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June 22, 2004
Gary, writing this paper on Adorno’s metaphysics is really taking all my time and energy. The conference approaches (about five weeks away) and the end of my paper is not in sight. I’m feeling stressed by it. I have downloaded the two articles you mentioned and I will endeavour to read them as soon as I can. In the meantime there is not much time for anything other than reading for my paper. I thought I should say a few things about Australian materialism in case anybody reading is wondering what we can be talking about, however.
My remarks were admittedly brief but I think I said enough to differentiate between my own views and Australian materialism in general. Let me stick my neck on the block and just fire from the hip – the mind-body problem has been a big topic in Australian university philosophy, a philosophy that began life as the offspring of British analytic philosophy (Frege, Russell, Carnap, Popper, Wittgenstein, et cetera). Central state materialism is a widely regarded thesis among the Australians – briefly, the idea is that when we think physical events occur within our body. I haven’t got any problem with physicalism or whatever variants of the identity thesis there are as long as it is treated as trivial. Cognitive science wants to erect a whole new dogmatic metaphysics on the basis of this claim. It is bad stuff.
Most Australian philosophy is a kind of dogmatic materialism in something like this sense. And most Australian philosophers do not advocate historical materialism, and certainly not in the sense I attach to this concept. Lenin is enigmatic but I take him to be referring to what I mean by historical materialism when he says that idealism is closer to historical materialism than is dogmatic materialism. As far as I understand it, historical materialism is a philosophical advancement beyond idealism (if you’ll excuse the idealist language). It is the notion that we come to know the world as it conforms to our idea, as freedom and necessity are progressively reconciled. Historical materialism is the rejection through criticism of this argument. The world will never conform to our ideas. Philosophy must break with this way of seeing.
Historical materialism implies nominalism. Human existence has remained under the influence of myths, these being claims to timeless and incontrovertible truths – in essence, universals. The whole point of Adorno’s Dialectic Of Enlightenment is to chart the course of demythologisation in European history, a course that never runs smoothly but is continually turning back on itself. Historical materialism is seen as a development in the historical expression of this process.
Here is an interesting point and perhaps an indication of a site of tension in Adorno’s thought: in the aesthetic theory, Adorno equates modernism with a complete nominalism. He says of cubism that it is a system of aesthetic universals in an era when all such universals have been abolished. Modernism is not only nominalism, however, but is also historical materialism, as I have described it – that is, as a philosophy that abandons universals. Historical materialism is negative dialectics. Modernist – or historical materialist – metaphysics has to be universal-free – that is why Proust is of such significance to Adorno: remember, memory of a lost form is really regret for some past event. In Proust lost love provides all the material for what has traditionally been considered as metaphysical reflection.
Before I finish, I must say something about Brian Medlin, who was mentioned but not introduced in my previous entry. Brian Medlin was Professor of Philosophy at Flinders University in South Australia between the mid sixties and the late eighties – I might be a little bit out one way or another. He came to public prominence during the Vietnam War demonstrations and was also associated with student activism. Part of his notoriety within Australian philosophical circles was due to his 1st year course at Flinders, which was called ‘A Materialist History Of Philosophy’ and aimed to present the main events in the history of western philosophy from a broadly Marxist perspective – this was at a time when most of the other 1st year courses throughout Australia were composed of arguments for the existence of God, free will and determinism, Darwinism and the philosophy of mind, and informal reasoning (which, in deference to Kant, they called ‘critical reasoning’). Flinders philosophy suffered over a decade of isolation from the Australian philosophical community as a result of this curriculum development. I could say a lot more but this is enough to give any reader the flavour of the Flinders philosophy professor we are discussing.
Medlin established his early reputation through his work on central state materialism. I found him to be a mass of contradictions. I don’t think I am doing him an injustice if I say that epistemologically he was essentially a logicist and positivist. He was certainly a physicalist. When pressed he would admit that there weren’t any truths of history in the sense that there were truths of physics. This was coupled to a commitment to historical materialism, by which was meant Marx’s theory of history. You can see from what I’ve just said that this isn’t what I mean by historical materialism, although I am in broad agreement with Marx’s theory of history. But I am not talking about a theory of history – I am talking about a philosophy.
I suppose you could say that I am pursuing the same ends Medlin pursued and beginning at some of the same starting points, but we’re following different paths to get there, the high road and the low road. The only problem is, his highroad is a dead end.
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Trevor
I did philosophy at Flinders in the early 70's, and I think your description of Brian Medlin and the philosophy department is a little mild. I was student at Flinders in 1974 and 1975 (I eventually dropped out as did many of my collegues because of our involvment in radical politics. Brian was 'burn out' by the time I was a student and actually his involvment with the radical politics of the time was more by reputation than fact. This was not true for the rest of Philosophy department who also saw themselves as Marxist Leninists except for an american philospher called Larry King who must have wondered what he had got himself into.
I did Logic with Brian and a rather disturbing and infamous subject called Politics and Art.
Politics and Art was a critic of Art and Art History that could only be approached from the thoughts of Chairman Mao.
I remember a particular tute where a mature age student presented a well researched paper and found herself being so verbally abused by Brian and his followers that she was reduced to tears.
Although I was involved with the ML's or Maoists as we were known, Brian had a particular group of followers (the remains of the Flinders Marxist Leninists from the late 60's) that resembled a cult. They all wore white jeans, long black boots and red shirts.
As regards to the view of other philosophy Departments towards the one Flinders because of its curriculum development I have know Idea. I do remember there was a huge battle between the philosophy department and the university over control of the curriculum.