The Nature of Political Theory

236 The Nature of Political Theory

also premised his whole philosophical system on a resonant distinction between
the vital process of the ‘élan vital of life’ or ‘real duration’ (which could never be
grasped by intellectual manifolds or endeavours) and the mechanistic processes of
thought and the surface consciousness of everyday existence (which distort reality).
Thought, in this context, always fails to grasp the becoming and flux of real life.
The same theme also appears in Williams James’s writings in his distinction between
the ‘stream of consciousness’ (James was the first to coin this latter term) and the
pragmatic uses of concepts that actually guide us through the daily routines of life.
A similar distinction also occurs in the idealist philosopher F. H. Bradley, whose
metaphysics is again premised upon a fundamental distinction between ‘immediate
experience’ (which incorporates absolute reality), as against the often feeble and
highly partial intellectual attempts to grasp that reality. This is the core of Bradley’s
distinction between ‘appearance’ and ‘reality’. A similar idea can also be found in
psychoanalysis (in fact some see a close relation between Freud’s basic ideas and
Nietzsche’s), in the distinction between the ‘unconscious’ (an idea that was being
used long before Freud) and the impotent distortions of our conscious intellectual
faculties.^4 Closer into the twentieth century, a parallel distinction can be seen in
structuralist arguments in linguistics and anthropology, in writers such as Saussure
and Levi-Strauss, on the basis that the surface of speech (parole) is distinct from the
deep reality structure of language (langue). A parallel idea is also present in Heidegger
(who will be returned to), in his fundamental distinction between on the one hand
‘Being’, and on the other hand ‘Being in thought’ or the ‘whatof Being’; the latter is
an idea dominating Western metaphysics from the Greeks onwards, which in essence
distorts the reality of Being. In many ways, Heidegger’soeuvresare premised on
this simple but influential distinction. Reality again continuously eludes our often
instrumental intellectual grasp.^5
Moving to the second question: do our intellectual structures actually give us any
insight into the ‘reality’ of this becoming or flux? Nietzsche again is not alone here
in thinking that our intellectual endeavours in fact donotprovide any fundamental
insight. Why should they? If all we know is what we intellectually construct and
constitute, then, asking if our views are true or false is pointless. To think otherwise is
to be in thrall to an older foundational metaphysics that identifies reality asotherthan
ourselves, that is, some standard or template to match up with outside or ‘deep inside’
ourselves. The answer of other late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century thinkers
mentioned earlier varies, although most are in accord with Nietzsche’s answer—that
the deeper sense of life and reality always eludes our intellectual grasp. This would
certainly be the case for Bergson, Bradley, Freud, Heidegger, or James.
The difference between Nietzsche and the latter thinkers is revealed in answering the
last question: does this deeper elusive reality—call it élan vital, stream of conscious-
ness, deep cultural or linguistic structure, immediate experience or becoming—have
any meaning that can be unscrambled through our intellectual endeavours? Nietz-
sche’s answer here does reveal a quite idiosyncratic position. For the majority of the
other thinkers, including Heidegger, wedohave some pathway to reality. We can
unscramble the deep structure. The unscrambling may not be by conventional paths,