Natural and social structures of human autonomy and their technical mediation

[Michael Allan]

I've read enough of Phenomenology of Spirit to attempt a "synthesis".
It's probably wrong in places.  Please correct me if you see any
errors.

I also added the notion of difference bridging as a form of Hegelian
"negation" (antithesis and synthesis).  See the final paragraph.

http://zelea.com/project/autonomy/a/aut/aut.xht#eq2.1
 
                            . . .

Aspects of this radical autonomy are apparently incompatible with the
previous argument, which has two possible readings in this context:

  2.1.  Human autonomy is thwarted by Nature, which forces us to
        engage in a star-faring mode of civilization against our will.

        Alternatively:

  2.2.  Nature enables the most radical autonomy of all, where our
        very existence is self-determined as a matter of will.

The first reading (2.1) assumes that a star-faring mode of
civilization is not something we would freely choose if, somehow, the
accompanying existential threat could be removed.  But neither reading
seems to support the modern outlook, at least as related above.  The
total self-determination of “what to accept as evidence about the
nature of things”, and the general indifference to imperatives of
Nature and “technological success or failure” are at odds with a form
of autonomy that is so dramatically enabled by Nature and so demanding
of technological success in response.

        Again, from 2.1:

  2.3.  A star-faring mode of civilization is not something we would
        freely choose if, somehow, the accompanying existential threat
        could be removed.

        However:

  2.4.  The possibility of existence without end assumes an
        existential threat, without which it is meaningless and of no
        value.  Mortality and immortality are two sides of the same
        coin and cannot be understood in isolation.

        Therefore:

  2.5.  2.1 is false.

        This implies that 2.2 is true.  But, from Pippin's reading of
        modernity:

  2.6.  We are wholly self-determined and in no way reliant on Nature.

        From 2.2 and 2.6, therefore:

  2.7.  That aspect of Nature that “enables the most radical autonomy”
        is an aspect of ourselves.  The limits of light speed and the
        distance between stars are part of what we are.

Pippin continues:

    This [re-opening of the “central modern philosophical question”]
    means the appropriate question at issue (asked many, many times
    after Kant) becomes whether such a subject can be so radically
    independent or self-determining, and especially whether such
    self-legislation can be said to be rational, whether its results
    can be said to apply universally to any agent attempting such
    critical freedom, all because the results are what such an agent
    “would himself determine.”  On the account I present, Hegel best
    realizes such a project, or most successfully rejects Kant's
    inconsistent qualifications on such an enterprise, and attempts to
    think it through to its conclusion, and Nietzsche represents, in
    effect, Hegel's most problematic opponent, the thinker who best
    raises the question of the whole possibility and even desirability
    of such a “self-reassurance,” a self-conscious justification...

Fundamental to Hegel's phenomenology are the tripartite elements of
(1) self, (2) negation of self as other, and (3) reflection of self in
other, elsewhere simply labeled as “thesis, antithesis and synthesis”.
The surprising conclusion that such distant structures of Nature are
somehow a part of us suggests that, in Hegel's dialectic, we and they
are related in the sense of thesis and antithesis.  That would mean
that a synthesis requires looking into the night sky, seeing ourselves
in the distances among the stars, and realizing that aspect of Nature
is an aspect of ourselves.  Without a working-through of that
realization, our understanding of who we are remains fundamentally
(and fatally) incomplete.

If this conclusion (2.7) holds, then we might further attempt to
interpret it in light of Nietzsche's aesthetics.  This seems promising
both because of the critical relation between Hegel and Nietzsche, and
also because of the practical requirement for aesthetics in visionary
consensus making.  As we may argue, no vision of the future could
possibly hold as a *consensus* vision unless it were formed as a
compelling work of art.  Altogether, it would have to be bound up and
binding in art, engineering, science and most other cultural spheres,
a possibility that would take us (with Nietzsche) to the limits of
modernity.

                            . . .

The remainder of the essay has yet to be drafted.  Next argument to
outline: Hegel sees autonomy as collective and historical and
fundamentally based on “movement” through negations and syntheses.
This fits remarkably well with the contempory technology of consensus
building with its evolving populations of text, continuous vote
shifting, and the juxtaposition of critical differences that are
erased in text flows.  Interpreting Hegel's phenomenology in that
technical context ought to render it, together with the branches of
Western philosophy that derive from it, as serviceable for
technological theory.

-- 
Michael Allan

Toronto, +1 647-436-4521
http://zelea.com/