Матрица иллюзии

Abstract

The article highlights several methodological levels in the study of illusory forms of consciousness based on the heritage of German classical philosophy (Kant, Hegel) and on the materials of the works of Durkheim, Freud and Marx. The “Kantian” level involves deciphering the content of an illusory complex by isolating unconscious intellectual or social processes, the interweaving of which gives rise to the appearance of ontological connections that do not exist in real­ity. Such an understanding of the nature of illusory forms allows us to single out four regular stages of reflection of these phenomena: naive fetishism, its rational criticism, scientific ideology and critical theory. At the fourth stage, invisible connections are revealed, but the reason for their concealment by an illusory form remains unexplained (fetishized). The “post-Kantian” level implies the re­jection of the subjective understanding of the illusory form and its understanding as a natural generation of content, which requires the rejection of the classical opposition of truth and error. The Hegelian model of absolute reality, for which all knowledge and illusions are its internal, but transient characteristics, can act here as a “methodological measure”. Unlike Durkheim, for whom illusion was the eternal state of society, Freud and Marx viewed it as a transient phenomenon, focusing on the mechanisms of its formation and death, but the opposition of “society and man” characteristic of psychoanalysis did not allow revealing the “systemic secret of form”. Marx partly took this step, and Durkheim’s innova­tion consisted in revealing the reflexive nature of the connection between the fetish and its sign.