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Commentary
Heteronomy, Repression, and Collective Wisdom
Joseph Shieber
Lafayette College, PA, USA
Shieber, Joseph. 2024. “Heteronomy, Repression, and Collective Wisdom.”
Journal of Philosophy of Emotion 6, no. 1: 37-43. https://doi.org/10.33497/2024.summer.5.
Abstract: One of the most controversial notions in Herbert Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man is the distinction between true and false needs. In this commentary, I suggest that Marcuse’s distinction is ambiguous between two readings, which I term the Repression Reading and the Heteronomy Reading, respectively. I argue that considerations from Maiese and Hanna’s (2019) notion of the Mind Shaping Thesis can help to see why we ought to reject the Heteronomy Reading in favor of the Repression Reading of false needs. I then suggest that the Repression Reading of false needs can, in turn, reveal some weaknesses in Maiese and Hanna’s theory of collectively wise social institutions.
Keywords: Marcuse, false needs, autonomy, heteronomy, repression, collective wisdom
Famously, one of the most controversial notions in Herbert Marcuse’s (2013) One-Dimensional Man is the distinction between true and false needs. In this commentary, I will suggest that Marcuse’s distinction is ambiguous between two readings, which I term the Repression Reading and the Heteronomy Reading, respectively. I argue that considerations from Maiese and Hanna’s (2019) notion of the Mind Shaping Thesis can help to see why we ought to reject the Heteronomy Reading in favor of the Repression Reading of false needs. I then suggest that the Repression Reading of false needs can, in turn, reveal some weaknesses in Maiese and Hanna’s theory of collectively wise social institutions.
MARCUSE ON FALSE NEEDS
Marcuse explains the notion of “false” needs in the following passage:
“False” are those which are superimposed upon the individual by particular social interests in his repression: the needs which perpetuate toil, aggressiveness, misery, and injustice. . . . Such needs have a societal content and function which are determined by external powers over which the individual has no control; the development and satisfaction of these needs is heteronomous. No matter how much such needs may have become the individual's own, reproduced and fortified by the conditions of his
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existence; no matter how much he identifies himself with them and finds himself in their satisfaction, they continue to be what they were from the beginning—products of a society whose dominant interest demands repression. (Marcuse 2013, p. 7)
One of the difficulties with the passage is that Marcuse seems to be defining false needs in at least two different ways. The first of those ways is evident in the first sentence of the passage. Marcuse there suggests that false needs are those “which perpetuate toil, aggressiveness, misery, and injustice.” I’ll call this the Repression Reading of false needs. The second of those ways, although perhaps also just barely evident in the first sentence of the passage, is dominant in the second quoted sentence. Marcuse there characterizes false needs as those that “are determined by external powers over which the individual has no control; the development and satisfaction of those needs is heteronomous.” I’ll call this the Heteronomy Reading of false needs.
THE HETERONOMY READING AND THE DILEMMA OF FALSE NEEDS
Because Marcuse is at least partially in the grip of the Heteronomy Reading of false needs, he sees the very phenomenon of false needs as involving a tragic dilemma. Here’s how Marcuse himself puts the problem:
In the last analysis, the question of what are true and false needs must be answered by the individuals themselves, but only in the last analysis; that is, if and when they are free to give their own answer. As long as they are kept incapable of being autonomous, as long as they are indoctrinated and manipulated (down to their very instincts), their answer to this question cannot be taken as their own. By the same token, however, no tribunal can justly arrogate to itself the right to decide which needs should be developed and satisfied. Any such tribunal is reprehensible, although our revulsion does not do away with the question: how can the people who have been the object of effective and productive domination by themselves create the conditions of freedom?” (Marcuse 2013, 8-9)
The dilemma, in other words, is this: if individuals are “indoctrinated and manipulated (down to their very instincts),” then they cannot answer the question of what are the true and false needs. However, only the individuals themselves are capable of answering the question of what are the true and false needs. Given, however, that Marcuse sees individuals in contemporary society as indoctrinated and manipulated, it would seem impossible for those individuals to distinguish between true and false needs! This is the point of the despairing rhetorical question with which Marcuse ends the passage, “How can the people who have been the object of effective and productive domination by themselves create the conditions of freedom?”
MAIESE AND HANNA CONTRA THE HETERONOMY READING
Luckily, however, the Heteronomy Reading—at least as Marcuse himself conceives of it—is false. The problem with that reading is that it presupposes a notion of autonomy that is at odds with the essentially social nature of human persons. That is, the Heteronomy Reading contradicts the thesis of the centrality of social institutions in shaping the minds of the individuals who make up those institutions. Maiese and Hanna term the thesis that social institutions shape minds the Mind Shaping Thesis:
Mind Shaping Thesis [MST]: “our . . . minds are partially determined, and . . . shaped, by the social institutions we belong to, participate in, or fall under the jurisdiction of.” (Maiese and Hanna 2019, 37, emphasis in the original)
If the MST is true, however, this requires us to revise our conception of autonomy. As Maiese and Hanna put it, the MST forces us “[t]o acknowledge that autonomy is always, at least in part, relationally and socially
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determined, is to transcend a conception of autonomy that focuses exclusively on the individual, and also to focus one’s attention on the necessary and . . . mind-shaping role of social institutions in autonomous agency” (70; cf. Shieber 2019).
Indeed, Marcuse himself seems to recognize that the only solution to the dilemma that he formulates is to abandon the requirement of robust autonomy. As Marcuse puts the point,
society . . . must first enable its slaves to learn and see and think before they know what is going on and what they themselves can do to change it. And, to the degree to which the slaves have been preconditioned to exist as slaves and be content in that role, their liberation necessarily appears to come from without and from above. They must be “forced to be free,” to “see objects as they are, and sometimes as they ought to appear,” they must be shown the “good road” they are in search of. (Marcuse 2013, 43-44)
What this suggests is that Marcuse anticipates that freedom might well require–even if we don’t wish to characterize it as “indoctrination” or “manipulation”–the very least the imposition of new ways to “see objects as they are” and a reshaping of people’s ways of thinking . . . yes, “down to their very instincts.”
Maiese and Hanna seem to have a similar process of reshaping ways of thinking in mind when they write that “The social and cultural context that we inhabit socializes us and instills within us the community’s intelligence and wisdom, as well as its norms and attitudes. By way of “education of attention,” members of society learn how to notice and engage effectively with relevant affordances and develop a “feel for the game that makes it unnecessary for them to rely on explicit rules to tell them what to do” (Maiese and Hanna 2019, 71).
PROSPECTS FOR A REVISED HETERONOMY READING
In the previous section I suggested that the plausibility of Maiese and Hanna’s Mind Shaping Thesis tells against the Heteronomy Reading of Marcuse’s notion of false needs. Before turning to a discussion of the other alternative, the Repression Reading, it would be worthwhile to address the prospects for a revised version of the Heteronomy Reading.
What I have in mind is this. Although Maiese and Hanna reject notions of autonomy incompatible with the Mind Shaping Thesis, they do not thereby abandon the notion of autonomy—and, by extension, heteronomy—altogether. Rather, they suggest that “while autonomous persons are not independent of social forces, they are also able, at least in principle, to reflect on them critically, examine how these forces shape their values, desires, and attitudes, and endorse some influences while rejecting and resisting others” (Maiese and Hanna 2019, 70). Might this revised notion of autonomy underwrite a correspondingly revised notion of heteronomy capable of underwriting a revised Heteronomy Reading of the notion of false needs?
I am less optimistic about the prospects for resting the hopes for a revised notion of autonomy on the ability, at least in principle, of persons to reflect critically on social forces and to “examine how these forces shape their values, desires, and attitudes, and endorse some influences while rejecting and resisting others.” There are three reasons for my pessimism.
The first is that persons are often ill-equipped adequately to identify the social forces that shape their values, desires, and attitudes. Recall that Maiese and Hanna suggest that “our social and cultural context socializes us and instills within us the community’s intelligence and wisdom, as well as its norms and attitudes” (Maiese and Hanna 2019, 117). Such socialization, and the inculcation of norms and attitudes, often remain unobserved and unquestioned by the participants in those social and cultural contexts.
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Maiese and Hanna seem to suggest that the autonomous agent would behave in contrast to Mill’s nineteenth-century gentlemen who behave according to “custom”: “I do not mean that they choose what is customary in preference to what suits their own inclination. It does not occur to them to have any inclination except for what is customary” (Mill, quoted in Maiese and Hanna 2019, 297-298). This, however, doesn’t seem quite right. Maiese and Hanna themselves, as quoted above, endorse the idea that “by way of ‘education of attention,’ members of society learn how to notice and engage effectively with relevant affordances and develop a ‘feel for the game’ that makes it unnecessary for them to rely on explicit rules to tell them what to do.” This, however, is not relevantly different from the notion of custom—although, of course, the “relevant affordances” would presumably direct the members of collectively wise societies toward better ends than those to which “custom” directed the nineteenth-century gentlemen of Mill’s quote.
So, the first reason for pessimism about a revised notion of autonomy is that persons are often ill-equipped adequately to identify the social forces that shape their values, desires, and attitudes. The second reason for pessimism is that, even if people were able to identify those forces, there is little reason for thinking that they would be qualified to “examine how these forces shape their values, desires, and attitudes.” This is because such forces—and the interactions among such forces and the values, desires, and attitudes shaped by them—are unimaginably complex. Consider, for example, that Maiese and Hanna endorse the idea that “relationships among the component parts of social institutions could better be understood via an appeal to dynamical systems theory” (Maiese and Hanna 2019, 274; citing the work of Protevi 2009). Notoriously, the phenomena investigated by dynamical systems theory are complex and difficult to predict; expecting individuals—who are not sociologists, psychologists, anthropologists, or complexity theorists—to be capable of examining those forces and their effects seems overly ambitious.
Finally, the third reason for skepticism about the prospects for a revised notion of autonomy involves the implausibility of expecting individuals to “endorse some influences while rejecting and resisting others.” Recall Marcuse’s suggestion that “liberation necessarily appears to come from without and from above,” and that individuals “must be shown the ‘good road’ they are in search of.” If this is correct, then an individual’s endorsement of the “good road” is not evidence of autonomy; rather, it is evidence that a new paradigm has successfully replaced the old one.
THE PROMISE OF THE REPRESSION READING OF FALSE NEEDS
Given the untenability of the Heteronomy Reading, let us turn to the Repression Reading of the notion of false needs. According to the Repression Reading, false needs are those “which perpetuate toil, aggressiveness, misery, and injustice.” Marcuse doesn’t abandon the idea that false needs are the products of “particular social interests,” but in the Repression Reading the salient feature is the aims to which those social interests are directed—namely, that false needs are “products of a society whose dominant interest demands repression.”
The Repression Reading has a number of important implications, but I’ll focus on three. First, if the Repression Reading is correct, then—contra Marcuse himself—the notion of false needs does not give rise to the dilemma that plagued the Heteronomy Reading of false needs. This is because, on the Repression Reading, it is not incompatible with true needs that they be recognized only as a result of “liberation … from without and above.” On the Repression Reading, what makes a need false is not that it has “a societal content and function which are determined by external powers over which the individual has no control.” Rather, it’s that its content is directed toward the perpetuation of “toil, aggression, misery, and injustice.”
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A second important implication of the Repression Reading is that the status of some goal as satisfying a basic human need—such as adequate nourishment or adequate accommodation (cf. Maiese and Hanna 2019, 99)—might not be sufficient thereby to insure that the goal does not involve a false need (Cf. Cutts 2019). Suppose, for example, that I live in a society in which the only adequate housing that I can obtain is constructed out of environmentally harmful materials and under unfair labor conditions. In such a case, then even the attempt to meet my need for shelter would be deformed by the societal conditions in which I live. Marcuse seems to anticipate this point when he notes that, in the case of false needs, “their satisfaction might be most gratifying to the individual, but this happiness is not a condition which has to be maintained and protected if it serves to arrest the development of the ability (his own and others) to recognize the disease of the whole and grasp the chances of curing the disease.” (Marcuse 2013, 7)
Perhaps the most significant implication is that, on the Repression Reading, an individual’s endorsement of a goal, self-identification with a goal, or gratification or happiness at achieving a goal is not good evidence for that goal’s status as a true need. As Marcuse puts it, false needs remain false needs “no matter how much such needs may have become the individual's own, reproduced and fortified by the conditions of his existence; no matter how much he identifies himself with them and finds himself in their satisfaction.”
Marcuse’s Repression Reading Contra Maiese and Hanna
I concluded the previous section with the observation that an individual’s endorsement of a goal, self-identification with a goal, or gratification or happiness at achieving a goal is not good evidence for that goal’s status as a true need. In this section, I want to suggest that this implication of the Repression Reading represents a challenge to Maiese and Hanna’s notion of liberatory social institutions, institutions that conform to what Maiese and Hanna call the Collective Wisdom Thesis.
Maiese and Hanna characterize the Collective Wisdom Thesis as follows:
Collective Wisdom Thesis [CWT]: “some social institutions, working against the grain of standard, dystopian social institutions in contemporary neoliberal nation-states, make it really possible for us to self-realize, connect with others in a mutually aiding way, liberate ourselves, and be mentally healthy, authentic, and deeply happy” (Maiese and Hanna 2019, 71, emphasis in the original).
Maiese and Hanna depict social institutions that instantiate the CWT as the sorts of institutions toward which emancipatory political philosophy should be working.
In understanding collectively wise social institutions in this way, Maiese and Hanna only focus on the ways in which social institutions might impact individual minds. In the conclusion of their book, for example, they present their investigation of the Collective Wisdom Thesis as a way “to help . . . one another to dismantle our ideological and emotional walls, overcome our cognitive crises, and liberate our imaginations” and “to develop new means of engaging people’s emotions . . . so that they are able to have the sorts of valuable experiences that expand their perspectives, afford the development of flexible habits of mind, and prime their affective and practical capacities so that they can freely bring about the satisfaction of their true human needs” (Maiese and Hanna 2019, 310).
What these passages underscore is that Maiese and Hanna’s conception of the goods to be achieved by collectively wise social institutions is mentalistic. There is evidence for this in the characterization of CWT itself—in the suggestion that the measure of a cognitively wise institution is that it allows us to be mentally healthy, authentic, and deeply happy. There is further evidence in the concluding summary of the goals of
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pursuing cognitively wise institutions. These goals may be divided almost entirely into three categories, all of which are mentalistic:
Cognitive goals: dismantling ideological walls, overcoming cognitive crises, liberating imagination, developing flexible habits of mind
Emotional goals: dismantling emotional walls, engaging emotions, priming affective capacities
Experiential goals: having valuable experiences
By formulating the criteria for collectively wise institutions in terms of mentalistic criteria, however, Maiese and Hanna run afoul of the third implication of the Repression Reading of the notion of false needs. For, as Marcuse points out, it is possible for an institution to “become the individual’s own, reproduced and fortified by the conditions of his existence,” and to be such that “he identifies himself with [it],” (Marcuse 2013, 7) and for that institution nevertheless to involve a false need. In defense of Maiese and Hanna, one might respond that the specific sorts of mentalistic criteria associated by them with collectively wise institutions are nevertheless incompatible with false needs. There are at least two reasons why such a response is unpromising.
The first reason is that it is possible to imagine the existence of an institution satisfying all of the conditions that Maiese and Hanna delineate, but whose existence depends on the prevalence of widespread unjust conditions outside of the “real-world utopia” of the institution itself. For example, on the model of Hannah Arendt’s conception of the Athenian city-state, (Arendt 2013, p. 50) we could imagine a society in which those within the privileged class enjoy all of the cognitive, emotional, and experiential achievements that Maiese and Hanna associate with collectively wise institutions, but in which the existence of the privileged class itself depends on the existence of a “slave” class. While such an institution would seemingly satisfy Maiese and Hanna’s definition of a collectively wise institution, it would run afoul of Marcuse’s requirement that an institution must be rejected “if it serves to arrest the development of the ability . . . to recognize the disease of the whole and grasp the chances of curing the disease.”
The second reason is that Maiese and Hanna endorse the Solidarity Thesis:
Solidarity Thesis [ST]: a social institution instantiates CWT iff it “manifests robust solidarity via social production” (73, emphasis in the original)
On Maiese and Hanna’s view, a social institution involves solidarity only if (i) members of an institution share joint “executive” interest; (ii) there is—at least implicitly—“a reciprocal identification with and recognition from the group” (72); (iii) there is “a shared disposition to empathy”; (iv) conditions (i)-(iii) give rise to a goal-specific trust among members of the institution (Maiese and Hanna 2019, 72, emphases in the original). Note, however, that it is possible both for an institution to manifest robust solidarity and for that institution to consist of individuals suffering from what Maiese and Hanna term “cognitive walls” (i.e., “effective screen[s] against manifest reality and truth”): (i) “walls concerning [their] sense of individual identity as a person,” (ii) “walls concerning [their] sense of group identity as a ‘card-carrying’ member of some important social community or institution” (300, emphases in the original). To take one example, many of the insurrectionists of January 6, 2021 (i) shared a joint “executive” interest, (ii) identified reciprocally with and were recognized by the group, (iii) displayed a shared disposition to empathy with members of the group, and thereby (iv) exhibited goal-specific trust with other members of the group. If this is correct, however, then Maiese and Hanna would seem—contra reality!—to be forced to characterize the insurrectionists of January 6, 2021 as a collectively wise institution. Again, Marcuse’s Repression Reading would avoid such an unpalatable consequence.
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References
Arendt, Hannah. 2013. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Cutts, Joshua. 2019. “Herbert Marcuse and ‘False Needs.’” Social Theory and Practice 45, no. 3: 353–370.
Maiese, Michelle and Robert Hanna. 2019. The Mind-body Politic. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Marcuse, Herbert. 2013. One-dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society. London: Taylor and Francis.
Protevi, John. 2009. Political Affect: Connecting the Social and the Somatic. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Shieber, Joseph. 2019. “Expanding the Scope of Reflective Knowledge: From MINE to OURS.” Philosophical Issues 29, no. 1: 241-253.
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Joseph Shieber © 2024
