Masters of Suspicion

Seguramente nadie leerá esto, porque les dará mucho fastidio. Pero yo estoy feliz! Acabo de llegar a casa de mi clase de Filosofía y mi profesor me acaba de entregar el trabajo que le entregué la semana pasada con una gran "A" en la última página acompañada de un "Great!". Estoy demasiado feliz!


In general, suspicion is the condition of being uncertain about something that has very little evidence or not evidence at all, and that can be wrong. It is a restless state of mind that looks for the reasons that make people believe what they believe, the function that those beliefs play in their lives and why they believe them. Suspicion establishes that reality often wears a mask and that our ideas are not sovereign. The real reasons lie underneath the surface, the obvious; they lie underneath the ideology.

This way of thinking, which is evidenced in Nietzsche’s, Freud’s and Marx’s ideas, broke with the Enlightenment tradition and helped in the process of transformation and reorganization of society. Although Nietzsche, Freud and Marx present differences, they all try to find the causal forces that explain the real world and reveal its true meaning.

Modernism was a reaction against 19th century Victorianism. It brought a new way to approach the world and humankind by submitting to criticism and analysis the premises of that era. It represented a rejection to philosophical idealism because it was not empirical enough and it didn’t deal with the non-conscious dimension of man. Modernism kept its eye on the consequences of the technological revolution in people’s lives and paid less and less attention to religion. It also meant a more relaxed posture towards sexuality.

It is unquestionable that the Masters of Suspicion contributed with their ideas of justice, values, the mind, God, etc, to reshape the ground on which Modernism emerged.

Marx is suspicious of the ideas that dominate society. He says that those ideas justify unequal power because they are the ideas of the dominant class, which is the bourgeoisie. This creates a false kind of nationalism; it creates a false “we”. “We” is not all of us; “we” is just a class. This all leads to the idea of justice. For Marx, reality is that economic forces have total control over the working class, and their interests always prevail. The moral system on which society is built makes it possible for the masters to control and for the slaves to be controlled. Religion is only a means to lessen the misery of dehumanized people by the capitalists in their working places.

In order to understand this, one should be able to see things in the context of history and be based on a philosophy of history. Marx rejects Hegel’s idealism and speculation, and wants philosophy to be rooted on materialism. He only wants to look at empirical, verifiable facts of life.

Freud is suspicious of the idea of desire. He says that our present is connected to our past and that the things we think we want and know are not the real things we actually want and know, because there are non-rational drivers and impulses that affect our way of thinking and behavior. For Freud the unconscious mind flows free and has no sense of time and unity. We can only see it through its masks, such as: our dreams, which not only have a “manifest” content, but also a “latent” content that is hidden and contains the real meaning.
Religion only represents our wish to be taken care of and protected. God is a father-figure that keeps us from telling the real from what seems real.

Freud encourages us to see underneath the surface-level of things. He encourages us to explore beyond what is obvious and overcome that feeling of self-alienation in ourselves.

With his approach to the human soul, Freud evidently brings down the importance that reason used to have during the Enlightenment. He defies ideas that suggest that the nature of the mind can be understood by introspection, and proposes psychoanalysis as a tool to access the aspects of the unconscious.

Freud and Marx assume that the horizon has to be cleared for a more authentic world. They not only criticize the society they live in, but also try to present solutions by interpreting it. Freud thinks that the irrational forces that run our unconscious mind constitute the real reasons that explain our souls. The only way to understand human nature is to acknowledge these forces and accept them as a crucial part of our existence.

Marx thinks that the truth is that a little portion of society explodes and controls a big portion. The needs of the majority, which are always forgotten, are important and so culture as well as all forms of thought must serve the masses. He believes that the world is being run by a big lie called capitalism, that doesn’t respond to human nature, and that a new system that values the necessities of the majority has to be implemented.

I believe that Freud and Marx were great contributors to the advent of Modernism, even though some of the Marxist ideas are rooted on the Victorian tradition, like historicism. They were a product of their time, they are fascinating and I think it will always be shocking to read them.

It is very hard for me to imagine a classless society that works, for instance, or a system in which private property is preserved as well as it doesn’t interfere with the interests of the majority. What does that mean? Who establishes what those interests are?

I think it is very interesting that in order to explain the not so strong support that the Communist movement received, Marx talked about the “false consciousness”, which kept people from perceiving the horror that capitalism was. I imagine Freud and Marx having coffee, talking and discussing about the unconscious world.