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'l'he Self Under Siege:
Philosophy in the 20th Century

Rick Rodcrick

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Rick Roderick
Professor of Philosophy
National University
Rick Roderick was born in Abilene, Texas in 1949, and receivcd his
bachelor's degree at University of Texas, Austin, Texas. He did
post-graduate work at Baylor University, and earned his Ph.D. at
University of Texas, Austin, Texas.
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F ro m 1977 to 1978, he was the editor of the Baylor Philosophy

Journal, from 1977 to 1977 a member of the Phi Sigma Tau National
Honor Society of Philosophy. He was the recipient of the Oldright
fellowship at the University of Texas and served as associate editor to
The Pawn Review, and Current Perspectives in Social Theory.
He is the author of the book Habermas and the Foundation of Crical
Theorv ( 1986), as well as numerous articles in professional journals. He
has presented over 24 papers, published 13 reviews and literary
criticisms.
From 1977 to present, he has taught Philosophy at llaylor, the
University of Texas, Duke University and now at National University in
Los Angeles. His areas of spcciali:t.ation are Marx and Marxism, Social
and Political Philosophy, Critical Theory (Habermas and the Frankfurt
School), 19th Century Philosophy, and Contemporary Continental
Philosophy. He also teaches Ethics, Logic, llistory of Modern
Philosophy, Aesthetics and Existentialism.
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Lecture One: The Masters of Suspicion

l.

Current professional philosophy is "deflationary)) in that it givcs

no answers to our larger questions, in particular our questions
concerning our own selves, our projects, our place in society and
in the world.

11.

We havc lost a vast resource of cultural meaning upon which we

could draw to construct meaning for our lives. Meaning, in this
large sense, can no longer be drawn unproblematically from
religion. We have information, but not knowledge.

111. We all strive to have a "theory" or narrative about our selves, we

want to have a meaningful stary about our lives that affirms our
humanity. In short, we want them to mean somcthing.
IV. The complex systems under which we live (economic,
technological, global) have put the self ''under siege,'' overloaded
with information and images that offer no meaning for us. We
have difficulty making any sense out of our lives.
V.

Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche (the figures named the "masters of

suspicion" by the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur) developed
powerful criticisms of our cultural mechanisms of meaning, in
particular religious meaning. Taken together, they raise the
problem of "false consciousness," the suspicion that our
certainties and our beliefs are the products of hidden economic,
psychological, and cultural motives.

VI. They reflect and respond to the vast changes in our views of what
it means to be human that come along with modernity and the
economic and cultural systems of capitalism. Marx exposes
religion as a mask for vcstcd economic intcrcsts, Freud shows its
origins in infantile distress and fear, and Nietzsche raises the
suspicion that 1t is a mechanism of power and deceit. After them,
no simple faith is possihle.
VII. They are the common possessions of our culture and their
critiques belong to us. We have no choice except to engage them
eithcr consciously or unconsciously. They are the gate through
which any relevant modern view of the self must pass. Thus, they
mark the beginning of these considerations of the self under siege.

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to give meaning and purpose to our projects. Such projccts are

"free for" a nd " free from " the st ifl ing yoke of co nform ity to "thc
t hey" o r w hat other people think.

Lecture Two: Heidegger and the Rejection of Humanism

l.

11.

He idegger develops a po werful accou nt of m ca.ning by rccast in g

tradit ionn l ta lk o f lhc self and the h uman into an a na lysis o f
" D ase in ", li tcra ll y "being the re". H e hopes to di scard m uch of the
hag.gagc o f t he philosop hical past in a kind o f " decon struc tio n ''
l hat lus. a nd conti n ues to be. very influe nti a l with think ers as
div('rsc :1s l k rr ida. Ma rc use, a nd Sart re.
Wl s ll n uld lh)t kt Heide gger's infa m o us connec ti o n to fascism
h l nd us l o his rl'al ins ig hts. It is sad , bu t true, tha t even very bad
pn>pk m:1y h :1vc importJnt things to teach us.

IX. Against H e idegger 's po werfu l acco u n t of being huma n it can

certainl y be argued that "aut he nticity " is too abst ract as a m eans
to m eas u re o u r projects. O ne ca n be a n au th e ntic Naz i, fo r
exa mpl e, just as well as a n auth e ntic C hristia n . H e idegger gi ves us
abso lut e ly no grou n ds fo r c ho osing one over the other.

X.

Aut hen tici ty will be importa nt in o u r acco un t of the self, as will

care a nd co nce rn with a projec t , b ut it w ill no t b e enough to save
t he self under siege as the case of Heidegger himself makes clear.

111. 1kidcggc r docs not begin with a " me thod". He begins by

hcgin ni ng. He offers a hermenuetic of Dasein, or th e historcal
and c ultura l self. ;\ hermenuetic is a narrat ive, a story, whose
'' t r uth " can no t ins ured since it depends u pon intcrpre ta tio n . But
h u mans are a lways a lreacly interpretin g bei n gs a nd, fro m this, the
ana lysis of Dasein can begin.

IV. l n Rein g a nd Time, Heidegger is guided by t he distinctio n

between Being a nd be ing. The o nly p rio rity of hum a n being or
D asein is t ha t we a re th e b ei ngs t ha t ask t he q uestio n co ncer ning
t he mea ning of Bci ng (wha t does it a ll m ea n?). !le is no
" h u m a ni st ", ra ther it is Being tha t d raws h is co nccrn toward
D ase in which h e p roceeds to a na lyze ac ross the dim ension of
t ime.
V.

H umans rela te to the past by bcin g '' th row n " into a world . This
mea ns we are socialized and have a la ng uage and a vie w of the
seJf a lready. T hus, it is impossible to begin witho ut a structure of
prej ud ices as b uilt into our culture and our history.

VI. Humans relate to the present as ''being a t home in or not be ing at

home in " . T his mean s that wc try to find a satisfying p lace and
view of ourselves and o ur world.
VII. H umans re la te to t he fu ture as " being a head of o u rselves~' o r "on
t he way to''. T h is m ean s that we fo rmul a te p rojects a nd m a ke
pla n s. T h e fun da m e ntal struct ure th us revealed is that h u m a ns a re
bei n gs w ho ca re, w ho have concern . This ca n be seen in w h a t t hey
b u ild a n d do even m o re t ha n in what t hey say or th ink.

;
;

VIII. A n xiety befo re d e at h is the fun da m e nta l human m ood . since

death is th e e nd o f our projects and o ur co n cerns. Fo r H e id egger,
a uth cn tic c xis tcnce must not "flee from " this insight into the
unthin k ing mass of people (the "they ") , but rather use this insight

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Lecture Four: Marcuse and One-Dimensional Man

Lecture Three: Sartre and the Roads to Freedom

l.

Sartre is a paradigmatic 20th Ccntury intellcctual: philosophcr,

artist, critic and political activist. For an American audience.
however. he is known first and foremost as an existentialist. His
novel Nausea and his philosophical treatise Being and Nothingness
are the best examples of this period in his development.

11. Sartre 's existentialism was based, in part, on a misreading of

Heidegger as a humanist: but this misreading lead to his own
interesting existential humanism. The first principie of his position
is an absolutc athcism. God does not make us, we make ourselves.
Sartre 's way of expressing this is that our existence precedes our
essence.

l.

Marcuse became a pop figure, the philosopher of the 60s. He

expressed a key contradiction in modcrnity. Modernity is
"enlightenment", the end of myth and dogma, the power of
reason; but it is also the rise of technology, capitalism,
specialization, instrUlnental reason and the return of myth and
dogma. The enlightenment built an intellect powerful enough to
destroy myth, but such an intellect tends to be totalitarian,
surrendering dogmatcally before thc powcrs of technology. This
is the "Dialectic of Enlightenment" as analyzed by Herxheimer
and Adorno and popularized by Marcuse.

11.

Instrumental rationality, informaton-based individual reason,

leads to irrational outcomes. Individual monologic rationality is
not rational in the totality of overall systcm. llow did the force of
the love of reason become itself unreasonable? The self cannot
escape siege under the sway of instrumental reason alone, it drains
the world of meaning and leads to the entwinement of myth and
enlightenment. The fiJm Dr. Strangelove is one long example of
the contradictions outlined by Marcuse.

111. Without God, humans are "condemned" to be free. Sartre sees

our refusal to recognize our radical frecdom as "bad faith": a

condition in which we treat ourselves as determined objects rather
than as free subjects.
IV. Sartre's existen tia) cthic requires us to ask of our actions would
others act as we act? Our decision must be made in the light of
our humanity, but also with full autonomy. Sartre recognizes that
without God sorne llmits to our freedom remain such as the brute
objectivity of nature and the behavior of other people. This limits
are scen as negative. In his play No Exit, Sartre goes so far as to
say that "Hell is other people".
V.

Sartre comes to modify and, in part, abandon his earlier

existentialism in favor of his own development of Marxism. In a
sense, he tries to fuse his earlier emphasis on the singular
individual and his growing concern with the fused collectivity, the
group seeking to change its condition. ln Search for a Mdhod,
Sartre uses a discussion of Kierkegaard as a representative of the
individual and Hegel as a representative of the collective to
express his desire to bring the two interests together in a future
philosophy of freedom that, for him, only a revolution can make
possiblc.

VI. Sartre expericnccd both fascism and the liberation of the 60's; his
philosophy always reflected a profound engagement with his own
time. Perhaps he is not a great philosopher, but he is exemplary
in his attempt to become a human being in the 20th Century
under the most difficult conditions.

111. Instrumental reason is the product of a one-dimensional socicty

that produces one-dimensonal human beings. Marcuse criticizes
our socicty along at least two dimensions. First, the inner
dimension: anxicty, dcspair, nausea and a massive industry in
drugs to deal with these pathologies. A society of addicts. Second,
the outer social world: alienation (separation from the subject and
the object and the self in Marx's sense); rationalization
bureaucracy and technical action in Weber's sense ). These
produce a one-dimcnsonal culture of banality which reduces
human suffering and human desire to trivia and image.

IV. Such humans have by now become deeply skeptical and cynical
about almost everything; in particular, the government and the
culture industry. Beyond that, we are becoming skeptical about
our history, our meaning, our purpose and the general fate of the
species.
V.

Marcuse's method of criticism is called internal critique which

mcasurcs a society against its own historically accumulated
concepts and ideals in order to point out thc gap between the
actual social practices and the principies.

VII. Sartre's account of "bad faith" and hi~ basic honesty in the face
of the human historical condition will serve to guide us in our
account of the self and its prcdicamcnt in thc late 20th Century.
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Lecture Five: Habermas and

the Fragile Dignity of Humanity

VI. Marcuse also never lost faith in the human species to reconstrucl
itself, to begin anew. This hope of liberation transcended the field
of economics and standard Marxism , as well as the achievements
of the so-called free and democratic world of today. llc also
rested hs hope in the possibility of that the self could be won
against the odds. Today, unfortunatcly, this view will 4ieem to
many quaint.

l.

Habermas is perhaps the last important defender of a kiilcl of

rationalism that attempts to savc thc contrihutions of rnodernity.
while recognizing its distortions and pathologies. He will attempt
to disentangle enlightenment in myth in the name of human
emanci pation free from unnecessary constraints.

11.

Habermas begins his project with a clstinction be tween l;~bo r (:1~

analyzed by Marx) and intcractinn . The fi rst is based on
prod uction. the. seconcl on communication. The fir~t ts
monological, the sccond clialogical. Freud serves :\S the model for
the study of distortcd form s of speech and action upon which J
critica! theory of society can take its start.

J
J

111. But to criticize distorted communication, a model of undistorted

communication is required. Habermas seeks to clevelop an
argument that the human species has a fu nda mental intcrest in
undistorted communicatio n that is built into the very structure of
language.

IV. Undistorted communication must meet four conditions: the

symmetry condition (everyone has an equal chance to tali< and
listen) ; the sincerity condition (everyone means what they say):
the truth cond ition (everyone cliscloses what th cy bclicve to he
true); the normative condition (eve ry;one attempts to say wh::lt is
right morally).

V.

Such communication would make a free society possible in which

the only force a free person must recognize is "the unforcecl force
of the better argument''. This is not justan elitist notion. since "in
a process of enlightenment there can only be participants".

VI.

Undistorted speech and action opens us up to the concept of

communicative rationality that acts as a co unter concept to merel y
instrumental rationality as criticized by Marcuse. For Habermas,
we should seek a balance between instrumental and critica!
re.ason, between science and the ethical and the aesthetic
dimensions that ha ve been unbalanced by powcr and money, state
and economy.

VII. The fragi le self is caught between these abstract systems 0f control
in its struggle for autonomy and meaning. Habermas project for
emancipation holds out the hope that a measure of the dignity of
humanity can be rescued from thc one-sided development of
modernity through the power of solidarity and reason.

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VIII. Habermas' project is ongoing and includes actvty in the public

sphere where alone the promise of a reasoncd consensus based on
undistorted communication might be fulfilled.

Lecture Six: Foucault and the Disappearance of the Human

l.

Foucault is a strong anti-humanist who believes that "man" is a

relatively recent construction of a particular historical paradigm.
Such paradigms structure discourse and action, as wcll as
institutions and belief systems. They are, at the same time.
systems of knowledge that are always interconnected with systems
of power. Anywhere you find knowledge, there too you find a
regime of power.

11.

Knowledge is comprised of discourses that function through rules

of exclusion. These determine who may speak, about what. for
how long, and in what settings or contexts.

111. Foucault's Discipline and Punish shows how thc paradigm of

punishment and thc law shift from one period to another. In the
feudal period, we have the body of the condemned" as a singular
figure and "the spectade of the scaffold" which expresses the
criminal as a transgressor and our interest in him.
IV. In the modern pe.riod, we move to a paradigm of gcneralized
punishment; from the body of the condemned to the entire social
body (public works, school and prison reform ). The reformers in
many areas institute a micro-physics of power over the "docile
bodics" of the "trained" and "socialized".
V.

Foucault's method of writing his "histories" rests on the postulate

that there are no bare "facts", just interpretations and thcsc are
themselves only made possible by the currently existing rcgime of
power/knowledge. Particular to his method are the following:
A. reversa), take the perspective of thc standard hi~tory and
reverse it
B. marginality, take the focus off what has traditionally been
thought to be central and look at thc excluded
C. discontinuity, drop the idea of neccssary progress and look
for breaks and catastrophcs
D. materia1ity, look at practices more than at ideologies and
E. specificity, take single instances to illuminatc largcr points.

VI. Foucault wants to reclaim a kind of radical critique in the interest

of people rendered inhum<!n by what he sccs as the very discourse
of the "human".

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11

VII. Foucault can be read as a novelist) a historian, a radical critic of

society, and many othcr things. Most importantly, he has changed
our discourse from Marx and the "factory" to Foucault and the
"prison ". He has carried forward at least a part of the task of
freeing a new kind of sclf from the barbarism of what is still
called the past.

Lecture Seven: Derrida and thc Ends of Man

l.

Richard Rorty may be viewed as an '' Americaniz:1tion" of Dtrri<tl:

widely considcrcd thc postmodern thinkers (perhaps wrongly).
Here we will use Rorty as a guide to Derrida.

11.

Derrida 's emphasis is on fallibility, contingency. finitude: positions

partially demonizcd as rclativism, deconstruction. and vaguely
connected to radical politics. multi-culturalism. and so on.

111. '' Deconstruction" origina tes in Hcidegger's project of tiH.'

deconstruction of metaphysics. an 'uncovering" of thc hstory of
l3eing. Derrida notes, as he proceeds through ;~ series l1f
techniques of deconstruction as re:1dingsmisreadings of texts. that
philosophers ha ve always tried to fill in thc hlank in "Being is
- - - - - - - ... But they have failed due to the t~ature of
language which is constituted by difference, materiality of marks
and phonetic signs, marginality, materiality. Words do not stand
for things, they stand in for them.
IV. Meanings depend not only on presence but also on absence.
Words can always misrefer: a possibility once is a necessity
forever.
V.

The upshot is that there are no final interpretations, no last

books. Better and worse readings depend on context ancl purpose.
meaning is not fixed "humanly" (against "humanism ").
Philosophy has always already thought;the end of man in thinking
the truth of man.

VI. For Derrida, "man '' is implicatcd in thc ''white m~ tlwiP~!\ .. th:tt ..,
philosophy and whose time is rapidly passing. Thi' lc.:.l\ e' tlu:
"self", the "1". <tS no more th;tn a v;tnishing poo.;itinn;dit' in :1 h.'\l
And this is a long way from the kind of story th;H migh( pnn idc
us with mcaning for our own lives.
VII. finally, when reading Derrida. remember, he m ay just be joking.
If he is right, even in part, thc samc might be said for Plato.

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Lecture Eight: Fatal Strategies

l.

11.

SUGGESTED READINGS TO ACCOMPANY

The task o f c reating a life with the "self u nde r siege" to the
degree 1 have argued may seem impossihle. At the very least, it
calls f or what Baudrillard calls " fatal strategies ''. So I begi n th is
las t lecture with the work of Baudrillard , perhaps the last
philoso phe r?
Ba udrillard builds on the work Guy Debo rd , th e si tuationist
au tho r o f The Society of the Spectacle. Baudrillard tr aces the
sympto ms a nd tendencies of the trajector y o f the pos tmoclern; a
set o f concep ts appropriate for a new world o f te.c hnologies of
images a nd communication devcloping in the la te 20th Century.

111. The firs t o f these is the Hyperreal. This is the image, the
reprodu<.:tion that is more real than real, reality is whatever can be
IHt..'l.: h ; t~li c dl y

and lechnologically reproduced. Thi':>

po-. . . Jhk h\ the s hift from h:ucl to soft technologies.

is

madc

1\. Th L "L'll'ld o f thcsc is Simulations. Reality is that which can he

'>imul:ttLd . xe roxed, virtual reality, images, data f lows, in fo rmation
al r;q) ll..l ) peed.
V.

The Self Under Siege:

Philosophy in thc 20th Cc nt ur:v
l3audr ill a rd , J ca n . fatal Stratcgicc.;.
O ~ rri da.

P rcss.

~cw

l.cft Bn()k'>.

:"L'\\

Yot "-

1""1

J acques. The \b rgin -; o f Ph ilo . . oph v. { .' ni\ l'l' "i ( \ n r ( ' hi c ~I~O

Chic:-~ go. 19~2.

Foucau lt, l\:'lic hel, Discipline ancl Pun ish. Vint age Boo ks, New York.

1979.
Ha b e rmas, Jurgen, The Philosophical Discou rse o f Modernity, MIT
Press, Ca mbridge, Mass., 1987.
Heidegger, Martn, Basic Writings, Harper & Row, Ne w York. 1977.
Marcuse, He rbert, One-Dimensional Man, Beacon Press, Boston, 1978.
Ricoeur , Pa ul , The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur, Beacon Press, Roston.

1978.
Sa rtre, J ean-Paul , Search for a Method , Vintage Books , New York ,

1963.

The third of these is Utopia Realized as the E nd o f Man and

World , with a ll their references to the regulatio n a nd contro l and
ob vious political mcanings. Baudrillard iro n ical ly argues th a t
America is Utopa realized in " the shadow of the silcnt
m ajorit ies" a nd with all the banality tha t belongs to a ll Utopias.

VI. For Baudrillard, we are, or are be.coming, fractal selves; split,

reproduci b le, basic life-style changes as fads, the disa ppearance of
experie nce and the desirc for a vanishing reality.

VIl. Beyond

Ba udrillard, Afrocentrism appears as a n a nswe.r to

recon nec ting o u rselves with "rcality". But this too is becoming
commodified in rap and "black ,. film .

VIII . The Ecstasy of communication, the vertigo o f infor mation

overi(Xtd , the bana lity o f a Tra nsp are n t socie ty; ca n a ny of these
postmoclern symptoms show us the way out of th e 20th Cent ury
:md tow<1 rd a ne w co ns tr ucti o n of the hum a n? Ca n wc fin d
m ean in g in th e " world" th a t is airead y u pon us? It is our ta sk to
try.

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