Habit and Revolution. Lenin on Second Nature(s)

CBEES Advanced Seminar with Frank Ruda.

Speaker: Frank Ruda, Senior Lecturer in philosophy at the School of Humanities, University of Dundee
Chair: Tora Lane, Research Leader, CBEES
Discussant: Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback, Professor in Philosophy, Södertörn University

Abstract

In his “State and Revolution” Lenin formulates the revolutionary agenda inter alia in terms of a revolution of habit. When the revolution is victorious, people will, from a certain moment on – that Lenin defines as the withering away of democracy – get used to follow “the elementary rules of social intercourse”. However one reads the precise contours of this argument, one thing is unambiguous: revolution must for Lenin aim at revolutionizing the very – second – nature that dominates people in the form of their (capitalist) habits. Revolution must thus be habitual revolution. The lecture will dive into the abysses of Lenin’s theory of habit and attempt to draw out in what sense, emancipation cannot be severed from the – in Hegelian terms – mad moment of transforming human nature.