Peter Emmerson

 Homo clausus: Marx and Nietzsche.

 I think it’s fair to say that the isolated, closed state of mind associated with Homo clausus develops in relation to a need or preference for thinking in terms of ideals, i.e. theometaphysically. Homo clausus is consequently an ancient cognitive identity linked to religious, philosophical and mathematical perceptual strategies. Homo clausus withdraws from the world of events to an ideal mental place where absolute truth/relativism abounds, a place of safety built on and around the great rock of certainty. Homo clausus is a perfectionist, a theologian, a philosopher, a mathematician, a rationalist, an idealist. Homo clausus can enable and justify the total detachment of difficult emotions and habits. Homo clausus finds solace in a world where ideals can be translated into reality, but also finds this politically useful. Homo clausus can isolate him/herself; Homo clausus can be free. Homo clausus is egocentric, looking out on the universe and judging all that surrounds. Homo clausus is privileged and influential so can afford to set aside survival needs and be divorced from reality. Homo clausus is deceived and a deceiver, a believer in the possibility absolute truth/relativism and a proselytizer of such beliefs for the benefit of self and those in authority who find such wares useful. Homo clausus is a theometaphysicist who pretends to be a scientist, as with Newton, Darwin, Marx and Einstein. Homo clausus is an ideologist!

The Cartesian ‘I’ is perhaps the most influential version of the thoughts of Homo clausus. Descartes constructed a world as an extension of the human mind that dispatched all doubts to the margins putting the human self, the ‘I’, in a position of privilege, certain in the knowledge that the truth techniques of verbal logic and mathematics which testified to God’s divine presence, allowed us access to perfection in order to facilitate the solution of human problems. The developments in maths that Descartes was involved in, offered new hope for Homo clausus, as his other incarnations founded on religion and philosophy, came under attack from natural philosophy (science): the new maths justifies Homo clausus in turning a deaf ear to the increasing volume of noise as scientists in particular, grappled with the relative uncertainty that goes with investigation of the facts.

The Cartesian view still electrifies so much of western thinking, promoting theometaphysical styles of analysis in a modern guise, too often directly influencing the practice of real world activity by elite scientists such as Hawking & Mlodinow. Homo clausus also has another more direct influence by posting health warnings about the malaise which stalks our rational western practices and that threatens the sensible world of absolute truth in the beguiling form of ‘relativism’. Relativism, not to be confused with ‘relativity’, is the devil which constantly menaces the ordered world, preying on the slightest weakness in the explanatory power of the apostles of absolute truth and their allies. The relativistic world is one of chaos and absolute uncertainty, where no method of arbitration exists to sort out disputes of any kind, where the established lose control. Philosophers argue that if we deny the existence of absolute truth the outcome is its dichotomous opposite, no truth at all, relativism – an intellectual state of anarchy leading to the break down of order, that Thomas Hobbes warned us about.

As far as I am concerned, relativism is another example of idealist thinking, as is incidentally, the concept of anarchy. Both are ideological; they are concepts used by the truth-finders and their influential patrons to frighten outsider figurations into accepting their arguments, a bit like those politicians who say that if we in Britain abandon the first past the post system for choosing MPs at general elections, in favour of a more democratic process of proportional representation, we will encounter something patently and incontrovertibly bad; an unstable, weak government. What they really mean is that we should keep a system that guarantees little threat to the position of those who already hold social influence: if the established hand over some of that influence to the voting people of Britain, they give away some of their hold on government to those who might not give it back. There is an ideology connected with democracy in Britain that fosters voter disengagement from politics to help established figurations utilize their control. The established political figurations pretend to govern for the people, whereas in fact they govern for themselves, as if Britain and the people in it were their own property: they are would-be absolutists. Britain is relatively democratic to the extent that the people, who are in fact subjects not citizens, are constantly ignored because they can be. It is probably the case that most people in Britain would like to see the reinstitution of the death penalty for heinous crimes. It is tempting to conclude that the reason for the lack of change in the law is that the small highly influential minority who know better, disagree: the established political figurations backed by their truth-finders. The corollary to this is that the aristocratic mentality, ably assisted by Homo clausi, is still alive and well in British elite figurations, providing the justification for ignoring the would-be citizenry in order to retain overall dominance. A referendum on capital punishment would mean loss of control, whichever is the outcome. If you believe responsibility for order is a matter of science rather than ideal, then all those who profit from ideals will lose influence: the established will have to justify their position to the outsiders by another means, that takes account of the relative uncertainty of everything as opposed to absolute uncertainty! A more democratic process requires an opening of the mind of Homo clausus to the fact that relative uncertainty is the actual nature of experience, rather than the choice between certainty or uncertainty, truth or relativism. It will not be easy to alter such an ancient state of being.

However, we can continue the process of development in criticism of the Homo clausus mentality by promoting the de-mystification of idealistic concepts such as ‘proletariat’ or ‘Übermensch’. If you take Nietzsche’s philosophical superman who exercises his will no matter what the cost, you have a life-form that is so distant from reality and social influence it can act alone: this not a person it is a theometaphysical android constructed by Homo clausus. Similarly, Marx’s version of ‘natural man’ who is only truly at home in the collective, is so strongly caught up with others that it cannot think or act in a relatively autonomous manner; another of Homo clausus’ theometaphysical constructions. If we distance ourselves from the mind set developed by the theometaphysicians, we can do better science and accept we are never independent of social influence, and never wholly dependent on it either – only Homo clausus can be independent or dependent: in fact we are in a relationship of relative dependency/independency. Similarly, certainty per se does not really exist, but we can be relatively certain. Equally uncertainty does not exist, but we can be relatively uncertain. As far as I can see, science offers knowledge at various levels of relative uncertainty, whereas Homo clausus can construct the certain/uncertain, idealist world of theometaphysics. Even though I believe Marx’ and Nietzsche’s models are too compromized by their idealism, they are major steps forward in the debate about what we know – that relative certainty and relative uncertainty abound.