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A Personalized Reflection of Karl Marx, Descartes And Hegel Philosophies.
Introduction
This paper offers a personalized reflection of situations where I critically employ Karl Marx, Descartes, and Hegel propositions to navigate personal life incidences. Each concept, the storyline might be different depending on the applicability context or concept-wise.
On a personal level, when my father got a job in a leading bank in the early 90s, the future looked very promising, or so he thought. He sacrificed everything, time, energy, commitment, and personal ideals to the company. We saw him less often as he was always at his desk, chasing prospects, churning reports, attending seminars, making his bosses happy, etc. The more he worked, the more frustrated he became. Although gradually increasing, the compensation packages could not match the behemoth company’s service, making billions in profits. In a sense, he became estranged, became cold to his family as the sole breadwinner, became estranged to his bosses, strived all day to earn peanuts, and finally became estranged with society. Marx concludes estranged labour creates the privatization of property, thus excluding the majority who have to sell their dignity to eke a living. Thus, Marx raises a pertinent query if labour alienates the independent worker whose benefit is the same labour done? It is not to benefit the worker but the capitalist mogul. Thus, this phenomenon split society into two factions, the toiling masses and the non-workers; in essence, they have and have not.
Karl marks 1844, series of writings dubbed Estranged Labor. Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts espouses the interaction between the political economy entity and its subsequent effects on the players, more so the majority who are the citizens in that economic dispensation. Alienation/estrangement as a conceptual ideology in the Marxist theory of Alienation and Estrangement is a feeling of psychological detachment by an individual caused by entrenched Economic, political systems. This political economy is a capitalistic extension designed to exploit the individual as he is objectified as a production factor instead of a self-conscious symbol. Estrangement as a concept could also refer to the antagonism between social groupings, individual disillusionment, and stratification in a society that was earlier homogenous.
The worker’s benefits are menial, low, and scarce and designed to exploit and dominate economic submission. Workers have no control of the labour they are offering; they have no unions to aggravate for better pay, working conditions, promotions, etc. Thus, these subjugating factors alienate them from the economic activities engaged in, their perpetual humanistic self, and ultimately to environmental. The result is a monotonous, disillusioned, and pathetic work to live kind of existence. Thus, these conditions promote a class conflict between the proletariat (working class/employees) and the bourgeoisie (modern-day corporate owners and shareholders). Marx concludes Estranged/Alienated Labor as self-sabotaging as the workers feel impoverished at his inner personal core. The worker also becomes alienated from the physical and metaphysical world. This results from the worker not separating his labour as a product and himself as a different entity. Thus, there exists conflict between labour as an object and the individual as a separate element.
In explaining the concept of Meditation on First Philosophy, my allusion will be to a personal conflict sometimes encountered back. Growing up in the 50s, the only way to get out of the poverty rut was to be an academic genius, as my father rut explained. After school, one was assured of getting a good job, benefits, and, if lucky, move up the promotional ladder. That was then my father passed through that system and inherited all those perks. However, today, the situation is stark different academic geniality cannot guarantee you economic empowerment. In my final year of college, I am stuck between following my father’s advice and settle for a safe, secure job or jump into entrepreneurship and perhaps be wiped out in the process. The mental anguish persisted between the two choices until I ran into Meditation on First Philosophy. Although I have not figured everything out, it gives me some tips on how to weave through my predicament. First, I must detach myself from what my father or I think I know. (about education correlation to job safety) , then I discard that information (philosophy rationalize, mediate) on available data on employment statistics and then make a valid decision on my future.
The human existence in doubt is an epitome of conflicting scenarios. Documented body of beliefs, assertions, claims, theoretical expositions, and epistemology comes packaged as irrefutable arguments that shape the way humans view the phenomenon. If unquestioned, these dogmas might be long-held dogmas awaiting a new body of facts to disapprove of their authenticity. This disjointed analogy of facts is the same scenario that jolted renowned philosophical proponent Descartes into a more detailed introspection, thereby coming up with a new school of thought. To shed more light on the author’s contentious turn of the dualism of bias and rationality, Descartes published his much-famed works on meditation in a series of writings called Meditation on First Philosophy published in 1639. First, the author begins with the audacious questioning of a supernatural being (here referred to as God). Second, he delineates the immortal febricity of the soul. Through this approach, the writer’s objective is to create an aura of rationality and, at the same time, espouse the fallacious human nature attributed to human beings thinking. The author then proposes a methodological approach whereby all accepted knowledge and beliefs must be trashed first to gain insidious objectivity. After that, the individual must come up with new ways to test already existing beliefs and dogmas. The epistemological objective of foundationalism is to create a new body of facts adduced from scientific edification. This body of facts should be testable, justifiable, and can withstand the assumptions raised. The other part of foundationalism is to promote a superstructure that edifies the foundation of the principles that the new body of knowledge promotes. Descartes’s objective was to ascertain the existence of a supernatural being, not necessarily in Christian tenets. To idealize the essence of critical thinking and independence of the human mind, the soul’s mortality. The modalities to be followed in building new scientific belief structures by first alienating oneself for held beliefs and then consistently introspecting with special emphasis on scientific rationality.
In Hegel’s Lordship and Bondage, a philosophical edifice, the author illuminates how our views ingrained in our consciousness do not translate to the bigger picture of understanding other conflicting opposing societal consciousness. Thus, the individual must be able to emancipate his consciousnesses to be able to define surrounding consciousness. Hegel proposes a three-way structure in the development of introspecting consciousness. An analysis of directed consciousness as opposed to self-consciousness. A master-slave relation whereby the inferior consciousness is directed to a higher form of consciousness. A universal paradigm whereby consciousness recognizes conflicting consciousness in itself. Thus, the master-slave predicament is an allusion of an internal procedure whereby the issue of” subject” and “object” and what occurs within an individual or two groups is discussed.
The author employs The Term “Sublate’ To Illustrate the Dynamics perpetuating Within the Human Mind and how it leads to a counter effect on the person’s externality. Thus, the object and the subject counter attack one another until a common understanding is reached in a philosophical unity of ideology. Thus, the conflicts of thoughts and consciousness act as a bridge for unifying the two opposing problems. In summary, when two conflicting consciousness clashes, it’s up to the two parties to first understand the essence of individual consciousness, which is innate in every human being and cannot be wished away. Then, after the two levels of consciousness clash, the two players have to reach a middle ground. They now recognize that consciousness is affected by individual cognizances and higher cognizance levels beyond one’s mind.
To explain this analogy, I will use this narrative. Assuming you are watching this cool movie, matrix, lord of the rings, Solomon cane, Godfather, Star wars, etc. Then you meet your friend, and you are like, “dude, The matrix’s a hot movie.” Your friend, regardless, trashes the movie because he is not in Sci-Fi. Thus, according to Hegel’s Lordship and Bondage, your reality about the movie’s appropriateness fits your mind/consciousness but not necessarily your friends. So, you need to be a servant about it and perhaps ask your friend what he loves watching. Then the friend becomes a master in this situation. He might suggest drama. So, in essence, your point of conflict becomes your unity of purpose.
In conclusion, Karl Marx, Descartes, and Hegel ideologies, classical as they might be having a lot of relevance in the contemporary setting. Individuals, society should be advised that these classical authors espoused ideas that have a lot of weight in solving day-to-day conflicts.
Works cited
Marx, Karl. “Economic and philosophical manuscripts.” Early writings 333 (1844
Descartes, Rene. “Meditations on First Philosophy, Meditation II.” The European Philosophers from Descartes to Nietzsche, New York: The Modern Library (2002).
Kelly, G. A. (1966). Notes on Hegel’s” Lordship and Bondage.” The Review of Metaphysics, 780-802.