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.

Levinas and Zubiri: The Cruel Error of Definition

For Aristotle, being (Greek: ouisia) was a substance (Latin: substantia, from sub under stare to stand.) In order to know the essence of a substance; that is, what a thing is, its essence must be demonstrated in a definition, Aristotle said. His most famous example of this is his definition of a human being as a rational animal. However, to define is to set limits on something (Latin: definire, from de completely finire to bind or set limits on, from finir boundary or end.) When Aristotle argues that knowledge of essences is gained via definitions he is linking his metaphysics of substance to his epistemology by making knowledge the result of capturing the essence of a substance in a definition. Heidegger would later criticize Aristotle for obscuring being by confusing it with substance. Still later, two of Heidegger’s students, Emmanuel Levinas and Xavier Zubiri would take up this critique of Aristotle.

It is important to point out that both Levinas and Zubiri were ethnic minorities. Levinas, a Lithuanian Jew and Zubiri, a Basque Catholic priest (who was later secularized). Each of these thinkers felt the sting of being totalized in definitions of the dominant cultures within which they lived and found themselves marginalized from. Levinas‘ privileging of the other arises against the background of his status as an ethnic minority in Europe. Zubiri’s emphasis on the dynamic structure of reality as the ground of being, which is incapable of being captured in a definition, also arises against the backdrop of his Basque heritage. (This is my contention that I am still investigating)

Levinas finds the other caught in a tension between its infinity (undefinability) and its totality (definability). However, his account of the infinity is not sufficiently accounted for, in my opinion (this may be the result of my limited reading.) Zubiri, on the other hand, does provide an account for it. Against Aristotle, Zubiri claims that reality is not a substance but rather it is a substantivity; that is, reality is not a static essence able to be captured in a definition but instead it is a dynamic structure of notes that is undefinable and full of possibility. For Zubiri, the history of philosophy has failed to recognize the distinction between reality as it is apprehended and naked reality which is not yet framed in concepts. Aristotle’s analysis stops at apprehended reality or in Levinasian terms totalized reality. But as Levinas reminds us, to totalize the other in this way is a cruelty that does violence to the other. For Zubiri, it is simply unscientific (given the insights from quantum physics) to think that reality can be exhausted in a demonstration or a definition. Zubiri reminds us that reality is dynamic and possibilating. Levinas reminds us that love is an insomniac and never falls asleep at the wheel (which leads to terrible accidents!) To capture the other in a definition is to enslave the other and relinquish pursuit of the possibilating mystery of the other.

I am still working out the connection between these two thinkers and there relationship to the other. I invite your comments, suggestions, and corrections.

Olafur Eliasson: The Chiasm of Art and Philosophy

On a recent visit to the Dallas Museum of Art my wife and I experienced the intersection of art and philosophy in the work of Olafur Eliasson. His current exhibit is called Take Your Time, and I highly recommend it to anyone who questions the boundaries between reality and perception.

Eliasson’s work is indebted to the phenomenological insights of Husserl, Bergson, and Merleau-Ponty, all of whom emphasize perception as a moment of embodied consciousness. For these thinkers there is no such thing as consciousness but only conscious acts. We are not disembodied minds detached from the world but embodied minds embedded in reality and creating reality.

Xavier Zubiri drawing from this same tradition has emphasized what he calls sentient intelligence where the senses are turned towards the intellect and the intellect is turned towards the senses so that perception is not a disembodied act of a mental subject to a physical object, but rather a physical moment of perception where the outside is inside and the inside is outside. Zubiri points out that man is not simply before things, but moves among them, deciding in each case what they are. Eliasson echoes this insight in his work. He describes his current exhibit as the experience of “seeing yourself seeing”.

In one of Eliasson’s most dramatic pieces, light and color are used to bring the visitor into a co-creative role with the exhibit. My wife and I entered a circular screened area illuminated with color that changed as we moved within it. Our physical movemnents altered the exhibit. We were clearly part of the exhibit. The closer we moved towards the screen the more the boundary between the light and us became less clear. For a moment I experienced a oneness with the light where I could not tell where I stopped and the light began. It was simply a moment of being immersed in color and light. I experienced myself in the other and the other in me.

Olafur Eliasson is one of the most important artists of our time, in my opinion. His work is a chiasm of art and philosophy that calls us back to our bodies that are not just in reality, but of it.