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[Nettime-bold] Karim Benamar: Self-restraint in the Desire for Knowledge |
Self-restraint in the Desire for Knowledge Karim BENAMMAR, Faculty of Cross-cultural Studies, Kobe University Thinking begins when the desire to know is freed from any compulsion to dominate (TI, 186)(1) Philosophy, and epistemology in particular, is a self- reflective exercise insofar as the thinker applies understanding and imagination to question the existence, validity, and kinds of knowledge attainable by the human mind. Philosophers have often sought to limit the ground, scope and aspirations of knowledge, but they have done so predominantly in order to survey the totality of the realm of attainable knowledge or to preserve the inquiry from error. The challenge posed by the work of Michel Serres is to conceive of a knowledge which would embody the practice of self-restraint, not with the purpose of avoiding error, but instead out of a desire to withhold from domination and exclusion. Michel Serres, sailor, mathematician, historian, philosopher, aesthete and staunch defender of French language and culture, has written twenty-one books so far in his search for this new kind of knowledge. Serres' writing can be divided into three chronological categories: his earlier epistemological analyses, published as the Hermes series; a middle period of literary essais which include Genese, Detachment, Les Cinq Sens and Statues; and his most recent books, Le Contrat Naturel, Le Tiers-Instruit and Atlas, which focus on pressing contemporary issues (2). In Le Contrat Naturel, Serres argues, with obvious parallels to Rousseau, about the need to establish a notion of humanity which includes our planet, and to renegotiate a "natural contract" which stresses our interdependence with the natural world. "When the hairs on the philosopher's head have turned white", Serres has said (3), "it is time to write about education", the theme of Le Tiers Instruit. Le Tiers Instruit is neither a treatise on education nor a set of principles for the upbringing of young people, but a meditation on the kind of knowledge we hope future generations will pursue. In a recent interview (4), Serres acknowledged that the possibility of philosophical wisdom, the fate of the earth and the future of our knowledge hold more fascination for him today than the analytic and epistemological questions that fascinated him when he was young. In this paper I will focus on the notion of self-restraint in the desire for knowledge put forward by Serres in Le Tiers- Instruit. I believe that his search for a radically new knowledge which would not based on domination and exclusion is of great philosophical importance, and that it deserves our attention. I find the notion that the desire for knowledge ought to restrain itself both compelling and puzzling. It is compelling because the notion of self-restraint can provide a matrix for the interaction of human intelligence with the natural world. Yet it is puzzling because it is never quite clear what it would mean for the desire to know to restrain itself, nor where such an internal imperative would spring from. While I wholeheartedly endorse the direction and tenor of Serres' philosophy, I am critical of his description and analysis of the principle of self-restraint. I will begin by presenting Serres' argument in some detail and linking it to some of the recurring themes in his earlier works. Serres proposes several notions of self-restraint; indeed, he analyses the notion of self-restraint in most human endeavors: in ethics, epistemology, science, aesthetics, ecology, philosophy, law, and religion. I will show that the notion of self-restraint in the desire to know, which may at first sight appear to be an epistemological problem, is treated by Serres as an ethical injunction. More surprisingly, perhaps, this ethical injunction itself appears to rest on an aesthetic principle. The structure of the argument thus proceeds from an aesthetic principle to an ethical injunction, to conclude on the status of the theory of knowledge. While an argument that seeks to find an extrinsic foundation for a theory of knowledge is not exactly original in philosophy, this particular focus on the interaction between the ethical and aesthetic is interesting. There are two main points I want to make in this paper: first, I want to stress the continuity in Serres' thought and show that the notion of self- restraint finds its roots in Serres' earlier appeals against an epistemology dominated by power and exclusion. Second, I will argue that Serres' appeal to an aesthetic principle undermines his whole argument and more readily helps us to prove the very opposite of his position. While this paper does not directly address questions about ecology or the relationship of humanity to nature, it does examine how theoretical, philosophical discourse can discuss ecological issues. The last third of Le Tiers Instruit begins with nature and the wisdom attributed to King Solomon: "There is nothing new under the sun". Serres imagines that the temperature of our temperate earth will increase or decrease dramatically, wiping out species and diversity. Under the frozen expanses or the torrid desert sun, there will be nothing new; the weather here functions as a metaphor for the unlimited expansion of a single law. Serres' various appeals to moderation and self-restraint all seek to counter the threat of a single law in science or philosophy obliterating everything before it and ruling uncontested. Instead, Serres champions diversity at every level, and a "philosophy of mixed bodies"(5) which strives for balance between the various elements of our knowledge. The key metaphor here is the sun, which figures prominently in King Solomon's phrase, conjures up the specter of a scorched earth, but also represents epistemological clarity. According to Serres, "The theory of knowledge has never ceased to take the emission or expansion of light as its primary model" (TI, 247). Since the emission from a light source is theoretically infinite, we can note the relevance of the metaphor for unlimited expansion. In Les Cinq Sens, Serres tried to show how fundamental the senses other than sight are to knowledge of objects in the world, and consequently how limited a theory of knowledge based on the sense of sight alone really is (6).. The other important metaphor is the interplay between the two meanings of the French word temps, which means both 'time' and 'weather'. Serres uses this double meaning to point to the two limits to endless growth: the weather, or the limit of the ecological adaptability of the earth; and time, which allows self-restraint by forgiving misdeeds and breaking the cycle of retribution. Although Serres' style makes it difficult for us to unravel all the strands of his discourse and its many metaphorical meanings, the many repetitions of his main appeal to self-restraint allow us to reconstruct the thrust of his argument without fear of misinterpretation. Self-restraint arises almost naturally from an ethical principle: according to Serres, "no doubt humanity begins with holding back" (TI, 180). In order to hold back, the endless striving for power and control must be restrained. Against Nietzsche's main contention in On the Genealogy of Morals (7), Serres claims that "humanity becomes human when it invents weakness - a strongly positive value" (TI, 185). Note the stress on the idea of invention, which Serres distinguishes from discovery; the claim is that we should not assume the existence of weakness but rather create it ourselves. Indeed, all the theoretically negative aspects which diminish an overwhelming desire or thirst for power are 'transvaluated' into positive elements. To refrain from doing even though it is in one's power becomes the guiding ethical principle: "Morality first requires abstention. The first obligation is caution; the first maxim: before doing the good, avoid the bad" (TI, 184). Even in ethics, the preponderance of an exclusive law should be challenged; against Kant, Serres holds that: "The wise person therefore disobeys the unique law of expansion, does not always persevere in his own actions and thinks that to make his own conduct a universal law defines not only evil but also madness" (TI, 184). In discussing knowledge, Serres plays on the etymological kinship between 'reason' and 'reasonable': "To be reasonable means to withhold from the full capacity of one's reason" (TI, 186). Or, in Serres' most naked and dogmatic assertion of self- restraint: "Reason puts aside some reason to restrain itself" (TI, 184).The scientific endeavor is, predictably, the area in which runaway reason can do the greatest damage: "Unified, mad, tragic, science is winning, and will soon reign, but as the winter wins and reigns" (TI, 187). Again, the solution lies in self-imposed moderation: "Science will become wise when it will restrain itself from doing all it can do" (TI, 188). Serres finds in ecology a concept which vindicates self- restraint: "Yet now we discover this old evidence anew: the Earth cannot give to all its children that which the rich wrestle from it today. There is scarcity" (TI, 192). Scarcity, itself a lack, a negative value, disrupts the equation in which endless progress is equated with endless growth. Self-restraint then becomes the response to the realization of this situation. There are both theoretical and practical aspects to self-restraint: theoretically, self-restraint is a part of reason itself; in a practical sense, it is the adaptation of the human race to compelling circumstances out of a spirit of survival. Moreover, self-restraint is found both at the individual and communal level: "We have to restrain ourselves, each of us individually but especially as a group, and invest part of our power in reducing our power" (TI, 186). The foundation of the ethical group lies in communal self-restraint: "To enjoy power and not take advantage of it is the beginning of wisdom, of civilization" (TI, 192). When Serres looks at the basis of our laws, he finds that they are founded on the principle of retribution. Justice is based on compensation, on vengeance, on the eternal return of the vendetta. This cycle of retributive violence is bound to continue endlessly, since it is a closed system, an eternal recurrence of crime answering crime. To break out of this ever-recurring cycle, Serres proposes the statute of limitation, a legal concept which allows for the essential working of time by voiding criminal acts after a certain period. By introducing a non-reversible element into a closed system, we destroy its cyclically repetitive nature (8). According to Serres: "This has concerned law, but also morality, politics and theology: the pardon is the foundation of ethics, clemency the foundation of power, self-restraint covers justice and controls our destiny (TI, 216). This last quote shows the extent to which Serres considers these fields to be intertwined by the notion of self-restraint. Clemency and self- restraint are the non-reversible elements which break up the endless cycles of vengeance or accumulation of power. While Serres appeals to self-restraint in ethics, ecology and politics, he finds it already present in art. To the accumulation of power or the will to dominate, Serres opposes the work of art:"The work of art, timid, weak, fragile, lost, waits to be discovered, shines softly as a crystal in a crevice, and fortunately, does not propagate. The work itself holds back" (TI, 189). Just as non-reversible elements break up an eternal cycle, so the originality and uniqueness of the work of art breaks up the propagation of copies. The inimitable work of art does not fall under the domination of the single law: "Fortunately, and by definition, the inimitable has no imitators and thus neither spreads nor propagates itself" (TI, 189). The original and inimitable work of art is beautiful precisely because it is free from the compulsion to dominate; it is this principle which Serres suggests we make the basis of thought: "When science and reason will have attained beauty, we will no longer be in any danger" (TI, 190). There is essentially nothing new in preaching self-restraint in our interaction with the environment or in our scientific progress, even though there is now overwhelming evidence that humankind will face an uncertain future if our mad growth is not drastically contained in the decades to come. What singles out Serres' argument is the level at which he stakes his claims, since he demands nothing less than a radical reconception of thought itself. The remarkable thing about Serres' interest in ecological issues is that it has enabled him to express in a practical and relevant sense the abstract longing for another way of thinking which haunted his earlier writing. In Rome, in which he discussed the bloody foundation of the city using the first book of Livy, Serres wrote: "We still have to found a city, a science or knowledge which will no longer be founded, like ours, on death and destruction. Aside from the dreary repetitions of history, there remains only this single task" (9). In Detachment, we read: "All things are emptied of their reality through rivalry. Every science is void of its truth through rivalry. You who fight for your truth possess only the truth of the contest. You who fight for knowledge possess only the knowledge of the battle. Soon, there will be only one science, the science of battles. The science of all sciences will only be an immense strategy, the space of knowledge lies in the hands of the soldiery" (10). And, a few pages later: "I am dreaming: outside our knowledge there exists a learning sealed off by our very science, killed by our very language" (11). The concern with the destructiveness of a single science or a single knowledge has remained, but the difference with the earlier work is that Serres now clearly identifies the evil as the law of unlimited growth, and proposes an answer. It is an answer and not a solution, because it does not solve the problems that arise from unlimited growth or domination by a single principle. It is not an argument, not a final move in the game; rather, it is an attempt to rewrite the rules. Serres' answer is situated outside of the territory of the rule of unlimited growth, since it stipulates that this growth should never be allowed to take place. Serres' answer is to stay well clear of the founding premise of the law of unlimited growth: do not succumb to the rhetoric of domination or you will be doomed. The appeal to self-restraint is thus not properly speaking a solution, either practically or philosophically; it is a call to reinterpret the way we think about knowledge and power, a summons to think anew, to desire knowledge without the compulsion to dominate. Since Serres' claims are so important, and because they point towards a fundamentally different way of thinking, it is vital that we understand the way his argument progresses. I claim that Serres' argument leads him to assert that the necessity for self-restraint ultimately rests on the formulation of an aesthetic principle. As we have seen, Serres appeals to self-restraint in the exercise of power, in the desire for knowledge, in scientific research, and in our interaction with the environment. Restraint is theoretically a negative value, since it is withholding from action; in this sense, it is a restrictive factor. Yet by closing off the open-endedness of the law of unlimited expansion, it also becomes a defining factor. The law of unlimited growth of knowledge or power is a law onto itself, since it requires nothing else but limitless expansion. By restraining ourselves from occupying the total space, by withholding from limitless expansion, it appears that we acknowledge a higher, extrinsic principle of control. Yet what makes Serres' characterization of self-restraint paradoxical is its reflexivity, since power or reason restrains itself: "reason puts aside some reason to restrain itself" (TI, 184). The restrictive and defining principle is part of reason itself; its action occurs internally. In other words, if total control of anything by a law of unlimited growth includes controlling itself (for example by curbing its own action when it endangers its own foundation), then a law controlling itself exhibits total control at a higher level. Since the agent, the agency and the object of control are all the same, reason or power grows at the same time that it limits itself. Paradoxically, then, reason controlling itself would be more powerful than unbridled reason. Moreover, if the principle of control is truly inherent in reason itself, then reason cannot be controlled by outside principles of any kind, including ethical ones. This is not, however, the way Serres' argument progresses. His first appeal is ethical: "Morality first requires abstention. The first obligation is caution; the first maxim: before doing the good, avoid the bad" (TI, 184). The exhortation to withhold from using one's power can be compared to the ethical imperative one is placed under in the face-to-face in Levinas. The face of the other is itself an imperative which forces me to assume responsibility for my deeds and those of others, irrespective of the real balance of power between us at the moment. Ethically, it seems that we can at least conceive of a law which requires first of all that one withhold from the full exercise of one's power. Serres, however, does not ask us to believe in such an ethical imperative by a leap of faith. He proposes instead an aesthetic principle: that which is inimitable has no imitators and therefore does not propagate itself. It is a novel an interesting philosophical move to link self-restraint in an ethical or epistemological sense to the aesthetic value of a work of art. I claim that Serres has staked the very intelligibility of his ethical imperative on its being able to be modelled on an aesthetic imperative. According to his description, this imperative could take two forms: that of the aesthetic desire to create a work of art; or that of the status of the work of art itself as an inimitable object. I now want to argue that neither of these two kinds of aesthetic imperative will render the ethical imperative intelligible, and therefore that neither will solve Serres' problem. Let us consider first what kind of drive produces a work of art. The aesthetic compulsion to create consists in excluding competing aesthetic principles completely, and in totally filling up aesthetic space. We could say that the aesthetic imperative demands complete control over the internal aesthetic principles of a work and the exclusion of any rival principles. Perhaps some artists will find this imperative either too radical or not radical enough; they may also feel that it does not describe their artistic inspiration very well. Let me therefore propose some examples: twelve-tone serial music, which was developed at the beginning of this century by Schoenberg and others, does not allow the aesthetic principles or rules of tonal music to influence the composition at all. Indeed, the twelve-tone system would literally not exist unless it systematically and completely excluded the musical conventions of tonal music. In painting, the Cubists with their focus on multiple perspectives broke radically with existing conventions about the representation of space. And in literature, the French chosiste novels of the post-war period stuck to their own radical principles of writing, which would be totally alien to, say, the magical realism of Garcia Marquez. Or let us take Serres' own example, mentioned in Le Tiers Instruit but discussed at length in his book Genese: in Balzac's short story The Unknown Masterpiece, the painter Frenhofer seeks to create the ultimate painting of reality, taking as his subject a female nude (12). When the painter dies, we finally get a description of 'la belle noiseuse'; only a 'delicious' foot is recognizable, emerging from a chaos of colors and forms. Serres regards this chaotic depiction of reality as a vindication his 'philosophy of mixed bodies' seeking to describe the 'noise' of the world. But more pertinently, this example stresses just how uncompromising the self-imposed aesthetic principles of the painter are. The force of the aesthetic imperative, when it is powerful enough not only to produce a work of art but to produce a masterpiece which redefines art, lies in its compulsive desire to exclude everything but its own principles. This does not necessarily mean that the artist disregards or despises earlier works of art and aesthetic currents, but rather that the domination of a single, obsessive law and the exclusion of other possibilities is necessary within the aesthetic context of the creation of a particular work. In other words, the creative impulse, in order to be productive, can never be democratic. The principle of the single law applies to the aesthetic impetus which constitutes the genesis of the work of art, and to the maniacal determination to actualize a particular project. The compulsive nature of thinking, in this sense, is akin to this aesthetic compulsion. Thought pursues the object of thinking relentlessly, with the same maniacal conviction, and perhaps with the same ultimate goal as the aesthetic imperative, namely to produce the beautiful. In scientific research, problems are preferably solved by the most simple but also the most elegant solution. The fact that an aesthetically beautiful solution is considered superior shows the importance of exclusive aesthetic principles and points to the close connection between thinking and aesthetics (13). But, one may object, Serres does not want to stress the similarity between the aesthetic drive and the unrestrained desire for knowledge. Instead, he takes great care to insist that the work of art is inimitable: that it cannot spawn a generation of copies and therefore does not seek to expand its own domination. Yet this is for all intents and purposes an artificial definition; to be inimitable, in Serres' definition, is to achieve such an exalted position that the work cannot be copied. The inimitable work of art is prized out of this world. While a work of art does not directly seek to be imitated, it seeks to project and maintain the criteria and environment necessary to judge it; these in turn allow it to be criticized, copied or parodied. We judge a work of art in some sense by the distance it takes from its most able copies; to some extent, therefore, the possibility of aesthetic judgement of a work of art rests on the possibility of it being copied. Consequently, both aesthetic imperatives are a dead end for Serres. The first, the aesthetic compulsion to create a work, is in fact a direct counter-example to the notion of self-restraint. More damagingly, it also provides a clear model for thinking which maniacally strives after its own resolution, and even scientific thought makes use of its stringent and exclusive aesthetic principles. The second, the notion of the work of art as an inimitable object, is controversial. If it is truly inimitable, the work prizes itself out of the realm of aesthetic judgement and comprehension; if, however, it is imitable at any level, it cannot, on Serres' own account, be exemplary of self- restraint and cannot support an ethical imperative. To conclude: I have analyzed Serres' appeal to self-restraint in ethics, ecology, epistemology and aesthetics. I have shown that the notion of self-restraint is important because it could provide the basis for a radically new way of thinking, and point beyond our conception of knowledge as domination and exclusion. This knowledge has been referred to and hinted at in Serres' earlier work, but only since his newfound interest in ecological issues has it come to be identified with the law of unlimited growth. Serres' notion of self-restraint does not present us with an immediately intelligible imperative, as the face of the other does in Levinas. Rather, he proposes that the ethical injunction be based on the aesthetic principle of an inimitable work of art. I have shown, however, that neither the aesthetic compulsion to create nor the concept of the inimitable can provide Serres with a foundation for the ethical injunction to self-restraint. I also note that the principles underlying aesthetic compulsion in fact seem to prove the very opposite of Serres' point, namely that thinking which is compelled to dominate is similar to the compulsive development of an aesthetic credo. Until it can be shown that self-restraint is either an inherently human characteristic, or that it can be achieved by modelling our behavior on some existing system of thought, we shall have to enjoy the compulsive nature of our thinking and suffer its consequences -a situation for which the world of art again provides a fitting analogy. Endnotes: 1. Michel Serres, Le Tiers Instruit (Paris: Francois Bourin, 1991). Henceforth cited as TI; all translations are my own. 2. Michel Serres, Hermes I - La communication (Paris: Minuit, 1969), Hermes II - L'interference (Paris: Minuit, 1972), Hermes III - La traduction (Paris: Minuit, 1974), Hermes IV - La distribution (Paris: Minuit, 1977), and Hermes V - Le passage du Nord-Ouest (Paris: Minuit, 1980); a selection from these volumes of collected papers has been translated as Hermes: Literature, Science, Philosophy, trans. & eds. J.V.Harari and D.F.Bell (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982); Genese (Paris: Grasset, 1982); Les Cinq Sens (Paris: Grasset, 1985); Statues (Paris: Francois Bourin, 1987); Detachment, trans. Genevieve James and Raymond Federman (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1989); Le Contrat Naturel (Paris: Francois Bourin, 1990); Le Tiers Instruit (Paris: Francois Bourin, 1991); Atlas (Paris, Julliard 1994).. 3. Lecture on Le Tiers Instruit delivered at the Alliance Francaise in Kyoto, Japan, on June 12, 1991. 4. Serres' latest book is a series of interviews with Bruno Latour: Michel Serres, Eclaircissements (Paris: Francois Bourin, 1992). 5. The subtitle of Les Cinq Sens is "philosophy of mixed bodies, volume I". Serres has referred to a second volume in preparation. 6. Michel Serres, Les Cinq Sens, passim. 7. Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R.J.Hollingdale, ed. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1967). 8. This introduction of a non-reversible element parallels the introduction of non-reversible time in physics and chemistry, as described by Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers in Order out of Chaos (New York: Bantam Books, 1984). Prigogine and Stengers cite Serres' work on thermodynamics repeatedly and wrote the postscript to the English edition of the Hermes series, Hermes: Literature, Science, Philosophy. 9.Michel Serres, Rome (Paris: Grasset, 1983), p. 114; the translation is my own. 10. Michel Serres, Detachment, trans. Genevieve James and Raymond Federman, p. 48. 11. Ibid., p. 59. 12. Michel Serres, Genese; Honore de Balzac, The Unknown Masterpiece. . 13. See for example: Deane Curtin, ed., The Aesthetic Dimension of Science (New York: Philosophical Library, 1982); Edward Teller, The Pursuit of Simplicity (Malibu: Pepperdine University Press, 1981). . source: http://ccs.cla.kobe-u.ac.jp/Kihan/karim/serres.html _______________________________________________ Nettime-bold mailing list Nettime-bold@nettime.org http://www.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold