Critique of Everyday Life Vol.1 Ch.6
寫於1945年8-12月,土魯斯(法國西南部)
當時Lefebvre當任當地廣播電台Radiodiffusion Française的台長
◎以下標記頁碼為讀本pdf的頁碼
Oil for the Lamps of China,1933年在美國出版的暢銷小說,左圖為書封,右圖為1935年改編的同名電影海報。
無政府主義者的失誤在於,只看到異化的形式,卻沒看到背後的社會關係。
無政府主義者對抗資產階級的方式落入私人意識的圈套,而偏偏私人意識本身就是資產階級的時代產物。
無政府主義者的思考排除了對人類生活可能的任何理解。
Everything great and splendid is founded on power and wealth. They are the basis of beauty. This is why the rebel and the anarchic protester who decries all of history and all the works of past centuries because he sees in them only the skills and the threat of domination is making a mistake. He sees alienated forms, but not the greatness within. The rebel can only see to the end of his own ‘private’ consciousness, which he levels against everything human, confusing the oppressors with the oppressed masses, who were nevertheless the basis and the meaning of history and past works. Castles, palaces, cathedrals, fortresses, all speak in their various ways of the greatness and the strength of the people who built them and against whom they were built. This real greatness shines through the fake grandeur of rulers and endows these buildings with a lasting ‘beauty’. The bourgeoisie is alone in having given its buildings a single, over-obvious meaning, impoverished, deprived of reality: that meaning is abstract wealth and brutal domination; that is why it has succeeded in producing perfect ugliness and perfect vulgarity. The man who denigrates the past, and who nearly always denigrates the present and the future as well, cannot understand this dialectic of art, this dual character of works and of history. He does not even sense it. Protesting against bourgeois stupidity and oppression, the anarchic individualist is enclosed in ‘private’ consciousness, itself a product of the bourgeois era, and no longer understands human power and the community upon which that power is founded. The historical forms of this community, from the village to the nation, escape him. He is, and only wants to be, a human atom (in the scientifically archaic sense of the word, where ‘atom’ meant the lowest isolatable reality). By following alienation to its very extremes he is merely playing into the hands of the bourgeoisie. Embryonic and unconscious, this kind of anarchism is very widespread. There is a kind of revolt, a kind of criticism of life, that implies and results in the acceptance of this life as the only one possible. As a direct consequence this attitude precludes any understanding of what is humanly possible.
圖片截自New Masses,1926至1948年美國共產黨辦的雜誌,除了向著名作家邀稿也會刊登普羅大眾的作品,Lefebvre在文中引用的詩就是一位紡織工Martin Russak所寫的。
「剝奪」的本質、私人意識和公共意識之間的關係在社會層次上的功能改變了。
這個關係在受過教育的人(culitivated man)身上經歷了倒置,對這些人來說,「他」的想法、文化都是他自身最親密的一部分。個體把思考承擔在自己身上,某個意義上是笛卡爾式的。
在個人主義、高度勞工分工和階級區分之下,對人類思維的假定(這是絕對必要的行動) ,在意識的倒置上找到了表達方式。「受過教育的」人忘記「他」思維的社會基礎。
在這樣的運動中要去達到對生活的意識,而不失去任何文化,首先的任務必須去打破這種限制的、狹隘的、錯誤的文化形式。
如何打破?
The myth of the triviality of everyday life is dispelled whenever what seems to be mysterious turns out to be really trivial, and what seems exceptional is exposed as manifestly banal.(p181)
一方面這將關乎如何能對於以往的「現代生活」有個有條不紊的對抗方式,另一方面,找尋能夠逃離生活或逃離「衰退」的方法與關鍵。關鍵是在相反的模式中找到可能性,讓新的模式發生,並豐富他的可能性。
從這個角度來看,現實中的人類是呈現對立的,到達一定數量的條件下即顯現其對比:
日常生活 vs 節日慶典
大多的平常時刻 vs 非常、特殊時刻
瑣碎無聊的事物 vs 光鮮亮麗的事物
嚴肅認真 vs 輕鬆玩樂
現實 vs 夢想
日常生活的批判關乎在這些對比中做探討,這樣的對比意指了那些更優越的事物批判著瑣碎平日,但同時瑣碎也批判著優越,群眾批判著菁英,而現實則批判著節慶、夢想、藝術、詩。
也必然包括現實生活與「表述」現實生活的道德規範、心理學、哲學、宗教、文學等的衝突。其中宗教是最直接、消極、毀滅的、沒完沒了而且最嫻熟的,以這個角度來看,宗教成了日常生活面罩,讓人們的樣貌更不真實,而哲學則是非直接的,透過外部(或隱喻的)「事實」對生活進行批判。
現今哲學家的任務是:學習哲學作為生活的間接批評,是感知(日常)生活哲學的直接批判。
To study philosophy as an indirect critism of life is to perceive (everyday) life as a direct critique of philosophy.
要让哲学成为直接的日常生活批判,就要感知到日常生活就直接的哲学批判。
a humanism which believes in the human because it knows it
被挑選出來的「精華」,同時遺留下巨大而龐雜的不明物體,個體與群體的關係在現有的學科中都被過度簡化了,請回歸龐雜混沌的日常生活吧!
Lefebvre: When the world the sun shines on is always new, how could everyday life be forever unchangeable?