The Return of Homo Sapiens: Zubiri and Arendt on the Intellectual Situation of the Modern Subject

In an essay titled “Our Intellectual Situation,” written in May 1942, Xavier Zubiri describes the intellectual situation of the modern subject as marked by confusion, disorientation and discontent. Technology as utility, he argued, had supplanted the ancient notion of techne as a mode of knowing which characterized the intellectual life of the ancient subject. Ideas were now used rather than understood. He described this situation as a transformation of the human subject from homo sapiens to homo faber:

… the colossal development of technology has profoundly modified the way in which man exists in the world. It can be said, really, that technology constitutes that concrete manner in which contemporary man exists among things. But although technology, for the ancients, was a mode of knowing, for modern man it is progressively taking on an ever more purely operative character. Homo sapiens has been yielding his place to homo faber. Whence the grave crisis which affects the very idea of the world and of the proper function of man in his life (Zubiri, “Our Intellectual Situation,” Nature, History, God, 28-29.)

The grave crisis in which homo faber was now mired was an isolated existence, which Zubiri referred to as a “sonorous solitude,” in which human life was separated from natural life. Michel Foucault would later make a similar assessment and trace this situation to what he termed bio-power (Foucault, Michel, The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, Volume 1, 143.)  Whereas previously the human subject had been founded on the metaphysical ideas of being, world and God, now each of these ideas disintegrated leaving the modern subject in a profoundly metaphysical situation beyond the totality of reality and beyond the physical. Created reason could no longer be based upon an uncreated reason. The modern subject was metaphysically empty and intellectually adrift. Zubiri described this situation and the path out of it in the following way:

Thus the man of the 20th century finds himself even more alone; this time without the world, without God, and without himself. A singular historical condition. Intellectually nothing is left to the man of today except the ontological place where the reality of the world, of God, and of his own existence were at one time able to be written. It is absolute solitude… …. But if, by a supreme effort, man is able to fall back upon himself, he will sense the ultimate questions of existence pass by his unfathomable depth like umbrae silentes. The questions of being of the world, and of truth echo in the depths of his person (Zubiri, “Our Intellectual Situation,” Nature, History, God, 30-31.)

The way out of the situation of homo faber is the return of the homo sapiens, a revival of “thinking” which gives action meaning. Zubiri, suggests reopening the metaphysical questions of being, world and truth precisely because the intellectual situation of the modern subject is metaphysical; that is transphysical (Zubiri, “Our Intellectual Situation,” Nature, History, God, 31.)

Hannah Arendt made a similar suggestion in her 1973 Gifford lecture titled “Thinking,” published posthumously in The Life of the Mind. She pointed out that “nothing seems to make much sense any more” for the modern subject precisely because “the whole framework of reference in which our thinking was accustomed to orient itself” has disintegrated. (Arendt, “Thinking,” The Life of the Mind, 11.) Arendt sees in Adolf Eichmann an example of the modern subject for whom this framework has disintegrated. She writes:

I was struck by a manfest shallowness in the doer that made it impossible to trace the uncontestable evil of his deeds to any deeper level of roots or motives. The deeds were monstrous, but the doer – at least the very effective one now on trial – was quite ordinary, commonplace, and  neither demonic nor monstrous. There was no sign in him of firm ideological convictions or of specific evil motives, and the only notable characteristic one could detect in his past behavior as well as in his behavior during the trial and throughout the pre-trial police examination was something entirely negative: it was not stupidity but thoughtlessness (Arendt, “Thinking,” The Life of the Mind, 4.)

The confused, disorientated and discontented intellectual situation of the modern subject that Zubiri highlighted in 1942 was still palpably clear in 1973 when Arendt gave her lecture. While the progress of homo faber is undeniable in modern life,  the means have not justified the ends. The demise of homo sapiens is the gravest tragedy of modernity and is the single factor that could make Eichmann’s of us all: thoughtless actors of monstrous deeds. The way out is the way in: from doing to thinking, from the active life to the contemplative life, from homo faber to homo sapiens.

How to Annotate a Philosophical Text

In my ongoing attempt to become a better reader and hopefully, one day, a better philosopher I have devised the following method for annotating philosophical texts. My chief goals in developing this method were to improve my comprehension of the texts I read and to make reviewing those texts a quicker and more efficient process. My one disclaimer with this method is that this is a personal method and by no means constitutes a standardized format for annotating philosophical texts. I ask two things of you, my good reader: (1) take what is useful and excuse the rest, and (2) share your experiences with this method and any improvements you make.

STEP 1: Categories
The first step in developing an annotation system for reading philosophical texts is to define the consistent categories under which notes may be taken. I chose the following:

• Important Quote
• Claim
• Support for Claim
• Conclusion
• Main Point
• Summary
• Key Term
• Key Term Defined
• Foreign Language Term
• Distinction
• Cross Reference
• Example
• Question
• Author’s Stated Purpose

STEP 2: Symbols
The next step is to develop symbols that can be written simply and quickly in the margin of a text. The symbols chosen should effectively represent the category in the simplest form. I developed the following symbols:

STEP 3: Test the System
The next step is to test the annotation system on a text. Always use a pencil! You will need to erase. Initially you may over-annotate but work to reduce your annotations to 10-15% of each page. I tested my system out on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Initially, I found myself marking every term, claim, supporting claim and conclusion in Kant’s dense text, which left me with a confusing and cluttered page. I then worked to reduce my annotations to the minimum required to outline Kant’s basic argument and terminology (see below.) One advantage to minimizing your annotations is that it keeps you focused on the author’s main argument instead of getting lost in the smaller supporting arguments. One disadvantage is that this kind of close and focused reading increases your reading time initially, but this improves with practice.

As you read, mark important terms, claims, and quotes while keeping an eye out for the author’s main point. I have found the Quad-Point pen by Yaffa (see picture below) to be an indispensable tool for annotating while reading. The Quad-Point has a black pen, 0.5mm pencil, orange highlighter, and a stylus all in a single writing instrument. This tool allows you to switch back and forth from pencil to highlighter without having to hold multiple pens in your hand while reading or pick up and set down multiple pens.

STEP 4: Revise and Repeat
Revise your system as you come across new categories or more appropriate symbols. Once you have a solid system stick with it and use it frequently. Reading philosophical texts with comprehension takes time and practice. The more you use your annotation system the more adept you will become at reading and understanding philosophical texts. Learning to use your annotation system is similar to learning a new language and takes time to master.

Additional Help:
Here are some additional tips for improving your reading comprehension and review of philosophical texts.

Bookmark: Create a bookmark with the annotation symbols you have developed and keep it in the book you are reading for reference and to note revisions as you further develop your system.
Inside the Back Cover: Write key terms or themes with their page number and page section in the inside of the back cover. To determine the page section divide the page on a scale from 1-10, so that the top of the page would be section 1, the middle section 5, and so on. Example: the middle of page 10 would be 10.5.
Sections and Subsections: Turn section headings into questions that you want to answer while reading.
End of each chapter: Write a brief (really brief) summary of the chapter outlining the main points of the author’s argument. This will cut your review time in half.

In the Midst of the Catastrophe: My Journey into the Heart of Darkeness

I recently made a trip to Poland to visit three concentration camps: Auschwitz, Birkenau (Auschwitz II), and Majdanek. I wanted to see the depths to which humanity has descended. I did not ask “How could they do this?” because I knew what Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenit︠syn had made so clear in The Gulag Archipelago that “the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being (Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenit︠s︡yn, The Gulag Archipelago, 75.)” We are all capable of the greatest good and the most egregious evil. We are all potential murderers. We are all guilty of what occurred in these camps. We cannot escape the responsibility by denying what happened, nor can we relinquish the responsibility by blaming others for what happened. The Shoah cannot be resolved. It can only be shouldered.

AUSCHWITZ

I took a train from Krakow to the town of Oswiecim. I walked from the Oswiecim train station (about 1km) to Auschwitz. On the way, I came across a mass grave where 700 prisoners from Auschwitz were executed in the final days of the camp’s existence. I paused to reflect on the individual lives that were starved, beaten, humiliated, murdered, and buried on the ground where I stood. It was a sobering moment. If I had known their names I would have recited them. A few blocks from the mass grave lay Auschwitz. Here the first experiments with gassing occurred. In this camp, prisoners were starved, beaten, shot, hanged, and gassed. Often, the corpses of murdered prisoners who had tried to escape were displayed in the center of the camp as a warning to other prisoners.

The local citizens did try to assist the prisoners in this camp by sending food, passing along messages to their families and hiding escaped prisoners. I was often reminded by Polish people that I met during my trip that “the Germans built the camps.” I took this comment to mean that the Polish people should not be held responsible for what had occurred in these camps. However, it is clear from several memoirs of survivors, that the Polish people who helped the prisoners of these camps were the exception rather than the rule. In fact, in Jedwabne, Poland the non-Jewish inhabitants murdered all of the towns Jewish inhabitants (1,600 people) except for 7 who were saved by a Polish family named Wyrzykowski. Even the local Catholic priest condoned the pogrom. The Germans did not initiate or participate in this pogrom. It was a strictly Polish campaign.

BIRKENAU

After walking through Auschwitz, I walked 3 km to Birkenau. It was here that the immensity and scale of the Shoah hit me. This camp was a gigantic death factory with four functioning gas chambers and crematoriums where 1.5 million people were murdered. While the red brick two-story buildings of Auschwitz had dwarfed me and confined me in in its corridors, Birkenau was massive and open. Auschwitz had been crowded with people, but Birkenau gave me space to walk and reflect. As I walked through the barracks and I prayed the Morning Office. Appropriately, the opening hymn dealt with shame, repentance, and mercy:

O God of mercy, hear our prayer,
for we are bowed in shame
To own our sin before your love
And beg in Jesus’ name
That you would heal what sin has pierced
With sword of bitter grief -
Our shriveled hearts, our darkened souls:

Send us, O God relief

After the barracks I walked up a long gravel road on the side of a camp and I came into a grove of Birch trees. Birkenau is named for these trees (Birkenau is German for birch tree). I recognized them immediately and my heart broke. I had read about these trees in several memoirs written by survivors. Here victims were made to wait their turn to enter the gas chambers. The trees had a calming effect on the waiting victims. Women calmed their children here, and hope, which always serves to anesthetize the sting of oppression and postpone resistance, was stillborn.

From there I walked through the ruins of the gas chambers and crematoriums. A Jewish man I met in a bookstore in Kasimierz challenged me to consider all of the knowledge that perished with the victims of the Shoah. “How many books will never be written? How many discoveries were indefinitely postponed?” I had never considered these far reaching consequences.

I will never forget a statement that I read inscribed on a plaque there: “The first to perish were the children… ” The horror of exterminating children reminded me of a passage from Elie Wiesel’s Night:

Never shall I forget that night, the first night in the camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed.
Never shall I forget that smoke.
Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky.
Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever.
Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live.
Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.
Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God himself.
Never.
(Elie Wiesel, Night, 34)

MAJDANEK

I took a train to Lublin, Poland where the Majdanek concentration camp is located. Approximately 78,000 people were murdered at this camp. 59,000 were Jews. This camp more than any other left me speechless. It was not the immensity of the camp or the number of lives lost but the overall aesthetics that impacted me.

There is a mausoleum commemorating the lives that were lost at the end of a long road, called the Road of Homage, that runs from the ominous Monument of Struggle and Martyrdom at the the gates of the camp. The inscription on the mausoleum reads “Let our fate be a warning to you.”

As I walked up the steps I saw that the dome covers what appeared to be a mound of dirt. I later learned from a plaque that it was not dirt at all. To my horror, it was ashes of the victims recovered from a compost pile in the camp. It was the most sobering moment of my trip. I was staring into the remains of the Shoah. I was now face-to-face with victims of the most unspeakable crime of the Twentieth Century.

The gas chambers and crematorium are adjacent to the mausoleum. I walked into the room where prisoners were gassed, search for valuables and shoved into ovens to be cremated. I thought of the prisoners that worked here and I wondered how they were able to carry out there duties. To refuse to participate would have meant death by the same means. What is ethics in a place like this. Not just in the camps as a whole, but in the gas chambers where living human beings are asked to create dead human beings and reduce them to ash as if they had never existed. It is no wonder so many lost their faith afterwards.

REFLECTIONS

I will never forget this trip. It will, no doubt, influence my work philosophically for the rest of my life. I came away from this trip, and the reading I did, with the following reflections:

First, the correct term to describe what happened to the Jewish people during World War II is the Hebrew term Ha Shoah (the catastrophe), not the Holocaust (the sacrifice). The Jewish people were not sacrificed. They were murdered. It is a catastrophe, not a sacrifice. Often, the horror of the Shoah is too much for people to bear and they take one of two paths to escape it. Either they outright deny that it ever occurred and develop elaborate revisions of history to bolster their argument. Or, they try to draw some meaning from what happened by highlighting seemingly good things that occurred as a result of the Shoah. Both of these paths are attempts to resolve the Shoah and relinquish the burden it imposes. The fact is, the Shoah happened and it was a senseless and meaningless act of genocide. Human beings were murdered by other human beings. It cannot be resolved. It can only be shouldered.

Secondly, the Shoah is the end game of a three step process, in my view: disenfranchisement, expulsion, and extermination. First, people were disenfranchised through interpersonal prejudices and resentments. Polish people resented the Jewish people because they felt they had cooperated with the Russians in the invasion of Poland and the subsequent oppression that ensued. The Germans only needed to exacerbate these prejudices through a well orchestrated propaganda campaign where Jewish people were depicted ritually murdering children, stealing money and spreading Typhus. Next, people were expelled; that is people were removed from the normal order of things. Jewish people were no longer citizens and were moved into ghettos and then concentration camps. Finally, people were exterminated. This three step process accelerates as it develops. Resistance must always start at the level of disenfranchisement. The rate of success for resistance diminishes as the stages progress. I learned on this trip how important it is to remain vigilant when it comes to the seemingly innocent bigotries that creep into our lives. It only takes the right conditions and political apparatuses to be in place for genocide to occur.

Thirdly, as an American, I realized that we are no different than the German or Polish people. We have committed our own pogroms and mass executions. We have slaughtered Native Americans, seized their property and placed them on reservations. We have enslaved African-Americans and developed religious and economic justifications for their enslavement and oppression. We demonize gay and lesbian people and deny them basic rights afforded to other citizens, and have only recently decriminalized their lives. We paradoxically employ Mexican immigrants at reduced wages without the basic rights or privileges of American workers and expel them from our borders on a daily basis because we view them as a threat to our economy. We have created our own prison camps at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Grahib and what happened in those camps is slowly beginning to emerge. Will we bear the responsibility for these offenses in the same way we expect the Germans and Poles to bear theirs? Where do we normalize prejudice and oppression? Where are the tracks of genocide being laid today?