The Paradox of Culture:

Antinomy From The Academy to The Dome

A Talk to the Cafe Philosophique

at Scarthin Books, Cromford, Derbyshire

9 December 2000

Introduction:

The Academy was Plato's school of philosophy. The Dome today is not known as the epitome of anything. Yet what links them is a concept which has concerned philosophers for two and a half millennia - the reconciling of opposites - or before that the attempt to understand if opposites exist.

Probably invented by Zeno the Eleatic, taught by him to Socrates and thence to Plato was the Dialectic. Taking the form of a normal debate or argument, in the Dialectic one would find three parts - a thesis or premise; its opposition, or antithesis; and finally the resolution, or synthesis. Political theorists such as Marx carried this forward into what they called dialectical materialism, but they assumed that a synthesis was possible. Antinomy identifies situations where synthesis cannot occur - it has been found in every field of thought.

Definitions:

A dictionary definition:

Clearly, an American dictionary. But notice how the term in contemporary practise also has a practical reference. The Encyclopaedia Britannica's explanation is:

(Future quotations from the Encyclopaedia Britannica unless otherwise noted).

And a paradox is defined thus:

Some of the Best known paradoxes are Zeno's

Travel over Distance: Achilles and the Tortoise. The analysis of the problem is true - and yet Achilles does win the race. Experience tells us so. In practise, it does not matter if a problem can be resolved by disputation.

The bigger opposition: Being and Nothingness: (in Greek: On Kai Me On)

Things exist. But then so do holes. How does a hole exist - it is defined by its surrounding solidities (earth, doughnut, wood etc). But if we can talk of the earth and the doughnut and the wood we know we are talking of something existing that is also physical. But there can be holes in arguments, in budgets, in understanding - again we know what arguments, budgets ad understanding are - though they are not physical. Mustn't the opposite also exist? Mustn't non-being also be, in order to identify what is?

Dualism - opposites. It is difficult to think without being able to identify extent - and how far anything (physical or not exists) is identify by where it ends - where what it is not begins.

Overlap with Manichaenism and Gnosticism. (Was the Trinity an attempt to escape from Dualism?)

Christianity introduced some new oppositions of its own: Christian Antinomies -

Flesh and the Spirit,

Goodness and Evil,

Pre-destination (do we control our own destinies, or are they in hands of God?)

Is Hell the absence of God?

Where is God in the world?

At its worst this took the form of the need to sin in order to be capable of experiencing redemption.

But by the time of the late Renaissance, whether in philosophy or theology, this seemed of little value: simply disputation: leading Christopher Marlowe's Dr Faustus to cry "Bid On Kai Me On farewell".

Kant and the end of the Metaphysical Antinomy

Kant (1724 - 1804) published the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason in 1781.

Science, technology and capitalism have seen a fading of religion. One of Kant's achievement, and perhaps co-incidentally, was the rise of technology, and a huge take-off in science. Reason on its own, as Kant showed, lead nowhere. If fields such as cosmology, where metaphysics had reigned, the scientific astronomer now took the field, working with observations rather than speculation.

The Value of Understanding Antinomy Today

What does this mean for the twentieth century? Metaphysics has disappeared - except that it re-appears in occultism, New Age-ism, irrationality and the popular delusions of crowds. Our newspapers now carry the message of the stars, as if they cannot be looked at each night by each of us.

Men and women are alienated from their world - both physical and spiritual. It has to be re-interpreted to them - where the Protestants struggled to give every person access to the word of God, transmission of the word in any form is now in fewer and fewer hands.

But why should we talk about it? Some people say that you can't argue with a mad man, and certainly a lot of our society today looks mad. Nevertheless it is worth re-stating the benefits of argument:

When we come to look at power systems - and that means politics - it is there that the concept of antinomy is now of most use. Oddly enough, those who identify it have often arrived at it individually, and yet identify something very similar. Modern culture is a good place to start to see some of these ironies.

Kant is not remembered as a political theorist, although he did propound ethical views, and proclaimed the need for "perpetual peace", and his ethical dictum - the Categorical Imperative "Act in such a way that it could performed universally". That is not the way of most men, of course. The mass media is predicated on the argument "Do as I say, not do as I do". The benefits, of course, are huge.

(The methods of ensuring that the masses "do as I say" are varied, and come under many headings - ideology, is a common term for this, and another subject of interest).

The threat, though, is that those who have an interest in maintaining the antinomic situation are also aware of it. Orwell exaggerated this to make a point of it in his last novel:

Orwell recognised that "dualism" is at the heart of these systems, and that those who maintain systems strive to maintain dual standards, even while maintaining their political and social unanimity. We said earlier that it does not matter if a problem can be resolved - in the example of Achilles and the tortoise. But failure to resolve other situations can be far worse for those under them - while it is not in the interest of those governing those states to end their contradictions. Although textbooks on philosophy may have chapters on "political philosophy" and "metaphysics", the consequences of the two can be very different, even while their understanding and analysis use similar tools of thought.

In 1936 in a letter to his friend Walter Benjamin, Adorno said that High Art and pop art are the torn halves to an integral freedom, to which, however, they do not add up. Popular art is "mass art" - music is shared, records are million or billion sellers. Venues hold larger and larger crowds. The crowd itself is an increasingly common phenomena. The individual matters less and less, and can own less and less unique to him- or herself.

The Dome

Which brings us to The Dome as the an epitome of opposing forces - the one place where the many must come together in an experience which is not unique. The crowds are given an experience in which they come, most of them identified by their designer clothes, not made for them as individuals, on transport which is "mass transport". In times of increasing wealth, individuals have less opportunity to buy objects uniquely. Products have a "U.S.P" - a Unique Selling Point, but are sold in a mass market. And our society relies on this antinomy between its proclaimed belief in the value of the individual and its inability to give each person anything of individual existence.

In politics, the democracies maintain peace at home, only by maintaining war in enclaves within themselves such as Norther Ireland, Euskadi (the "Basque region"), or in institutionalised attacks on minorities in ghettoes and bidonvilles (the mean concrete and tin suburbs of the French cities); meanwhile, political leaders proclaim "police actions" on countries, on whom they use weapons and methods scarcely dreamed of in World War Two. In some case, these are the policies of the Nazis finally brought to fulfilment (the destruction of a federal Yugoslavia, for instance). The Troops used in these actions will enjoy the pleasures of their fellow citizens when they come home on leave - perhaps to visit The Dome, or the Hanover Exposition 2000.

Bizarrely, although governments will maintain strict fiscal policies in their own governments, they will make other cases exempt from this. So the management of Domes and Expositions, and various other bodies will be exempted from fiscal control, in order to pump money into them. At this point don't "bizarrely" and "antinomically" become synonymous? In Britain, we can see that money put into railways instead of The Dome, would have much improved society. In the USA we can see that money put into the "the war on drugs" would have repayed itself if put into reconstruction in the ghettoes. And the same is true around the world today.

Conclusion

The ruling thought of any day takes various names. A popular name today is "The third way". This carries the implication that it is a third stage, as well, as if perhaps it were the third, synthetic stage of the dialectic we mentioned in the introduction. Is this implication intentional? I don't know.

If we are to understand "the third way" we have to understand the concept of antinomy, because the way of modern politics is to maintain opposites. Society, like Zeno's race, keeps on going, and winners continue to emerge- but it is at the cost of logic. And at a far greater cost, as we can see on our streets.