What we are facing here is a fundamental incomprehension of what a system implies due to the very fact of being a system, meaning an ensemble where effects can take place both retroactively (the feedback of cybernetics) and in the traditional direction; where ‘the environment’s retroaction only serves to guide, correct or stabilise a pre-existing behavioural system’ (Koestler); and where all elements interact with one another in such a way that, just like in a chess game, the moving of a ‘pawn’ does not merely alter the latter’s position but also impacts the arrangement and significance of the entire system.
In short, as stated earlier, reductionism implies one’s refusal to acknowledge the fact that within a system, the whole can actually be more than the sum of all its parts and that the whole as such could have certain properties that cannot be found in any of its components when taken separately.
Let us consider an electrophone. No matter how an amateur dismantles it, he will never manage to identify the part where the sound is ‘to be found’. This is because the sound is an emergent property, one that surfaces when the different parts are arranged in this very manner. The same is true of sweet taste, which cannot be separately found in carbon, oxygen or hydrogen but is present in sugar, although the latter is only composed of these three elements. Likewise, the attributes of the H2O composite (water) are neither found in oxygen nor in hydrogen. And the list goes on.
Unlike what the advocates of reductionism claim, emergent properties are not due to mere coincidence (In Koestler’s eyes, evolution cannot be explained solely through fortuitous mutations: ‘Evolution plays out in accordance with rules that limit its possibilities while leaving sufficient space for an infinite number of mutations’). So as to explain these properties, one does not need to resort to the arsenal of old scholasticisms either. They are not ‘underlying’ aspects of the very nature of the ‘previous’ elements, like those microscopic homunculi that one believed to be ‘hidden’ within germinal cells during the Middle Ages. Indeed, they only surface when the different parts of a system are arranged or amended in one way or another and are not only the result of the presence of the elements in question but also of the manner in which the latter are organised. Consequently, what is more can relatively emerge from what is less.
Arthur Koestler’s great merit has therefore been his ability to avoid falling into the double trap of the two conventional solutions. He has thus transcended all the alternatives connected to the old logic of the excluded middle (materialism-spiritualism, mechanism-vitalism, etc.), while simultaneously extracting a third position, one that constitutes, almost invariably, a synthesis of its two counterparts and, as a result, outreaches them both.
One could, however, criticise some of his assertions, especially the notion that the human brain suffers from a ‘defect’, a defect that consists in an incomplete capacity to control our primal impulses through reason and that allegedly acts as the source of an aggressiveness endangering the future of humanity.
This idea is presented in the third part of Ghost in the Machine. In it, Koestler reaffirms his view that man has fallen victim to a sort of ‘error’ or ‘accident’ in the course of his own evolution. This ‘accident’, which is responsible for a coordination deficiency between the brain’s old and recent structures, is said to turn man into a kind of ‘paranoiac’, gravely jeopardising his future. Koestler writes:
Man’s original equipment comprises some innate error or defectiveness that predisposes him to self-destruction.
He adds:
The appearance of the human neocortex is the only case where evolution has granted a species an organ which the latter does not know how to use.
This twofold affirmation seems debatable.
A Multi-Storey Brain
Paul MacLean and Papez277 have demonstrated that the differences one notices between our emotional conduct and our intellectual behaviour are founded upon a physiological factor, namely a dichotomy in the functioning and relation between the paleocortex and the neocortex. Just like all scientific discoveries, however, this finding is an absolutely neutral one from a moral point of view. It reveals to us how the human brain functions but does not tell us that this very functioning is ‘bad’, nor that we should regret the manner in which it occurs. Koestler is the one who introduces such a regret by presenting us with an entirely subjective opinion rooted in his own personal sentiment, in the values that he focuses on and, in all likelihood, in the experiences that he has had. One cannot therefore agree with him when he suggests that this opinion is but the necessary result of the stated facts.
The assertion according to which the human species is a ‘failed’ one is nothing new. Innumerable thinkers have dreamt of both an ideal man and ‘the best of all possible worlds’, and their doctrines have, generally speaking, only served as a basis for various utopianisms.
Each one of us, of course, wishes that man behaved in a thoughtful and reasoned manner. While telling us that man is indeed reasonable, however, it is precisely reason itself that shows us that he is not entirely rational and that it is because of this fact that he cannot be quantified.
MacLean has shown that the human brain comprises several ‘storeys’, with only one being exclusive to man: the neocortex. The remaining two storeys have been bestowed upon him by his animal heritage. The human brain is, therefore, a compound whole, and one fails to see why one would ever be expected to think that a specific part of this whole is more ‘detestable’ than another. If man were just another animal, he would have no neocortex. If he were entirely rational, he would only have a neocortex. His mind constitutes an ensemble in which a dialectical relation between reasoning and emotion, as well as between reasoned decisions and impulses, is developed on a permanent basis. The logic of anti-reductionism requires us to avoid reducing this whole to one of its parts alone and to accept man as he is, in his entirety.
It is a fact that the ‘old brain’, ever dominated by impulses, neither verbalises nor conceptualises and thinks — to use Arthur Koestler’s own words — through ‘preverbal, prerational and prelogical thought’. It does not follow, however, that it is always in the wrong. Another fact is that, thanks to his ‘new brain’, man gains access to the domain of abstract ideas and conceptual thought and that he can, for instance, apply reasonable thinking to experiences that he himself has never had or learn the kind of motor coordination that he has never actually performed. And yet this does not mean that the neocortex is always right. Koestler himself acknowledges all that artistic and even non-artistic creation owes to our ancient brain (see Anthony Storr’s Dynamics of Creation). There are also instances where the first impulse, the most ‘unreasoned’ one, turns out to be the best. Inversely, it often happens that our reasoning goes astray. Is reductionism not, after all, also a ‘product’ of the neocortex? And whenever the spirit loses itself in the voluptuous contemplation of pure ideas, is it not a fundamental impulse stemming from the paleocortex that enables it to revert to the path of non-deceptive realities? Under such conditions, prudence is a necessity. To recognise the primacy of the neocortex is one thing, but to place our blind trust in it another. Even if we were to suppose that all truths are perceived thanks to its presence, all that it expresses would not necessarily be true.
Maclean has incidentally highlighted the great difficulty in rendering unto every ‘brain’ its own due. The neocortex seeks out ‘alibis’ for the paleocortex. A thousand times over, our reasoning only aims to bestow a veneer of reason upon our most unreasoned instincts. And when Koestler states that the human species is the victim of ‘error’, how can one be certain that it is his neocortex expressing itself at that very moment? Indeed, was he not the one who declared that ‘at the end of the day, all our declarations are based upon beliefs’? (In an interview with L’Express, 13th July, 1970.)
One is, likewise, only left in doubt when Koestler declares that man’s forehead has been branded with a ‘dimension of madness’, a madness that is said to manifest
itself through an exaggerated tendency towards conflict due to the paleocortex.
The affirmation that humanity in its entirety should be considered stricken with mental disease coincides, paradoxically, with the position of antipsychiatry (Koestler writes: ‘What we seek is a remedy to the paranoid dispositions of the people we call normal’). What it reveals as well is a certain rejection of the human condition, since Koestler views this ‘madness’ as a defining feature of mankind, while simultaneously denouncing it: ‘Man has always been insane. Since the dawn of civilisation, human sacrifice has existed in all cultures’ (as stated in the above-mentioned interview).
All the pages dedicated to language in The Ghost in the Machine are just as astounding. Indeed, Koestler perceives language as an ‘illness that is specific to man’ and writes:
Language is man’s greatest glory. But it is also one of his greatest servitudes, since it erects barriers between the different groups.
Owing to its very structure, language is allegedly a source of conflict:
Without language, there would be no war. Wars are waged because of words.
Even independently of the fact that the most ‘silent’ species are far from being the most pacifistic, such an accusation cannot be upheld. If what we are dealing with here is, yet again, a specific trait characterising mankind, it is one that makes us a species capable of using syntactic and abstract language; and what constitutes our superiority are specifically the ‘linguistic barriers’ and the ‘separatist forces of language’ denounced by Koestler. It is because language manifests a ‘segregating’ disposition allowing man to apply customised definitions to heteromorphisms that we can mentally adapt to the greatest variety of situations. In the absence of syntactic language, there would be no hominisation and no human beings.
A Key to Open All Doors
One thus witnesses Koestler, on the one hand, ‘regretting’ the power retained by the emotions and impulses that emanate from the paleocortex over the human spirit and emphasising the presence of the neocortex (which is indeed the specifically ‘human’ part of our brain), while, on the other, acknowledging the fact that some of the traits he deplores and condemns are, likewise, constitutive elements of the human phenomenon, thus making it very unlikely for anyone to erase them without having man vanish by the same token. What we are facing here, it seems, is a fundamental contradiction.
Indeed, in order to ‘correct’ nature, Koestler proposes that we resort to some ‘drug’ or ‘miracle-cure’ — ‘chemical harmonisers’, for instance — which would inhibit our ‘wicked penchants’. One wonders, however, in what way our human nature would be ‘normalised’ through a chemotherapeutical intervention that would deprive it of some of its specific traits. And having received such treatment, would man not plummet to an infrahuman level? These are all questions which Koestler does not seem to ask himself.
In the end, one notices that Koestler would like to preserve, within our human nature, all that he personally considers advantageous, while eliminating all that he regards as ‘harmful’. With man ‘condemned if he remains what he is’, one must, he states, ‘stabilise and harmonise people without genuinely castrating them nor sterilising them mentally’. His proposal is a squaring of the circle in the true sense of the word: how is one to remove one side of the coin while preserving the other?
During the same interview, a journalist observed: ‘One encounters in your writings the same desire to seek a global explanation, a key that opens everything… You once sought it in Communism, but did not find it, and now you seek it in your work on the two brains’. To which Koestler responded:
I agree. A key to open all doors. It’s naïve, but that’s basically it.
Unfortunately, the search for such a key, one to which everything could be reduced, is already a sign of reductionism. There is no ‘key to open all doors’, no universal explicative key. There are only plural realities, relative and contingent ones that establish both man and the universe in their diversity; realities that must be accepted and desired not as one wishes they were but as they genuinely are.
Within the rigorous mind that Arthur Koestler possesses, the thirst for the absolute has therefore never been completely quenched. Being too honest and too intelligent to make a fool of himself, he fails to break free of a certain kind of messianism.
At the same time, however, his perpetual fear of being ‘trapped’ by a system and obsession with present and future dangers — an obsession that was fuelled by his experience of totalitarianisms — has brought about an inner malaise which, on several occasions, almost cost him his life and has constantly compelled him to burn all that he believed he could adore. Hence this cantilever-like situation, which acts as a source of ‘defiant’ inspiration and continuous challenge, one that places him, as he himself has stated, on a ‘tightrope’ between two worlds or two momentums.
This ‘crusader without a cross’ has actually carried them all. An inner fire burns within him, consuming him yet never exhausting him. Which direction is he going to opt for next? With this ‘odd individual’, anything remains possible.
*
‘Koestler’, a special issue of Cahiers de l’Herne (42, Verneuil street, 75007 Paris, France), 468 pages.
*
Except for Spanish Testament, which has been published by Albin Michel, all of Arthur Koestler’s books have come out (in their first editions, that is) through Calmann-Lévy.278 The most recent one, The Thirteenth Tribe (1976), is a study of the Khazar people who, during the early-9th century, converted massively to Judaism and are said to be the source of a major part of our contemporary Jewish people.
In his Ce que je crois279 (Grasset, 1976), Mr René Huyghe280 tackles quite extensively the issue of reductionism. He vigorously denounces this doctrine, which has been ‘introduced into numerous knowledge domains: just as the psychological has been “reduced” to the physical, so shall the unconscious be to the libidinal — under Freud’s authority — and, just as arbitrarily, the social to the economic’.
The Alpbach symposium proceedings, known as Beyond Reductionism, have been published and edited in English by Arthur Koestler and J. R. Smythies and are currently being translated.
Counter-Figures
Antonio Gramsci
There was once a time when Marx was simply read; nowadays, he is imposed. He is not merely a trend: the vast majority of all that is published in the ideological domain today is located inside the scope of Marxism, and fashion no longer focuses on anyone but those authors who, in relation to Marx, introduce a number of personal variations. Sometimes it is Lukács,281 at others Rosa Luxemburg,282 then again Wilhelm Reich.
Recently, it was Gramsci’s turn, and Gallimard published a first collection of his Political Writings covering the 1914–1920 period.
Antonio Gramsci is, alongside Lukács, the most renowned ‘independent Marxist-Leninist’ of the Stalinian period. He is, above all else, the theoretician of ‘cultural power’.
Gramsci was born in Sardinia in 1891. A Don Bosco-like legend has turned him into a shepherd’s son. In actual fact, his father was an official. At the age of three, following a fall in a stairwell, he suffers spinal column deformation, leaving him hunchbacked for the rest of his days. At the age of seventeen, a scholarship allows him to enter university. He arrives in Torino in 1911. Two years later, he joins the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), immediately becoming a militant in the ‘Left wing’. He also contributes to the writings of the Avanti! daily and the Grido del popolo weekly.
On 1st May, 1911, he launches the Ordine nuovo weekly, in collaboration with Terracini283 and Palmiro Togliatti.284
At the time, the communist world was in a state of complete turmoil. Beginning in 1918, certain currents declared themselves in favour of a ‘critical support’ of Russian Bolshevism. These currents refused to accept the hegemony of the Komintern (the Communist International) without questioning. In Germany, this was the case of the groups which wou
ld go on to form the KAPD (Communist Workers’ Party of Germany) in 1920, together with Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Korsch.285 The same applied to Pannekoek’s286 ‘councilists’ in the Netherlands. Their opposition particularly impacted parliamentary action, which they considered inadequate for the purpose of socialist struggle, and the role of syndicates, whose revolutionary virtues they questioned.
This position, which would thereafter be adopted by numerous leftist movements, is denounced by Lenin in ‘Left-Wing’ Communism: An Infantile Disorder.
In Italy, within the PSI, two ‘Left-wing’ groups clash: one is led by Amadeo Bordiga,287 the other by Gramsci.
Gathered around the Il Soviet journal, in Naples, the ‘Bordiguists’ call for the creation of an ultra-hierarchised and ultra-centralised revolutionary party. Unlike their counterparts, the authors of the Ordine nuovo contrasted the ‘council communists’ with ‘party communists’, denouncing ‘organisational fetishism’, meaning the idea that everything had to be subordinate to the party’s interests.
The syndicate’s purpose, Gramsci writes, ‘is one that could be labelled commercial’: it consists in ‘enhancing the work of a certain category of workers within the bourgeois market’, which bears no connection to revolution. As for the ‘party’s religion’, which is connected to bureaucratism and elitism, it is expressed through the ‘desire to cultivate the apparatus for the latter’s own sake’ (Notes on Machiavelli). The conclusion? Both the party and the syndicate could act as the agents of the revolution but could never be its privileged forms, which would then come to merge with it.
With his pronounced features, large nose, black hair and lorgnette, Gramsci participates in all congresses. That is when he enunciates his famous watchword: ‘Only the truth is revolutionary’.
Controversies and Viewpoints Page 11
