Gehlen: §48 Primeval Man and Late Culture
Original translation from the previously untranslated work ‘Urmensch und Spätkultur’ (Primitive Man and Late Culture). §48, the last section, summarises some of the ideas of the book and provides a brief overview of its contents.
48. Summary. Outlook
The entire structure of this book could also have been developed based on the three distinct forms of human behaviour that can be identified, which, to our understanding, cannot be traced back to one another: rational-practical behaviour (Part I), ritual-representational behaviour (Part II) and behaviour described by the words ‘reversal of the direction of drive’, which we saw how it can emerge from intoxication, ecstasy and asceticism, find an inner path and end in belief in a divine spirit and will. The reversal of behaviour ‘inward’ always has an ascetic component, at least to the extent that its immediate, physical forms must be excluded. For even the most ordinary ‘consummatory action’ such as eating and drinking can be instrumentalised in an expressionless sense to bring about the subjective state of enjoyment. This behaviour in particular has its own expansive power, it generalises very quickly, and if the theory of man follows this generalisation, then we have the assertion, widely accepted in the 19th century, that the purpose of all action is to avoid displeasure and arouse pleasure, thus instrumentalising all human behaviour in this expressionless way. This was also Freud's consistently held view: ‘This principle (the pleasure-displeasure principle) governs the processes in the id without restriction’. This is a formula that clearly excludes the will, but is nevertheless anthropologically revealing in that it contains a kind of reference to the need for the prolongation of ecstasy, which is difficult to achieve on a purely physical level.
The second form of behaviour has long since atrophied, and its decline is one of the major events in cultural history. Incidentally, it is a momentous one: since it is nevertheless a trait of human nature, it is one of the roots of art. The sublimation of the representational component, its development away from its archaic connection with immediate life practice, meant at the same time the liberation of the specifically artistic-representational sphere, including the stratification of an audience that now plays a merely passive role. The term ‘sublimation’ can be defined with some rigour: it always means the transformation of a formally consistent (in this case: representational) behaviour in such a way that its focus shifts, with a change in meaning, to a predominantly internal, predominantly conscious and low-action processing.
Even today's primitives, who have been living under direct or indirect high cultural influences for a very long time, have never fundamentally achieved or strived for this transition to ‘art.’ Their performing works have not shed their connection to the practice of life – mostly magical – and are therefore misunderstood as ‘art.’ The images created by primitive peoples have an overwhelming, indecipherable expressiveness; the raw, violent, body-to-body experience and yet the refined form in them allow only a very limited comparison with what we consider art, let alone with the cerebral exaltations of modernity.
Archaic culture, and even in its remnants among today's primitives, forced all three basic forms of behaviour into close connection with each other, and therefore the striving of intellectualised big-city cultures to return to it has something deeply symbolic about it. Gauguin in Tahiti and Nolde in Rabaul sought more than artistic motifs.
These three types of action now stand in a certain relationship to the three major possible worldviews (§ 33), depending on their predominance. It is obvious that the worldview of materialism is associated with rational-experimental behaviour: it was born out of natural science, just as natural science was born out of experimentation. Its overly theoretical content should not be overlooked, however, as this worldview aims at the wholeness of man on its own level, as Marx made clear enough in his early writings. This worldview takes the individual, the society of the masses and nature reduced to the inorganic into a powerful circular process: therein lies the idea of a new, unprecedented morality, the subordination of the individual to this overall structure, which is reality here. The contrast that divides the world would be incomprehensible if it were not ultimately a moral one and not merely a theoretical or practical one.
The metaphysics of sympathetic connection again refers to ritualistic behaviour. Insofar as this has not been transformed into art, aestheticised and rendered inconsequential, it has largely disappeared today, especially since Protestantism completely stripped away the figures of representational symbolism and meaningful rituals that had been carried over into monotheism, presupposing a degree of spiritualisation that greatly diminishes its influence on the masses. It is very remarkable that the mechanisation of the arts, their transition to mass reproductions, films, and endless trickles of music, has finally made the function of art as a substitute religion, which it clearly still had in Wagner, impossible.
The ‘reversal of the direction of drive,’ although initially concealed under the barbaric forms of intoxication and ecstasy, nevertheless found an inner path within itself from the very beginning, which became all the clearer the more it took the direction of asceticism, until the leap to monotheism, which we believe cannot be derived from the previous forms of religion, brought out the religion of the will and thus a goal of the inner path that could be achieved by purely inner means: the God who creates through word and will corresponds in the soul of the believer to the acceptance of this word into one's own will. The danger to this religion lies in its softening in the age of subjectivity, all the more so as it does not require any innovation in content. The softening does not need to appear as a deviation.
All three worldviews give humans the possibility of an indirect self-understanding. Identifying oneself with a non-self, with something other than human, and distinguishing oneself again in this identification, is one of the essential characteristics – apparently because humans must include themselves in the world if they want to maintain and prove their self-conception in action. As enormous as the differences in content between such positions are, as decisive as their historical differences and their incompatibility with one another are, from Imitatio Christi to l'homme machine and from there to totemism, this characteristic can be abstracted; indeed, it even asserts itself unintentionally in attempts at direct self-understanding, which always end with the self retreating from itself. The insight gained here with the thesis of indirect self-consciousness has the characteristic of being true but sterile, for only the completed assimilation with a certain form of the non-self is practicable, for only then does that form become a motivational background and only then do the types of action transition into forms of expression.
The undertaking of a philosophical anthropology might now appear contradictory, for it addresses the problem of man directly, and its questioning would indeed be somewhat paradoxical if philosophy were a continuation of religion by other means, which, incidentally, it was for a very long time in the form of idealism. Only the view of philosophy as an empirical science, which is explicitly stated here several times and implicitly in every line, gets us out of this dilemma, and we can see that this view is decisive in terms of content and method. This science is as aware of the fragmentary nature of its results as it is of the possibility of making discoveries about human beings at every turn, even today, and of bringing to light categories that had to remain in the dark with the conventional approaches of psychology and semi-metaphysical philosophy. Often, all that is needed is an unbiased eye and simple, calm objectivity, which, incidentally, are themselves the product of a certain kind of philosophy.
If we now extend a few lines of our train of thought forward, keeping them carefully hypothetical, then perhaps some very general statements extending into the future are possible after all. First of all, one has the distinct impression that the transition to industrial culture, the mastery of the inorganic and especially its nuclear forces, opens a new chapter in the history of mankind. We have only been in this process for 200 years, and this ‘cultural threshold’ has a significance that can only be compared to that of the Neolithic period. This means that no sector of culture and no fibre of human nature will remain untouched by this transformation, which may last for centuries, and it is impossible to say what will be burned in this fire, what will be remelted and what will prove resistant. The classical concept of high, autonomous art, which developed in the late phases of pre-industrial cultures, has already been discarded.
Within this framework, we include a hypothesis suggested by Hofstätter. According to this hypothesis, trans-national fusions and supranational formations, which seem to be on the horizon, can only come about in a new, third medium, and as such, the corresponding worldview can be found first. This line of thought is based on an inductive conclusion.
In the history of institutions, conflicts between groups of the same level have always been defused, balanced, weakened or ceremonialised in a higher-level institution. Primitive clan associations and their antagonisms were regulated within the unity of the tribe, often in third institutions that cut across the clans and represented this tribal unity: age-based associations, cult communities and the like. Similarly, in the Middle Ages, the estates such as the nobility, the clergy and the crafts had a unifying effect across tribal boundaries and a kind of national mission. If nationalism among states is now perceived as problematic, partly after two world wars, and partly because it is no longer appropriate to the state of technical production, then a common worldview could become the medium in which national differences are levelled out or trivialised or weakened to mere friction, in which state organisations, probably in the majority, would intervene. However, what Hofstätter does not take into account is that even among coloured peoples, racial antagonism towards whites appears to be a medium of supranational understanding, while we must abandon the assumption made in the last century that industrial and commercial interdependence could in itself lead to supranational unity. It is therefore possible, even probable, that one of the themes of future history will be the replacement of national antagonisms by conflicts of world views.
On the other hand, a global organisation based on a single principle remains unlikely. In addition to the great ideological antagonisms represented by supranational entities, national traditions are likely to be preserved in other places, and even remnants of archaic cultures may ultimately survive, cultivated by the scientific interests of the great powers as if in cultural preservation parks. As mentioned above, a racial conflict of the greatest magnitude, between the coloured and whites, seems to be emerging across the board. It is a strange, surrealistic, yet obvious thought that this globe continues to hurtle along its path, orbited by new moons, namely the packages of toxic nuclear waste that are shot into the stratosphere, while somewhere the ‘Indians' are still performing the dance of the red rock cock. But the deepest, as yet unimaginable change will, if it succeeds, bring eternal peace. If international nuclear wars become as unthinkable as civil wars within states, this will be welcomed as a truly epoch-making achievement. But it will be paid for in a way that is only just beginning to emerge: even vital, divisive conflicts crying out for resolution could become irresolvable and continue to smoulder within people without erupting. This phenomenon can also occur within societies, and it could place an enormous, as yet immeasurable moral strain on individuals, a new, unprecedented form of profound bondage, with probably no other forms of expression than ideological struggles that are as bitter as they are inconsequential. For two reasons, therefore, we can expect a considerable intensification of ideological conflicts and an increased commitment of people to their institutions: because of their function as a medium in which the formation of supranational entities can take place, and for reasons of eternal peace.
Philosophers will then be recognisable, more than before, by the way they live; philosophy will take on ancient traits, hopefully with remnants of its cheerfulness and freedom.