“… we must try to help the dogmatics to clarify to themselves the meanings of their own positions… Communism is a dogmatic abstraction” (13).

I am struck by how much these early writings fit with the program of critical theory, tho I should not be, as critical theory is explicitly a continuation of Marx’s project.

Our motto must therefore be: Reform of consciousness not through dogmas, but through analyzing the mystical consciousness, the consciousness which is unclear to itself, whether it appears in religious or political form. Then it will transpire that the world has long been dreaming of something that it can acquire if only it becomes conscious of it. It will transpire that it is not a matter of drawing a great dividing line between past and future, but of carrying out the thoughts of the past. And finally, it will transpire that mankind begins no new work, but consciously accomplishes its old work. (15)

I can get behind this, with the important caveat that, in the information age, it is not longer possible to believe that the culmination of the promise of philosophical thinking and being is a an assured destiny, much less that such a culmination is beneficial. Not that it is not, only we now know it is not given, and that much doubt and hesitation is needed, and much striving to grasp at glimmers of hope.

I do find this moving, and I hope it is true:

the work of our time to [is] to clarify itself (critical philosophy) the meaning of its own struggle and its own desires. This is work for the world and for us. It can only be the work of joint forces. It is a matter of confession, no more. To have its sins forgiven mankind has only to declare them to be what they really are. (15)

Tho we must also face (and hopefully disprove) the allegation that logico-techno-metaphysical being is our original sin. This is a serious charge, and it is our task to show how we can save ourselves from and with it….

Hegel emphasized and exaggerated the way in which being and thought form each other. He didn’t invent this dynamic, nor do I think his system is an adequate account of the way this mutual determination works itself out, but his emphasis on the systematicity and the basic dynamic was of great import. (Of course, there were ample antecedents and previous thinking along the same line. But holding sway is a matter of timing, temper of the times, etc.)

Just as man projects the idealized attributes of the species into his image of a transcendent deity, so he projects social power into a separate sphere–thestate–which dominates him. (from the introduction xxiii)

Hobbes viewed the state Leviathan, as the greatest artificial work of man. It is the realization of artificial intelligence.

We must chose the kind of being we shall become. An organism? A colony? Something like a fungus or species of bacteria? How do we want to constitute our being together? I now think Nancy’s vision of the articulated fabric of singularities is appealing.

But, regardless, this is a pivotal moral horizon for the next ten millenia. See omnipotence and ethics.