PSR, Nihilism, and Dialectic of Enlightenment

The dualization of nature as appearance and sequnce, effort and power, which first makes possible both myth and science, originates in human fear, the expression of which becomes explanation. It is not the soul which is transposed to nature, as psychologism would have it; mana, the moving spirit, is no projection, but the echo of the real supremacy of nature in the weak souls of primitive men

Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment (p. 15)

In the next few posts I want to begin exploring the relationship between the PSR (Principle of Sufficient Reason) and our effort to make sense of our lives. The latter concern may seem to be a subset of the former – after all, if the PSR calls for an explanation for why things are as they are and not otherwise, then this would also include, apparently, an explanation that accounts for and explains our lives. This could not be further from the truth, however, as became increasingly apparent to many 18^th century philosophers who began to think thorugh the implications of Spinoza’s rationalism, and its attendant reliance upon the PSR. In particular, many saw in Spinoza a nihilism whereby nothing in our life means anything but is simply that which follows from the necessity of God’s nature, and it is God’s infinite nature that explains, in the end, our existence. This explanation, however, does nothing to give meaning to our existence, or so the critics of Spinoza argued, and thus Spinoza’s reliance upon the PSR is not, on this view, in line with our effort to make sense of, and find meaning in, our lives.

We find an analogous claim in Horkheimer and Adorno’s (H&A’s) work, Dialectic of Enlightenment. Put simply, to the extent that enlightenment thinking relies upon mathematico-scientific explanations, and hopes such explanations will resolve our problems, then for H&A that is the extent to which we have laid the seeds for the emergence of the type of totalitarian and fascist regimes of power that led H&A to flee Germany. As the above quote indicates, the turn to scientific explanations is perfectly understandable, for it serves as a response to human fear, and the explanations provided first by myths and then by science go a long way to alleviate our fear of “the real supremacy of nature.” The enlightenment, however, goes furthest by demythologizing anything that may remain mysterious, unknown, or other, and this is critical to alleviating fear for we believe ourselves “free from fear,” H&A argue, “when there is no longer anything unknown,” and for this to happen “Nothing at all may remain outside, because the mere idea of outsideness is the very source of fear” (16)  

It is precisely at this point where the formal techniques of mathematics, the chess-like manipulation of meaningless signs and elements, becomes the means of eliminating any remaining outside. As H&A put it, “Mathematical formalism…whose medium is number, the most abstract form of the immediate, instead holds thinking firmly to mere immediacy” (27). Coupled to the immediacy of mathematical formalism is the appeal to brute facts, facts that mask and hide “the social injustice from which they proceed” and attain a security and unassailability that was once the preserve of “the medicine man [who] was sacrosanct by reason of the protection of his gods” (28). In an interesting twist, the task and concept of enlightenment, as H&A understand it, is at odds with the PSR as Spinoza understands it, for instead of seeking to explain why things are as they are, brute facts bring explanations to an immediate end, to an end with the immediacy and self-sufficiency of the brute facts themselves, facts that are then processed and explained by way of the tools of mathematical formalism. Instead of developing a thinking and cognition whose task is the “determinate negation of each immediacy,” a negation that forces upon us the effort to think, explain, and make sense of things other than what is given and immediate, a mathematical formalism as applied to brute facts satisfies the demands of our fear and eliminates the sense of an outside for even that which is unknown will be, and can only be known, if it can be expressed and explained in the terms of mathematical formalism.

As successful as the tools of mathematical formalism are, along with the control they have given us over nature, H&A argue that we have left the true power and “supremacy of nature” unexplained. Rather than rely on brute facts, therefore, we ought instead to call upon the demands of the PSR and push it in a direction whereby what is explained is irreducible to the immediacy of brute facts and the role such facts play in scientific explanations. There is then, on my reading of H&A, a place for the PSR and the effort to make sense of our lives. This should become clearer as I discuss the remaining four essays of Dialectic of Enlightenment.