Why People Say ‘Drugs and Alcohol’ or ‘Rock and Metal’ — A Deep Dive Into Concrete Universality
Why do people say “drugs and alcohol” or “rock and metal music” instead of just saying “drugs” or “rock music”? Answering these two questions would help us understand the philosophy of taxonomy (or classification): the relationship between a universal and its particulars (such as the relationship between a genus and its species, or between a set and its subsets).
DRUGS AND ALCOHOL — ARISTOTLE
In order to tackle the first question (drugs and alcohol), we have to understand what an autohyponym is. In linguistics, an autohyponym is a word with a meaning that is more general and another meaning that is more restrictive or specific, the second one being a subset of the first. For example, the word “dog” is an autohyponym since it can refer to all animals of the species Canis familiaris, or just to the male ones. Similarly, the word “guitar” is another autohyponym, since it can either include or exclude bass guitars.
This notion helps us understand the phrase “drugs and alcohol”. The word “drug” is an autohyponym. This means that it has a more general and a more restrictive meaning. The more general definition of the word ‘drug’ is: any mind-altering substance, or any substance that gets you ‘high’ or ‘intoxicated’. The more restrictive definition of the word ‘drug’ is any illegal mind-altering substance. So, alcohol is a drug only in the first definition and not the second one. This means that alcohol sometimes is and sometimes isn’t a drug, depending on context. This is why people feel the need to say the expression “drugs and alcohol”: to clarify that they are talking about any sort of mind-altering substance and not just the illegal ones, in order to avoid miscommunication.
The notion of an autohyponym is compatible and even complementary to Aristotelian binary logic. For Aristotle, every particular that is part of the same universal category has something in common with all the other particulars, which is the ‘essence’ of that universal. For example, all apples have something in common without which they wouldn’t be apples, or all trees have something in common without which they wouldn’t be trees. This is called essentialism. For Aristotle, the relationship between a genus and its species is analogous to mathematical set theory.
This is why for Aristotle, difference is subordinated to the identity of the concept, as Deleuze would say. Differences are differences between species within a genus (or between subsets that are both part of a larger set). For Aristotle, each definition takes the form: ”definiendum = differentia + genus”, where the definiendum is a species (or genus), and the definiens is the formula that consists of the differentia + the genus (or super-genus). Thus, just as a species is defined in terms of its genus and a differentia that marks it off from other species of that genus, each genus is defined in terms of its super-genus and a differentia that marks it off from other coordinate genera falling under that super-genus.
The tree of Poryphry is an illustration of Aristotelian taxonomy:
This understanding of classification is compatible with the phrase “drugs and alcohol”. Drugs, here, would simply be a signifier referring to two separate signifieds (a homonym), where the word ‘alcohol’ is a subset (a species in a genus) of only one of those two meanings.
PLATO, PROTOTYPE THEORY AND FUZZY SETS
At first glance, the expression “rock and metal” seems similar to the expression “drugs and alcohol”. Metal is already a subset of rock, so the expression feels redundant. But if we do a deeper analysis, we will notice that the underlying logic of this expression is radically different from the logic of the expression “drugs and alcohol”.
The word “drug” is an autohyponym but the word “rock” isn’t one in a formal sense. While there are contexts in which alcohol isn’t considered a drug, there are no contexts in which metal is explicitly excluded from the category of rock. Nevertheless, people often feel the need to say “rock and metal” in order to clarify that they’re not excluding heavier types of rock music (like heavy metal). This would mean that, nevertheless, the term “metal” might only be implicitly excluded from the larger category of ‘rock’, in certain historical and cultural contexts.
Moreover, we sometimes get the impression that “rock and metal” implicitly excludes softer types of rock (like pop rock: The Beatles, Imagine Dragons, etc.). So, while a band like Imagine Dragons is considered part of the category of “rock”, it is not considered part of the category of “rock and metal” even though this statement is invalid from the standpoint of binary logic.
In mathematical terms, if x is a subset of the set A, then this implies that x is a subset of the set “A reunion B”. But this is not the case here: Imagine Dragons is part of the category “rock” but is usually not part of the category “rock and metal” in the social contexts in which someone feels the need to say “rock and metal” instead of rock. Therefore, while the phrase “drugs and alcohol” directly refers to drugs like heroin and cocaine, the phrase “rock and metal” rarely refers to bands like Imagine Dragons.
All of this implies that “rock and metal” is not simply the reunion of the set “rock” with the set “metal”. From these we can gather two conclusions. Either:
1). Rock and metal are not mathematical sets in the first place.
2). Rock and metal are mathematical sets but the word “and” doesn’t represent reunion.
The answer is that rock and metal are not traditional mathematical sets, but instead are mathematical fuzzy sets. In mathematics, fuzzy sets (also known as uncertain sets) are sets whose elements have degrees of membership. In classical set theory, the membership of elements in a set is assessed in binary terms according to a bivalent condition — an element either belongs or does not belong to the set. By contrast, fuzzy set theory permits the gradual assessment of the membership of elements in a set, where an element can be “more” or “less” part of a set.
While the mathematical theory of classical set theory complements Aristotelian logic, the mathematical theory of fuzzy sets complements Platonic logic as well as prototype theory. Prototype theory is a theory of categorization in cognitive science, particularly in psychology and cognitive linguistics, in which there is a graded degree of belonging to a conceptual category, where some members are more central than others. For example, a penguin is ‘less’ of a bird than a swallow, because a penguin is an atypical example of a bird. Cognitive science can empirically study this by designing experiments in which people are thought to think of the first thing that comes to mind when a category is brought up. For example, a 1975 study found out that people more often think of sofas and chairs when asked to bring an example of a furniture than they think of a love seat of a lamp¹.
Fuzzy set theory and prototype theory are more compatible with Platonic essentialism than with Aristotelian essentialism. For Plato, particulars are imperfect copies of the perfect universals (or ‘platonic forms’). Plato would argue here that there are individual rock songs, and then the overall category of “rock” is not merely a mathematical set containing all rock songs but is instead “the rock song” itself. Every rock song for Plato is an imperfect copy of the ultimate rock song. This Platonic logic does away with classical sets and subsets and introduces the concept of a fuzzy set, where a member of a category can belong ‘more’ or ‘less’ to that category depending on how well it resembles the ideal Platonic form. While for Aristotle, each rock song is equally part of the overall mathematical set of “rock songs”, for Plato, some songs are “more rock” than others.
Gilles Deleuze explains Platonic difference as follows:
“Division is not the inverse of a ‘generalisation’; it is not a determination of species. It is in no way a method of determining species, but one of selection. It is not a question of dividing a determinate genus into definite species, but of dividing a confused species into pure lines of descent, or of selecting a pure line from material which is not (…) there are no longer contraries within a single genus, but pure and impure, good and bad, authentic and inauthentic.”²
For Plato, it’s not about opposing definitions logically but about claimants struggling for authenticity, depending on how well they live up to the standard imposed by the universal platonic form. Deleuze gives the example of The Statesman, where many people claim to be the “true shepherd of men,” but Plato seeks to find the real one, or Plato’s dialogue “Phaedrus”, where it is a question of defining the good madness and the true lover, but many claimants cry: ‘I am love, I am the lover’.
HEGEL AND CONCRETE UNIVERSALITY
What does this imply for the expression “rock and metal”? We could argue two opposite things. First off, perhaps metal music is “more rock” than softer rock songs. Second off, perhaps metal music is ‘less rock’ than genres like pop-rock. So, which one is it?
To say “rock and metal” implies both things dialectically: first off, metal is less rock than other types of rock in general, because if metal already was the ultimate example of rock music, then there would be no need to state it. Second off, metal is more rock than other types of rock here and now, in this context, not in spite of but precisely because of its instantiation! When people sometimes say “rock and metal”, it’s almost as if they were to say “rock… and just to make clear — I don’t only mean that pussy soyboy type of rock, I also mean real hard rock!”. The phrase doesn’t exclude soft rock per se but rather remembers people to not exclude the heavier rock types. So, the phrase “rock and metal” implies that metal is more and less rock at the same time: it’s less rock for the Other, and more rock for the self. Less rock in the object but more rock in the subject.
Henceforth, neither Aristotle nor Plato would save our situation, but only Hegel could make sense of this. For Hegel, the concrete universal is the ultimate instantiation of universality in a particular (like a species in a genus) not through perfection, but precisely through its failure to live up to the universal’s demands. The concrete universal for Hegel is not just the perfect Platonic forms that particulars derive their model from. Instead, the concrete universal is the opposite: it’s the worst example within a category, but precisely because of its failure to live up to the universal standard/universal definition, it encapsulates the point in which the universal contradicts itself, thus representing it better than a perfect copy.
Slavoj Zizek and Todd McGowan explain the concrete universal through the difference between the ‘Black Lives Matter’ and the ‘All Lives Matter’ slogans. The All Lives Matter movement is an example of abstract universality: the set of all humans (all) have a certain property (their lives mattering). Simple, Aristotelian logic.
The Black Lives Matter slogan is a concrete universal for Zizek, however: the group of people whose lives matter the least for the system/for society (Black) have a certain property (their lives mattering). Thus, the slogan Black Lives Matter is not a statement about the fact that the life of black people matters, nor about the fact that the life of non-black people matters, it is a slogan about the group of people whose life currently does not matter but should matter. This is how the concrete universal works: the worst example of a universal (the universal here being ‘the group of people whose lives matter’) shows the hidden contradictions of the universal, thus encapsulating its logic to the end. Here, this concrete universal is a better and a worse instantiation of the universal at the same time: it’s a worse one in the Other (for society/the system) and a better one for the subject (for morality or for the “should”).
If we replace the term black for “metal” and lives matter for “rock”, doesn’t this help us make sense of the respective statement? The statement “rock and metal” could thus be interpreted as “don’t forget metal!”.
The phrase “rock and metal” functions similarly to “Black Lives Matter” in that it isn’t a simple Aristotelian categorization but a statement that reveals an implicit contradiction in the universal. Just as “Black Lives Matter” emerges precisely because black lives don’t seem to matter to the system, “rock and metal” emerges because heavy rock genres are often excluded from mainstream conceptions of “rock.”
By adding “metal,” the phrase is both:
1. Acknowledging that metal is, in some sense, distinct from rock (otherwise, why mention it separately?).
2. Asserting that metal belongs to rock more than some other subgenres do — precisely because it is the genre that is usually excluded from the mainstream conception of “rock.”
This is what makes “rock and metal” dialectical: metal is simultaneously the most rock and the least rock. The subject using the phrase “rock and metal” is making an implicit judgment about what counts as real rock, displacing softer subgenres like pop-rock from their intended meaning.
Thus, the logic of the concrete universal is neither inclusion or exclusion, but the failure of identity itself. Both inclusion and exclusion operate through the logic of identity, where difference is subordinated to the identity of the concept (through either classical mathematical sets or fuzzy sets). The concrete universal displaces of set logic altogether. For instance, the phrase ‘Black Lives Matter’ does not exclude White people and other races, but simply implies that the lives of white people already matter to society/to the system, so the focus should be on lifting the lives of other groups to the same level. Similarly enough, the phrase “rock and metal” does not explicitly exclude softer genres of rock from the category, but simply highlights how metal was excluded by others in certain contexts. In other words, the purpose of concrete universality is neither to include nor to exclude, but to point out an already-existing exclusion for the sake of reverting it.
This also means that the concrete universal is always context-dependent, since the instantiation of a context-less universal is always different in each context. This is why Zizek often argues that the European enlightenment tradition is not an example of western colonialism, because the way the European enlightenment manifests is different in each culture. Similarly, the French revolution was a concrete universal in history through the way it inspired other revolutions like the Haitian slave revolution.
This relationship between the concrete universal and its context explains why I only hear the phrase “rock and metal” in the anglosphere but never in my native language (Romanian). In Romania, “rock” already carries an implicit focus on heavy rock and metal because of historical exposure and social perception. Romanian subculture didn’t absorb “rock” in the broad Anglo-American sense (where it includes things like pop rock or soft rock) but instead in a narrower, heavier sense.
This is why Romanian doesn’t need the phrase “rock and metal” — the word “rocker” (which simply means ‘rock listener’ in Romanian, not to be confused with the leather boy subculture) already implies someone who listens to metal. Meanwhile, in English, the term “rock” is so broad that it often needs further specification. In English, the default meaning of “rock” tends to be more inclusive (covering everything from The Beatles to Metallica), but at the same time, it is shaped by mainstream tastes, which skew towards the softer side of rock. The phrase “rock and metal” thus functions as a corrective, making sure that the more extreme subgenres aren’t erased or forgotten from the category. If in Romania, “rock” already carries the connotation of heavier rock and metal, then there’s no need to specify “rock and metal” to correct an implicit exclusion, in the same way that in a society where black people are given equal rights, there would theoretically be no need to say something like “Black Lives Matter”.
REFERENCES:
1: Rosch, E. (1975). Cognitive representations of semantic categories. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 104(3), 192–233. https://doi.org/10.1037/0096-3445.104.3.192
2: Gilles Deleuze, “Difference and Repetition”, pg. 60
