A Review of Mr. Desh Subba's work by Abdullateef Sadiq, Theoretician and Generalist Writer, Nigeria
Let's begin with a story.
A king sent for a Man who he heard feared no one. Well, the king hearing that, although he has won many battles and made waste to land inhumanly, killed people and slaves and closed ones without second thought. The king summoned him immediately. Having on the top of his fence, heads of conquered kings and great rebels as trophies, with their wives as his concubines. Firstly, the king tries to confirm if the man knew what he has done by asking the man that fears nothing (let's call him F) if he knew him, the terrible king and all the stories of his ruthless and blood thirsty nature.
Mr F said, 'yes of course, I know you and heard all about you, and so what? You only conquered lands for fear that other kings might dominate you, or we might see you as inferior, or that according to the tradition of kingship and it's mythology, a display of brutality and war must satisfy the myth and unconscious forces of our custom and traditions. Also my lord, your imagination also is your master, and if it means by filling up a large field with human heads to prove over your inferiority complex of your personality type, you would do so. My lord, all these, you do, because of the system and instincts of fear revolving around your present life progress and spiritual station. If your position torments you, then your fears and it's expression by the super ego or ambition are your persona in this throne which it might not be your cosmic harmony.'
But the king, fearing more that someone knew something he never wished anyone knew. That someone knew his fear. A personal issue and subjective. But not yet. An objective and social issue lies also. " If People knew that the King wasn't feared, so they too were afraid that if that is so, their whole world view was a lie".
But the king, must satisfy his inner peace to still be the king. He had to prove to himself that all creatures feared him. He inquired if Mr F had a family or friend or loved one. They said no. So next was torture and starvation. But the man proved to enjoy pain, and welcomed the will to death, so even hunger was something he welcomed. His hands were cut, but he had nothing to lose. He had a disorder which made him feel no pain. The king was in fear, for even if he banished him out of existence the fact already existed that someone never feared him. The king committed suicide, because he was afraid to live life as such with such a fact. The king wasn't FEARLESS.
Here below are some remarks I made.
Now, I Present my Reflections on Mr Desh Subba's book on the 'Philosophy of Fearism" (Abdullateef Sadiq, Theoretician and Generalist Writer, Nigeria)
1. It's is, to use an institutional metaphor, an anthropology of the various human conditions and how they act and react to them that arouse fear. Sure, I skipped other early chapters because I belief we know the basics. The hierarchy and systems of schema such as an organization, the relationship of the mind to objects and realities that have an affect hold on him resulting to fear. They having the "appearance" based in the evolutionary epoch, mode of living (or production in Marxist terms) and culture of religion, philosophy, civilization (science, art and technology).......all masking the various modes of fear. But at the end, you tend to make a classification of fear. The dispensable, the gradation (minimum or maximum) and the one that perhaps seems to be innate (such as sickness, death, overwhelming of cosmic force and uncertainty of time).
"if you really want to make a field or a discipline of "Fearism" you would need to systematize the whole discourse"
2. On your use of concept and categories. You take the unconscious as an existing and autonomous realm. Although, with your use of some "Asian or Eastern" (I don't clearly agree with such demarcation as the history of thought has led me to believe) philosophies that unconscious is put in relation with some mysteries hidden as forces yet conceptualized but intuited by feeling of cosmic/material rhythm and sensual mastery of the body and environment (hence the "Asian"). This step, if I am correct in reading you is accepted to me as far as it remains open as a conjecture and to be tested by experience. There are many mysteries which I am sincere not to deny.
But the "idea" of post modernism and postmodern thinkers at least I might accept that Derrida took such a pledge, but not with Foucault whose text you lodge into such matrix. If you read his "Archaeology of knowledge" and also his "The Order of Things" (where he made some empirical analysis of the instability of "isms" and the arbitrariness of sciences and programs as "Modes of Discourse" each with its strategy of "Formation of Objects" you would see that by inference he would not be classified as such or even imply any post modernism). To confirm this, just see the second chapter of the "Archaeology of Knowledge". Perhaps the best way to put this is Foucault reply to Derrida critique of his 'History of Madness', this was imposed in his other edition as a reply to Derrida letter. It shows the difference and also that foucault doesn't practice philosophy neither sees it as a foundation neccessary for knowledge;
"What I have tried to show (but it was probably not clear to my own eyes when I was writing the History of Madness) is that philosophy is neither historically nor logically a foundation of knowledge; but that there are conditions and rules for the formation of knowledge to which philosophical discourse is subject, in any given period, in the samemanner as any other form of discourse with rational pretension." APPENDIX III Page 578. Routledge Publisher. Ed. By Jean Khalfa.
Also on your use of categories, perhaps, if you really want to make a field or a discipline of "Fearism" you would need to systematize the whole discourse, but I understand why the text is like that, with its literary structure still leaving windows here and there, because as you made clear in the beginning that other works and findings in different areas and by different people are making progress towards that "ism". That means they are under the research program of "Fearism". Well, the only addition I might say is that, it should be open to criticism and falsification of the concept any time, experience is the only thing that contradicts it's own results. This would help to keep an attitude of objectivity and awareness of bias.
3. On findings, you made (especially at your ending notes), an elaborate clinical and medical collections of observations, studies and professional reports of the conditions of life which fear is actualized either from a psychic, bodily, environmental (or "natural") and institutional source. That agreed and it is corroborated by many psychological, sociological and philosophical (beyond, Jasper, existentialist, Nietzsche and psychoanalysis schools) works I have tried to read to the best of my time.
COMMENTS
1. Your work helps to bring to Man the unconscious (which in strict psychological epistemology is just the mental process, habits and the contemporary and historical institutions known and unknown that have a grip on our social fabric of culture and life, hence the mystical feeling of it) workings and it's varieties to the consciousness of Man. By making it clearly, showing its various historical forms and also how even in the superstructure maintained by various elites and ruling class whatever their realm (science, legality, spirituality or politics and art) the idea of fear is almost innate and might (and is used) for the betterment of society or to its detriment or exploitation. I applaud this remarkable achievement. This step I believe, in your own version is quite novel and made apparent for those who wish to know and take life serious.
2. Another progress is it's collection of wealth of facts and making notifications here and there in different fields of discourse how "fear" relates them together. Also, I would add that a progress was made (also, as far as I have seen, a novel one indeed,) is the skill of making an elaborate classification of various feilds of human experience and also animal experience (for example on your analysis of fear in organism from micro to others as they adapt, feed and react to environment, but, whatever the notion or "nature" of animal mind might be still remains a mystery.) This was done at the beginning of your book which from there you took on the life or nature of consciousness basing it not on discourse or "knowledge" or "experience" but on what I might surely go with George Santayana as "Animal Faith". An elaborate philosophical discourse of the fact of consciousness playing a minute role and only called upon in the existence of animal life for survival and purposive (problem solving sure, a sign of "fear" also I think) reason can be found elsewhere. For example, to be found in the first two chapter of Alfred North Whitehead's "The Function of Reason" and also the second section of his cosmology of "Process of Reality".
Again in the work of that forgotten sociologist and philosopher L.T. Hobhouse's first part of "Development and Purpose: An Essay Towards a Philosophy of Evolution". Where we see on "conation" as the organic reaction and action towards an impulse but through adaptation it gets purposive (hence the adventure of conscious life beginning, for consciousness even in everyday experience is aroused to respond with the power of language for 'higher animals' like us, it deals with the discourse of essence related to the aim). See William Mcdoughal's "Social Psychology" to see how this description finds its form into the matrix of the whole social fabric.
"A work like Mr Desh Subba's, is surely deserving our serious attention especially if we choose to deal with it without the tradition of verbal magic and the cult of terminologies which are a true hindrance to fruiltful intellectual progress Indeed, a work to be revered."
Comments
Note: I just found a book review of Trans Philosophism (Desh Subba, 2021) by Sadiq as well (see also above). Here is an excerpt from the review:
INTRODUCTION
Here goes Mr. Desh Subba again after his book “Philosophy of Fearism,” [2014] where he expounds (I have discussed that critically somewhere else) the basic arguments regarding the role, structure, and function of fear throughout the varieties of human experience. The task he set himself there was to bring to the foreground the structure and dynamics of fear throughout the world of human experience and speculations and as they find their practical purpose or utility in the material organization of the external/objective “world.” He takes the pain to classify the broad categories of the human experience of fear in whatever aspects.
And we should thank him for his sincere approach to thought, which can be seen in that book and also this book to be considered (“Trans Philosophism”) by his simplistic use of language, less metaphors and figure of speech, and also by the well reference to authorities and thinkers as to give evidence for the arguments he sets forth step by step.
THE AIM OF MR DESH SUBBA’S WORK
In this work, known as Trans Philosphism, Mr. Desh Subba tends to go a further step. He realizes that the value of thought and its meaningfulness if it is not to remain a mere play of words and empty discourse, must make a strategy and a framework for such mental “product” to shape. Of elucidating, in reality, the world of ideas it suggests to our minds. Here perhaps we could say that he realizes what Marx and Engels wrote in the “German Ideology” on the “Thesis on Feurbach” that the role of speculation and thought is to change the state of the world itself, not just to make a hypothesis and mere play of discursive formation of objects (thanks to Foucault for elaborating such about the fields of discipline): for how better can it be done and how better even if we are pragmatics or “Popperians” (by testing theories based on falsification) in knowing the soundness of our thoughts and conjectures than to put them to the practical test of everyday life? That’s why Marxism has the nature of tactics, propaganda, and criticism as its aspect of mental activities because it has been realized that thought or principles cannot be dissociated from practice for even the material basis of the “ideas” we are dealing with in the “realm” of thought have conditions based on real social relations (to add to this lest we forget that the psyche is also conditioned by the organic structure and situation of the body and environment too).
All these can be seen as Mr. Desh Subba himself says that he is dealing with the doctrines of Marxism, Post-modernism, Existentialism, Criticism, Sociology, Ecology, Politics, Science, and Language. All these, in whatever form they appear, necessarily demand to participate in the movements that shape world affairs by expounding and propagating their thoughts and theoretical frameworks. Here goes the plain fact that he set himself unto the task of not neglecting his philosophy of Fearism and not going against philosophy itself (which would have been a contradiction and also, as the title of the book might tempt many to assume as such). But instead, elaborate on the role of fear in the everyday living experience and how “Fearism” has a right to participate in shaping and guiding present world problems by engaging in the currents of political life itself.
The book has seven sections in the whole and thirty-six also in total in the first four sections. Followed by three other chapters respectively in the last three concluding chapters and each with a single part in themselves. Also, again, respectively, the previous three sections have dealt with the argument that fear precedes essence, a challenge to post-modernism, and finally, some miscellaneous topics related. And as it is apparent, these three sections deal with some critical inquiry towards some fundamental principles which might be needed as one reads the earlier parts of the book from the author himself....
CONCLUSION
What have I done now? Just like all writing, it bursts forth like a broken dam whence only after what the mind brings forth (whatever the nature of association and causation concerning the entity or object which such attempt to understand find their purposive “structure; for if we speak of “cause” and “effect,” it must be about a given reality and the trail of facts and judgment <the process> which brings such reality to our consciousness). Perhaps, by a survey of what I have written above, it appears to be an examination of the structure of Mr. Desh Subba’s book with some description of what the reader should expect and perhaps how to navigate his or herself on the work.
As I have said before, Mr. Desh Subba is an author of sincerity in style and argument in dealing with the facts he is about. Hardly can you catch yourself while reading him with some blinding light of allegory or deep mystical feeling. No! Hardly can you find such an instance in this or the other book about “Fearism” itself. And I will stress enough that this should be the way authors should write without giving a false appearance of sophistication and complexity; for if we are to deal with philosophical arguments and nothing else, I see no other better way than control of language and clarity of statements and references (here, I make warm praise of Dr. R. Micheal Fisher for taking into consideration these aspects and styles of Desh Subba while serving as the editor and interpreter).
What shall be said of Fearism and its praxis form elaborated in Mr. Desh Subba’s “Trans Philosophism” is not just a matter of a one-person view. It is to me too early to make any judgments about it at all, for it needs to be seriously discussed and also be reviewed in the light of different fields of experience, discourse, and research to come to terms with the various arguments and suggestions entailed in Mr. Desh Subba works. Perhaps, that’s why we can see that in both books (but especially and most importantly that of “Philosophy of Fearsim”), we find many fields of research open, many suggestions, proposals, novelty, and points of view, and finally, an array of facts classified from various aspects of life and activities in the framework and theoretical analysis of Mr. Desh Subba’s project. Yes! All philosophies and scientific speculations are projects or, say, “research programs” if they are not to remain abstract and empty words or perhaps beneficial for propaganda and rhetoric (and if that be so, they should be taken as such for a given proposition or problem solving for they lack any reference to concrete reality in the linguistic qualities which they have their being).
For the Full Review go to, https://taffds.org/11605-2/
ABDULLATEEF A SADIQ (Theoretician and Generalist Writer)
Maxmecuryxt901@gmail.com
Written in Nigeria on March 1st to 4th. [2023]
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Desh Subba (2021) wrote, "Throughout this book, I have attempted to come out of the den [re: Plato's cave] to get into a new world....I hope to reveal something new....I present the new life and the new world through a Fearism perspective. To do so, I have compared it to Marxism, postmodernism, political science, psychoanalysis, phenomenology, and existentialism. It is new path for a new century...". Fisher (2021) in Editor's Commentary to this book, wrote, "I'm glad to have been asked by Subba to read his latest provocative work....Like the above examples, there are many poignant lines and statements by Desh Subba in his new book. They shine and cut through the darkness and dullness of lives lived without a lot of depth of meaning." (p. xvii).
Subba, D. (2021). Trans philosophism: Trans philosophism doctrine on Marxism, postmodernism, existentialism, criticism, sociology, ecology, politics, science and language. Xlibris.
This interesting story told, reveals that even the pursuit of "fearless" can be fear-based and is not really what it claims. We still have not as humanity, stories of discernment that guide us to inquire deeper into the nature of fear(lessness) adequately, and to discover that behavioral outcomes that seem like they are fearless are only the surface of a much deeper needed understanding of fearlessness. That systematic classification is part of what I have brought to the philosophy of fearism (a la Subba).
Sadiq also brings forth worthy thoughts on consciousness and the interplay of experience and knowledge--and ultimately the human thirst for power. The ethics of such interplay is still what we need to pay more critical attention to. Michel Foucault does help here in analyzing the power flow in regimes of "truth" (so-called) in discourses through history. I see that Sadiq is critical that Subba has mis-placed Foucault as "postmodern" thinker. Perhaps, and perhaps not. A case could be made that Foucault carries some postmodern temperament into his critique of modernism (the age of Reason) etc., and in that way is postmodern but perhaps Sadiq is by contrast saying that Foucault is not fully poststructuralist-postmodern (like a Derrida)--and, in that regard I would agree. Foucault kept integrated in his thought (and loose "philosophy" of knowledge) a theoretical embrace of structuralist elements from pre- and modernist thinking--as Foucault was less inclined to throw out structuralism as anti-structuralists (i.e., postmodern-poststructuralists) did. On that view, I am more a Foucault-type thinker myself, seeing that there is some value and truth in structuralist theories.