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Socio-psychological delegation of feeling and fictive identification play a role in the life of society, a role which indicates that they are a constitutive structural element of any healthy social organism. To be sure, in this case we are concerned with a special form of delegation or identification which is characterized by its positive, serious, and purposeful tone. This particular form presupposes a firm, lasting relationship between the partners of the interrelation, has as an objective the attainment of very definite purposes, and is based upon a more or less intensive cooperation of the “delegating” component. This conviction was expressed recently among others by Roger Caillois in regard to games, and its importance was especially emphasized.
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- Copyright © 1957 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)
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1. Roger Caillois, "Les jeux dans le monde moderne," Profils, No. 13, 1955; cf also "The Structure and Classification of Games," Diogenes, No. 12, 1955. One of the most inter esting conclusions of the author concerns the isolation offormer spectators of, and up to a cer tain extent participants in, races ("agôn"), games of chance ("alea"), and dramatic perform ances ("mimicry")—an isolation which is closely connected with the development of the technique of transferring; and it concerns also the increasing passivity of the masses who now no longer participate in any way, and also the increasing significance of that which Caillois terms "délégation," which goes hand in hand with this passivity. Such "delegation" is the transference offeeling from the passive spectator to the active hero. Caillois has felicitously set forth a phenomenon here which is of special significance, particularly within the framework of a diagnosis of socio-psychological disintegration, as well as for any general cultural pathol ogy. Caillois points out the regression of initiative, which is apparent in this increasing tend ency toward delegation—"une défaillance grave des ressources de chacun en initiative, en ambition et en imagination désintéressées" (p. 40)—and is rightly inclined to see in this a symptom of illness in a society which is no longer at the peak of flourishing. It will be reward ing to pursue this train of thought and these thought-provoking insights further in the direc tion indicated and especially in connection with the socio-psychological function of games, for here virgin territory lies before us.
2. It is already evident here that individuation is only a foreground and that behind it there stand numerous (polymere) super-individual configurations reaching out both spatially and temporally—configurations with their own proclivities and specific formative forces (nisus formativi according to Blumenbach), which are actualized only in single individuals and are effectual only through them; so-called "concealed heredity" (verdeckter Erbgang) is also closely connected with it. From this a new light also falls on the problematical phases of com prehensive socio-cultural totalities, such as modern culture-morphology has as its object of study. More detailed information concerning this is to be brought out in the book Kulturmor phologie-das Problem einer ganzheitlich-gestalthaften Geschichtsbetrachtung, which is now in preparation.
3. Cf. also the two brothers Jean-François (the decipherer of the Rosetta Stone) and Jacques-Joseph Champollion; cf. H. Hartleben, Champollion, 2 vols. (Berlin, Weidmann, 1906).
4. The effect of background (Folienwirkung) also plays a role here (Figur-Grund relation of the Gestalt—theory)—often a role purposely striven after, but this does not belong to the phenomenon of procuration as such.
5. Let it be noted here that heterosexual procuration in both directions (reciprocal), even in the specifically sexual complex of feelings and sensitivities, can be and perhaps always is an accompanying factor basically. Possibly a new approach to the difficult and complex problem of homosexuality could be gleaned from this perspective.
6. A celibate culture sustained only by men is therefore always a one-sided and conse quently a defective culture; this is also true of cultures in which the feminine element is tre mendously masculinized; cf. the ingenious remarks of Prince Karl Rohan in his book, Moskau, concerning the sociological effects of the artificial exclusion of the erotic element from the life of society in Bolshevik Russia in the twenties and early thirties! Defective, in some instances pathological, are also the "schistose cultures" in which the natural relation of heterosexual procuration is dissolved because of an all-encompassing emancipation of women. In such cul tures not only the relation of the two sexes to one another but also the specified function of each (i.e. based on a division of labor) is disrupted. The result is a depreciation in the total produc tiveness ofthe society in question, a depreciation which has a more and more ominous effect in the progressive stages, but which by virtue of this alone must not necessarily lead to ruin, but assuredly belongs to those factors which do bring it about. Thus viewed, heterosexual schism is a mark of illness or a symptom of disintegration, as has been described by A. J. Toynbee among others in his A Study of History (3rd ed., London, Oxford University Press, 1945), V, 35 f., 376 f., under the heading "Schism in the Body Social" and "Schism in the Soul," and by Pitirim A. Sorokin in S.O.S. : The Meaning of Our Crisis (Boston, 1951), pp. 83 ff.
7. Cf. E. Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, tr. by Ralph Manheim, Vol. III (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1953); H. Friedmann, Die Welt der Formen (Berlin, 1925); Weinhandl, "Die Symbolik der Ganzheit" in Blätter für deutsche Philosophie VI/ 1-2 (1932).
8. E.g. Leo Frobenius, Paideuma (1921).
9. Cf. L. Lévy-Bruhl, La Mentalité primitive (Paris, Alcan, 1922); cf. also H. Weinert, Dergeistige Aufstieg der Menschheit (Stuttgart, Enke, 1950).
10. [A satisfaction], which by virtue of the fact that it springs from an artistic stimulus is illusory, i.e. without a tangible object, evaporates into a vacuum, is totally fleeting, stands in no relation to the preceding nerve stimuli, and is dreadfully similar to onanism; and it is also closely related to the latter in its adverse results. The whole experiencing-complex in modern society can thus be described in reference to the amusement industry (and especially to the film industry) as a kind of spiritual onanism, as an artificial rousing of the passions of an impotent society void of experience, and as an artificial sham gratification of the appetites thus aroused.
11. In a discussion one can put up for debate the question whether the social forms such as the one that developed for example under the Ancien régime in France were desirable or necessary—theoretically one can naturally deny this, but this will not alter the situation, namely that such forms are forever created in practice. One cannot deny, however, that ac cording to their very nature they can only be the property of a narrow and exclusive social crust. Social forms, such as those of the American TV-civilization, can naturally be made common property for the broad masses—but the one is nevertheless Ancien régime and Rococo and the other 20th century and TV.
12. Not even 100 per cent technological perfection and mechanization of the world and the transformation of our culture into a robot-culture would remove this dilemma from the face of the earth, for as long as a modern robot cannot be invented who in perpetual motion begets by itself and sustains itself, there will always have to be social strata, which will be re quired to dedicate themselves to the construction, care, tending, and repairing of these ma chines, to the acquisition and preparation of the raw materials required for their construction, and to the acquisition and preparation of those energies indispensable for their operation, whether it be in the form of water power, coal, oil, solar or atomic energy.
13. Even Toynbee, who professes an outright socialistic standpoint (cf. loc. cit., IV, 191 ff. and passim), almost involuntarily let slip the question so intimidating for him, whether a high culture is possible only through the enforced labor of the masses; it is significant that he doesn't venture to answer it.
14. The Marxian class-struggle theory is also disposed of herewith and the ideal of a classless, or, more correctly expressed, of a one-class (proletariat!) society; each one of the above, seen from the point of view of procuration, is, to be sure, itself already the product of dis integration, just as the social resentment from which both have originated and on which they still feed is, too, a symptom of disintegration.
15. The idea of social procuration in this comprehensive meaning is also touched upon by Toynbee: "It is a universal condition of social life that the majority of the members of any given society should be perpetually extending the narrow radius of their personal lives by living vicariously—[per procuratorem I]-through the representative activities of a small num ber of their fellows" (ibid., I, 191); nevertheless he didn't pursue it any further; however, the idea seems to be implicitly suggested in his theory of the creative minorities and the mimesis of the non-creative masses in the social organism.
16. Concerning the views on sublimation cf. above, p. 19; cf. also Toynbee, ibid., III, 174 ff. ("Etheralization" as a psychological and socio-cultural phenomenon).
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