Inwardness and Existence: Subjectivity in/and Hegel, Heidegger, Marx, and Freud

by Walter A. Davis

A profound, challenging, wide-ranging book, back in print for a new generation

 

“ Inwardness and Existence accomplishes what no book before or after has even it demonstrates with great lucidity and insight the shared philosophical project that animates psychoanalysis, Marxism, existentialism, and Hegelian dialectics. Davis roots the reader in the enterprise of questioning what is given and probing beyond what is safe in order to demonstrate that psychoanalytic inquiry, Marxist politics, existential reflection, and dialectical connection all move within the same orbit. No one who reads it will ever think about existence itself in the same way again. Davis’s landmark work will profoundly transform anyone who reads it.”—Todd McGowan, author of The Real Film Theory after Lacan

Genres: Philosophy

440 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1989

Reviews

[Phillip · Rating 5 out of 5]

on a personal level simply one of the most important books I have read.

[isaac smith]

This note is inspired by a quote from Inwardness and Existence, a quote on the Hegelian dialectic, shared (in part) by Phil Kapitan:

"Dialectical opposites stand in sharp contrast to the dualistic and binary categories with which they are frequently confused. Dualistic oppositions separate distinct orders of being, experience, and value, establishing the “purity” of one term while loading all ill onto the other, in such a way that conflicts are resolved.18 Dialectical opposites, in contrast, are inseparable, mutually determining, and vitally in need of one another for their very being. Their union is grounded in the fact that the tension between them defines each. Such fusion is dynamic and necessarily generates mediations which give birth to irreversible developments. Mediation isn’t after the fact; it is the primary fact. Dialectic overcomes reductionism and the genetic fallacy because origin is “always already” in process. Hegel’s concept off Aufhebung attempts to grasp the logic of that process in a single term. In Aufhebung, the situation that emerges from the clash of dialectical opposites cancels the initial form of the opposition yet preserves the essential terms of that conflict in a more complicated form which extends that conflict to a wider range of experience. The ever popular thesis-antithesis-synthesis account of dialectic is the parody of this logic: dialectical progress is reduced to an abstract schematism in which every step constitutes an inexorable advance toward a single predetermined conclusion. Such is the way mechanical understanding arranges experience into abstract spatial patterns. “ Synthesis” becomes a bland resolution in which opposites really do no more than cancel themselves in fixed, wholly positive results, risen above the conflicts that gave them birth and freed of the need for further development. Conflict is resolved only because it has never been met.19 In the concrete dialectics of Aufhebung, in contrast, conflicts are not dissolved but developed. Each successive 'synthesis' coalesces what is dynamic in the clash of opposites by taking conflict to a more involved stage. The 'essence' of a 'synthesis' is the further development it demands. Rather than producing static outcomes freed of tension, a “synthesis” explodes with new developments. Thus, the task, with any opposition, is to trace the stages of its total development or what Hegel terms 'the self movement of contradictions.' Because no term, concept, or opposition can be stabilized outside the dialectical process, whatever perspective one takes on conflict and beginnings will lead to the whole of things. As we’ll show, this proves true whether one begins with (i) a simple, primary opposition, (2) a random collection of opposites, or (3) a large, all-inclusive dichotomy. "

Davis presents a theory about the human subject, or "the self," merging four seemingly incompatible theories of subjectivity: Hegel's self-consciousness, Heidegger's existentialism, Marx's dialectical materialism, and Freud's psychoanalysis. Davis argues that Structuralism and Deconstruction represent incomplete stages in a dialectical movement towards Hegelian "unhappy consciousness." Throughout the text, Davis explores various topics such as sexuality, love, neurosis, psychosis, death, capitalism, freedom, and authenticity, challenging common beliefs in intellectual and popular discourse. In the existentialism section, Davis seeks to reinvigorate the philosophy beyond simplistic notions of freedom, highlighting the need for intellectual effort, termed "anti-bildung," to uncover and eliminate ideological influences from family and culture. But, really, this is mostly just Wikipedia's description.

I am writing this now as part of my exposure of what I have (perhaps insensitively) been calling my metastasis. Said metastasis includes notions from German idealism (especially Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, perhaps even his Science of Logic; I do not feel read enough to mention Schelling or Fichte, and I see Wolff and Kant as prior, with less philosophical influences like Boehme, Gothe, Schiller, &c), Freudo-Marxism (Althusser, Adorno, Ricoeur, & lesser so Marcuse, Fanon, Reich, Fromm, Castoriadis, Zizek, McGowan, &c), Existential Phenomenology (Heidegger, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, Sartre, etc.), and last but not least, post-structuralists (Deleuze, Derrida, Foucault, Barthes, Kristeva, Lacan, Irigaray, Blanchot, Lyotard, &c). Of course, there is overlap in these categories (Freudo-Marxism + Existential Phenomenology, Existential Phenomenology + Post-structuralism, Freudo-Marxism + Post-structuralism; 3 choose 2 is 3 after all) and people often distanced themselves from such labels, especially post-structuralists.

I should properly read this book some time.

[Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five stars is not enough, but what’s in a rating anyway? I have so much I want to write and yet nothing I write feels adequate, because I’m pretty sure this book changed how I read and how I think (or perhaps more accurately illuminated how I “always already” read and thought). Suffice it to say this found me at the perfect time, and clearly I’m going to need to read this at least 4 more times during and after my now inevitable dive into Heidegger, Marx, Freud and especially Hegel (lucky me), thinkers whose thought Davis here has so generously situated in this shared ground of subject and dialectic - almost unbelievably this has started to make some sort of concrete sense to me (or maybe I’ve finally lost it), and I think that that is the highest praise I could give at this time.