philog: philosophie sophiste

Understanding Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Media:

 McLuhan as a post modern sophist

Introduction:

In order to understand an author thought, we ought of course to read his texts, but also to consider his thought as contextualized. To understand in which specific cultural and intellectual context a thought is produced helps greatly to interpret the texts. Regarding Marshall McLuhan, one of the most prominent pioneer in media studies, the first thing we notice is the difficulty to understand his texts, and thus what he means with his famous catch sentences, such as “the medium is the message”, “a medium is an extension of the body”, or “global village”. Therefore, in order to understand the depth of such points, we ought to contextualize McLuhan thought in the context of post modernism.

In the 20^th century, post modernism, a strong cultural movement has developed. This cultural movement is basically the acknowledgment of a change in our value system, in our conception of the world. Therefore, intellectual postmodernism is an attempt to propose new conceptions of the world: a post-modern metaphysics, a post modern ontology, a post-modern conception of politics and ethics, and a post modern conception of media. Here is the task of a real post modern philosophy: to create new concepts that could lead to a better understanding of the post modern world.

In this paper, I will try to argue that Marshall McLuhan is fully a post modern philosopher, and that he argues through his conception of media for a new conception of mankind, thus proposing a post modern man, or in Nietzsche terminology: an overman.

In this respect, I will first explore the structures of modernism, going backward in history together with Nietzsche and Foucault to find the fundaments of modernity and quickly analyse them. Here, with a short analysis of Platonism, we will try to see how it has led to a modern conception of media, considering media as communication device only. Then, I will evoke sophism as a pre modern philosophy, and show how these sophists, especially Protagoras, can be usefully “post modernised” considering media. Within this historic and philosophical framework, I will argue for a contextualization of McLuhan’s work as a post modern sophism, showing how his conception of media recalls Antic sophism and at the same time leads to a post modern conception of mankind. In this respect, I hope to show that this classification as a post modern sophist helps to understand the depth of McLuhan’s thought.

Platonism and Modernism: from dualism and dialectic to a specific conception of media

            In this first part, I will explore the fundaments of philosophical modernism, mainly based on Platonism, and show how they led to a modern conception of media. Indeed, what is common to all post modernists is their critical attitude toward modernism. In a historical perspective, they go backward to find the fundaments of modernity in art, economy, politics, law, and in philosophy. But post modernism, through the work of philosophers such as Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault, is also a critical analysis of the philosophical fundaments of modernism. These philosophers went backward in history to find the philosophical fundaments of modernism, to show that they were historically situated, and not universal nor transcendent. Thus, Nietzsche fought against Platonism and Christianity, with his famous catch-sentence “the death of God”, which in my mind means both the death of the Christian God, and the disappearance of Plato’s world of Ideas.

Friedrich Nietzsche wrote about Platonism, thus implying that Plato’s thought was not reducible only to Plato’s texts but also to a certain culture, an ideology (which means literally a verbal formulation of ideas), and a certain conception of language and more generally of media. Indeed, Plato’s thought leads to a certain use of media.

But let’s first explore quickly Plato’s main theory in order to understand a modern conception of media. Plato is a dualist: he considers that there are two worlds, our world, consisting of matter, and a world of ideas that defines the categories of the material world (the idea of the chair is responsible for a chair to be a chair). Significantly, Plato favours greatly the world of ideas. Indeed, according to him, Ideas are reality. This preferential dualism is extended to all his philosophy. For instance, a man is composed by a material body and an ideal soul, but what defines a man is his soul, not his body. This dualism led Plato to a particular conception of language.

Indeed, language is for Plato the privileged mean to gain knowledge about ideas. Starting with a questioning about a word (we all remember Socrates’ famous “What is…?”), and through rational dialogue, the participants reach an overview of the Idea mediated by this word. But this conception requires a dualist assumption: on the one hand, the word, and on the other hand, the Idea. As the very concept of media is a recent invention, it is hard to speak about media in Ancient Greece, but the concept of media fits very well to the relationship between words and Ideas in Plato’s philosophy. Indeed, words are the media that carries Ideas. This relationship between words and things, or in Plato’s mind, Ideas, is enlightening to understand a relationship between media and messages in Plato’s philosophy. In the dialogue Cratylus, Socrates (that is Plato) argues that the names of a thing changes, according to conventions, but the thing itself does not. In more contemporary terms, even if the medium (here a word) changes, the message (here the thing, or the Idea) does not. The idea -dog- is mediated similarly by the words –dog-, -chien-, or –hund- (respectively in English, French and German). The message differs from the medium, which is already a dualism, and moreover, the medium does not define the message, but rather the opposite, that is to say the message defines the medium.

            But a Platonist conception of media is not only to be found in the content of Plato’s philosophy but also in his way of using media: dialectic. In his dialogues Phaedrus and the Gorgias, Plato argues that language should be organised to discover Ideas, to gain new knowledge. As a matter of fact, he favours rational dialogue as a privileged way of gaining knowledge. Through rational dialogue, the two arguers communicates, that is arrived at a common conclusion, whether it is a common definition (an Idea), or a common lack of definition. Indeed, if we want to reach Ideas, the words used in the dialogues are therefore required to have a common meaning to both arguers.

This dualist and dialectic conception of media has greatly shaped the modern conception of media, and considering Plato’s thought is really helpful to understand what a modern conception of media is: it is first a thing that carries a message, and therefore it is different from the message itself; secondly, it is a common convention, a thing that is invented and used to make common the representations of messages.

We ought to say that Ancient Greece is a particularly important moment in Western History, as it was a society in transition between orality and literacy. Indeed, philosophers, especially Plato and the Sophists were very interested in the different uses of oral mediation, especially related to truth. In his dialogues, Plato constantly criticizes the sophists. Because Plato’s thought is one of the fundament of modernism, and that post modernism is a critical attitude toward this modernism, post modern philosophy ought to pay a greater attention to pre-modern philosophy, and especially to the sophists against who Plato has developed his main theories.

Sophists and sophism: from the measure doctrine and rhetoric to “the medium is the message”    

            Sophists are individuals that had a great influence in Ancient Greece, especially in Athens . It is difficult to speak about sophism, because it supposes a coherent ideology, and that the sophists are rather isolated individuals than a philosophical school. However, they all have some things in common: they all agree with Protagoras’ “measure doctrine”, and they all teach rhetoric, the art of discourse. Therefore, when ought to develop the classification “sophism” as the common philosophical basis of sophists’ thought.

            The measure doctrine is quite simple. It is the prefect opposite to Plato’s theory about Ideas. Protagoras affirms that a human being is the measure of all things. Therefore, he denies the existence of Ideas that would be the true and real measure of things, and thus the possibility of an objective truth. In affirming that a human being is the measure of all things, Protagoras and the sophists considers that truth is a subjective matter. Indeed, if as a human being, you are the measure of all things, and, as a human being, I am also the measure of all things, then as we are different, things appear to us differently, but they are true to both of us. Protagoras is indeed a subjectivist.

            From this measure doctrine that seems to be the essence of sophism, what could be a sophist conception of media? Like Plato, the sophists are also interested in relationship between things, ideas and words. But contrary to Plato, the sophists are not dualists; they do not make any differences between appearance of things and the things themselves. Indeed, since the world appears to me in a true way (measure doctrine) on a subjective level, appearances are things and things are appearances. Thus, according to the sophists, words are political conventions, that is to say categories that are required to be common to be able to live together. But in being naturalized, these words appear as subjective realities. The word -dog-, a convention to name one recurrent element in the world as it appears to me, creates a naturalized category -dog-, thus shaping my interpretation of the world. The conventional word dog creates the appearance dog. To sum up in more contemporary words, for the sophists it is clear that “the tool shapes the hand”, that a medium (word) shapes our interpretation of the world as it appears to us. In this respect, media are already messages.

But, just like Plato, the sophist conception of media is also to be found in the sophists’ use of media, especially language. Indeed, sophists were rhetoric teachers. Rhetoric is the art of discourse, written or oral. In Athens , rhetoric was really important, Athenian democracy being an oral democracy. Politics are especially important in media: media conventions like words are defined by political system. Thus in the sophists mind, it was really important to know how to persuade people that your convention is better (not truer) than another one. Therefore, they were themselves great speakers, and their teaching was socially and personally useful. But contrary to Plato, they were not preaching a dialectical conception of media as a basis of communication, but rather an aesthetic conception of language. Indeed, in accordance to the measure doctrine and the truth of appearances, they favoured the technical skills to make a point of view to appear attractive. They favoured discourse rather than dialogue, persuasion rather than discussion. Moreover, in teaching rhetoric, they were not only making people better speakers, but also better listeners, at least less candid, more media literate, thus allowing them to differentiate the form and the content of a discourse, which was especially important in an oral democracy constantly threaten by a risk of a tyranny.

            We have seen that, opposed to Plato, the sophists had another conception of media. Here, I would say that it is important to post modernize this pre modern philosophy. Indeed, their main thoughts, subjectivism, truth of appearance, and politics as the definition of useful conventions, is a basic feature of post modernism. Concerning media, their conception of the word really helps to understand how the “medium is the message”. Now that we have overviewed the basic features of a pre modern sophism opposed to a modern Platonism, and seen how sophism could be constructed as a coherent stream of philosophy, we ought to apply it to understand McLuhan’s thought. Indeed, classifications of authors and thoughts are required only if they are useful to understand them.

McLuhan theory of media: from the content to the medium, from the man to the “overman”

Here, we will try to explain McLuhan’s theory of media, in the light of both sophism, and post modernism.

We have already seen how the Ancient Greeks sophism could lead to a conception of media as a message. Marshall McLuhan extends this conception. In this respect, he could be classified as a sophist. Indeed, one of his famous “mcluhanism” is “the medium is the message”. Therefore, he extends the sophist conception of media to everything that shapes our conception of the world. It could seem bizarre to consider electric light as a medium, but McLuhan does. It does definitely not fit to a modern conception of media as communication device. But electric light in shaping our conception of the difference between day and night is a message, and therefore a medium.

McLuhan does not make any difference between medium and message, but rather between medium and content. The medium allows some activities, for example the electric light allows night work, or the word allows the idea, but these activities are the content of the medium, not its message. Content is another message and therefore another medium. Therefore, when I am writing this paper, I using the medium writing that shapes my (and maybe your) conception of the world: writing is indeed linear, abstract, and rational. This medium allows content, which are words. These words are also a medium that shapes our conception of the world, as we have already seen. These words allow themselves another content which is ideas. These ideas shape our conception of the world…

McLuhan, in differentiating the medium and the content, implies that instead of caring only about the content, we should care more about the medium that carries this content. For example, if we study the effect television has on society, as Neil Postman did in his book Amusing ourselves to death, the age of show business, we ought not to pay attention only to the content of TV, that is what is shown, but also to TV as a message, that is how is it shown. Moreover, as the sophists did with rhetoric, McLuhan has shown the democratic necessity of media literacy. In this respect, McLuhan can be considered in the continuity of the Ancient Greece sophists. However, McLuhan wrote in a specific context, which was (and still is) especially characterized by the influence of post modernism.

 One important feature of post modernism is to go over the modern concept of human being. Nietzsche developed this notion of overman (even if it has unfortunately been misinterpreted as the announcement of the Aryan-typed man). Michel Foucault has shown with his concept of episteme that human being is a historically situated concept, linked with other concepts in a knowledge stratum, and that it was therefore possibly updatable, and perhaps already outdated. He even evoked a possible “death of the human”, thus implying that the category “human” could disappear from our conception of the world.

I think that, in considering media as an extension of man, of human’s senses, body and mind, McLuhan gives his conception of a post modern man, or overman. In using media we extend ourselves, both mechanically, through the use of mechanical media (tools, wheels, car, eyes glasses…) but also electrically (telephone, television, the internet…). In this respect, using media, human beings becomes more than humans, developing a “hyper senses”, a “hyper body” and a “hyper consciousness”. And the other persons become media as well. A secretary could be then considered as an extension of the boss. This feature of McLuhan’s theory makes him definitely a post modern philosopher.

Conclusion:

            In this paper, we have seen that we could oppose a Platonist/modernist conception of media as communication device between human beings and a sophist/post modernist conception of media as a tool that shapes our conception of the world, just as the tool shapes the hand. We have also seen that classifying in this way philosophical positions on media could help to understand the rather difficult theory of Marshall McLuhan. Two main features have been emphasized in McLuhan’s thought. First, we have explored how a “medium could be the message”, and why media literacy is required in democracy. Secondly, we have seen how McLuhan, through his conception of media as an extension of ourselves, could propose a post modern conception of humanity.

However, one point of McLuhan’s theory could be developed further. We ought to wonder if the “natural” senses, body and mind of a man are the famous unmediated, as McLuhan seems to imply by his conception of media as extensions of ourselves: does a colour blind person have the same conception of the world as a “normal” person? Does a leg-handicapped person have the same conception of distance as a person with legs? It seems obvious that they do not. In that case, the body, the senses and the mind are themselves media. But we may wonder what can be mediated by these “natural media”. I would propose that we mediate our own subjectivity. Indeed, the uniqueness of our genetic code and of our environment makes our bodies, senses and mind unique as well. And it really shapes our conception of the world, making ourselves unique and subjective.

Pour comprendre ce texte, il faut lire le texte de Julian Dubbell, témoin d'un viol dans le cyber espace (espace virtuel - Internet). Vous pouvez trouver ce texte, ici:

http://www.juliandibbell.com/texts/bungle.html

How real is a rape in cyberspace? In what way(s) could it be considered a real event, in what way(s) not?

            In order to understand the world, philosophers (as everybody unconsciously does) use specific tools, known as concepts, to analyse it and act on it. But, like real tools (a screwdriver for example), concepts are not adapted to every task. Therefore, with the development of new phenomena, (or, if we continue the metaphor between a screwdriver and a concept: the development of new types of screws), concepts may be outdated and not adapted to understand these phenomena. With the recent and broad development of a powerful media, the Internet, we are facing such a development of new phenomena, on a world wide scale, such as virtual community, or more precisely, the possibility of rape in cyberspace.

Here, we will discuss the extent to which a rape in cyberspace is real. First, in order to try to understand this question and try to answer it, we ought to say that reality is considered here as a concept, as a tool. And as every tool, conceptual or mechanical, it needs methodology that we will develop in a short deepening of the metaphor between concepts and screwdrivers. Screwdrivers are created for screws (and not the opposite that is screws created for screwdrivers). Then if we have a certain kind of screw but no screwdrivers adapted to it, then you will analyse the shape of the screw and created an adapted screwdriver, not the opposite, that is adapting the screw to the screwdriver you have. Just like screwdrivers are created for screws, concepts are created for instances. So here, we will try to see if there is an adapted tool already available to understand a cyber-rape (a rape in cyberspace), a concept as it has been mainly developed so far. If there is not, we will propose in the conclusion a new concept that would allow us to have a better analysis of the instance.

We will therefore discuss if the concept of reality is a good tool to analyse this particular event. I would like to add that because rape is a “hot topic”, that it implies lot of emotional reactions, it is important to say that no judgement is done on the gravity of a rape. Thus, if we speak of virtual rape, we do not imply a depreciative evaluation compared to a real rape. In any case, we will work with a neutral definition of rape as a sexual relation in which at least one of the protagonists is unwilling to have sex.

The philosophical field that tries to answer the question “What is reality?” is called metaphysics. Then metaphysical questioning of a rape would be: what makes a rape be real? Here, it is worthy to try several tools, or conceptions of reality. There are two main conceptions of reality in past philosophy: materialism and idealism.

Materialism has been developed very early in the history of philosophy, especially by the atomists, Leucippus, Democritus and Epicurus, but also by Aristotle, the Stoics, and is now a widely accepted conception of reality. According to materialists, reality is matter, and nothing else. If something is material, then it is real. Here, if we are to apply materialism to a rape, then, rape is real if it is material. Rape is indeed a material event, a specific configuration of atoms situated in space and time.

Thus, in an extreme materialist analysis, if we consider that a rape (in cyberspace or in “matterspace”) is real, then a rape does not differ much from normal sex. Indeed, the fact that one of the rape protagonists is not willing to have sex can hardly be pictured in terms of atoms. Moreover, even if a cyberspace is based on matter (material servers, material wires, material computers, material bodies that type on their keyboard…), the affection between members does not define the affection they have together. As Julian Dubbell puts it, in a cyberspace “No body touched. Whatever physical interaction occurred consisted of a mingling of electronic signals sent from sites spread out between New York City and Melbourne, ”. If the contact they have is not defined by their material contact, then materialism is unable to explain this affection. We thus see that a purely materialist conception of reality is not an adapted tool to analyse rape in cyberspace.

A strong version of idealism have been developed by Plato, who considers that what makes something to be real is not in our material world but in another world, the World of Ideas that have a transcendent status. Therefore, what makes a rape real is the correspondence between the transcendent idea of rape and the rape as a material event. We can know transcendent idea in using our rational thinking ability. In a softer version of idealism, which I would call personal idealism, a rape is real if it corresponds to your personal idea of what a rape is. If you consider that a rape in cyberspace is a rape, then the “cyber rape” is real.

What could be the idea of rape? Using my rational thinking ability, I can picture that rape involve a sexual relation in which one or more of the protagonist is unwilling to have this relation. Concerning rape in cyberspace, I can rationally conceive that one or more of the protagonists can be unwilling, the rapist using a voodoo doll, but it is hard to conceive rationally that there is a sexual activity here, because it requires a rational analysis of what sex is, which is hardly appropriate.

Concerning an idealist conception of reality, both in transcendental idealism and in personal idealism, there are two alternatives. On the one hand, if you consider a rape in cyberspace as real, then you can hardly make a distinction between a material rape and a virtual rape. ; On the other hand, if you consider it as unreal, then you cannot explain the psychological consequences (Julian Dubbell uses the world “trauma”) on the “cyber raped” persons, and their reaction to it.  

We have seen that reality as a concept, both in its materialist and idealist versions, is hardly appropriate to analyse a rape in cyberspace. To consider it as real either leads to shade the difference between “normal” sex and rape (materialism), or to shade the difference between “virtual sex” and “material sex” (idealism). On the other hand, if we are to consider it as unreal, we are unable to explain the psychological consequences of a cyber-rape. These two consequences show that reality is hardly an appropriate tool to analyse a rape in cyberspace.

 Therefore, we ought to propose an adapted tool: the concept of virtuality. A conception of virtuality has been developed by Gilles Deleuze. According to Deleuze, the virtual aspect of something is the imagined potentiality of something real. This conception is really applicable to the Internet. First, to consider the cyberspace as a virtual space, or “imagined space”, allows one to explain why there is so much utopianism on the Internet. As a virtual space, it is not subject to material limitations, what can leave space for pure imagination. Here, the rape in cyberspace is virtual, and can only be virtual: voodoo doll only exist in imagination (at least, that what I believe).

However, a purely virtuality-centred analysis of the Internet cannot explain everything. Indeed, Internet is an interface between reality and virtuality. Therefore we ought to try to understand the close links between reality and virtuality. On the one hand, virtual reality is the concept that allows us to analyse the actualization of imagination, the realization of virtuality. The cyberspace is then an imagined space, but it is realized, made concrete through the appearance of material reality (a mansion, for example). On the other hand, real virtuality is the concept that allows us to consider the real aspects of virtuality, such as the real origin of imagination or the influence of imagination in real life. For example it can allow us to explain the reality of a virtual rape, how it has real effects, such as “post traumatic tears”.