambiance through which people can care. If people identify with themselves, and the school and so on.
If you engage people in social work, and they are aware of what it means, the fact will be far more important than a course on ethics.