Understanding Structuralism, Life’s Meaning, and Progress

Posted on Mar 12, 2025 in Philosophy and ethics

Structuralism

Structuralism:

Structuralism adopts the concept of the “unconscious meaning” of social facts from Freud’s psychoanalysis. For Freud, certain physical symptoms (like paralysis of an arm) or mental phenomena (such as dreaming of wolves) were the conscious “expression” of emotional conflicts that the subject was unaware of.

These experiences are found unconsciously in the depths of our minds.

Objections to Structuralism

This faces two objections:

  1. If society imposes norms on its members, why do some members deviate from them? Why do they disagree and do what they want?

The transgression of rules, in essence, strengthens the social machinery:

  • It makes the limits of proper behavior visible.
  • It strengthens the bonds of those who do not transgress.
  • If offenders are punished, it reinforces the power of the standard.

However, this solution does not seem very convincing, as communities, by continually breaking rules, are put in danger.

  1. Structuralism and Marxism predicate an investigation that denies the very act of investigating.

The Marxist says that their behavior is determined by society and ignores the social meaning of what they do. Structuralism and Marxism claim for the social researcher what they deny to the subjects investigated.

The Meaning of Life

Why live?

Life must have meaning:

  • Intra-worldly sense (our kingdom is this world)
  • Transcendent sense (our kingdom is not this world)

Intra-Worldly Meaning

1. Intra-worldly sense:

The world is for the development, design, and pursuit of an ideal of human excellence, both personal and social.

Suffering has positive aspects:

  • It warns us of what threatens our physical well-being or our health.
  • It clarifies our hierarchy of values (we don’t know how much we wanted something until we lost it).
  • It brings out our heroic virtues in times of tension.

Death has positive aspects:

  • It creates solidarity with those who come after us (we do not all fit).
  • It ensures an expiration date for our ills.
  • It gives life an unusual intensity.


Transcendent Meaning

2. Transcendent meaning:

  • Moral evils: derived from the cruelty of the human heart. They are the result of human freedom.
  • Physical evils: natural disasters, epidemics. They are not evil because:
  1. They are a cause for the development of our understanding of reality.
  2. They state that the important thing is not in this world.
  3. They show that the love of God is to be without consideration.

Death comes as the moment of truth; in the afterlife, man reaches the fullness of his existence.

The Concept of Progress

Looking forward:

Notes on “the story of human progress?”

Progress:

  • Development of knowledge: knowing reality more and better.
  • Development of the technological power to transform reality: increasing power.
  • Knowledge and power in the service of justice.

Views on Progress

  1. No progress but repetition: history repeats itself.

The problems remain the same generation after generation (poor and rich).

The story takes place through an endless series of cycles that repeat endlessly the same sequence of events.

  1. No progress but decay: the story gets worse.

It is the position taken by those nostalgic for a past who may see many more values (respect for parents…).

Plato sees in history the progressive distancing of the Golden Age in which men were good people dedicated to philosophical wisdom.

  1. Progress is inevitable:

For Comte, the scientific understanding of reality and technological control of nature and society are the pillars of the final progress of humanity on Earth.

Technocracy: technological power.

According to Comte, the history of mankind goes through the following stages:

  • Theological philosophy that explains things by attributing them to causes external to themselves: the gods. It is an imaginative explanation that has evolved.
  • Metaphysical concepts to explain things by themselves internally (imaginative explanation of reality).
  • Positive: consider the scientific knowledge developed in accordance with the experimental method the only valid understanding of reality.

According to Marx, history is moving inexorably towards better. This involved the abolition of the social class struggle through the creation of a classless society, communist society: freedom, justice, and sharing.

Objections:

  • The horror of the Holocaust: showed that scientific and technological development is not matched with moral development (slaughter).
  • The ecological collapse calls into question the alleged unlimited nature of our power to transform nature (environmental destruction).