Plato’s Revenge and the Promise of Politics: Reading the Republic with Hannah Arendt – Part 4 of 4

Objections and Responses

Several objections may be raised against Arendt’s reading of the Republic and her subsequent claims regarding Plato’s project in the work. I will attempt to respond to four objections that seem to be the strongest challenges to Arendt’s claims. First, Arendt’s reading of the Republic has been criticized for straining the text to accommodate her uncritical glorification of the Greek polis and consequently exaggerating Plato’s opposition to it (Hull, Margaret Betz, The Hidden Philosophy of Hannah Arendt, New York: Routledge Curzon, 2002, 33.) However, this criticism fails to appreciate the hermeneutical approach that Arendt takes with respect to the Western tradition.  Arendt seeks to mine Greek philosophy for its fundamental insights and foibles. Her project is critical not revisionist.

Secondly, it could be argued that Arendt’s claim that Plato sought to save philosophy from the hostility of the polis by the enthroning the philosopher as king fails to recognize that Plato explicitly dismisses the actualization of the ideal city in favor of the ideal soul in Book IX (Bloom, The Republic of Plato, 591c-592b.) Indeed, if Plato wanted to save philosophers by installing them as rulers it seems odd that he would eliminate the conditions for the possibility of their rule. Dana Villa has recognized this same weakness in Arendt’s claim (Villa, Politics, Philosophy and Terror, 198.) However, whether Plato’s project is statecraft or soul craft in his assertion of the rule of philosophers, Arendt’s claims about Plato’s motive remain unaffected. Whether the philosopher is the ruler of the inward city of his soul where he “adjusts the body’s harmony for the sake of the accord in the soul (Bloom, The Republic of Plato, 591d)”or whether he adjudicates justice for the sake of accord in the city, he remains king and consequently free. Either way Plato is offering a defense for the philosopher against the hostility of the city. For as Epictetus knew, “no man is free who is not master of himself (Epictetus, “The Golden Sayings of Epictetus“, trans. Hastings Crossley in The Harvard Classics, vol. 2, New York: P.F. Collier & Son, 1909, Saying X, 183)” and the person who is free is safe from every tyranny.

Thirdly, it could be argued that Arendt’s claim that Plato sought to save philosophy from the hostility of the polis by establishing what she calls a “tyranny of reason” fails to recognize that the philosophers resist being installed as rulers and must be compelled (Ibid., 520a-b.) Additionally, Plato’s moratorium against dialectic until a philosopher becomes fifty seems equally incompatible with Arendt’s claim that Plato is trying to establish a “tyranny of reason (Ibid. 540a.)” If the salvation of the philosopher rests upon his knowledge of the forms (Bloom, The Republic of Plato 478a.) and the path to this knowledge is dialectic (Ibid., 534b-c.) it seems odd that Plato would deny it to the best in the city until their fifty. It seems even stranger that Plato would depict the philosopher as needing to be compelled to cooperate in his own salvation (Bloom, The Republic of Plato, 539e.) But as C.D.C Reeve has pointed out, the philosopher king in training spends 15 years engaged in “polis management” before they have “the knowledge of the good” and therefore “the aim of dialectical-thought is to discover the model or blueprint of the city (Reeve, C.D.C., Philosopher-Kings: The Argument of Plato’s Republic (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1988), 83.)” In the first account of the city in speech the philosopher comes about through his own education and therefore must be compelled to rule; however, in the second city in speech, the philosopher spends 15 years being educated and gaining experience in “polis management” and therefore rules out of necessity, though he still does not desire rule. In the first instance the philosopher is compelled by the force of others, in the second instance he is compelled by his own sense of obligation. When Arendt claims that Plato asserted the rule of philosophers to save philosophy from the hostility of the polis, she is not suggesting that the philosopher will want to rule, only that it is necessary for him to rule if the quiet and peaceful conditions necessary for the philosophical life are to be established and maintained.

Finally, it could be argued that Arendt’s recovery of Socratic doxa is a misreading of the Socratic tradition and that truth, not dokei moi¸ was the aim of Socrates’ maieutic practice. Indeed, Socrates in the Theaetetus says that the goal of his “art of midwifery” is “to determine whether the young mind is being delivered of a phantom, that is, an error, or a fertile truth (Plato, “Theaetetus,” in Plato: Complete Works,150b.)” While Socrates admits that he is “barren of wisdom” he does not deny that truth exists, nor does he conflate knowledge and opinion. However, this does not compromise Arendt’s claim. Socrates was indeed leading his interlocutors to truth; but, as Dana Villa has noted, “the other side of Socrates maieutic activity… was making citizens aware of what they shared – the world of their particular city or culture, the thing which formed the basis of their individual doxa (Villa, Politics, Philosophy and Terror, 208.)” This unifying element of Socrates maieutic activity was what held the most promise for Arendt.

Conclusion

In this article, I have attempted to defend Arendt’s revenge on Plato’s revenge that sought to dethrone the philosopher by reintegrating thought and action through the recovery of the Socratic notion of doxa . I have situated Arendt’s claim that Plato sought to save philosophy from the hostility of the polis by establishing a “tyranny of reason” through the instrumentalization of the Forms and the enthronement of the philosopher as king within her overall reading of the Republic and against the backdrop of the conflict between philosophy and politics. Additionally, I have highlighted Arendt’s emphasis on human plurality as a thematic guide for understanding her reading of the Republic and suggested that her recovery of the Socratic notion of doxa is one of her most important contributions to resolving the conflict between philosophy and politics. While I have not claimed in this essay that Arendt’s claims are demonstratively proven, or that her reading of the Republic is superior to other readings, I have argued that they are persuasive on two fronts: (1) her reading is critical, coherent and capable of accommodating the wider Platonic corpus without doing unnecessary violence to the text, and (2) it offers fruitful insights into the conflict between philosophy and politics as it has developed historically in the Western tradition and offers possibilities for bridging the chasm between them. On the basis of these conclusions, I regard Arendt’s reading of the Republic as philosophically persuasive and politically hopeful.

Plato’s Revenge and the Promise of Politics: Reading the Republic with Hannah Arendt – Part 3 of 4

Arendt’s Revenge

Arendt’s response to Plato was to dethrone the philosopher by reintegrating thought and action through the recovery of the Socratic notion of doxa which bears within it the promise of politics. As Dana Villa has pointed out Arendt’s response is “a revenge on Plato’s revenge(Villa, Politics, Philosophy and Terror, 218.)“ Arendt shared with Friedrich Nietzsche the suspicion that philosophy was inherently anti-political and based upon the human malady of ressentiment by which Nietzsche says “all men… are physiologically unfortunate and worm eaten, a whole tremulous realm of subterranean revenge” and that “la bete philosophe [the philosophical animal]… instinctively strives for an optimum of favorable conditions under which it can expend all its strength and achieve its maximal feeling of power (Ibid., 217; Nietzsche, Friedrich, On the Genealogy of Morals, III.15, 124 and III.7, 107.)” Just as Plato vengefully sought to save the philosopher from the hostile polis that killed Socrates, Arendt sought to save the polis from philosophy’s “tyranny of reason” that has created an abyss between thought and action from Plato until Marx.

According to Arendt, philosophy since Plato has constructed political theories at the expense of political experience. That is to say, the entire tradition of Western philosophical and political thought from Plato until its culmination in Marx elevated theory over practice to the detriment of both politics and philosophy. This led to what, in her opinion, amounted to the creation of an abyss between thought and action and robbing speech and action of their political meaning and dignity. Margaret Canovan, following Arendt, has highlighted the inherent danger to the polis that a privileging of thought over speech and action involves. She has argued that when the “acting among others” of politics is supplanted by the “thinking in solitude” of philosophy politics loses its dignity because speech and action become subject to thought (Canovan, Margaret, Hannah Arendt: A Reinterpretation of Her Political Thought, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992, 256.) Additionally, Arendt notes that both Aristotle and Kant recognized the dangers the rule of philosophers posed to philosophy and politics (Arendt, “What is Authority?,” 107.) When Plato attempted to save the philosopher from the hostility of the polis by establishing a “tyranny of reason” that elevated philosophy over politics he jeopardized both.

One of the primary assumptions that guide Arendt’s reading of Plato’s Republic is that “plurality is the law of the earth” and men, not Man, inhabit the earth (Arendt, Hannah, The Life of the Mind, ed. Mary McCarthy, volume 1, New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1978, 19) On the basis of this assumption she concludes that political life is concerned with men in their plurality and philosophy is concerned with man in the singular. For Arendt, Plato’s Republic elevates man in the singular (philosophy) over men in their plurality (politics) with the fatal consequence of elevating thought over action.  What Arendt came to realize is that “the promise of human freedom, whether proffered sincerely or hypocritically as the end of politics, is realized by plural human beings when and only when they act politically (Arendt, “Socrates,” location 189-205.)”

Building upon her emphasis on plurality and freedom in political action Arendt sought to recover the spirit of Socrates’ maieutic (midwifery) (See Plato, “Theaetetus,” in Plato: Complete Works, eds. John M. Cooper and D.S. Hutchison, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997, 148e-151d.) practice of dialectical discourse described in the Theaetetus where equals discuss their opinions by means of doxa which means both “opinion” and “splendor” or “fame” (Arendt, “Socrates,” location 582-98.) She contends that doxa, for Socrates, was the locus of a common world where “the same world opens up to everyone” in spite of the different doxai that are expressed, and is therefore “related to the political realm, which is the public sphere in which everybody can appear and show who he himself is (Ibid.,  location 582-98.)” For Arendt, “to assert one’s own opinion belonged to being able to show oneself, to be seen and heard by others (Arendt, “Socrates,” location 582-98.)” Socrates was a midwife “helping others give birth to what they themselves thought… to find truth in their doxa (Arendt, “Socrates,” location 582-98.)“ Plato lost faith in this Socratic practice after his teacher failed to persuade his judges of his innocence. But as Arendt points out, Socrates mistake was using persuasion, which is addressed to the many and begins with opinion, instead of dialectic, which is addressed to the few and begins with truth (Ibid., location 560-77.) Doxa, as a philosophical means to a political ends, bears within in it the promise of politics, namely, that “Truth for mortals… inheres in the plurality of perspectives (Villa, Politics, Philosophy and Terror, 212.)”

Plato’s Revenge and the Promise of Politics: Reading the Republic with Hannah Arendt – Part 2 of 4

Plato’s Revenge

Arendt has argued that Plato sought to save philosophy from the hostility of the polis by establishing what she calls a “tyranny of reason” through the instrumentalization of the Forms and the enthronement of the philosopher as king (Arendt, “What is Authority?, ” 108, 109.) She writes:

The reason Plato wanted the philosophers to become the rulers of the city lay in the conflict between the philosopher and the polis, or in the hostility of the polis toward philosophy, which probably had lain dormant for some time before it showed its immediate threat to the life of the philosopher in the trial and death of Socrates. Politically, Plato’s philosophy shows the rebellion of the philosopher against the polis. The philosopher announces his claim to rule, but not so much for the sake of the polis and politics (although patriotic motivation cannot be denied in Plato and distinguishes his philosophy from those of his followers in antiquity) as for the sake of philosophy and the safety of the philosopher (Ibid., 107.)

For Arendt, Plato’s assertion of the rule of philosophers and his subsequent establishment of a “tyranny of reason” constitutes an act of rebellion, an act of revenge, if you will, of the philosopher against the polis. Arendt claimed that Plato wrote the Republic to justify the rule of philosophers so that they would not be ruled by people worse than themselves and so that the quiet and peaceful conditions necessary for the philosophical life could be established and maintained (Arendt, Hannah, Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy Chicago: University of Chicago, 1982, 21.)

According to Arendt, Plato realized that in order for philosophers to rule they would have to ground their authority outside themselves so that “the compelling power does not lie in the person or in inequality as such, but in the ideas which are perceived by the philosopher (Arendt, “What is Authority?,” 109.)” Arendt argues that Plato modified his philosophy after experiencing the conflict between philosophy and politics and witnessing the failure of peithein during trial and death of Socrates. She claims that Plato not only denounced doxa, replacing it with truth but also abandoned the beautiful, replacing it with the good (Arendt, “What is Authority?,” 112.) She claims that Plato augmented his theory of forms by instrumentalizing the form of the beautiful into the politically useful form of the good (Ibid., 109-110.) Indeed Plato’s description of ta agathon (the good) in Book VII of the Republic as “the cause of all that is right and fair…[which]… the man who is going to act prudently in private or in public must see…” is very similar with his earlier description of ta kalon (the beautiful) in Book V (Bloom, The Republic of Plato, compare 479a-480 with 517c and 518a-b.) As Arendt points out, the Greek use of agathos (good) “means exclusively  good-for, beneficial or useful (Arendt, “Socrates,” 515-32.)” Plato transformed the philosophically alluring idea of the beautiful into the politically useful idea of the good. This transformation creates political instruments from the ideas of the philosopher that “can be used as measures of human behavior because they transcend the sphere of human affairs (Arendt, “What is Authority?,” 109.)”

Arendt argues that “the idea of the good is found only in the strictly political context of the Republic (Ibid., 112.)” She points out that while the philosopher is defined as a “lover of beauty” at the beginning of the Republic by the sixth book the idea of the good is introduced as the highest idea (Ibid., 112.)” The idea of the beautiful was not political, Arendt argues, and only served to illuminate the darkness of the philosopher. Consequently Plato modified the doctrine of the ideas in the Republic “so that it would become useful for a theory of politics (Ibid., 112.)” But, as Arendt points out, only the idea of the good can be “useful” because in Greek good “always means ‘good for’ or ‘fit’ (Ibid., 113.)” The beautiful stands at a considerable distance from the realm of speech and action and “cannot be imparted to the multitude in the conventional manner of persuasion… because their revelation and perception are not communicable in speech at all… (Arendt, Hannah, “Tradition of Political Thought,” in The Promise of Politics, location 1124-39.)” If the idea of the good is the highest idea and all other ideas partake in its “fitness,” then “in the hands of the philosopher, the expert in ideas, they can become rules and standards or, as later in the Laws, they can become laws (Arendt, “What is Authority?,” 113.)” Arendt claims finally, that Plato “took human affairs so seriously that he changed the very center of his thought [the doctrine of forms] to make it applicable to politics” in spite of his “emphatic insistence on the philosophic irrelevance of this realm (Ibid.,  113.)”

The instrumentalization of the Forms is justified by Plato’s analogy of the craftsman who reproduces in his craft the transcendent model (ideas) through imitation (Arendt, “What is Authority?,” 110; Bloom, Allan, The Republic of Plato, 596b.) Arendt points out that through this analogy, “the ideas become the unwavering, ‘absolute’ standards for political and moral behavior and judgment” and this is precisely what becomes the “essential characteristic of specifically authoritarian forms of government (Arendt, “What is Authority?,” 97-98,)” namely, “that the source of their authority, which legitimates the exercise of power, must be beyond the sphere of power (Ibid., 110, 111.)” Following Arendt, Dana Villa has explained that by employing the analogy of the craftsman Plato sought to make “the sophia of the philosopher seem pertinent to the world of the citizen” by augmenting his theory of forms so that they became “unvarying ‘yardsticks’ for the realm of human affairs” so that the forms could be realized in political action (Villa, Politics, Philosophy and Terror, 93.) This, of course led to a complete “separation of knowing and doing, one that replaces the transient doxa and endless deliberations of plural equals with relation of command and obedience (Ibid., 93.)”Arendt points out, however, that there is an inherent violence in Plato’s analogy of the craftsman so that “an element of violence is inevitably inherent in all activities of making, fabricating, and producing” and it is at this point that Plato’s philosopher king most resembles the Greek tyrant who is a type of expert (Arendt, “What is Authority?,” 111.)

Given, that only philosophers possessed knowledge of the forms, and these forms were the absolute standards for human conduct, philosophy and politics, thought and action could be divided and ordered hierarchically so that the commands of philosophers were executed without question by their subjects and the philosopher could live a quiet and peaceful existence free from the hostility of the city.  For Arendt, this elevated philosophy over politics, robbing speech and action of their political meaning and dignity and creating an abyss between thought and action from Plato to Marx.

Plato’s Revenge and the Promise of Politics: Reading the Republic with Hannah Arendt – Part 1 of 4

Hannah Arendt has argued that Plato sought to save philosophy from the hostility of the polis by establishing what she calls a “tyranny of reason” through the instrumentalization of the Forms and the enthronement of the philosopher as king. For Arendt, this elevated philosophy over politics, robbing speech and action of their political meaning and dignity and created an abyss between thought and action from Plato to Marx. Arendt’s response to Plato was to dethrone the philosopher by reintegrating thought and action through the recovery of the Socratic notion of doxa which bears within it the promise of politics. In order to understand Arendt’s view of Plato’s project and her own response to it I will employ the Nietzschean inspired metaphor of revenge suggested by Dana R. Villa (see Politics, Philosophy, Terror: Essays on the Thought of Hannah Arendt New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1999.) I will therefore characterize Plato’s project to save philosophy from the hostility of the city as his “revenge against the polis” and Arendt’s subsequent claims regarding Plato’s political philosophy and her response to it as her “revenge on Plato’s revenge (Villa, Politics, Philosophy, Terror, 218.)”

The Threat of the City

Arendt argues that “the gulf between philosophy and politics opened historically with the trial and condemnation of Socrates” where “the hostility of the polis toward philosophy… showed its immediate threat to the life of the philosopher” and that this experience was subsequently the catalyst for significant upheavals in Plato’s philosophical and political thought (Arendt, Hannah, “Socrates,” The Promise of Politics New York: Schocken Books, 2005), Amazon Kindle e-Book, location 471-84, 484-500; Arendt, Hannah, “What is Authority?,” Between Past and Future, 1961, repr. New York: Penguin Books, 1993, 107.) After the trial and death of Socrates Plato despaired of political life and subsequently denounced doxa (opinion) and its rhetorical companion peithen (persuasion) (Arendt, Hannah, “Socrates,” location 471-84, 484-500.) Indeed, Plato’s reflections in the Seventh Letter of his unrealized hopes that the Thirty Tyrants were “going to lead the city out of the unjust life she had been living and establish her in the path of justice” coupled with his statement that the trial and death of Socrates’ was a “shameless” act against the “the justest man of that time” lends support to Arendt’s claim (Plato, “Letter VII,” in Plato: Complete Works, eds. John M. Cooper and D.S. Hutchison Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997, 324d-e; Arendt, “What is Authority?,” 107.)

Arendt argues that Socrates’ failure to persuade the judges at his trial that he was innocent of the charges of impiety and his inability to convince his friends that he must remain in the city to persuade itor obey its laws(Plato, “Apology,” in Plato: Complete Works, 36a-42a.; and Plato, “Crito,” in Plato: Complete Works, 51b,) led Plato to “doubt the validity of persuasion” which had played a significant role in the political life of Athens (Arendt, “Socrates,” location 471-84.) Arendt explains:

We have difficulty grasping the importance of this doubt, because “persuasion” is a very weak and inadequate translation of the ancient peithein,… …the specifically political form of speech, …[which] …the Athenians were proud that they, in distinction to the barbarian conducted their political affairs in the form of speech and without compulsion, they considered rhetoric, the art of persuasion, the highest, the truly political art (Arendt, “Socrates,” locations 471-84, 484-500.)

Persuasion lacked the force of compulsion, which for Plato, compromised its political effectiveness. Plato’s doubt over the political effectiveness of peithein led him to draw a sharp distinction between truth and opinion. Plato discovered, according to Arendt, “that truth, namely, the truths we call self-evident, compels the mind, and this coercion, though it needs no violence to be effective, is stronger than persuasion and argument (Arendt, “What is Authority?,” 107-108.)” For Plato, truth was a mediating position between the persuasion of the sophist (whom he referred to as “useless”) and the violence of the tyrant (whom he called “the most wretched (Bloom, Allan, The Republic of Plato, 1968 repr. New York: Basic Books, 1991, 490e, 576b-c.)” This discovery led Plato to establish what Arendt calls the “tyranny of reason” where the many must be made subject to the truth of the few by a means that doesn’t involve coercion through violence which destroys the political life of citizens (Arendt, “What is Authority?,” 108.) However, as Plato discovered, only the few are subject to coercion through reason and this became the “central predicament of Plato’s political philosophy (Ibid., 108.)” Plato was forced to find a solution to make truth universally compelling. His solution, as Arendt understands it, is what Dana R. Villa has referred to as “Plato’s revenge on the polis for killing Socrates and endangering his memory (Villa, Politics, Philosophy, Terror, 217.)”

The Horse YouTube Rode in On: Part 4 of 4 – Between Frankenstein and Metropolis

In order to formulate a response to technology that is both responsible and thoughtful it might be helpful to consider Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein and Fritz Lang’s film Metropolis. The character Victor Frankenstein in Frankenstein represents an enthusiastic response to technology and the worker class in Metropolis can be seen as representing Luddite rejection of technology. Both Frankenstein and Metropolis; however, point towards a more critical response that is both thoughtful and responsible.

“The world was a secret” that Victor Frankenstein “desired to discover.”[1] He “pursued nature to her hiding places” until, to his horror, he gave life to inanimate matter.[2] Commenting on this aspect of the novel Langdon Winner has written that “Victor Frankenstein is a person who discovers, but refuses to ponder, the implications of his discovery” and “Victor’s problems have now become those of a whole culture.”[3] Winner’s comments suggest that enthusiasm for technology must be tempered by critical thinking.

Fritz Lang’s film Metropolis (1926) depicts “man’s schizophrenic love-hate relationship with the Brave New World of Technology.”[4] The futuristic world of Metropolis is divided between the ruling class who reside in The Eternal Gardens and the workers who reside in the Worker’s City. When the worker’s realize that they are being oppressed by the ruling-class through the technological manipulation of the proto-mad-scientist Rotwang and his Machine Man, they revolt and declare “Death to the Machines!” The workers destroy the machines that support The Eternal Gardens and therefore jeopardize the lives of the ruling class and themselves. But again, as with Victor Frankenstein, their actions are rash and unreflective. Their actions are reminiscent of the Luddites who destroyed the mechanized looms during the Industrial Revolution of the 19^th century because it threatened their jobs.  The truth is: change is inevitable and it happens through technology. What is required is a more thoughtful and responsible engagement with technology.

YouTube rode into the modern world on the back of Leland Stanford’s horse “Occident” that Eadward Muybridge captured on film with all four feet off the ground. As strange as it sounds, this is the how technology works. The manifest purposes of innovators like Eadward Muybridge, Steve Chen and Chad Hurley are eventually replaced by more latent purposes through reverse adaptation that occurs in increasingly more complex technological systems. It is unlikely that technological progress will stop and even more unlikely that any human attempts to stop it would be successful or beneficial. What is required is a more thoughtful and responsible engagement with technology. We must not rush to embrace every new and emerging technology with a blind enthusiasm like modern Victor Frankensteins. Nor should we become neo-Luddites and declare “Death to the Machines!” Instead we should we should develop a more reflective response that takes the form of questioning that Martin Heidegger suggested at the conclusion of his essay “The Question Concerning Technology” where he wrote, “The closer we come to the danger, the more brightly do the ways into the saving power begin to shine and the more questioning we become.”[5] The most human response to technology is the one that makes use of our most human capacity: the ability to think.

---

[1] Shelley, Mary, Frankenstein, ed. J. Paul Hunter, 1818,  Reprint (New York: W.W. Norton Company, 1996), 20.

[2] Ibid., 34.

[3] Winner, Autonomous Technology, 313.

[4] Webster, Chris, “Film and Technology,” in An Introduction to Film Studies. ed. Jill Nelmes, 1996. Reprint (New York: Routledge, 2001), 73

[5] Heidegger, “The Question Concerning Technology,” 341.

The Horse YouTube Rode in On: Part 3 of 4 – The Complexity of Manifest and Latent Purposes

By placing the stories of Eadward Muybridge and YouTube side by side it becomes easy to see how the origins of technology are often strangely dissimilar from their later manifestations. The possibility of a common citizen asking a Presidential candidate a question through the medium of video and receiving a response through that same medium that is simultaneously broadcast around the world most likely did not occur to Muybridge when he first  developed his rapid-shutter camera to capture “Occident” in motion. Indeed the manifest purposes of Leland Stanford and Eadward Muybridge to determine whether a horse galloping at full speed has all four feet off the ground concealed a more latent purpose: to go beyond the limits of the human visual capacities and arrest motion in a technical apparatus. This latent purpose eventually became a form of entertainment. Muybridge became a trapper of sorts; capturing bodies in their intermediate stages of motion and entertaining audiences with the “frenzy of the visible.”[1] This form of entertainment became a multi-billion dollar film industry.

YouTube’s later attempts to democratize this industry by giving the individual consumer the power to produce, publish and disseminate films in a free and public interface was an example of a manifest purpose, but perhaps a more latent purpose was to capture, control and commodify an emerging genre of film. The controversial issues of censorship, copyright, privacy, and even public access to the democratic process have all emerged from wanting to democratize the entertainment industry. It has even given rise to more advanced technologies such as video fingerprinting in an effort to control video commodities.  Muybridge’s “frenzy of the visible” is now enframed[2] in a complex technical apparatus.

Why does this occur? What are the conditions that give rise to manifest purposes expressed at the origin of a technology being replaced by more latent purposes that eventually develop the technology in ways unforeseen at its creation? Langdon Winner has suggested that the process of reverse adaptation as a possible reason for this phenomena. His thesis, simply stated is, “that beyond a certain level of technological development, the rule of freely articulated, strongly asserted purposes is a luxury that can no longer be permitted.”[3] At the core of this process is a reversal of the means-end logic in which the “ends are adapted to the means available.”[4] Latent purposes emerge as new ends are adapted to new means.[5]

Winner identifies five patterns of reverse adaptation that occur in technological systems.[6] The operative purpose in each of these patterns is control extended and executed through planning.[7] (1) Technological systems can control the markets relative to its operations through vertical integration, market control, and contracts.[8] (2) Technological systems can control or influence the political processes that attempt to regulate its production and operating conditions.[9] (3) Technological systems seek a “mission” that corresponds to its technological capacities in order to avoid extinction.[10] (4) Technological systems propagate or manipulate the needs it serves by tying consumption to a meaningful and happy life through advertising.[11] (5) Technological systems can discover or create crises such as an external threat or a resource shortage that justify their expansion.[12] Within each of these patterns manifest purposes are replaced by latent purposes through the inversion of the means-ends logic.

Given the complexity of technological systems, the reality of reverse adaptation inherent in these systems, and the possibility of “unfortunate consequences in the world at large”[13] we are faced with a response dilemma. How are we to respond to technology given the apparent risks? Should we reject it completely or embrace it enthusiastically? I want to suggest that Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis offer insights into a possible response.

---

[1] Williams, Linda. Hardcore: Power, Pleasure, and the “Frenzy of the Visible” (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 37-38.

[2] Heidegger, Martin, “The Question Concerning Technology,” Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell Krell, 1977 (Reprint, New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1993), 325.

[3] Winner, Autonomous Technology, 238.

[4] Ibid., 238.

[5] A current example of this phenomena is Apple’s iPhone. Until the technology was available to synchronize online email servers, contacts, calendars, and tasks lists there was not a demand for an integrated application that would synchronize these various functions in a single iPhone application.

[6] Winner defines system as “large sociotechnical aggregates with human beings fully present, acting, and thinking.” Winner, Autonomous Technology, 242.

[7] Ibid., 239.

[8] Ibid., 242.

[9] Ibid., 243.

[10] Ibid., 244.

[11] Ibid., 246-247.

[12] Ibid., 248-250.

[13] Winner, Autonomous Technology, 3.

The Horse YouTube Rode in On: Part 2 of 4 – The Story of YouTube

Fast-forward 116 years to February 2005. Four technologies have reached a point of convergence: the camera, the phone, film, and computers. The cameras of Muybridge, Marey and Edison are now digital and fit in the palm of your hand. The phone is also handheld and wireless by 1978 and digital by the 1990s.[1] Film has escaped the hands of the syndicated specialists and leaped into the arms of a waiting public in the form of video. The ability of individual consumers to create their own home movies with hand held 16mm video cameras is available by the 1960s.[2] Sony and Matsushita produce the first Betamax and VHS formatted video cassettes in 1975 and the DVD follows in its footsteps, debuting in 1996.[3] Finally, with the release of the Mosaic browser by the National Center of Supercomputing Applications in 1993, the World Wide Web becomes accessible to everyone and dawn of the Internet, a global communications network of networks, revolutionizes the way human beings access and disseminate information, and consequently how they communicate.[4] By 2005, the need for integrating these various technologies into a single and easily manageable interface that is publically accessible becomes a pressing need and two former employees of Pay Pal who have an idea.

When Steve Chen and Chad Hurley created YouTube they wanted to develop “an easy interface for storing, sorting and sharing the kinds of digital videos, that thanks to cell-phone cameras and Webcams, [had] become more prevalent.”[5] Hurley, who is now the CEO of YouTube said his initial motivation was to “democratize the entertainment process.”[6] What has occurred is anything but democracy. In a recent deal with Warner Music Group, You Tube agreed to “provide fingerprinting technology that will help locate its copyrighted material on the site.”[7] The freedom to record and post videos on YouTube is not without limits and sometimes decisions are made about videos without consulting the author. Videos are sometimes pulled from the site due to Digital Millennium Copyright Act violations such as adding copyrighted songs or video clips to an amateur video.[8] The dreams of a free and democratic YouTube did however, have some glimmer of hope in 2008 when CNN and YouTube co-sponsored “video-questions” for the Presidential election debates during the campaign. Over 3,000 Americans posted video questions.[9] Some of these questions were answered by the Presidential candidates.

---

[1] Zheng, Pei and Lionel M. Ni, Smart Phone and Next Generation Mobile Computing (San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 2006), 32.

[2] Williams, Mathew, Making Real-Life Videos: Great Projects for the Classroom and Home (New York: Allworth Press, 2006), 26.

[3] Kochberg, Searle, “Institutions, Audiences and Technology,” in An Introduction to Film Studies. ed. Jill Nelmes, 1996. Reprint (New York: Routledge, 2001), 30-31 and Taylor, Jim, Mark R. Johnson, Charles G. Crawford, DVD Demystified (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 2006),  2-2.

[4] Gilles, James and Robert Cailliau. How the Web Was Born: The Story of the World Wide Web, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 236.

[5] McGrath, Ben, “It Should Happen to You,” The Best of Technology Writing, ed. by Steven Levy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007), 354.

[6] Ibid., 354.

[7]Ibid., 356.

[8] Ibid., 365.

[9] Schoen, Douglas E, Declaring Independenc: The Beginning of the End of the Two-Party System (New York: Random House, 2008), 136.

The Horse YouTube Rode in On: Part 1 of 4 – A Story About a Horse

What do horses have to do with YouTube? The origins of technology are often strangely dissimilar from their later manifestations. Often the initial motivations and purposes that give rise to technological innovation conceal motives and purposes that even the innovator is unaware of. Indeed, as Langdon Winner has been keen to point out technology can often “have profound and often unfortunate consequences in the world at large.”[1]

This article will focus on the technology of film in order to identify and explain the principle levels of manifest and latent purposes in the genesis of film technology in general and in its more recent manifestation in YouTube. By examining the earlier and later manifestations of the technology of film I hope to show that technology in general is complex and requires a response that mediates between complete rejection and uncritical acceptance; a response, therefore, that is both thoughtful and responsible.

The technology of film emerged from the technology of photography near the end of the nineteenth century. The genesis of cinema begins curiously with a horse named “Occident”. Leland Stanford, former U.S. Senator, California governor and founder of Stanford University, owned a horse named “Occident” who had a peculiarly long stride. This peculiarity, along with Stanford’s penchant for horse racing and his considerable wealth, led him to search for a means to investigate more precisely the movement of horses.[2] His search led him to Eadweard Muybridge, a still photographer working in San Francisco in 1872 who he hired to conduct a series of photographic experiments on galloping horses to determine whether artist depictions of animals in motion with all four feet off the ground were correct.[3] This characterization however, may mollify the real motivations that led Stanford to conduct the experiments.

Horse racing was a popular spectator sport in the 1870’s and large sums of money could be won and lost at these races.[4] One of the controversies surrounding this sport centered on “whether a horse trotting at top speed ever had all for feet off the ground at once.”[5]A legend surrounding the experiments (corroborated by local newspapers) suggests that Stanford might have conducted the experiments to settle a $25,000 wager, a legend which Muybridge substantiates but experts on Stanford disavow.[6] Nevertheless, the controversy led to questions about animal locomotion, and this was a topic of great interest to Muybridge who had pioneered the use of a spring-activated shutter which had allowed him to vastly improve the quality of still photographs of bodies in motion.[7]

Muybridge began his photographic experiments for Stanford between April and December of 1872 although his now famous photographs of a horse galloping with all four feet suspended in the air were not published in The Scientific American until 1877.[8] The experiment was conducted at the Union Park race track in Sacramento, California.[9] The five-mile track was lined with 12, then 18, and finally 24 side-by-side rapid shutter cameras which were triggered by trip wires installed on the track.[10] As the horse ran the track and broke one of the trip wires the camera shutter fired and captured the image of the horse in motion. These photographs could then be lined up next to each other to simulate the horse in the motion. One of the chief reasons for the delay in publication was that the first attempts at photographing a horse galloping at full speed were unsuccessful because the photographic technology was not adequate to capture rapidly moving objects. Frank Beavers explains:

The unusually rapid movement of a horse caused the arrested images to blur. In 1872 the wet plate photographic materials on which exposures were made were not yet “fast” enough to produce sharp, clearly defined images of rapidly moving objects. (A fast photographic material is one which has a high sensitivity to light. The combination of a fast film and a rapid shutter aid in the acceptable photographing of rapidly moving objects.)[11]

Eventually, Muybridge collaborated with an engineer named John Isaacs and developed a rapid shutter that had an exposure time of 2/1000 of a second and was able to demonstrate through a single negative that “Stanford’s horse did indeed have all four feet off the ground simultaneously when galloping.”[12] It is important to note; however, that newspaper reports of Muybridge’s success were never verified; that is, the newspapers who reported the story had never actually seen the successful negative but had only been informed about its existence by Muybridge.[13]

Muybridge’s photographs of bodies in motion were widely published and he eventually developed a projector called the Zoogyroscope which allowed him to project his photographic sequences on to a screen.[14] Muybridge conducted entertaining demonstrations of his work around the world eventually capturing the attention of the physiologist Eitienne-Jules Marey who was inspired by Muybridge to invent a “photographic gun” that “made twelve rapid exposures on a circular glass plate which revolved like a bullet cylinder.” Marey later substituted paper film for glass and added a motor to advance the film.[15] By 1889 Thomas Edison had been inspired to combine his invention of the phonograph with a camera. The result was the Kinetograph which used 35mm film and the birth of what we now know as the modern motion picture.[16]

---

[1][1] Winner, Langdon, Autonomous Technology: Technics-out-of-Control as a Theme in Political Thought (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1977), 3.

[2] Hendricks, Gordon, Eadweard Muybridge: The Father of the Motion Picture (New York: Grossman Publishers, 1975), 46.

[3] Beaver, Frank. On Film: A History of the Motion Picture (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1983), 9-10.

[4] Haas, Robert Bartlett, Muybridge: Man in Motion (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 46.

[5] Ibid., 46.

[6] Hendricks Eadweard Muybridge, 46. See also Beaver,  On Film, 46.

[7] Beaver, On Film, 10.

[8] Hendricks, Muybridge, 46.

[9] Haas, Muybridge, 47.

[10] Beaver, On Film, 10.

[11] Beavers, On Film, 10.

[12] Ibid., 10, 11.

[13] Hendricks, Muybridge, 47.

[14] Beavers, On Film, 11.

[15] Beavers, On Film, 11.

[16] Ibid., 12.