Neo-Existentialism

by Markus Gabriel

  So the universe (maybe) has a fixed, bounded shape – even though we may never fully grasp it. But, by its very way of being, a human culture can’t be like this. If it has present limits, it can always reach beyond them. To put it paradoxically, it is in the nature of the world of self-interpreting animals like us that it is undelimitable in this fashion. To think of all of reality as bounded, as one (probably) can of the universe, is to ignore or grievously misunderstand us.

  If I understand him aright, this is one of Gabriel’s crucial contributions to our understanding of the human condition.

  3

  Does Mind “Exist”?

  Jocelyn Benoist

  I really feel sympathetic towards Gabriel’s view on the philosophy of mind as set out in his chapter “Neo-Existentialism.” His criticism of reductionism is really illuminating and his overall perspective strikes me as true.

  To go directly to the remaining problem in my view, it seems to me that a further step is required: in order to make sense of the specificity of mind, maybe one should go beyond any kind of ontological perspective instead of trying to fix ontology. Thus, maybe, the discourse of ontology is no longer appropriate, and mind consists of nothing of which it would make sense to say that it “exists” – because by the way what would it mean for mind “not to exist”? In other words: to what does one add “mind” when one says that there is mind – and it can only sound as if this meant: there is mind as well?

  To some extent, Gabriel’s strategy in his text is meant to avoid this trap, because it is supposed to question not only the ontological exclusivity of physicalism but its priority as well. From the pluralistic perspective that Gabriel advocates there is no privileged sense of being; on the contrary, we have to make room for the essential plurality of the senses of being that are so to speak all on a par.

  Gabriel’s global purpose is to reject that formulation of the problem according to which we should find some place for mind within an essentially mindless world. We can agree on that. I still wonder whether, in his view, something doesn’t remain of this problem. To be sure, according to him, there is no world, and the world that there is not is not (only) physical. However, the mental still remains something that has to be posited in contrast to the physical. Now, I am not sure that it is the best way to capture the mental. The risk, constitutive of what modernity has called “the philosophy of mind,” seems then to build a mere negative philosophy of mind. I am not sure to what extent Gabriel avoids this pitfall.

  A first possible kind of negation – which is the troublemaker – is the negation within a genus. Then, mind would supposedly be simply another kind of being than the merely physical kind. Gabriel seems to reject this option in some way: “I propose to locate the semantic action not in a natural gap between inanimate and animate matter of a certain complexity but between natural kinds and Geist as an explanatory structure” (t/s p. 36). I take this to be right if we put the emphasis, in this statement, not on the fact that Geist is not any kind of matter, including an “animate” one (but what would it mean for it to be “matter,” even so? Is such negation then meaningful?), but on the fact that Geist is not so much a kind as an “explanatory” structure.

  In other words: the insistence that one finds in the chapter on the fact that Geist is no natural kind is certainly insightful; however, it seems that the author, in his discerning criticism of the metaphysics of mind as a “natural kind,” focuses on the fact that mind cannot be natural. Which is certainly a fact. It seems nevertheless even more important to me that mind is no kind at all.

  The technical term “natural kind” might turn out to be misleading. In a lot of cases it would be correct to interpret it as if its meaning depended on some preconception of “nature”: thus, a natural kind would be defined as such by its belonging to nature, understood for example and principally as the material universe. One might, however, endorse another interpretation of the so-called natural kinds: what makes them “natural” is not their belonging to a nature in a preconceived sense of the term but, rather, some semantic property such as their referential rigidity. A “natural kind” is a kind that can and should constitutively be picked out by deixis, if you want to refer to it at all. In this sense, mind could still be a natural kind without belonging to nature in the preconceived sense of the totality of what is material.

  Now, the most interesting side of Gabriel’s criticism of any naturalistic conception of mind, in my view, is that he seems to reject not only the claim that mind should be a natural kind in the first sense of the term, but that it is one in the second sense as well. You cannot pick out mind in this way because it is certainly no kind. This negation of the fact that the mind is a kind seems to me the real core of the chapter and a brilliant move. As Gabriel puts it very clearly: “Neo-Existentialism is the view that there is no single phenomenon or reality corresponding to the ultimately very messy umbrella term ‘the mind’” (p. 9).

  Now, if the mind is not a kind, it remains to be observed that negation cannot then have the sense that we have initially ascribed to it. It is no longer a “negation within a genus,” but a categorial negation, which marks a categorial difference between two kinds of terms – a difference of grammar, so to speak. The grammar of mind is not the same as the grammar of nature.

  It seems to me this is exactly what Gabriel is after, in particular in his beautiful toy model of cycling. “Cycling,” says Gabriel, “cannot be … reduced to bicycles” (p. 43). This is perfectly true, but not because these are entities of different sorts – different “kinds” to be precise – but because cycling – as opposed to bicycles – is not an entity. It does not have the same grammar as bicycles: from this point of view, the simple fact that it is a gerund should not go unnoticed.

  As a matter of fact, prima facie, something or even a lot of things don’t seem to work in this comparison. It seems really difficult to say that “the relation between mind and brain, in all the cases which really motivate the question of how something mental fits into the natural order, is like the relation between cycling and bicycles” (p. 43). Because, in the first place, a bicycle is the tool with which I cycle, whereas it is probably a bad metaphor to call the brain a tool, as if I purposefully make use of it – it is true that English speakers might say “Use your brain!” – but the metaphor, like any metaphor, should not be taken literally. But also especially because, prima facie, “mind” and “cycling,” as terms, do not belong to the same category. The logical comparison, it seems, should rather be between thinking and cycling. This ostensible impropriety, however, reveals something: that is to say, that mind, or at least “Geist,” has no other substance than thinking. There is no Geist except insofar as it is involved in an activity. From this point of view, cycling – as opposed to the bicycle as a thing – might prove a good model, after all.

  One might even take a step further and assert conversely that every “activity” in some privileged – and structuring human life – sense of the term is “geistig.” Cycling, for instance, could then turn out to be an expression of Geist as such – exactly inasmuch as it is not reducible to the bicycle with which it is performed. This claim could be absolutely true insofar as in cycling the bicycle is used and use is something that never goes without Geist – a point that might be substantiated by the fact that, on some understanding of the word “use,” it makes sense to talk of “use” insofar as there might be a good and a bad use, or at least this use might be described as more or less “correct.” Then Geistigkeit certainly seems in order.

  Now, the real question is whether the talk of “Geist” can ever make sense independently of this framework. Is there “Geist” independently of any “activity”? As Gabriel puts it, Geist being “an explanatory structure for action,” it does not seem to be possible.

  Now, this hypothesis is very appealing, because putting the emphasis on the activity as such in the first place helps the philosophers avoid any reification of Geist and, secondly, might make Geist
altogether more concrete – give it a less ethereal ring. I am not sure, however, that a new kind of essentialization is not to be found in this characterization.

  To be sure, as opposed to the “mind,” Geist is not an umbrella term, to the extent that – this is my hypothesis – it does not mix up notions of different categorial status. In this regard the shift made by Gabriel’s analysis from the disparate concept of “mind” to the more precise – at least categorially homogeneous – concept of Geist is a real step forward. However, Geist is still a notion that applies to a diverse range of attitudes or capacities, not all of which can be adequately captured by the term “action” – unless one holds that thinking something is itself an action, or at least for an action’s sake, which, even at the cost of the broadest understanding of action, is not evident at all. Those who say that, in order to be “geistig,” action does not need the external contribution of a thought – that per se would be no action – but that action itself is geistig, certainly have a point. However, this does not amount to a denial that there might also be thought without any framework of action, and that thought in this sense, as such, is one side of what “Geistigkeit” is.

  In this regard, Gabriel’s definition of Geist, apparently linking it up essentially with action, maybe seems rather too narrow. Of course this depends on how one understands “action.” However, if you stretch the concept of action too much, you risk ending up with a meaningless concept – one that makes no difference, for instance, between action and simple thought, which might not be so desirable.

  It remains that placing the emphasis on action probably helps the philosopher make sense of the distinction between nature and Geist – to put it in these terms – as a categorial one, and not only a difference between two kinds. Action is certainly no kind of entity. It is not given as entities are; it is only as far as it is to be done.

  On the other hand, when one takes a closer look at the way in which Gabriel draws this categorial distinction, some questions might arise. It seems to me that, even if he absolutely correctly relativizes the role of “consciousness” in the delineation of the mental (or, more exactly, of the “geistig”), because “consciousness” is indeed an umbrella term that also covers “natural” phenomena, he still tends to determine the sphere of “Geistigkeit” by self-consciousness. Of course, both points are consistent, as Gabriel can perceive from the tradition of German Idealism that self-consciousness is precisely to be distinguished from the simple fact of consciousness. The pain in my knee is analytically conscious, otherwise it would be no pain; this consciousness, however, has the status of a purely natural, as it were “meteorological” event, to be observed. That is not what self-consciousness is about: self-consciousness is about my capacity, for instance, to treat this pain as something that happens to me, that is part of the sense of my life. Now, self-consciousness, as a principal definition of Geistigkeit, has its own issues.

  Why should I say that the philosophy of Geist presented in “Neo-Existentialism” is essentially, in the tradition of German Idealism, a philosophy of “self-consciousness”? Because of the pivotal role that self-deception plays in the way in which Gabriel articulates the aforementioned categorial difference. The basic argument is that self-deception is not a mere observational mistake. In this, Gabriel is certainly right. The difference is that the mistake I make about fermions – or indeed about anything: that is the way mistakes work – does not change fermions or what they are about, whereas my self-deception changes myself.

  This is very true, but it raises some questions.

  The emphasis on self-deception is a very good move, because it discloses the gap that is always potentially there between what is “geistig” and itself. What is “geistig” has essentially this capacity to be and not to be itself, whereas what is not geistig – but “natural” – is just what it is. In this regard, what is geistig always bears in itself a constitutive distance to ontology: it never comes down altogether to what it is.

  Now, one possible mistake – there is one – would consist in ontologizing this distance to ontology: in saying that the geistig being, by the simple fact that it believes itself to be what it is not, becomes what it is not, and that finally it is what it is (that is to say: what it is not). It is obviously not true. To adopt Gabriel’s example, it is not because I believe I am a squash champion that I am one. The belief doesn’t actually make me a squash champion.

  It remains that I do believe that I am such a champion, and that this belief is certainly part of me – and may even positively structure my existence. As a matter of fact, this is the classical move, typical of the so-called modern philosophy of self-consciousness, that Gabriel makes in his turn. Perhaps I have not become a squash champion, but I have become someone who believes he is a squash champion.

  Now, to believe one is a squash champion is not the same kind of property as actually being a squash champion. Or, more exactly, in some way it is a property, but then it is a property like other properties – a part of what may be called my (psychological) “nature” – and in some other way it is not a property at all, just a semblance of a property.

  In this regard, there is something very specific about these determinations that might indeed be called “spiritual” – that is to say, that they are not merely facts but also claims, assessable as such and justified or not. I have certain beliefs, and it is probably part of my “nature” to have them. However, it is part of the definition of these beliefs that they are or are not correct. The things might be as we believe them to be or they might not. Otherwise they are not beliefs but, again, like the pain in my knee.

  This means that what Geist adds to nature as such is not a strange kind of thing that has the equally strange property of being able to determine what it is independently of any norm but, on the contrary, normativity as such. The things are what they are – that is their definition. On the other hand, we can be wrong about what they are, and we can even be wrong about what we are – the point being that to be wrong is still a mode of that very particular way that we have of “being,” because it is a way of existing under a norm, which is not the same as mere “existence.”

  To be sure, at this point, we should introduce something like reflexivity. Normativity is, however, an essential condition of this self-reflection. Self-deception certainly is not merely a mistake. But there is self-deception only where there is a norm to be abused. Without the priority of the norms, there is as little logical room for self-deception as for mistakes.

  In Gabriel’s text, this fundamental normativity of Geist does not seem entirely prominent. It is more implied than made explicit. This might create misunderstandings. From this point of view, it seems to me, for instance, that the insistence on fiction – “fictional story-telling” as a central feature of Geist – demands a proviso. It is perfectly true that the capacity to fictionalize is an essential feature of Geist. However, one should then go into the grammar of fiction and observe that there is only fiction in contrast to a discourse that is not fictional – i.e., to the norms of this discourse, bracketed within the fictional discourse so as to set up another normative framework. Fiction is no mere cancelling of norms: it essentially feeds on them and plays with them, which is still another kind of normativity – a game is nothing but pure norm.

  A mistaken use of the reference to fiction, and to intentionality in general, is possible – that is to say, a purely ontological reference, as if the question were only of “what there is” and not also of what norms are used. Then, one would believe that by adding fiction one adds something to our world – this mistaken belief is precisely the target of Gabriel’s criticism at the beginning of his chapter. Now, fictional being is not just an additional being; fiction is an additional norm which does not simply add an extra nature to the realm of natural being but, rather, determines another normative framework for being – which framework makes sense only in relation (in contrast) to being in a non-fictional sense.

  To overco
me naturalism, as Gabriel reminds us many times, it is not just to add another – or many other – compartment(s) to natural being. Shouldn’t we then proffer this alternative agenda: to open up our sense for the diversity of the senses of being, as normative senses?

  4

  Human Life and its Concept

  Andrea Kern

  1

  The concept of a human being, according to Gabriel, is not the concept of a natural kind. The reason for this, Gabriel thinks, is that “human beings essentially depend on their self-conceptions, for they act in light of who they take themselves to be” (p. 42). Nevertheless, Gabriel thinks, “humans are animals” (p. 19).

  In what follows I will argue that Gabriel’s position has difficulty making sense of the latter thought. His account of the human does not allow him to make intelligible the thought, entertained by a human being, that a human being is an animal. However, if a human being cannot understand herself as an animal that possesses the very capacities in terms of which she is supposed to understand herself as, and hence be, a human being, then there is no such thing as a human being, on Gabriel’s account, and hence no such thing as the various phenomena subsumed under the term “Geist.”