Chen Xiangqin: The Theoretical Dilemma of Contemporary Western Left-wing Critical Philosophy
Since the development of contemporary Western Leftist critical philosophy reached its present state, its status, function, and destiny have all encountered numerous predicaments. Although this current of thought has exhausted nearly every theoretical resource to critique the alienation and domination of modernity—thereby establishing a radical theoretical foundation for Leftist actions such as revolution, resistance, and struggle—when faced with a domination of modernity that has penetrated to the very "marrow," this radically critical Leftist philosophy remains essentially theoretical; its political action is its academic discourse. Contemporary Leftist philosophy, lingering at this level of academic discourse and theoretical action, seems to have degenerated into a linguistic and rhetorical game played by Sophists who use critique, deconstruction, and resistance as a posture or identity marker. Moreover, what this game brings about is merely abstract resistance, obsessive-compulsive critique, and the "unhappy consciousness" [1] of modernity—such as the profound sense of powerlessness or nihilism triggered by these forms of resistance and critique.
Unlike classical Western Leftist philosophy, the objects of critique for contemporary Western Leftist philosophy are no longer merely the dominant orders of modernity such as capital, technology, and power, but also extend to Enlightenment concepts of modernity such as reason, freedom, humanity, and progress. However, when humanistic ideals such as equality, freedom, or liberation, as well as concepts of progress such as history, knowledge, and technology, are subjected to the negation and questioning of contemporary Western Leftist philosophy—or when this negation, critique, or questioning runs not only through its understanding of the real world but also through its understanding of history, human nature, and freedom itself—it falls into a predicament of theoretical and politico-critical practice. Consequently, while questioning the ideas of modernity, the critical project of contemporary Western Leftist philosophy simultaneously questions its own justificatory basis. It thus loses its own normative yardsticks, encounters its own theoretical limits, and even announces its own logical end. To overcome such theoretical and logical dilemmas, contemporary Western Leftist philosophy, particularly its radical branches, can only take critique itself as the sole principle of justification, launching endless critiques against the history, society, and ideas under the rule of modernity. It even devolves into a pure technique of critique whose profession is the discovery of negativity and heterogeneity, alienation and reification, contradiction and conflict. Alternatively, it substitutes the eschatological faith and Messianic complex of "Biblical studies" for the Enlightenment concepts and faith in progress of modernity. This is done to achieve a theodicy for the future, hope, and ideals of history—and indeed for history itself—which inevitably results in a pure rhetoric of apology that loses any critical edge within a transcendent, divine attitude. This article aims to demonstrate that, despite facing various theoretical dilemmas, contemporary Western Leftist philosophy—with criticality as its basic hallmark—has in fact inherited the critical spirit of Marxism, yet it has not been able to reach the theoretical height of the criticality and revolutionary nature of the Marxist historical materialist outlook.
I. The Critical Predicament of Contemporary Western Leftist Philosophy
Leftist philosophy is a philosophy marked by critique, though this critique is more closely associated with the experiences of the history, humanity, and freedom of modernity. In the context of Leftist philosophy—be it the critique of the abstract domination of capital, the indictment of the instrumental domination of reason, or the exposure of alienating or reifying forces such as technology, knowledge, and power—all such techniques of critique aim to establish a theoretical justificatory basis for Leftist practical actions (such as resistance, struggle, and revolution).
However, the objects questioned by contemporary Western Leftist critical philosophy include not only the dominant order of modernity but also a series of Enlightenment concepts such as reason, progress, humanity, and freedom. As is well known, the enlightenment of reason, the progress of knowledge and technology, universal social prosperity, and the universal realization of human freedom were once the common convictions of modern ideological currents, whether Left or Right, radical or conservative. The Left merely appealed the ideals of human freedom and liberation to the future of history, thereby establishing a critical stance toward the present reality.
In the Age of Enlightenment, reason itself signified an ultimate identity or equivalence with nature and freedom. Thus, if an order was confirmed as a rational order, it meant that this order was essentially a natural or historical order conforming to the attributes of freedom, implying that this order would ultimately win the supreme justification of reason and freedom. However, the picture presented to us by contemporary Western Leftist critical philosophy is one of profound opposition and antinomy between reason and humanity, nature and freedom. Reason has not only lost the attribute of freedom it ought to possess, degenerating into an intellectual category devoid of inner meaning and soul, but has also become an alien or alienated necessity at the very moment it finds its own form of realization in the abstract, technological, and "rational" domination of modernity. Consequently, the modern social or historical order confirmed by reason is no longer a natural order rooted in the idea of freedom or the essential human nature of freedom, but rather an alienated or reified order of domination that is unrelated to freedom, or even hostile to freedom and humanity itself (such as the all-encompassing domination or control over the human body, life, and spirit by the capital, technology, and power of modernity). Meanwhile, the human subjective self and freedom—his most primordial individual or species being—has been reduced to a "residue" of the subject left behind by modern and postmodern critique. As a heterogeneous element, it degenerates into a pure spectre [3] that has lost its own body and world, exiled to the margins of this modern order, constantly evoking deep-seated human anxiety and self-concern regarding modernity.
Within the sharp opposition and antinomy between reason and freedom, history and humanity, the real world, history, and society—acting as the dominant order of modernity—have lost the possibility of justification by freedom, reason, and humanity in an ultimate sense. Real human beings, as the objects or subjects of domination, are permeated from body to soul by the "governmentality" of modernity—techniques including technology, capital, power, and discourse. Any technique of governmentality is a "technology of the self" [N1] (in Foucault's phrasing), constituting a production system of de-subjectification and re-subjectification. While constantly deconstructing and destroying old subjects and self-identities, it is also constructing and encoding new subjects and identities. In the governing dialectic of de-subjectification and re-subjectification, the guardianship of the self is accompanied by the release of the self. Any substantive resistance or struggle will be treated as a contingent event and re-incorporated into the modern order's risk control of uncertainty.
Faced with the all-encompassing domination of modernity, contemporary Leftist philosophy, seeking to find hope and the possibility of resistance, rebellion, and struggle, has exhausted almost all intellectual resources to lay a theoretical foundation for the radical actions of Leftist politics. They appeal either to the uncertainty of the future or the incompleteness of history [5], to the residue of subjectivity wandering outside the real world [6], to the heterogeneous "Other" controlled, marginalized, and excluded by the dominant order [7], or to purely contingent "truth-events" [8]. In short, contemporary Leftist philosophy strives in its critical agenda to reveal the uncertainty or incompleteness of modern history in a holistic or individual sense, linking this to the existence, future, and destiny of modern man to stimulate its own historical imagination or theoretical reflection on a completely new way of being for modern humanity.
However, regardless of the critique leveled against the abstract domination of modernity, contemporary Leftist philosophy cannot escape or resolve the conflict and antinomy between reason and freedom, history and humanity, and the abstract domination of modernity and the Leftist ideal of human liberation. In the context of modern and postmodern critique, the ideals defended by Leftist philosophy—such as humanity, freedom, and liberation—can no longer unconditionally appeal to the "process of the natural history of society" [N2] revealed by Marx. Consequently, it cannot, like the classical Left, reveal the natural history of society as the history of human freedom or liberation in a higher sense. For the classical Left, the dialectic of humanity and history, freedom and society, was confirmed in a practical sense as the historical dialectic of society itself; the ideals of freedom and liberation defended by humanity itself could be set as the immanent telos or result of the dialectical natural-historical process of human society. But for the contemporary Left, the historical dialectic—once possessing immanent teleological settings of freedom and liberation—has degenerated back into a dialectic between history and humanity (as well as society and freedom). Moreover, the opposition and conflict between them cannot be sublated (aufgehoben) by the empirical natural-historical process of human society. Once this occurs, the natural-historical process of society loses the legitimate justification of the idea of freedom in a deterministic sense and begins to degenerate into an alienated or alien dominant order or process, becoming the opposite or negation of freedom and humanity. Leftist ideals such as freedom or liberation are excluded from the empirical historical process; only by appealing to the a priori/transcendental categories of philosophy or theology (such as Benjamin’s principle of redemption or Bloch’s principle of hope) can they win their own rational justification.
Therefore, between reason and freedom, history and humanity, and between the social reality dominated by capital, power, and technology and the Leftist ideals of equality, freedom, and human liberation, contemporary Western Leftist philosophy seems to reproduce the Kantian dualism of the phenomenal and noumenal realms. That is, modernity—as history and reality characterized by certainty—is grasped as a phenomenal realm unrelated to, or more accurately, hostile to freedom; it is a nature that is human but alienated or alien. Freedom and liberation—as ideas or ideals rooted deep in human nature—are grasped as a noumenal realm unrelated to "society" (man's own phenomenal realm or nature), or as a "residue" of subjectivity marginalized, obscured, or crowded out by the phenomenal realm or nature. However, this philosophical opposition or distinction between the phenomenal and noumenal realms carries a negative or dialectical historical (or political) connotation in the theoretical rhetoric of the contemporary Left: Leftist ideals like human freedom and liberation, as modern ideas rooted in the depths of humanity, have an ontological ground of legitimacy; whereas man’s own history or actual nature (the objective dominant order of society), as an alienated or alien phenomenal realm, ought to be negated, questioned, and critiqued. The abstract domination of modernity intensifies the dialectic or antinomy between the noumenal and the phenomenal. This is the eternal struggle between freedom or humanity as ontological categories and history or nature as phenomenal categories (alienated into the abstract domination of modernity). In Giorgio Agamben’s words, it is the eternal struggle between "humanity" and dominant socio-political systems like "the state, society, and history" [9]. In this struggle, the most profound feeling of contemporary Western Leftist philosophy is a deep despair regarding the possibility of shaking the dominant order of modernity. The politics derived from this deep despair can only be an "art of the impossible," an art that "changes the parameters of the possibility of the existing constellation" [10] only in a purely theoretical or rhetorical sense. The process of historical transformation or innovation can only give way to empirical technical or positive processes. The deep despair expressed by contemporary Western Leftist philosophy toward the domination of modernity is typified by the closing passage of Adorno’s Minima Moralia. He writes: "Philosophy, the only way in which it can still be responsibly exercised in the face of despair, is the attempt to contemplate all things as they would present themselves from the standpoint of redemption. Knowledge has no light but that shed on the world by redemption: all else is reconstruction, mere technique. Perspectives must be fashioned that displace and estrange the world, reveal it to be, with its rifts and crevices, as indigent and distorted as it will appear one day in the messianic light." [11] This means that the empirical historical process itself cannot carry or fulfill any human hope or ideal such as freedom and liberation.
Nor can they achieve a supreme justification for these hopes, concepts, or ideals. Because history, at every finite stage, is unfinished or indeterminate, it is incapable of achieving its own self-justification, self-realization, and self-redemption. Yet it is precisely where certainty or necessity is completely surrendered to indeterminacy or incompleteness—where the naturalness of nature is completely surrendered to the historicity of history—that the world, in the sense of a totality, posits itself as a category of individuality, as a one-time or contingent historical event. The underlying destiny or necessity governing such contingent or one-time historical events is indeterminate or unfinished, forever unknowable to humanity. On one hand, this calls forth an abyssal despair or nihilism; on the other, it reveals an ultimate eschatological faith or Messianic redemption.
II. The Justificatory Dilemma of Contemporary Western Leftist Philosophy
One important reason why contemporary Western leftist philosophy encounters a series of theoretical dilemmas in the field of critique is that its own basis of justification (or rather, the normative basis of justification for critical theory) has begun to undergo profound suspicion, reflection, and interrogation. In this sense, classical leftist philosophy was not a critical philosophy of "critique for critique's sake"; it possessed its own justificatory basis of legitimacy, which consisted of Enlightenment concepts such as reason and progress, freedom and liberation. However, in the context of the contemporary Western Left, such Enlightenment concepts have themselves become a new form of modern obscurantism—namely, a blind faith in reason, freedom, and progress.
For instance, in Dialectic of Enlightenment, Horkheimer and Adorno explicitly point out that humanity has undergone multiple enlightenments throughout the history of civilization, yet whenever the principles, concepts, and ideas produced in each enlightenment cease to be critiqued or questioned, civilization and humanity lapse back into a new form of obscurantism. Therefore, enlightenment itself possesses its own dialectic or negativity; any enlightenment carries the danger of falling into a new obscurantism. Regarding this, they state: "We have no doubt—and herein lies our petitio principii—that freedom in society is inseparable from enlightenment thinking. We believe we have perceived just as clearly, however, that the very concept of that thinking, no less than the concrete historical forms, the social institutions, with which it is interwoven, already contains the germ of the regression which is taking place everywhere today. If enlightenment does not assimilate reflection on this regressive moment, it seals its own [self-destructive—editor’s note] fate." [4] "The reason why enlightenment lapses into mythology is to be found... solely in the enlightenment which, out of fear of the truth, is itself paralyzed." [5]
Enlightenment signifies suspicion and critique; it signifies the purging of illusions, the awakening of the world, and the replacement of myth or ideology with knowledge and truth, allowing one's mind and intellect to truly reach maturity. But for the finite experience and intellect of humanity, truthful knowledge (as opposed to technical or empirical knowledge) is never a set of certain facts, concepts, or principles; rather, it is the boundary or limit of experience and knowledge itself. That is to say, any certain experience or knowledge is conditional; under specific circumstances, it is worthy of suspicion and critique, and therefore lacks the quality of truth. Thus, a true attitude of enlightenment based on suspicion and critique ought to be one of prudence. This attitude is not only practical (such as Machiavelli’s praise for "prudence" as a political virtue) but also theoretical (such as Socrates’ prudent theoretical attitude derived from knowing his own ignorance). This character of enlightenment, defined by prudence (prudentia) and practical wisdom (phronesis), was clearly present in Western classical thought. However, for classical thought, this prudent theoretical, moral, or political character was something only a select few excellent or eminent individuals could possess—such as those great theorists, politicians, or legislators endowed with virtues like wisdom, sagacity, and intellect. For them, the social state was always a state of "opinion" (doxa) that could be questioned. One of the core missions of theoretical and political practice endowed with the virtue of prudence was to rationally arrange or configure the relationship between "opinion" (the diverse or pluralistic state of social views), "authority" (dominant opinions believed by the masses), and "truth" (the ceaseless questioning or doubting of opinion), so as to establish a social or civil order justified by the ideas of justice or the Good (even a critical justification).
However, in the historical context of modernity, this theoretical or practical virtue of prudence or sagacity has receded, replaced by the enlightenment of the masses through new principles such as science, progress, freedom, and humanity. This enlightenment itself breeds a new obscurantism or vanity, because it uses a new myth to critique, deconstruct, and replace the old myth. This new myth consists of positivized dogmas such as the universal progress of civilization, knowledge, and science, and the universal realization of reason, freedom, and humanity.
We know that in the context of modern enlightenment, reason and freedom are always interconnected in an ultimate sense. As understood in German Classical Philosophy, reason itself implies freedom, and freedom is the supreme concept or Idea of reason. The principle of subjectivity in modern metaphysics laid the ontological foundation for the unity of reason and freedom; thus, in this context, social history, as humanity's own natural history, would ultimately win the supreme justification of the Ideas of reason and freedom.
In the critical theory of the contemporary Western Left, however, Reason (Vernunft) has degenerated into a soulless Understanding (Verstand) [6]—one divorced from the Idea of freedom—and has become an alienated or reified order of dominance. Regarding this, Horkheimer states in The Eclipse of Reason: "Reason, in its proper sense of logos or ratio, has always been essentially related to the subject, or subjectivity, in its faculty of thinking." [7] "With the surrender of its autonomy, reason has become an instrument... Reason has become completely harnessed to the social process. Its operational value, its role in the domination of men and nature, has been made the sole criterion." [8]
In this alienated or reified rational order (or rather, an order of the Understanding) that has lost the dimensions of freedom and humanity—such as the abstract rule of modern forces like capital, power, and technology—both the species-freedom and individual freedom of human beings are directly subjected to and manipulated by this external order of dominance. Relatedly, thinking about human freedom simultaneously means measuring human un-freedom; thus, whether in a theoretical or practical sense, freedom is always entangled with its opposites, such as externalization, reification, and alienation. Therefore, Adorno points out that true "freedom can be grasped only in determinate negation [9] in accordance with the concrete form of unfreedom." [10] Furthermore, this negative freedom (negative Freiheit) is not something that the dialectic of history or society can sublate [11]; rather, it reflects the basic logic and facts of human nature.
When Western leftist philosophy discovers the dialectic or negativity inherent in Enlightenment concepts such as reason, freedom, and progress, its critical project encounters its own theoretical limits. When such concepts or Ideas face critical interrogation and deconstruction, the Left announces its own theoretical end, because the justificatory basis upon which it launched its critical project has collapsed. If the classical Left still had certain "analectic" options worth defending (such as the principles of history or humanity like reason, progress, freedom, and liberation)—and thus its theoretical critique of modernity and its political revolution, resistance, or struggle against modern dominance still possessed a proof of legitimacy—in the context of the contemporary Left, these options for justification have become "dialectic" categories of negativity. They have become objects of theoretical critique. This means the theory and practice of the Left has become a purely critical theory or practice (originating in critique and terminating in critique). To cross this boundary, even to take a single step forward or backward—such as the transition from the "weapon of critique" to the "critique of weapons" [12]—is seen as a misuse of leftist theory and practice. For in the view of contemporary leftist philosophy, any positive or justificatory concept is worthy of suspicion, critique, and deconstruction; any theoretical or practical principle is dialectical and will be stamped with the mark of negativity. However, if a theory lacks any basis of legitimate justification, it cannot lead to any effective or meaningful moral, political, or historical action. Thus, in its critical course, contemporary leftist philosophy has unconsciously abolished the possibility of directing itself toward any substantive political action. Consequently, it can only degenerate into a purely theoretical dialectical craft or deconstructive rhetoric aimed at discovering negativity and heterogeneity, alienation and reification, contradiction and conflict. Taking critique itself as the sole principle of justification, it conducts endless critique, deconstruction, and resistance against history, society, and humanity itself under the rule of modernity. Moreover, this radicalist act of deconstruction and resistance is itself a self-demonstration of nihilism, despair, and modern anxiety.
If it is true that "each age dreams its successor" (as Michelet said), then the leftist movement in modern Western society can be seen as a theoretical, historical, and political practice launched on the basis of a positive imagination of the successor to modernity. However, in the context of the contemporary Western Left, the era of modernity is indeed an era about which it is impossible to be optimistic. The more modern people understand themselves, their origins, and their history, the more modernity imprisons their imagination regarding its successor or the future, to the point where we have lost the ability or possibility to imagine a different kind of history, civilization, or society. While the classical Left (such as the modern communist and socialist movements) once greatly stimulated the historical and political imagination and creativity of modern people, this creative imagination and capacity for action has now dried up in the contemporary Western Left. Therefore, the discourse, rhetoric, and theoretical context of the Left are saturated with omnipresent anxiety, despair, and nihilism.
Thus, where history and reality are filled with nihilism, despair, and anxiety, and where rational concepts, Enlightenment faith, and the principle of progress are on the verge of collapse, history can only leave behind its broken walls, debris, or ruins. Walter Benjamin provides a profound description of this vista of historical ruins. In his Theses on the Philosophy of History, while discussing the "Angel of History" attempting to repair a fragmented world history, he writes: "His [the Angel of History’s] face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress." [13] In this picture, the historical past is the continuous accumulation of ruins as time passes, while the historical future no longer has the strength to undertake the mission of self-repair, because progress itself simultaneously means the continued piling up of ruins. Although the Enlightenment concept of progress is a "storm blowing from Paradise," that only indicates that such concepts once attempted to prop up the future of history and tried to make the future responsible for the redemption of human history and destiny.
However, this human and historical self-redemption based on the principle of progress is nothing more than disaster or punishment continued in another form; it is nothing more than the continued accumulation of historical corpses and ruins in the name of hope, happiness, and faith. For contemporary Western Leftist philosophy, when faced with the debris and ruins of history, the only philosophy capable of defending an ultimate hope or faith for history is one that stands at the height of soteriology—revealing an ultimate affirmation or redemption within the depths of abyss-like despair or nihilism. This redemption is, in fact, an eschatological theodicy [14] of the temporal process of history or nature; it is what Benjamin called "Messianic time" [15].
III. From Faith in the History of Progress to Faith in the History of Redemption: The Path Toward Theodicy
In the critical context of contemporary Western Leftist philosophy, the Enlightenment concepts of modernity and the faith in progress have been subjected to deep reflection, suspicion, and critique by modern and postmodern thought. However, where such concepts or principles begin to be shaken, the future of history—in which Leftist philosophy once placed its certainty—loses the primary value it held relative to the past and present; it loses its historical status as the dwelling place for ideals such as freedom and liberation. Once this occurs, Leftist thought, which draws its source of legitimacy from the future, falls into a theoretical and practical predicament.
Regarding whether history necessarily possesses a progressive character—that is, whether it necessarily "exhibits a character of moving toward improvement"—Kant offered serious and solemn reflections and inquiries in his Essays on the Philosophy of History. He wrote: "If we ask whether the human race (as a whole) is continually advancing towards the better, it is not a question of the natural history of man, but of his moral history; and indeed, not according to the concept of individuals (singulorum), but according to the totality of humanity as united in society on earth and divided into various nations (universorum)." [16] Furthermore, viewed as a history of progress, history implies a question regarding its underlying theme or intent, which Kant termed the question of whether history has a "prophetic" or "prognostic" faculty, and whether or how humanity can know this faculty. In fact, Kant’s question regarding the "prognosis" of history concerns whether history, in its crystalline temporal process, possesses a defensive structure of ultimate morality, values, or ideas, and whether this structure can bear the concerns, sustenance, and hopes of humanity regarding its own existence and destiny. He pointed out that it is only by "opening the horizon of future ages" and determining the meaning and value of the future for the temporal process of history that a "prognostic" history capable of carrying human ideals and hopes becomes truly possible. Toward this end, Kant further noted: "A prediction can be made in three ways. In its moral vocation, the human race is either in a continuous state of retrogression towards the worse, or in a state of continuous progression towards the better, or in a state of permanent stagnation at its present stage of moral worth among created things (which is the same as revolving eternally in a circle around the same point)." [17]
Among these three scenarios, the first is "moral terrorism" (retrogression), the second is "moral eudaemonism" (progression), and the third is "moral Abderitism" [18]—the idea that at every moment, history is a tapestry of interwoven good and evil, where advancement implies retreat, construction is for the sake of destruction, and progress is accompanied by degradation. Regardless of its form, any prognostic history contains a redemptive element. For the history of retrogression, the creative origin or arche of history is the redemptive force that saves history itself from degradation or ruin. For the history of progress, the future or goal serves as the dwelling place of historical ideals and is the redemptive force that liberates history from its present or past. As for moral Abderitism, it represents a cynical attitude that places no sustenance or hope in history itself; those who hold it maintain a nihilistic skepticism regarding whether history as a whole can win a defense from moral or practical reason. In truth, this nihilistic skepticism is only one step away from a position that offers an eternal theodicy for history (and any of its eras).
In Kant’s view, the concept of historical progress cannot obtain empirical confirmation through the positive evolution or development of history. This is because "progress" is a moral category containing moral judgments of practical reason, while "evolution" is a positive category—a positive judgment formed according to empirical knowledge. Or more precisely, if the evolutionary process of nature, history, or society contains some form of progress or evolution, it must also necessarily contain a corresponding form of "regress" or degradation; as Pascal put it, "anything that is perfected by progress also perishes by progress."
In this sense, history as a history of progress is always morally controversial and rootless within the positive process of history. At the same time, by relying on a finite positive process, history itself cannot fulfill the theoretical mission of defending the future (such as positioning the future as the dwelling place of hope or the site for the realization of ideals). Therefore, the self-defense of history in terms of morality, values, or ideas cannot be achieved through the positive historical process itself. For the final defensible characteristic of positive or empirical history is likely merely its continuity and evolutionary character; this is history’s "ultimate religion" (as Burckhardt put it), upon which no further moral or value judgments regarding the historical process can be formed. If one insists on forming moral judgments about history based on empirical history, such judgments can only be "moral indifferentism" or "moral Abderitism." Such judgments already possess the general characteristic of applying transcendent concepts of good and evil to the empirical field of history. Therefore, if history—and especially the future of history—is to obtain ultimate moral defense in terms of freedom, justice, or the good, it can only appeal to ideas or principles that transcend history itself.
Regarding this, Nikolai Berdyaev [19] pointed out in The Meaning of History: "It is impossible for any state of absolute perfection to appear within history; the tasks of history can only be solved outside the scope of history. This is the fundamental and primary conclusion reached by the philosophy of history. This is the inner mystery of the historical process. Humanity has always attempted to solve its own destiny within history through the transition from one era to another. It is only when humanity reaches a state other than what was expected that it senses there is no exit from the circle of history, and thus begins to realize that its tasks cannot be solved within the historical process, realizing that the bridge to solving historical tasks relies solely on transcendental methods." He continued: "If history were an infinite process, then history would have no meaning. The tragedy of time might be insoluble, and the tasks of history might never be realized, because they cannot be realized within historical time." Therefore, Berdyaev said: "The final thought of the metaphysics of history is that the end of history is inevitable; this is also the theoretical premise of the metaphysics of history."
If a metaphysics of history is possible, it can only be truly realized at the point where history ends. This point has already presupposed a teleology or eschatology of history, the ancient roots of which lie in "Biblical" eschatological faith and Messianic redemption. In the "Biblical" context, it is only through eschatological principles that history can overcome its own negative temporality and the relentless dissolution of historical meaning or purpose by the infinity and nihilism of time. Only in this way, at the end of history, can the ultimate meaning or value of the future for the historical process be fully revealed. For any ultimate inquiry into history, the future is the true focus, the true anchorage for human hopes or ideals—it is also where Leftist political philosophy leaves its deepest marks. Therefore, to save the future and even history itself in the highest sense of morality, value, and practical reason, one must take eschatology as a principled premise and grasp history as a history of redemption rooted in Messianic faith. This is the fundamental revelation of Hebrew "Biblical studies" for the metaphysics of history.
In the faith of "eschatology" (the Book of Revelation and the Gospels), historical time is, in an ultimate sense, a completed time. For a completed history, the past is thoroughly finished, and the future, in the sense that it can be completed, has already won thorough redemption and defense. Thus, historical time can be internally divided into meaningless, nihilistic "profane time" and "Messianic time," which has completed its ultimate redemption or theodicy. At every moment of Messianic time, history wins its own supreme defense. Therefore, within the anxiety and despair of modernity found in contemporary Leftist philosophy, there already lies hidden an eschatological faith and an expectation of Messianic redemption. This is because only this faith absolutely correlates the future of history, the fate of man, and redemption in an ultimate sense, thereby allowing the historicity of history to emerge from the abyss of its own nihilism and despair toward its revelation and hope, pointing toward redemption in the Kingdom of God. By correlating the future, destiny, and ultimate completion of history with Biblical concepts such as eschatology, the Messiah, and redemption, a brand-new way of understanding the historicity or temporality of history emerges: a Messianic time or process of redemption that corresponds to the secular process of historical time. Regarding this, Giorgio Agamben wrote in The Time that Remains: "What is decisive here is that the fullness of the moments is to be understood as the relation of every moment to the Messiah—every moment is immediate to God, and not just the final result of a process. ... Every era is the Messianic 'now' (totum illud tempus diem vel horam esse); the Messianic work is not the end of time in the usual sense, but the present, which, as the urgency of fulfillment, gives itself 'as the end.'" [20]
When history, in the sense of its ultimate self-completion, entrusts its destiny to Messianic redemption, history also wins an ultimate defense of theodicy in an eschatological sense. Every civilization and its social and political forms in history can win their own proof of legitimacy within this ultimate Messianic redemption, which manifests as the ultimate salvation of the future and the hope of history by Messianic faith.
In the Messianic faith of "Biblical studies" and its modified forms, the Messianic event either exists in a state of eternal "not-yet," marking the placement of human redemption in an eternal future (as in Judaism); or the Messianic event has already occurred, marking humanity’s entry into a history of redemption, though this history of redemption remains in an eternal state of non-completion (as in Christianity). No other event occurring in history is qualified to impersonate the Messianic event. This means that, in principle, the Messianic event cannot be confirmed as a "this-worldly" historical event. The completion-time of Messianism is not the end of time in a positive or empirical sense, but a metaphor or symbol of indeconstructible transcendental ideas (such as the good, justice, divinity, or freedom) within the process of history or time, thus allowing the profane time of history in every era to be converted into the time of the "Messianic now."
Therefore, when Leftist philosophy attempts to seek inspiration and a source of conviction for the future, hope, and ideals of history within Hebrew "Biblical studies," [it finds...]
already treats actual human social history as a degraded natural history. Yet, within the context of Greek philosophy, nature was not degraded; a fundamental characteristic of nature as nature lay in its ability to be justified by Reason, Justice, or the Idea of the Good. It is only today that nature has been branded with the "original sins" of alienation, reification, and domination inherent to modernity. Consequently, nature unfolds its own justification of ideas or conceptual vindication within a theological dialectic of divinity and humanity, fall and salvation, eschatology and the Messiah. In this sense, the so-called eschatological faith and Messianic redemption of history (and its eternally unfinished future) actually complete a supreme or ultimate ideal justification for all of earthly history through the rhetoric, language, and concepts of "biblical studies." As a result, contemporary Western Leftist critical philosophy inevitably degenerates into a purely positive theoretical technique or apologetic rhetoric that loses any substantive critical edge within a transcendent divine attitude.
IV. The Theoretical Limitations of Contemporary Western Leftist Critical Philosophy
It is well known that Marxism is a system of thought whose fundamental hallmark is its criticality; criticality is the essential characteristic of Marx's thought. It can be said that the history of the formation of Marx's thought is a history of theoretical critique—that is, a progression from the critique of philosophy, theology, and religion to the critique of politics, the state, and law, and finally to the critique of political economy [21]. In this sense, contemporary Western Leftist philosophy, characterized by its criticality, is in fact an inheritance and advancement of the Marxist critical spirit. Regardless of their respective theoretical forms or the theoretical resources they possess, the fundamental aim of contemporary Western Leftist philosophies is to deepen the critical project initiated by Marx, even though they have yet to reach the theoretical height of the criticality and revolutionary nature of the Marxist historical materialist outlook.
On the one hand, contemporary Western Leftist philosophy has unearthed "abstract domination" from Marx's critique of capital modernity. It has incorporated science, technology, knowledge, discourse, and power (not just capital) as elements of modern rule into its critique of modernity. This expands the horizon of the critique of modernity and reveals the deep-seated antagonistic relationships between reason and freedom, history and nature, and society and human nature that are hidden under modern rule. On the other hand, by invoking various intellectual elements, contemporary Western Leftist philosophy treats Marx’s thought as an open text. It has produced multi-dimensional interpretations of Marx—such as Hegelian, Kantian, Heideggerian, Fichtean, Schellingian, Spinozist, Rousseauian, and Vicoesque readings—thereby deepening and renewing the world’s understanding of Marx's thought.
Nevertheless, contemporary Western Leftist philosophy has encountered its own theoretical dilemma: its objects of critique are not only the modern ruling orders of capital, technology, knowledge, and power, but also extend to the modern Enlightenment concepts of reason, freedom, humanity, and progress. This leads to a dual crisis of "critique and justification." On the surface, this dilemma seems to result from the "radicalism-only" or "critique-only" stance ("critique for the sake of critique") of Leftist philosophy—where the critical edge is ultimately directed at the very justificatory foundations that make critique possible. In reality, the reason contemporary Western Leftist philosophy encounters this theoretical dilemma is that its critique stops at the "philosophical critique" that Marx once sublated [22], and fails to progress to the "critique of political economy" he initiated, nor even to the critique of human social history guided by the critique of political economy. In other words, their critique remains perpetually at the level of ideas and fails to advance to the materialist, dialectical historical process itself as presented by Marx in his critical journey.
When Western Leftist philosophy returned from Marx's tradition of the critique of political economy to the tradition of philosophical critique, it began seeking various forms of conceptual or ideal justifications for its own theoretical critiques. They either posit "Man" (with a capital M) as the absolute subject of the actual historical process, thereby setting an anthropological origin or goal for history; or they attempt, through a kind of deconstructive critique, to discover certain "undecconstructible" concepts or ideas and posit them as the indissoluble conceptual foundation for any deconstructible law, order, or history; or they view the subject as a transcendental or transcendent category that cannot be reduced or exhausted by any actual society, order, or history, in order to carry the ideals of humanity and freedom inherent in Leftist philosophy; or they attempt to find a different space for the imagination of the ideas or ideals of humanity and freedom through theoretical proofs of the unfinishability or contingency of history, and so on.
In Kantian terms, these justificatory concepts or ideas of Leftist critical theory are "regulative" (regulativ) rather than "constitutive" (konstitutiv). Moreover, such regulative concepts or ideas are usually transcendental-transcendent; only as such can they provide moral legislation for actual social history. However, as critical scales or referential ideals relative to actual society, these concepts or ideas are either "of this world" (i.e., anthropological)—in which case they will inevitably be found to be dialectical or negative, and a negative dialectical concept cannot serve as a positive or affirmative justificatory basis for critical theory, leading to the collapse of the theory's own justificatory foundation; or these concepts or ideas are "of the other world" (i.e., theological or metaphysical)—in which case they are speculative and, in an ultimate sense, affirmative or positive. But such theoretical critique, using ultimate concepts or ideas as its own justificatory basis, will eventually lead to a "theodicy-style" critique—that is, leading to a supreme justification and total affirmation of history in the name of critique. Therefore, once contemporary Western Leftist philosophy strands its critique within the realm of philosophical critique, such critique must be one that takes a certain type of concept or idea as its justificatory premise. Consequently, there must exist some type of idealistic application of concepts or ideas, making it difficult to escape the difficulties brought about by the abstract and conceptual nature of such critique.
In contrast, Marx discovered "man himself" within the critique of philosophy, theology, and religion; he discovered "civil society" within the critique of politics, the state, and law; and he discovered "human society" within the critique of civil society (i.e., bourgeois society). Thus, in Marx, the progression from the critique of philosophy (theology) to the critique of politics, the state, and law, and finally to the critique of political economy and the critique of human social history, is primarily manifested as the discovery of the history of actual human beings, particularly the discovery of the materialist dialectic of history. Of course, it was Hegel who discovered history’s "dialectic as the moving and creating principle of negativity" [42], but in Hegel, this dialectic or negativity was an "abstract, logical, and speculative expression." As the concepts or ideas supporting Hegel’s all-encompassing philosophical system—as the "money of the philosophy of spirit"—it possessed only "speculative, thought-value" for nature and the history of humanity itself [42].
It was only with Marx that the dialectic truly shed its idealistic abstraction, achieved its "materialist inversion," and truly presented itself as the creative or negative self-movement of actual history (including nature and man himself). This historical dialectic contains a fundamental insight of the materialist conception of history: namely, that the structural problems caused by the internal contradictions, conflicts, and negativity of any social formation cannot be truly resolved within that social formation itself; they can only be resolved or sublated during and through a broader historical process of dialectical movement. Thus, the fundamental historical result of the self-movement or self-sublation of a society’s internal contradictions is the birth of a new society. This is the history of the evolution or development of human social formations discovered by Marx.
It is in this sense that Marx's critique of political economy performs a pathological dissection and diagnosis of bourgeois society (the modern society ruled by the principle of capital) and treats it as a historical category. He examines it within the broader dialectical movement of history (such as his later critique of human social history preceded by the critique of political economy), thereby pointing out that the internal movement of contradictions in bourgeois society will inevitably give birth to a new society that realizes a higher degree of liberation for man and nature. This is what Marx called "socialized humanity" or "human society"—that is, communism.
In this sense, Marx's critique in his mature period was a historical critique represented by political economy, rather than his earlier philosophical critique. Therefore, it did not, like contemporary Western Leftist philosophy, unfold its critique by taking some type of concept or idea as its justificatory basis. For Marx, the true revolutionary critical power is the creative, dialectical, negative historical process itself; "true critique" is the discovery of this revolutionary historical process itself [43]. If contemporary Western Leftist critical theory is to escape the dual dilemma of critique and justification and the related difficulties brought by conceptual critique, it must progress from philosophical critique back to Marx's critique of political economy and the related critique of human social history.
Whether in terms of writing style or theoretical temperament, it is highly metaphorical for contemporary Leftist philosophy. In this work, Derrida points out that as modern individuals, we may all be described, in our spiritual orientation, as specters of Marx or Marxism, characterized by a spectral entrustment to Marxism and a spectral haunting of the communist ideal; whether we ruthlessly expel or passionately embrace Marxism, we are all performing an incantation for the resurrection or Messianic redemption of Marx or Marxism in an uncertain future. The "hauntology" [25] Derrida elaborates here can be said to hit the mark regarding the intellectual mapping of contemporary Leftist politics, though it is, of course, quite ironic. See Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx, trans. He Yi (China Renmin University Press, 1999).
See Zheng Xiucai, “Biopolitics and Subjectivity — An Interview with Agamben” (Parts I and II), Global Theoretical Trends [26], no. 6 (2005): 41–44; no. 7 (2005): 37–39.
For example, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe argue for the possibility and necessity of Leftist antagonism or radical democracy by demonstrating the "unfinishability of social totalization" or the "impossibility of society fully constituting itself." See Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics, trans. Yin Shuguang and Jian Chuanjin (Heilongjiang People's Publishing House, 2003).
For example, Slavoj Žižek grasps the self or the subject as something that cannot be exhausted by the actual order, but is rather a limit or "excessiveness" situated "out of joint" with the positive order or nexus of reality, thereby establishing the subjective foundation for Leftist resistant action. See Slavoj Žižek, The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology, trans. Ying Qi (Jiangsu People's Publishing House, 2006).
Giorgio Agamben, under the premise of analyzing the state of exception as the existential basis of sovereignty or law, proposes the necessity and possibility of conceiving a politics that transcends Western "biopolitics," transforming those others or objects of rule who are excluded, forgotten, and marginalized into a new politics of "us." See Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Wu Guanjun (Central Compilation and Translation Press, 2016).
For example, Alain Badiou uses an "ontology of the event"—that is, the ontological irreducibility or "out-of-law" (hors-la-loi) status of the "event"—to demonstrate the significance or political value of Leftist action as a truth-event by remaining faithful to the event itself rather than to orders or rules. See Alain Badiou, Being and Event, trans. Lan Jiang (Nanjing University Press, 2018).
G. Agamben, Means Without End: Notes on Politics, trans. V. Binetti and C. Casarino (University of Minnesota Press, 2000), 88.
Slavoj Žižek, The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology, 227.
T.W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life, trans. E.F.N. Jephcott (Verso, 1991), 247.
Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. Qu Jingdong and Cao Weidong (Shanghai People's Publishing House, 2006), Preface, 2–3; Preface, 3.
Max Horkheimer, Eclipse of Reason (Oxford University Press, 2004), 5, 14–15.
T.W. Adorno, Negative Dialektik (Suhrkamp, 1982), 230.
Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” trans. Zhang Xudong, Literary and Artistic Theory Studies, no. 4 (1997): 93–96.
For example, in The Origin of German Tragic Drama, Benjamin points out: "Historical time is infinite in every direction and unfulfilled at every moment... For the occurrence of empirical events, time is merely a form; however, what is more important is the unfulfilled form. The occurrence of events does not complete the formal essence of the time in which they occur... Time is actually a relatively empty form; it is meaningless to imagine its completion. The idea of fulfilled historical time... appears in the Bible as its dominant historical idea: Messianic time." Cf. W. Benjamin, Origin of German Tragic Drama, trans. J. Osborne (New Left Books, 1977), 133–137.
Immanuel Kant, Collected Works on the Critique of Historical Reason, trans. He Zhaowu (Commercial Press, 1996), 145.
Immanuel Kant, Collected Works on the Critique of Historical Reason, 147.
Nikolai Berdyaev, The Meaning of History, trans. Zhang Yaping (Xuelin Press, 2002), 159–160, 166, 160.
Giorgio Agamben, The Time That Remains, trans. Qian Liqing (Jilin Publishing Group, 2011), 95–96.
If Marx’s Ethnological Notebooks from his later years are regarded as the in-depth expansion of his critique of political economy from modern history (the history of capitalism) to ancient history (the pre-history of capitalism), then following the critique of political economy, the critical process of Marx's thought developed into a critique of the history of human society, with the critique of political economy serving as the precursor or the fuse.
Collected Works of Marx and Engels, vol. 1 (People's Publishing House, 2009), 205, 201–202.
The best corroboration of this view and position is a sentence by Marx and Engels in The German Ideology: "Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself," but in terms of its actuality, it is "the real movement which abolishes the present state of things" (Collected Works of Marx and Engels, vol. 1 [People's Publishing House, 2009], 539).
(The author’s affiliation: Institute of Chinese Marxism Studies, Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences)