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Of Work, Drugs and Revolution. the Revolt Against Time
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 July 2024
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Since the late middle ages man, in the “West,” has spent himself in one or both of two opposing activities. His life has been spun out either filling or killing time. The former we have come to call, commonly, work; the latter idleness. By whichever of these morally conflicting or complementary ways he has shaped his life, occidental man has made a single affirmation which unites both extremes: he has tacitly or explicitly affirmed that time is the framework of existence. The point of my paper is to attempt to show that this is no longer so. Evidence will be adduced to demonstrate that dimensions of existence, “categories,” more meaningful than time are now competing to displace it as the mould or form in which life is filled out with meaning. These currents of understanding, now increasingly evident, must necessarily be thought of as substitutionary and oppositional to that in which time was preeminent, because they place the emphasis on a perspective which greatly reduces the significance of time, indeed one which tends to eliminate it altogether, inasmuch as this is possible in a world still largely governed by sunrise and sunset, the process of aging, and so on. Time gained its ascendency in an epoch characterized by man's imperial conquest of nature, or his externalization, effected substantially, through reason and work. The shadow of time's eclipse can be made out where interiorization and assimilation of the objective world have become the predominant preoccupations. In three steps we shall attempt to look at 1) the characteristics of the epoch in which existence was circumscribed by time; 2) the revolt against time and its conditions as typified in the writings of J.-J. Rousseau; 3) some signs of the current growth of this trend in the West, or should I say more precisely, in the technical societies.
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- Copyright © 1970 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)
References
1 Christian Directory, I, p. 79, cited by Weber, The Protestant Ethic and Spirit of Capitalism, New York, Scribners, 1958, p. 261.
2 One of the most thorough descriptions of the pervasiveness and effects of the domination of time in contemporary, advanced industrial society will be found in Raymond Melka, "Punctuality, an Inquiry into the Psychology of Modern Man," Diogenes, No. 65, Spring 1969.
3 E. Weil, Philosophie politique, Paris, Vrin, 1956, p. 61.
4 Ibid., p. 67.
5 Weber, p. 75.
6 Bell, Daniel, The End of Ideology, New York, Free Press, 1965, p. 231.
7 Weil, op. cit., p. 96.
8 La raison dans l'histoire, Introduction à la philosophie de l'histoire, Paris, Union générale d'éditions, 1968. Tr. and notes by Kostas Papaioannou, p. 88.
9 Ibid., p. 71.
10 "The peoples of history, the particular qualities of their collective ethics, their constitution, their art, their religion, their science, constitute the configu rations of this gradual progress. Accomplish these steps that is the infinite desire and the irresistable push of the spirit of the World, for their articulation as well as their achievement is its very concept. The principles of the spirits of the peoples, in the necessary series of their succession are nothing, themselves, but the moments of the One universal Spirit; thanks to them, it rises in history to a totality transparent to itself and brings the conclusion." Ibid., p. 97-8. See also, e.g. Hegel, Leçons sur la philosophie de l'histoire, Vrin, p. 337: "The temporal world is the spiritual empire in its existence, the empire of the will which is giving itself existence;" and Phénoménologie, p. 305, "la forme dans laquelle la substance est dans la conscience."
11 " La phénoménologie de l'esprit, vol. II, p. 305.
12 "History and Theodicy," Diogenes, No. 53, Spring 1966, pp. 49-50.
13 The seminal protestant theologian wrote from prison in 1944 that "the time of inwardness and conscience" is over. Letters and Papers from Prison, Fontana, p. 91.
14 See, e.g. Robert Osmont, "Contribution à l'etude psychologique des Rêve ries," Annales J.-Jacques Rousseau.
15 Ibid., p. 1005.
16 Ibid., p. 1047.
17 Op. cit., p. 1063.
18 Op. cit., pp. 1067-8.
19 Ibid., p. 1076.
20 Ibid., p. 1075.
21 Ibid., p. 1079.
22 Note the ref. to intervention of money into almost every instance of his relationships with children. The relationship is one of purchase—even though in an attenuated degree.
23 Ibid., p. 1099.
24 Writes Marcel Raymond in his note on the mention of time which is quoted from the Fifth Promenade: "It does not appear that time is transcended but on the contrary that there is a descent into immanence deep enough to enter an absolutely homogeneous and undifferentiated form of time." (Ibid., p. 1799). Raymond cites Jean Wahl (Tableau de la Philosophie française, Paris, 1946, pp. 94-95) as saying: "A sort of existential mysticism is founded."
25 Second Promenade, p. 1004: "J'étais fait pour vivre, et je meurs sans avoir vécu." (Reflection prior to his accident).
26 Second Promenade, p. 1003.
27 Ninth Promenade, p. 1089, "happiness to be with me," or joy purchased with money by him…
28 Fifth promenade, p. 1047.
29 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Du Contrat Social…, Discours sur l'origine de l'inégalité parmi les hommes etc., Paris, Garnier Frères, 1962, p. 91.
30 Ibid., p. 92.
31 Ibid., p. 91.
32 Ibid., p. 236, Du Contrat Social.
33 Ibid., p. 236.
34 Translation mine. The standard translation will be found in Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, (1920), the Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, tr. James Strachey, vol. XVIII, London, The Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1955, p. 28. Note also other remarks drawn from Ibid. vol. XIV, 1957, The Unconscious, (1915):
"The process of the system Ucs are timeless, i.e. they are not ordered tempo rally, are not altered by the passage of time; they have no reference to time at all. Reference to time is bound up, once again, with the work of the system Cs.
"The Ucs processes pay just as little regard to reality, they are subject to the pleasure principle; their fate depends only on how strong they are and on whether they fulfill the demands of the pleasure-unpleasure regulation."
35 Philosophie politique, Paris, Librairie phil. J. Vrin, 1956, p. 93. This sentence is preceded on p. 9 by the following passage: "La lutte sociale, inévitable dans toute société particulière, montre à l'individu, à la fois la né cessité du travail social et le caractère insensé de celui-ci. Elle rejette l'individu sur lui-même et elle montre en même temps que ce lui-même est un terme dénué de signification, un flatus vocis: le rationnel le plonge dans l'irrationnel absolu."
36 Ibid., p. 103.
37 See among the analyses of the disappearance of past and future, Kenneth Keniston, The Uncommitted, N.Y., Harcourt, Brace and World, 1965, esp. Ch. entitled "Chronic Change and the Cult of the Present."
38 Ibid., p. 380.
39 Weil, op. cit., p. 105 ff., esp. p. 126.
40 Op. cit., p. 381.
41 Ibid., p. 394.
42 Ibid., p. 419.
43 "The New Left in Action as Others see It," Canadian Dimension, vol. 3, No. 6, Sep.-Oct., 1966.
44 Hanna Arendt, "Reflections on Violence," New York Review of Books, Feb. 27, 1969. In this respect the French student revolutionary movement resembles others in the industrial countries in their sharp contrast to 19th and 20th century revolutionary movements. The latter were founded on historicist and rationalist presuppositions, highly conscious of "conditions" and timing. The former, which challenge the institutionalization of power itself, are less concerned with seizing it than breaking its hold on human activity. The struggle to obstruct, resist and liberate is not determined by time but by more primordial life forces. It takes the shape of a counter-culture, or a revolution that is "cultural" and on-going.
45 Understanding Media, Toronto, New York, McGraw Hill, 1964, p. 335.
46 Ibid., p. 336.
47 Ibid., p. 255.
48 Ibid., p. 337.
49 Sidney Cohen, The Beyond Within, New York, Atheneum, 1964.
50 Ibid., p. 126.
51 Ibid., p. 119.
52 Ibid., p. 5.
53 Ibid., pp. 227-8.
54 "That so anti-intellectual a product should have been fabricated in our highly intellectualized civilization is the cream of the jest," Cohen, op. cit., p. 103.
55 Ibid., p. 145.
56 Ibid., pp. 43-4.
57 Gilberto Freyre, "Time, Leisure and the Arts," in Diogenes, No. 54, Summer 1966, p. 116.
58 Note the interesting analysis of "Ennui, nausée, et lassitude" by Petru Dumitriu in Esprit, No. 9, september 1962, pp. 295-298. "Dans les sociétés mourantes, le dernier amusement qu'on puisse encore trouver, c'est la destruc tion et plus précisément la destruction de soi-même car l'instinct de conser vation s'est affaibli comme les autres…"
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