Background of the study
Lefebvre in his book on Production of Space argued that space is created by human in which they make their lives. These are shaped by interests of classes, experts, the grassroots, and other contending forces such as interlinkage of geographic, environment, symbolic meanings and routines of life. Space is neither simply inherited from nature nor determined by laws. Space is an abstract which represents the use of value, emerged out of the felt needs and urges of daily life.It is produced and reproduced through human intentions regardless of the outcomes. Space itself is a production or vice versa for instance economies produce spaces, besides producing goods and services depending on the environment, alterations of nature and geographical of locations.
Lefebvre’s bring space into marxism basis of capitalism which shapes space not just to achieve ideological results or to sustain appropriate conditions for production on other spheres but creates a market space whose frequent rebellious movement reflected the complement for innovation, responsive arrangement and rise of homogenization among the capitalist that saved them from extinction. Lefebvre observes that within this space the pursuit of use versus exchanges values push the capitalist globally and into outer space that it threatens nature itself. He argued that certain goods that were once scarce have become abundant and vice versa. However, the very foundation, namely land, space, town and country were left out or overlook by not only the economic sphere but was even make worst by political sphere.
Lefebvre’s called to create new spaces that required an alignment between recreated macro structures of politics and economy on the one hand and everyday life on the other. This is to be carried out by pressurizing from the local levels or grassroots (opposition) where it will confront the state in its role as organiser of space to counter against the strategies, plans, and programmes imposed from above.
The theme of the study
Lefebvre is broadly perceived as a Marxist thinker who made a critical contribution to the inquiry of time and history. All through his written work, Lefebvre grasped on the thoughts of Heidegger to comprehend our times however not something which could remain on. Space is delivered in two ways as a social arrangement (mode of production) and mental development (conception) He contended that Heidegger’s theory on how the world is assaulted by technology, is critical to investigate of how space is created and experienced.
For Lefebvre, Heidegger demonstrates the best and the most exceedingly bad of life advanced from the earlier period and foresight about the future . His work on the essence of innovation and its connection to the modern world is an importance. Both understood that it may not be conceivable to tackle the issues of logic from inside theory, however that something else may be required. Lefebvre, in this way, depicts a large number of his best-referred to thoughts, for example, the examination of the generation of space, and the examination of every day as a metaphilosophy.
Lefebvre was political in the wide sense as demonstrated in his written work against Stalinism and opinion on political topics of space, design, and spatial arranging. He talks about thories of state and examinations of state in the present day world where the Marxist thoughts should be identified with contemporary issues, for example, the state, the relations amongst financial and political variables, the issues postured by development and improvement, towns and nation and so forth and essential works on nationalism, the legislative issues of contrasts and citizenship which are to a great extent obscure.
Heidegger notion on Christian Theology
Theology is considered as the interpretation and elaboration of convictions which are acknowledged as given, and theologian more often than not feel obliged to translate emphatically of their religous traditon. The philospher of religion is will undoubtedly acknowledge as genuine the convictions of their religious traditon, yet he can’t work in segregation from these traditons, beacuse there lies the object of his study is to be found. It would be extremely troublesome if not unimaginable for the philospher to deliver an altogether a new religion, he should rather manage what as of now exists, in spite of the fact that he is allowed to change this religion to an impressive degree.
The theologian is been the guardian of religious convention, he has much to gain from the thinker with respect to the comprehension of reality including God and the perfect and human relationship, however he additionally has something to instruct to the philospher to be specific how and why religion has showed itself the way it has in his own religion custom. As to heidegger’s, philosophy specifically, numerous christian scholars have discovered his idea helpful for their explaination of christian convictions with exceptional refernce to the way of intuition (nature of thinking) and language. Heidegger is reluctant to investiagte the importance of his thoughts for philosophy yet he makes an exemption to this rule in his evaluate of metaphysics.
The connection of ‘Being’ towards man, which Heidegger portrays as far as relevation is like the christian comprehension of God’s connection to man. In spite of the fact that it would apppear that Heidegger has appropraited a number of these thoughts from christain religious philosophy, his non-metaphysical reinterpretation of these thoughts can be acknowledged by the scholar as a novel commitment to the advancement of christian religious philosophy
The significant segment of Heideggerian philosphical religious philosophy , as with any philosophy, would be the idea of god. As we have seen, Heidegger has nothing positve to say in regards to God. Be that as it may, his criticsms of the otherworldly idea of God as the supreme being, the primary the most astounding quality and so forth have animated scholars to develope non metapysical ideas of god.
Heidegger’s philosphy is significant for the reinterpretation of different components of christian religious philosophy, for example, Jesus christ, the congregation, ethical quality, administrations and so forth should be left to the scholars themselves to choose. His treatment of religious subjects is significant for philosophy and for philosphy of religion and to the degree that his depictions of traditonal philosophy, man and god are precise , they should be absorbed by the scholar. Thus, the full significance of heidegger’s philosphy and philosophy as they cooperate to facilitate the improvement of the religious conciousness of man.
Heidegger’s on Hermeneutic Phenomenology of Science
Martin Heidegger has assessed Kant’s perspective in connection to transcendentalism uniquely in contrast to his own particular philosophical point of view. Heidegger contended the issue of experience emerges basically bacause man’s goes beyond himself and in him there is subjectivity then again. He contended that man’s going beyond or transcendence is because of restriction or limitation. Human knowldge is made out of two components knowns as quick intuiton and universalizing of judgements. The former is open as it comprises in an essential acceptance and the latter as that human comprehension as not the maker of those object but rather it just binds together the distinctive idea. He utilized Kant thought of man’s limitations in the transcendental circle of learning to express the essence of his principle (limits of individual). Heidegger did not concede the cenrtal part of science in the space of philosphy. He contended that its essential part is to uncover the embodiment (essence) of man. The role of man can’t be acknowledged without a detailed investigation of the essence of man in this present reality. Along these lines, we have not way out but rather to anlyse the domain of the metaphysics of man.
For Heidegger logic is no more a matter of theoritical reflection or exploratory investigation yet a dynamic inquiry. He claimed that science does not think, restricts thought and sense guided reflection to the reasonable, calculative task of western innovative space and progressing of science. We should permit ourselves to wind up required being referred to that look for what no innovation can discover. Hencethforth, Heidegger basic philosophy of science is to keep the inquiry open and that is to make the inquiry problematical.
Heidegger’s criticism of philosophical approach to Science and technology
Inoder to know how things are, instead of how one needs them to be, science seems to portray the way the world is, instead of giving perspectival and arranged examination. Likewise, technology , on the other is comprehended as simply connected science, that is, the ordering by instrumental reason of nature revealed unbiasedly by theoritical reason, undermines to threatens man into requesting as assumed the single method for uncovering and in this manner blocks different methods for comprehension.
Modern science may go before technology by a couple of hundreds of years, yet it prepares the path for innovation since it as of now has the embodiment of technology, as it establishes information on the conviction of subjective representation (i.e., objectivity). Scientific objectivity consequently prepares the route for the embodiment of innovation to hold influence. That is, science and innovation start with an priori projection of an idea of nature, much as old (ancient) techne started with a thought of the thing to be created. Modern science considers material science(physics) as items, that is spatiotemporally (relating to space and time) stretched out bodies subject to a intelligibility of powers measurable ahead of time.
In both science and technology, man is thrown against the large excesssive amount of nature. His examinations of science and innovation propose that there is something beyond both that is reducible to neither. Science and technology are ways of uncovering that venture an elucidation (an “as-structure”) onto nature. Common substances i,e natural entities are translated most importantly as item or object for science, and as asset (resources) for technology. For Heidegger, science and technology are profoundly complicit and inseperable methods for the comprehension of nature.
Heidegger argued that we cannot escape the fate of technology, however, he conveys that technology can work against us. By using technology, modern man faces a more dangerous situation than the technological destruction of nature and civilization. Posting our situation as a problem that must be solved by technological too. The threat is not a problem for which there can be a solution but an existence or reality (the fact that it has already existed) condition from which we can be saved. Consequently, he distinguishes the present or existing problems caused by specific technology such as pollution, global warming, extinction of species, the heap of garbage accumulated over time etc , from the devastation that would result if technology solved all the problems. The danger is not the destruction of nature or culture but a precaution or prevention in our way of thinking as the understanding of being. This being is the social practices containing an understanding of what it is to be a human self, interpretation of what it is to be a thing and those defining what fits into the society together add up to an understanding of being.
We view technology as the way we currently known as tools and instruments but for Heidegger is seeking the technology essence (the technological understanding of being). We will not find essence if we think conceptually but rather we need to find metaphysically, more deeply in terms of philosophical on the basis of whenever there is an effect, there is a cause. Technology is a tool, so whenever tool or instrument reigns, there reigns causality, the idea was given by Aristotle usually known as the four causes. However the use of causality concept for Heidegger does not apply to modern technology. Modern technology goes beyond causality. Unlike the earlier times when the man brings forth, today man challenges forth; in other words we use and manipulate resources that nature has given to us, to manufacture, to create and to reveal. We can prove this by looking into windmill which is a man-made device where the idea of challenging does not apply, instead the wind is left as it, yet we use energy. The windmill satisfies human without harming nature. However, Heidegger argued that we need more of this technology so that men can challenge to meet the other requirements or one’s desire which can be either for destruction or a peaceful purpose.
When we challenge resources we always want to yield maximum at a minimum expense where we set optimization as our goal. This is where Heidegger used the term standing reserve to describe how men perceive resources, men have no longer see as what actually they are but instead see them as the way to fulfil their needs. The resources such as rivers are no longer see as natural tendency but rather see as the power that will give to him. There he sees as standing reserve and that we become very narcissistic in recent generation.
Heidegger utilises and depends on upon modern technological devices. He is not opposing and he does not advocate a return to the pre-technological world. Instead, Heidegger argued that there is a way we can keep our technological devices and remain true to ourselves. A technological understanding of being is our destiny and not fate. One can have technology without the technological understanding of being, so it becomes clear that that the technological understanding of being can be disassociated from technological devices. In order to fully comprehend what technology means and their commonality, we need a free relationship. Heidegger seeks on how we can recognise and thereby overcome our restricted, wilful modern clearing precisely by recognizing our essential receptivity. We can break out of the technological understanding of being whenever we find ourselves gathered by things rather than controlling them. When we saw a tree in the forest we actually see them as firewood and animals as meat.We completely destroying earth because we continued to enframe our standing reserve, where enframing reigns there is danger in the highest essence. For instance, we used the bridge to help us in crossing the brook from the village into the field, network of long distance traffic and others maximum yield. This helps us to understand the technological functioning that make us sensitive to the technological understanding of being as the way our current clearing works, so that we experience our role as a receiver, and the importance of receptivity, thereby freeing us from our compulsion to force all things into efficient order.
The danger becomes to save us when we grasped the danger. Heidegger argued that once we recognise the technological understanding of being for what it is i.e the historical understanding , one gains a free relation to it. We neither push forward technological efficiency as our goal nor always resist it. Heidegger also argued that the efficient use of technology by using the term “Releasement” towards things, as getting the most out of ourselves so long as we do not assume that efficiency for its own sake is the only ends for man. For Heidegger, the technological understanding of being are show itself and at the same time withdraw, by which he called a mystery. Releasement towards things and openness to the mystery belong together. This gives us a capable of dwelling in the world with new ground and foundation upon which we can stand and endure in the world of technology without being threatened by it.
That’s why each time Heidegger talks of releasement and the saving power of understanding technology as a gift where he then goes on to talk of the divine. Modern technology has nothing to do with tools. Technology has increasingly knocked out man and uproots him from the earth. We do not longer need atomic bombs since the uprooting of man is already taking place. This uprooting is the end of everything including human unless thinking or poetizing ( the radical transformation that unified the community) once again regain their nonviolent power.
Technology should be seen as a possibility to preserve the essential nature of human being where the cultural practices unified the people. By following such practices the new understanding of reality which radically transforms over the change of time and technology can save us. Marginal practices such as friendship and drinking alcohol with friends might be insignificant and inefficient for time being. However, at some point of life these practices could have come together in a cultural paradigm and become central and efficient in our life. Such a new object or event which gives us a new understanding of reality was called a new God. According to Heidegger the idea of God might sound unrealistic, but like our historical essence which brings the community, we need a new paradigm healthy enough to give new meaningful directions to our lives.
Lefebvre Debates with Heidegger
For Lefebvre, Heidegger shows the best and the worst of life, evolved from the earlier period and foresight about the future. His work on the essence of technology and its relation to the modern world is significant. Both of them realized that it may not be possible to solve the problems of philosophy from within philosophy, but that something else might be required. Lefebvre, therefore, describes many of his best-known ideas, such as the analysis of the production of space, and the investigation into the every day as a metaphilosophy. Lefebvre argues that one of the many problems with Heidegger’s work on ordinary life is that he didn’t not recognize the artistic and revolutionary potential transformation of the everyday. In order to change the world, we all must change the life. A revolution cannot just be a hope to change the political work force or organizations, it should change like the way we change the colonised capitalism.
In Lefebvre critique of everyday life he argued that human, in reality, men avoids not only their will but also their consciousness from what they have made themselves . They do not realise that the world is their work rather they are left alone. The notion of everyday life provides an essential context for the work on urban and rural societies in analysing the time and space, and perhaps to a lesser extent on the question of the state where power also occupies the space which generates. Thus, the everyday life is the very soil on which the great architectures of politics and society rise up.
The political town directed, secured and exclude the encompassing territory and organized things such as drainage and irrigation to work on the land. Lefebvre argued that the city was parasitic on the countryside which only provides non-productive functions such as military, administrative, political, and it was only with the advent of capitalism that the city substitutes the countryside in respect of productive work. The advances in technology , for example, techniques or machine used for farming, have shaped the rural as much as parallel developments to that of urban. Lefebvre on having same ideas like Heidegger recognizes that modern technology dominates nature rather than working with it. On one hand, the countryside disappears, by the establishment of industrialisation for agricultural production which deliberately leads to the disappearance of peasants. On the other, it ruined the earth and destroyed the nature. As urbanization stretch out over to the countryside, it creates peripheries of towns and destroys old or traditional origin villages. So, in this way the urbanisation has gradually degraded and challenged the nature by this domination, which is not a mere appropriation.
Lefebvre acknowledges the importance of Heidegger in this regard but develops his deeper understanding in more concrete analyses . Lefebvre sees a distinction between the works of art in the rural and the production of products in the urban in which the urban are results of industrialization, the capitalist mode of production and the boomed of mechanism and calculation.
Lefebvre argued that the city is the suitable place to display work of art through an appropriation of the people and challenging the dominant system and political arrangements. However, it should not be forgotten that the urban environment is directly affected by state planning. As Lefebvre argued that the state is actively involved in housing construction, new towns, or the so-called urbanisation which is part of both ideology and considered as rational practice of the state
In urban, the relation of production was equally modified in reality although it is not able to transform them. The productive forces or powers do not only work inside space yet on space and space equally constrains them. As Lefebvre argued that space and the governmental issues of space express social relations but also react to them. The city itself was born out of relations of production, that is the contradictions within them not from the mode of production, nor superstructures or ideology, nor productive forces themselves. The modern city is not simply the peaceful place of production or the place where capital is concentrated, but urban marvels or remarkable development profoundly reshape the apparatuses of production namely production of forces, relations of production, disagreement between productive forces and relations of production.
Lefebvre distinguishes further a way in which we live space, by introducing social space which is further removed from the abstractions of technocracy and planning. Social space as space where we encounter and live unlike the geometrical space. It also distinct from standard geographical ways of viewing it.
Both Lefebvre and Heidegger realized that the Cartesian comprehension of space as measurable and controllable permits social and technological domination. Similarly like Heidegger, Lefebvre suggested a distinction between the domination and appropriation of nature, with domination leading to destruction. This conflict takes place in space and space is not just discovered by humans and occupied, but in the process, it is transformed. As mentioned above that nature is challenged by this domination. Urbanization makes not different from the aspect of this large extension. Space is not just the place of conflict, but an object of the struggle itself.
Conception of Stalin’s Dialectical Materialism and Historical
Stalin’s view that ideas proceed from pondering a material world particular from cognizance or human movement that prompts another political mystery. Stalin separates man from nature and social life from material production. Dialectics was view as a system of thought, a theory of knowledge inseparable from the subject matter we are dealing with. It is an important distinction for Stalin as he maintains that man’s social life is a simple reflex of his material life. Stalin removes man as the subject of history. Nature is not a condition of rest and fixed status, stagnation and permanence yet a condition of consistent development and change. Stalin sees the working class (proletariat) as essentially an object, doing the demands of history instead of history completing the demands of the proletariat (Lance, nd). It was obvious that there was not even a period when the proletariat as a force of production and producers of this production could co-exist literally in harmony with the relations of production.
He contended that the there are new thoughts and old thoughts, where the new thoughts serve the development of the powers of production. The inquiry emerges on how these thoughts first show up, out of what encounters, and how can a thought be developed from the material world that is its inverse? He contended that the progressive thoughts emerge not from the materials worlds but rather from the new undertakings of the material world and these thoughts organise man. For Stalin’s, a group of society which takes the thoughts to the class (working class), alone has the capacity to observe the laws of the material world. Likewise, it follows that no practices with respect to the working class outside the direction of the party can be progressive.
He contended that progressions and advancement always start with changes and improvement of the productive powers. The produtive relations impact the strengths of production. So having expelled man from his focal part in history band diminished to an agent of the materials strengths of society. Stalin has completely no place else to search for the source of development in history other than the change of the matter i,e invention.
Lefebvre Debates with Stalinism
Marx’s work is necessary but not sufficient to enable us to understand our time, grasp events. Sometimes the suggestion is made that Marx abandoned the analysis of the role of the state as he turned toward the political economy .Clearly, this requires an analysis of the political economy in order to shed light on the workings of civil society which is the sum of the material conditions of life, and the realm of the social existence of humans. This enables us to comprehend political and legal forms, which cannot be understood in isolation nor from a reductive idealism.
Marx realized that we cannot conceive the state without analysing economic reality however in distinction to numerous Marxists, he did not think it could be reduced to just that. Capital is not an ‘economic’ work because it is a critique of all political economy and not just bourgeois political economy with an attempt to replace it with the socialist political economy. Likewise, the Marxist critique of the state is not just of the Hegelian or bourgeois state, but also of democracy and the democratic and socialist state.
For Marx, in distinction to Hegel argued that the state is just another institution dependent on historical conditions. He also contended that humans are not political animals, but social animals, for instance, social relations, including contradictions that give rise to class struggles, explain the state, not the other path round, as it appeared to Hegel.
Lefebvre argued that there are three key speculations in Marx’s compositions:
1. The state as an instrument of the predominant class financially, then politically. The most surely understood hypothetical draw, the most vulgarized.
2. The state is self-ruling in appearance, above classes, however is actually parasitic upon social generation of riches.
3. The State takes control of the entire society, in that it accept regulatory capacities which have a sparing effectiveness, and however in appearance it keeps on setting itself up as above society, really state power oversees gainful powers specifically. In this examination, the financial is not free of the political, it is neither cause nor reason; it relies on upon it. (Cited from Elden, 2004).
Lefebvre contended that an analysis of the way the world process works requires the transforming of traditional analysis of both Marxist and otherwise. Instead of the nation giving birth to the state, the state makes the nation a political and ideological effect that is, instead of the economic base generating political superstructures, the political head generates the social body, the political or state superstructure modifies and sometimes gives rise to the economic base.
For Lefebvre, Stalin manufactures or creates on state mode of production is something new , unexpected and incongruent with supposed Marxist-Leninist thought, however which has appeared and keeps on demonstrating its force. Lenin’s grand project in 1917 was to destroy the existing state and to construct a state that would fade. However, the result was opposite the fact that Stalin produced, a strong state, which is why Lefebvre describes him as a man unable to see the difference between state socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Stalinist State remains the model of the modern State but behind state, socialism comes state capitalism. As he argued that Stalinist Russia is merely the exemplary case.
Instead of rethinking the state and its relation to society it has embraced state socialism, and like the state power, it has demolished democracy at the base and eliminated all mediations. It also had become powerless without a bureaucratic machine and solid with a bureaucratic machine, the left is situated on the very terrain of those with whom it is engaged in battle. A whole range of examples can be given for what is meant by the State Mode of Production. Basically, it means the mode of management and domination of the entire society by the state. It is perhaps most evident in the social production with their thirst for the quantitative development of gainful powers. These projects were cooperated by largely publicity drives to show the world images of great works, canals, dams, and power stations, and the mechanization of Soviet agriculture.
Lefebvre claims that the mystery on the failure of fascism and falsifications of Stalinism are part of the same issue in the elevation of the state’s position. Stalin and Stalinism can be simply understood as the irrationalism of the state.We can, therefore, understand the purpose of Lefebvre’s critique of Stalin. As he argued that as early as the mid-1960s, the liquidation of Stalinism is nothing other than the liquidation of a certain concept of the state.
Conclusion
Lefebvre critical examination upon Heidegger’s philosophical is astoundingly effective in taking a look at the connection amongst legislative issues and space, particularly in connection to modern capitalism or free enterprise. He does this through an examination of the production of space. The bringing of a Marxist concept, with all the political issues that infers, is hugely imperative in understanding. Lefebvre’s indebted his emphasis of space to Heidegger and that his work on the Production of Space should be read between Marx and Heidegger.
Lefebvre noticed that it is as an incongruity of history that the communist nations, endeavoring to foundation Marxist philosphy have really understood Hegel’s programme (idea of self- conciousness). The linkage amongst communism and the state is especially played out in Stalin’s idea and practice. Capitalism has turned out to be stronger, adaptable and versatile than it was belived. The review on the study of Stalinism was that the idea of the State Mode Production which was expressly planned to comprehend Stalinism and State Socialism as well as one party rule with its financial and political arrangements.
Therefore, Lefebvre’s main work on space concluded that work has to be done on an understanding of space and how it is socially put together and used. Space is a social and political product. This is clearly revealed on why Lefebvre’s has given a title as the Production of Space where he used two terms which need to be critically analysed.
Space needs to be understood in the context of the mode of production of a particular period. Despite Lefebvre’s attention to the role of ideas, he does recognize the importance of forces and relations of production. Spaces are sometimes produced by the contradictions of the mode of production such as the medieval town, which was emerged from feudal rule but eventually come out victorious. However, Lefebvre goes further, regarding space an important role of product. In the strict Marxist tradition social space would be considered as part of the superstructure, but for Lefebvre, it enters into the forces of production, the division of labour, and has relations with property.
Production is broader than the economic production of things and includes the production of society, knowledge, and institutions. Production in Lefebvre’s sense deriving from Marx, Hegel, and Nietzsche’s notion of creation which needs to be grasped as both a material and mental process. In a modern world, an analysis of production shows that we have go through from the production of things in space to the production of space itself where it is considered as need of both. On one hand, he deliberately pointed out that a social space is not a socialised space i,e claiming that the space was produced by social forces . While on the other side, he argued that productive forces permit those who dispose of them to control space and even to produce it. This productive capacity extends to the whole of the earth’s space, and beyond. Natural space is destroyed and transformed into a social product by multiple techniques, particularly physics and information science.