Now it is compelling to enter into a metaphysical debate about monism and dialectics, but it may not be necessary as the very idea of dialectics stems from a monistic axiom: A force generates from within itself another force that works against it. Hegel knew this when he referred to the inevitability of taking Spinoza’s insights as the basis of philosophical inquiry. In Lectures in the History of Philosophy (1819-1831), Hegel stated that: “The fact is that one must be a Spinozist if one is to begin to philosophize at all.” (Vol. 3, Part 2, on Spinoza).
That Hegel thought Spinoza’s concept of substance lacked the self-determination necessary for a fully developed concept of Spirit is itself perhaps mere evidence that Hegel himself had not fully understood why Spinoza did not want to distinguish between Nature and God. When we understand Spirit in terms of Schopenhauer’s concept of the will (which later inspired Nietzsche’s work on the Will to Power) and we deplete this Will of any anthropomorphic fantasies, we end up with “energy”. After Einstein, it is no longer weird to think of the matter and energy as connected. What for Spinoza was a mere consequence of logical deduction, Einstein was able to show in terms of mathematical physics.
This, however, does not mean that we have to abandon Dialectical-Historical Materialism as inspired by Hegel and Marx. It also does not mean that we have to refrain from engaging with political ressentiment, as Nietzsche suggested. We can still engage with a critical dialectical historical materialist analysis of events as our own practice of abstraction, as long as we realize that this is also grounded on the estate and thus closely aligned with from practices of extraction. That is to say, every critical historical account will still have some relationship to the Establishment, for example in terms of ascertaining the reliability of sources in terms of journalistic as well as scientific methods, the use of semantics, syntax and grammar in terms of both thought and rendering an account, and in terms of the institutional setting of being enabled to render a critical historical analysis in the first place.
The epistemic shift, which coincided with the onset of European Imperialism at the turn of the 16th century, and which is now commonly referred to as modernity, has to be understood as first and foremost political. It is, however, not an event that has no histories of its own. We can look at many different aspects, such as the use of gunpowder in warfare, the use of mathematics in monetization of trade, the Renaissance in art and philosophy, the transformations of practices of confession, the Protestant Revolution or even climate change; whatever happened during the European so called “Dark Ages”, most of it has had a major impact on why European imperialism took off.
It is therefore perfectly logical to look at, for example, the writings of Plato as a means to understand what kind of mind set might have resonated with the spirit of European imperialism. After all, Plato has a major impact on, for example, the development of Christianity as well as Roman Law, which both have played key roles in the ideological as well as practical consolidation of the Establishment in the centuries leading up to European imperialism. Turning to Plato also helps us understand why the Establishment is impossible without practices Abstraction such as those undertaken under the label of philosophy.
When Plato engaged in dialogues, it performed a clear communicative strategy of critique. The counterpart in a dialogue is usually a voice that represents the popular opinions of that time and Plato’s interventions were thus an attempt to engage in intellectual transformation. Plato did not do so by gathering facts, but instead by using logic, in particular derived from geometrical notions of order and aesthetics. Plato’s dialogues were performative and political.
The question I am not asking here is to what extent we should treat the range of different platonic interventions as part of a unified mind set? I am working with the hypothesis that they probably can be but that is something that philosophers should debate. For me, as a lazy sociologist, there is enough material to suggest that Plato was extremely interested in unification through abstraction and this allows us to consider many different interventions, such as the allegory of the cave, his critique of writing or his invocations of khora as pointing in a similar direction.
In the allegory of the cave (in the Republic), Plato allows us to see the power of the sun as that which reveals truth. The sun is a source of both energy and light. This is the very first clue as to why we should think of Extraction and Abstraction as connected. The sun gives life and gives truth; both are gifts that cannot be returned, but only rejected (this is also the cornerstone of Christianity). This may help us understand the concept of debt. We are always-already indebted to the sun.
The critique of writing (in the Phaedrus) could be understood as upholding this notion of debt. By arguing that writing is a practice of exteriorization of the voice that connects thought and speech, and thus a mode of alienation, he is also referring to the forgetting of the original bond between Life and Truth and thus a forgetting of our debt to the sun. By being turned into written text, the performative aspect of thinking is being side lined by a representational one. One could also argue that Plato understood writing to be itself a form of extraction: extracting ideas from the mind and the voice of a living thinking being and turning them into objects of representation, like shadows on the wall of the allegorical cave.
In the Timaeus, Plato invokes khora to designate the impossibility of thinking a beginning without place. At the same time, khora is the impossibility of place; it is the matrix of place without being itself a place. Again, khora helps us understand the relationship between philosophy and debt. One cannot practice the love of wisdom without entering into debt. Khora is the impossibility of the annulment of this debt. It is the impossibility of autonomy, of the individual, of unity without excess. It is a reminder that to think is to be indebted. It is a reminder that Abstraction derives from Extraction.
Sohn-Rethel’s thesis is that philosophical abstraction derives from real abstraction is perfectly plausible when considering the work of Plato; all we needed to add was to argue that real abstraction did not start with industrial capitalism, but has deep roots in the synergies between life (oikos) and politics (polis) as so eloquently thought through by Plato. During Plato’s time, coinage had already been introduced and widely used. Coinage enables one to relate different entities in relation to something abstract: exchange value. Coinage is also a measure and a reminder of a relationship of debt. It is something tangible yet abstract, and thereby lends itself perfectly to relating materiality (e.g. derived from extracted silver ore and smelting it) to an abstracted and thus alienated conception of value.
Disaffected Sociology 
Leave a comment